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Monday, October 13, 2014

It Must Be Nice....

Lately I find myself getting a little crunchier.  I don't trust big food or big pharma any farther than I can throw a bushel of GMO sugar beets.  Artificial growth hormones, antibiotics and pesticides make me nervous.  I'm looking at girls my daughter's age, with their C cups and raging hormones and can't believe that no one blames the milk.

What I really want to do is raise my own meat, buy local raw milk and make my own cheese and yogurt from it (I tried butter.....it's just impractical), buy locally ground, non-GMO, organic wheat and make my own bread....etc.

I'm in love with the idea of making my own everything.  The idea of not buying a single boxed food item makes me super happy.  I want to clean with all natural, homemade products and diaper my son with chemical free cloth.

But none of these things actually happen.  The big hurdle being that we both work.  We are a two income family and barely get by on that.  We are pretty much clinging to the lowest rung of middle class by our finger nails.

I recently discovered couponing and price matching and I love it.  I think there is a chemical in my brain that reacts to saving money the way that other girls' brains react to chocolate.  When I walk out of Walmart with a full cart for $60 I do a little dance (in my head....I don't dance in public.....you're welcome).

In our recent attempts to eliminate some of the chemicals and additives from our diets (bye bye Coke Zero....I will miss you) I have found that while I can still use coupons for some things, it's not going to be anywhere near the giant haul I used to bring home.  Unfortunately, most of the coupons out there are for things we don't really want to eat anymore.

We plan to raise cows and pigs and eat them.  We're hoping to be able to get started on that next spring.  I have intended to make my own yogurt for the past 2 weeks.  I have serious plans to compost.

In general, I have a lot of plans and ideas, and I research the crap out of ways to make our lives more natural, less chemical, and healthier.

But my problem is time.  I don't have any.  Being at work is actually more restful than being at home.  As soon as I get home it's a big push to get everything in my nightly routine completed in a reasonable enough amount of time to get a reasonable amount of sleep before I have to do it again.  The list of things that didn't get done is always longer than the list of things I accomplished, and I'm always trying to catch up on what I didn't do the day before.

I do a lot of reading online.  I find these great blogs, with great ideas.  I think "well if that chick can pull this off, I totally can". 

I realized something today.  While checking out ways to more efficiently tackle laundry, I was reading a post suggesting doing a load every night, switching it in the morning, and if you're really behind throw another load in at lunch time......when it hit me.  Lunch time?  Oh shit....this woman is a SAHM. (read: Stay At Home Mom).  Well no fucking wonder she can handle laundry.

Now don't get me wrong.  I give SAHM's all sorts of credit.  It's really freaking hard to stay home and raise kids all day.  No sarcasm there.  It really is. 

But the revelation that these ladies that write these blogs imparting inspiration and practical ideas to improve your home and life....they aren't trying to do it while working full time.  They're just doing it.  They don't have to race to the bank on their way home from work before it closes....they can just go to the bank.  They don't have to take time off of work to get their kids to the doctor/dentist/school function....they just go.  They don't have to go to Walmart at 9:00 at night every Friday after they put the kids to bed and get home at 10:30 just to have to put the groceries away.  They don't have to "find time" to shower. 

I guess I'm just jealous.  But what I would like to see is a blog written by someone like me.  Someone that is working full time, 45 minutes away from home, that has kids in day care (2 different day cares) and still manages to make her own yogurt and keep the house clean.  Any suggestions?





Kids


HA HA HA HA HA!!

This is what I found while messing around on Facebook today.

I love The Oatmeal.  The man is fucking hilarious.  And in this case....totally right.

People with children just love to try to make people without them feel the need to reproduce.

I guess I've never really felt that way.  I can't think of one instance where I even asked someone if they were planning to have children in the near future, let alone had an opinion about their answer.
Maybe it's because I have so many friends that don't have children, and aren't really planning to, but I don't have any opinions about a person's reproductive choices.  I feel like there are far too many accidental children out there that if someone chooses not to have children....well that's their thing I guess. 

Or maybe it's because neither of my children were planned.  When my daughter was born I was too young to have planned to have or not to have children in the future.  I was too young to have any real grasp on the concept of a future at all.

And my son was an oops! as well.  My husband and I were not planning on having any more kids.  He didn't want children at all.  He was cool with being a step-father....but didn't really want the responsibility of having his own spawn.  Guess I screwed that up for him.












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Shouldn't You Be Working by Bethany Davenport is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.