Mary Beth Writes

Mindful Chickens 10/23/2017

1. The most effectively frugal thing I did last week -- was have a cold. I walked some of those beautiful days… but other than that I stayed home with my germs.

Botanical Gardens

Actually, the cold started on the way home from meeting our daughters at the Botanical Gardens north of Chicago. Walking there was gorgeous.

2. I did a lot of writing last week. It is a gift to be able to do the thing one wants to do. Passion seems like such an important word; I’m not all that comfortable saying we all have to pursue our passions – but percolating along at the tasks we like and need to do, having enough time to do them well, pulling off a good project. That’s sort of the point of being Mindful Chickens, I think.

3. I took everything out of our most crowded closet and “went through” it all. Isn’t that an oddly passive phrase for such an active process? To “go through”…

I found 5 jackets to donate to the church coat drive. One of them is a homely white marshmallow of a winter jacket that I found for Len for $15 at least 15 years ago. It was a helpful for walking the dog after dark as there were no streetlights where we lived. I’m not a big Marie Kondo person, but I did say thank you to that jacket.

This weird Battery Medic jacket was something our son liked when he was in high school. I think I’ve held on to it long enough -- as he’s now past 30.

The kids, once they were teenagers, rarely adored thrift shopping yet they knew if they came with me I’d pretty much buy them anything they wanted. If they wanted NEW things, we expected them to buy those items themselves, which they did. It’s interesting to observe them now to see how that worked out. None of them thrift shop very much.  Our son buys and sells high end bikes and bike parts for himself which either costs hundreds, or saves thousands, depending on how you look at it.  

I think one of the values they figured out was that if they wanted nice things, they were going to have to get good jobs. None of them are in stunningly lucrative careers (none went into finance) but all have figured out how to pay the bills while building some assets. The girls have cool clothes, but they aren’t clothes horses.

Which is another funny phrase, and with that we shove on.

3. Added a little water to extend my hand cream, crème rinse, and birthday whisky.

I love the Outlander books. Jamie and Claire are always drinking a “wee dram of whisky.” For my birthday I said I wanted to compare Irish and Scotch whiskey/whisky (the Scots are too cheap to put a not-needed extra E in there). So that’s what I received, two bottles of whiskey! I like the Scots Scotch a wee bit better, you can taste the smokiness in it - but both are awesome for this nagging cough.

4. When three adorable girls (5th graders?) came to our door selling ridiculously expensive junk for their school, we hesitated. We didn’t want to spend $20 for any of it. We asked them if they would give our money to their program. They solemnly nodded yes so we gave them $5. Only God knows what those kids did with the donation, but I’m betting they gave it to their teacher.

5. Paid the bills mostly using our cash-back rewards credit card. As soon as we can arrange it in 2018, we will be going on some short get-aways. Our motel bills will be paid with cash back dollars.

Oh Ashland (Wi) I miss you….

Loon Lake, Copper Falls

6. Len apparently has been thinking about this for a year. There was a micro-line of light and space beneath our front door. This weekend he took the door off the hinges ( I helped, it was heavy!), put new weather-stripping on the bottom, then re-hung the door using much longer screws which will keep it from hanging slightly off-center.

Len says when he fixes little things like this on an old house (all our houses have been old) he feels as if he is spiritually communicating with the old husbands who lived in this place over the past hundred years. That someday, if there is a heaven, he will stand around with these other guys and they will all talk about doors and plumbing and why did that one guy put that shelf up so high in the garage and did that outlet in the corner ever work right?

What did you do to be a Mindful Chicken lately? Are you getting your house ready for winter? Any tricks the rest of us should know?

Tags

MindfulChickens

Comments

Submitted by Karen on October 23, 2017 - 7:31pm
Smiling at the husbands gathering together in heaven. Loved the Jaime and Claire reference. I don’t like whiskey. I do like the thought of drinking it on a cold night, a tiny bit in a sturdy glass. Our house is almost ready for winter, but I don’t think we have any tricks , we just plug along.

Submitted by Leonard on October 23, 2017 - 9:24pm
First, you're absolutely right, I obsess over talking to other people who fixed something just the way they wanted. Why in the world did they want it that way? Second, the delight of fixing something the second time, where you get to remember what you were doing the first time you fixed something, and wondering why you did not do it right the first time. Third, homeowners who fix things need not be male. Someday, someone who owns the old house on Newhall in Waukesha is going to wonder who did all that with florist wire?

Submitted by Mary Beth on October 23, 2017 - 9:46pm
I have no idea what you are talking about. With the florist wire. That is easy to manipulate and one can cut it with normal scissors. If you can't fix it with florist wire, you haven't used enough of it yet.

Add new comment

CAPTCHA

This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

The Choosing Season

“Decision fatigue helps explain why ordinarily sensible people get angry at colleagues and families, splurge on clothes, buy junk food at the supermarket and can’t resist the dealer’s offer to rustproof their new car. No matter how rational and high-minded you try to be, you can’t make decision after decision without paying a biological price.”  (https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-...)

The Arrows of Yore

I have a weird dark closet in the back of my soul. In it are critical things people have said to me in my life. I rarely consciously think about those old cuts and criticisms, but they are tucked in back there and sometimes I remember them uneasily.

Here are some of my particular arrows of yore:

“Can’t you do anything with her hair, Dorothy?” Dorothy was my mom. My dad liked his daughters’ hair to be curly and orderly, mine was straight and flyaway. I think I was in my 40’s before I realized OMG I do not have “problem hair”… whatever the hell that is.

Make Persimmon Cookies; Don’t make a Persimmon Life.

Bowl of Persimmons

We are new subscribers to “Imperfect Produce” which is a service that delivers imperfect (duh) but safe and flavorful veggies and fruit to your house. This helps to keep “imperfect” produce from being wasted. (https://www.imperfectproduce.com/  I don’t get kickbacks from them.)

We are open-minded about trying new things to eat so when they included a pomegranate – cool. I enjoyed pomegranate, raisin, and walnut oatmeal I invented for myself.

Buy Angry

Frugality is a tool and a weapon. You can use it to be powerful.

What?

Frugality and Privacy

 “If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product.”

When one of our kids was 8-years old, Len thought it would be fun to let that kid drive his car. I swear - though I doubt you will believe me - no drinking was involved. Len just really believes in our kids and sometimes this turns into bigger adventures than one would expect.

Did I mention the car was in the garage so it needed to be backed out? Also, the child in question was too short to adequately reach the pedals.

Mindful Chickens – Up North Weekend Edition 9/24/18

Mindful Chickens are (for people who don’t know why I call them this) about:

1. Being Cheap (cheap, cheep).

2. Being thoughtful about how choices affect our community and our earth.

3. Paying attention to the constant tumble of little things like bugs and crumbs, dollars and daily choices.

…

Several years ago our son and his wife decided that they were going to set a goal to visit every state park in Wisconsin. There are 50 state parks and they only have a few more to go; what a cool way to claim where one lives.

Tag Cloud

17 minutes Accountable apples Arrows baby balance Barkskins BeanandBerry Beauty Becky BookReport boy scout Bread BuyAngry Canada Choosing Christmas cilantro Cinnabuns circus Clowns clutter consumerism Courage creditreport death December DecisionFatigue decluttering Detroit Duty eBay Eclipse FairTrade farmer firealarm Fitness Five Flexible flu Franc FrancGarcia friends frugal Garden ghosts GovernorThompsonStatePark Guatemala guns Healthinsurance HelleKBerry History HomeRepair Honduras HouseinBlueRiver Innkeeper Interview InterviewU? InviteMe2Speak JoyceAndrews Lamb LeeLeeMcKnight Len Lincoln LockedOut MargaretFuller Marquette marriage MayaWorks MilwaukeeMarch4OurLives MindfulChickens Mistakes Mother museums must-haves New York City Nomadland OurBrother Outside Paul Hessert Penny persimmon Pies poetry Preaching privacy Quern Questions recipe recipes Reruns resolution RitesofPassage Sanctuary Sermon sewing Shepherd ShortStory sickness SofritoBandito StoryStarts Stubborn taxes teenager Thanksgiving ThePerpetualYou ThreeBillBoards tortillas Traveler Tubing vacation Valentines vanilla Vietnam VivianWokeUpDrowning vole WalkingAndSeeing war WarsanShire wedding
Ad Promotion