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!

Can't Buy Me Love

I've been seeing Christmas commercials on television for a couple of weeks now, and Christmas advertising everywhere.  Come on, people, can't you let us get through Hallowe'en first?  Isn't life hectic enough, doesn't time already go by fast enough?

When our daughters were children, we had a yearly ritual.  During the last week of November we'd make up a big calendar covering the first 24 days of December.  We'd plan one getting-ready-for-Christmas thing to do together every day.  Shopping trips, wrapping sessions, sending cards, baking, decorating one room at a time ... twenty-four days of fun, togetherness, and anticipation.  The to-do for Christmas Eve was always "hang stockings, make cocoa, and watch 'White Christmas' " .

But now ... they're all adults, with jobs and lives of their own.  The pre-Christmas calendar has become a list in my notebook, the decorating and baking are what I do in the evenings after work, the cards get done on my lunch hour at work.  Shopping is done in one marathon trip through Metrotown, made only slightly bearable by the close proximity of my Mom's place; I shop till I can't stand another minute of crowds and noise, go up to her place to deposit bags and swill coffee, and get my second wind before heading back to the mall for round two.

For the record  -  I'm not shopping just for gifts.  Most of my gift accumulating actually happens throughout the year, when I finish making someone's gift, or see something I can afford that I know someone would really enjoy.  This trip is also when I pick up all the baking supplies, cards and stamps, extra groceries for the family get-together and Christmas dinner, whatever craft/knitting/sewing supplies I need, last-minute stocking-stuffers and thank-you gifts, and whatever else is on the regular shopping list for the next two or three weeks.  It happens either the last weekend in November or the first weekend in December, and its ultimate purpose is to make sure I don't have to shop for anything else (except milk and fresh produce) until after Boxing Day.  (It's also the first time I will buy mandarin oranges; to me, they're Christmas oranges, and I refuse to eat them before December.  I'm just odd that way.)

And it's not just Christmas.  It's Easter, Hallowe'en, Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Grandparents' Day, Secretaries' Day, Bosses' Day ... I'm sure I've left some out.  It's all the artificially created, overinflated "holidays" whose only real purpose these days is to be used by retailers to encourage / persuade / guilt-trip us into spending money on things.  To convince us that overspending is the only way to show someone we appreciate them.  To make us all believe that true love can be measured only by how many dollars we lay out.

What's the best present you ever received?  I'd bet anything it wasn't the most expensive present you ever got, but the one that warmed your heart with how much love went into something that was truly, uniquely you  -  the one that made you realize how much the giver cared for you and thought about you.

So here's something to think about ... when you're shopping for Christmas gifts this year, are you thinking about how much to spend on each person?  Or about how best to show them you love them, you listen to them, you pay attention to what they like or don't like?  Do you want them to measure your love in dollars and cents, or in time and thought and caring?

Three Weeks On A Roller Coaster

I've been struggling to get this post done for about three weeks now, and I'm still not sure exactly why.   True, I've had a lot going on in the real world, but I've been tired before and still managed (mostly) to post as scheduled.  It's been three weeks of inner and outer ups and downs ... at work, at home, and with both my physical health and my moods / emotions.  But I've blogged through those before, too.  So what's different this time?

The weekend after my last post was our office move.  Not a bad thing in itself  -  the space we were in was far too big for just the six of us, and the new office not only fits our needs better but is in a much nicer building, with a gorgeous view of Coal Harbour and Stanley Park.  True, it means getting a bus to and from the downtown Skytrain in bad weather  -  it's a lovely walk on a nice day, though!  -  but that only adds about ten minutes each way to my commute, and the views alone are worth it.  But the moving process itself was fraught with frustrations.  On the Friday, we had no phones  -  that was the day our phone service was shifted to the new office.  And naturally, in spite of spending two weeks warning everyone (and adding a warning to our e-mail signatures) that we'd have no phones on Friday but would still be in the office and reachable via e-mail, we were deluged with offended e-mails complaining that we weren't answering the phones ... sigh.  Then on Monday, we had phones but for most of the day we had no internet.  Now, literally everything we do, every program we use, is internet-based.  So we could take calls, but that was pretty much the only thing we could do.  And within an hour of finally getting the internet working, our booking system went down for the rest of the day ...

The weather has been cold, wet, and gloomy.  One or two nice days, but overall not pleasant at all.  I did manage to salvage enough apples for a dozen quarts of applesauce, but the tomatoes are pretty much a write-off, and nothing else even tried to grow  -  except the ubiquitous chives!  I don't think they can be killed!

Right after the move I caught a nasty cold, probably from one of the all-too-numerous people on the Skytrain who think it's okay to cough in other passengers' faces.  Nothing too serious, but by the time I got home every evening I was feeling pretty washed-out and used-up.  I kept my germs to myself, and didn't give the cold to anyone else, which pleased me.

As I expected, nothing more happened in the basement until literally the night before the installers were coming to replace the furnace.  I'd already moved everything I could handle without help, and having Big Guy lose his temper with me because he actually had to shift his big heavy things himself ... let's just say his running commentary was not well received.  However, during the whole process I did get four more big bags of donations weeded out, and I'm still working on adding to them.

If I'd been told when they started that the furnace guys wouldn't be finished the same day, I think I might very well have packed a bag and spent the weekend at my Mom's place.  Ditto if I'd known that Big Guy had not, after all, lined up a gas fitter to reconnect the gas lines after the installation was done.  Yeah ... two days with no heat, no hot water, no stove, and all the microwaveable meals we'd bulk-cooked and frozen were inaccessible because, apparently, the best place to pile all the toolboxes, spare furnace & duct parts, etc was on top of the chest freezer.  I suppose it could have been worse  -  I still had my coffeemaker.  Still, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for lunch and dinner two days in a row didn't do a lot for my mood or my digestion.  He finally did find a gas guy willing to come out on a Sunday afternoon, so at last we have heat, hot water, and a working stove again.  The best part?  I'll get to watch our winter heating bill come in at not quite half of last year's, since the new furnace is more than twice as efficient as the old one.  And it's so quiet you can't tell it's on unless you stand on a heat vent!

Righteous indignation being a great motivator, I got a lot of cleaning and clearing-out done in my workroom over those two days ... the family refers to my bouts of anger-based activity as "working furiously".  I'm not quite ready to post the "after" pictures yet, though (you can see the "before" pics here).

My birthday had its ups and downs, too.  Mom got me the lecture series on geology, tectonics and climate interrelationships I'd been  jonesing for, and daughter J gave me beautiful flowers and a gift card to Chapters  -  she knows what I love!  Big Guy brought home three birthday desserts  -  he said he couldn't remember what I like and wanted to cover all the bases, so there were cheesecake, Nanaimo bars, and a coffee-almond torte.  Seriously?  Almost thirty years and you don't know what I like for dessert??  So I was torn between being charmed by his thoughtfulness and resentful of his lack of attention.  And then I felt guilty about the mixed feelings.  And later I felt more resentment, and more guilt ... he'd bought me not the one fall hoodie I wanted, but two  -  black and super-dark brown, just like I wanted   -  but he didn't bother unfolding them or looking at the tags, so they are both about three sizes too small.  And he promised we'd go exchange them today, only now he's suddenly "too busy".  Busy with what?  Reading a cookbook.  Yes.  He's decided he wants to deep-fry our Thanksgiving turkey.  Should be ... interesting. 

I've decided to scale back a bit on Hallowe'en this year.  We'll still put up some creepy fun stuff around the front door and hand out treats, but I just don't feel up for our usual all-out over-the-top decorating.  Partly because this year everyone will be at work all day except me, and I want to use the quiet time for more appropriate Samhain reflection.  And partly because Big Guy's job has lasted months longer than it was originally supposed to and we don't know when the axe will fall and want to spend as little as possible on non-essentials as we prepare for his layoff.  Oh, and of course we'll do several pumpkins  -  which will get cut up, cooked, and frozen the next day, as usual.  I've never cared for pumpkin pie, but I make a pumpkin-cinnamon-raisin loaf that's very popular with family and friends.  I might even give some frozen pumpkin puree to sister S for her pies, if she asks nicely!

Next weekend the guinea pigs will come inside until spring; the indoor cage sits in front of the living room window, so they still get fresh air and what little sunshine there is.  Now that we have three of them (female-free-to-good-home, we couldn't resist!), the old indoor cage is far too small.  Luckily, the vet clinic daughters P and J work at was tossing a perfectly good indoor cage big enough for all three, so she called, Big Guy drove to Kits, and the pigs have a nice roomy safe space until they go back to the outdoor hutch next spring.  And the price was right  -  free.

Yes, even though J is back to cooking full-time, she's decided to hang on part-time at the clinic for as long as she can stand to; she wants to get those student loans paid off quickly, and more power to her!  Like me  -  and unlike Big Guy  -  J sees debt not as just a to-be-expected part of life, but as something to be dealt with and eliminated as soon as possible.

I got a letter from Visa last week, telling me that they had doubled my credit limit.  Since I never ever carry a balance, it really doesn't matter; whenever I use the card, I go online as soon as I get home and transfer the same amount from my chequing account, so my statement balance is always zero.  And I only take the card shopping when I know in advance what I'm going to buy and how much I'll be spending.  I suppose I'm fortunate in that I've never been tempted to be a buy-now-pay-later shopper ... I just don't like to carry large amounts of cash.  It's good to know, though, that if a true emergency arises I have enough credit (I hope) to take care of whatever it is.

Right now, though, I have to go deal with three loads of laundry and a grungy kitchen floor.

Projects And Updates

Yes, I know it's been longer than usual since my last post.  I could go on about getting caught up in other things, or delayed by events outside my control, but the truth is I just kept putting it off until here I am, a week later than I planned.

It's true that a lot has been going on here  -  some of it good, some not so much.

I'll start with a good thing  -  a finished project.  Yes, a sweater is actually finished!  And here it is:

Please ignore the mess behind it  -  the "get-the-workroom-cleaned-up-and-organized" project is not going as quickly as I'd hoped.  But hey, one finished project is better than none  -  isn't it?  And the second sweater is almost finished; I just have to assemble it and darn a few ends in.  So maybe  -  with luck and hard work  -  more things will get done.

This year's food garden was almost a complete loss, thanks to uncooperative weather and steady rain through almost all of pollination season.  So far we've managed to harvest one stalk of rhubarb, two tomatoes, and a handful of chives.  The apple tree, however, contrived to bloom during the only dry few days we had all spring, and the apple crop was so abundant we were afraid branches would snap from the weight of the apples before we could pick them.  One five-gallon pail at a time, they're coming into the kitchen to be canned as applesauce.  We'd hoped to slice a bushel at least and run them through the dehydrators, until we realized that every one of them has had at least one bite taken out of it by the squirrels.

Every.  Single.  Apple.

You'd think that after the first, oh, hundred or so bites, the furry little buggers would have figured out that all the apples taste the same, but no.  Apparently our squirrels, while handsome and sometimes entertaining, are not very bright.

And the basement project is almost at a standstill through no fault of my own.  Or anyone else's, really ... accidents happen.  It's not my co-worker's fault he had a bicycle accident last weekend.  But because of that, instead of having a week off to really clear out the basement, I was called back into work.  Yes, I'll get the days off some other time ... but probably not until next spring, since we are coming into the busiest / most hellish time of year for my department.

This slows the basement work down rather seriously, since the only time left for it will be weekends, when Big Guy always manages to have something "more important" to do and I can't move the big heavy things that need to be moved without his help.  Why do they need to be moved?  So that our huge old clunky noisy 43 % efficient furnace can be replaced with our new (still in its wrappings in the basement) small quiet 93 % efficient furnace.  I would really love to see that happen before we actually need to turn a furnace on again this fall, but I know if I leave it up to Big Guy it will be at least another year before anything happens.

So my plan of attack has morphed into a plan of sneak attack.  I'll be down there in the evenings clearing out all the small stuff, and on the weekends I'll just cajole him into helping me with just one or two large things at a time.  Wish me luck!

In other news, J has rounded up two potential roommates, and their plan is to find somewhere to rent by the end of October.  We'll miss her, and the move to paying rent will slow down her debt repayment plan, but I can understand her reasoning.  She's working two jobs now, one full-time and one part-time, and the almost-two-hour commute each way is killing her.  She goes to work, comes home, sleeps, and gets up and goes back to work, seven days a week.  Living closer to work will give her a little time to actually have a life.  Maybe even get some laundry done ...

This project has had side effects, of course.  Big Guy is not happy with the last "baby" leaving home, of course.  And all the bins and boxes of her stuff from the basement and the attic will be all over the living room until she makes time to go through them all and do the keep-trash-donate sorting.  But ... the day after the last of her possessions leaves that big sunny front bedroom, I'll be in there with a bucket of paint!  That room will become my new workroom, this little 8-by-11 room will become the den / guest room, and she already knows that if things go south and she has to move back in, she gets the den and not her old room.

Some people have said I'm unnatural, or a bad mother, for actually wanting my nest emptied ... but hey.  She's twenty-six, she has a good education and a good profession (chef) ... it's time.  Time for her to spread her wings in the real world, and time for Big Guy and I to be able to sit back, watch our girls all out on their own and independent, and know that we did a good job as parents making sure they could make it on their own.

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.