Category: Home Life

LAKE MACBRIDE— It has been a quiet Christmas holiday and that’s okay.

Our family has never been very big, even when nieces and nephews from both sides are considered. There are shirt-tail relatives, of course. If we connect the threads, that could include all of humanity, something that may be wondrous, but is not practical for a holiday gathering.

Our daughter came home for Christmas the weekend of Dec. 12, so the holiday decorations have been up since then. In past years we started decorating on our wedding anniversary, and continued until Christmas Eve. With decorating done early, there was one less thing to do on the actual holiday.

Christmas day I visited my mother and we talked for two and a half hours—more than we have in a long time. After that, I came home where there was not much action because of illness. I made baked falafel and Kalamata olive sauce for what turned out to be my Christmas dinner. Like with the quiet, I was okay with that. I took the first photos in my new project.

We don’t exchange gifts any longer, but I bought a couple of books which arrived Dec. 23. I’m halfway through Barry Estabrook’s Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit. It will be a quick read and I won’t be buying any winter tomatoes in the foreseeable future. In queue is Selected Letters of Norman Mailer. Mailer was prolific, and the new tome already has been a valuable research tool on contemporary writers.

We went to the New Pioneer Food Cooperative in Coralville together. Going to NewPi is a couple of times a year trip for me. I placed some rolls from the bakery, vegan sausage for gumbo, and some fair trade organic cocoa mix in the wagon. I can’t help but price compare with the warehouse where I work, and the coop is sky high with brands both places carry.

The benefit of NewPi is the wide variety of organic and local foods. They even have bottles of vinegar made with the same mother as the jars we have in our pantry. I don’t know how they manage a diverse inventory when the grocery business is going the opposite direction, but I am glad to be able to visit them once in a while.

I wrote 61 newspaper articles for three papers in 2014, with the last one making yesterday’s front page. It has been a learning experience to freelance, and a different kind of writing. Some editors have been better than others, and each has provided solid lessons in the craft of writing. I am thankful for the opportunity our local paper provided to get me started, but glad I moved on to the Iowa City Press Citizen. More articles are planned in 2015.

 The holidays are in full gear. With my work at the warehouse, I’ll stay busy until Jan. 1 as we want to end the year with zero carry-over product demonstrations. That means I’ll be working almost every day until we are finished. For a while, the warehouse work is my only job—the first time since I can remember there has only been one. And that’s okay for a while.

LAKE MACBRIDE— Budgeting. We think of spreadsheets and calculations that determine our balance sheet— and ensuring there is enough action in the works to produce enough income to pay expenses. In December, it’s about considering this year and preparing for the next, and it is not all about finances.

What shall we do next year? Once some answers are framed, the budget process begins. Two things are clear this holiday season. Our household is in better shape this year than last, and there are opportunities beyond basic survival.

Our household relies upon a mix of part-time jobs to fund expenses. I outlined my approach in 2013, and the basic framework is unchanged. Where the financial budget is lacking will be made up by new adventures in part-time work.

This year’s challenge is how to use time.

As readers will recognize, my time has been spent gardening, writing, cooking and in part-time paid work. This won’t change. However, there are some new things on the horizon.

We need to downsize, and there is a full-time job just doing that. Next year will partly be about that.

I want a book to sell at speaking events. Framing topics, writing and editing one is high on the list. Most likely it will be a collection of past writing, which fits in with downsizing.

We moved to Big Grove in 1993, and our house is showing wear. It is time to make a list of projects and work on some of them.

While this isn’t much of a plan, it is a framework of how to spend a year. That is a beginning to proper budgeting.

LAKE MACBRIDE— My resistance to shopping broke down yesterday. I stopped at a national chain drug store and bought a packet of razor blades and two cans of shaving cream. I was almost out. By the way, when did razor blades move to $2.29 each? Rhetorical question.

In a life without television it can be quiet in the house. After returning from a two-hour shift at the warehouse, I crashed and slept for four hours.

While preparing dinner, I turned on the radio to Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, as I have been wont to do since I learned about the program in the late 1970s.

In 2011, there was a clamor about the underwriter Allianz, a German financial services company, and their underwriting of A Prairie Home Companion. They are said to have collaborated with the National Socialist German Worker’s Party,  and Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida) introduced legislation that would allow Holocaust survivors to sue Allianz.

“(Ros-Lehtinen) has launched a letter-writing campaign aimed at blocking the insurer from advertising with any U.S. media until it pays off all Holocaust survivors’ life insurance claims. During World War II, Allianz insured concentration camp facilities and sent money to the Nazis instead of rightful Jewish beneficiaries,” according to the congresswoman’s website.

“Allianz is no ordinary insurance conglomerate,” Ros-Lehtinen wrote. “This company was involved in one of the greatest atrocities in recent history and has gone to great lengths to dodge acceptance of responsibility for its actions.”

And I thought Allianz was bad underwriting for A Prairie Home Companion because of their financing of nuclear weapons.

Last night they were promoting Martinelli’s Gold Medal Sparkling Apple Cider, a product I sold at the warehouse last Tuesday. It is that weird blend of familiarity, and the unspoken meaning of underwriters that garners my attention as I listen to the radio program. If I had left the house quiet, I wouldn’t have been thinking about that—not at all. A Prairie Home Companion could pull the plug on Allianz, and should. I listen, as old habits can be comforting even if they aren’t the best for us.

What else is there to do while preparing dinner in the kitchen?

LAKE MACBRIDE—Five consecutive days without home broadband has been challenging. My work relies on being connected.

While taking stock of this dependency, which borders on addiction, unnecessary concerns drop easily from view. Instead there is time to contemplate the 4 a.m. southern cloud formation, bright against a sky sprinkled full of stars.

It has been a chance to catch up with where I’m bound.

With nervous apprehension, I await the cable guy, who’s coming between 8 a.m. and noon.

I have become Everyman.

A killer frost has been delayed. The tomatoes, peppers and kale continue to grow, albeit more slowly. Today’s harvest included some of each.

The Bangkok peppers have been good for dehydrating and making red pepper flakes. More than a year’s worth is inside to be processed.

The deciduous trees have dropped most of the leaves they will this fall, so it is time to mow and mulch them: one last cleanup of our wild-grown yard.

There will be much more to write, but for now, waiting on the cable guy, these few words will have to do.