New Year's Diets

 

 

The Winter Solstice came and went without the World ending.  Winter is a time for turning inward and nurturing our interior lives so that we can bloom in the Spring.  It is probably not accidental that we celebrate New Year’s at this time of year or that most people’s thoughts turn to creating better lives in some way.  The dark days and nights give us time inside our homes and heads to think about what we can do to improve ourselves, our community and the World.  If this is a new era, as was actually the Mayan’s belief, then are we not each of us a part of that?  If we make our own lives better are we not making our community better as well?

Like most people my New Year’s goals are always to be physically healthier.  Actually, I’ve been working on that since my life hit a perfect storm of my husband leaving to work out of state and my discovery of some health issues that have caught up to my Baby Boomer body.  I’ve managed to lose some weight, am working on keeping my blood pressure down (not an easy feat with Dave 1,500 miles away) so that there’s no further damage to my heart and eyes, and getting my right eye treated for an occluded vein.  A friend recently asked me how I was keeping from over indulging in the sweet goodies of the season.  It’s simple.  I don’t want to die just yet.  I’d like to live long enough to enjoy my husband’s company when we are living together again.

The other sort of health that we are working on is fiscal health.  The reason that Dave went from our home in Gig Harbor, Washington to Prescott, Arizona was to get our finances in better order for retirement.  The bursting of the real estate bubble and the “Great Recession” of 2008 deflated our plans for retirement.  We are several years behind in our plans for selling our Gig Harbor home (or even the ability to do so) and moving to our 131 year old Victorian cottage by the sea. 

Since Dave left in June of this year there have been some glitches along the way including a hiking accident he had in Arizona necessitating him coming home for surgery, going on short term disability (less money), and trying to get compensated for out of state physical therapy.  We also saw this Christmas as a last time to give generously albeit not excessively.  With the beginning of what is supposed to be Dave’s last nine months as a “commuter husband” we are working toward the birth of fiscal stability and the creation of a new life and maybe a new bathroom in our antique house.  Nothing fancy, but our current one was installed in the former pantry when indoor bathing was instituted in the house.  I’d like the pantry back to its intended function and a shower that is actually supposed to be a shower and not a shower head nailed to a piece of 2X4.

By living frugally in Arizona, Dave has been able to pay down our home equity loan from $43,000 to $8,000 today.  Having a debt-free retirement home should be a piece of cake, but we’d like that bathroom as well so the challenge is to spend as little and save as much as possible.  In the past when I have written about frugality for the Tacoma News Tribune I have been accused of attempting to undermine the American economy.  I have actually been called un-American.  It seems to me that as American individuals we have spent our way into the situation of the past four years through over-consumption, easy loans, and living beyond our means.

So our physical diet and rehabilitation will be accompanied by a fiscal diet and rehabilitation as we head into what I hope will be lucky ’13.  My mother-in-law called it “making a penny scream.”  I spent enough time as a low/no income single mother to know how to do that.  I can make do pretty well and while I’m not disposed to go to the extremes of those on The Learning Channel’s “Extreme Cheapskates” (I will NOT recycle tush wipes), I can cut the fat out of both sorts of diets.  I'm not sure whether or not the nation should or will go off the fiscal cliff.  Maybe everyone should count on a fiscal diet...oh, yeah, that would make everyone unAmerican.

I believe that the main reason “New Year’s Resolutions” fail is our belief that a day or two of falling off our wagon means failure.  Every new day can be a New Year’s as long as the sun comes up and now that we’ve learned that the Ancient Mayans saw us as not ending, but as entering a new era we can make each day a new beginning.  Things to ponder as sleep our Winter's nap with dreams of Spring.

Saying Goodbye to 2011

2011 was not particularly good to us and I need to feel that I am working physically as well as emotionally toward a better 2012.

I really like New Year’s. I don’t get gussied up and go out and drink; I’m lucky if I’m awake to ring it in by watching Seattle’s KING5 broadcast of the celebration at the Space Needles, but I like New Year’s just the same. I wonder if Catholics feel about confession the way I feel about New Year’s. Absolution. Of course one could choose any day to embark on new habits, but there’s something about the collectivity of knowing that so many others are doing the same thing and the notion of a brand new year inspires me to get organized—a yearly resolve that meets with a little more success each year.

We returned from eight days at our home on the coast to discover that my son Frank had gotten us down the road on the process of organization by having cleaned the family room, the laundry room and the kitchen. I could have kissed him, but he was passed out on his bed as he’d stayed up all night cleaning for me. There is still debris from his, Ana’s and Gabriel’s celebration of Christmas strewn around the living room, but considering the mess that usually is left in the wake of Ana’s preparation to take Gabriel to Brazil for a month, I was gob-smacked at how well the house looked.

I have a few days of my break from my job at Gig Harbor High School left and am determined to get as much done as possible with the time left. People talk about Spring Cleaning, but I find Winter Cleaning and the sense of starting the year afresh much more satisfying. 2011 was not particularly good to us and I need to feel that I am working physically as well as emotionally toward a better 2012.

I’ve started excavating the refrigerator of its science experiments while the washing machine hums with the laundry we left and that which we brought home. I’m also making a pile for Goodwill. That is an ongoing process—to get rid of as much of what I’ve spent nearly sixty years collecting—and now I’ve decided to be ruthless. I am overly sentimental and my children are decidedly not. If I pare down my pile now there will be less to deal with when we move along whether it is to Ilwaco permanently or just…well…along.

New Year Resolutions

I like New Year’s. It’s like absolution in the Church. You get to start over and try again. I don’t mind resolutions even if I believe that I will probably break them. Mine are always the same: lose weight, get organized, and be more frugal with my money. It’s good to be reminded of what we need to do to improve ourselves for no one is above improvement and last year my resolution for keeping better track of my money means that I now have more than $1,700 in savings that I did not have at this time last year. That’s being saved for a 40th birthday trip for my daughter.

Orthodox Jews get organized and clean for their New Year’s and it is probably a good thing. To that end I am excavating our refrigerator. It’s a fairly new one and appears quite large on the outside, but inside is another story. It is only with creativity that we are able to get leftovers in there. Unfortunately, it is our fault, not that of the refrigerator. Things get shoved to the back and forgotten and I’ve a pretty good idea that I’d have more money if I ventured back there more often. I’ve spent the last two days pulling and pitching and washing. I’ve doubled our space and plastic ware. I am hoping that getting the kitchen organized will gradually spread beyond its borders to the rest of the house. Unfortunately, I’ve got my middle son working against me. He’s cleaning his “art room” which means dragging everything out to the living room to organize it. Moreover, the New Year’s plan is to turn that room into a bedroom for our grandson.

My New Year’s Resolutions include:
1.) Eliminating as much chaos as possible from the house. This means working on the clutter.
2.) Bringing as much peace into my life as possible which includes the house.
3.) Finding new ways to stretch our money farther since my husband’s job ends the end of January.

New Year’s 2010 is coming in on a Blue Moon. That has to be fortuitous. May 2010 bring health and happiness to everyone.

Carving Out Time

Carving out of the day time to reflect on nourishment of the spirit and creating the sort of life we want is difficult. Only two generations ago women did not have cell phones, dishwashers, and microwaves. We barely had washing machines (I dried my first child’s clothes on lines in a drying room in the apartment building where we lived) and vacuum cleaners and yet I contend our lives are no easier than those of our foremothers who sweated over a laundry cauldron in the yard and hoed a hard row in a garden. Our load may have changed its face, but not its nature. Now we are not only expected to be responsible for hearth, home and children, but for bringing home a paycheck and attaining what 21st society considers success to be and to be available 24/7 for everyone who considers themselves worthy of our attention.

In a busy household I find the shower my best place of rumination. Today it was washing my daughter Amy’s hair. Standing in the bathroom with the drone of the fan blocking out the rest of the world, I thought about what I want to do on this second day of a new year to truly make it “new”; to make a new beginning. At the same time I know that there’s still laundry to finish, I want to change the sheets on Amy’s bed, and I need to go shopping.

One of my New Year’s resolutions is a holdover from last year. It is to burn the candles and incense. When I receive little luxuries like lovely soap, candles and incense, my reaction is to want to save them for sometime special. That time never seems to arrive so I am trying to make every moment special and since candlelight suits me I burn my candles at night along with the incense. Sometimes I burn them in the morning while I shower and dress. I think that each moment of the day should be honored. It is hard to feel that way when you’ve small children that need attending to or you’re in the middle of some chore for an employer, but attempting to see the blessing of each moment of this life is so important especially for someone like me who is past the midpoint of life. How do I want each moment of what is left to me to be spent?

Today I will try to remain in the moment as I go about homey chores that I actually love and be mindful of how I am spending my money, society’s value of my life’s energy, and time. What can I do today to make the life I want in which peace and serenity will dwell. We will see.

A Time of New Beginnings

It’s January first, a time of reflection and new beginnings. Of course one can start anew anytime, but January 1st is so symbolic like absolution. A time to reflect on what lies behind and what awaits us in our future.

I looked for an image of the freshness of today and found none as beautiful as this one taken on December 30th 2008 over Home, WA by friend the wonderful singer, poetess and photographer Lady Lorraine Hart.

The past visited just yesterday I received a note from the granddaughter of friends of my parents. Elle wrote to tell me of her grandparents passing. My father and her grandfather worked together in Boeing’s Flight Test in the 1950s. Lately I’ve watched my father’s home movies of a New Year’s party circa 1957. The men all in white shirts and neckties, the women coiffured and glamorous. I am sad each time one of this rapidly diminishing group passes, but glad that somewhere there’s a poker or dance party now nearly complete. I will write to Elle.

A long hot shower to wash away the old year and start afresh while I consider the past 57 years and those left to me. What I want to make of them. A good day, too, to do laundry, to clean, to organize, rituals that for me welcome the new year and start it off well.

My resolutions are to keep track of the remuneration I receive for my life’s energy; to get out of debt; to live more in the moment; to use the special soaps and burn the sweet smelling candles, to eliminate the physical and spiritual clutter in my life and to care for myself with as much concern as I care for my family and friends.

Voluntary Simplicity

Confessions of a Packrat

The notion of “voluntary simplicity” in connection with me seems crazy. Simplicity is not one of my characteristics. Packrat is. I come from a long line of packrats. My mother has a T-shirt that says “I’m not a packrat, I’m a collector.” We have to be forgiven. My mother was raised in a house that not only contained her parents’ trumpery, but her grandmother’s as well.

Many afternoons were spent by my cousin and me exploring our grandmother’s basement and the trunks that contained generations of interesting clothing and artifacts. Grandma Mills gave us leave to poke around all we liked except for the trunk which contained the belongings of our mothers’ brother. The uncle we would never know in this life had been thrown from a horse in front of a truck and killed at age thirteen and obtained instant sainthood in the minds of our grandparents and to the confusion of his preschool age sisters. I am now the keeper of many of Austin’s things, including a cigar box almost identical even to the contents to the one in the movie To Kill a Mockingbird, and I’m not about to get rid of them, but I do consider myself a recovering packrat.

I’m not as bad as some family members who could probably benefit from medication. One relative sobbed over lunch one day, “My neighbor died and her husband had a dumpster in front of the house before I knew what was happening. I just know Pat will do that if I die first.” You think? This woman has trails through her house of stuff. Not only do I not want to be her, I want to create a life that is less cluttered physically and emotionally. We hang on to things for a variety of reasons. I’m trying to let go.

Before the lazy days of Summer were abruptly ended by the realization that we were free falling into an economic recession, I had obtained a copy of Dominguez & Robin’s Your Money or Your Life. Reading it and getting serious about creating new patterns of living became imperative. The philosophy behind the book and what has become the voluntary simplicity movement is not a budget, but a different way of consuming and living and seems to be the perfect reading material for a season generally given up to conspicuous consumption and perfect for making New Year’s resolutions.

Your Money or Your Life is about figuring out what “enough” looks like. I’m working on that. I have already figured out what “too much” looks like. It is about living simply so that other may simply live and walking gently through this life and Earth.

With snow and ice slowing down the pace of life I have been able to focus on organizing some things with an eye to paring down my entirely too large pile and beginning afresh with a New Year. It is a mighty task I’ve set upon for I’ve been collecting for more years than I would like to admit to. It may well take me all of 2009 to get to where I’d like to be, but it’s the journey that counts so I keep plugging away at eliminating things and accounting for every penny of my money. This time next year I hope to have less stuff and more financial independence.

You’ll have to excuse me now. I’ve got to get back to creating the life I want to have.