Everybody’s talking about Wall Street.  Every morning we all read the news to find out what bank collapsed today, check on our IRAs, 401Ks and our stocks to see what kind of money we have lost now.

I feel terrible for all the people who have lost lots and lots of money lately. All the good, hard working Americans who have been dutifully giving half their paycheck to their 401K or IRA, only to be watching that money disappear now. Many of them were probably about ready to retire. We heard about all the folks after Enron collapsed and felt for them - this is bigger than Enron. Heartbreaking.

More sad are all the people who have been foreclosed on, or who have had to walk out of their homes and hand the bank the keys because they couldn’t make those payments after the rates increased on them. For many in Florida, it wasn’t just that their mortgage payments doubled, but so did the cost of insurance, electricity, gasoline and taxes. A person can only take so much.

Even my little neighborhood in my little town has seen foreclosures. One was a lovely family that was struggling after their third child was born. Now they’ve moved in with her mother, the house sits empty, and the grass is two feet tall - this is hard to see after knowing how he always worked to keep that yard so neat and tidy. I miss seeing the kids playing in the backyard, and the mom sitting on the swing on the back porch, watching them play. You don’t often see children playing outside anymore, or a parent willing to watch them. It’s just really sad.

Which brings me back to my topic. What’s all this running around for, anyway? We in this culture work hard in school so we can get a good job, where we again work hard so we get noticed by the boss and get a good raise so we can afford a big house and a nice car and all the trappings and start a savings plan and put money away so we can retire and finally enjoy life. We are barely ever home with our kids, we are barely home to enjoy the homes we work so hard to pay for. And we eat processed crap because there is no time to make a real meal. We’re tired all the time, we take Ambien to make us go to sleep and drink a quart of coffee to wake us up.

Who designed this treadmill?

A friend and I were out riding our bicycles and I was talking about how I am taking a break from doing jobs I don’t love but that pay well and instead doing things I like and being a little broke, but happy. I said I felt like life was too short to run around and work my ass off instead of enjoying life. Don’t get me wrong - I’m definitely working my ass off between four jobs, managing a garden, cooking meals, keeping house, hanging laundry on the line, making as much as I can around the house and processing food for winter. But I love it. I really do. My rewards are many - I love, love being at home. It’s all these little intangible things, like seeing how the sun enters my kitchen in the Fall, something I’d never seen before. And other things too - like the self-reliance thing I talked about a few posts ago. I don’t feel dependent on consumerism to make things work at home, I can make them.

Back to the bike ride, my friend says, you know, it took her until she was 50 to realize that she would never be a millionaire, would never have a maid to clean her home, and that life was slipping away from her. Part of the influence in her realization was her parents. They worked until they were in their 70s, planning on doing lots of traveling when they retired. They retired and… they were too old to travel anymore. All that work and saving, for what?

Which is probably what a lot of people who are sadly watching their portfolios shrink are asking too.

I’m not saying “live for today and spend all your money” - but I do think we should live a little bit, each day. I’ve realized now that I know how much I love making fresh dinners and growing my garden and fitting in that bike ride a few times a week, I just can’t get a full time job. I would die inside from knowing what I am missing.

This treadmill that our culture has created over the past 70 years - getting us off the farm or out of small towns where the cobbler fixed shoes or the baker made bread - and instead making us work for faceless companies that barely know our names and could outsource our jobs to India or China at a moment’s notice - is empty. Is this what life should be? Working our lives away and being so dependent on buying our clothes, our pre-made food (ick?), big houses, nice cars, and having to watch our paychecks go right out the door for a mortgage, a car (or two), daycare (because we have to work), lawn maintenance (because again, we have to work), a housekeeper (because we can’t work full time AND do the deep-cleaning)… is this really living?

Maybe this setback in the economy is a chance for us to re-evaluate what is important to us. Maybe we don’t need a big house. Maybe we don’t need the Hummer. If we downsize, maybe we can afford a small home and not have any payments in a few years. Maybe both parents only need to work part-time, and can spend time with the kids, enjoy the yard we mow, take walks or ride our bicycles to the store or the post office. Maybe we could help our teachers, or get involved in an aspect of the community, plant gardens or take up hobbies and sell our creations online. Maybe we don’t have to hate Monday morning anymore.

If we think about it, maybe it can be done. Maybe we can have our cake and eat it too.

A friend and I were talking last Friday evening about the potential upcoming Depression. It seemed unfair to be a little doom and gloom on such a beautiful day – it was sunny and clear, and the cooling breeze was almost chill. Weather for throwing a party and putting good food on the grill. But the talk of the day was still last Monday’s 504 point drop in the market, and the tax burden of the president’s bailout plan.

My friend, of course, is the very epitome of frugal. Look up “frugal” in the dictionary and you should see his picture. But what we were discussing was how, if one is already accustomed to being frugal and a major economic downturn does hit, then it isn’t a major lifestyle adjustment and one doesn’t feel deprived as a result.

Even better, we agreed, the people who have been frugal all along, who have been canning and gardening and cutting firewood and coupons, the people who have been making new clothes out of their old clothes and only buying what they need when it is on sale, will be there to help folks who haven’t had to learn that lifestyle before. They can take their friends and neighbors by the hand, and say “it’s ok, this is how you do it.”

I’ve learned a lot this summer, and it seems the Internet has been my friend for learning how to can, freeze or dry the summer’s vegetables and fruits. I’ve taken to leaving the laptop in the kitchen so I can look these things up and not get distracted from the work that needs to get done because I can’t see it from my office computer. I’ve had a busy summer, a good summer, learning all of these things and experimenting.

With my hands this busy, I haven’t missed going to the store. I have a self-sufficient happiness to me now – a feeling that, no matter how bad the economy gets, I can heat my house, dry my laundry, sew my clothes, grow my food, and preserve it. I have made my own medicine for minor discomforts and general health. I can even cook if the power has to be turned off – the top of the woodstove is big enough to hold a few pots and pans. I have a good feeling, knowing that so long as I can grow things in my yard, no matter how bad the economy gets, we will not starve. We may not have a lot of variety and we may even have a weed salad from time to time, but we won’t go hungry. A year ago, I would have had trouble telling you what weeds we could eat and how much of them was safe to consume at a time.

I don’t feel deprived because I’m not buying cereal at $6.00 a box or decorating my house with the latest cool stuff at Target. I have lots of projects, and I have such a satisfaction knowing that our credit card bill is slowly shrinking because I’m not buying… I’m making.

Remember college? Especially if you were putting yourself through, and had to eat off $3 in change for a whole week? Remember not having more than five pairs of pants and just a few tops to go with them? For a girl, I wasn’t terribly interested in clothes back then. Thanks to a couple of roommates – one with a massive load of credit card debt from shopping and the other who frequently got financial gifts from The Bank of Dad – I knew how far behind the styles I was. I had to be creative with my money and adopted a comfortable, boyish look – jeans or cargo pants, t-shirt, ponytail. Clothes were just not important – I was in college to study, right?

Since then, for a long time, I have enjoyed getting new clothes. I’m not a big shopper by any means, but I do like having some nice things that are in style. My closet is full, and so is a whole dresser devoted just to me (my husband also has a whole dresser and a whole closet, but there is less hanging in his closet than mine). I can deliberate for half an hour over what to wear. I spend hours sorting and washing and line-drying laundry every week, and we don’t even have kids!

About a month ago I was in our attic sorting through some boxes for a yard sale when I came across my favorite bag from college. It is a WW2 map bag, sized like a small messenger, with loads of pockets in the front for pencils. It had been the perfect size for a couple of textbooks and a notebook, and had been easy to sling over my shoulder as I hopped on my bike to ride to school in the morning. At some point in recent years my dog with the nervous disposition had chewed the strap, and I had stopped using it.

I’m back to using it now. I washed it and took it to my overloaded closet and pulled out a beaded belt I’ve worn maybe three times. It was easy to tie it to the strap rings, and I’m super thrilled to have what feels like an old friend back. I haven’t bothered changing purses to match my outfit since, and have gotten more compliments on my bag than I usually do with my favorite Liz Claiborne.

I’ve realized I can be creative with that strap. I have lots of scarves I could tie on it instead of the belt – I can make the bag “go” with my outfit anytime I so choose by changing its accessory.

If I can do that much by being creative with a bag, what can I do with all the other stuff hanging in that closet? New ideas and ways of thinking are starting to sprout. Maybe my creativity hasn’t entirely left me after all.

This year, I have only bought 5 new items for my closet, and I did that this Spring before I decided not to buy any more. I’ve come to realize that what I wear does not matter. It can be last year’s jeans and the sweatshirt from 10 years ago with my alma mater emblazoned on it. What’s wrong with continuing to wear that teddy-soft t-shirt with a few holes in it while I am home? And even if someone did come to the door, they’d know they came without calling me first. Most people dress for comfort while at home.

Many people don’t bother themselves too terribly much about how stylish your clothes are. Jeans and cargo pants have been my uniform for decades, I just forgot that while trying to impress clients with my Ann’s Taylor and Klein. I’m regressing back to my college days of dress, just a little less sloppy and a little more fitted. The people that do care? If what I wear, being three years out of date, bothers them so much that they no longer want to be seen with me, then are they really people I want to know? Why should I continue to spend money to impress people?

For myself, it isn’t that I want new clothes so much as I don’t want to be perceived as being poor. We look at each other and assess their value based upon what car they drive, what neighborhood they live in, the square footage of the home, and how many Maholo Blahniks are in the closet. We look at the jewelry our friends wear, the style of their haircut and color job, their nails. They’re all measures of status, and whether you are worthy of people’s attention falls on your appearance, not your education or all the things you have accomplished in your life.

It’s a consumer culture, and my closet is going to keep what it has in it for a looooong time.  Maybe I can sell my other bags on e-bay.

I’m skimming the news this morning, and the first big story on www.time.com is this one: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1839995,00.html  — in short, the media is once again telling the world about how the methane in cow farts (ok, they said flatulence, but “farts” sound far less serious) have 23 times the warming impact of CO2, and cow waste has 296 times the warming effect of CO2. And of course, the article goes on and on about how everyone should convert to vegetarianism.

Unfortunately to my mind, all these articles just add up to nagging. Nagnagnagnagnagnagnag…. This one is more naggy than the others and it does so by talking about how meat clogs arteries and causes an increase in heart disease and stroke. I think most people will put their fingers in their ears and say “lalalalalala” at the top of their lungs.

However much I’d like for there to be more vegetarians and vegans in the world (hey look, more options on a menu!), at the moment we are considered “weird fringe people” - there’s this negative bias. Some of the bias is well-deserved, since many vegans go around saying how awful it is to be eating Bambi or Chicken Little when their lives were torture. Who wants to be lumped in with that crowd?

Another issue is harder: we Americans like to keep up with the Joneses, and since meat is expensive, it shows you have the money to spend. It’s also deeply set in our food culture - what’s a summer barbeque without hamburgers and drumsticks? Or Thanksgiving turkeys, or Christmas ham, or any birthday t-bone? Further, will many Americans feel deprived because their meals no longer contain meat?

I can tell you from experience, it takes a while to adjust to a vegetarian diet. Meat, especially red meat and pork, lends a lot of flavor to something as simple as rice, and finding out what makes rice and veggies palatable without meat takes time. I’ll admit, sometimes when making one of our favorite Italian dishes, I wish I could toss in a little pork for that flavor - though now I bet I would think it too salty. Your taste buds change. In a way I think they improve and can pick out more flavors from veggies than they could before - soups I once considered bland I really enjoy now.

Back to my point, in asking people to go vegetarian, the media is asking for a major lifestyle change, and a mindset change. They are asking our culture to change. That won’t happen overnight, especially since most Americans are pretty selfish (yep, me too, even though I have a good bike now I still don’t want to ride three miles up a mountain and I take the car to work) and we are slow to change.

Until vegetarian options show up on more menus, until there are more recipes for vegans and vegetarians in magazines and rags than there are meat-based recipes, until there are more of us and we aren’t part of the fringe but rather a group of people who care more about our health and the planet’s health, life isn’t going to change.

But of course, if you DO want to try some great vegan recipes, check this girl out! www.veganyumyum.com - without her I would have starved to death while trying to find good vegan meals!

It’s funny how we suddenly remember cool things about our childhoods and there seems to be no logical reason as to why it would come up - but I’m glad this one did so I can share it.

When my brother was little, we had tons and tons of crayons, some of them just little bits left over from my heavy use of them years before. My brother loved to color, and so we had a whole tin full of bitty crayons that were hard to hold and impossible to sharpen.

Didn’t faze my mom after she clipped an article from the Boca News about putting all those crayon bits into a muffin tin, then melting them over low heat in the oven for a while. The bits melted together, making easy to handle crayon “cookies” - perfect for my brother’s chubby little hands. The colors would be all mixed up (not blended) so you could have one crayon cookie and have red, green, blue and yellow colors to work with. No more griping because one kid had the blue crayon. I think in the next batch we put warm colors together so red, yellow and orange would be on one cookie, but the first batch was plenty fun to play with still.

I’m not sure if she had to grease the muffin tin first. They all had nice neat edges so they apparently came out just fine. If they do stick, I think the same trick that works for getting the melted wax from one of those scented wax burners would do the trick - put the tray in the freezer for a few hours. Pops right out!

P.S. - freezing wax works well for anything it’s stuck to. Place an ice cube over a spot of wax on your tablecloth from that last fancy dinner and the whole drip will come up with very little coaxing.  No mess, no stain. Ta-da!

If we all showed love for our fellow man like this? I love the sign here for “Free Hugs” - our world is so lacking in love. I know people who fill that empty hole in their hearts with new toys or bad addictions like alcohol. If we were better at showing that we can love our fellow man, how much better a world would this be? Just food for thought.

Free Hugs Campaign

As a side, I am recently learning to hug more. It takes time, but we can all learn.

I originally wrote this post for www.unofficiallyoptimistic.com, so forgive me for the cross-post but I feel this is useful information. You can find many recipes for home-made laundry detergent all over the web, and doubtless some of them are better than mine - but I thought the harmful chemical information good to have as well. Making my own detergent hasn’t been just about saving money, but about keeping harmful things away from me and water. I pass on all softeners too - they aren’t really needed!

Here is a list of just some of the chemicals found in fabric softeners and dryer sheets:

• Benzyl acetate: Linked to pancreatic cancer
• Benzyl Alcohol: Upper respiratory tract irritant
• Ethanol: On the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Hazardous Waste list and can cause central nervous system disorders
• Limonene: Known carcinogen
• A-Terpineol: Can cause respiratory problems, including fatal edema, and central nervous system damage
• Ethyl Acetate: A narcotic on the EPA’s Hazardous Waste list
• Camphor: Causes central nervous system disorders
• Chloroform: Neurotoxic, anesthetic and carcinogenic
• Linalool: A narcotic that causes central nervous system disorders
• Pentane: A chemical known to be harmful if inhaled

Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t appreciate chemicals like Pentane that is harmful if inhaled being in my laundry. I mean, what’s one of the most natural things to do when you get something out of the dryer and it’s all soft and warm? I know, especially in winter when it’s cold - you put your face in that warm laundry and inhale. haha. Cute.

You can find a list of other toxins added to laundry detergent and their effects on humans here: http://www.ourlittleplace.com/chemicals.html

To make your own detergent, you need the following: Borax is Hydrated sodium borate, Na2B4O7 -10H2O, is a mineral ore of interlocked chains of boron, hydrogen, oxygen , water,and sodium. It is often found in dried playa lake beds. A playa lake is one that fills with rain water then dries out leaving various salts.The simplest refining method is to boil the ore in water, add carbonated soda which causes the borax to dissolve and impurities to settle out. The water borax mixture is poured off and cooled, borax crystals form and are collected. Borax is a water softener, cleanser, whitener and disinfectant.

Now, borax CAN still be harmful. But at least in making my own laundry detergent, I know exactly how much of it is IN my detergent.

Then washing soda, I use Arm & Hammer brand, and Fels Naptha soap (you can use unscented Ivory too).

Shred the whole bar of Ivory, or only 1/3 of the bar of Fels Naptha, into a large pot that you don’t cook food in. Add six cups water, heat it until the soap dissolves. Then add 1/2 cup of washing soda and 1/2 cup of borax and stir until it dissolves. Remove from heat.

Pour 4 cups of hot water into bucket. Add the soap mixture, stir. Add 1 gallon plus 6 cups water and stir. Let sit 24 hours. It will get up… into a weird sort of egg soup mixture. Use 1/2 cup per load.

The site I got the recipe from had even broken down the costs. It costs roughly a penny a load to use this stuff, and you have about 2 gallons worth to work from. I find it lasts us a few months.

You can add scent to this as well - just add one ounce of the essential oil of your choice before it gels up. Favorites include: peppermint, lavender, lemon grass, and orange essential oils.

Last night, I realized the slugs were invading. I had to go out and collect the laundry off the line, and when I came back in and started putting the laundry away, I caught sight of something on my shoulder. I grabbed hold of it and realized I was holding a young slug, about two inches long. I briefly marveled at how it almost had the same cute face that a snail does, only bigger, before I sent him to flush heaven.

I then discovered it takes a remarkable amount of time and scrubbing to get slug-slime off of one’s fingers.

Later I went outside in my bare feet. I love the feel of fresh-cut grass under my toes, and my husband had just cut ours earlier in the afternoon. There was a slight breeze coming in from Gustav, a safe several hundred miles away, and I was enjoying the night air and looking for fireflies.

I stepped on a slug. So much for looking for fireflies.

Clearly something needed to be done. After taking another ten minutes to scrub slug-slime off my toes (GROSS!) I dug out the cheap beer that we buy solely for this purpose. I think it breaks down to about fifty cents a can, some brand nobody has ever heard of. We are winos, not beer drinkers, but I do wonder what a guest would think if they saw that in my pantry! I poured the stuff into a few old containers and put them down in several places in the yard (yes I wore shoes this time).

I poured myself a glass of Shiraz, then headed off to the shower.

Forty-eight slugs died in their cups last night. Forty-eight!

Remember that fellow who discovered his lawn was greener if he sprayed it with beer once in a while? Apparently I don’t, as I cannot recall his name. But I took his advice to heart and decided the slugs and beer might be just fine in my compost pile. May my plants be all the greener next year.