I’m even–possibly–getting my impulsiveness/procrastination in check. Earlier today I got 5 shirts from Threadless that I picked out with my mom to buy me as a Christmas present while I was visiting for Thanksgiving. After trying 2 on, I realized that I didn’t have to try the rest on immediately (a long process considering how long I’d mess with them looking in the mirror) because I would still be happy–even happier–if I tried them on separately the first day I planned to wear them.

Likewise, I’m currently attempting to break away from my internet addiction by telling myself that it won’t actually be difficult to sustain attention to my homework once I start it–the hardest part is beginning. I’m most afraid of my computer science homework, because I can’t abandon the computer or the internet while working on it, which provides even more chance of desperate hours lost to distraction. Math homework is easier because I can take paper and pencil to a desk far away from a computer.

Technically, Advent started yesterday, but I never start my Advent calendars until Dec 1.   This year, I decided against going with a sugar-filled one for a number of reasons.  To start, this is the first year that I have a calendar I can fill; I previously just bought the chocolate ones, but finally found one last year that can be re-used.  Secondly, I am trying to wean back Daughter’s dependence on sweets, especially at the holidays.  Finally, and most importantly, Advent is not about chocolate, but about preparing one’s self for Christmas.

From a Home Front perspective, a Mother undoubtedly would have been saving her sugar and candy rations for Christmas, especially since chocolate would have fallen under the candy ration.  Children had to do without in order to have a sweeter Christmas.  None of the books I’ve read describe Advent during the war, but I imagine that they might have come up with something like an Advent chain.

The one I found here started yesterday, but I am going to have it start tomorrow.  I decided against making the chain itself, but will put the slips in the little drawers of the Advent calendar I have instead.  I might occasionally tuck in a chocolate or a sweet, but I like how this Advent chain focuses on acts of preparation rather than eating.

For those who are just looking for a coloring page for advent, I think this one would do in a pinch.

Tomorrow, I will post pictures of the Advent wreath Sister-in-Law made yesterday…

I am not one to start giving gifts left, right, and centre during the holidays, but I do believe that some people outside of our friends and family deserve a special treat.  Teachers definitely fall into this category for us.  However, I don’t like giving gift cards, and I generally feel that the gift should reflect the area of your life the person is in, since I tend not to know her or him on a friend-basis.  So here are a few ideas I have been toying with, based on the WWII notion that giving small things that are needed is best…

Caffeine and Cookie/Bisquit Basket – I’m leaning towards this, actually, because Daughter can help me from start to finish.  Pack a tin/bag/basket with a box of tea, a small jar of instant coffee, a few rolls of bisquits, and a small box of chocolate or candy.  Have Daughter (or Son) make the card.

Classroom items – Collect a bunch of fun pencils, a handful of very nice pens in fun colors, a variety of stickers, a pad or two of decorative paper, and a load of small candies or chocolates.  Okay, Daughter can help with this too, I suppose, if she went to every store with me.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten.  Does anyone have any other ideas? 

(I should explain that Daughter’s school has a teacher rotation, so she has one main classroom teacher, and any two of five others that might be in the classroom that day, plus aides.)

The challenges of growing up can’t be quantified, but studies sure do try.  Some numbers:
*  The national high school graduation rate hovers around 70%, with some cities as low as 25%, and Oregon coming in at 68% in 2008.
*  The recidivism rate for kids who have been incarcerated is over 65%.
The figures are grimmer for poor and ethnic populations.

Keep this in mind when you meet a fallen-down-but-climbing-back-up kid like Armpit, the hero of Small Steps, Louis Sachar’s adaptation of his book, commissioned by Oregon Children’s Theatre and slated for full production this spring.   You may remember Armpit from Camp Green Lake Juvenile Correctional Facility – a twisted boot camp from Sachar’s Holes where kids, well, dug holes all day on a bizarre treasure hunt.

Fertile Grounders will get a sneak peak at Small Steps’ development on January 22 during its staged reading at Madison High School, where, as Stan Foote, director, puts it, teens will assist with getting out the “bullshit factor.”

theresa – What is the story of Small Steps?

Stan Foote – Oh boy [laughs].  The story is about Armpit, a character from Holes, two years [after Holes] and he’s trying to get his life together and stay out of trouble.  So the importance of the story to me is his small steps that he’s taking, which are to get a job, graduate high school, save some money, stay out of situations that might be dangerous, and lose the name Armpit.

And then there’s a character in the story called Ginny, a ten-year-old who has cerebral palsy, and small steps sort of applies to her because she’s trying to heal.  The other main character is Kaira and she is a pop singer who is in a situation where her manager/step father is abusive and controlling.  So these three characters sort of meet together in this little adventure, which is Armpit meeting her and having a pretty…. They admire each other.  I’d hate to call it a romance.  It’s not a sexual story.  It’s a story about two kids who really like each other and find friendship with each other from different communities.  And it’s an adventure from thereon.

th – What attracted you to it?

SF – The small steps.  The high school graduation rate nationally and locally is amazingly poor, dropouts at every juncture of middle school and high school.  And here you have a kid in trouble that is making an actual effort to graduate from high school and get his life back on track.  I like the idea of taking things one step at a time.  I think we throw a lot of future on kids as opposed to present.  I think we’re future-thinking as opposed to what to do today, what things can I do today to make my life better, and how can I improve today.  I like that idea.  I think it’s a good model for kids to follow, and especially [Armpit’s] being an African-American young man.  I don’t like hitting people over the head with message and I don’t think this does.  I think you see a character that’s improving his life through a very short-term planning process that is doable.  He’s not perfect – he makes mistakes, but he gets through it.

th – What do you think is going to draw in the audience?

SF – Louis Sachar, Newberry Award-winning writer writing his third play.

th – What were the first two plays he wrote?

SF – He did the script for Holes and the script for There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom.  And then other people have adapted his works – Sideways Stories from Wayside School [which OCT is producing this spring].

th – Do you think there’s something in Small Steps that adults can pick up as well?

SF – Oh, well, yeah.  I think it’s going to be interesting for adults.  One of the things I like about this story is the romance is just a friendship.  [Armpit and Kaira] really like each other but they go on with their lives and it’s playful as far as how they behave around each other, but it’s not over-sexualized.  And I think there’s an over-sexualization of teens right now.  Of kids.  Just dress, conceptually with what they see on TV and commercials and stuff like that, and I think it’s interesting to see a relationship that is about friendship and people liking each other and not about, “When are we going to have sex?”

th – What do you think brings Armpit and Kaira together?

SF – It’s fate that brings them together.  I mean it is a hundred percent fate – an accident – and [Kaira’s] looking for something real to hang out with.  She doesn’t get to hang out with friends of her own and [Armpit] is just in the process of going through his life, and there they meet.  And Ginny’s part of that too.  I think that’s an interesting relationship – having a 17-year-old young man whose best friend is a 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy.  I love that the book doesn’t explain it and that the play doesn’t explain it.  What explains it is they like each other, and I love that.  There’s nothing stuck about him pitying her or anything.  There’s nothing but admiration between the two of them, and I love that.  That’s very interesting and unique.

th – Do you have a favorite scene, line, or character in the play?

SF – I have a favorite line:  “Y-you have a very beautiful soul.”  It’s something that Ginny says to [Armpit]….  It is how she admires what he does and both of them seem to have flaws that the other one doesn’t even notice because they think so much of [each other’s] courage.

th – Would you or anyone at OCT have an embarrassing nickname you’d want to reveal to the world?

SF – My last name is Foote.  That’s enough.

th – Did you commission this from Louis?

SF – Yeah, and Karl Mansfield [whose Oregon credits include working with PCS and OSF] is doing the music.  And the music is red-hot and rollin.’   [Sadly, for this blogger, a sample of the music can’t be released at this time, but let’s just say that it covers the gamut from sassy pop to latin backbeat.]

th – What is the collaborative process between you and Louis?  Is there any back-and-forth?

SF – There is back-and-forth, and he’s a really good writer.  In writing a play and doing the rewrites I think the tendency is to throw stuff out and all of that, and some of the writers I’ve worked with try to add more things to cover a problem where I think sometimes it’s just just deleting a word or adding a word.  An example of that is El Genius in this book is doing threatening letters as a character called Billy Boy, who’s imaginary, and he’s threatening Kaira to keep her in line.  In the book that’s really really clear but in the play the first time we got it, it wasn’t clear because there’s a visual of those letters you’re supposed to connect immediately.  And in the rewrite [Louis] just added two words to connect El Genius to Billy Boy.  Just two words from one character in a scene and the connection was strong, as opposed to adding things or adding a whole line of dialogue or anything else.  I like that.  Yeah, we’re collaborating well and then [Louis had] never met Karl.  My main thing on this project was making sure that they had a good relationship.  That they liked each other.  Karl’s a buddy of mine from New York, formerly from Portland.

th – Is Louis going to get to attend the reading in January?

SF – Yes he is, and Karl will be here too.  Louis also wants to be in on the rehearsal process.  Part of his contract says he comes here and watches rehearsals.

th – Do you know if he’ll do rewrites or anything?

SF – Oh yeah.

th – Is there anything else you might want on the blog about the production?

SF – You know, we already have a cast, the rock songs are going to rock, the music is great.

th – Is there going to be music in the reading as well?

SF – Yeah.  And it’s at Madison High School, which I think is really interesting.  Part of this process is to get out the bullshit factor, to make sure this is the way kids talk, you know, so having a reading at a high school where the characters are these kids’ age, just to see what they think, see if there’s any place they go, “Oh that’s stupid.”  That’s why I wanted the reading at a high school.

* * *

If you don’t know Louis Sachar, I guarantee you don’t have to be a kid to enjoy his work.  Between now and the Festival, pick up Holes, or Small Steps, or my personal favorite discovered at age 22, Stargirl.  They’re pocket-sized quick reads during those 10-minute rehearsal breaks.

Fertile Ground Website || Buy Festival Passes

I just realized that this semester I really, really gave into my depression. I thought I wouldn’t, not after this spring semester in all its horror, but…

I don’t know what killed me most this semester: the thing with Ben or losing my ideals about adult life and my hopes that I could be something special, or even someone more than an empty husk/shadow of a person I have occasionally revealed myself to have the potential to be buried under this mental illness and the systematic imperfection that is society and the “real world”.

When you put it that way, it’s probably the latter. Not that the two are completely unrelated. I came face-to-face with disappointing adulthood in Ben and the stories of his friends and family, and I realized it’s reflected in many other adults I grew up knowing. That does not, of course, mean that their lives are worthless or unrewarding, just that shit happens and that ideals tend to be unattainable. I bet even the people I esteem as having accomplished great things or lived great lives spent a lot of time bogged down in being human and living in society. I can hope for as much as I can grab from life, and I can hope to grab as much as I can.

Today marks the third week since I officially became a homeowner. I have to admit that it feels great to have accomplished this major life goal. LYJ blogger Suzanne Grossman encouraged me to post some reflections on the process that translate to setting long-term career goals:

• The first step in moving forward on your goal is simply to state it out loud and then share it with your network. When I moved into my apartment three and a half years ago, I told my friends that it would be the last apartment in which I lived—the next place would be a place of my own. This set me on my path to home ownership even before I had saved the first dollar of the down payment.

• Do your research and mobilize your resources. Real estate is a language unto itself—I had to learn the lingo. I logged countless hours watching “House Hunters” and “Property Virgins” on HGTV, I read a couple of books and stayed on top of The Washington Post’s weekly Real Estate section, and I talked to friends who had recently bought homes in the area (my new home ownership mentors). In my case, I embarked on this goal with my husband, so I had to take inventory of what we could each contribute (financially and emotionally) to the process. When approaching a major career goal, researching the field, the steps you need to take, and who can help you get there will be key to your success.

• Create a visual reminder of your goal. Earlier this year, I placed two important items on my fridge: 1) a wipe board where I simply wrote my savings goal, two pieces of furniture I want to buy for the new house, and the phrase, “Buy a house,” and 2) a photo of a house in one of our target neighborhoods and in our price range. Despite the numerous types of homes we viewed, the house we bought actually looks very similar to the house that adorned our fridge for many months. Whether you enjoy making crafty collages or prefer a simple approach, an informal “vision board” can do wonders (and perhaps stir a little magic) in helping you stay focused to accomplish your goal.

• Be patient and persistent—you’re in it for the long haul. My home ownership plan became a two-year process full of many small, weekly steps. I monitored my credit score, researched the price ranges for different neighborhoods, set up an ING savings account and made automatic monthly contributions into my “house fund,” identified my realtor, viewed properties, etc. When I first started, I probably spent about an hour or two each week on this project; in the final three months of the process, I spent 30-90 minutes each day. It certainly took a level of dedication and focus, but it was do-able. I often acted on the good advice fellow LYJ bloggers have suggested of tackling one thing a day. 

What can you start doing today that will get you where you want to be in two or three years?

I was just staring at my reflection in the mirror for a while. Earlier I couldn’t get out of bed, which I had returned to for a good reason–to stay warm while reading my Computer Systems book. I feel like this procrastination/paralysis (since it is both) is crippling, and I’m disappointed that it continues even though the Effexor is making me think more positively and function better in situations with other people (like my dance class this morning, which went amazingly. I actually exerted myself fully for once.).

But I was able to move from my mirror-gazing pose when I thought about honoring my procrastination and the anxiety that causes it (and/or whatever other quirks of my neurological system make me prone to these states). I can’t eliminate it by blaming myself for it, or by trying and trying and trying to find a way around it. It’s there. I’ve tried for years to find a way around it, and while many things help at the right time and place, nothing is going to eliminate it entirely from what I have to deal with, at least not based on past experience. And that’s okay, because I’m really not in a desperately bad situation.

I am behind on my schoolwork, but I can catch up, and anyway, it doesn’t matter how far behind I am. I’m certainly not at the point where I can’t afford to continue going to school because I’ll lose all my financial aid after this semester. I don’t think I’ll even lose the 25%, but since I don’t know what GPA I need to keep, that one is a possibility. I’ll talk to my parents about it if it becomes an issue, and maybe I will have to go to another school or something, but from my past experience as a materially spoiled brat, that’s unlikely.

The situation I’m in now is a product of the past, and of mental illness. If I’m behind or haven’t “proven” myself, it’s because I’ve been very ill. If I’m still ill, well, I’m doing the best I can, and it doesn’t matter if that isn’t good enough to anyone else. I certainly know it’s good enough for me.

It’s funny, but an effect of the Effexor seems to be that I know my limitations better. In dance today, I saw that my ability to endure under stress is greater, but part of my positive thinking involves accepting and letting go when I can’t push myself any farther. I’m also more likely to choose a lower-priority but still somewhat desirable task when I cannot work on my top priority, and that’s good.

Yesterday I went to my doctor’s appointment and got a prescription for Effexor, which I took that afternoon after going to an Italian deli with Ben (around the time I was skipping a class on what turned out to be exam day, ouch).

I think it’s made me feel better. Certainly it’s unusual for me to get up at 8:10 in the morning (even if I’ve spent most of the last hour and a half wasting time online). I feel calmer, and more able to think past any panic I might start experiencing. On the other hand, psych drugs are terrifying, as I was reminded when I googled effexor and variations thereupon. A woman whose husband killed himself during withdrawal from Effexor, serotonin syndrome, someone who developed a permanent tremor (this attributed to the Lexapro they took after quitting Effexor), someone who stopped caring about her husband, lotsa inability to orgasm, increased aggression, memory loss, and so on. But that’s what you get when you’re desperate enough to try meds–the results are unpredictable, and some undesirable side effect or another is almost inevitable. What’s important is whether it allows me to gain more control over my life.

Wait, no. What’s important is whether it allows me to become happy and engaged, to pursue things that matter to me. Excess need for control in a world that doesn’t offer it is one cause/symptom of my ill health. And even the happiness part isn’t so crucial–I’ve got enough happiness and appreciation for beauty and experience in me most of the time, even with untreated illness. What’s really been concerning me is how much the mental illness disrupts my life, how it’s threatening my education, how it keeps me from pursuing hobbies or developing skills, how it ruins interpersonal relationships, how it makes it hard to think, to focus, to prioritize.

Although I have an inkling that being human makes it pretty hard to prioritize.

Anyway, here’s hoping that this medication serves me well. I woke up thinking that this may be the best thing I have ever done for myself. That thought’s always shadowed by the awareness that the course of treatment on this drug may be unpredictable, that the other shoe may fall and hard, that I don’t know what mood swings I’ll go through or whether the side effects will prove intolerable or whether the drug will severely hurt me or whether my current feeling will actually translate to an increased ability to pursue goals and interests. I don’t feel great now, not happy, just not unhappy and fairly clear-headed–which to me is a good sign, since no-reason happiness makes me fear hypomania or further mood swings.

No-reason happiness “makes” me feel those things? I suppose, on the first one, I’m really afraid of being misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder, and I’m haunted by the echoes of lay misdiagnoses so many people have suggested to me in the past. On the second one, hard experience has taught me that in states like I was for the past week or so before starting the Effexor, “high” moods are likely but also accompanied by low moods, and the highs aren’t even necessarily going to help me accomplish tasks.

Do I really care so much about accomplishing tasks, to the exclusion of other things? The tasks tend to be unimportant, but a few of them have the power to change where we find ourselves in life, and that’s really important. I need to learn to better discriminate between the important ones and the unimportant ones.

So my goal for today was to start catching up on homework, using my new-found sanity. I’ve actually been procrastinating because I’m cold and don’t want to change clothes, which would make me even colder. C’est la vie.

I spent almost 24 hours with Ben just chillin’ mainly, got home a while ago, ate, went to the grocery store, ate, surfed the web for a while with the intention of actually working out something worthwhile to do and focusing. I’m on duty in the Writing Center an hour from now, so I’m not sure how much I can do, but it’s looking like that homework I started yesterday is the best choice for what to do this evening.

Some other things I need to make priorities around:

1. Currently subsisting mainly off candy, chocolate, and nutritionally similar foods. I need to stop seeing it as too mentally draining to purchase and prepare some more substantial foods. By which I mean vegetables and maybe some meat or veg protein. So, yes, the goal is to start eating vegetables.

2. Remembering to set up a doctor’s appointment tomorrow.

3. Getting on something of a reasonable sleep schedule.

4. Attending class.

And there’s a wealth of others: Dancing or at least exercising and stretching a little in my room, writing that essay EVENTUALLY, working out a budget, finding a sane way to keep up with news and research mental illness disability in the US…

Obviously this isn’t prioritizing, but right now my top priority is this blog, because I think it’ll help keep me on track to accomplish the others. It falls under the heading of “addressing my mental illness”, along with the “getting Prozac” thing that’ll be my top priority tomorrow. My second main blanket priority is school, which oddly enough falls under the mental illness thing too, since my warped relationship with school is a key feature of my depression and anxiety. There’s also an ever-louder chorus within me that seeks to find other ways of meeting my life goals, to find bigger issues than just academics. I spent so long with my self-esteem and my sense of whether I’d ever succeed in life related very very closely to how I was doing in school, but I’ve since realized that life success actually has not so much to do with school and a whole lot to do with a whole lot of other things.

And what is life success after all? I think Ben said something last night like, “Anyone who can live in this world deserves to be commended.” We’re all just trying to survive, and whatever else we get out of or give into life is just optional extra–it may not seem optional at the time, but that’s because valuing things so highly that we feel we can’t survive without them is a feature of our ability to choose what we value and why we live. I see it this way: We have a lot of statistical tendencies toward some values, which are biologically and culturally imparted to us, and it’s unlikely that we’ll choose not to value eating or avoiding death, but many people do change even those values. There are so many different things to care about in this world that everyone’s going to care about a different set, and that’ll change over time for them too. But it’s because we’re not hard-coded to pursue some specific sane goal at a specific sane time, we go through a jerky, idiosyncratic path in life, often overvaluing things (like an object of infatuation) we’re predisposed to overvalue or have grown into a habit of emphasizing too much, often undervaluing things whose worth to us we don’t detect.

My head feels incredibly fuzzy right now, so I think I’ll go do math.

Maybe I’m afraid of not having Maple (because I’d have to walk to the library and it’s COLD outside!) to do it with. Maybe I’m afraid that I won’t be able to solve the problems. Maybe I’m afraid that doing something productive = not being disabled, and I’m too afraid of being disabled to easily approach something that might confirm or debunk that fear. Maybe it’s just habit. Whatever the case may be, I’m not giving in.

It’s cold on a Saturday afternoon, snowing hard outside, and I don’t really know what to do. Luckily I can’t curl up in my bed due to it being MADE (ha, bed, you got made) so I’m going to have to do something a bit more rewarding than that. I’m faintly averse to doing schoolwork, although since the last time I made it to Multivariate Calc was halfway through the class on Monday, it would be a good idea to get some solid time into that today. But I think cleaning my room some more is also a worthy priority, so that’s what I’m gonna do first. Perhaps. The homework thing is coming in as a leading candidate in my mind too.

It helps to sit down and write this out to concentrate, to focus on what can and can’t make a big difference in my life instead of floating chillily through the day, this hat muffling my ears. (Yeah, most people probably wouldn’t think it was so unbearably cold in my house, but that’s been another major problem for me.)

So, today I started out taking a couple of steps in the right direction.

My most serious struggle recently has been to get out of bed and stay there. Ever since the conversion disorder thing, it’s been easy for me to have trouble moving. So, I’ll lie in bed and give myself the orders to get up and not follow through. I’ll probably drift into thinking about something else or daydreaming, then come back to struggle to get up, over and over. Maybe I’ll be thinking about how I’m missing class or something else important, as is frequently the case, while I lie there. Maybe I’ll be thinking about how thirsty I am and how much I need to use the bathroom, or how sweaty I am from lying there for hours. It’s a pretty awful situation.

Today I got up at 10-something, and I carried through with a plan I’d hatched: to make the bed first thing. I went to the bathroom first, so it was odd as I walked back–following the old habit of going back in order to throw myself down and curl up for hours, but this time with an altogether different intent. When I reached the bed, I made it. Doing something to the bed instead of hurting myself by disappearing into it. It might be hard for an outsider to understand that feeling of empowerment in something so simple.

I took a photo of the bed. I also cleaned my closet a bit and continued with the laundry stuff I started last night. Then I got the idea–I’m not sure where from; oh, when I was uploading that photo of the bed–to make a screensaver of photos I’d taken that made me happy. I greedily used almost all the photos of my family and a friend that I took when I went back home this summer–I wish I had more: good that T-day’s coming up. I filled out the rest with photos of spring and summer, the mountains and flowers and such that I shot earlier this year.

Reclaiming your space, reminding yourself of contact with others and with the outdoors, really making my computer mine–that’s what this screensaver does for me. So cheer and scream congratulations. It’s the small steps that get you over the humps.

I feel a lot better now that I’ve talked to KN. I’m glad that I have friends who I don’t have to be angsty about contacting–I’m glad that I really do have people who care, and I’m glad that I don’t have to put all my eggs in one basket and depend on one person for all my emotional needs, a recipe for disaster and also an act of unfairness to the other person and to oneself. I suppose some people actually would like to be your sole salvation, but that wouldn’t be good for you, to become dependent.

I’m actually pretty drained now, even just physically from all these late nights recently, so I think I’ll go to bed after setting up the next load of laundry. The emotional distress and the conversion reactions are probably draining enough themselves, but if need be, I could work on homework or something that was due tomorrow right now. It’s just that nothing’s due tomorrow, so I’ll focus on taking care of myself instead. I feel a lot like I did last semester after Joi and the others burst into my room because I was sobbing so loud in existential despair and pep-talked me until I was ready to write that essay for Engl 310.

I realized that no one’s ever spent so much time with me as Ben has recently when I was feeling bad. (Which means that no one’s ever spent that much time with me in a short period of time–and I mean with me, not just bringing me along for the ride while I was in an unresponsive state and withdrawn because I was dealing with symptoms like I always do.) I’m grateful for that, and it also kinda scares me–not because of what it means for the future of our relationship, but because of what it means for the future of who I am, to have had someone be there for me like that and to know it’s possible. It caused me to take stock of my condition and really make a commitment to do something about that. Who will I become in future changing circumstances?

Anyway, I’m happy to be reminded that it often doesn’t really take all that much to bring me to a much better state than I’d be otherwise, and I’m very happy to have reached for the phone and for someone I wasn’t feeling compelled to contact.

I’m not hurting about anything, mind you, or if I am it’s very abstract. As you can see, I’m posting over and over in a short period of time in an attempt to deal with what I’m feeling without having to call on someone who’ll be made at me for doing this. Actually, come to think of it, I could probably call KN, even though it’s past midnight where he lives. Doing so now.

He picked up!

One of my friends recently gave me a nudge. She said I didn’t take compliments well at all. She’s right…

“That’s a great dress. The colour really suits you.”

The reply? “Yes, it hides my flabby belly” or “Thanks, but I just got it on sale”.

“You look so fit and strong.”

“Looks are deceiving. I blow like an old horse when I run.”

“You look radiant.”

“…it’s the makeup. I had to trowel it on to hide the bags.”

“Thanks, but…”  Why the disclaimers? It’s almost like I’m channelling my inner-critic – the narky little voice in my head that tells me I’m not really good enough. I’m a fake and someone will find out sooner or later – so I may as well admit it all upfront.

I’m not alone. Accepting compliments is difficult for many of us (especially women!), and it’s an art we need to practice. It’s very simple to do. All we need to do is smile and say ‘thank you’ and leave it at that.

I’ve been very conscious of it lately and it really does make you feel better. I admit, I have bite marks on my tongue, but it seems to be working! The funny thing is that I’m noticing how many women just can’t take a compliment without adding a disclaimer.

But a compliment is a gift we can accept graciously. It will lift you up, if you let it. Just think about those days when someone says, “you look tired today”. How do you feel? Suddenly tired (or more tired). A compliment has the opposite effect .

Thank you. Smile. Thank you. Smile. If it takes 14 days to form a habit, I reckon I’m almost there…

So instead of admitting you got your fabulous dress in a closing down sale, or pointing out one of your flaws to counteract that great attribute someone just pointed out…smile and say thank you. It could just make your day…

cheers

Lou

Daughter, like every other child in Britain, must wear a uniform to school, which I whole-heartedly support, despite the price tag attached.  However, sometimes parent organizations are, well, organized enough to hold used uniform sales once in a while, like ours did last week. I was lucky enough to come away with skirts, pinafores and school jumpers for the next two years, and really only need to find the blazer before the start of the next school year (I’ve got time, so I’m not too worried).  Socks and tights will need to be purchased new, and I get school shoes during annual sales for about half-price, but over all I feel pretty good about the whole school uniform thing.

I thought I’d bring this up today to demonstrate how the Home Front  still affects some aspects of our lives.  Charitable clothing resale really took hold during the war, since new clothes needed ration coupons and could be hard to come by.  This practice lives on today in the various charity shops across Britain and organization sales like the one I attended last week.  Surprisingly, the practice of shopping at sales and charity shops seems to cut across all social classes here, based on who I’ve seen there, though the younger generations are much less likely to charity shop.  (Perhaps they need to have kids first to realize the futility of pay full price for something that is going to look used in two hours?)  Children’s clothes in decent condition are hard to come by in any charity shop, which is why the parent organizations also play an important role.

At any rate, because this is an austerity blog, I’ll share that the school clothes did set me back eighteen quid, but that was still about a quarter of what they would have cost me in the store.  Also, had this been during WWII, I would not have had to turn over any clothing coupons either, based on the price of the used items compared to new ones, which would have the best thing about resale shopping.   I might have been able to use the saved coupons to buy knitting wool or extra knickers…

When I was preparing to write my piece on the gift economy for the Dictionary of Ethical Politics, I read a few essays by others but quickly abandoned that approach to ensuring that I was fully up-to-speed on the current thinking. As I explained with my customary lack of sensitivity, diplomacy, and fairness:

Unsurprisingly, [the gift economy] is a topic that appeals to well-meaning, good-natured, spiritually curious people. Unfortunately, this results in treatments that are often long on fuzzy-headed feel-good and short on rigor. I’m sure there are some very good essays on the gift economy to be found with a simple Google search; but I really had no stomach for a needle-in-haystack exercise that would subject me to the level of penetrating analysis found in the average Hallmark greeting card.

After I published my synopsis of the gift economy, I received a superb essay from my good friend, Manoj Pavithran, with a very different approach to the subject. Manoj is that rare and spectacular combination of deeply thoughtful and utterly brilliant; and his careful analysis is constructed with the considerable philosophical rigor one might expect from him. It represents a significant contribution to the growing, evolving appreciation of the gift economy.

Manoj is not simply a theorist of the gift economy; he is a practitioner. He lives in Auroville, a community founded, in part, on both collectivist and cooperativist gift economy ideals. He also played a direct and influential role in the gift economization of two significant product initiatives of Upasana Design Studio: the Tsunamika dolls and the Small Steps cloth shopping bags.

With his permission, I offer Manoj’s essay for your consumption and reflection.

GIFT ECONOMY
Joy of Giving, Abundance, and Bonds of Love
By Manoj Pavithran

At the heart of immensely complex economic systems move the fundamental generative dynamics of demand and supply – the complementary opposites, the two poles of a single force field. Understanding this dual force in its various levels of evolution is essential for gaining insight into the nature of Gift Economy.

Transactions

No individual or organisation can exist in isolation; there is always exchange of goods and services among individuals or organisations or with the surrounding environment in general. Everything is embedded in the force field of demand and supply and an evolving individual or group has to interact with the force field through unending series of transactions. However all exchanges or transactions are not of the same nature; they undergo fundamental qualitative change with the growth of individual or organisation and this growth has three distinct stages which can be called: Receiver, Trader, and Giver.

Receiver

This is the first stage of transactions, the childhood, of an individual or organisation in which the entity is primarily in need of goods and services but at the same time it is not capable of giving something in return. Every individual or organisation goes through this stage. A new born child is in need of receiving nourishments for its growth and there is nothing much a child can give in return. Parents take care of the child. So is someone who is crippled by age or disease who should be taken care. Similarly a new organisation that is taking birth requires lots of investment to get it going before it stands on its own feet. There is a childhood stage where an entity is primarily a receiver.

If a childhood stage prolongs then even when physically outgrown the entity will continue to remain as a receiver and fail to become an adult who is capable of independence. It can also be a result of psychological distortions as in the case of someone who is selfish or miser and is unwilling to give anything in return to others. When this stage turns dark we get the thief or the exploiter who intentionally live like a parasite. There are people and organisations that live like parasites; they do not give anything in return for what they take. This is the receiver stage that has become diseased and dark.

The focus of awareness during this stage is in receiving or taking.

Trader

This is the second stage of the growth of an individual or organisation, the adulthood, in which the entity becomes productive and actively engages in trade with other individuals or organisations to create wealth. This phase brings economic freedom and greater independence to engage in activities that are mutually enriching. But the characteristic feature of the act of giving something to someone during this stage is the demand for return in equal measure. In fact the focus is more on the returns and the individual or organisation involved in trade is engaging in it for the sake of returns it brings. One-to-one return for every investment is a key factor during this stage. If there is no possibility of getting something back from someone or a group, nothing will be given to them.

This stage is largely animated by reason at the best. A fair trade market operates on this basis making sure that all those who are involved in trade are receiving returns in fair measure. An individual or organisation in this stage of their growth will always make sure that the people with whom they engage in trade are getting what they deserve and sharing is fair on both sides of the equation.

Often trade is animated by greed in which one gives as little as possible but takes as maximum as possible. When trade is animated by greed one is closer to a thief, the darker side of first stage, than a genuine trader in the second stage. Not all trades are fair trades; there is a tug of war and bargain which can be driven by force of greed or reason. When driven by reason we get fair trade and when driven by greed we get parasites.

Act of giving bound to returns breeds trader-hood, the second stage of growth.

Giver

This is the third stage of the growth of an individual or organization, the parenthood, which brings to focus the joy in the very act of giving itself. Joy of giving is often discovered when you fall in love and discover the sheer joy of giving a gift to someone you love dearly. Giving is a means to express your love and not a means to get something in return. This is the stage of parenthood or lover-hood in which one takes responsibility over people, organisations or situations that requires support and does so for the joy of doing it. It is largely animated by love. Parents taking care of their children are a typical example of this stage; organisations involved in charity, social work, environmental protection are some of the common examples of organisations that operate in the third stage.

It is not so much the outer form of action that determines the stage of growth but the inner quality of giving. For example if a parent is supporting the child for the sake of future returns then it is still a trade relation, similarly charity work done with hidden agendas to spread a particular religion or philosophy is still a trader consciousness in disguise of a giver. The purity of giver-hood is in the purity of giving; only an unconditional giving for the very joy of giving qualifies one to be in the third stage.

The magic of gift economy starts only at this stage when you discover that all acts of unconditional giving brings back returns of abundance beyond your imagination.

Transaction matrix

All the three stages of transactions simultaneously exist in every individual or organisation in varying proportions. No one is entirely locked up in a single level. You may be a receiver in one transaction, a trader in another or a giver in yet another transaction. It is a dynamic quality that changes in every interaction. For example you receive a gift from someone who loves you and you would not spoil the quality of that transaction by insisting that you should pay for it. On the other hand you go to market and buy something and make sure that you pay them properly. The same item you bought as a trading transaction you may give to someone as a gift to express your love. There is a greater joy in receiving a gift as well as giving a gift. We engage in such a mode of transaction only with those whom we love where as with strangers we prefer to engage in trade. Every interaction is qualitatively different; we are receiving, trading or giving all the time. We are dynamically changing and taking roles in every interaction and since there are three roles possible we get six possible combinations of transaction matrix.

With this transaction matrix it is easy to see that all our daily interactions neatly fall into one or other category and we are constantly in flux.

There are enriching transactions and there are depleting transactions. Those few transactions that bring us greater joy and inner satisfaction (not necessarily material or financial benefits) are the ones in which you have received something unconditionally as a gift or you have given something unconditionally as a gift, as an expression of your love. By observing our daily transactions it is relatively easy to find our dominant mode of transactions and take steps to bring necessary balance or to evolve to higher modes of transactions.

This song is so damn danceable. Whenever I listen to this song, I can imagine myself in a car with one hand on the steering wheel,  and the other hand waving in the air while shaking violently on the car seat.  

I’m that silly.

“When I look at you,
I’ve caught myself off-guard a time or two
Those funny times I realize that I’ve been staring
Way too long and you’re done talking
Not to mention I’ve stopped breathing”  

Deer and the Headlights – I Just Do

I thought I might blather on a bit about eggs this morning, a seemingly innocent topic really.  Quite a number of frugal websites cite eggs as the ultimate source of frugal protein, and seem to think nothing of recommending six egg quiches or more than two eggs in a baked dish (one recipe I read called for, gasp, five eggs for a baked good!).

I am sure you can see where I am going with this.  Unless a person kept quite a few hens, such rampant egg use would not have been possible pre-industrial agriculture.  Eggs are only relatively cheap now because of factory laying, cheap grain, and antibiotics.  I won’t get into the politics of all that, because other people already have, but I will point out that judicious use of eggs in cooking is something worth considering.

Under rationing during WWII, each person was limited to one fresh egg a week  (or sometimes every two weeks), plus a monthly packet of dried eggs once Lend-Lease started.  I don’t even pretend to try to keep to one egg per week per person, since we go through about a dozen eggs a week for a five-person household.  I do, however, use my eggs carefully.  Here are a few things that I have learned -

1. Two eggs will usually work as well as three eggs in baked goods (this does not hold for sponges though).

2. A tablespoon of soy flour will work in place of an egg in most recipes, as long as there is at least 1/4 c oil/fat in the recipe, and you are willing to add a bit more liquid to make up for the egg.  I usually only do this to replace one egg in a recipe that calls for more than one though.

3. GF recipes, especially baked ones, can work without eggs, but the recipe has to be eggless to begin with.

4. You can actually make a six-person quiche with only four eggs.

As a side note, the cheapest protein is probably beans (legumes) or peanut butter, but that’s just being picky.  Really though, learning to manage eggs means less trips to the store when you’ve run out.  It means that you can put together a reasonable dessert, even a cake, without worrying about how many eggs you need.  It means, actually, a bit more kitchen peace of mind.

P.S. I would love to have hens…

My wonky picture of a radio illustrates how I felt when starting this blog back in May of this year. Rather like fiddling with the dial on an old battered shortwave radio that wasn’t quite on the station, with plenty of static. I did not have a clue. And I was terrified about putting my stuff on show.

There was no need to worry, as I discovered. My flabber has been utterly ghasted (I’m taking anti-biotics for it) by the encouragement, warmth and generosity shown to me by my fellow bloggers. You all know who you are. On an almost daily basis, I’m inspired, stimulated and influenced (and often intimidated) by the abundant wealth of artistic talent out there.

What a truly fantastic bunch you all are.

Once I started tuning in properly, the tips, techniques and opinions began to come in loud and clear.

This post was composed yesterday. Just before publishing it today, I saw Anya Galkina’s latest post where her purple prose (cola-fuelled) says “…art is a conversation between souls.” And I’m tuning in, tuning in slowly like a radio (radio, radio, radio).

Another reason I chose to paint this radio was to practise the wet-on-wet technique – hugely inspired as I was by the quirky and humorous work of Karen Kurycki – her ‘Social Mixer’ being my favourite.

Literally, for days I’ve been working and working away at it. Heck! So many versions of this radio have been done that I’ve lost count. Although becoming more familiar with the technique there’s a very long way to go before I can come close to Karen’s immense skills.

But who knew that controlling and manipulating a bit of paint with water could be so, really, hugely, DIFFICULT??? Gaah!

Well I didn’t. But I do now!

Yesterday, Daughter and I came home after our respective long days to find that a water main had blown directly in front of our house.  Now, if you’ve lived any length of time in London, you come to realize that this is a rather regular event, as most of the water system relies on old Victorian clay pipes; however, it’s never happened in our street before. 

Luckily, by the time we got home, the water company had already started repairs, and our house came out relatively unscathed, given that the pipe burst about six inches in front of our driveway, though not everyone in the street was that lucky.  So, imagine if you will, coming home to a cold house on a dreary day, gasping for a cup of tea, and there’s no water.  Stupidly, I also never filled our reserve containers back up after we moved.  It made sense to have stored water in the desert, but in Britain, well, suffice to say that I never got around to it.

We were without water all evening yesterday, and thankfully the water workers continued long after we went to bed to restore water to our house.  I managed to snag enough water from an unaffected house down the street to get us through some version of dinner and teeth brushing, but it was a less than ideal response to the situation.

So, yes, today I will be digging around for our spare water containers and filling them up.  Just because we don’t have doodlebugs dropping through the roof doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be at least somewhat prepared for minor disasters.

I’ve been on a secret mission, and I haven’t wanted to tell anyone in my family – I am refusing to turn on the heating until after Nov 1.  Ssh, don’t let them know…

Luckily, the weather has been cooperating, mostly, and we’re away on holiday at the end of the month.  Last year’s heating bill was so outrageously high that we have just this month finished paying it off.  To top that off, our energy tariffs have also gone up this year.  Our budget has been squeezed to the max recently, and I honestly don’t know where more money is going to come from.  So, the heating stays off until after Nov 1.

But how to stay warm…

1. Sweaters, socks, and long sleeves.  Repeat.

2. Lots of hot tea, black or herbal, doesn’t matter

3. Hot chocolate, even for the adults

4. Big blankets for sitting around in the evening and early morning

5. Shutting the blinds as soon as the sun starts to go down

6. Closing off rooms (this really helps)

7. If absolutely necessary, turning on one of our portable radiators for 15 minutes to take the frost out of the morning

I wish our landlord would insulate the loft and cavity walls, which would significantly help, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, even if we paid for it.  Still, you make do with what you have and hope that the really dreary cold rain holds off until November…

I wanted to do a quick review of the Jamela series by Niki Daly.  Jamela is a little girl growing up in South Africa, and the stories revolve around her misadventures as a typical child.  Not only are the illustrations outstanding, but the stories are endearing as well accessible for children.  Daughter has no problem relating to Jamela as a character, and is able to reflect back on the stories from her point of view as well as Jamela’s.  We don’t own this series, but we get it out of the library fairly often.

I wanted to mention this series because these books are some of the few that address frugality as a fact of life.  In Happy Birthday Jamela for instance, Jamela’s grandmother says “wasting money is no laughing matter” as part of the discussion on Jamela’s transgression (gluing beads to her school shoes to make them sparkly).  In the Jamela books overall, frugality is framed as normal, not a punishment or an indication of poverty, as in other children’s books I’ve come across.  I think it  is important to see our financial mentality reflected positively in books that Daughter reads.

That isn’t the only reason I read this books with Daughter; in fact, it’s probably fourth or fifth after storyline, illustrations, and general entertainment.  It is hard to find quality children’s books, so it is even more exciting to find something that is easy to read, beautiful, and supportive of frugality

Tonight I’m reminded of the inspiring opening stanza of David Whyte’s poem, “Start Close In”, which I heard him recite aloud at Toby’s Feed Barn in Point Reyes, CA, back in August.

Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step you don’t want to take.

Read the rest of the poem here

Don’t we all like to convince ourselves not to pursue our big dreams because of the great chasm separating “here” from “there”? We imagine our goal, and then quickly make the list of things we need to get done or overcome before we can get there. As the list of things grows, and the probability of getting them done starts to dawn on us, we start to shrink back from our goal, or dial down our aspirations. David Whyte’s poem reminds us that sometimes it’s as simple as taking the FIRST step. Often that’s the one that holds us back the most – the first defining step that we don’t want to take. We hold back, not realizing that maybe, just maybe, that first step could unlock the door to a cascade of other possibilities, one of which could shorten the distance between our “here” and our “there”.

The rest of the poem talks about the first step often being the most fearful because it is the most authentic path for us. It’s our own. We often mistake other people’s paths as ones we should follow, or other people’s voices as the ones coming from inside us. But a soulful – and fulfilling – life must begin with that first authentic step to call your own, no matter how small and humble.

Elsewhere in his writings, David Whyte has captured it even more vividly in the metaphor of the writer facing the first blank page before creation begins:

“We leave the beckoning blank page of our life completely empty because we don’t have confidence in the particular first sentence that confronts us.”

What first step will you take…the step you don’t want to take?

(CFD.net.au – Contract for Difference, Share, Forex, ETFs, Commodities Traders) – Uniting Care Wesley says people on the far north Aboriginal Lands are losing their work ethic because of a decision to take away some work for the dole projects.The Federal Government’s Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) have provided activities which help people develop their skills and job readiness.

Jonathan Nicholls, from the welfare organisation, says people are still getting welfare payments but losing their involvement at a community level.

“It’s very much a case of taking small steps and building up a momentum, building up an expectation that people turn up first thing in the morning and do particular activities,” he said.

“That momentum has been lost because people have been told ‘You can no longer do this particular activity and we’re not quite sure yet what will be the replacement activities’.”

Mr Nicholls says his recent visit to the Lands highlighted a sharp contrast, with communities less active than he observed six months before.

“When I went to the Lands in March, in every community there were CDEP workers out and about involved in activities in their local community,” he said.

“On this visit I didn’t see any CDEP workers in the communities doing things – people feel like they’ve lost their involvement at a local community level, people feel like they’ve lost their jobs.”

Source: Work ethic 'lost' in Aboriginal lands