Farewell

I've decided to close up this blog and start a new one.

When I began this blog just over two years ago I was entering my midlife, approaching the age of 40. My life seemed poised to embark in a new direction, one I'd not anticipated in all my years at University. I was unsure as to what my new life would look like, and wanted to document the process.

During the time I've been writing here I made the decision to start my own consulting business and to homeschool the children. These decisions set the course of my life for the next several years. I'm going to remain a full time stay-at-home mum, I'll continue with my business and hope it will grow further over the next few years. I'll be dedicating myself to homemaking, assisting the kids with their learning, and hopefully expanding into gardening and animal care as we take on a dog and maybe even some horses, too.

The path I've chosen seems fairly well laid-out now, and I think it's a natural place to end this blog. My new blog can be found here at Wordpress. It will be dedicated to the pursuit of our new dream: leaving the city and moving out to a more rural setting. I will, of course, also post about other issues that crop up in my life. I hope you'll join me there.

Time to get off the fence

For some time now, I've been tossing around the idea of moving to a more rural setting. Those of you who've followed my blog for a while have been through the various permutations of this plan: the City Mouse, Country Mouse scheme where we had a few acres outside of town and an apartment in the city, the Endless Commute plan where we get a few acres in a far-flung suburb and I basically never see my husband, or the Island Living plan where move to a lovely little rock whose only access route from the mainland is cut off at 9 pm each night. All these plans had one thing in common: the rural lifestyle but with city living at your doorstep. The bottom line was that I didn't want to leave the city.

I've been a city girl for pretty much my whole life (I grew up in the 'burbs and spent most of my youth staring longingly across Burrard Inlet to the lights of downtown). I can list off a dozen reasons why urban living is so great. But my lifestyle has changed considerably in the last several years and all these great reasons really don't apply to me much anymore. I think somewhere in all of this reasoning I forgot that simple fact.

Moving here to a house in the suburbs was supposed to be a "baby step". An experiment to see if I could handle living in a house and living away from the city. House living rocks and I can't get enough of it. I think I'd rather die than go back to cramped condo living (at least so long as I have children in my home). As for being away from the city I haven't missed it for one second (well, okay, on the odd takeout night I have longed for the sushi restaurant that was one block away from our apartment). Seriously, I have everything I need here and actually avoid going over the bridge into town if I can help it.

So this "baby step" has been a cinch and perhaps that is why I'm already looking for the next step (read this previous post if you haven't already). Yes, I want land. I want doggies and horsies and a neighbours that can't see into my living room. And it has finally occurred to me that if we're going to do this, we need to do it all the way. None of this I-want-land-but-I-want-to-be-close-to-the-city-too wishy-washy fence-sitting. For months now I've been cooking up crazy schemes to have my cake and eat it too. I wanted the rural lifestyle but I was afraid to leave the city limits to have it. Well, after spending a few days at my Dad's place over on Vancouver Island (which is chock full of lovely, rural communities and more spectacular natural beauty than you could ever hope to see) I've decided that it's time to make like Nike and Just Do It. Dammit, what's the worst that can happen? I'll hate it and want to move home. Not the end of the world.

But really, do I think that will happen? I'm the girl who has dreamed of owning her own horse since she was 7. The happiest time of my life was when I lived in a semi-rural community near the University and spent my days surrounded by horses, riding my bike between barn jobs, and having my dog running freely alongside me as we sped along the riverside. For months now I've been cooking up crazy schemes because I wanted the rural lifestyle but was afraid to leave the city limits to get it. And what exactly do I think I would miss so much? I mean, take a look at my current lifestyle: I'm a homemaker, I bake, I knit, I volunteer. I have homeschooled kids and I love, love, love animals. Does this sound like a city girl to you??

It's plan-making time again!

Here we go again...

We've only been in this house for 3.5 months. When we moved here I figured we'd stay for several years, but that could always be chalked up to the hellish experience of moving with two small children. I say this because for the last little while I haven't been able to get it out of my head that I really, really want a house of my own and renting one just isn't going to cut it for me much longer.

I can talk about rent vs. buy, I can crunch the numbers, I can use all sorts of logic to explain why we are okay renting right now...but the bottom line is I want something that is ours. I want our monthly payments to go to something, even if it is mostly interest at first.

But the truth of the matter is that DH and I started our lives together late. And due to a divorce on his part and a long stint at university on my part we basically had nothing when we came together. Given that houses here are about $700k for a "starter home", even with a respectable savings rate it will take us probably 5 years to save up a respectable downpayment and even then we'd have to take on huge monthly payments for a mortgage, essentially shackling DH to his current job and adding to the pressure should he ever have to leave it. The alternative is to wait for a grandparent to die and leave us some money and the only one who really has anything worthwhile to hand down is my mother, who I'd gladly trade all my inheritance for to have her in my life for another 20 years. But what really gets me about all this is not just how much debt we'd have to take on to get a house here, but what exactly are we getting for all our troubles?

Yep, you faithful readers know where I'm going with this don't you: I want some land. Now check out the photo on the upper right of my blog: doesn't that seem more like what you should get if you fork out a million dollars and work your ass off for the rest of your life? If we're going to save up money and buy something, wouldn't it be nice to feel like we really got something special? Something wonderful? Something that felt worth it all? Ultimately, a house in the city is just a roof over your head with windows that look right into your neighbour's living room, and a patch of dirt that you can't do anything with unless you have ten permits and your neighbour's permission first. Unless you have about $10 million to spend on housing you're not going to get much more than that here (albeit a very fancy roof with lots of toys inside). How about a forest, or a lake, or a big field with horses? How about being able to walk through wooded trails without having to drive to them? Now *that* seems like something worth going into huge amounts of debt for!

Debt to the Max

Perhaps this is an appropriate post given we're all heading into the post-Christmas hangover. Like the poor young slob who awakens to wonder if any amount of fun the night before could be worth how he's feeling right now, many people will be staring at their new credit card balances and wondering if the satisfaction of seeing everybody open that "perfect gift" you found for them (in a last minute shopping frenzy) is really worth the several months of interest charges that could likely end up costing more than what was originally spent on the loved ones.

I just finished watching Maxed Out on Debt, a documentary about consumer debt in America. While some situations don't apply to us Canadians (our federal government has had a balanced budget for a few years now, our provincial government debates how to spend the growing budgetary surplus, and we don't allow sub-prime mortgages and some of the other "interesting" schemes they have going in the US), most of it is applicable to the average Canadian family. In short, the movie shows how the majority of consumers do not use credit wisely, are allowed to get into far more debt than they can ever hope to pay off, and the laws governing consumer credit are actually written by the credit card companies. When  you see story after story of people being allowed and encouraged to spend far more than they have, at the end of it all you are left thinking that the best thing we could do would be to just ban credit altogether. But you can't do that, and the reason why is a tad shocking: because the economy depends on people spending more than they have. We've become so dependent on the current level of spending (most of which is using borrowed money) that our economies couldn't survive if, suddenly, nobody had access to credit. 

This ties in with another movie I watched recently, a 20 minute short story called The Story of Stuff (it's free and easily downloadable and I encourage you to watch it). This easy-to-follow tale describes the life cycle of consumer goods from manufacture to disposal. The narrator points out that consumerism is the fuel that drives this cycle - without convincing people that they always need new things, demand would slow and economies would suffer (because they have become depending on rampant consumerism). The production, manufacture, and disposal of most consumer goods wrecks the planet's health and dooms large groups of people (usually in other countries) to a lifetime of poverty and deprivation.

Debt is freakin' scary. No matter how intelligent you are, and how many times you are told of the perils of credit card interest and the folly of minimum monthly payments, it is the rare individual who can deal with credit in a responsible and, importantly, financially prudent manner. A preliminary search did not reveal an answer to the question "What percentage of credit card customers pay off their balances every month?" but I'm willing to bet they constitute far less than 50%. Why is that? Are most of us just stupid and greedy?

The answer is a bit simpler, and a bit scarier - our culture raises consumers. From the time we are old enough to watch TV we are bombarded with messages that shopping and things and acquiring and renovating are all Good Things. Add to that the availability of credit and you have a disaster waiting to happen. I've heard about this sort of mass manipulation for over 20 years, but never believed it was really true. I don't think I appreciated the amount of effort, research, data, and understanding of human psychology was directed toward this goal. And, like most people, I didn't want to believe that my own Free Will was in fact an illusion. Most of us do not want to believe that human nature directs our actions via subconscious processes, nor that these processes are easily manipulated once you understand them.

It's hard to watch a film like Maxed Out on Debt and not feel that the American economy is headed towards collapse. In our own family we have been fortunate enough to have the means to pull ourselves out of the crushing slavery of debt enough times that the lesson has finally sunk in. Even so, I'm finding that sticking to a budget and saving money is a constant battle that is, in many ways, analogous to the battle people wage to maintain a healthy body weight. My New Years resolution, which I may expand on in a later post, is to work better at being frugal and saving money. The film was definitely an inspirational boost in that regard.

Who owns Christmas?

My friend Spacemom married a Jewish man and agreed to raise their family in the Jewish faith. So you can imagine this is a hard time of year for the Space Family. I get the feeling that Spacemom doesn't miss Christmas; I always wonder in these situations how closely this correlates with one's childhood memories of the season. But of course it's about her children, growing up in a society where Christmas is the national version of this holiday season, and where rampant commercialism adds to the fervor for kids, so that it's hard to imagine any Jewish child not feeling as though they are being given a raw deal at this time of year. A recent post about her frustrations with her country's seeming determination to push Christmas down the throats of everybody apparently brought on a slew of nasty emails and this has ensued more discussion which stimulated me to post my thoughts on the subject. 

There was a sentiment among Spacemom's readers that Christmas cannot be called a non-secular holiday. Perhaps I'm misconstruing the context in which these comments were made, but I disagree that Christmas cannot be secular. I'm baffled, actually, considering that you often see Christians sporting buttons and bumper stickers saying "Keep the Christ in Christmas", etc. - apparently they aren't secure in it being a purely Christian holiday themselves. Perhaps one's perception depends on where you live and how pushy and vocal the local Christian population is (truly there is no other sort of Christian like the fundamentalist version they breed in parts of the USA).

I grew up with Christmas, and while I was raised Catholic the parts of Christmas that were most special to me had nothing to do with Jesus. When DH and I started a family we sought to establish our own meanings and traditions to this season. DH had flirted with the idea of converting to Judaism and so, in an attempt to be supportive, I agreed to forgo Christmas one year in favour of Hannukah (we were living far from home and DD was only 18 months old so it seemed a good time to experiment). DH made latkes and donuts, he made a menorah, and we lit it each night of the season. We read the Hannukah Story to DD (though I could never bring myself to say that the oil burning for several days was a "miracle"; more like a fortuitous miscalculation). Anyways, DH tried his little heart out to make a nice holiday for our family...

It was the most depressing winter of my life and I almost had a breakdown by the end of it all. 

DH decided against the conversion and I happily planned our next Christmas. It was good to have reason to examine which parts of Christmas were important to me, and what they symbolized for me:

The Tree: I insist on a real one because to me it's about nature and a fake tree just screams commercialism, plastic, and well...being fake. The evergreen symbolizes that winter is not a "dead" time for Nature. The smell of pine fills the room and I love it. 

The Lights: we hang lights around the balcony railings, and across the mantel. We light the tree and hang decorations upon it. To grasp the symbolism of these things imagine the time before we had electricity. Imagine a snowy village in a northern clime where it's dark early and the sun doesn't rise until late the next morning. Now imagine that houses in the village are decorated with candles, and the trees are decorated with lanterns, and perhaps suet for the local wildlife, and perhaps ribbons or other pretty things. Now imagine this light reflected in the snow and think how beautiful that must look. Isn't it obvious that the lights are a way of bringing joy and warmth to the long darkness of winter? Even now, in our cities of streetlights and power generators you cannot imagine how lovely our neighbourhood looks at night (and night begins at 4:30 pm these days) with the colourful lights around trees, railings, and seen through windows. As I stare out across this scene I think how dreary and depressing it would be if we had to go all winter without that. Why would anybody *not* want those lights? My one guess in this matter is that, since the origins of the Jewish faith took root in a place of deserts and near-equatorial climate perhaps there was never any need for this remedy against SAD.

When the Spacemom commented to her child that they couldn't light the lights because that had some meaning to it (which, apparently, went against their Jewish teachings? not sure) I was confused. Would it really be against the Jewish faith to put up some lights? Why do they have to be about Christianity? Why can't it just be about bringing some light and cheer and joy to the darkness? Lord knows there is nothing "Christian" about Christmas lights; as much as the Christians like to think they own the holiday, they stole most of it from the pagans. 

I admit it, I feel bad for the Jewish kids and then I feel guilty for feeling this way. No matter how hard the parents try to put a good spin on it, many kids are still convinced that they are missing out on something special; whether you think they are or not doesn't change how they feel. It's like the kid at the birthday party with sugar allergies - no matter how yummy his sugar-free, naturally sweetened, carrot thingy looks...it ain't chocolate cake and everybody knows it! There's just something about Christmas that really appeals to young children, and it's obviously not just the presents since we all know about the "eight crazy nights" of them (thank you, Adam Sandler). I think it's about the magic - waking up to a house lit with the faint glow of lights from the tree; the magical quality of a neighbourhood lit up with outdoor lights; and of course the magical story of Santa and the excuse to believe in something fairytale-ish while one is still capable of fully suspending one's disbelief. None of these things need be religious in any way, and I guess I don't get why Jewish families feel they can't incorporate any of these ideas into the season without somehow betraying their own religion for another. 

When families make a choice to raise kids Jewish in a culture that worships Christmas, they know that no matter how much they explain it, no matter what spin they put on it, the young children are going to feel gypped. They are going to look longingly at Christmas trees in their neighbour's windows and wish, even for a moment, that they weren't Jewish. I'm not saying this is right, and certainly society struggles with how to make the season more inclusive (as they should). But ultimately the parents chose this for their children - the children did not get to choose. And I just don't get why they can't even hang a few lights around the house (*if they want to*) without feeling like they are being untrue to their faith? 

To end this post on a lighter note, check out this parody of the PC vs. Mac commercials called "Chanukah Vs. Christmas":

Getting rid of those darned plastic bags

It's been in the news lately that certain cities are banning those little plastic grocery bags you get at the food stores. Our landfills are choked with them and yet they manage to find their way into our waterways and wilderness places, even harming the animals who are unfortunate enough to accidentally ingest them. They don't biodegrade properly and there's some evidence that chemicals in the plastic leach out into the environment.

For years I have taken the "reuse" part of the Three R's of Conservation (reduce, reuse, recycle) seriously; I keep my grocery bags (doesn't everybody have one of those plastic bag holders with the holes in them from Ikea?) and use them to line my household garbage cans. A while ago I started using canvas (reusable) bags for my grocery shopping, but soon found that I nothing with which to line my kitchen and bathroom garbage bins. I ended up in the ridiculous position of deliberately not using my reusable grocery bags so that I could have some plastic bags with which to line my bins. The alternative was to buy those "kitchen sized" garbage bags, and that just seemed even more ridiculous (and a waste of money). 

I even wrote of my predicament to a blog about "living green" (sorry, I've forgotten the name). We discussed using paper bags instead, but of course that means wasting forests. People also mentioned some garbage bags you can buy that are apparently biodegradable, but that seems like a whole lot of trouble (you have to purchase them online) and an added household expense for what literally amounts to garbage. The only other suggestion was for me to reduce my waste as much as possible. But I already do that: I compost, recycle anything and everything I can, and have reduced our household waste to 1 can a week (of that I am proud; our district allows 2). When I imagined our district and local grocery stores banning plastic bags I thought "That's great - but am I then going to have to buy plastic bags for my garbage?". 

Turns out, the answer was so simple I'm gobsmacked that it never occurred to me before. I was over at the Earth Friendly forum of our homeschooling program's online community reading a discussion about composting. Someone wrote that it grosses them out to store their compost in a container until they take it out to the bin - something about the smells and rot going on inside made her queasy, and she would spend an OCD amount of time cleaning and sanitizing the darned thing. Now, I use an old tupperware container that sits on my kitchen countertop and into which I dump my kitchen scraps. When it gets full I take it outside. I have to do this every 2 to 4 days, and sometimes I confess there's a bit of nasty going on inside though it's not like I've made primordial soup. I just wash it like I would anything else, with a bit of dishwashing soap (7th Gen, 'natch) and hot water. It is *plastic* after all. 

And as I mused about this woman's queasiness over placing raw vegetable matter in a plastic tub it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks: if I can handle days-old banana peels and tomato pulp why do I need a plastic bag to line my kitchen garbage bin? Why not just dump my refuse right into said kitchen garbage bin - which is plastic after all - and after I've emptied it into the big cans (the ones that go out to the curb each week) simply wash the bin with soap and hot water??

I can't believe it had never occurred to me to just "go naked in the kitchen". Okay, I'll confess at first the idea really gave me the heebie jeebies. It is *garbage* after all. Yuck, poo, stinky, sloppy! But really, how hard is it to clean the bin? No harder than cleaning the compost container. And so...with a bit of trepidation, two days ago I dumped out the last plastic shopping bag full of garbage into my can and replaced the bin under the sink with nothing. Naked. No plastic lining. 

And you know what? It's totally fine! My garbage isn't actually all that disgusting. And its not like it sits under the sink there for days on end. Every day or two I just take it to the garage, dump it in a can, and clean it with hot water and soap in my laundry tub. Okay, the can *does* now have to be lined with a big green garbage bag, as per city regulations. I can't have loose garbage in there. So I suppose it might be worth looking into those biodegradable bags for the big can liners (but I always have a supply of those big green garbage bags around anyways so it's not really an extra expense). But I sure do feel good about the fact that I am now no longer dependent on those little plastic grocery bags and can happily look forward to the day when our region bans them as well.

Knit-O-Rama

It's the time of year when my Christmas gift list prompts a visit to my LYS (that's "local yarn store" in knit-'Net-speak) and I have an excuse to go a little crazy and buy up a stash of yummy stuff to knit. I like knitting my gifts, because it gives me great pleasure to have an excuse for lots of knitting, and of course it feels more thoughtful and personal than wandering the stores looking for "that perfect gift" (and try doing that with a 3 and 5 year old in tow!). Of course, it also means that I encounter deadlines and timelines that may results in me sitting up late furiously knitting purling to get a project completed in time. I also have to choose projects that knit up fairly quickly, which gives me a chance to do lots of different things in a short period of time. Fun!

This year I'm trying my hand at felting. Like wool isn't remarkable enough, what with it's water-resistant and antibacterial properties; it also has this property whereby dunking it in hot water and agitating the fibres causes them to mat up. The result is just what the name suggests: felt (think about the sort of felt shapes you played with as a child on a felt board). It's thick, water-resistant, and you can even cut it like fabric! I've never felted before, but many of my knitting friends have and swear that it is just as easy as the instructions suggest. All you need is a washing machine (and actually you could do it by hand if need be).

And while I was in said LYS the lady at the shop gave me an amazing idea. Anyone who knits understands that you soon build up a stash of little balls of yarn, leftovers from projects. There isn't enough yarn to make anything other than a dishcloth, but you liked it so much you can't bring yourself to throw it out. Well....if you knit them up into little squares (as big as you can get with what you've got) and felt them - you have fabric that you can cut into shapes and sew onto knitting projects! Isn't that fabulous?

I'm going to close with a couple of links to knitting blogs I'm enjoying (other than the ones in my sidebar): Yarn Harlot and Four Friends and a Blog.

Say Sorry!

Fourteen years ago a Saskatchewan farmer murdered his 12 year old daughter by placing her in his truck and piping exhaust into the cabin. His daughter was born with severe cerebral palsy, had undergone three major operations and was in constant pain, not to mention pretty much a vegetable. Doctors had just informed her parents that she needed another operation. The farmer decided to take his daughter's life to spare her more pain.

The case sparked a huge controversy. Organizations representing disabled people cried out against this act, and feared that condoning the farmer's actions would send out the message that the value of disabled peoples' lives could be judged by others. Many people, however, sympathized with the farmer, who had immediately turned himself in to the police following his daughter's death. He was sentenced to jail and today the man was up for a day parole. The parole board denied his request because he "showed no remorse".

What struck me about this case was that the farmer was totally up front and honest about his feelings. To this day he claims he did it out of love for his daughter, that he would do it again if he could go back, and that he feels he did "what had to be done". The only reason this guy didn't pull a mea culpa act and bullshit the parole board into thinking he really was sorry is that he has scruples and ethics. An honest man says what he believes, even if it means he spends another two years in jail without the opportunity to venture out for the day. A lesser man (and perhaps myself in that situation) would likely have said whatever I thought the board wanted to hear to get my taste of freedom for a day.

This poor guy is no threat to anybody. He is a man of principle who found himself in a horrid situation, watching his severely disabled child live a life of pain. He made a decision that the rest of us can thank our lucky stars we've never had to contemplate. And as far as "punishment" goes, don't you think he's suffered enough? God forbid I give birth to a child so disabled they can barely interact with the world around them, and then watch as modern medicine goes to ridiculous extremes to prolong this sorry life. But no, in our society we want to see criminals (and children, for that matter) punished or we feel cheated out of something (revenge, but nobody seems to want to admit that; instead we use the euphimism "justice").

So the reason he was denied parole is not because he represents a public safety threat. It's not because he's a lying thieving scumbag. No, it's because he refused to say "I'm sorry". Is this what our justice system is all about? Making people say sorry? AFAIC, those parole board officers are no worse than the playground mom who drags her little boy by the arm over to some kid he slapped out of frustration and forces him to mumble an obviously insincere apology.

On the radio they interviewed a representative of one of these mental health advocacy organizations, who was very pleased that this man's parole was denied. When asked why he thought the farmer should not have received parole, given his model prisoner behaviour and his obvious lack of threat to the public, the man replied along these lines: "This man represents a threat because he refuses to admit that what he did was wrong. He insists on claiming that what he did was acceptable, and I think that is a dangerous idea to promote.".

Uh....last time I checked this was a progressive, democratic country. Since when did we start buying into this "dangerous ideas" crap? And is this guy seriously saying that the farmer should be denied one day of parole because he isn't afraid to stand up for what he believes in, rather than kiss the asses of the parole board by telling them what they want to hear?

This is what happens when children are taught that saying "sorry" is more important that meaning it, or standing up for your convictions.