Unexpected Allegory

Things that have deeper or hidden meanings... I usually don't get them.  Probably because I'm not looking for them.  To me a song can be just a song, without being a social commentary or a drug reference.  Same goes for books, plays, art, movies, etc.  I tend to let things be in that regard.  If things don't make sense, I'm good with that, embracing of it even.  I love a good bit of nonsense.  So all this stuff that everybody else sees goes right over my head.  I had to be told that the Narnia books were about religion.  I had to be told that the song Crystal Blue Persuasion is about crystal meth.  Why would I think that?  Is crystal meth actually blue?  I've never seen it.  "Every morning there's a halo hanging from the corner of my girlfriend's 4-post bed."  Apparently the halo is a condom.  Which I think makes the next line: "I know it's not mine but I'll see if I can use it for the weekend or a one-night stand," totally gross. Is he actually re-using condoms?  wtf? There are a slim few that I actually pick up on by myself, but not many, and I tend to second guess myself on them anyway.  Madonna's Like a Prayer, is this about oral sex?  I'm thinkin' so.  Why can't a story just be a story?  Why does it have to really be about the politics of communist Russia?  Why does a story about unicorns have to be an allegory for capitalism?  Why do we have to look for penises in King Triton's castle in The Little Mermaid?  Why are there so many names for our private parts?  Beaver?  Really?  You wanna name a woman's crotch after a water-dwelling rodent with giant teeth?  Why?  Especially since so many women in the US shave down there now, so it's not like the brown fur thing is even relevant in many cases.  Now, I know all this kind of is a 180 from what I said in my Thinking post, about never just accepting things without thinking about them.  I don't know why I'm ok with taking things at face value in entertainment....actually I think that's exactly it, to me there's entertainment and then there's stuff that makes ya think.  I steer toward books and movies for escape, for some fluff and fun, and nonsense is totally fun.  I guess I get annoyed when something is presented as a fun or cute little romp of a story and then it turns out that they're really trying to spread a message about politics or drugs or sex.  It ruins it.  I don't have a problem if things are going to do that, but I think they should present themselves as such from the beginning, and that way I'll know to go into it when I'm in the right mood and have some energy to really examine and contemplate.  They could at least put it on the jacket flap of books, or the description/trailer for movies.  Or if it's just straight out that kind of movie where you know there's something deeper going on, like, maybe Pan's Labyrinth.  That's the kind of movie where you just KNOW to look at the tree and see a uterus.  The Golden Compass, you know you're dealing with heavier crap than a fun adventure story there.  They make it clear.  But if you're gonna act like you're presenting a book like Wind in the Willows, or The Princess Diaries, don't go stuffing in things about religion and philosophy on the sly and expect people to be looking for it, cuz I'm sure as hell not. 

Thinking about thinking

Does everyone think about things all the time like I do?  Is this unusual?  Do other people have moments when there are actually no thoughts going through their heads at all?  I know people who I would wager, judging from outside appearances, don't think about anything that is not absolutely necessary.  When they need to start dinner or pick up the kids, yeah.  Philosophy and how things work?  Probably not.  Is this a false impression?  Are they maybe thinking about this stuff, but they just don't discuss it?  Mean and judgmental as it is, I seriously seriously think some people just do live like that.  I can't imagine.  Is this why people gossip and keep talking on and on about the weather and their doctors and medical issues?  They just don't think about other things?  Do they just accept everything at face value?  I accept nothing.  Completely nothing.  Everything is open to interpretation, to quandary, to being disproved, to being improved.  I'd say most of my heavy thinking happens early in the morning, while I'm showering, getting ready, driving to work.  And sometimes on the drive home.  These are the times when I'm not occupied with doing things, when my mind can disconnect from what I'm doing and go wandering.  This is when I come up with my own stuff.  My mind does go nuts at other times too, but more often because I have been presented with an idea, or something that led to an idea.  A movie, tv show, something somebody said.  So I know I'm not alone in thinking about everything all the time; other people do this to.  But I don't seem to run into these people that often.  Is this because of the area that I live in?  Or because I work in retail with a general population of coworkers who are not college educated?  Not that a college education is a pre-requisite to being a pondering type of person, and not that I think the girls I work with are stupid or anything.  Am I just not social enough to get close enough to people so that they get into these kinds of discussions even if they are thinking things?  Must you be a person with lots of leisure time to ponder things?  If you are super productive, over worked, whatever, does that make you less likely to, or without the luxury of having time to think about things?  Is it a conditioning thing, like you have to be raised this way, constantly exercising your mind?  Is it an actual physical thing that some people are literally born incapable of?  Do some people consider this a waste of time?  I.e., things are what they are, stop wasting your time sitting around thinking about things and just live your life.

Materialism Cont.

Ok, so what if you live a materialistic lifestyle, and then there's a house fire, and everything is gone.  The home, the things you've collected, the things you've made.  Nothing left.  What now?  What do you have to show for your life?  But alternatively, if you live for the moment, for the experiences, then nobody can take those away from you, unless maybe you get cracked in the head and become partially brain dead, or when senility sets in...  but anyway, yeah, you'll probably have those experiences to revisit in your mind forever, but there will be nothing left behind.  Your grandchild won't have anything to remember you by.  Will they know who you were, why you were, what you did, what you felt and learned?  Probably not.  I guess you could keep a journal, but then that's a material thing that could be lost by the airport luggage handlers, or dropped into the Ganges river, or torched in a house fire. 

Materialism

I am materialistic.  I value things.  I love things.  I could not be happy without my stuff.  Or at least this is what I believe.  Sometimes I look at people who don't have all this stuff, who don't have the option or don't want it, and I wonder if they're better off than me really.  It'd probably make life easier, I might be able to find stuff when I need it if there was less to dig through.  ( I was not raised this way, btw, my mother is very minimalistic) Would it be great to not be tied down by it all, to not even have a building to continuously call home from day to day, year to year, so as to be able to pick up and go whenever I wanted?  Is it a better idea to not have a lot of stuff, but spend all your money on travel, on experiencing, on learning about the world in a hands-on kind of way instead of by watching tv and looking things up online.  I think the problem is that in order to travel a lot and still have a home waiting for you (which I feel in my heart is a personal necessity for me) you must have a fairly substantial amount of money.  Which I don't have.  For my life @ present, I can have it one way or the other, but not both.  I have chosen home, security, material possessions.  And I'm good with that decision.   Some times I wonder what it'd be like to let go of everything and run away to ...live, I guess.  This thought both excites and scares the hell outta me.  If ever I become filthy rich, rest assured, I'd keep my home and possessions and also run around the world experiencing everything. 

Simpler or Harder?

Sometimes I feel like I miss a time period during which I wasn't even alive.  lol  I tend to idealize times past, especially the 50's in suburban America.  The I Love Lucy and Dick VanDyke illusion.  When all the women wore figure flattering dresses and spent their days cleaning, cooking, & socializing.  I think taking care of a house, especially if there's a kid, is a full-time job in itself, and now we're (women) expected to do all this PLUS enter into the workforce.  Really?  No wonder our kids are so screwed up!  Nobody has time to raise them properly!  I miss times past, when things like sewing, knitting, embroidery, cooking, these were all valued skills for a woman to have.  And people could spend an evening together just talking, and maybe playing music and singing together.  When women's legs were special.  When's the last time you heard a guy praising a woman's legs?  I've never heard it.  Ever.  Boobs, ass, yes.  But anyway.  Was this time really as great as it seems in retrospect?  It was relatively soon after a major war, so I suspect there were lots of people who had lost someone near and dear.  No air-conditioning I believe.  Frozen foods were a new and novel thing and it was much cheaper to use canned things.  Yuck.  I think some foods were just not available unless you lived in the area where they grew, and I think there just weren't as many recipes to provide variation @ dinner.  And you'd be cooking without air-conditioning.  I think people were more close-minded then.  Less acceptance for differences, whatever they might be, and a less empathetic view.  No internet!  I don't know how this....like.. ok, internet was not an everyday at-home thing when I was a kid.  Not for me, not for anyone.  But NOW...  I can't imagine being without it, really.  How would I LEARN anything?  I think I look at least 1 thing up on Wikipedia every single day.  And whenever I need a recipe for anything, look it up online!  How do I do this knit stitch?  Can I freeze this food?  Which side is the appendix on again (hopefully not the side of me that hurts right now)?  Where is Uruguay?  Who was Amy Winehouse?  When is the next Meg Cabot book coming out?  If I had to look all this stuff up by going to the library and pouring over books for hours...I probably just wouldn't bother, & I'd come to terms with being ignorant.  It'd SUCK!  So what do I really want?  I guess I want the impossible: all the benefits of our crazy, fast, commercial, artificial, computerized lives now, but going back to some of the more simple, innocent ways of the past.  PS: Kindle scares the crap outta me.  I can see a future with no books, everything electronic.  How Terrible!!  I may expand on why later.

Dinner annoyance

My husband and housemate think it's the worst thing ever if they have to eat a meal without meat.  I don't understand this, and I think it's very frustrating.  I like meat, but there are also plenty of great things that don't involve meat. Our housemate also has a really really REALLY long list of things he doesn't like.  Crazy annoying.  Jessy only refuses to eat 2 things: fish & beans.  That's not that bad.  Arron's list is more like 50 things.  I will eat practically anything you'd come across in a normal American kitchen.  Some things I'm not crazy about, but I will eat them.  My avoidance list: raw onion, bell pepper, any cooked fruit except apples, kale. I think that's about it. 

murder & knitting

Totally weird thought, but it all comes of there being so many forensic investigation shows on tv.  So here it is:  If you were going to kill someone, you could never ever dump or bury their body in a blanket that you knitted or crocheted yourself.  Because your DNA would be all over the thing.  Skin cells must be rubbing off your hands all the time while you're handling the yarn, and a few strands of hair get knitted right in.  The skin part just makes sense, and the hair part I know for sheezey myself cuz I'm always pulling strands of my hair out of my knitting while I'm working on it. 

H20 For To Drink

People say not to drink from natural water sources.  Cuz they can have bacteria, toxins, poo, etc etc.  Ok.  But what did people DO for drinking water before all the water cleaning processes that we have in our city water today?  I'm pretty sure they just drank the water available, yes?  And how many people really died from it?  A significant number do ya think?  Like more than die from..I dunno, like, cigarettes, or heart attacks?  I'm guessing not that many.  I'm thinking water is probably more dangerous today than in the past because of us.  Because of our waste and pesticides and chemicals and everything.  But regardless, people around where I live still drink from wells, and from natural springs.  Not me, mind you, cuz I think there is some degree of risk in drinking ground water, even though it is safer than streams and what-not, and also because I think the water tastes super nasty.  (Slated to be the sequel to Super Bad, by the way, Super Nasty lol)  I like city tap water.  No bottled water for me, cuz it tastes like plastic and half of it comes from municipal water sources just the same as tap water anyway.  But anyhoo I never heard of anybody around here dying from drinking well water or from water from Seven Springs or anything.  Would Lewis & Clark have drunk out of the Ohio River?  Would it have actually been safe then?  Would it still have looked dark and muddy/gross like it does now?  I know lots of other countries are still drinking mostly untreated water, and they seem to be ok.  Are we perhaps weakening our immune systems by making our water so pristine?  You know they say that kids who aren't exposed to dirt and germs and stuff are more likely to get sick and have allergies and all that just because their immune systems haven't had a chance to fight and get stronger.  I bet it's the same principle, having water really clean all the time.  Not that I really want to go start drinking out of Indian Run creek or anything.

Social freaking the hell out

I'm going to a bridal shower here in about a half hour for a girl that I used to work with.  She invited I think 4 others girls from the store, but everyone else apparently had scheduling conflicts and can't go.  I want to go and see my friend and all, but I am seriously flipping out at the prospect of being in a room full of women that I have never met and having to try to find something to talk about and somebody to talk about it with.  I do not do well in social groups.  Ever.  I don't really like parties, and tend to avoid them, unless possibly if I have at least one good friend to go with me, because then at least I can cling to her like she's a life raft, keeping me from sitting in a corner by myself.  And even then I get worried if she knows other people there and I don't, cuz she might abandon me and go talk to them while I try to tread water and keep from drowning in a sea of self-imposed social anxiety.  Plus I am worried about stuff like, is my gift nice enough/big enough?  Should I be wearing something nicer than jeans and a t-shirt?  Should I go put on a skirt?  I'm thinking it's probably ok.  We're likely to get wrapped up in toilet paper wedding gowns anyway, right?  Damn it I wish this was over with! 

But I want it too!

Does it cheapen a hand-made gift if you make an identical copy for yourself also?  I am telling myself that it doesn't.  The person I've made it for need not ever know there was a copy made, especially if it's not somebody I really hang out with.  They'll probably never even come to my house again, since this is really more of a lingering friendship from a time in high school when we were besties.  It is still a hand-made gift.  It still took a lot of work.  And I cut way too many squares when I made the original, so if I don't make a duplicate I'll have to throw all of them away, which would be a waste of fabric and of time.  But then the second question is, is it completely nuts to make a baby quilt for a baby that I have not yet had and do not plan to have for a few more years?  And even more, this will be an obviously female quilt, so I'm assuming that this far-off child will be of the right gender.  Which I fervently hope it will be, but it's not like I get to chose.  I suppose even if I never have a girl I can always give it to someone else, or, seeing as I'm crazy anyway, save it in hopes of a female grandchild.  Then I will be making a quilt for a grandbaby before I've even have had a child!  Ridiculous!

Changelings

Ah changelings. What are they?  I guess there are several variations on a theme out there.  Having at several points in my life attempted to seriously research all things Fae and of the magical world(really hard btw, since stories differ everywhere and sometimes obviously different creatures seem to fall under the same name), I think I can explain roughly.  A changeling is what the fairies leave behind when they steal a human baby.  Some say that they leave one of their own, an adult or a baby,  in exchange, and other stories say they'll leave a glamoured branch or something behind, something completely not alive, but they make it appear to us to be our own baby.  Some say that the only way to know for sure if you have been tricked with a changeling is to throw your infant into a fire, at which point it will revert to a piece of wood, or show itself to be a fairy and run away screaming.  Supposedly, especially if it is a fairy, your child will behave absolutely terribly, with tantrums, screaming, crying, being impossible, refusing to eat, etc.  This makes me wonder, has anyone ever actually TESTED this fire theory?  Has anyone in the history of time ever actually had enough nerve and enough faith to throw their baby into a fire?  Yikes.   Anyway.  Why do fairies want our babies?  Some say the fae just love to be tricksters and enjoy causing us trouble.  Some say they are fascinated by our babies and consider them novel play toys.  Some say that they just play with our babies till they die, but the main goal is to get us to shoulder the burden of raising their children until they are old enough to return to the fairy community.  Some say that fairies, being immortal, cannot produce their own babies. However many there are is however many there have been and will be, minus any that die because of violent tragedies (accidents or wars usually).  So some stories say that they want to raise the babies as their own, and some say that they want to breed with us, because it makes them stronger and gives them a way of reproducing even if the offspring is not pure-blood fairy.  This whole sperm and egg idea is a fairly recent revelation, actually, so it probably made more sense back in the day than now.  Cuz I'm thinking, if they do not reproduce on their own, why would they even have the appropriate equipment to be able to reproduce when they get together with a human??

The Changeling by Charlotte Mew

TOLL no bell for me, dear Father, dear Mother,

Waste no sighs;

There are my sisters, there is my little brother

Who plays in the place called Paradise,

Your children all, your children for ever;

But I, so wild,

Your disgrace, with the queer brown face, was never,

Never, I know, but half your child!

 

In the garden at play, all day, last summer,

Far and away I heard

The sweet "tweet-tweet" of a strange new-comer,

The dearest, clearest call of a bird.

It lived down there in the deep green hollow,

My own old home, and the fairies say

The word of a bird is a thing to follow,

So I was away a night and a day.

 

One evening, too, by the nursery fire,

We snuggled close and sat round so still,

When suddenly as the wind blew higher,

Something scratched on the window-sill.

A pinched brown face peered in--I shivered;

No one listened or seemed to see;

The arms of it waved and the wings of it quivered

Whoo--I knew it had come for me!

Some are as bad as bad can be!

All night long they danced in the rain,

Round and round in a dripping chain,

Threw their caps at the window-pane,

Tried to make me scream and shout

And fling the bedclothes all about:

I meant to stay in bed that night,

And if only you had left a light

They would never have got me out!

 

Sometimes I would speak, you see,

Or answer when you spoke to me,

Because in the long, still dusks of Spring

You can hear the whole world whispering;

The shy green grasses making love,

The feathers grow on the dear grey dove,

The tiny heart of the redstart beat,

The patter of the squirrel's feet,

The pebbles pushing in the silver streams,

The rushes talking in their dreams,

The swish-swish of the bat's black wings,

The wild-wood bluebell's sweet ting-tings,

Humming and hammering at your ear,

Everything there is to hear

In the heart of hidden things.

But not in the midst of the nursery riot,

That's why I wanted to be quiet,

Couldn't do my sums, or sing,

Or settle down to anything.

And when, for that, I was sent upstairs

I did kneel down to say my prayers;

But the King who sits on your high Church steeple

Has nothing to do with us fairy people!

 

'Times I pleased you, dear Father, dear Mother,

Learned all my lessons and liked to play,

And dearly I loved the little pale brother

Whom some other bird must have called away.

Why did they bring me here to make me

Not quite bad and not quite good,

Why, unless They're wicked, do They want, in spite, to take me

Back to Their wet, wild wood?

Now, every night I shall see the windows shining,

The gold lamp's glow, and the fire's red gleam,

While the best of us are twining twigs and the rest of us are whining

In the hollow by the stream.

Black and chill are Their nights on the wold

And They live so long and They feel no pain:

I shall grow up, but never grow old,

I shall always, always be very cold,

I shall never come back again!

Fae

I love love love fairy (or faerie) legends.  Nobody seems to truly believe in them anymore.  Well, maybe except how in Ireland they supposedly diverted a road to keep from disturbing a piece of land dedicated as a Leprechaun reserve.  *cough*    But anyway, the old-time fairies, i.e. NOT Tinkerbell, seem to be going extinct in culture.  At least American culture.  They can still be found, certainly, if you know where to look.  The young adult book sections in stores and libraries still have large collections of fairy stories, new and old.  The problem is that people take huge liberties with this stuff.  Fairies become whatever people want them to be.  And even going back to old legends, this stuff is hard to pin down.  How big is a fairy?  Sometimes they're human sized, sometimes insect sized, and everything in between.  The larger fairies, with their Seelie and Unseelie courts, seem to be enjoying a resurgence in books right now.  (if you dig under the books about vampires and child wizards.)  The Tithe series, the Wicked Lovely series, etc.  I think this is a much needed return to the roots of fairy legend.  Fairies that are not necessarily good or evil, but live by their own rules and morals of right and wrong.  To hell with the Victorian age cherub fairies.  What was up with those things anyway?  And the eternally good-intentioned flower fairies and Disney fairies, which are fun and pretty, but not even remotely believable. 

Cryptozoology

I am completely enamored with Cryptozoology.  Not that I'm gonna go try to hunt down Bigfoot in person, but I like shows and books and just the possibilities of it I guess.  I think it's great to have a reminder that we don't know everything yet.  There's still stuff out there to find, to discover, to study.  Maybe things that will totally revolutionize some of the stuff we think we know now. 

Do I believe all of it?  No.  Do I believe even a quarter of it?  No.  But maybe one or two things could be true, and some of the others are good for a laugh, and laughs are much needed.  This morning on the radio it said that a boy shot what he and his family believe to be a Chupacabra.  They're currently doing tests on the dead animal to find out what it was.  I almost died laughing.  I don't mean to insult anyone who believes in the Chupacabra, but as far as I'm concerned this particular cryptid is about as unbelievable as they come. 

I really didn't know there were so many cryptids in the world until I started watching Destination Truth, which is cool and hilarious.  I believe Josh Gates' quote @ the start of the show goes: "In my travels I've seen some unexplainable things, and done some things I can't quite explain."  Great show. 

The problem is, other than the really famous cryptids (Bigfoot, Nessie, etc) there is not much info available for research.  There are encyclopedias of cryptids, which I have been horribly disappointed by, since they just name the creature and then provide 1 sentence to 1 paragraph on them.  And for many of them, this is ALL there is!  Unless you live in the area where the critter is and know the lore about it, apparently you're never gonna find out.  Although, having read the literature on (semi-) local cryptid, the Mothman, perhaps I know why this literature doesn't exist.  It's a lot of words without much actual info, and lots of personal accounts of encounters.  It's hard to read unless you're really interested. I was, and I did.  Do I believe in the Mothman?  No.  It's fun cuz it's close to me, but, yeah, ridiculous.

What cryptids do I tentatively believe could be real?  The Yeti in the Himalayas.  The Orang Pendek. Maltese Tiger.  Moa. 

What cryptids would a love to believe in but can't?  Mermaids.  Nari Pon (plant people of Thailand).  The Grassman of Ohio (our Bigfoot). 

Man v. Refrigerator

Scientists say that if a baby cannot see something, they think it doesn't exist.  If mom is holding the baby and he/she can see, hear, and feel her, she's there.  If she steps away out of baby's line of sight, she's dropped off the face of the earth suddenly. 

Men are like this with refrigerators.  If it's not front and center on the top shelf in a giant see-through container, it doesn't exist and therefore there is no use digging for it.  No way could it possibly be behind the milk jug, or on the second shelf behind the leftover rice. There's nothing behind that milk jug except the back of the fridge, and behind the bread there's actually a big black hole, down which whatever he was looking for has probably been sucked, never to be seen again. 

Ohio IS the Heart of it All!

I have recently been disproportionately annoyed by a song. Namely "Country Must Be Country Wide." The singer says he's country, and he sees a car pull up with Ohio plates and thinks the driver's lost, because apparently people from Ohio can't be country. He finds out different in the next verse, but I am still ticked. Why in the WORLD would he think that people from Ohio can't be country? We're OHIO!! Whatever you want brought, we can BRING it!! We have cities, symphonies, ballet, museums and zoos, and fine dining. We have the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But we also are the hosts for Jamboree In the Hills, a country music festival so big we've hosted practically every big country star in the history of ...ever, and people come clear from Hawaii to see it! We are coal miners and barge workers, steel mill workers, we have glass factories, we grow tomatoes for Campbell's soup, we grow Concord grapes for Welch's grape juice and jelly, we grow tons of corn and soy and lots of other stuff. Farmers, coal miners, fishing and deer hunting? SOUNDS country to me!! My school used to get the first day of deer season off! We go mudding 4-wheeling, fishing, camping. We have lakes, waterfalls, caves, rivers, and even a National Park. We have towns so small there are no traffic lights, and we also have Cleveland, Cincinatti, and Columbus. We have the best public library system in America (not the largest library, though). We have Cedar Point, which unless I'm wrong still has the tallest roller coaster in the world. We are the birthplace of aviation. Presidents Grant, Taft, Hayes, Harding, & Garfield all called Ohio home. Basically we kick ass and can do ANYTHING. We are Ohio, America's heartland, or, as our state slogan says, "The Heart of it ALL"

If I had a billion dollars

My friend just did a blog list of things she'd do with a million dollars. But I fully expect I could dispatch a billion without batting an eyelash. So here's my list.

First, I'd have a house built. A HUGE house built to exactly my specification, which would be less than sane. I'd have a music room with all kinds of instruments to play & masses of sheet music and fakebooks. An art room full of supplies. A sewing room. A knitting room, which must be seperate from the sewing room, because yarn and fabric take up lots of space. A library, something akin to the one in Disney's Beauty & the Beast, I think. A massive kitchen, & a KitchenAid stand mixer. A closet big enough that it requires chairs and possibly a mini-fridge. A full wet bar with every kind of alcohol ever. A vegetable garden, flower gardens, and an orchard with gardeners to take care of it all. A pond. Possibly a man made waterfall. Possibly with a swimming pool at the bottom.

3 brand new, fully paid off, highly insured cars. One of which runs on water.

My own room on 24/7 reserve for me at the Disney Swan or Dolphin hotels, with a pre-paid ticket to Disneyworld for life.

My own plane and pilot to fly me to all the places I would travel to around the world, and an English speaking guide to go with me.

Every video game ever made. some for me, mostly for Jessy.

People to clean my house.

An on call pastry chef.

Someone to style my hair.

Solar energy panels to power my home.

Give money to help save animals, especially elephants, rhinos, manatees, tigers, pandas, and frogs.

Buy the JoAnn Fabrics where I work, which I would turn into a superstore. (Even though Joann's is a corporation, not a franchise, & therefore it does not work this way!) And I would go down and help the girls out setting plan-o-grams and stuff, when I felt like it of course, and I'd have craft and sewing supplies for life.

Houses for my parents & Jessy's parents, or a wing in my house if they want, and a car and driver to take them on fabulous trips. And a house for Paul.

Invisaline braces.

And now I must leave for work. :(

Groceries

Jessy was recently out of work for 8 months, and it was to the point where I was feeding 3 adults on $100-$150 a month. Not an easy task. And Jessy does not like beans, which I would normally have made a central point of a tight budget, do to cheapness and high nutrition. Also the boys both freak if there is not enough meat in a meal. Personally I can go veggie for an extended period of time and not blink twice about it. Anyway, I thought I'd just write down some points that I followed to help me feed a family on the cheap, in case anybody cares. I'm sure nobody will do this stuff unless forced to, cuz some of it is a pain in the butt, but there ya go. And as a side note, I'm not a coupon user. They're usually for brand name products that I can still get cheaper from Kroger brand, and I forget to take them to the store with me after I spend the time cutting them out anyway. Also we don't get the newspaper, so there's not much for me to clip! Here's what I did do:

Buy store brand. (with a few exceptions due to really big quality difference)

Do not buy convenience foods. Nothing prepared for you. Except I do get instant potatoes, $1 a bag, it's worth it to me. You can almost always make from scratch cheaper than you can buy it prepared...except bread and spaghetti sauce.

Learn to read labels. Make sure you're getting the most product for the least amount. You have to look at the unit price on the sales tag, or maybe do a lil' math.

Learn to read nutrition facts. You want things high in vitamins & minerals, and also fiber. The higher the fiber content the more the food is gonna stick with you & you won't be hungry again in 10 minutes. Good: oats, potatoes, whole wheat, veggies Bad: snack cakes, potato chips, many cold cereals, most breads, cheese. Fruit is good, but usually comes with a high price, and it has high natural sugar content (sugar speeds through your system and makes you hungry faster).

Lessen your meat portions. You can make your meat go further by cutting it into bits and putting it in something, like stew, soup, fried rice w/ veggies, casseroles (watch out for casseroles with high fat condensed soups though, they are not very good for you and often involve lots of cheese too), pot pies with homemade pie crust, etc.

Only buy meat when it is on sale. It's usually cheaper to buy in bulk and re-package to freeze at home. Chose your meat types and cuts depending on sales, you can think of something to do with it.

There may be more, but Arron just put a comedy central special on with a girl I like, so I am distracted. And since probably nobody cares about my shopping anyway... yeah. See you all lata!

porch lights

So, I absolutely do not keep up with the news, as I've said before. But apparently there's some lady in...Florida (?) who killed her kid a few years back, and just got off the hook for it or something. (I don't mean to sound flippant about it, btw, it is really very sad) So people are spreading a message of outrage around and pledging to keep their porch lights turned on for a night, I guess in a show of their feelings of injustice and sympathy for the child and...I don't know, I didn't read the whole thing. And I totally understand that people are feeling this way, that our judicial system has failed us and this little kid's murder (or it might be 2 kids, not really sure) is going unpunished when it seemed fairly obvious that the mom did commit the crime. I get it. Without knowing any of the details I would hazard to say that I probably agree. What I don't get is the porch lights. In a show of outrage and sympathy, we the people pledge to needlessly waste electricity that most likely came from non-renewable fossil fuels? Can't we think of a less wasteful venue of expression? Maybe something that would help children, or something to better the environment for the next generation? Just a thought.

And now I'm going to go make tacos and watch Alfie (the one with Jude Law, whom I do not find as attractive as most people of my gender seem to) and hope that he is not going to be a self-absorbed male chauvinist for the entire movie.

Pondering Exoskeletons

Found myself contemplating exoskeletons on the way home from work today. No idea what brought it on. Exoskeletons are weird though, don't you think? How do the joints work? Is it really bone or more like fingernail? Is it alive like our bones with blood and stuff...can't be, right? Are there completely no bones on the inside of the body then? What do the muscles bond to? How do they move? ...There are muscles, right? If you break your exoskeleton do your insides all just come out? Is it pressurized at all in there? How do you get air in to breathe without being able to expand and contract? What happens where joints are...like is there exposed...exposed...I dunno, like is there skin or something under where the joints are or just exposed muscle, or what? If you don't have skin does that mean that you never get an itch? I wouldn't think an exoskeleton could itch. It probably doesn't have any nerve endings. ....how do they know when they're touching something if there are no nerve ending on the outside? Does the pressure from touching it transfer to the inside where there are nerve endings? They must have nerve endings somewhere in the body, right? Maybe not. hmm. Apparently I need a book about this. How can bees be hairy if they have exoskeletons? Does the hair grow right out of the bone or whatever it is?

food & teeth

Well. No clue what to talk about. Can't wait for the 3rd book in my tiger series now. It's not out till November. Could be worse.
Arron's car broke down today. I guess he got it running again but he says it's probably only temporarily fixed. *shrug*
Getting tired of coming up with meal ideas on a shoe-string budget and cooking every night. I wanna go to the store and buy whatever I want and get pizza and Burger King when I don't feel like cooking. Made some pretty good gravy tonight though. Considering it came from bouillon cubes. mashed taters and gravy is the best!
Bought some fluoride mouth wash cuz my teeth have been really sensitive the past few days. My dentist said my enamel is kinda thin and fluoride would help, like Sensodyne (sp?) toothpaste. & it does, but I've had lots of sour candy lately. Not good for enamel. Still cavity free though! Haven't had one since I was a kid, and luckily it was in a baby tooth, so now I have no fillings or anything. Except my front tooth, where half of it's fake...but that's not cuz I didn't take care of my teeth, it's cuz I fell on my face on a bathroom tile floor when I was visiting a college. I think I have good teeth cuz I drink water instead of pop or tea or ..whatever, I hardly ever drink sugary things, and the water is tap water with fluoride in it. I guess fluoride is controversial now, people say it slowly rots your guts or something. I dunno. From what I understand it's not too much worse than anything else, and my mom is always telling me that there's a HUGE difference in people's teeth since fluoride was put in tap water. My mom's a pretty smart lady, so i think I will trust in fluoride. Maybe my teeth have to do with nutrition and/or genetics too though. My nails are always really strong too, and they say the strength of your nails is an indicator of the strength of your bones. All related.
Gross section to follow:
I drove by a cat today that had just been hit by a car and wasn't dead yet, even though it obviously didn't have much longer. Rrrreeaaaallllllyyy disturbing. I won't describe it. The thought crossed my mind that maybe I should try to run over it myself to put it out of its misery, cuz it was really thrashing around in pain. But I definitely don't have the nerve for that. I almost puke when I have to kill a spider. A cat? No way. And what if I just hurt it worse but didn't kill it? That would be terrible.

Just re-watched Three Guys Named Mike...which probably nobody but me and a few grandmas have ever watched. 1951 movie with Jane Wyman and Van Johnson. I like Van Johnson, especially in The Good Old Summertime, with Judy Garland. Anyhoo. 3 guys all named Mike fall in love (supposedly) with this one girl. Van Johnson wins. yay. But she never kisses a single guy the whole movie and the other two guys plead for marriage one minute and the next minute smilingly accept their rejection. Really? I guess that's 1951 for ya! I think marriage should be to somebody you feel like you can't live without, somebody you'd do anything for. Or at least somebody who gets under your skin and into your heart and you know you could never leave them. I get the idea of loving someone enough that you want them to be really happy even if they don't pick you, but these guys didn't even seem phased! "Please marry me! ..No? Hey, you're rejected too Fella? Well, let's go get some coffee. Maybe the cafe's having a special on pie today!" ......... How could this possibly be love? Maybe it just wasn't about passion then. Maybe if it was a good looking girl that you liked talking to and she could cook and clean, she was in! I dunno though, isn't this about the time of Marylin Monroe? (maybe she's a lil' later, I dunno) But passion seems to pop up everywhere through time, clear back to ancient eras. But then people in countries with arranged marriages...well, that's a whole other discussion that I won't attempt to tackle right now. I guess a lot of things happened in the 40's and 50's that I don't understand. Like a woman accepting the fact that her husband continually cheated on her and still pretending like nothing was going on. Not ok by me!

Tiger's Quest

My personal library delivery service (a.k.a.:Dad) brought me the second book in a series I've been reading. It just came out and I'm all excited. But, since it's a series that isn't finished yet I have issues with being left hanging at the end of the book and having to wait months or years for book 3...which the author did to me with the first book. So I turned straight to the end (I know, I know! Bad!) to see what was up. And yes, in fact, I shall be left hanging yet again. I'm sure everything will turn out alright in the end, but it appears that the Persian prince, cursed to take the form of a white tiger, has had his memory erased by the evil villain and does not remember the young American girl whom he has fallen deeply in love with. Bummer. Sounds like a super cheesey plot line when summarized like that...but I love it. So now I find myself doing another bad thing and skimming through the book to find the sappy love scenes and totally ignoring the (I'm sure, based on book 1) very cool adventure scenes with Hindu gods and goddesses and creatures of Indian mythology. It's a big book, and I must know the details of the romance, but I must also do my dishes, make muffins, and pick up Arron, so I can revisit the adventure parts later and fill in the gaps. And the question of the moment is, why on earth am I blogging about this instead of reading the book?!?!?! Peace out peeps, if ya need me, come look me up in handsome romantic shape-shifting white tiger prince land. (make a left once out of Lollipop Land, straight ahead until you cross the bridge of clouds, right turn at Lusting After Fictional Characters Avenue) ;)

Satellites, cars, muffins

Wasted some time today messing around with Google Maps satellite imaging. Kinda fun actually. Jessy showed me his mom's house, and tried to show me where they used to live in Hawaii but couldn't find it. Then we looked at downtown NYC, and the Grand Canyon, and the Mariana Trench and Mt. Rushmore... neither of which I thought was that exciting, but Jessy wanted to see them. Then I showed him where my grandparents lived and promptly started to cry over it once I found it. I knew better than to look at that house. But I never listen to myself.
Hoping to make muffins later today, but it's a big process cuz the dough has yeast in it, so it takes forever. I have to go pick up our housemate from his family get together later, but I don't know when, so I don't know when to start making muffins. Hopefully he doesn't stay too long. I don't want to go get him at all. Better than having him borrow my car though, which he originally wanted. I only have 1 year left to pay on my car, and after that if the car lasts at least another year or two I can start digging myself out of my massive credit card debt since I won't have car payments any more. Practically my whole future depends upon this. I wanna get out of debt before I have a kid. I can't see any other way out of debt if the car dies and I have to get a new one. I have massive debt. Seriously massive. I'm not talking, oh, that's big. No. Seriously. Massive. So having a kid depends on being out of debt, being out of debt depends on my car lasting, and putting unnecessary mileage on the car shortens the car's life. Arron does not understand this apparently. Even though I've told him. He used to hang out with his family all the time and they would come get him, because his car is extremely bad and might not make it. But recently every time he wants to go somewhere he wants me to take him or wants to borrow my car. I'm not sure if he's covered on my insurance, and regardless of that, he's had 2 accidents in his own car within the past year and a half or so. I don't know if he's covered, 2 accidents, I don't want to waste my day driving him around, unnecessary mileage, whole future riding on the car not dying.... I DON"T WANT HIM USING MY CAR FOR FUN!! If he wanted to go see his dad in the hospital or something, yeah, ok, understandable. But I don't even take my car out for fun myself but once in a blue moon, and generally not half an hour away. Why should he feel he's entitled to? He has helped us get through some hard times financially, but we enable him to have a place to live away from his family, he doesn't have to do any chores or cooking here, I make his dinner for him... I figure it's about a fair trade, especially since money doesn't seem to mean much to him. I made it very clear to him that I was not comfortable with him using my car, but he kept giving me a hard time about it. Which makes me mad. Asking for a favor and then continuing to practically demand it even after the person makes it clear they're not really ok with the situation? What is that about? He is really a very nice, generous person, but under these circumstances I am not happy with him at all. I'm sure if I asked to borrow his car, even to take it to Columbus, which would surely kill it, he'd let me. But he doesn't have debt, or a wife, or want kids as far as I know, he pretty much has no commitments financially and if he lost his job he could just go back to his dad's. So yeah...there's my little vent about Arron and my car.. & I promise I will try to make the next post happier and not so angry.

The Blog About Blogging

I had a few diaries when I was younger, which I never kept up with, because it seemed a smidge pointless. And I've had a blog before, with which I bored the world to tears with the details of my not-so-interesting life. I had written myself off as a non-blogger, non-diary keeper, non-writer. Until Facebook. I found that I had a lot more to say than what a status update would allow, and also I've had lots of feedback saying that people love reading my posts, even if they don't comment on them. Friends of my parents were actually bringing my apparent Facebook awesomeness up in casual conversation with them. Yes, I know that sounds big-headed. lol Whatever. And so was born my "Age of Blogging" ...which I'm currently in, and as of yet I'm not sure if this is a golden age or a dark age!

Blogging advantages:
I can dump! All the thoughts running around in my brain can be examined individually, given proper notice, and dumped out onto the screen. I find that getting some of the gunk out of my head makes for a more relaxed, happier me.
I need not impose on anyone to actually listen to me babble. It's GREAT when people do chose to, but there's no one standing in front of me wishing I'd shut up so they can excuse themselves to go do something more interesting. I am not a talker in 'real life', partly because of this, but just cuz I don't talk much doesn't mean nothing's going on upstairs, I just don't like to trouble the world with my random thoughts.
Editing! I can go back over what I've said and add or delete things, or clarify before I post. Fantabulous, as I often find myself wishing after a live conversation that I'd said this or that, or thought of something faster.

Blogging disadvantages:
I'm too worried about what someone reading will be thinking. Is it boring? Is it too long? Is it confusing? Is it stupid? Will anyone comment on it? It's like a constant search for approval....but why do I need someone to approve my thoughts? Does it make it more relaxing or more beneficial if I know for sure people are reading and appreciating? ...I don't even know the answer to that. I guess it makes it more rewarding. Probably it's just a universally human thing, all of us searching for approval and praise from others. Like when you buy a new outfit that you love, but it makes it much better if everyone else thing it's great too, and if they don't it's disappointing.

Must stop & post now since husband wants computer.