It's Official

We got it in writing on Wednesday ... the office is closing much sooner than we expected.  My last day at work will be December 30th.  Happy New Year.

My first thought was "I'm glad I didn't do much Christmas shopping yet."  My second was "I'm glad Big Guy is still working."  I'm ashamed to say it took me until the third thought to feel badly for N (our office manager / supervisor), who has a little one at home and whose husband's work has been somewhat sporadic lately (not his fault in the slightest, the work just isn't there).

So, here I am again  -  job-hunting in an economy that's as unsettled as it was the last time I was laid off, with even bleaker prospects in my particular field.  

And in a corporate move that really adds insult to injury, I get to spend part of my remaining time at work training my replacement!  Now, I'll do the very best I can with her in the inadequate time I have  -  because honestly, even if she spent a month sitting with me all day every day, it wouldn't be enough to teach her everything.  But a couple of hours a day on the phone isn't going to cut it, and I feel badly for her.  I'll do everything I can for her  -  none of this was her doing, and I'm certainly not going to throw her under the bus just because I'm not happy with upper management.  I have to admit, though, that there's a not-so-nice part of me hoping that said management will shortly come to realize how badly they shot themselves in the foot with this particular decision.  I'm also deriving a bit of satisfaction from hoping they all lie awake every night through the holiday season, feeling guilty about their execrably poor timing and the effect it's having on all of our families.

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Yesterday's gathering went really well, even though there were some last-minute no-shows.  We talked and laughed and ate  -  and  ate  -  and ate  -  and enjoyed each others' company.  I ended up pressing containers of food on everyone to take home, because there was so much more left than I expected.  There are still enough leftovers that Big Guy and I won't have to make work lunches until at least Wednesday, and today I asked him to please not make anything large for tonight's dinner because there is no space in the fridge for any more leftovers!

Now it's time to get creative with gifts.  The stocking stuffers will be easy  -  traditionally, everyone gets socks and a chocolate orange (addictive, those!) in their stockings, so there isn't too much space left to fill.  A trip to the dollar store will take care of the stockings nicely, and with luck provide a few other gifts.  Thrift stores are always good too  -  in fact, Value Village is daughter P's first choice for gift cards!  I raised her well ... I just wish I'd known a couple of months ago that the layoff was coming; I would have made time to make more gifts myself.

I'll spend this afternoon redoing my shopping list, and shop on my way home from work every day.  We have Friday the 23rd off, so anything I haven't acquired yet will have to be picked up then.  Friday evening is Chinese food and Miracle On 34th Street with Mom and sister S, and Saturday is for wrapping and tree-trimming, and watching White Christmas and The Muppets' Christmas Carol and the original Grinch and Alistair Sim as Scrooge.

So ... my house is cleaned and decorated (except for the tree), I have plenty of homemade goodies on hand, and a plan for an affordable holiday.  I'm more determined than ever to enjoy my family, count my blessings, and not let a little thing like unemployment stop me from having a wonderful time!

It's Been A While

Actually, it's been a little over a month.   That's because every time I sat down to post, I ended up going into such a Woe-is-me rant that I shut it down again.  Nobody wants to read weeks of me just moaning and whining about how sorry for myself I'm feeling.

Anyway, here, in no particular order, are the events that kept me from posting anything worth reading until now:

My uncle A died.  It was expected; he'd been very ill for a long time, and I think everyone heaved a sigh of relief that he's no longer sick and in pain.  But at the same time, it was very sad  -  he was the "baby" of my Mom's family (and I think kind of her favourite sibling; they were close), and even those of us who weren't as close to him as we would have liked were sorry to have him leave us.  He was only a few years older than Big Guy; my cousins are closer in age to my daughters than to me, and both have little ones themselves.  It just doesn't seem right that they won't grow up knowing their wonderful, funny, loving, kind, wise grandfather.

I somehow managed to dislocate two fingers in my sleep.  How the heck does that happen?  And in doing so, I also tore the cartilage, and tore the skin on one knuckle just enough for infection to get into the joints.  So I ended up with a honkin' big awkward splint, and two weeks' worth of antibiotics.  Now, antibiotics and IBS are definitely not a good combination ... I'll spare you the details, but believe me, it got ugly.

Halfway through my round of antibiotics, Big Guy got an abcessed molar and ended up on penicillin himself.  It's true what they say about the effect of penicillin on the digestive tract ... and we have one, count 'em, one bathroom.  Let's just say there were a few exchanges of less-than-polite language and leave it at that.

When I went to start doing my holiday cards, I discovered that I'd completely forgotten to clean my favourite fountain pen after the last time I used it.  I had to soak it in water for four days to loosen up the dried ink enough to take the pen apart and clean it properly before I could reload and use it.  Every time I drained the water, shook the pen, and put it in fresh water I felt like an idiot.

Last Tuesday at work, we were informed that the line will be cancelling its Pacific Northwest services mid-February, and "some time between now and the end of February" our company (the agents for the line) will be closing down all their Canadian offices for good.  Hello, unemployment.  Again.  Only this time, I don't know when the axe will actually fall, and so don't know what to plan for.  Of course, come Monday I will once again be sending out resumes and cover letters  -  and this time, I'll also be sending out a flyer advertising my services as a freelance temp.  With the current state of the economy, it's anyone's guess how long I'll be out of work this time.  And this time, I won't qualify as "long-tenured", so I'll only be eligible for five or six months of E.I. instead of twenty months.

But ... I'd hardly done any Christmas shopping yet, so I'm able to scale back my spending budget quite severely without feeling too much hardship.  (Although if I'd known a couple of months ago about the impending office closure, I'd have done this year's craft fairs after all!)  The family party will still be here; sister S has already delivered the gingerbread, and has promised one of her "signature" party dishes.  My second batch of shortbread is in the oven and making the house smell festive, and last week's winds brought down enough evergreen twigs, branches and cones that my decorating will be almost effortless.  And... ta-daa! ... I found the candy canes, so I got to cross them off the shopping list.  The rest of the groceries are in the house, I remembered where I stashed the holiday cookie tins, and I found a super-easy recipe for pumpkin tart filling.  Oh, and J has offered to leave work early on Party Day and whip up a big platter of her killer spring rolls! 

So life isn't so bad after all.  I'm still blessed with family and good friends, I still have a warm, dry home and enough to eat, and I'm blessed with loved ones who understand that this season is really about how we feel, not about how much money we spend.

Kicking It Up

October, in retrospect, was a pretty lazy month for me.  For whatever reason, I had no energy and no motivation; I just couldn't seem to get myself going.  I'd look around at all the things that needed doing, and all the things I wanted to do, and then fritter away the time on things that didn't really need to be done just so I could fool myself into thinking I was actually accomplishing something.

It wasn't until Hallowe'en was almost upon us that I managed to pull myself out of that rut ... actually, to be honest, it was Big Guy who got behind me and shoved me out (without knowing that's what he was doing).  I'd pretty much decided to skip the whole Hallowe'en thing this year  -  no pumpkins, no candy handouts, just me and a good book on the sofa.  But when I got home from work Friday night, he proudly showed me the three gorgeous pumpkins he'd scored on his way home that afternoon, and at that point  could hardly say "That's nice, dear, but I'm not doing anything with them" ... So out came the stencils and paring knives, and by Monday afternoon there were three fairly decent jack-o-lanterns on the front porch waiting to have their candles lit, and a big bowl of (nice but cheap-on-sale) candy to hand out.

So today I'm cooking and pureeing the pumpkins, and toasting the seeds.  I think by the time I'm done I'll have at least two dozen pints of pumpkin in the freezer, and the toasted seeds will be a nice snack later when my friend D arrives for our usual Saturday video night.

I've started my Christmas planning too  -  this year will be my first time hosting the annual pre-Christmas family-and-friends open house, so in addition to my usual notebook lists of things to do and to shop for, there's a new page for party menu planning.  It's always nibbles and dessert-ish things, not a full meal, since people come and go throughout the day.  So far I'm planning to have:

spanakopita wedges
smoked salmon with dill mayo on baguette rounds
vegetable gyoza (maybe)
cheeses and cold cuts, with French bread and butter
edamame
the usual assortment of pickles and olives
shortbread, gingerbread, and sugar cookies
pumpkin tarts
mince tarts
lemon pound cake
coffee, tea, soft drinks


And I won't be spending as much as you might think.  Our local supermarket deli sells trays of cheese and cold cut "ends" for cheap; Costco has excellent, affordable gyoza, edamame, and pre-made spanakopita in the freezer section; our neighbour trades us his home-smoked salmon (fabulous stuff!) for firewood (which we get free), and I'll spread the baking out over several evenings after work.  No booze, since people will be driving.

Our tree won't be up yet, but I can do some nice decorating with fresh greenery from our own trees and the ivy I'll have to cut back by then anyway, and my stash of holiday-scented candles.  Fir swags along the mantel, bowls of fresh pine cones and shiny glass ornaments, and bouquets of candy canes in my crystal snifters ... quick easy decorating that will be almost completely free ... the only bought elements will be the candy canes, which we get every year anyway to hang on the tree  Oh, and a fire going in the woodstove, with the doors folded back so all can enjoy it.

I guess the best way to describe October might be to say that it was kind of a "burnout" month for me.  Or possibly a short-lived episode of depression  -  which I've never been diagnosed with, though it does run in my family.  I didn't feel depressed, really, so much as just really tired.  And I did have a low-grade sinus thing going on all month ... So, depression?  Virus?  Overwork?  I don't know, and probably never will  -  I'm just glad it's over!

Am I Redundant?

I've been doing a lot of blog-surfing this past week  -  not just catching up on old favourites, but following links, googling odd thoughts, looking for more information on anything that looked interesting  -  and I'm amazed at how many bloggers there are who are thinking the same things I am, and doing the same things I am.

Am I redundant? Repetitive?  Am I doing the blogger's version of carrying coal to Newcastle?

I don't believe so.

Everyone does things their own way.  A hundred people may be heading for the same goal but getting there by a hundred different paths.  Or as my grandmother used to say, "There are as many ways to make meatloaf as there are people who make meatloaf."  And none of those ways are wrong.

I've learned a lot from other bloggers.  Not just different methods, but different points of view; sometimes even different reasons for doing the same things.  Some of us are just trying to save money.  Some of us are just trying to save the environment.  Some of us are trying to do both.  Some are all-out do-everything-humanly-possible-and-then-do-more types, while some are chipping away at changing their lifestyles bit by bit.  There are radical one-day total life makeovers, and there are one-thing-at-a-time ease-into-it gradual evolutions.

Now, I don't want to open that old can of worms about whether ends justify means.  But it seems to me lately that I'm seeing a number of bloggers who are surprised that working toward one goal has had effects that spill over into other areas.  And I guess what bothers me is: why didn't they foresee any of that spillover?

Decades ago, I set out to find ways to provide the best possible life for my small daughter that I could with a ridiculously tiny income ... we were so far below the poverty line we couldn't even see how far over our heads it was.  But we managed.  I managed.  We ate healthy and stayed healthy, our home and our clothes were always clean and neat, and we had fun.  To me, it was a serendipitous side benefit that we were living so "lightly on the earth", as the saying goes.  We didn't just recycle  -  which was pretty much unheard-of as such back then  -  we re-re-recycled.  We used and re-used everything until there was nothing left of it to use.  We put out almost no garbage  -  because we couldn't buy anything that would produce garbage.  We shopped at thrift stores (they were called second-hand stores then) and cheap produce markets.  We walked almost everywhere, especially to the library every week.  

And how could living like that not spill over into health and environmental areas?

No money = no junk food = eating fresh healthy food = minimal packaging = minimal trash.
No money = no unnecessary appliances = doing things by hand = less resources used.
No money = walking everywhere = healthy exercise and fresh air.
No money = minimal spending = re-using or buying used = more useable items kept from landfills.

Win-win!

Even so, I've learned a lot from other bloggers  -  about creative ways to save money, to use fewer resources, to make what we have go farther and do more  -  and I hope that maybe someday I'll hear that someone out there learned a little something from me.  If karma works, maybe I'll give someone an "Aha!" moment like the ones I find in other blogs.

Redundant?  Repetitive?  I don't think so.  I'm not just parroting the current "popular wisdom", or following someone else's practices to the letter.  I'm doing what most of the other bloggers I read are doing  -  telling my own story, in my own words, and hoping that something resonates with someone else the way those other bloggers' words often do with me.

 

Changes

Small changes first ...  I've removed the money and projects sections from the sidebar.  The money sections because I got to feeling that I was only doing it to pat myself on the back, which smacks of gloating or boasting (both very unbecoming).  The projects sections because, frankly, it was too discouraging.  There are just too many projects I want to tackle that can't be done because of a shortage of time and/or money, and too many that can't be started until a gazillion other things are done first.  Whenever I looked at the blog, instead of being pleased with what I have accomplished, I was disheartened by all the things I haven't.  So those sections just didn't work for me the way I'd hoped they would.

And the big change ... a major change in myself.  A change not in what I do but in how I think about it. A change in how I react to what goes on around me.  A change in how I choose to feel about, and deal with, life in general.

Up to now, when I've talked here about the green/frugal stuff that happens at home, I've said "we".

The truth is, it's mostly me.  Big Guy humours me a little; he dutifully shovels compost onto the garden and puts his newspapers in the blue box, he goes through the grocery flyers and asks me if XXX is a good price to pay for peanut butter, he takes all his beer cans to the depot to get his deposit back.

But ... although he says he "hates waste" ... he wastes so much ...

Time.  Money.  Food.  Water.  Energy, as in in gas and electricity.  Energy, as in flying into pointless rages over things that don't matter or can't be altered ... like the traffic, or the weather.  Any combination of these things.  Perhaps the most frustrating to me is his habit of buying all kinds of materials for projects that actually need to be done, and then talking endlessly about the projects without ever actually doing anything.  Case in point: the basement.  We've been talking for years about turning the unfinished part of the basement into a family room.  We have all the insulation, all the wiring/outlet supplies, all the lighting fixtures, all the shelving, flooring, wallboard, paint ... I've been chipping away at cleaning all the junk out, getting rid of what we don't have any use for any more, organizing what needs to stay, and so on.  Every time I ask him what needs to be done next, he insists that he can't do anything until "everyone gets their crap out of the way".  Guess what?  Ninety percent of all the "crap in the way" is his. I don't tell him that, though.  I just go on quietly working toward the day when I can gently point out to him that it's all his.

What scares me the most when I think of the future?

Him.  I love him like crazy, I have for almost thirty years, I always will.  But I worry that the time is coming when that love won't be enough.

He doesn't see money and debt the way I do.  I see money as a tool, to be used as wisely and efficiently as possible in order to have the life I want.  He sees it as what the world owes him to do whatever he pleases with.  When I decide I want something, I look for the best price and I save up for it.  He needs instant gratification  -  he sees something, he wants it, he buys it, he'll worry about how to pay for it "later".  I see debt as something that eats up energy and resources I'd prefer to put to better use elsewhere.  He sees it as a fact of life, something that everyone has and something that he will always have because that's just the way life is. 

Another thing that's starting to worry me arises from the dark side, if you will, of his declared hatred of waste.  He comes from a family of impulse shoppers and hoarders.  And I'm seeing the tendency developing in him.  Oh, not to the extent of some of his family, but it's there, and it's edging into problem territory ...

Our old dishes and cutlery were mostly mismatched pieces from the years before we got together.  Yes, it would be nice to have dishes that went together, to have knives & forks & spoons that all matched, but there were more important things to spend the money on.  We'd wait for a good sale on something we both really liked ...  Well, the sale happened.  We agreed on a set of silverware and bought it.  But then he went back to the sale and bought three more sets!  One more set went into the kitchen drawer, one set went into the camper, and one set he put away "for spares".  I hope we never need the "spares", because he can't remember where he stashed that third set.  Pretty much the same thing happened with the dishes; he's always had the mindset that if one of something is good, six must be six times better.  But we can't ever get rid of the old beat-up useless stuff we've replaced, because we might need it someday, we might buy a summer cabin in the woods someday, the kids might want it someday ... It's the same story with sheets, towels, lawn rakes, you name it.  If he dies first, I stand to make at least a year's worth of mortgage payments just by holding a tool auction!  As of the last count he has forty-three work shirts, eighteen pairs of sweat pants, three dresser drawers full of socks, and twenty-two plaid jackets.  Twenty-two.  Plaid.  Jackets.  Oh, and nine pairs of steel-toed work boots.  I don't think I have nine pairs of shoes unless I count in my gumboots!

So what does all this have to do with the "big change" in myself?

I've changed how I react to it, how I let it affect my actions and my feelings. I've realized that I can't change Big Guy, I can only change how I cope with the way he does things.  I can stop stressing about how he deals with money, and focus on what needs to be done that I can deal with on my own.  And I can concentrate on all the qualities I love in him, instead of the traits that frustrate or anger me.

When we make a shopping list, I keep it to what we need that's on sale, I go through my coupons, and I try to go with him so I can encourage him to stick to the list.  I can't stop him from impulse buying in the grocery store when he goes by himself, but I can make sure he eats before he shops.  I can't make him get rid of anything, but I can insist that he find a home for it where it's not going to be in the way of something we need to do or to get at.  I can't make him do things ... but I can quietly just go do them myself.

Like I said, I love him.  And I know he loves me.  But it's kind of sad, sometimes, to think of all the ways in which I'm now living my life around him instead of with him.