simple and cheap

several weeks ago i blogged about how i came home from wherever i had been to find a for sale sign in my front yard. at that time, i was all about putting off moving until there was a firm offer on the house. i am over waiting until the offer comes. i am in no way interested in having to vacate up to 7 people everytime the realtor wants to show the house. besides, my mom has "her shows" in the evenings and doesn't like us intruding on them (her home was our refuge during the showings).

the house we have been in for the past year is rather on the large side. it is an much older home, but very spacious. not to sound ungrateful, but i hate it. it's too big. there is too much to clean. it's too much to cool and in winter you can't get it warm. this summer (which has been ridiculous hot) the second floor where my big kids rooms are have been almost unusable due to the heat. we have lots of unused space in the living and dining areas, so it doesn't have a homey feel. plus, it is a huge chunk of our monthly income.

i was ready to try out rv living, something tim wasn't quite ready for. keeping simplicity and sustainability in mind (both very important to tim and i), we decided on a 2 bedroom/2 bath older home. actually, it was all that was available in the neighborhood where we currently live and wanted to stay. it is two blocks from our current location, so again we don't have far to move (our last move wasn't even off the block, we just moved from one end to the other).

i know you are gasping at putting 7 people into a two bedroom. people, it is possible. luckily, our kids value simplicity. they understand the give and take. the home has a roomy dining area that once enclosed, will bring the bedroom total to three. i'm just thankful for the two bathrooms. we have lived small in the past, but never with two bathrooms!

so, here we go again. i have every hope that we will be here for at least three years. long enough for me to finish the degree that i have been working on since 1992 and to further establish my place in the donut world.

super fly

sit down. are you sitting? i need you to be sitting for what i am about to type.
okay, i am the owner of a pair of sketcher shape-ups.

the above pair is very simillar to the pair i now own. if my camera had batteries i could show you my actual pair. they are a (orthopedic) beaut.

turns out the donut biz is a very physically demanding world. after my first day i was basically disabled. my legs and ankles hurt like i had used them for the first time. i am truly ashamed at how little i use my body. apparently, you need to use your muscles more vigorously than walking from the bed to the recliner and back to the computer. say what?

my mother, who is also a proud shape-ups wearer, promised me that these shoes are an absolute miracle. they would allow me to be on my feet for 8 hours on a concrete floor, stooping, bending and lifting and my legs, ankles and feet would think they had been caressed in a cloud of pink cotton candy while tiny cherubic baby angels frolic near by. i tried to resist the pressure my mom was applying. i stood my ground while i tried on 3 pairs of nikes and 1 pair of saucony's. the shape-ups were the most comfortable of the 5 pairs i tried on. i do think that having only 3 hours of sleep the night before left me weak to my mother's power. she's my kryptonite.

i don't know if i would agree that they are like walking on cotton candy, they DO make me taller tho. they claim that they improve posture. lord knows i need help in that area. i tend to be a hunchback. hooray! i wont need boniva in my future! thanks shape-ups (sorry sally field). another boast is the firming of your abdominal area. uhh, no way am i going to believe that shoes with a three inch rocking sole are going to tighten my "i birthed 6 children" abdominal area.

word.

i don't know how this donut thing is going to work out for me. i should not be allowed to ever touch a cash register. even when every single button is clearly marked. i should also never be allowed to make change. even when the exact amount of change that i need to give back is clearly displayed about a foot from my face.

i thought i had a good memory. i don't know if it is because i am learning so many new things, but my retention lasts about 7 seconds. i am supposed to take an order, repeat the order as i am taking it and then repeat it again as i am handing it to the customer. this is not going so well for me. i take the order, repeat the order as i am taking the order and then my mind goes completely blank. i mean nothing. i haven't gotten a repeat back to the customer order correct yet. not even one time. in other words, i have gotten a customer order repeat back correct zero times.

who would have known that donuts would be the most difficult job i have ever had? gosh. oh well, if i get fired, i will still have my shape-ups.

donuts aren't the only thing rising in my life. when i came home the other day there was a for sale sign in our yard. our lease was up in july and the owner wants to sell the house, so i guess we are moving. since 2006 we have moved 5 times. i think that makes us nomads. time to invest in a yurt? seriously, the thought of finding another home and then moving to that home is really close to exceeding the bounderies of my sanity.

i think i am going to see how this thing goes before i start freaking about finding another house. we are supposed to get 24 hours notice to show the house. there is no way that 24 hours would allow me the time to get even MY room ready to show to a potential buyer. after experiencing my room, all he would have to do is open the under stairs cupboard (imagine harry potter at the dursley's) and sniff. it smells like musty farts, mushrooms and dead body. i am going to roll the dice and see just how long we can ride this thing.

i will keep you up to date on the status of my job, how my shape-ups are working and my house (not) hunting.

doughnut freedom

several months ago i quit my corporate job. i was miserable. the corporate kiss ass world is so not me. i am NOT a kiss ass. i am the opposite of a kiss ass. i don't give a flying *f what people think of me. i really don't. lots of people say that, i mean it. i don't care. i might not have it all figured out, but i do know that i don't need to be working anywhere that i have to wear slacks. my "i don't give and *f" attitude doesn't go well with working for "the man". i tend to want to do things my way and "the man" likes things done his way.

i wanted to be at home with my kids. i wanted to be a part of their lives again, to know what was going on with them. they are all teenagers, so i was feeling the urgency to reconnect before they left us. tim had finally gotten a REALLY stupendous job and we are good at treading the waters of one income.

so, here i am. at home. actually, i am at home from 11 am on. i missed working a bit and really wanted some extra income to eventually squirrel away. so, i am working from 3:45 to 11. that is am, folks. what am i doing from 3:45 to 11 am you ask? i am making doughnuts. i wanted something that i could do and still be at home. doughnuts are not life or death. doughnuts are not so stress laden that you have to come home and be in a vegetative state for the entire evening to recover from your day. doughnuts don't mind if you are having a crappy day. doughnuts aren't petty. they don't stab you in the back, play games, gossip, stir up shit, put you on an action plan or send you home for wearing capri pants. doughnut's don't care what you wear to work (as long as you are wearing the appropriate t-shirt) and they don't talk, they can't yell.

for me, doughnuts equal a certian amount of freedom. the freedom to have income, but on my terms. i can be perfectly comfortable in my jeans and doughtnut shirt. i am not ashamedly trying to cover my beloved tattoos like they are in someway bad. the ring in my nose is completely acceptable. my dreads are embraced since my hair needs to be covered with a headwrap of my choosing anyway.

i know many people wont get it. they will feel sorry for poor melissa who is 36 and still doesn't have her life together, she has to work in a doughnut shop. to those people i say "i don't care what you think. you are narrow minded and materialistic. i know that i don't have to work a minimum wage job. i am perfectly capable of going back to medical billing, coding and insurance. there are PLENTY of jobs out there in thoes areas. i am aware that i could be making more than twice what i am making now. thanks for your unwanted sympathy".

for those of you who do get it, i am excited about my doughnut liberation.

* the use of the letter "f" instead of the word fuc out of respect for my mother who raised me better. i do use the f word quite frequently.

green smoothie

part of my daily routine is my green smoothie. i feel actual guilt when i miss my green smoothie, so i try not to. these pictures are of the smoothie i had today. it's very green. the reason it's so green is because i used half a box of baby spinach to make it. the straw is glass. it's from glassdharma, check 'em out!

here's whats in my usual smoothie

• 1 orange


• 1 frozen banana


• 2 cups of no sugar added frozen fruit blend


• lots and lots of baby spinach. like i said above, i use about half a box of the baby spinach that you can find by the bagged salad.


• filtered water

sometimes i play with different variations. if i have fresh pineapple i add some. it makes the smoothie very sweet. yesterday i did blueberries, banana, orange, pineapple and spinach. yum!

green smoothies are an easy way to put good stuff in your body and it's a staple if you are eating raw. i highly recommend green smoothie revolution if you want to find out more about the benefits of drinking green smoothies and hundreds of recipes (even smoothies for your fur children).

you spin me right round, baby!

saturday brennah, kam, kass and mara headed to round rock for our first meet up with the austin hoopers. it was a blast. bren, kam and kass all suprised me with a natural hooping talent. the instructor also gave us examples of poi. of course, the girls tried their hand at poi and when they found out that fire is often involved, they were asking for poi lessons.


we are looking forward to our next lesson!

achieving peace

school is out, summer is here. time for deschooling! my foremost goal for this summer is peace. peace in the home. peace outside of the home. peace in our universe.

bip

i want to start this post with a shout out to larabar. about a month ago they announced that they were retiring pistachio and if you went to their website you could register to win a fare thee well pistachio prize pack. which i quickly did, and won! i love larabars. they have no more than eight ingredients (all of which you can pronounce) and are gluten free, dairy free, soy free, vegan and kosher. they are so delicious. try one. don't think, try. below is a picture of my prize pack that arrived in the mail today. it included 1) a uber cool rubber band with the larabar logo that will be worn by me as a bracelet. 2) a larabar pistachio tee shirt, also cool. 3) a larabar logo sticker (love it!) and 4) 4 DELICIOUS pistachio bars. i can't for the life of me figure out why they are retiring this flavor? i must believe that there are other incredible flavors on the horizon to make up for pistachio being gone.




it is already really hot here in central texas. this morning i sat out with my mom at her place (kinda like a retirement village, but with some younger people lightly sprinkled here and there) having a community garage sale. luckily we were in the shade as we listened to roger miller sing "king of the road" way to many times. at a quarter to 11 i told my mom that i was done (no one had come by in a while) and began to pack up, once again convinced that the effort put into a garage sale is not worth the profit or maybe my stuff sucks?

my personal goal for this summer is to try new things. i am really bad about not wandering out of my comfort zone, but i am ready to change all that. our town is pretty small and not very progressive. thank god austin is just down the road! i am already committed to hooping classes on saturday's in round rock. brennah, kamrynn and kassidy have graciously agreed to go with me. if they like it, there are enough of us to form a family hooping act. i will let you know if we decide to take it on the road.

there are other things that i would love to delve into, amature photography is one. i would love to be able to more beautfully document our family times. i am looking at several certification programs for natural/holistic health. in september i am going to train to become a birth doula. i would also LOVE to attend rethinking everything conference if we can come up with the bucks to fund a family of our size. i want to try vegan for a month (no cheese....will i survive?)

if i am going to impart a love of learning for a lifetime to my children, i need to model it.

1995

Close your eyes,

Have no fear,

The monsters gone,

He's on the run and your daddy's here

Beautiful,

Beautiful, beautiful,

Beautiful Boy,

Before you go to sleep,

Say a little prayer,

Every day in every way,

It's getting better and better

Beautiful,

Beautiful, beautiful,

Beautiful Boy,

Out on the ocean sailing away,

I can hardly wait,

To see you to come of age,

But I guess we'll both,

Just have to be patient,

'cause it's a long way to go

A hard row to hoe

Yes it's a long way to go

But in the meantime,

Before you cross the street,

Take my hand,

Life is just what happens to you,

While your busy making other plans

Beautiful,

Beautiful, beautiful,

Beautiful Boy,

Darling, Darling, Darling Nate.

saturday soapbox

when i was a child i played outside. i would wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, put on my seafoam green, ultra short sports shorts, a shirt and no shoes and head out the door. i would magically reappear at lunch, ravenous from play. with my appetite sated, i would be back out the door, my mom telling me to be back before dark.

i would freely roam my familiar neighborhood. sometimes alone, sometimes with a pack of other urchin children. most times these hours of open abandon would be on (bare) foot, others on the back of my purple bike with the banana seat. there was little to no supervision, no boundaries, no limits to how far i could go. i just had to be home by dark. i remember it as a magical time. free and innocent.

this afternoon tim and i were sitting on the front porch watching my brother tim's (my brother and my husband are both "tim") kids and mara playing in the sandbox husband tim just made and set in our front yard. everyone was playing peacefully after being admonished gently to not dust sandy hands off over each others head.

i am embarrassed to say that we don't know our across the street neighbors very well. it is a rent house that has a pretty high turnover. normally tho, we do make it a point to be friendly with the people around us. so, as we are sitting on our porch preaching peace, here comes the across the street neighbor.

the reason for her visit was to report to us that she had been researching sex offenders in our town and wanted to let us know that we have several that live mere blocks from us. she even had a hand written list of the accused to prove her case. she said that she knew that our girls (referencing the twins) are always outside and that if it were her girls that were roaming the streets, she would want to know. we politely looked at her list, told her thanks for the information and that we would pass it on to the girls.

i am so not about fear. i am not about living in fear. i am not about putting fear into my children. i am about information. i am appreciative that my neighbor is concerned for the safety of the kids in our hood. i will remind the girls that there are people close by that could do harm to them. what i wont do it keep my kids in the house in an effort to protect them from the bad people. bad people could be anyone, not just the sex offenders. i wont scare my children out of their wits, making them completely phobic to come out from under our wing for fear of some horrible, terrible demise that must surely be awaiting them right out side our door.

talk to children. let them know that everyone is not kind. that everyone does not have their best interest at heart. that there are people out their who will hurt them. push play on "stranger danger" and rewind/repeat often. don't live in paranoia. with all the bad that is constantly thrown at us it is easy to forget all that is wonderful about our world. a world kids need to get out and live in. would i sanction kids leaving the morning with only "be back by dark" as their only guidance? no, probably not, but i am not going to over parent either.

hair and omelettes

i have had my dreads close to four weeks now. and it is a love/hate thing. i love not having to "fix" my hair. prior to dreads, i didn't exactly have a taxing hair routine. i washed my hair. i blew it dry. i put some stuff in it (not expensive stuff, more like mid-low priced). then i would straighten it with my mid-low priced straightener. i never got my hair cut every six weeks. counting the frequency of my hair cuts in months would probably be more accurate. needless to say, i have never been a hair girl.

now that i am no longer working and have (baby) dreads, i spend even less time on my hair. having 4 other girls in our home, they were more than happy to take my brand new blow dryer, the mid-low priced straightener, my brushes, and even the cheap product off my hands. i replaced those items with 1) my bottle of almond liquid dr. bronner's, 2) a bar of knotty boy dread shampoo, 3) a various array of bandanas and head wraps and a slew of heavy duty ponytail holders. i wash with either or both soaps every 3-4 days or until i just can't stand my scalp itching anymore. good bye conditioning, brushing, straightening, drying, and good riddance to caring.

all that seems so positive (to me at least) what could possibly be the negatives? uhhh, i live in texas. it's hot. it's may and we are already hitting the mid 90's. my head is hot. there is also the aforementioned itching. dread's have zombie tendencies and like to eat their neighbors, so i have to make sure everyone is separated and playing nicely. you don't even want to see me with out the head wrap and the rubber band. as my brother put it "melissa, your hair is really fluffy". it's beyond fluffy, it's enormous (that's what she said).

i am cool with the negatives. the positives far out way them. to not have to deal with my hair is groovy. it is time i can spend doing something else that is far more worthwhile, like julia childs showing me (via youtube) how to make the perfect omelette. julia, i followed your instructions and my omelette turned out perfect, thanks dreads and thanks julia.

looking up

things are starting to look up around our place. we have had kinda a tough year, but we got some very much needed very good news on friday. a heavy weight has been lifted off my chest and i can breath again!

as i wrote earlier, many changes are afoot. tomorrow morning will be our third sunday at our new church. we have been attending vista community church and really enjoying it. it is casual and laid back. the worship band is amazing and the preaching is relevant and applicable. the best part is no one looked at us twice when we entered last sunday. we are pretty non-conforming and that attitude extends to our physical appearance.

we let everyone, including mara, choose their own clothing. mara decided that she was most comfortable in her skinny jeans, ugg boots and a red and white stripe tank top. i wish i had taken a picture. she marched right up to her sunday school room and went right in. not one person commented on her choice of outfit. my brother has also been going with us and that has made it even better.

tim is out of town this weekend. we aren't apart very often but, i know he is enjoying a little break. little breaks are nice. i am looking forward to him coming home in one sleep!

learnin'

homeschooling is nothing new to us. we homeschooled for a number of years until we had a family catastrophe that caused the children to have to enter public school. when i began to rethink how our lives were being played out, bringing the kids back home was at the top of my list. kamrynn and kassidy having typical junior high angst was the straw that broke the camels back on that topic.

in our former homeschooling life we used a very popular literature based curriculum. it was this particular curriculum's catalog that i immediately requested when the decision to bring the girls back home was solidified. as i was pouring over the catalog, i quickly remembered my particular school at home achilles heel.

i LOVE the idea behind using books to teach. i love to read. i love to read aloud to my kids. my kids love to listen to me read to them. perfect fit, huh? here's the kicker, i am HORRIBLE at consistency. i have the worst time ever at following a laid out plan, even the ones already scripted for me. i also struggle with keeping a daily schedule. i am a very free spirited person. i also have adhd (no, i don't medicate, adhd is what makes me uniquely me). schedules, lesson plans, scope and sequences, scripted lessons, and just about anything that resembles traditional learning is not for me. i abhor any kind of busy work, workbooks, research papers, penmanship for penmanship's sake, and repetitive drills of any type.

then god himself opened the sky above and allowed me to see through unfettered eyes exactly what he had in mind for our family. tim and i were watching tv one evening and came across "radical parenting" on discovery health. to be honest, what got us watching was the promise of a segment on attachment parenting (ap). we are an ap family and were glad that the positive message of ap was getting some media time. what intrigued me most though was the portion on unschooling.

my curiosity was piqued. up until that fateful night, i had only heard about unschooling and i hadn't heard that much. the next couple of days i googled all the info i could on the subject. i ordered some great books and perused unschooling blogs. and right now i am gleaning all the information on the process (or lack there of ) of unschooling. the unschooling ethos matches our family/parenting philosophy very closely and because we already embrace ap, we are pretty much already unschooling.

i can't wait until the kids are done with school so we can begin to begin de-schooling.

everything changes

this last year has been a roller coaster. up, down, up, down, way down, loop d' loop. there have been many factors that have caused this amusement park quality of life to reign at our house. the factor i want to blog about is the one that i am personally responsible for.

writing this, i am on the cusp of 36. by cusp i mean three days away. to some, i will still be in my mid-thirties. to me, i am in my late thirties sprinting towards 40. a year ago this month, i started having a great awakening. it began with my health/weight and spiraled out of control from there. i don't know if it was a midlife crisis, but it was something. i needed change.

so, change i facilitated. i have lost weight (and am still loosing), quit my rat race job that made me feel so disconnected from my family, completely altered the way i eat, am on the road to spiritual recovery, accepted wholeheartedly what my outward appearance has always wanted to be, reduced our living to the bare minimum, and embraced simplicity.

i am so excited about where this new path is going to take us. tim and i have so many dreams and thoughts that we are kicking around. dreams that will help us to live even more simply, more freely and more naturally. peace.