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.

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….

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?