Hope

Well I think I am going to call 2011 a lost year. It has brought nothing but heartache and famine, as a family unit we have gone nowhere, been totally stagnant, truly a lost year. Never in all my life have I been put to such a test of strength and I am tired, oh so tired. The darkness of the time is threatening to consume me.

And yet through all of this I have had hope. Even now when I would like to give up, it is hope that keeps my feet moving. Hope that hubby or I will find a job that pays enough for us to pay our bills without compromising our ideals. Hope that we will not be foreclosed on, that we will grow old in this house which didn't feel like a home until we had the fear that we might lose it. Hope that we will not be forced to move out of state, away from family and friends and our support system. HOPE HOPE HOPE!

Hope is spiritual...... I have to believe that eventually things will stop going wrong for us soon and we can get back on track. We want to contribute to this society 100%, but we need to be able to pay our bills first. We can't do big home improvements until we can guarantee that we will be able to pay our mortgage, but I do have hope.

Quiet Riot Post

If anyone else is a fan of apron strings blog you may have already heard of her quiet riot plans; and I'm going along. September is our time to look at our home economy do and audit and see where we can cut back. Which is great because I just got our water bill. We have a brand new energy efficient water heater (it's two years old). However our water usage is just insane. I cannot fathom how we use so much water. Our usage is less than average (100 gal to the average of 130) but I think I can easily get that number lower. Little 'un only gets bathed when he looks dirty which is about three times a week. I don't bathe that often and neither does hubby. One thing I have decided to do is cut back on my laundry. I will only do laundry three days a week. I do not have to have an empty laundry basket everyday. I can let it pile up and we will still have plenty of clean clothes to wear. In fact I think that this will help me in another area of my home audit, my consumer purchases. I have many clothes I just don't wear, I'm hoping to clean them out of my closet for our summer garage sale.

I know that our energy usage is up with hubby out of work we are up later at night and on the computer more often and watching a lot more tv. I am making for myself a goal of cutting 1 hour per person per month of the quiet riot. In the end that will come out to 6 hours of cutback for each of the three people in our household. That shouldn't be too hard for us to do and it will be a big dent on our energy usage.

Our gas usage is minimal we only drive three days a week, one day for grocery shopping, one day for little 'uns rhyme time visit to the library, and one day for visiting. Obviously when hubby gets a new job that will go up drastically but I have decided that we'll tackle setting a goal for that as soon as life returns to normal.

Luxuries are another non-issue with our household. We don't have the money for any. Trash I cannot do anything about right now because now that the cold weather is back I will not be able to reliably compost. But, in the warmer months I compost and that gets us down to one bag a week. Right now it's more like three.    

Telling the Truth

To tell the truth I haven't been very busy lately, I've been depressed and run down. The stress of our financial situation is hard to deal with much less post about here. We are in serious trouble but we have heard a few positive things lately, which somehow makes the stress worse. The waiting is just killing me. I want to know whats going to happen, I just want it to be over with so I can get back to my life. Staring into the abyss of total financial failure is making me sick, can barely pull myself out of bed in the morning much less contribute to a blog that I used to enjoy posting at but don't anymore because I don't have anything meaningful to say. Heading up to Boonville to volunteer at the Adirondack Fantasy Festival this weekend. There is a chance that if it is successful I could make enough to get little 'un something nice for his birthday. 

Political Pagan

Just a couple of articles that I wanted to share with my readers today!


A very detailed article on Dominionism:

An here is a little post about my least favorite Presidential Candidate Rick Perry

That's all I have here today!

The Green Eyed Witch

I have to admit that lately I've been a Green Eyed witch. Many of my friends have been pregnant and having babies and I am so envious that they are onto their second (or third or fourth) already and I'm not. I miss being pregnant. Which is crazy because by the sixth month I just wanted it to be over with and I was completely hypertensive. I toed the line of pre-eclampsic had heartburn so bad I went to the hospital in the middle of the night sure I wasn't having a heart attack but sure that I must be dying. Yes I do want another child (JUST ONE) but why in the world? Little 'un has such bad food allergies that when he was a baby I would regularly go three days without sleeping or eating. Why would I want that again? So yes I envy my friends their morning sickness, swollen feet, and heartburn. Hubby doesn't want another baby and I am aware of this being the worst time possible for another baby, but maybe in the future.......