Doing Good: Share a Little Comfort

Right now, if you click on the link at Share a Little Comfort Kraft will donate one box of mac and cheese to Feeding America. Yay!

Define splurge

I've been reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and one of the (many) things that struck me was an offhand comment about Amish friends of hers. My rough paraphrase is, You can tell a lot about someone based on how they define the word splurge.

Now, I'm not suggesting I am as self-possessed and simple as the family in the book. I like things. I like good chocolate, I like my Roomba. On a global scale, I am more spoiled than most people in the world.

But my needs aren't too great either.

When I started talking to people about what I wanted to do with my summer off, I told them that the first thing I wanted to do was pamper myself for a little while until I felt better. People told me it was a good idea and started asking myself how I intended to pamper myself. Was I going to get a massage? a pedicure? some good wine?

Umm, no. All I really wanted was to curl up in my bed in the afternoon with a book. Maybe a cup of coffee. And for lunch I wanted to saute some vegetables from my CSA basket before they went bad (and to eat them without a 10th grader hitting me in the back of the head with a grape).

I'm not perfect, and I think my goal in life is to become the kind of person whose splurges are always this simple, but it makes me smile to know that in some things I can already be so easily pleased.

Ways to Save Money this summer

So, once again it's summer and I find myself with plenty of free time and less than plenty of money. Oh, I have some savings, but I have no full time job nor am likely to especially soon. More time, less money, means it's a great time to start refocusing on ways to save.

• Turn off the lights. Maybe turn off the computer too. It's amazing how much energy we waste during the course of a day.
  
  
• When I'm home by myself or when we're both going out, turn the air way up (or off altogether). I really don't like the way air conditioning feels, and I'm willing to be a little warmer. I can wear shorts or drink ice water. Also, I need to check the thermometer on my porch and open the windows when it's cooler out than in, and batten down the hatches when it's hotter.
  
  
• Hang my laundry. I've never done this before, but I'd imagine it'll dry very quickly in the 100 degree weather.
  
  
• Cook from scratch. During the crazy last month of the school year, we ate out a lot. A lot. I plan to change that this summer. I would like to go even further, though, and try making yogurt,cheese, pasta, and more of our bread.
  
  
• Use up the stockpile. I'm moving in the relatively near future so it's time to stop buying so much and start using it up. If I wasn't moving, I'd be reluctant to use up (or I might have to rebuy everything at full price), but I'd still try to use down a little to get through the income gap.
  
  
• Find fun, free things to do. Since we live near a college, there are lots of free lectures and forums, and I am relatively sure there are some free outdoor concerts and movies too.

Anyone have any more great suggestions on things I can do this summer?

Gruaduation Day

Yesterday was graduation day at the high school where I teach, and since I won't be back next year it felt like graduation day for me too. Right now, I am filled with mixed emotions, maybe even more mixed than those of the graduates. I told several of my seniors, who were the first class I taught 3 years ago when I started, that at my own high school graduation I had expected to cry and then realized that I was in fact ready to move on. One of them came and told me afterwards that I was totally right, that she'd had no need for tears. I, on the other hand, cried buckets.

I don't know if that means that I'm not ready to leave, that I just haven't accepted yet that I'm leaving, that their graduation makes me feel old, that I cried because I'm so proud of them and their many accomplishments (which I am), or just that I'm an old sap and Pomp and Circumstance still makes me get a little weepy like it did for most of my high school career. I've never been especially good at change, and even though I tell myself that I'm ready for this one, it still comes at me all of a sudden.

But yesterday wasn't about me. It was about the graduates, my first little darlings, and all they've learned and achieved. It's scary to watch them turn into such mature and likeable adults (and some not so much), but at the same time it gives me a certain sense of peace and calm. I know that it's time for them to go out into the world, and that they are ready and will do great things. If anyone asks me any time soon why it is that I love being a teacher, the answer will be fairly easy.

In need of more simplicity

Recently, Heather of Simple, Green, Frugal gave a talk on Voluntary Simplicity and it really got me thinking. The general crux of her post was that you need to decide what things in your life you really like and what things you really hate, and then find ways to increase the former and decrease the latter.

For me, the first group would include things like drinking tea and coffee, preferable with one or two very close friends, in the middle of the afternoon; reading a good book; cooking fresh meals from scratch, and knitting and sewing. The latter group would include working (well. . . not everything about working, but certainly the paperwork, office politics, faculty meetings, grading essays), waking up early, waiting in lines, putting things away and driving. I've been thinking a lot about this lately and ways to do more things I love and fewer things I hate. I think the truth is that a good deal of my time is spent doing things I neither love nor hate, things I nothing, like watching trashy TV shows and aimlessly surfing the Internet in a futile way to self medicate my exhaustion and frustration. I think it's time to start practicing more awareness of what I do with my time and finding things that I can painlessly eliminate.