Huh.

Browsing through news articles shoved at me by msn.com this morning, I came across one called How to Build Your First Budget (here). Having taught myself how to budget and always feeling like I'm forgetting or missing something, I skim through such articles for tips on ways to improve upon what I do, so... "click". Blahblahblah, know that, yup, check, get to the second page and woah.

"Food: Basic groceries should cost a single person about $150 a month. You'll spend a lot more if you eat out frequently, however, or if you buy lots of processed foods, frozen dinners and gourmet stuff. Cut your food costs by bringing lunches and snacks from home. Substitute potlucks or picnics for expensive socializing at restaurants."

Um, $150 for one person for a month? That seemed a wee bit on the low side to even me, and after A. agreed with me, I dug into what the government had to say. According to the USDA's report the cost of food at home, the average cost to feed one male (age 19-50) in March 2008 was $162.50 on the thrifty plan. On the lost cost plan, it was $209.10. For the moderate cost plan it was $260. The liberal plan was $316.40. For females of the same age group, the numbers were lower: $145.80 for the thrifty, $182.70 for the low cost, $222.40 for the moderate cost, and $287 for the liberal. As far as I know, these numbers are JUST for food items, no toiletries, paper or pet products. The numbers for April 2008 haven't come out yet.

Ok, so maybe not so low, considering they did say about $150.

Still, the numbers for March looked... off... from what I based my last budget review on, so I pulled out the January 2008 numbers to compare. Despite the rising cost in everything but wages over the last five months, the USDA has determined that the average cost of food at home has gone down. Yes. DOWN. By $1-3 in most cases, between the months of January 2008 and March 2008.

Hmmm. The numbers go up between December 2007 and January 2008, and then they start falling. I have to wonder if that's because some people just aren't able to afford to eat any longer.

Needless to say, the geek in me is eager for April's numbers to come out. I'm curious to see if the average price goes up or down. Based on my budget, they should be going up because for the third month in a row I've gone over budget. (I currently budget $480 a month for two adults, one child (girl, age 11), two felines, and that $480 includes all pet food and supplies, personal grooming, toiletries, cleaning, and paper products the household may need, as well as AC filters.)

Also needless to say, I think maybe I need a hobby I can afford to actually do because I'm enjoying comparing the monthly numbers waaaay too much. (LOL)

In other news, I went walking again this morning and determined that I like the earlier (6am) start time rather than the later (almost 630am) start time of today. While it was lighter outside (meaning I didn't have to carry a flashlight), there were more cars leaving the complex and spewing noxious exhaust at me as they passed. Yuck. So we'll get up a little earlier and be out the door by no later than 610am.

I also have my car today! This means that I can go pay for the Angel Food boxes today. Assuming someone is there to take the money.

Even though I have the car today, I'm not going shopping for the baby present(s) I need to get before next weekend. I'll save that for another day. I do need to go to the library though. Apparently, when you turn dvd cases back in, they like the dvds to be in them.

After watching the plants yesterday to see how much sun they actually got all day long, I'm more convinced than ever that they need to be in a wagon (or something) so that I can roll them around to the front of the building on days when I'm home. Of course, after reading more about the types of plants that were brought home, I'm also convinced that the lady at the garden center was a wee bit delusional when she told us that the size pots we got would be fine until the very end of the growing season because all my plants need to be in bigger pots. Much bigger pots. The recommended size is "no smaller than a 5-gallon bucket". Oh, sure, they can be potted in smaller, but they won't grow well because of a confined root system. And while I would have preferred to know that before hand, the little plants can sit in the little pots for another few weeks (though that one tomato plant might need to be replanted this weekend, and much deeper). By then it'll be obvious whether or not I'm killing them, and if they're dying, then there's no reason to repot them.

And I'm off to run what errands I can before it gets ghastly hot.

Did I die? aka Ramblings of the Infirmed.

Ugh. So blogspot is being a brat today.

I went grocery shopping with my mom yesterday. I still haven't tallied up the damages yet. That will be the next task I undertake, if I can manage it. I'm not feeling up to do much today.

Yesterday I was fine. A little tired, but fine. Mom had me home in time for a late lunch, which I happily ate even though it wasn't McDonald's. I'm thinking that's where I went wrong. I think some part of the leftovers I foraged out of the refrigerator didn't settle well in my stomach. Or maybe it was being so hot outside then getting so chilled under the AC while I ate, but I still think it was something I ate. Either way, not long after lunch I got incredibly sick. My stomach was tied in knots, my head throbbed, I was alternately freezing and unbearably hot, and there was more than a few times when I wanted to curl up around the base of the toilet. Luckily, A. was able to manage dinner without my help.

This morning I woke up feeling like I'd been kicked in the stomach. My stomach doesn't feel quite as bad at the moment but now my head feels like I've had it kicked in and one minute I'm shivering violently because I'm so cold and five minutes later I'm sweating buckets and wondering why I have to wear clothes when I'm home alone, only to be wondering five minutes later how many layers of clothes I can possibly wear at one time. And forget about moving around because the throbbing inside my skull causes quite the wave of nauseousness whenever I attempt moving.

So I did what any reasonable mom would do: I made myself a little nest on couch with nearly everything I could possibly need for the day. Or at least until either A. or K. gets home. Unfortunately I can't manage to sleep, which in the long run is probably for the best because while sleeping would be great, the not sleeping later tonight would really suck. Even if my eyes do feel like they have sand in them and like they're about to bleed at any moment.

You know, except for some hot tea. I don't have any tea. Not having a tea pot and warmer, I can't have a cup of freshly brewed cup of tea without getting up and padding into the kitchen to make it, and I'd love some right now. A nice toasty cup of ginger tea would be wonderful.

Anyway...

I've been spending some of my more lucid moments today with the laptop balanced against my legs and researching container growing. I'm wanting to grow some tomatoes and possibly carrots and lettuce in some containers in the back "yard" area of this apartment unit, but, um, I'm a more than a little worried.

I heard it said long ago that you could tell how good of a mother a girl will be by how well she kept her plants. Well, I guess it's a minor miracle that my cats and child have lived as long as they have. I used to keep plants right after I got married. Or rather, I used to TRY to keep plants. I got a philodendron right after we moved into our first apartment together. I killed it. Three of them, actually. Then I tried to grow this decorative little moss thing that was popular way back when. It was... moss. On a rock. You were supposed to keep in the bathroom. I killed it, too. The Wandering Jew? Dead. The half a dozen aloe plants? Dead. The cactus garden in a pot? Dead. The little palm trees... well, one of the cats at them, so technically that one wasn't my fault, but still. Dead. You know that "science experiment" that almost every kid has done at some point in their youth where you take a piece of potato with an eye in it and sprout it in some water in the kitchen? I've never gotten it to sprout. Ever.

And here I am again, wanting to grow some sort of plant. Not just any sort of plant, mind you, but food bearing plants. I must be insane.

Besides not even being able to grow mold properly, I live in an apartment. An apartment with north- and south-facing windows, no less. What areas I do have outside - the front porch, back porch, and back "yard" - are shaded most of the time. Most of the time, but not all. And then there's the careless yard crew that's hired by the apartment complex and known far and wide for tearing up plants that the tenants put out.

Still, freshly grown tomatoes, carrots, and lettuce would be wonderful.

I think I'm rambling so I'll close this and think about logging the purchases from yesterday.

Summer, writing, and choices

I haven't been doing a lot on the internet lately. I haven't been reading forums or blogs,writing in my own blog(s), nor reading or responding to e-mail. As my excuse I say "Life has been in the way", but the truth is that I made the choice to back away from the 'net for a while. Not only did I need a serious break from the internet life, but there were - and are still - other things that I wanted to be doing with my time.

And that's what it boils down to, isn't it? The choices we make in life.

K. is out of school for the summer, and I'm wanting this summer to be a little more special than previous summers. I'm less crazy than I have been in recent years, thanks to a stabilized schedule and (more or less) regular sleep, and I really just want to spend time doing things with my daughter; things that she wants to do, things that I want to do, things that we want to do.

While it's a no-brainer choice for me to spend time with her, I'm finding that it will take more effort and work than I first thought. With limited funds (not to mention rising prices all across the board - rent, electric rates, gas, food) we have to figure out frugal/cheap ways to accomplish almost everything but staying home. We have to make choices about driving somewhere to do something fun or sitting at home and reading (or worse, watching tv). We have to figure out a way to acquire the supplies we need for projects. We have to figure out what we can make for lunch out of the food we have on hand.

It all comes down to choices. Even to the point of how we choose to react to circumstances beyond our control.

I suppose we, as a family, would be better off financially if I had continued to work all the years of the past decade, but me staying home (whenever possible) was a choice A. and I made together. If I were working, K. would be shuffled off to some daycare-type facility every day this summer. There would be no curling up on the couch together to watch the mid-morning cooking shows on PBS. There would be morning frolics in the pool. There would be no days spent sprawling at the library. There would be no impromptu visits to visit her great-grandparents - my grandparents - whom she is lucky enough to know in this age when few children know their parents, let alone their grandparents. There would be no letting K. sleep late then tickling her out of bed. There would be no early-afternoon phone calls from friends, no learning to cook, no weekly visits to the zoo to play with the stingrays or feed the laurakeets. This is the choice that I, with my husband, made: to give her these things, and so much more.

But that choice has cost us. Much of society sees our family as dysfunctional because only one parent works. More often than not I'm seen by outsiders as being a burden to my husband, judged to be lazy and worthless because I "contribute nothing" toward the finances. Yes, we would most likely already be in the house we want by now if I had been working all these years... but I wouldn't have been able to spend school vacations and summers with my daughter. I wouldn't have been able to be at home to take care of her when she was sick without worrying about my job. And then there's the pesky little feeling that I wouldn't have been the one raising her all these years if I had been handing her off to some daycare every morning on my way to work and letting them take her to school, pick her up from school, and help her with her homework or play with her until 5 or 6 in the evening when I picked her up. It's the choice we made, and as far as I know, we're all happy with it. I have to remind myself of that sometimes when I stand while being judged. While my instinct may sometimes be to react with all the self-righteous fury I can muster, the cooler part of my intellect calmly whispers that I have the choice to be better than that. It reminds me that it really doesn't matter what others think because whenever I pose the going back to work question to A. and K., both of them prefer I stay home for a few more years.

That is the choice that we, as a family, have made.

There have been sacrifices that go beyond financial measures involved with our choice for me to stay home and raise our daughter. Personal sacrifices. I gave up a career (that I really didn't like anyway, but it could have been used as a stepping stone to something I would have loved). I've not been able to go back to school (yet). I gave up adult social interaction... human social interaction (I won't call them friends because they weren't). More recently, I've had to set aside my writing because it's less important to me than fixing the chaotic mess my family has become. This is a huge blow for me. I was just starting to feel the edges of my writing groove again. It is, however, the choice I'm making.

I'm not giving up the writing completely, though. In fact, my husband just recently agreed to me registering a domain in the name I've chosen to write under. For the next two years it is mine, and with a little luck (and a lot of hard work) I'll be able to do something with it besides point the URL to the blog*spot journal I have for that name. Maybe I'll even manage to get something published.

But I know I won't be able to really work on that goal until after the summer is over and she's back in school. While this does bother me some, I'm also ok with it. It's the choice I've made. My family comes first. My daughter comes first. I know that soon enough the chaos will be calmed, and eventually my daughter won't want to spend as much time with me. She'll have learned all she thinks she needs to learn from me and will venture out into the world to make her own choices. When that happens, I'll have all the silence, peace, and time I need to write. Until then, this is my choice.

Monday Musings

I woke up feeling mildly dehydrated and in one of those "off" moods that hovers somewhere around the outer edges of bad. It's the sort of mood that makes me feel rather anti-social and often has me pulling away from people, more often so that I don't inflict my mood upon anyone or, worse, dump everything I'm feeling at their feet by venting. Things like that have never work well for me, so over the years I've learned to pull back and isolate myself when I recognize the moods coming on. This makes me something of a loner, but one that often enjoys the company of people.

Recognizing that my mood was hovering on the outskirts of some bad territory, I spent much of the day trying to pinpoint the cause of this particular round of feelings. The primary reason being that I'm really tired of feeling this way with a (close) secondary concern about me slipping back into those days when depression consumed me entirely for weeks and even months at a time. I don't want to go back to that. I rather enjoy the light of day.

One of the things I did today to try and counter this "off" mood was sit down to have a cup of tea. Not just have tea with breakfast (which I skipped - I really need to stop doing that) or have tea on hand while I work on other things. Rather, a dedicated tea time. I haven't had one of those in a while, and I do miss it. During tea time, I sit quietly and savor the tea, letting my mind relax and go where it wills. Sometimes I pray. Sometimes I read the Bible. Sometimes I just sit with my eyes closed and listen to myself breathing. On my schedule (which I also need to get back to) tea time is listed as "Tea with God" because more times that not it's during tea time that I feel the closest to Him, or maybe more precisely, that I feel Him closer to me.

Following the tracks of my relaxing mind this morning was difficult. Usually my brain will tell me what's wrong if I just settle enough to really listen, which is where tea time comes it; it helps me be still and settled enough for my brain to untangle itself and show me where the problems are. Today, though... wow. The tour my brain took me on today shows me exactly why I've been feeling so off lately and why this moody feeling has been so persistent. In short, I've overloaded myself.

I traced everything I'm feeling now back to April 21. Though I wasn't feeling well physically, I was doing fine emotionally until I got that wicked sun burn on the 23rd and had to give up (admit failure) on the 30-Day Organizational Challenge on the 26th. Things have gone down hill from there. For the first week I sat in semi-darkness, smearing and re-smearing aloe gel over the burned areas, only able to sleep in blocks of two to four hours before the pain woke me. Gradually I was able to sleep for longer periods of time, but I found myself awake at night and sleeping through the days more times than not. Though I was able to move more and was in less general pain during the second week, I was still pretty helpless, and more than that, I was useless. By the beginning of the third week, I had much of my range of motion back, but my sleep patterns were still horribly disrupted and my schedule was completely lost.

Sidebar for a little time line, because events and their ripples begin to overlap. For the majority of the second week I was suffering with that sunburn (April 29 - May 5) my eyes bothered me. On May 7, I woke late in the morning to find that there had been a stranger in my apartment while I was sleeping. On May 12, A. and I went to a Home Buying Seminar event. Confirmed pink eye ruled the time between May 11 and today. On May 18, I woke up somewhere between 4 and 5am and threw up so violently that I hurt my back. There were other things, little things, throughout the entire time period, but those are the highlights.

Now back to the tale.

I figured the trouble I was having with my eyes was from lack of quality sleep and being constantly on the verge of being dehydrated. I didn't find out until May 11 (which marked the end of the third week of sunburn recovery) that I had a mild case of pink eye that the doctor said was probably trying to go away on its own (it does that??) but kept returning because I was trying to get back to my normal day schedule and kept putting my contacts in. Pink eye sucks. Anyone who's ever had it can tell you that, but I'm here to tell you that even a mild case of pink eye sucks. All the same light sensitivity (in already light sensitive eyes) without all the redness and sympathy because "you don't look sick". The week following the diagnosis (this past week; May 13 - May 19) has left me - again - in a semi-darkened room in my glasses... which is my body's cue for me to sleep. Any progress I'd made toward getting back on schedule has been lost this past week.

Waking up to find that someone has been in your home while you were sleeping is very unsettling, and even more so when you sleep in the buff. It was "only" the bug-spray guy, but the guys hired to do the job are usually quite unsavory and I don't even let them in when I'm awake. The areas that are routinely sprayed are the kitchen and the bathroom - the two tiled areas in the apartment. To get to the bathroom, one has to walk directly past my bedroom door. So many things bother me about that day that I don't even know where to begin. My biggest question is Why didn't I wake up?? I know whoever it was didn't knock. They never knock when I'm here and don't see them coming. They just use their pass key and start to come in. Would I have woken up had they knocked? Probably. Maybe. With my sleeping patterns so off right now, I can't be sure. And that scares me. I'm not used to not feeling secure when I sleep anymore. It's playing havoc with my already out of whack sleeping patterns, and I'm desperate to get back to my version of "normal" before the end of the week when school gets out. While nothing really happened (that I know of - and I'd like to think that I'd have woken up if he'd touched me) beyond my sense of security being shattered in the street, I know that had something happened, I'd muddle through and survive. What bothers me more is the thought of what could have happened if K. had been home.. and sleeping... right next to the bathroom... and what could have happened. I try not to dwell on it, try not to think about it at all, but it's a thought that's there, buried deep inside my brain, and my sense of security is completely gone because according to the apartment management, the bug guy has the right to come in and spray even though I've asked time and time again for him (them?) not to because of my schedule. Just... never mind my right to feel safe and secure in my own home.

The Home Buying Seminar was less spectacular than I expected, and less helpful than I expected. Most of what we found out we already knew, but there were some nuggets of valuable information amidst everything we had already learned for ourselves. I guess that's what happens, though, when you have two self-learners/teachers in one household. Basically, because of those valuable nuggets of information we found, A. and I walked away from the event with the idea that we do not have to wait for another two or three years before we can buy a house. It's possible that we can afford to buy one before the end of the year. I'm not sure if it's probable or not, but it would seem that it is possible. Normally, especially in light of strangers being in my home recently, I'd see this as a good thing, but it has me stressed. I'm not sure why. It could be any number of things (being trapped at home for the past month but not being able to clean let alone find the missing documentation we need to fill out a loan application, the unsettling feeling that something bad is looming just over the horizon, the need to make sure the credit reports are straightened out but having to wait a little longer before that can be seen to, financial issues, etc.) or any combination of those things. And there's still research to do. Research that I can't get to because I'm almost a full month behind in cleaning and everything else... and trying to play catch up while still not functioning at 100% is wreaking all sorts of havoc on me to the point that I'm stalled, not knowing what needs to be done first, what's more important, what needs and/or deserves my focus the most.

I don't know why I woke up Friday morning to vomit so violently. All I know is that I did, and the vertebrae that's bothered me all my life feels like it's slipped just a wee bit out of place again. Not enough to warrant a doctor's visit (or going through x-rays and MRIs... again) because the doctor will only tell me I need to lose weight and offer me muscle relaxants (standard procedure with them, and just never mind that I've had this problem since I was 14 and weighed what the doctors said I should) but enough to be bothersome and keep me more or less immobile. And the muscles around it are all bunched up. This used to happen quite frequently when I was young. I remember being a teen and sitting in church with my elbows on my knees, hunched forward while my mother would rub that spot with two fingers - one on either side of my spine - all through services. Hunching forward like that was always less painful than sitting up straight (I could... and can... feel something grinding and pinching when I sit up straight) and her touch eased the pain further, and sometimes it would even relax the muscles enough that the vertebrae could go back to where it belonged. That's a painful "pop" but one that feels so much better afterward.

And through everything, I have to watch my husband come home from work and tend to the things that I haven't been able to get to during the day. I swing wildly between the feeling that I'm not needed and the feeling that I'm failing my family.

I feel lazy and useless.

I feel off balance.

I feel... broken.

And there's so much to do: catch up on the cleaning, advance on the cleaning, declutter... everything, prepare for hurricane season, check the credit reports, get my social security card reissued, prepare for a summer with K. at home with me 24/7 so that we're not sitting around watching tv and playing xbox every day, find the (missing?? how can it be missing??) documentation we'll need to apply for a loan to get a house, get passports for all three of us, dental appointments, doctor visits, car maintenance, upgrade the anti-virus program... and so much more, that's not even counting the recreational activities I want to be doing (reading, studying, working on chain maille, crocheting, exercising, wood burning, playing with K., etc.).

So where's the reset button? How do I stop playing catch up? Because I know there's no real way I'll ever catch up. I have to start over from this point, or some future point, in time. I got knocked off track for a month. I have to find a way to get back on track. I'm just not sure how. Right now I don't know where to start. Everything I start to do seems to be in direct opposition to something else that also needs to be tended to.

Maybe I need to stop stressing and worrying and take a break. Just throw everything to the wind and go have fun with K. at the zoo or park, then whatever I happen to pick up first when I get back gets my full attention until it's done with no thoughts about anything else that needs to get done.

So, how off schedule am I?

I mentioned in my last entry that I was completely off schedule because of the sun burn I was suffering through recently. Part of my healing process is lots of sleep. Unfortunately, while it was great for ignoring the pain and healing, all that 'round the clock sleeping I did for a week threw me way off schedule. Some may wonder, "How off schedule could you possibly be?" Well, let me tell you.

I went to bed at 6.30 (edt) this morning. It took almost an hour before I fell asleep. The last thing I remember is sighing at the cats and asking them why I wasn't asleep yet when I looked at the clock and saw it was 7.07am. They both purred at me and snuggled a bit closer, and I was asleep not long after. I didn't get out of bed until just after 12.30 (edt) in the afternoon.

That's how off schedule I am. I'm supposed to be getting up between 4am and 5.30am, and I've not even slept yet by then! I'm back to this schedule where I'm up until dawn then asleep until noon(ish).

So what if my schedule is a little off and I'm keeping vampire-ish hours? It may seem like nothing, no big deal, to a lot of people, but it matters to me. When I sleep half the day away like this, I feel lazy. Never mind that I was up all night puttering around, picking up this bit of clutter and fussing with that bit of laundry (ok, ok, or reading). I feel like I've wasted half the day I could have spent doing... anything... with my family. I get frustrated because we could have gone on a picnic, or to the zoo, or on a photograph hunt, or... anything. But no, I was sleeping. Again. Because I was up all night. Again. I get angry with myself (and snap at people around me), then I start feeling like a failure because I can't even sleep like a normal person. And try as I might not to have them, it's just such unbidden and unwelcome thoughts that always lead to a depressive episode that has me out of commission for days, sometimes weeks. Human emotions are just weird that way. We can't always control them, no matter how hard we try.

I do believe I'll have to do something drastic in coming days to snap myself back to being diurnal. The only questions are Which day? and Do I snap this cycle by sleeping through a full day and night, or do I do it by not sleeping at all one day? Both would work, but both are bound to produce a most unproductive day - either because I'm asleep or because I'm doing zombie impressions - and the not sleeping option is sure to have me whining about being tired, suffering a headache, and snapping at people unnecessarily because I'm so tired that my patience has curled up somewhere in the corner of my mind to take a nap without me. Both will leave me feeling groggy and out of sorts for a few days, but with reinforced sleeping patterns (where I actually go to bed at night whether I'm tired or not and get dragged out of bed by 5am, no matter how little sleep I managed to get) I'll be better off in a week or two.

Whichever course of action I decide upon, the bottom line is that I need to be diurnal. If I were alone, with husband and child, the whole nocturnal thing would work. But I'm not, so I must be diurnal in order to give my family the attention it needs.

And sun burns aside, seeing daylight and being outside, being in the sun every once in a while is just good for me.

Excuse me? I'm...what...??

It doesn't happen often anymore, but still I get the occasional flaming email from someone feeling the need to judge me based solely on my decision to be a stay-at-home mom. That's right, you heard me. Based SOLELY on my decision to be a stay-at-home mom.

Apparently, according to this latest... ahem... person, I am not only completely undoing women's lib but I'm also validating men's beliefs that women are "no better than stupid brood mares not fit for anything but a life of sex and servitude". Apparently, according to this... person, I am giving up "all rights as an individual" and becoming "completely dependent on a male" to run my life for me.

Apparently this... person... doesn't know me. At all. Or any stay-at-home moms, for that matter.

I could go on a wild rant about this, but I'm not. I'm exercising my self-restraint, and rather admirably, too, because believe me when I say that this is a subject I can RANT about. I will, however, make just a few observations (for which I'm sure I'll be thrashed wickedly by someone or another):

• Stay-at-home moms work. Anyone that doesn't believe this should shadow me for a week. And I'm on the "easy" end of the spectrum; I have only one child (which is limited to one "extra" activity a semester) that goes to public school, I live in an apartment, and I don't do near as much baking/cooking as some stay-at-home moms I know.



• Most of the women that "give up" their "identities" don't see it as such. At most, they see it as trading one identity for another... when they bother to think about it at all. That's not to say that there aren't some rather resentful stay-at-home women out there, but they still make the choice to abide by whatever circumstances make them feel that way.



• Stay-at-home moms aren't stupid. They weren't stupid before they made the choice to stay at home to raise their children and dedicate themselves to their family, so why is it that people think they're stupid after that choice is made? Our brains don't switch off or fall out, yet for some reason, once that choice is made, people - both men and women - treat us as if we are stupid, as if our brains have indeed fallen out, and our opinions and thoughts cease to matter, no matter what they may be. Surprisingly, this is an attitude we stay-at-home moms periodically have to battle against within our own homes, too. Surprisingly, there are some husbands that occasionally forget how smart their wives are.



• Women that are so intensely critical of those women that do make the CHOICE to stay at home are no better than the men in our government today who are taking away women's rights over their own bodies. (naamah_darling has a wonderful entry here about those men, and just for the record, I am and always have been pro-choice... meaning that while I don't believe abortion is right, I will fight to the death for any woman's RIGHT TO MAKE THAT CHOICE for whatever reason she may have.) These women seem to forget that just because our fore-mothers fought so hard for women's rights and women's liberation, not all women want to be the all-powerful super-mom proving we can do it all. They wouldn't dream of forcing a woman to have a child against her will, or staying in a marriage she didn't want to be in against her will, or taking away any other freedom of choice rights women enjoy today... yet they're all too eager to condemn a woman for making the choice to stay at home to raise her children. How long, then, will it be before women actively aid in taking away a woman's right to choose to stay at home?



• It's amazed me time and time again that so many employed women (whether they be married or single, have children or don't) find it offensive that another woman makes the choice to quit her job to take care of her family. As a woman that made that choice, I've been called "selfish", "a traitor to [my] gender", "stupid", and many more things. I've heard the same frustrated sighs (and occasionally confused sobs) from other women who have also had such words flung at them because they made the choice to stay at home. Yet no one - and believe me, I've asked - has ever been able to tell me WHY we offend these women so much. More than once I've been told I am too stupid to understand so they wouldn't waste the time and effort to explain it to me. Is it just because we don't hold to the same beliefs, ideals, and priorities that they do? Or is there something else going on there that I'm just not seeing?

There are undoubtedly more observations I've made over the past decade, but I'm starting to slip into rant-mode and that's not a place I want to go right now.

Grocery Budgets...

I've spent the past few hours browsing the forums at Frugal Village and a few threads are really intriguing me. In a few places throughout the forums, I've seen people saying that $450 a month to feed 3 people is entirely too much. Maybe I'm misunderstanding them since I lump all my paper products, toiletries, health/beauty supplies, and cat stuff in with my grocery money.

Since the first of the year, I've had to increase my grocery budget from $400 a month to $480 a month. For three people and two cats. We haven't changed our eating habits for the worse, in fact, we've been eating better - more fresh fruit and vegetables, more salads, less meat, less pasta, more rice, organics when the budget allows - but in the past six months I've seen the cost of regular 2% cow milk rise nearly $0.60 per gallon so that it's now anywhere between $3.50 and $4 a gallon, depending on where I look... and that's not even the hormone free/organic milk the kid loves so much! I've watched as the price of apples often sores to over $3 per pound. Bananas are often $0.50 or more per pound. Salad greens - romaine, leaf lettuce, even iceberg lettuce - are usually $2 or more a bunch, and for the three of us it usually takes at least 3 bunches for one week.

Am I shopping in the wrong places? Am I living in the wrong place? Sometimes I wonder.

I believe this topic will need further thought. Right now, I need sleep.