A "Nice" Cup of Coffee

Well, it has been one month since I gave up sugar & shopping and began my new year-long journey. I am loving my new life and feeling really great. I have actual cheekbones again now. The other morning I thought I had detected a hint of a hip bone, but when I stood up it got all covered up again by a roll of fat so I think it would be cheating to count that yet. :) But my clothes are getting looser, my mood is calmer, I feel much more easily content and at ease with the world. My meals are simple and easy, cooking is a cinch and I have had no cravings since eliminating the sugar, corn syrup and white flour. Still working out the kinks with the kids, but their habits are improving along with mine. It turns out that we are not saving billions of dollars as I had hoped from my not shopping or buying, because the grocery bill is much higher now which I think is due to the fact that I am buying groceries. :) Healthy food can be more expensive, but it feels so good to pay money for such good things. We are finally starting to level out, eat a little less and I am becoming content with very simple meals that never seemed adequate before. Grocery shopping is MUCH simpler now, as I have had to pretty much eliminate 95% of the products in the store. :) Haven't had to deal with any holidays or occasions without sugar yet, except for my birthday. I asked for a fruit basket in lieu of a birthday cake and knowing Gaston would forget (after 24 years of marriage I know these things) I went out that morning before the snow started and bought myself some beautiful fruit & fresh berries, a nice thick steak, some red, yellow & orange peppers, a bottle of Perrier & a used scary book. And yes, since you MUST know, of course he forgot. :) But he did walk home in the snow carrying two six packs of beer...for himself. My Hero. New blog- "Gaston's Year of Living Simply Single". I didn't share my steak. :) Then that afternoon the electricity went out. Clyde-Pierre claims I walked in from outside looking "all peachy" because I thought I may have just heard a neighbor get electrocuted which meant 8 hours of no technology, no television and no phones. It was a lovely day.
Of all the habits I have changed this month one of the biggest adjustments and hardest habits to give up was a daily stop at the local convenience store for an industrial sized iced coffee. I LOVE COFFEE...
I had already eliminated using sugar in my coffee at an earlier attempt at weight loss last year. I lost over 25 pounds while still consuming almost a pint of cream everyday and drinking LOTS of coffee. (so don't let anyone convince you it's the fat we consume, it really is the sugar and corn syrup) When I gave up my Pepsi addiction, I had replaced it with my iced- coffee-with-lots-of-cream addiction. But when I gave up shopping for the year, I knew that also meant my daily coffee at Sheetz. Yikes. That was My Thing. My Treat. A trip to town, dash into Sheetz, grab a huge soda cup, fill it with ice, pour in 1/3 full of half & half and then a nice dark roast coffee. Yum. My Routine. When they were replacing the ice machine, the cashiers always kept an ice bucket out for me because they knew I was coming. The highlight of my day. (yes, I am aware I need a life...I am working on it here) But No Shopping meant No Shopping, no buying. So No Daily Coffee. Most people in our country don't get the $1.50 cup at Sheetz I tried to reason with myself. We all know folks who don't blink at spending 3-4 dollars for one cup of designer coffee. Well, I did the math...it hurt, so I cheated & rounded some numbers instead. Let's be kind and go with the low end of what I know most people spend and say they put out $3 a day. I was spending about a $1.50, so let's say $2.00 a day average for a nice coffee out. Let's assume people don't stop by Starbucks on the weekend,(HA) just during the work week. So $2.00 a cup (which we know is a way low estimate) five days a week for a year. You are talking OVER $500 for a cup of coffee in a year. Bare minimum. Add to that if you spend more than that, or buy more than one cup, etc. So I figure your Average Joe is spending between five hundred to $1,000 a year for a cup of joe. Not including the can sitting at home in the pantry. Whoa. I realized that wasn't gonna fit into my new simple life so it had to go. So I happily made coffee at home this month, bought nice organic cream, good stuff. Then I had to go and read again. (Reading has ruined my life more than once and my kids and friends really wish I would give that up too. Next project, My Year of Ignorant Bliss.) My oldest son Clyde-Pierre is a Barista at our local coffee shop. I thought he just made coffee for people, but nope, turns out he is a Barista. But I found that in order to be true to my desire to live 'simple that others might simply live' I, the proud mother of a Barista, was going to have to ditch the coffee habit too. Lord in heaven, will this never end? I learned that what the coffee companies pay farmers to grow coffee sometimes does not even cover the cost of growing it and leaves people in more poverty & debt. The land is used by major corporations instead of the local people so I can have my latte. Yikes. No deal. But I found a way around that. (I am very clever) If you purchase only certified Fair Trade coffee, then you are supporting small farmers, their families, their local economy and caring for the land in a way no corporation ever will. From Globalexchange.org ~"The United States consumes one-fifth of all the world's coffee, making it the largest consumer in the world. But few Americans realize that agriculture workers in the coffee industry often toil in what can be described as "sweatshops in the fields." Many small coffee farmers receive prices for their coffee that are less than the costs of production, forcing them into a cycle of poverty and debt. Fair Trade is a viable solution to this crisis, assuring consumers that the coffee we drink was purchased under fair conditions. To become Fair Trade certified, an importer must meet stringent international criteria; paying a minimum price per pound of $1.26, providing much needed credit to farmers, and providing technical assistance such as help transitioning to organic farming. Fair Trade for coffee farmers means community development, health, education, and environmental stewardship."~ Groovy, huh? Before you go to Starbucks and support them , I have a little video excerpt to show you about their business practices. It is from a documentary called This Land is Your Land which I haven't been able to locate. Before you buy a yummy cup of their Christmas Blend or anything else please know about an article my friend JL ran across & shared with me. Several years ago Starbucks took a MONASTERY to court (yes, as in people who have taken a vow of poverty) for the rights to the name of that coffee. The monks there depend upon the annual sale of this coffee as a significant portion of their income . Does anyone else find this extremely disturbing or at least Not Nice? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGkTvkpo6as Your consumer dollar is a vote. I began thinking about the power of coffee in our society, not a harmless pleasure, but something used to destroy some people's lives and make others rich. I thought about how driven our world is by this, the anxiety & rush & speed at which most of us live our lives. Knowing what I now know about sugar and its affects on our health and lives, knowing that it is a socially acceptable and legal drug, I had to admit that coffee was in the same category. Legal addiction. Oh Lord, that makes my son a pusher, a supplier. But he is very cute and brings me flowers & laughs at my jokes so we are going to ignore that. I saw a woman the other day zooming in her huge SUV with a Latte in one hand and a cell phone in the other . That's two hands...(I did more math). I am fairly confident had she been holding a joint instead of a coffee she would have gotten pulled over...not to mention probably driving much better. Or at least slower. :) So in the spirit of trying to live a more calm gentle life, (no, I am not taking up pot) I have given up the coffee as well. Did I mention that I LOVE coffee?? One day I may enjoy some fair trade coffee again on occasion, but not this year. I am burning less gas not making the coffee run and am happier knowing I am not contributing to a harsh corporation or feeding an addiction. Please look into Fair Trade coffee for your home and request it at local family owned coffee shops ! Tell them the Barista's Mom sent you. Peace.

ooops

Sorry about that. My computer has rabies. I had email/computer trouble & somehow disabled comments on the last entry. Thanks for all the emails I received a day late! :) If there is any of it you want published, let me know. Should be fixed now.
Your favorite Luddite & technology-challenged friend,
Pigeon

Contentment

I sit down to write with a grateful heart today. I have decided to be delighted. An attitude of gratitude. I am simply happy. Let me tell you why. I have lived in the same house for twenty years. It is small. No basement, no rec room, no rooms of one's own, no privacy, no space, no secrets. We raised four kids here with one bathroom. We have never built on an addition or remodeled. Our heat is an old woodstove, we do not own a washer, dryer or dishwasher. It WAS always hard through those years watching everyone I knew get new houses, bigger houses, nicer houses, adding on because another child was born, remodeling, landscaping, installing pools and appliances. Many years ago a lady commented to me she felt sorry for Caroline Ingalls on the Little House TV show, watching everyone else get more modern new homes, labor saving devices to lighten their workload & even eventually telephones, while poor Caroline was still stuck in that broken down Shanty on the Prairie. :) Another friend told me once that living in my house was like trying to live in a Third World country, but that the hard part was no one else around me was doing it. That was great insight. There are days when it is very hard. It is extremely difficult to relate with women discussing which pool chemicals & liners to buy when it just took me 20 minutes to run enough water to fill up a sink to wash some dishes. It is sometimes hard to visit all the Barbie Dream Houses and be given the tour & shown the Berber carpet, new appliances and decor as I have never picked out a piece of furniture new from a store. It is really hard overhearing all the Christmas morning phone calls from your kid's friends listing all the new expensive high tech toys they got that you know your kid wanted. It's hard to keep your sense of humor when scraping ice off the inside of the bathroom window while you shower knowing that my friend is in her hot tub. It is difficult when everyone you know goes to the beach for a vacation every summer. We don't have a stereo or satellite radio...we have a radio. We have this computer because it was free deal from our phone company. Groovy. We don't have cell phones or satellite television. We have an old set someone gave us that gets one PBS channel. I don't know what an IPOD or a Bluetooth is, but am pretty sure we don't have one. So, yeah, I can easily fall down the slippery slope & into the trap of thinking about all those folks and comparing my house to theirs. But I have a better plan and here is what I do instead. I take my lovely dogs out to walk down the road then I turn around and look down at my broken old house, with smoke curling out of the pipe. I know that inside there are warm happy children, stacks of books and good nourishing food to eat. I look at the beautiful oak trees that are older than I am and will be here when I am gone and I can see the river in the distance. I hear the geese fly overhead in the sky above me and remember the fields and trails to enjoy but that we don't have to mow. I recall all the dinners, sleepovers & endless parties and how many times our kids have fit over 30 people in our tiny little house. Then I think to myself, WOW. My house is a very very very fine house. Then I come inside, put some wood on the fire, look at my cracked dry hands and immediately start to think about everyone I know that gets manicures and hair done and... wait. So I go to the shelf and take down my book, Women of the Material World & I read about how MOST women live in this world and I look at the pictures of their homes & I read what their days consist of and the work they have to do. I think of my own friends who have gone to Africa with their small children to make the world a better place spiritually... I start to cry and I ask God's forgiveness & vow again to do what I have been called to do. To raise children who do not feel entitled, who know how to walk lightly upon this Earth He has given us and to "live simply that others might simply live". I recall something I read once by Chuck Swindoll that changed my thought life many years ago

"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.

Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company ... a church ... a home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable.

The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude ... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you ... we are in charge of our Attitudes."

My house was the same house it was before I took my walk yet now it seemed...brighter, cozier. You cannot always change your circumstances but you can always change your mind. So I make myself a cup of tea, turn on Prairie Home Companion on public radio, sit down in my old hand-me-down ugly chair and pet my purring Siamese cat I rescued from the animal shelter. My kids remind me that the Nature show we have been waiting for comes on PBS tonight & ask if I will pop some corn for it, can we please go to the river, is Daddy bringing home books from the library & do I think the fresh pineapple we bought will be ripe enough to cut tonight. I remember our old car won't be taking us to the beach for an ocean vacation but that the boys will be going fishing or hunting or to a matinee with their Dad on his day off because he won't be too busy maintaining property and possessions. My beautiful Spaniel puts her chin on my lap and looks up at me with those eyes full of love and I think how good my life is and how very content I am. I now feel overwhelmed with the abundance and goodness in my life. I think of Thoreau's quote, "Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul". Before long I'm starting to feel bad for the people who have so much and wish instead I could share my contentment with them. :) It is truly the most satisfying feeling in this whole wide world.

Kid Chow & Starving Artist

The Food again. "What about the kids?" Emails and questions, everyone wants to know if I am also starving the children, are they threatening to abandon ship and move in with normal people and what do they eat. As you know, Tallulah in The South is on board with me. No sugar, the whole deal, for the next year. (Invest in sugar stocks towards the end of next November, demand and sales expected to escalate dramatically) But what about Dear Clyde-Pierre and poor Wolfgang and little Hank? Clyde-Pierre is his Own Man. This means he is very strict about his food intake. He and The Band only consume a very limited diet. I believe it mostly consists of hot dogs from 7-11, subs from the renowned Sheetz deli & the vegetables of choice are pickles and jalapenos. When there is a rare sighting of him, I sometimes huck a carrot at the back of his head, but the dog usually gets it first. What it basically means for the Little Boys who do not have jobs and cars is a lot less sugar, much less white bread and junk food, but not perfection. With my family, I am making myself be selfish, in the proverbial oxygen mask sense of the word. I know from past attempts at healthier eating that I have to "save myself first" and then be better able to help them. For them, that presently involves no fast food, which we were eating SEVERAL times a week. We were what the documentary Super Size Me said McDonald's tagged "heavy users". They still get homemade hamburgers on whole wheat buns, ketchup, frozen pizza, chicken nuggets, all those foods that were most important to them, but no sugary cereals. They eat lots of organic eggs, fruit, popcorn and nuts. When visiting friend's homes we have a don't ask/don't tell policy, meaning eat whatever you want, but I don't want to know. They have gotten much more social. hhmmmm. The only unbendable rule/request is please never ever any soda. They have seltzer water and juice. We used to have candy on Special Occasions which according to Gaston meant everytime we put on a movie. If you know my family, you already know that might as well be a twenty-four hour I.V. hookup. This family breathes movies like oxygen, we have gone entire days speaking ONLY in movie lines, no joke. Dear Hubby's idea of "a little candy with a movie" is the industrial size boxes and bags FOR EACH PERSON. So that is what my family had come to expect with every movie. So I had to declare movie watching Not a Special Occasion. Little Hank has repeatedly asked for Twizzlers, says he misses them and would like to have some with a movie sometime. I ignored his pleas and got all natural fruit leather instead, which he took one bite of, put it down on the chair and walked away. The dogs ate that too. So on weekends, for ONE special movie I think I will allow some candy, the difference will be quantity, a small reasonably sized single serving pack from the checkout. As far as Wolfgang, he wants to try to improve his diet and is being very cooperative in the sugar area. So, the kids aren't starving, they are eating a lot more whole grains and a lot less sugar and junk and are most likely eating my friends out of house and home at sleepovers. I will try to improve their diet gradually over time, but for now am very pleased with where they are and their great attitudes, mood swings and outbursts have declined. They are such groovy kids, especially for a bunch of little addicts. I am more concerned they have good manners when visiting than eating a perfect diet. When invited to dinner recently, I intended to eat before I went and then take a big salad, but the boys were excited because we were going to be having homemade pizza! When we got to my friend's house, she had made a whole wheat pizza just for me! My kindred spirit, lovely Luna, had made me this amazing gift with her own beautiful hands. Amazing because my only interaction with dough involves picking up the biscuit dough off the floor that had flung across the room when I hit the can on the edge of the counter. So you can imagine my delight. So for now, that's where the DimWhits are with The Food. An excellent book on the subject of kids and sugar is Little Sugar Addicts by DesMaisons, a more dry, boring, but informative book for the analytically minded (meaning you are welcome to my copy since I'm not using it) is Fast Food Nation and of course the documentary, Super Size Me. So, the kids are eating better, but not perfectly. Wolfgang is enthusiastic and eating well, Hank has yet to eat anything green and Clyde-Pierre Who?...my son,the Elusive Starving Artist, if you see him, please buy him a salad. The dogs, however, look and feel great!

Simply Mad...Mental Illness & Empty Museums

I am from The South. We don't have mental illness in the South. We don't believe in it. What we have instead are Eccentric Relatives, Crazy Aunts, Odd Uncles & Cousins with a case of the nerves & bouts of hysteria. In the South, if someone commits suicide, we don't talk about it. We say, they died of a "head injury" if referring to a self-inflicted gunshot or in the case of overdose, we would say "natural causes" (?????) or my own personal favorite, if they were considerate enough to dispense of themselves at the house we publish in the local paper, "died at home". When I asked about my grandfather, I was told he "had shell-shock" which I now know probably means that he went through town naked on a mule, randomly shooting at the locals around the town square before returning home to hang himself in the outhouse. So it may be true that growing up in this particular culture MAY have influenced my views on what others call Mental Illness. I had crazy aunts on both sides and as you may have already guessed, yes, they are the ones I most take after. I didn't know til I grew up and started to read too much that there were names for this stuff. I thought it was just Life. Before I type this, I am going to pause for a moment of prayer, as I am praying like hell at this moment that none of these people or their families own computers. My favorite aunt on my Mama's side was a hoot. She was very childlike & Delighted. She was also scared to death of EVERYTHING & we spent stormy afternoons hiding under the coffee table, quickly removing all her bobby pins & my pigtail holders so as not to be struck by lightening. Then she would tell me stories about Heaven, which apparently we would be entering at any second. She never had children, was afraid it would kill her, she wouldn't take a bath during the winter to avoid catching her death of cold and all their cow's milk was boiled, not pasteurized, but boiled, as a neighbor's cow had once had a sickness. 30 years before. She never left the house except to go to church a few times a year. Now being the self educated intelligent woman that I am, I now know that she was a hypochondriac, an agoraphobic, had extreme germ phobia and OCD. Ew. And all those years I thought she was just a very sweet odd duck, who taught me to chase the hens but never the roosters, always had King Leo's peppermint candy sticks and Juicy Fruit gum for me. She showed me how to hear the ocean in her big seashell and gave me eggs to try to hatch at home. We made paperdoll chains, ate lemon jello cake,listened in on the party line to the neighbor's telephone calls, caught daddy longlegs and went running out onto the porch when we saw the dust in the road rise up to wave at the car passing by. Simple joys. I had another aunt who would walk us to the curb when we left, wearing her underwear on her head, all the while pulling her curls though the leg openings. Another aunt kept marrying men who would wait on her hand and foot, fix all the food, clean the house and worship the ground she walked on. When one would die, she would obtain another within a couple of months. My favorite aunt on my Daddy's side is also a loon. In The South, great tragedy and disaster apparently await at every turn & great care is taken to avoid death by lightening and electrocution. (thus the previous bobby pin story) This included never taking a bath or answering the telephone during a storm. Aunt Wheezer had a little poodle dog named Joey and she loved that dog. One day when it was thundering and lightening, her phone rang and the dog went running into the kitchen barking and yapping and Wheezer screamed, "JOEY! DON'T YOU ANSWER THAT PHONE!" So, as you can see, I come from a long line of Crazy People. No one ever told them they were dysfunctional or chemically imbalanced. And I like it that way. So I have had a lot of experience with what the psychiatric world calls mental illness. However, I don't want my children to remember me as "suffering" severe Attention Deficit Disorder, being Bipolar, being paralyzed with Agoraphobia many months out of the year, having Post Traumatic Stress disorder which causes short term memory loss, the inability to retain new memories after a certain point which worsens with age. Ew.Or how my potpourri of "ailments" results in extreme disorganization & all the struggles that come with that.. How boring, self-absorbed and monotonous is all THAT...but because of my colorful childhood and my exposure to Life as opposed to Illness, I don't live my life like it's a piece of something broken that needs to be fixed. I just live each day. My kids don't think of me in any of those terms, because I have chosen not to think of Idiosyncrasies as an Illness to be cured. My kids won't have memories of mom popping happy pills, or going to therapy or a lot of psychobabble. I think of most of what we call mental illness is The Human Story. What I hope my kids see & will remember... is a mom who walks by a ringing phone but doesn't answer it, who stays home more months than she goes out, and coming home from trick-or-treating to find me decorating a Christmas tree.They are not surprised to walk out at 4 a.m. to find me painting the kitchen hot pink. No one is thinks it strange to find me in the same spot as I was when they went to bed reading the same book the next morning. They know I don't have any memories of when they were babies except what I have seen in pictures. This particular knowledge is very valuable to little boys who use it to their advantage often I am sure. A mom with no short term memory, how good does it get? :) They know no project is ever finished, I could walk through the door with a new puppy at any second & that if I put things away (including birth certificates) I will forget where they are & that is why we keep them in the freezer. My kids like me. My kids are flexible, creative, artistic & I think have "survived" quite well.They will be writers, actors and directors as I have provided them with SO much great material. :) I hope they will remember me as a Delighted odd duck. If the psychiatric community had the power over society throughout history that we have handed over to them now, the world would be a tragically different place. If Abraham Lincoln had been medicated or hospitalized for his manic depression, would our country still be a country? Would some of my friends with dark skin still be bringing me my mint julep, good lord. If doctors had tried to "fix" all the "broken" people like Van Gogh, Beethoven,Hemingway, Mozart, Winston Churchill, Henry David Thoreau, Leonardo Da Vinci, we would live in a colorless world. So, EMBRACE your mental illness, I say! :) Get UP off that psychiatrist's couch, rip off those electrodes, and flush those pills (unless you intend to share with the rest of the class) and BECOME the Character you were meant to be! I believe if the psychiatric world was as prominent in the past as it is today, and every mood, personality & eccentric quirk was treated as something to be fixed and cured, then all the art museums, libraries, theatres & concert halls would be EMPTY. Except, of course, in The South.

The Food

(Note: I am not a doctor and none of the following is meant to be medical advice, I am only sharing knowledge from personal study. I am not affiliated with any of the authors, books or websites I recommend) Thank you for all the nice comments and supportive emails. By far, the subject everyone seems to be most interested in and curious about is The Food Plan. No sugar & no white flour. So I will tell you what it means and what I am doing. My grown daughter, Tallulah, who has moved to The South to pursue a career in acting is also doing this with me. Having a partner in crime makes life easier! It is also nice to have something that is ours, even though we are far apart. We sat down before she left after the holidays and wrote down our plan. It is pretty simple. The reasons are not to lose weight, although I am looking very forward to that being a benefit. I gave away my bathroom scales and didn't weigh myself before I started. I decided not to get hung up on the numbers. Before when I have tried to change my eating habits, I would use the numbers as the measuring stick, when to feel encouraged, and when to get discouraged and give up. So no numbers this time. And, yes, that was very hard to do. But theoretically, if I do this for one year, I will be at a healthy weight by Christmas and that's a good thing. My main focus on the food is to support my desire to live more simply, be less of consumer, & to learn to eat in a manner closer to the rest of the world as opposed to a McAmerican. We spend more on dieting and fitness than most people spend on FOOD. Most of the diseases and medical conditions we suffer from and pay to fix are caused by an excessive lifestyle and high sugar consumption. Most auto-immune diseases seem to me to be our bodies crying out for us to be eating the foods we were created to eat. Almost all weight gain and diabetes and other related problem are caused by insulin becoming totally whacked out in our bodies. It affects everything and causes those of us who are the heaviest and eat the most to actually be STARVING to death, suffering from malnutrition. The affects on mental health are shocking and I will talk about that later. Which brings me to my main reason for "going off the sugar" and that is it clears my head, levels my moods, banishes my depression and I begin to function like a semi-normal human being. Also the white flour causes your body to react in the same way the sugar does, and it ain't good. They affect your brain chemistry, seratonin levels, B vitamins absorption, in other words, they AFFECT YOUR ABILITY TO BE HAPPY. Depressed? Ditch the flour & sugar. This time sugar includes not eating sugar, corn syrup, evaporated cane juice or honey. Now "something sweet" means "God's candy", fruit! This is not a "low carb diet" & grains are welcome. Much of what I have learned came from Kathleen Des Maisons work. Some of her books include Your Last Diet & Potatoes Not Prozac & you can read more on the website radiantrecovery.com She teaches you the relationship between sugar addiction, alcoholism & depression & how to "do the food". There have been numerous other helpful books and resources in my life, among them Nina Planck's book, Real Food. I eat a high protein breakfast every morning, the hardest adjustment and new habit to learn as I am not a breakfast person. I have small breakfast steak and stir fried frozen vegies or greens or an omelet with spinach, or organic yogurt with frozen berries. At the end of the day, for a bedtime snack, I have a "carb", because it causes your seratonin levels to raise for the next day, and causes a small blood sugar spike and fall which makes you sleepy. So at night I have a baked potato covered in sour cream or a sweet potato smothered in butter or maybe just a bowl of buttery popcorn. (some diet, huh?) Those two small acts literally change my life. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper. Am trying to learn to enjoy simpler foods, more soups, or making a meal of cheese and crackers. Learning to eat less and enjoy more. Before I started this, we were a drive-thru family. We were eating off the Dollar Menu several times a week. I have hardly any domestic skills and severe ADD which can make simple meal preparation a nightmare in disorganization. But I am learning. I am getting it. I am becoming more focused and it is getting easier, not harder. My mind is clearing, I feel better, have lost a little weight & I have a spring in my step. People have said it sounds too hard & they will give up this, but not that. Well, I know from experience that it is all about the chemical reactions inside your body, it isn't a lack of will power or a failure on your part. A drug addict can't say they will cut back, be sensible and only have a little bit of cocaine in moderation. That same principle applies to the sugar for me, so it is actually much easier for me to say none at all and to know what to do when confronted with that choice. For this one year, I don't have to decide how to handle birthdays or Easter or Valentine's Day, because I have already decided. So when Halloween rolls around, I don't have to struggle with deciding whether or not to allow myself some candy, I already know and that just makes life SO much easier. The cravings go away if you don't feed them. Now you can remember all my high and mighty claims when you hear along about March that I have gnawed off my own arm and have been carted away muttering something about a Cadbury Creme Egg.

Torture, Temptations & Treasures

My last purchase at a retail store that Sunday over a week ago was meant to be a symbol of the simple pleasures I hoped to incorporate back into my life. I bought one of those beautiful wooden boar bristle hairbrushes. The kind women used to brush through their long hair 100 times every night. I thought this would be a beautiful tangible way to start on my new path. So that evening, while Gaston my husband watched a Western movie, I sat in my chair while to the sounds of horses, gunshots, trains and coyotes, I used my new stiff bristled brush to brush through my not so long hair. As usual, I figured MORE was better. If one hundred times had been the trend, then brushing it through the entire movie would probably be miraculous. So I did. The entire movie... My first waking thought the next morning was 'the children have been killed in their beds or burned at the stake because I, obviously, have been scalped'. This was my first reminder that more was not better, not even simple pleasures and that living simply was not going to be painless.
The next night my nineteen yr, old son, Clyde Pierre brought me a shopping bag from Kohl's, to show me the great deals he had gotten. He had a Peanuts shirt he had gotten for $1.50. I began to plan my dash to Kohl's upon rising the next morning, bright and early, because I really NEEDED A Peanut's shirt too and my gosh, can you imagine if that is such a good deal what other things they must....OH. Right. I'm not shopping. Well, I wondered, I could give Clyde the money and have him go get it for his beloved mother, that wouldn't be cheating now, would it. The gods of Simplicity frowned. So I do not have a new Peanuts shirt from Kohl's. Instead I cleaned out all the drawers full of clothes I already had and gave most of it away. Now when I open my dresser, it not only opens, but there is SPACE between my clothes. That space is more beautiful to me than a new graphic tee. Even Snoopy.
When I left the final store that Sunday, I put my new plan into action and went to Goodwill to look for the glasses I had gone out searching for, with the decision to be content with whatever was provided. Well, this new attitude seemed to have opened a floodgate of blessing, because I found so much treasure! I found a brand new, never used, sticker-still-on set of steins, the kind you freeze to make your drink cold, each a different color. Perfect. My son was thrilled, he loves them. They were 70 cents each so the world didn't end when my husband immediately dropped one and broke the handle off. When he felt bad, it was easy to say, "no biggie, it's from Goodwill"! I got two black Corelle coffee cups to go with my white ones for 39 cents, an almost new commercial grade Nordicware wok approximately $40 new for only $8, it will last a lifetime & has been very helpful all week in my attempts to eat simpler foods. Also two ice trays for 29 cents, a set of very orange, very 70's measuring cups, 29 cents and my favorite find, a pair of thick flannel pajamas from Vermont Country Store, hardly worn, in my size, blue flower print for $3! They sell for $40 new and my little boys think they are beautiful. I also found a pair of Land's End mocs in my size, very good condition in a most unfortunate shade of pink, that I have been wearing with pleasure for only $4 which sell for $30 new.Have bought many brand new items and stored away as gifts and of course many good books that have made the week very enjoyable. This was fun!
There have been many moments of restlessness or boredom that my first thought was to jump in car, run down to Walmart, just to look around. So am having to learn to redirect my mind as I change my habits. It has been a very good time of change, gears grinding down, speed slowing, learning to be still. More about being still, clutter, hair, food and gifts later. I hope your week is full of many simple pleasures. Remember, when you get to 100, STOP BRUSHING.

How It All Started

Christmas really got out of hand this year. It felt excessive and lacking, overwhelming and disappointing. I spent more than I have ever spent, but woke up every morning overcome with sadness and a sense of failure that it still wasn't right. That is NOT how I want Christmas to feel. Even when it was over, there was still endless returns and exchanges and gift cards and money to be spent & more shopping to be done. That bad experience was the beginning of the brainstorm that has become my plan for this new year. It started with an agreement between my daughter & I that for the next year, until next Christmastime, we would both eat no sugar, white flour or fast food & we would not shop at Walmart. Together across the miles we would both get a step closer to the simpler life we both desire. Then a few days of being off the sugar, my head began to clear and the thoughts & ideas began to churn & one Sunday afternoon, standing in the middle of Kmart, I thought, "What in the hell am I doing? It is Sunday afternoon and instead of being at home listening to Prairie Home Companion with my little boys & husband, I am SHOPPING again." I had the realization at that moment that I didn't have to shop at all. Anywhere. I did not have to be a consumer. I made the decision then & there to not shop for one year. To abandon the consumerism I despise and live off the fat of the land. I knew I could not be excessive for one minute more, so I left the store and began to formulate my plan. For one year I would buy nothing new at any retail store. I would not pursue certain items or a look or a style or a color scheme. Decor would not be in my vocabulary. I wouldn't try to express myself through what glasses or dishes I bought, or curtains I hung or clothes or shoes I wore. I would use only what other people had gotten rid of. I would only shop at Goodwill. I will shop at grocery stores only. The one exception I made in my plan was to include Dollar General, as it is not a hotbed of consumer temptation and delight and I can purchase soap, toilet paper, cleaning supplies & such for less expensive than the grocery store, I also will buy new towels, wash cloths & underwear. Loew's or Home Depot or a local hardware store will also be allowed for home repairs. But all shoes, clothes, furniture, gifts, housewares, books, everything must come from Goodwill or purchased used online. More later on the challenges this presents and the treasures I am finding. Letting good things come to me instead of hunting them down. No Walmart, Target, Kohl's, Petsmart, Dollar Tree, Cracker Barrel, Bed Bath & Beyond, Ross's, Border's, Toys R Us, Gamestop, nothing new all year. Will I be able to figure out how to just live with what I find at Goodwill? Will I be able to resist the temptation of buying that new book I just have to read? Will I be able to overcome the need for instant gratification and learn patience and self-denial. Will my children put themselves up for adoption? Stay tuned.