THEY TOOK THE WORDS RIGHT OUTTA MA MOUTH

This morning, on MidLifeBloggers, I read:

On Money: MidLife Mommyblogger Meltdown

by msmeta of Adventures at Midlife

The Daily Beast, Tina Brown’s new excursion into tabloid online journalism, has an absolutely heart-wrenching collection of posts from women who have been slammed by the economic crisis. The last one, from a midlifer who calls herself The Accidental Housewife, really got to me:

The generations who survived the Great Depression were tough. They were resilient; they did not expect the government to bail them out of the hell that fell upon them…They boarded up their farms and loaded up their jalopies and headed out to find work. They did not stand around wringing their hands crying about what they didn’t have anymore they went out and worked. They were doers and savers and they made it.
My step-grandmother used to reuse her foil. She would smooth it out, wipe it off, fold it up and use it again and again until it eventually fell apart. My best friend’s grandmother would make a single chicken last through a week’s worth of meals. Each meal being different but made from that single chicken. They were resourceful. More important they MADE IT….
I am ashamed of my fellow baby boomers. I am ashamed that we have turned into such an entitled generation. I am ashamed that we have to have someone else make our morning coffee and we are too good or too busy to prepare our own dinner. That we feel entitled to drive vehicles that use more fuel in one week than a whole village in a third world country uses in a year.
So what do you say fellow boomers? Can we do it? Can we tighten our belts, knuckle down and use that knowledge that our forefathers and mothers gave us? Can we cook our own meals, repair our own roofs, make ourselves pay our own bills and not rely on the government to bail us out? I think we can. We just have to want to do it.

She captured much of my current angst. We as a generation have not been as careful as our parents. We’ve serially refinanced our homes and underfunded our retirements to pay for our lifestyles, and the payments are now due. Many boomers are spoiled and selfish and feel entitled, and some of us have passed those “values” on to our children. And we are all now in deep, deep kimchi.

But I am encouraged by some of the adjustments and accommodations and belt-tightening that I’m seeing around me: less driving, more brown-bag lunches, even a little more kindness and solicitude among my colleagues and neighbors. We are a well-educated generation with a lot of tools at our disposal. And one of those tools is the online communities we have built, which hold the promise of advising, supporting, sustaining and cheering us on (and up) during this bleak time.

Chins up, peeps. We’ll get through this.

Hill Country Hippie says "Ditto to them both!", and if you need advice or support, check out this new cooperative blogsite with numerous contributors: http://simple-green-frugal-co-op.blogspot.com/

GIFTS OF SELF

I have gifts on my mind this morning. I finally realized it was past time for me to start my holiday list-making. I've got my husband's clan coming for Thanksgiving, so I've started a list of fun things they might enjoy doing while they are here, and I need to start thinking about meals that can please both our vegetarian, and Mr. Where's-the-Beef. But mainly I need to get started on my list of what to get everyone for Christmas. I would so love to be able to make a lot of my presents, but can't think of anything I could make, that anyone would actually want or use.

When I think back on all of my Christmas-Pasts - all the shopping I have done, gifts I have bought and wrapped - they are pretty much a blur to me now. The only things that really stand out in my memory are the very few times I actually made most of my presents. There was the year when I machine-appliqued sweatshirts for everyone. Then there was the one when I made my beautiful quilted tree-skirt, and made lap quilts for the kids and John's dad. Oh, and there was the time, when I first went nuts over gardening, that I was doing landscape designs for everyone, and putting together container gardens for them, or offering them my services as pruner and planter. (I was much younger and less arthritic then!) Out of more than 50 years of giving, I only remember 3 years distinctly? Sad!

The same holds true on all the gifts people have given to me. I'm sure there have been hundreds that have been thoughtfully purchased, much used and much appreciated, but for some reason, my mind has not been able to hold on to their images for long. Right now, as I sift back through the years, what are the things that jump out at me? The box full of Barbie clothes that Mimi made for my new doll; the matching red velvet dresses and corduroy bathrobes Mom sewed for me and my sisters; the wooden trundle bed Dad built for pre-teen me and the footstool he and my sister worked on together, and which is under my feet at this moment; the cradle, swing, rocking horse and circus wagon toy box that George made for my babies, and the doll house he built for me; the carved birds that Theda made for everyone in my family, Priscilla's Fimo creations and Megan's famous Christmas Hooch; the one dress Kathy sewed for me, even though she hates sewing; the times my kids planted all my seasonal color as a birthday gift to me, the beautiful shawl Lex knitted for me, and of course, the handmade and crayoned Valentine card John made for me once, that started out "To an oolie-droolie girl...", and that other one that contained a very memorable, original poem, which is, unfortunately, unprintable.

These are the gifts I remember. All those lovely, expensive, purchased gifts? Not so much, I'm afraid.

P.S. You can click on the to-do list, to enlarge it enough to read.

"Why not give our children a course in advertising; not how to do it, but how to defend against it...the greatest threat of advertising is that once it teaches our children that they can have salvation if they buy, they silently accept that they cannot have salvation unless they do...The formula is simple...You create an ad that will make us feel ever so slightly inadequate, then offer a product to make us whole again. Bingo!...we can be conned into buying even the most embarrassing crock of doo-doo within days." Ferenc Mate

THE ARW MYSTERY

Please tell me I'm not the only one who does this! I don't have a PDA or anything like that, but I do have a little date book that stays open on my desk at all times. It's the only way I can keep track of my life. It's not that I am juggling numerous appointments each day, like some corporate types. It's just that if I get absorbed in one thing, I tend to forget everything else. So I need reminders sitting right in front of me, of any appointments for the week, deadlines to be met, and things I want to accomplish, etc. The spaces in this datebook are fairly small, so over the years I have developed the habit of abbreviating things, using acronyms, and using colored pencils to indicate importance. In general, this works well for me. But occasionally, I screw up royally.

For instance, take this week. Every day for the next four days, I have the initials ARW written on the page, in red. Red indicates "Don't you dare forget this!" It skips Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and then there it is again the following week on Sunday through Wednesday. ARW. In red. Trouble is, I can't for the life of me remember what ARW stands for. I have been wracking my brain all week, trying to remember why I wrote that. Then I enlisted my husband's assistance, when he arrived this weekend. In the end, he was more obsessed with figuring it out than I was, and will probably stew on it during his entire drive back to Houston.

I wish I could blame it on old age, but I've been like this my entire life. For instance, I'm forever putting something away in a safe place, so I will be able to find it when I need it, but then I forget where that safe place is. People see my lists and think I am a super-organized control freak, but actually they are a much needed coping mechanism for just getting by. If you come to a dinner party at my house, you will probably laugh, as does everyone else, when you see my list on the refrigerator door, of all the things I plan to serve that evening. If only you knew how many times I have been putting things away after a dinner party, only to discover that one of the main dishes was still sitting in the refrigerator, because I forgot to serve it!

So, this isn't the first time I have forgotten the meaning of one of my own abbreviations. They always come back to me eventually, so I'm not too worried. I know it doesn't have anything to do with The Bountiful Sprout, or with the on-line class I am taking, which are the only critical things going on right now, as far as I know. I'd feel better though, if it weren't written in red.

SNEAK PEEK

I won't be doing my next give-away until later this month, but I have already chosen which book to give next, and am having a great time looking back through it, and noting the things that I hi-lited the first time around. I'm not going to reveal what it is, or who wrote it yet, but I'm going to give you some teasers. It was written back in '93. I had read several tomes like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and they just scared the bejeebers out of me. Then this guy came along, and though he ranted and raved too, he was just so damned funny sometimes, I really didn't mind. Now that I think about it, I guess I do have to tell you his name - can't use a quote without a name, now can I?

"We...bought chemicals to calm our fits, dry our pits, clean our mitts, expand our tits...Have we gone and lost our collective bloody minds?!!! Or are we simply bored? Have our lives become so meaningless and empty that we have to fill every moment with a toy? If that's so, it's sad. Sad that we might turn the universe's only living planet into a monstrous monument to the boredom of us all." Ferenc Mate

(Sound like Wall-e? Remember, this was written 25 years ago!)

BE THE CHANGE

Have you ever asked "Yeah, but what difference can one person make?" If so, check this out: http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=1310

TAA DAA!

Today's the big day folks! The Bountiful Sprout went live at midnight, and orders are already coming in. We board members (well, not so much me, as I'm a Johnny-come-lately) have really been scrambling these last few weeks, trying to get as many producers as possible on board, but it's a slow process. First you have to convince them that it would be advantageous to use our website to sell their produce/products to member families, and much easier than having to lug their stuff to the farmers' market each week, never knowing how many people will show up or what they will buy, and having to sit out in the heat or cold for hours on end, just twiddling their thumbs. With TBS they just go to our website twice a month, at the end of the ordering period, and look to see the exact total ordered of each of their items. Then all they have to do is drop that amount off on pick-up day, and go back home. We even sort it for them! How easy is that?

But convincing them isn't really the hard part. In fact, once word spreads, they'll be knocking on our door! No, the hard part is getting a busy farmer to take time out from their work day to fill out their application and return it to us in a timely manner, so that we can come out for a site visit. Then we have to get them to sit down at the computer and list all of the items they plan to sell. Of course, this only has to be done once. After the items are in, all they have to do is log in twice a month and adjust the amounts on each item, to reflect what they have available at this particular moment in time.

We managed to get a decent number to complete ALL the steps before we went live, have several more that have been approved but haven't listed their items yet, and have a whole butt-load who have said "Count me in!!", but who just didn't get their paperwork in soon enough to be included in this first order. Maybe that's just as well. It will be like a new restaurant doing a soft opening, before letting the general public swarm their doors. I have a feeling this whole thing is going to mushroom into something unbelievably wonderful, once word gets around, and I'm hoping other communities will follow our example. To find out more, go to http://www.bountifulsprout.com/.

BOTH THE PROBLEM, AND THE SOLUTION

I was reading back through old journal entries this morning, and discovered that certain things keep popping up over and over again. I am beginning to realize that not only is this computer the source of much of my frustration, it is also the tool that has helped me to figure out a way to deal with it. How weird is that?

Back in late August I wrote "I'm finally coming up with a fairly workable routine, with regards to chores, and they are actually getting done, for the most part. Believe it or not, I think that reading that blog Eyes of Wonder has had a positive effect on me. I figure, if she has eleven people living in an average-sized house, and manages so beautifully to keep it simple, uncluttered, cheerful and inviting, surely I can do as much, with only one person here most of the time. Right? Now my real problem is trying to juggle my passions, and not letting the blogosphere suck too much time away from everything else. For instance, why haven't I done any sketching or art projects this month? Guess I need to work out a rotating schedule for these things too, just like I do for chores, and make sure that I include some outings and creative excursions, so I don't become a complete hermit!"

Then in early September, I wrote "I gotta quit going out of town so much, cause coming back just leaves me feeling too scattered. My routines have gone to hell in a hand-basket, and I can't seem to get back on track. Instead I just sit here paralyzed, feeling pulled in 20 different directions by all the things I should be doing - finish painting that darn wall! read that pile of books and magazines! exercise more! either do some more painting, or put that crap away! when are you going to whip that garden into shape? what about that sketching class you paid so much for? when are you going to do something with that? - and not getting anything done as a result."

And finally, a week later, I wrote "I am still enjoying my nightly bedtime visit with Jewels at Eyes of Wonder. One of my persistent problems, as you have surely picked up on, is my scattered focus and distractibility, when it comes to managing my time. My mornings have fallen into a fairly productive routine, but the rest of the time, I am a pinball, caught in a continuously haphazard carom about the house. I no longer wish to live according to all my detailed lists and schedules, as I had to do when I was gainfully employed. I want something looser, that helps me to focus, but still allows for spontaneity."

I continued, saying "The other day, Jewel's blog gave me just the inspiration that I needed. She was quoting that old poem that was embroidered on so many samplers in days gone by - the one that starts out 'Monday is wash day,' and ends with 'and on Sunday, we rest.' It came to me then, that I should stick with, and further develop, my morning routine of sunrise meditation, breakfast and journaling, writing and reading time on the computer, followed by exercise and lunch. Then, in order to organize somewhat the remaining hours of each day, without over-scheduling myself, I will give each day a designation. Mine, however, will be a bit different than the traditional ones, allowing for plenty of interpretation and spontaneity. One day shall be devoted to food - as in shopping for, perusing my food magazines and cookbooks, cooking something that requires time and attention, etc. Another day will be devoted to organizing - making sure there is a place for everything, and everything is in its place, culling out clutter, filing, etc. One day shall be devoted to creative pursuits, whether it be a meeting of the muses, designing a flower bed, or working on an art project. I will need one day for such things as mending and maintenance, both inside the house and out, and Fridays will be for general cleaning - getting the house in shape for John's arrival and weekend visitors. Saturday will be for exploring - artist's dates, creative excursions, treasure hunts, or just seeking out interesting people and places to blog about. And Sunday, of course, shall be our day of rest, where I will give myself permission to nap, read, or watch an old movie, with none of my usual pangs of guilt!"

So there you have it. The computer gaveth the problems, then tooketh them away.