Living-Deliberately.com

The AC is finally on this summer. I am still amazed that we made it this long but it honestly wasn’t difficult until this week…we’ve had an unseasonably cool summer thus far. But this week it’s HUMID. The kind of sticky-wet thickness that drove our redheaded-selves from the Florida peninsula, away from the relentess scratching sound of the cicadas (which, I’ve learned, only annoy me when the air is thick and stagnant like this), is languidly surrounding our house in this dell, the very low spot that gave us deep shade and breeze while the rest of the neighborhood tended to bake on warmer days.

I’m not using my clothesline either right now. I’m so busy that just keeping my head above the rising tide of dirty socks, jeans, shorts, swimsuits, t-shirts, and undies is a tremendous effort and thankful am I for the new-to-me dryer that can do a load on one cycle, versus the 3 it took our old beast to accomplish. With daily rains, getting things on the clothesline and then dashing back out to save them is one thing I need to cross of my to-do list.

My power bill will show it. At least it’s cheaper than hiring help :-). My dear apologies to the carbon footprint.

On Giving:

It is hard living on a tight budget when one has a generous heart…one constantly feels they have nothing to give. The solution: gardening. Grow food and there will be an abundance to give.

I’ve been thinking a lot about personal reinvention: the decision to change one aspect of life intentionally and taking the steps necessary to bring it into fruition. It’s essential to Living Deliberately…we see what we want to change and we set out to do so, one element/day at a time.

A while back a friend clipped the following quote from an issue of Sky Magazine. I’ve had it taped to my office wall and read it frequently.

“…the fine art of reinvention- that is, what can happen when circumstances permit you to evolve. Or, perhaps, force you to evolve. By ‘reinvention’, we mean specifically taking something that already exists and seeing what it can become. The creative process is very well-celebrated. Less so is the reinventive process, the adaptation….”

I am adapting a few things in my life right now…. designing a career, learning on a sharp curve new things every day, reducing distractions so that we can stay focused….

Anyone changing things in their lives, reinventing themselves or choices intentionally? Care to share?

Mine: Gettin’ organized.

Today my little closet office got a top to bottom cleaning, as did my purse, laptop bag, and  to-do notebook.

What’s yours?

The prayer says, “Give us this day our daily bread…..”

Not: our daily cake.

Not: everything we want.

I wonder if it’s shows God’s sense of irony that the next line is:

“and forgive us our debts….”

So yesterday, when I “ran out of time” doing the Thinking Blogger awards, I was really writhing in my chair in pain and had just realized that I was NOT going to be able to wait for my doctor’s appointment the next day…but rather, I was headed to the ER NOW.

True, true…last week I had a mild UTI that I treated homeopathically with what I thought was success. I’d had no symptoms in four days and felt just a lingering nausea that I thought was hormonal. But then that nausea turned to this horrid heaviness that felt like I had bricks sitting on my gut and back. I was literally trying crawl away from my skin! Not really pain per se…just pressure.

So with less fanfare than I thought would occur, David came home and we off we went, with friends from church taking our children at the ER door to a fun evening of trampolines and freshly squeezed lemonade.

The hospital was newly remodeled; and true, true…that is not always a guarantee of cleanliness nor efficiency, said the Little Red Hen who has been inside too many. But my cassocked priest got my moaning self into triage quickly (the robe has that affect on people I think…it’s so official looking) and as I, who have had 5 children naturally, ranked my discomfort easily at an 8, was quickly sent to a room to await the doc.

The attendant told me her name. This tiniest of details stood out loudly to me. I have never had someone ranked under the “I’m your nurse” tell me their name. This is the girl who wheeled me into the bathroom, made sure I didn’t fall, and knew what to do. In my experience, they are typically a friendly bunch. But introductions don’t usually happen. How much easier it was though to have a name to call when I was done!

They apologized for the wait over and over but I didn’t notice it being long. David had just enough time to get a quick snack down the hall (it was dinner time) when the doctor came in. Now, true, true… I do not like being asked, “what can we do for you today?” when I am squirming in discomfort so much that I can’t lie still, and by someone who I want to examine me and TELL me what I need today. But, it was at least polite to ask. And with ER docs, there is absolutely NO guarantee that they will be “polite”.

He listened well. I was pretty exact with my description. The obvious answer was that it was either an ectopic pregancy or a rippin’ UTI. The pee was in the cup; all that was left was to test it.

They did. I’m not pregnant. I had only a slightly elevated white count; not the kind that is usually swimming with bacteria when someone is wriggling like I was. And let’s make that really past tense, because by now I’d had some kind of anti-spasm med and a pergaset. I was feelin’ very relaxed. The physical exam didn’t show any obvious cysts or anything. So I suppose if I’d been feeling fiesty, I would have wondered why he wasn’t running an ultrasound. Or doing blood work. But like I said, the ceiling tiles were so pretty by then…. :-).

He wasn’t really positive what was wrong so he went with what made the most sense to all parties and they sent me home with the UTI coctail. Anti-spasm med guaranteed to turn every fluid you produce pumpkin orange. An antibiotic. And a good old narcotic for pain. (Guess which one I’m NOT taking. I like walking and talking and functioning thankyouverymuch. I can deal with orange and well, bacteria needs to die anyway).

So today I was back up and at ‘em, abeit very slowly. One thing though…this anti-spasm med makes my eye balls feel crunchy. My brain feels like it’s sucking away from my skull and ears, drying up into a grey, crumbly cookie. I guess, with a condition that must be hydrated in order to flush through your system, it makes sense to create a drug that dries up your tissues? Well, who am I to argue. I’ve drunk enough liquid to swim in today and well, it’s all still inside.

The doctor’s nurse called to check on me today. Nice touch concluding the very nicest ER visit I’ve ever had, save for the one where Wheaton’s specialist met us as the hospital one night and we got to skip the entire check in and waiting room mess. Medicine is big business these days and while I never want to be treated so much as a customer that the establishment forgets I’m a patient who needs educated and caring treatment, I was thankful last night that some business influence made for a clean, kind, efficient, emergency room.

I was recently tagged/given two blog awards and I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to get them u .

Simple Reduce bestowed this one on me. Rules? I list 5 other blogs that make me think.  Here they are:

Julie Unplugged: long time friend and alway-challenging thinker.

Glory To God For All Things: my priest is also a stunning writer.

Crunchy Chicken: new read for me; energetic girl on a mission!

More Deliberate Every Day: I’m watching this one…more focused one area than I but variations on a theme. Neat blog!

Ah well…I’m out of time this afternoon. Thinking blog number 5, as well as the reward for positive global change, will have to wait for another day.

Character Trait I possess that I hate the most: over-sensitivity. And when hormones get wonky, it’s at it’s worst; meaning, being a grown-up requires not trusting my perception and giving the benefit of the doubt. Still, while lawn-mowing today, I was muttering and crying over my hurt feelings. A song came to mind that I haven’t thought of in a long time; the line goes, “He did not keep himself away; He was no stranger to my pain, he walked a mile in my shoes.”

The primary lyric was an empathetic one but the rest of the song reminds us of the part we have played in His pain. It was a good reminder.

The song is “He Walked a Mile” by Clay Crosse. Listen at rhapsody.com, and below are the lyrics.

Before the threads of time began
Was pre-ordained a mighty plan
That I should walk with Him alone
The cords of trust unbroken

But fate foresaw my wandering eye
That none could yet restrain
To violate the friendship I
Would cause Him so much pain

Chorus:
And everytime I close my eyes
I see the nails, I hear the cries
He did not keep Himself away
He was no stranger to my pain
He walked a mile in my shoes
He walked a mile

Feet so dusty cracked with heat
But carried on by love’s heartbeat
A man of sorrows filled with grief
Forgiveness was His anthem

No feeble blow from tongue or pen
Could ever sway my love for Him
Across the echoed hills He trod
And reached into my world.

On perspective:

When something awful, or seemingly awful happens, it feels as if the world will stop turning. That the sun will never rise again. Like life is ending.

It doesn’t though. Tomorrow always comes. Saying this out loud during a “crisis”, large or small,  makes the “awful” seem less dire.

otherwise titled, “Thinking Outside the Box”.

otherwise titled, “Ron paul…does he really need the mainstream media?”

Last night, for the fourth night in a row, David and I were up until 1 am watching videos of Ron. While we’ve quietly slept and remained apolitical for years, grinning and bearing a government and system we had no hope of seeing change, there is now an awakening of anticipation….the Eminem song has a line that says, “You only get ONE shot, do not miss your chance…opportunity comes once in a lifetime.” And here it is! Someone has risen who has a REAL chance of taking this country in a different direction…what we’ve been doing for the past several decades is NOT working…. and if we are very brave and actually put our money where our mouth is, we have a chance at change, at regaining stolen freedom, to remove our froggy selves from the slow-boiling pot.

Jana Stanfield has a song on her website that has a line I’ve been pondering this week… “What would I do today if I were brave?” I’ve decided to deliberately ask myself that question every day.

One thing that was evident last night is the fact that there is an effort to squash Ron’s grassroots swelling support, to silence him down. His name is not included in the polls and the “none of the above” answer is instead rising. He was not invited to a major tax reform conference in Iowa, though his voice is the loudest, most radical, and most rational voice in congress on the topic. He also had raised more campaign money than four of the other speakers, so their straw-man of an explanation was shot down. Viacom pulled one of his highest ranking youtube videos, the interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, something I bet they don’t do to anyone else’s videos, so happy are they typically for the exposure.

And yet….that video can still be watched on his website. And that led to another revelation: WE STILL HAVE FREEDOM OF SPEECH. As long as the internet is not regulated at the federal level, or taxed (and may any congressman who seeks to see that happen lose their seat), we don’t NEED the mainstream media to get a candidate and their message in our face. We don’t NEED them to spin things, explain things, manipulate us…if we are interested, we can go listen for ourselves. Mainstream media, and I think I’m tempted to include the idea that one must have millions and millions of dollars for a campaign to be successful as well, is THE BOX. It is old…maybe only as old as the last presidential campaign, but in internet-land that is ancient history. Information and ideas move much, much faster than that. The support Ron has behind him can not be bought, it can not be manufactured. It will not be traded and handed to a different, more polished and greasy manicured competitor. Intelligent people believe in what they are hearing and they are backing who they want. Being a part of the revolution, one can feel the nervousness of the other candidates, the mainstream media, and the old guard as they realize that what they’re saying isn’t being bought, that change is happening that they can’t squelch, that the movement America has been ready to embrace is leaving them in the dust.

So..no media presence can dictate who our president will be. They can’t make us vote just because it’s our “duty” to pick who’ve they’ve promoted; we’ll vote for who we believe in or not at all if recent history is to be beleived. If the name is missing from the ballot because some policitcal organization deemed him unlikely to win, the nation can rise up and WRITE HIS NAME IN.

If our government at it’s essense is really supposed to be about what the people want, then the media will either tune into what we’re saying or be ignored by those who no longer need to buy what they’re selling.

If we are brave today, what will we do? Will we allow ourselves to feel hopeful and finally fight against taxation and the removal of liberty that we’ve known for years is wrong? Will we support a candidate who says, “let’s not spread our goodness with force” and who espouses a much more kind, loving, and moralistic message of “do unto others”? A candidate who doesn’t want our children to go to war, who wants our soldiers brought home before more blood is spilled, and who encourages kindness, trade, and communicaiton with the world? Someone who beleives that things need to be done but that the free market, full of good and well intentioned, intelligent people, can do it better than a messy, top heavy federal governement can?

Well, those are the questions I am asking, breaking out of little boxes that no longer fit the changing world. Bigger than the coming election is the personal question that will influence my deliberate choices for the rest of my life, “What Would I Do Today if I were BRAVE?”

Want more Ron?

If He Can Save Us From This….

Change Your Status So You Can Vote…

Sticking my toe back in…

want to read more about my journey to live more deliberately? Subscribe to my feed!

I didn’t realize that this was necessary; but Ron is getting interest from a broad spectrum of voters from all affiliations and in order for them to do more than just talk…in order for him to actually get the Republican nomination…they will have to change their party affiliation in order to do so. Here is an article on it.

And here is a good NY Times article on him; I think it’s too soon to be so resolute as the last sentence is, but the content is a good bio and reminds of the commonality that is swelling amid voters who are usually on opposite sides: “But what is “Ron’s message”? Whatever the campaign purports to be about, the main thing it has done thus far is to serve as a clearinghouse for voters who feel unrepresented by mainstream Republicans and Democrats. The antigovernment activists of the right and the antiwar activists of the left have many differences, maybe irreconcilable ones. But they have a lot of common beliefs too, and their numbers — and anger — are of a considerable magnitude.”

And you know? I was thinking today of how fed up I am about taxes….I pay taxes for a school system I don’t use. I pay taxes for a social security system that won’t be there for me to use.  I pay taxes to fund a war I want to be over.  Local taxes for roads and such make sense but not a whole lot other does.  Just more thoughts on a friday afternoon….

Who here fears the IRS? Who feels like they are a force that can not be fought, that must be obeyed, lest they ruin you? Who’s ever been mad at the tax rate, knowing how unfair it is and felt that burden on their back?

I am the child of self-employed parents, people who’ve been audited by hateful IRS agents, people who pay quarterly and feel deeply the scurge taxes can be. Somehow, Americans continue to start businesses and seek success even as the tax structure has been developed to discourage and defeat these businesses in their infancy. Like the flag at Iwo Jima, they persist in sailing anyway. And often people who ARE this way, raise children with a “can do” spirit, who know the adage, “you don’t work, you don’t eat” very, very well and when money is tight, will see what resources they have to put together their own business start up. At the very least, if they aren’t self-employed themselves, they are industrious and creative.

And so we in our family have had a string of started-businesses that didn’t quite make it off the ground. The year came when we moved out of state, into a two bedroom apartment, to simplify our lives, get out of debt, and start fresh. The year was 2005 and we had four surviving children. Life was tight. That year we were NOT self-employed but WERE industrious. Income sources: David worked the first half of the year at his old job; the second half in sales that cheated him out of his commission and UPS (often two shifts); I worked as a commissioned painter. We had $15k worth of consumer debt to pay off, stopped retirement contributions, stopped charitable giving and had $1600 in moving expenses. Combined gross income: 35,926. I did the taxes with TAX ACT online; everything was a W2 and it was very straight-forward and easy.

When you support a family of 6 and you get a tax return, you use every penney of it; you don’t save it for two years wondering if somewhere there was a mistake. Our return that year was $3500, nearly the same as every single year for the past 10; there was utterly no reason to question it.

And so today….I went to the mailbox and pulled from it a very large, thick, white envelope. Well sealed with scotch tape; nothing mass-produced looking about it. I knew in an instant that these were papers that had been hand assembled on someone’s desk, taped with a roll from the dispenser on the corner, in a room full of cubicles and computers. I was already shaking in fear….all the while thinking that fear was irrational; we have done nothing wrong! Such is the power is mail coorespondance from the IRS.

The verdict? We owe $2500. Some of that is INTEREST that they have applied since the day of the supposed “mistake”. They say we were self-employed. They say we made more than origionally thought. They say we also owe the “self-employment tax” in addition to having more taxable income. They say there is some kind of adjustment to our child tax credit and also our retirement tax. At some point, quite early on, it starts to sound like jargon that blurs the mind.

Am I in debt again for money I did not borrow? Do I have to HIRE an accountant to sort this out, to prove we didn’t lie or misrepresent our income? Should we not have worked 3 additional jobs and taken government welfare instead to pay less in taxes? This year I AM self-employed. If the paper work in my hand is to believed, I have made enough so far to have to pay the self-employment tax and not enough to cover it. I am, debt free or not, not working for myself, but for the government.

This is utter lunacy. I scarcely know where to start. I am so sick of government officials standing pompous in their business suits, red faced and arrogantly deciding where to send this billion and that billion… while my life is so much closer to the margin: what are we eating this week? How can I save another $10 on my water or electric bill? Can I go to church today (can I afford the gas to drive there)? We are working our asses off for goals we beleive in, to be responsible, to owe no man…and departments like the IRS, the government, and all the ways they can come up with to make us fund their folly are smearing our faces back into the mud from which we rise.

Forget toes in the water of politics. I’m diving in. We’ve had enough. Ron Paul, you have my vote, my attention, and my vocal power: may it take you all the way to the top.

The last time I felt any amount of passionate interest in politics was back at the first Clinton election. I was a nanny and a daycare worker and we workers fought like crazy over who should be president (yes, that’s what they do when the mommies are away).

Clinton depressed me. It wasn’t just scandal, but it was so…. icky. Onward. I, ame>feeling a charm with a familial legacy not seen since the Kennedys, liked the idea of George W. picking up where his father had left off. That was the last time I voted.

Shocking? Well, only kinda. I’ve been very, very busy with babies in the last decade and didn’t like the idea of voting when not informed. I’ve been waiting this presidency out; we’ve been against the war since it began (David pretty much lost his job over this too), are way too green for the current administration, and are generally sick of the way of things. We have no TV so have skipped all the addresses, debates, and political harriness going on right now. Reading Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, … America (or at least the Republican Party) reminded me that there is more keeping me a conservative than just the pro-life issue, which was a good clarification to have. Thing is, the new field of candidates, read in various papers, magazines, and seen on news clips, hasn’t been too inspiring….

But for my business clients I’ve been hunting out the hot search words each week and for over a month now, one of the hottest search and tag words in Technorati is the name Ron Paul. Who is he? I had no idea….

Watching a steam of youtubes about him last night, I now have a better idea. What an enigma! He is barely a republican; more of a libetarian. I’m not sure he could even get the nomination. But in interviews and debates he doesn’t miss a beat: he’s not just against what he calls “this undeclared war” but has radical plans to remove the “big government” that is making us broke. Not just cutting taxes but by radically restructuring everything….for someone keenly interested in not having debt, not being a wasteful consumer who thinks shopping and accumulating more stuff will solve the world’s problems, Dr. Paul (yes he’s an MD) was a refreshing voice last night. For the first time in well over a decade I felt myself get a little excited about a politician’s message.

I figure it at least bears watching. Watch for yourself:

Stop Dreaming

The Truth

On the hilarious Steven Colbert Report.

This experiment was interesting; I’d certainly pick the book up for a read, along the lines of Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses. Someone wondered something (how tied are we to a global economy?), gave it a deliberate try (live without things made in China for one year), to the end of a discovery (buying locally reduces your eco-footprint) and a book, (A Year Without “Made in China”: One Family’s True Life Adventure in the Global Economy).

The kids and I often talk (usually in the car) about the rise of China; they are particularly interested in China’s large military, girls being adopted in America, declining population, and control of our manufacturing. It’s complex, that’s for sure. For now, our focus has not be to avoid things made in China, mostly because they seem so umbiquitous that it would feel like an overwhelming task. Instead, we are buying them second-hand as much as possible so that at least we are changing our mindset from “disposable consumer goods”. It’s a baby step I suppose. But we’ve striven to eat locally for years and this year have given added focus to supporting local business; buying locally made products can not be far behind, ideologically speaking.

Here and there I’ve also read things about toxins and poisons commonly used in China’s manufacturing, lately showing up in the Thomas The Train recall, which directly affected our family. As they surpass us in Carbon Emisssions, it is yet another reminder of the future of America and China connection. Anyone else have any China concerns and the future?

On Housekeeping:

To go as fast as I can. Think about other things and move quickly and it will be less of a temptation to procrastinate. Added benefit: it becomes a work out.