Living-Deliberately.com

My friend and blog client Sheryl and I have a running game in our conversations…we say what we are celebrating today and follow the list with a “you?”. I thought I’d do today’s in public!

Celebrating Today:

• Still living in “real air”. Thanks to shady trees, our valley, open windows, and fans, we have yet to hit the AC on. I LOVE real air and only capitulate to the fake stuff when it’s frigid or sweltering…and we ain’t there yet.
• wading pools for little ones
• a clean house
• a stocked fridge and pantry, thanks to shopping last night
• the cool new template I’m working on for Dr. Tray; love the space and organization of it!
• summer dinners: crabcakes, artichokes, and new potatoes.

You?

Clara Irene~ March 29, 1999 - May 27, 1999

please watch this one!!! What a great TED talk! A whole bunch of of our favorite points wrapped up into one bundle: creating spaces that we care about, spaces worth defending. One disclaimer: there are a few wordie-dirties in the first half.

This one is free: the smell of freshly cut grass.

It’s hay season around here and we live downhill from a large hay baling farm. It seems all the hay in the county has been mown, rolled into large round bales, and then loaded onto semi trucks to be hauled up our hill. There are probably 10 or so trucks a day going by, loaded with 20 or so large round bales, and then the next morning, the same hay, rebaled into neat little rectangles and shrink wrapped headed back down.

Add to it my boy, who has taken a liking to mowing the flatter sections of our yard, and the neighbors, bouncing around on thier riding mowers, and the air is constantly fragrant these days.

It’s a warm, summery scent, which together with the cool breezes and suddenly-lush shade that’s grown, has made for some beautifully stunning days this week.

It all makes May one of my very favorite months.

please share your simple pleasures in the comments, and if you blog it, be sure to link it!

I think I realized today how very, very different writing a book with an outline and  a specific goal in mind, is from writing a project like nanowrimo, where I just freely got the words down, aspiring to a certain word count. I’ve been frustrated this week, knowing I need a certain block of time to be available for working on the book; just about everything else I do can be done in spurts or multi-tasked.  But the book needs focus, time, freedom from interuption and distraction, an ample supply of water and sour patch kids, and rest, all of which has been available in criticaly low amounts this week (well, not the water).

I’ve got a great outline, done just the way I like it. I can go from point to point, relying heavily on the narrative, and pick up where I left off. A part of my brain still wishes this were all long hand; I have a desire to see all my thoughts on paper so I can shuffle them around, manipulate their order in physical ways, and SEE the accumulation. Having it on a computer has its disadvantages. On the other hand, my handwriting is pretty much illegible these days, so having all on paper might not be such a great thing either…

I hit a snag with the title; I’ve come to hate my working title. “Low Income Is Better Than Owed Income”, the first half of it, is certainly the sentiment and the experience. But “low income” is not the message I want to repeat to myself over and over and over again for months at a time. I want to focus on the benefits  living a deliberate life has provided: freedom and the ability to truly aspire, where there was once only bondage and arrested goals. And having a snag like that has caused a little bit of a spin in the vision; footing that can be hard to regain when one is trying to summarize the premise and stay focused.

Writers need time to write. One of the benefits of a blog is that it has me writing a little bit of something nearly every day, in amounts that are conducive to the busy life I currently lead.  There won’t be a “writer’s retreat” in this project,  I don’t have a formal office with a door that closes or childcare to keep everyone from running amuk while I think.  Blogs are not books and in order to move from soundbites to lengthy content, a solution has to be found around the constraints.  Others have done it: without advances from publishers and while they kept dayjobs, books, even very good ones, have been accomplished. This project is a huge piece in the bigger picture of our goals…goals that we are deliberately working towards acheiving.

I imagine the strategy involves taking one step at a time, one hurdle at a time. It probably comes down to seizing the concentrated moments as they come and maybe seeing what I can do to carve out some serious time set apart in the summer, a few blocks of time larger than the rest. I want the book to be more seamless than a quilt with all it’s fragmented parts making the greater whole but perhaps I need to reconsider that.  Only I sense this is the time for doing rather than thinking about doing. Too much consideration can be paralyzing.

“I want a modest portion of sweet potato and a plentious one of brocoli please.”

said the boy who loves, loves, loves green veggies and just about can’t tolerate anything of another color. We’ve been working on “not complaining” :-). Gotta love it!

I like these TED.com videos so much I had to make a category for my favorites! Today’s: Barry Swartz’s The paradox of Choice. I’d heard of his book and the idea is an interesting one: does having more choices really make us happier?

But I’m excited about TED.com….in addition to the very excellent speech by Sir Ken Robinson the other day, tonight I watched a speech by marketing-guru Seth Godin, which led me to finally check out the root site, TED.com. It’s a gathering of creative thinkers…neat, neat, neat. Check it out.

I realized this over the weekend. My neighbors have neatly tilled squares in their yards; little red-brown clay rows studded with dark green sprouts. No mulch and lots of space between every row.

Mine, on the other hand, wasn’t tilled. I started layering the lasangne steps right away last summer, by laying cardboard over the grass where I wanted to grow stuff. I have this strange mixture of lasangne, square-foot, permaculture, and moody gardening going on… no rows. I like the tomatoes to be side by side with an iris with an herb with a marigold. I like green beans tucked in between everything and peas and morning glories competing for climbing space. Over the cardboard went grass clippings, raked leaves, ash from the wood stove, and chicken shit (oops…trying not to say that word but goodness it fell in rhymically into the writing there…) poop. It cooked compost style all winter. Before I planted I put a layer of the NYTimes; old stocks and beautiful models becoming worm food in short order. I poured top soil over all that and punched holes where the plants needed to go. Then, I took straw and nested it all around; this keeps the water in and the weeds down.  Nice and pretty low maintenence; the actual planting was done in two afternoons and now every evening I just go out to water it.

In a few weeks I’ll add stakes for the tomatoes, the blackberries, and the cucumbers.

I decided to line the edge of the sidewalk with garden. This way, I can use it for “edible landscaping”. It’s also very much more in keeping with a passion of mine: suburban homesteading. I have a city sized lot out here in the country…there’s no real reason to have a squared off “farm plot” in my yard, a miniture version of a pasture. Especially in light of the Food Stamp Challenge, I think it ultimately makes sense to continue to work and discover how much food can be produced in the suburban and urban garden scenarios because they are a wonderful resource for a higher quality food while still saving money.

So we’ll see how it goes this year. The last two gardens I had were left right before harvest due to summer moves so I’m not sure what the yeild was for the amount of planting I did.  I kept is small this year too; my original goal was to add two goats,  25 meat and egg chickens, and another raised garden bed. The neighbor situation has led us to beleive we’ll try to sell next spring and so most of my “home energy” will go to finishing projects up rather than starting new ones.

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For those interested in tidal homeschooling, I have a new post up on the blog I keep for the record. And I revamped my 365 blog as well and it’s back in business, somewhat adjusted to allow for imperfection ;-).

I love running. Well, not quite… I hate running. No, not exactly because I do it too much. I like the results running gives me. What else is true is that I’m a horrible runner. I’m not even sure one could call what I do “running”….it’s more like wogging, a combination of walking and jogging, done with a grimace on my face and the feeling that vomit is not far behind. No matter how often I run or how I train myself, I still can’t go faster, and it doesn’t feel better; timing my “mile” would be obnoxious. My “runner’s high” means I’ve pushed through the ready-to-puke-feeling and can actually run and feel on the verge at the same time. It’s not unlike that place in labor that is early transition: not quite the place where you are out of your mind in pain and urgently wanting that baby out but well after the place where your body is getting to serious work and you know there’s no turning back, no doing this another day, no other way out but through.

And so I run because while all this is happening to my body, my brain is pushing through the exhaustion and the anxiety. The junk in my trunk is hopefully melting down a little more. And somewhere around the third lap I start to be able to think clearly.

I LOVE this place in my mind. Ideas fall into a practical order that I can see almost tangibly and figure out how make them real; I can “see” what thing to do next. I step back from the emotion of stuff, because emotion while going through grueling physical work is too distracting, and see the elements of situations for what they are and what needs to be done. Lately, I’ve thought about my business, my book, my marriage, my kids, our future…

Today though, I had company. One of the neighbors was out on her go-cart. She had a child on a child’s-size 4 wheeler making laps with her. She (the go-cart driver) is the daughter of the woman who reported our children to the police for playing outside too much. They made circles on their exhaust-fuming machines while I tried to walk-run-wog my own. When I clung to the inside of the loop, they crossed over the lane to come at me head on, antagonizing and daring me to “play chicken”. Later, she was joined by two other girls on 4-wheelers, also making loops.

So ya know? I don’t get the appeal of 4 wheelers on a paved loop. It’s right up there with mud bogging and Nascar. Snow mobiles? Those make sense in their context. Jet Skiis…way fun. And ATV’s out in the country seem to have a purpose too. But loops on paved concrete, when gas is over $3 a gallon, and the things pollute like you wouldn’t believe, making so much noise that the drivers can’t really communicate and they weren’t even racing….well I don’t get it.

One message did come in loud and clear though. After many, many consistent reminders through church and the afternoon today, I know I don’t love my neighbors. In fact, I’m struggling with down right hatred and resentment. I’m mad at them, mad that they don’t like me, mad that they won’t even just leave me alone. Hatred and anger does not feel good. It’s not what I thought I’d have in this neighborhood, this country life I hungered for so long. Approaching them isn’t a safe idea; any thoughts of bringing a pie or cookies would be spurned. I’ve been waving at one man who sits on his swing watching me run everyday; after 9 waves deliberately in his direction on every loop (he’s about 15 clear feet from my path and stares right at the road) I finally gave up.

So how to love these people? I crossed the road when they played chicken. I made (well tried anyway) to think of other things rather than dwell on how much I dislike their pastime. I avoided eye contact and kept my mouth shut. Other than that, I’m a bit out of ideas. If you have one, I’m open to suggestions. And if you’ll pray for me, please do.

Bless this man! He perfectly pegged what I hope to preserve in my kids, why I run and pace when I need to think, why my math grades shouldn’t be a judgment of my intelligence, why education needs to reform in ways rarely talked about, why we should look closer at those who don’t fit into a box…. this video will take a few minutes of your time but they will be minutes well worth it. Shout out to Carrie for posting it first!

Stoneyfield’s Vanilla Truffle Yogurt

True, it’s the Strawberry featured in the picture and true, ever since the discovery of how fantastic whole milk yogurt is I’m pretty much hooked on it served any way, most especially the cream top of plain whole milk yogurt scraped into a bowl, topped with coconut almond granola, fresh berries, and drizzled with local honey…..sigh. BUT…

every afternoon (not just on Saturday’s quite honestly) I have a little cup of their vanilla truffle bliss. It’s got a chocolate sauce layer on the bottom and the cream layer on top; mixed together the entire concoction is NOTHING like the syrupy, gross, thin stuff I used to think yogurt was. This is thick and creamy and nourishing and good…and no corn syrup or funky things included. It gets my brain going for writing and working and is the best “pick-me-up” in the afternoon that I think I’ve ever found.

Good nutrition has so many beautiful whole foods available… how can plastic, overly and artificially sweet, cardboard-and-microwaved imposters possibly compete?

If you’ve got a Saturday Simple pleasure to share leave it in the comments or share the link to your post!

Yes, I’m still talking about the Food Stamp Challenge. I was excited to see Lisa McGovern, Jim McGovern’s wife, participating on his blog; she is taking the challenge too. Her insight as a wife and mother, who I assume did/does most of the family’s shopping will be a valuable perspective.

One thing I’m hearing and noticing is that the monthly amount for a family on the average food stamp rate totals what many American families have for their food budget without government assistance. There is an under current of sentiments like, “well we do it without help and the government shouldn’t be feeding people” or “they only use the food stamps for the real food and they use their wad of cash for the junk”. I remember being in the store one spring and seeing that prepackaged easter baskets full of cheap toys and cheaper candy were on the WIC list. I commonly have steamed while shopping at some of the food choices that are promoted on the list, knowing how poor in nutrition some of them are.

And of course, it all fits within a greater picture. What crops are subsidized in this country trickles on down to who is eating what. Who grew it, who processed it, and what they used to do so wasn’t accident or coincidence. Subsidize beans and rice? It could be done…but there isn’t much processing cost (read: profit) to be made. I keep coming back to empathy.

Food stamp abuse? I’m absolutely positive it exists. Malnuturition in an obese environment? That’s rampant too. Can judgement be sound when diets are pathetic? No matter the income level, it’s true: the human mind needs fat and food in order to work, concentrate, and be healthy.

I’ve listened and read and lived the kind of food choices presented in stores, the kinds of options that become very tempting when one is on a tight budget. Sites like the “hillbillyhousewife” exist on the premise of helping the budget shopper; the author most likely meant it that way and I bet she eats/ate that way. But really it promotes eating in a way that will toxify and deplete the body while supporting food processors and chemists, instead of farmers and local markets. Get the shopper by? Of course. They’ll get by. But none of the larger problems are ever addressed that way.

When I read the words of those changing their lives this way, trading what I’m sure was a fresh, organic, rich diet for a more common experience (for that is what it is: food stamp users for certain, but also the non-government assisted lower income families, you teachers, firemen, military, warehouse workers, middle management, lpn’s, and many, many single income households), a wealth of information is gathered, experieneced, and lifted. I hope this really does shed light on the food issues in this country, on the Farm Bill, on the fantastic resource the local farmer is and can be in most regions, and on the plight of the struggling American worker. It really is a choice between gas and milk for many.

And politics, parties, and agendas aside, I can scarcely think of a better way to make change happen on a large scale than to have the ear and attention of empathetic lawmakers. They are the ones, who for better or for worse, make the choices that direct our country. Taking emphasis off of what kind of larger hand-out the poor need from the government at nervous tax payer’s expense, and keeping it on ways to think outside the box and radically change and improve how America eats and where it comes from, is having a larger mind than little polarized political argument affords.

Why does Orthodoxy feel so full to me? Like it’s the fullness of Christ, the fullness of christianity, the fullness of any expression this human could ever aspire to? This is why. I missed today’s liturgy; didn’t know it was even happening in fact, so bad am I at looking at my calendar some weeks. But he’s right (about more than one thing, might I humbly say): it was not a part of my protestant experience (more than an almost incidental bible story) and I’m ever grateful that this deep  ocean of Orthodox christianity is there and that I have as long a lifetime as needed to discover it. When one has been a “christian” for over 20 years and yet struggles to know very basic things about the Christ she tries to follow, things not even brought up much during those first 20 years, finding “the point” is refreshing balm.