The sky... this is one thing I will miss about living here. Not that this particular photo is award-winning, but the sky here tends to be quite outspoken. During the summer, the sunsets last for hours. The winters have very abrupt, very magnificent sunsets and sunrises. In the winter I find joy in watching the sunrise from the bus stop on my way to work. In the summer, the closest we see to a sunrise is the dusk after the official sunset. Clouds. The clouds stretch, reach out, exist, and when they aren't dominating the sky, they showcase lovely light and colour. I will miss Scotland's sky.
Tonight I went to a friend's birthday night out, came home pretty early, and sat on the hospital's ledge at the corner of our street, watching the sky change colours. Joel is at a gig, so I had the luxury of independence and loneliness. Who can feel lonely when watching such beauty? (no offiense to Joel's company!) While I was sitting quietly, an old Scottish woman walked by and started talking to me (as they so often do). She told me she was going to pick some grass for her cat, that it helped her stomach, and went on to tell me about how she so would love to let her cat outside, but the Cat Protection said there was too much traffic. So she settles for bringing her cat grass. The woman told me she often gets grass from Bearsden (just outside of Glasgow), that's how spoiled she is! I love these people who share their life stories for no apparent reason. I will miss that too.
This is Joel, with the rhubarb cake I made on his lap. I don't want to gloat over the fact that he's slowly beginning to like rhubarb, I really just want to show how sacrificial his love is, to be prepared to like rhubarb, for my sake. This is truly a wonderful man, folks. Seriously, have any of your partners been prepared to give up a lifelong adamant detestation of such an assertive food?
Okay, now let's address the matter at hand: The Biggest Kitchen Table discussion. Today is on Living Deliberately, and Money.
Living Deliberately: This is about living with intention, having your life goals in mind in your everyday actions. It is a departure from living for the moment. For me, I first began thinking about this and practicing it in high school. My close friend who acted as a spiritual and personal mentor to me, Lori, taught me about what it means to live intentionally, and caused me to really meditate on this. I believe we do fairly well at this. It is about a balance - not living fully in the future, but living the present while thinking about and preparing for the future. My goals are varied, alive, and I like to think simple. I want to grow my own vegetables - I've started that this year, with windowpots full of spinach and tomato plants. Just a small step, but a step nonetheless. It helps me learn some things slowly, and hopefully in the future I'll have access to some real dirt to grow things in.
Money: Joel and I do well managing our money, out of necessity, and a conviction that 'your money is where your heart is'. We have been given hard lessons to learn in our married life, centred about being dependent and accepting help from others. I hope this prepares us for a future in which we are able to help others in the same way.
We're very careful with our money, and apart from bills like rent and electricity, and my student loan payments, the only thing we really spend money on is food. Food is an area we would like to spend less money on, by making more things ourselves, and growing things ourselves. The spinach has been a success. The main hindrance to making more things homemade is the time factor. As we both essentially work full time, it is difficult to live up to our aspirations We often experiment with this; we were making our own bread for a time earlier in the spring; Joel has made yogurt on occassion; we were in the habit of a weekly from-scratch pizza night.. but when things get busy, these things fall away and we end up buying bread. In that case, we buy nice bread - we tend to buy Polish bread that doesn't have any preservatives - but of course buying things is more expensive, and often not as good quality, as homemade. Both of us look forward to a time when Joel is working, and hopefully I'll have a bit mroe time in the home to do things like this. Food is very important to me (you may have notices). So I look forward to tomorrow when Rhonda looks at the food issue.
Our money goals are essentially: -to eliminate debt (all of the student loan nature) -to have a savings account
I hope this isn't too much information, I know we don't usually share so much on the blog. Anyone have any thoughts about any of this?
And that brings us to today. I dressed Marie up like a valentine, as you can see. Pigtails came later, sorry you missed out on that. We are in the midst of sickness. Marie got sick 2 weeks ago and still has green stuff coming out of her nose. I got sick a week ago and still have a raging cough. We do not have high expectations out of today.
