Embracing Imperfect

With all three boys home full time, I have found that my house doesn't stay as "clean" as I would like.

I know it is possible - to keep my house neat and tidy - because when they leave town or go fishing all day, the house stays clean.
But when they are home all the time, it stays pretty cluttered.

The house is not perfect.

But it is filled with imagination as Jackson builds airports for his baby brother who loves to fly the lego planes around the house.
It is filled with the smell of fresh baked pies and dinner and snacks because I am here to do this for them.
My grass was perfect when we first planted it. Now it is marked with dead spots from dogs.
But you know what? My kids and my family love their dogs and it seems that it is worth a few patches of dead grass to give them the experience of family pets.

My flower beds have rogue plants from bird feeders. But, then, we wouldn't have the birds in the yard without the feeder. And we do enjoy watching the birds every morning from our breakfast table.

IN the end, what is the point of a "perfect" house?

Because in my imperfect house and yard, I see lots of laughter, childhood, and fun.

PERFECT.

My Enemy - The Sun

A year ago I was diagnosed with Basel Cell Carcinoma. It is a non-aggressive form of skin cancer. It is the most common form of skin cancer and occurs the most often in Americans. I've always been a good sunscreen applier and I almost always cover my face in the sun. Basically, you will never find me "laying out" in order to get a nice tan - because in my case - sun exposure means cancer. Anyway, I went in for my annual mole check today and they found a mole that indicates melanoma. That's the aggressive skin cancer. The bad one. The serious one. The one you have to do chemotherapy for. Anyway, I'm not saying I have it, but they had to biopsy the mole and now we wait.

This is how I feel about the sun now.

I have found what I am looking for

I'm always looking for a great DVD -pref. a TV series on DVD - that I can watch while I am doing dishes AND/OR when I am on the Elliptical. Randomly, I added This American Life on DVD to my queue.

All I can say is AMAZING.

If you are a blogger or a follower of many blogs, my guess is that you enjoy taking a peek into "everyday" people's lives. I know that is why I read blogs. People who have interesting stories to tell and different perspectives than mine. This TV series takes snapshots of people as it relates to the show's theme - i.e. in Season One there is a show entitled "God's Close-Up" and they feature two stories. In one of the stories, it follows a Utah man who paints depictions of Christ using homeless men and hippies with beards for his models. A twist on the plot? The man who models as the "Christ" is a Marxist atheist from New York City whose ex-Mormon girlfriend is appalled that he agreed to model for this painter.

Which reminds me - tell me Mormon friends - in this show it said that the Mormon church frowns on men having facial hair. Is that true? They said the reason why the painter uses homeless men and hippies as his models is because he has a hard time finding men with beards in Utah.

Anyway, if you feel like you want your life enlightened in a humorous way - rent This American Life.

You brought WHAT home?

You knew this would happen. Shannan becomes a dog walker and pet sitter and when one of her clients needs to rehome a dog that is PERFECT, well, how can she resist??
Meet BEAR.

Let me give you a list of justifications.

• We were planning on getting another dog one of these days for a companion to Chili and a dog for our second born.
• We only wanted to add a flat coat retriever to our pack
• Bear is 3 years old - Chili is 3 1/2 so they are the same age.
• I don't have to train a puppy - no house breaking, so biting, no barking, so chewing. He has that all out of his system.
• He's a flat coat (mix) - so he is mellow inside and a full bound sporting dog outside.
• He can handle my boys physically.
• He came from a family with two kids and the mom runs an in-home daycare so he is USED to lots of kid action and noise.
• He is SOOOOOOOOOO sweet. I'm not kidding. I've been around a lot of dogs lately and I have not come across a more mellow, sweet, and submissive guy.
  

CONS

• He's a big guy - overweight - I don't think he was exercised much so it is going to take some training and discipline on his part to get in shape for our active family.
• He's big- so he takes up space in our ever shrinking household.
• He takes up attention that I often don't have enough energy to give.
• It is another mouth to feed and body to vaccinate.
• I'll have to pay DOUBLE for pet sitting now when I go away.
• My house will be smellier with TWO dogs living there. (as if the boys didn't offer enough stink)

Other than that, it's a good situation. My kids are lucky that they have softies for parents that let them have two big retrievers as pets.

A new addition to the family

Ha!
You thought we were done having kids and well......






We are done.


But we're adding a furry grizzly "Bear" to our family tomorrow. I'll give you more details soon.

Tales from a Recessionista

When I first told of our plan of getting out of debt, one of my blog friends called me a "true recessionista" (thanks Diane). That idea really stuck on my head. Before, I called myself in the "depression" era after I watched the movie Kit Kittridge where you make every last cent stretch as far as it can go, even if it means making clothes out of chicken feed sacks. (okay, I haven't gone that far, but believe you me I considered raising chickens in our backyard for the free eggs). Anyway, the statement always made it sound like I was in a depression, as in a depressed mental state, when in reality, I have never felt more liberated or more in control of my destiny as when we started our get out of debt and save for a rainy day plan. So yesterday - a normal day in the life of me - I documented some of the little changes I made to help our dollars stretch a bit farther as we rally to pay off student loans, car loans, and personal loans we took out to finance our move to Oregon. We also have plans to have 8 months of living expenses in savings in case of that rainy day.

This is my natural hair color. No highlights, no coloring - au naturalle. I haven't colored my hair since last summer - sigh. I miss having very blond hair, but at $85 a pop, I just can't work it in the budget right now.

This was picked from the garden of one of my dog sitting jobs. She said I could bring home whatever fruits, berries, and vegetables I wanted. We had broccoli casserole for dinner.

This spinach was harvested from my garden today. Bacon, tomato and spinach salad for lunch.

This is now the basis of our date nights. Buy one, get one free. I used to be really embarrassed to present a coupon, but now I got over it real fast when I saw how much money we can save.


This is now our wine of choice. Two Buck Chuck. For those of you who aren't wine drinkers, let me fill you in. Charles Shaw is a decent bottle of wine - well it is right above box wines and jugs - and it costs $2.99 at Trader Joe's. I just wouldn't show up to dinner party with one of these, but eating dinner with your husband? No problem with two buck chuck.

My summer wardrobe. This. Is. It.

In years and seasons past, I would take out my clothes and try everything from last year on. Whatever fit stayed. Whatever didn't fit great and look flattering went into the Goodwill bag. Then, I went through the "keep" pile and again edited out whatever looked dated.

Last, I would look at how many empty hangers I had and my personal goal was to find garments for each hanger.

This summer, those hangers will remain empty.

Same goes for this summer's shoe closet. Those blank spaces will not be filled. I'm making do.

On to my cleaning supplies. I've moved to the natural "green" products that our grandmothers used.

Baking soda as a laundry additive and freshener.

White vinegar as a fabric softener. My grandma Jackson uses both and her clothes do smell very fresh. I thought they would smell all pukey vinegar-like, but they smell like the detergent.

I'm using generic dish wash soap. I hate generic dish wash soap. But I had to direct that money to buying food in my grocery budget, not the soap.

Speaking of my grocery budget, this is it. $210 every two weeks. I used to spend $210 every week. Now I have my list with the item's price listed next to the item I need and I take my calculator and add up everything before I go to the checkout. Remember how I only take cash? So I have to make it add up.

My go-to meal when I didn't want to cook used to be Papa Murphy's pizza. Now it is beans and rice. I'm not kidding. If it is not the end of the week yet and I have "run out of food", we eat beans and rice until my budget refreshes itself on Friday. That's how committed I am to making this work.

Speaking of beans, my most favorite way to save money is to boil my own beans. Sounds funny, but when you do the math, you see that one can of beans costs around $1. If you go to Bulk Foods and buy $1 worth of dry beans (about 1.5 pounds), you can make a batch of beans that is the equivalent of 8 cans!!! Now that is math that makes sense to me. Plus, your beans don't have the added salt and sugar that canned beans do.

Even our dog is a recessionista.

She used to go to the groomer's every 6-8 weeks. Now it is every 4-5 months. At $45 a pop, it makes sense. So when her paws look shaggy, I just show her my un-pedicured toes and tell her I understand.

Next time on "Tales from a Recessionista": casseroles feed a crowd, I love the library and paperback book swap.com, how to avoid driving your car so as to save gas, dog walking and pet sitting money sure helps when your car blows up, and we will drive these cars until they fall apart on the freeway.