I think I had the most decadent vegan day possible today! Keep in mind I live in the Middle East, in a country where I’m lucky to see 5 organic products a week. I just helped a dear friend move back to the USA from Canada. We did some much needed “new place” shopping today. We started the day off at Whole Foods, came home and ate a delicious vegan taco for lunch, followed by vegan chocolate chip cookies. I then laid down and took a 3 hour nap. When we woke up, we did a little work around the apartment and then set out to dinner at a wonderful independent vegan restaurant here in her new hometown. I had vegan mac & cheese followed by vegan shepard’s pie for dinner with unsweetened iced tea and lemon. (Most perfect meal EVER.) We then came home and moved boxes for an hour. I finished my evening with a couple heaping scoops of coconut milk ice cream and have spent the last hour browsing vegan shoes for yours truly and her daughters at boutiques online. I swear I don’t do this every day but for today it was heaven! (Note to self: when you have a bad day come back and remember this one!)
The Wump World
As the daughter of an elementary school librarian, with unlimited access to the 10,000+ books at my mom’s library, I had a pretty rockin’ story time growing up. One of my favourite authors was Bill Peet. My favourite book by him was The Wump World and I read it over and over. (I do a pretty good wump! wump! noise during key scenes.) Eventually, I got my own copy of the book and stopped stealing borrowing the library copy.
Its story line is a classic one. The beautiful Wump World and its resident wumps are taken over by the greedy Pollutians whose only thought is for more, more, more and they never realize what they’re doing to the Wump World. When they have thoroughly trashed the world, the Head Pollutian sends scouts off to find another world for plundering and polluting. Once the Pollutians have left, the wumps come out of hiding only to find their once beautiful planet destroyed. Is there any hope left for the Wump World? You’ll have to read it to find out!
I have now passed my copy onto my daughters who get a great kick out making Dad read it over and over. Just as I have passed the book along, I look forward to passing its message along as well, especially in our family. We are all dependent on each other and on our earth. Our actions resonate far longer and louder than we could ever comprehend. Let’s make ‘em good ones.
So next time you are in the mood for an eco-friendly story time, take a look at The Wump World!
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A hallway full of open doors
I was talking with a good friend last night about moving on. She, as of next week, will be leaving the starving student lifestyle behind for a university position down South. We met and connected during the leaner years and I will be helping her with the big move. We waxed poetic about old times and I mentioned how bittersweet it is to go through such a drastic life change. In one sense moving on, but in the same breath, leaving something else, very real, behind for good.
Her family’s adage is: when one door closes and another opens, all you want is a hallway full of open doors. Isn’t that the truth?! I love it.
Perhaps it’s just this stage in life , but I feel like I often pine for a past piece of time. Some of them are happy memories, some not, some are things that I never experienced, a missed opportunity, that I feel I should have had. It’s not that I hate where I am now, but I can’t help but wish to be able to be here and there.
The funny thing is: it’s not the place that holds on, it’s the time. The ‘hallway full of open doors’ as it were, isn’t a hallway to different places on the map, it’s a hallway to different places in life. Time is what we miss most.
It’s not healthy to live in the past, nor is it wise to be too invested in the future. I’m here, now, for a reason, and I’m grateful for it. Still, it’s a lovely mental picture, no?
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“When it’s cancer, you care more”
Or something like that, as Jillian Michaels says. This seems to be her favourite byline for getting people on reality television to realize the error of their ways in consuming large quantities of soda, Taco Bell, cigarettes, or processed peaches. It’s syndicated telly people, alcohol and prozac pay the commercial tab. Though I’d sooner give myself a root canal than sign up for this particular “15 minutes of fame,” I can relate to the want now, pay later attitude. Watching all of this play out on television, and the obvious psychosis of the individuals involved, gives me the “oh shit” chills.
When it’s cancer, you care more. Right?
I can’t stop. I love it. I can quit when I want to. I’ll do it tomorrow. This is the last time, I swear. Just this once.
Today I looked at myself in the mirror. I have a couple moles on my face that need to be removed. Nothin’ serious, no worries. I dreamt about my mother dying last night. My mother died of cancer in 2007.
When it’s cancer, you care more. Right?
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Cool Budget on Daily Worth
I discovered Daily Worth today, which is a site dedicated to money management tips for women. I love the idea of practical advice with pretty pictures delivered daily to my email doorstep, so I eagerly signed up. While surfing around the site I came across this fantastic looking budget plan which is aptly named the ‘Save to Spend Plan.’ Finances is another area of my life that I am looking to simplify.
My husband and I are at that strange period in life where we finally have the funds, job, and time to really think beyond paying next month’s rent. Having nailed down the proverbial “1st job out of grad school,” we’re now Canadians living the American Dream in the Middle East… I think…
However, I’ve come to realize that having more money also means having more money to keep track of and bills have a pesky way of multiplying when you reach this stage as well. Suddenly kids, student loan repayments, and insurance for everything you could ever think of become a monthly cycle of “money in, money out.”
Complicating this even further is that my husband I come from completely different financial backgrounds. He grew up with depression era raised, uber (and I mean uber) thrifty ranching parents. And, well, I didn’t… So finding middle ground on the financial question has been shaky at best.
So with credit card debt, parental debt, student loans, and retirement, not to mention all of the good things like: house down payment, braces for the kids, a vacation now and then, and some savings, I still remain an optimist who would like to simplify this jumbling barrage of financial commitments down into a meaningful, productive, and yes, simple plan.
Enter ‘Spend to Save’. 5 categories, 4 of them savings oriented, 2 of which can be spent on a monthly basis as desires and needs dictate. On a monthly basis, 10% of income goes to retirement, 10% to long term savings like down payments, new car etc, 10% to short term or emergency needs, 10% to fun and frivolous, and the remaining 60% to monthly living expenses. 60% didn’t seem like a lot at first, but when I saw the numbers: 60% of a monthly income of $4000 is $2400, which is pretty close to what my old complicated budget predicted anyway! Plus, with this plan, the savings part is in a completely different category! Potentially 80% of your income could be spent in any given month depending on wants and needs! And I’m not going to lie, $400 dedicated totally to fun every month sounds great! Personally, we can accommodate our debt payments in the 60% allowed for living expenses and I think that we might potentially take 5% of the short term savings chunk and put it towards accelerated debt repayment.
The point, at the end of all the % this, % that, is that it’s doable and surprisingly simple when viewed in a pie chart rather than a paragraph! I’m really looking forward to trying this plan on our finances and seeing if it makes a difference in simplifying our wants and needs into a productive, usable system!
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Between Salt Lake City and Burning Man
I’ve been having an identity crisis, as many self-inflated, bourgeois gits do, for as long as I have been able to find irony in the previous moniker. Moving to a place so foreign to my innate sense of self though has been a wonderful, terrible wake up call of sorts. (For clarification, my family and I currently reside in the Middle East.) I won’t pretend that even as globally educated as I thought I was, the move wasn’t a shock. What I’ve discovered however is that the perpetual cold water hasn’t been the religion or language barriers I was expecting. Specifically, my beefs are with the bloody, God-awful traffic and homicidal drivers and the serious jones for materialism that permeates here like a bad stench. I love Islam, I love the people, I detest the oil and the lifestyle it funds. And funnily enough, that’s what the West and the Middle East have in common. We can’t get enough of the stuff!
I know by now, anyone reading the title and the first paragraph of this post is in the midst of a geographical conundrum. How do Salt Lake City, Burning Man, and the Middle East come together? For me it is in the quest of a simple life. While my beef with the Middle East is material, my desire for simplicity extends much further in a spiritual sense.
I’ve been watching the BBC documentary series Around the World in 80 Faiths hosted by Anglican vicar Peter Owen Jones. In part 5 of the series, he goes to America and through his travels sees a variety of homegrown religions/spiritual movements in the Bible Belt and Western USA. Two of these are the Mormons and the Burning Man Festival, held annually in Nevada. Since I have a personal history in the LDS faith, I was curious to see how they would come across in comparison to so many other faiths. True to official, public form, they were perfectly manicured and well spoken. Posit this if you will against 3 nights at Burning Man. As Peter Owen Jones astutely pointed out, these were opposite ends of the spectrum, especially since Burning Man doesn’t self identify as any sort of specific religious or spiritual experience.
The romantic in me couldn’t help but smile at the differences between these two thoroughly American examples of ‘spiritual experience’ held up for anyone watching BBC (or YouTube) to absorb. And I realize that I fall somewhere in the middle. Like No Impact Man, the little ‘wild at heart’ in me loves the liberating extremities of Burning Man and no electricity. Realistically however, I don’t think that degree of liberation, physically or spiritually, would be a viable, healthy, long-term way of life for me. Likewise, I have lately found the doctrine and the lifestyle of the faith I have practiced to be too confining and abundant in answers and lifestyle recommendations for the way I want to connect with God and my life.
Thus, I find myself living in the Middle East but intentionally somewhere between Salt Lake City and Burning Man, and regardless, on the quest for a simpler life.
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No Impact Man
I watched this documentary tonight and fell in love. Actually, not with No Impact Man, better known outside of the telephone booth as Colin Beavan. I fell in love with No Impact Family, especially Michelle, the reluctant, plucky NYC gal who joins her husband on a year of eco-ascetisism. Except that in giving up her Marc Jacobs, refrigerator, and tp (yes tp for toilet paper) for a year brings on a whole new life and language for the family. I was amazed to watch how the communication between Colin and Michelle changed throughout the year.
It was particularly poetic to have one of the final notes of the film be Colin realizing that community is the most important part of changing our collective and individual ways of living and co-existing with our fellow beings and the planet. It’s not the most brilliant film ever made, but unlike other change-the-world wannabes like An Inconvenient Truth, which features Al Gore turned Shock Jock and a lot of lies, damn lies, and statistics, No Impact Man is pretty real. He’s just a zany guy who decides to see how far he can push the boundaries of no impact living (and his family’s sanity.) And the results are documentary magic and ironically thought provoking. Check out the ongoing projects of No Impact Man on his blog.
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