Surviving the Storms

We all know Toyota pulled their Tundras from production in their California plant.

We all know that Ford isn’t doing so hot either.

While I have felt for a long time that the economy is in turmoil, that the price of gas and groceries are outrageous; that I can find just one more thing to cut back on and live cheaper; nothing has hit me like the setback today brought.

With all of these faults in the automobile industry, my husband’s job was hit hard today. Jamie works in a factory that makes bumpers and sidesteps, etc for Ford and Toyota trucks. Today was the day that demotions, lay-offs, and the end of employment for some people came to a realization.

While my husband wasn’t fired or laid off( Thank you, Jesus); he was demoted, losing pay and hours.

We have cut out extras. I have internet because I am a student taking classes online to save the gas and time and daycare fees. I have a cell phone because I am under a contract for the next year and a handful of months. We did shut of Jamie’s phone because his contract had expired. I have DirecTv, not just for my sanity and at times a breath of relief when the kids get interested in a show and sit still for a few minutes watching it, but I am also under a contract with them.

I buy in bulk at the cheapest that I can. I don’t buy many convenience foods. I make most everything from scratch. I grow my own vegetables, make my own jelly, can my own veggies, bought and had a cow slaughtered this year to save a ton of money on meat. We hit up a lot of yard sales, thrift stores and hand-me-downs for clothing needs for the kids.

We recycle, reduce, and reuse as much as we can. I hang the clothes on the line to save energy from using the dryer. I cloth diapered my youngest. I even made some of his diapers and crocheted his wool longies and shorties for diaper covers. When I run bath water, I save the cold water in a bucket to use for mopping the floor, watering plants, etc, and when the water turns warm, I fill the tub for baths. I make our own soap, shampoo/shaving bars, laundry soap, stain remover, and lotions.

We have been hypermiling for awhile now, and while it is paying off in a small way, it is still helping. We plan doctor’s appointments (when they can be), grocery shopping, errand running, etc. for a single trip to save more on gas and time. We don’t eat out at all. If we will be gone during a lunch or dinner time, I pack sandwiches to take with us, and we always have sports jugs full of water with us.

The only extra curricular activity the kids have is playing soccer on the local fall soccer league. Outside of that, they have went to Vacation Bible School this summer at three different churches: ours, their friend’s sister’s boyfriend was teaching at another church, so they went there with the friend, and this week they are going to that friend’s church. Each church offers a different theme, while still being positive and encouraging to the kids. They love it, as do I. Next week they will be going to my brother’s church where his wife will be teaching one of the classes. They can’t wait for it.

What I am getting at is we already have cut back in big ways. We don’t buy extras. We don’t take extra outings. For fun, we go hiking on the sloppy, muddy trails and walk through the stream that runs through the middle of the trails at the local state park. We play baseball and basketball with the kids in the yard – last weekend Jamie and I had the kids laughing so hard at us being goofy while playing whiffle ball. It was great. We walk/run/jog around the block with the kids. We take them to the park a block away. We watch movies in our living room while sitting on a blanket on the floor with a bowl of popcorn: the only movie theater you can pause the movie in for a quick bathroom break.

While the world seems like it is out to get us today, we will survive. God willing, we will make it through this. I will still continue life at the frugal ways I have been living, while attempting to find more frugal ways to do things. While I am stressing right now, and fighting off the anxiety that has been building in my chest and heart, I know that we will survive this.

While a lot of bad things can come from this, we have to find the good. While we can’t take a vacation, or fly to Alaska to see the land we will someday own and live on (my dream!), we will camp in our backyard, roast hot dogs and marshmallows over the fire, and live life one day at a time. While it isn’t pretty right now, it could always be worse. Right now, I am praising God that it isn’t.

I was cleaning out my son’s closet this morning and found my old high school sketch pads. It’s been a long time since I have looked at them. Took me back to the days when Nirvana, Live, Jim Morrison, & White Zombie rocked my world. Wow! How things have changed! The days when my own style in clothing, choices, and life were not at all like those of most everyone else around me. (Oh, wait, that is still my life today.) Here are some examples of my life back in the day: (I took pictures of them because my scanner is broken.)

From the back of White Zombie’s La Sexorcisto album:

Need I explain? Charcoal drawing outlined in sharpie

Major dates in the life of Kurt Cobain

The sketch planning of a painting I did after my cousin and best friend, Troy, took his life at the age of 15. I gave the painting to his Grandma. Troy was a genius (no joke at all), loves music, playing his guitar, and was on the High School Bowling League with me. His top game was 220 during league games. Right after he passed away, I bowled my high game of 209, 99 points above my average, and won first place in that tournament, giving me a spot in the state competition for Women’s Handicap. I placed 33rd for state. If I had never known Troy, I would never have bowled. If I had never known Troy, I would never have known a lot of things in life, including what it feels like to have my life changed in a fraction of a second by a pull of a trigger. My life changed that day – the beginning of the person I am today.

Self portrait – the difference between me and you. I am a puzzle put together by the many colors of life. I refused to darken my world; instead, I became the prism of color as I blacked out everyone and everything else I cared about for a long time. I refused to let my eyes shed a tear – so my lips are what spewed out the beginning of the river.

Chalk Smudging

LIVE!! I still love LIVE! I saw them in concert, my first concert when I was 16. Their music described my life. Waitress; I Alone; Dam at Otter Creek (refer back to my self portrait)… I didn’t realize before that you could see the page beneath this one when I took the picture. Aw well – Live goes on (yep, I meant it that way)

More kiddish type drawings from when I was 15. When I was trying to be the good kid and not look beyond the cartoons of life:

I had never read any books by Nora Roberts until recently. Now, I can’t get enough of her.

Angels Fall was the first one I read. It was an amazing read. The two main characters were perfected in words.

I was sad when the story was over. It was the perfect ending, but the same as when I watch a good movie, what happens next? I always want to know more: the next step in their lives; are they going to do this or that? I don’t want to imagine what happens next, I want the rest of the story. But since books and movies never give you that, I will say this story was it. It’s the book that has to be read.

The next book of Nora’s that I read was Blue Smoke.  It was another great book. It moved fast and never left me hanging. The main character had a huge, wonderful family that played a big part in the story.  It wasn’t hard at all to figure out who the mysterious person was in this book, but then as I continued reading, I realized that he wanted everyone to know who he was. Definitely a book I am glad that I read.

Now I am on the hunt for some more of her good works. If you know of any must reads of NR’s, please, please, leave a comment with the name of the book. School starts again in less than a month for me and I  need to read as much as I can before then as I will have no free reading time for myself.

My gas gage doesn’t work. In the two years that I have owned my van, it never has worked. There’s no point in fixing it when there’s other ways (besides sitting alongside the road when we’ve run out of gas) to know our driving limits before fueling up again.  We reset our Trip B (we have three Trip settings) and use that as our gas gage. Anywhere between 350 and 450 miles, we fill up. If it’s the weekend and we’re only at 350 miles, we go ahead and fill up. (Living in the boonies, we can put those miles on the van quickly just by going to the grocery store, picking up my stepson for a visit, heck, just going to my in-laws’ house and back is over 60 miles round trip, and that’s at least a weekly visit.)

I’ve always kept track of our gas mileage. When we fill up the tank, I check how many miles we have driven since the last fill up, and I divide that by the exact amount of gas we put in the van. Yesterday we had 357 miles exactly, and it took 14.69 gallons of fuel to fill up. That gave us 24.4 mpg this past week!! I was overly thrilled. Lately we’ve only been getting 20-21 mpg. 3-4 miles extra per gallon might not sound like much, but to me it is. My van has a 25 gallon gas tank. That means, I actually could drive approximately 500 miles per having to fuel up again.  (I do it early to play it safe!) With an extra 3-4 miles per gallon, I get an extra 75-100 miles per full tank of gas. And knowing that I got 24 miles per gallon yesterday, that’s a savings of over 4 gallons, which in turn means, I saved myself $16+ at the tank. Or I could look at that the other way: I could make an extra trip for the kids to see Grandma – for free!

So, what have we been doing differently?

Hypermiling! That’s right. A word in which Webster does NOT have a definition for. YET! If the dictionary can have the definition for “longneck” [-noun- a bottle of beer] and even give it’s origin as Chiefly Texas, it needs to have more intelligent words, like “hypermiling.” Hypermiling, which means fuel efficient driving, should have the definition of “the way everyone should drive” with a picture of me behind the wheel. I’ve always said that if everyone drove like me, we would have no problems on the road

To read more on hypermiling, please visit this website EcoModder.com for 100+ hypermiling/ecodriving tips to increase gas mileage.

Learning to drive more fuel efficiently is not hard to do. You can enjoy the scenery longer (especially if you live in the country like I do); read a few pages more in the new book you’ve picked up (only, of course, if someone else is driving); let the kids nap a while longer in the backseat on the way home; become a safer driver which prevents more accidents; and know you are keeping more money in your pocket by driving slower, safer and more efficiently. Oh, and you can also laugh or shake your head at all of the cars that fly around you because they have the money to waste at the gas pump…or…um…maybe it’s because they don’t have the patience to follow the person who is actually driving the speed limit or less.

I am a huge fan of Hillbilly Housewife. I have used many of her recipes and love how simple and cheap they are. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of bread/muffin/roll baking. I have a certain son who doesn’t like to eat food that is good for him, so I sneak in what I can.

I used the recipe for Plain Muffins but modified it for my own liking (and for the liking of my kids- including the one who doesn’t like good food).

Raspberry Vanilla Muffins

• 1/4 cup oil
• 1 medium egg
• 1 cup SOY milk (my daughter is allergic to dairy)
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1 TBSP Vanilla extract or flavoring
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon baking powder (3 teaspoons)
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup Raspberry preserves

In a large bowl combine the oil, egg, milk, sugars, vanilla and salt. Mix it very well with a fork or wire whisk. Measure in the baking powder and flours. Mix again until all of the dough particles are moistened. Mix in raspberry preserves until just mixed in. Spoon the batter into a dozen well oiled muffin cups. Bake at 400° for about 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool slightly before removing from the pan.

So, here goes…I forgot to do this before I started working out, but here they are for today. I weighed in at 136 today with a BMI of 23.26. I am on the higher end of Normal. My first goal is 130 and a BMI of 22. I will then work from there.

Arm 11.5 in

Chest (right below breasts) 33 in

Waist (even with belly button) 31.5 in

Hips (big ole’ booty) 39 in

Thigh 23 in

Calf 14.5

Ankle (right above ankle bone) 9.5

The humidity hit, then the rain for a few days, then of course the heat! My garden is so full of weeds and mosquitoes. It’s horrible. I need to get out there and take care of it. I only missed 4 days of being out there, and oh boy, it’s not good.

The green bean plants are not producing anymore. Time to pull them and plant more. I want a fall harvest. The corn has tasseled out already, even thought some plants are only 3 ft tall. It’s not looking so good. Maybe, just maybe, we might have some baby corn for stir fry, but I am not seeing big, juicy, ears of corn. I don’t know what happened. It’s real odd. On the other hand, the cabbage doesn’t look too bad. Some of the heads were attacked by some kind of worm – looked like a tomato worm, but not as big. But a few heads are making it.

Tomatoes. I have millions of tomatoes. They are all still mostly green, but I have millions of romas, big boys, beefeaters, lemon tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and grape tomatoes. I’m going to be a canning fool! I can’t wait!

Yesterday I also noticed that we finally have cukes growing. Just a few small pickles so far, but they are there. All of the plants are stock full of blooms though. So I am prepared for a tremendous amount of them too. Zucchini galore is on the way too. I noticed one squash so far, but again, stock full of blooms.

Watermelon- meh, not as great. We might see one or two, but I don’t foresee them being very big. My last hope of the gardening year will be the sweet potatoes. I will start hunting them in late August or September. The top plants look good, so I am hoping there will be many of them. A warm sweet potato with butter sounds real yummy right now.

Now, who was it that was going to go pull the weeds?

I am finally doing it. I am working out, I am stretching, I am jogging/running, I am HURTING!

My sides- meh, not so bad. My inner thighs, the back of my knees, the back of my thighs, and yep, my stomach, too. It’s not so bad that I don’t want to continue, it just hurts to sit and stand and stretch my legs.

I will feel pain! I will (not) like the pain!

A lady at church asked the other day if I have a goal of how much or how far I want to be able to run. I told her I just want to be able to do it.  Maybe I should have said I want to be able to run without my back side jiggling like jello.