first things first

Joel's first day of school!

Joel started his new job today - Adjunct English Instructor at Green River Community College. Our home is full of thankfulness and peace right now, with the timing of his job being so perfect (and so last minute! A rushed syllabus was created, a commute quickly established, and a chair at home with the cat is now empty during the day).

The transition of the seasons, with the blustery comfort of autumn just setting in, is really reflected in our life right now. Joel's new job, the baby coming soon, me settling in to the wonderful idea of a long (by American standards) maternity leave... many changes, but all such comforting and peaceful changes.
Joel found today that he likes, enjoys, appreciates his teaching position. He is fulfilled and satisfied in his role, which is such a surprising thing for the both of us after years of uncertain times in academia. None of you in the academic world will see his job as particularly spectacular, but it is exactly what we have been hoping for and needing. An entrance, an opportunity, a chance for Joel to do what he has felt has been his passion - teaching introductory level courses. And a step towards us being able to transition from relying on my salary to relying on his. That is something, however old fashioned it may seem, that we've both craved for some time.

This is a celebration, friends! Have a dram of scotch in honor of Joel today!(Other photos are from our annual trip hiking at Mt. Rainier. Oh, out of town friends, we must take you there.)

Some more early Christmas photos

Check out how awesome my Grandpa is! He is so classy. And I like to think he passed on his financial sweetness to me too - he got this $500 hat for like $3 at a store closing sale decades ago.Some of the hats I knitted for Christmas presents this year:
You can see more photos if you join Ravelry!

Biggest Kitchen Table -- Electricity and Water

Today's discussion was on electricity and water. I don't think we have much to change in this area. We are in rented accommodation, which means we can't change any appliance issues. And I don't think we need to anyway. All the stuff the landlord picked out is energy efficient, water saving stuff. Nice. Although if we had our way, we'd have a slightly less efficient fridge that actually had a fan built in. There is a dishwasher. We don't use this, to save money and save energy and because it seemed like it might explode the last couple times we used it. There is a tumble dryer. We don't use this either, for the same reasons sans the exploding thing. We were used to hanging all our clothes to dry anyway from our last flat which didn't have a dryer, so we figure why use it? We let guests use it if they need to. :-) We like never use our heaters in the winter, hardly ever. We're cool with it. Double-glazed windows, you know.

Water. We're on city council water, and because of Joel's student status we don't even pay for our council tax or water. So they don't really tell us how much we use.

That's all I have to say about that.

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?

This evening I got the chance to do some things in the kitchen. I made a lasagne which is now in the fridge ready to be baked for tomorrow's dinner. I made rhubarb crumble (Nigella's recipe from Feast) with some early rhubarb from Yorkshire I got for cheap. The crumble is is cooling on the stove now. I also had time to put away the clean dishes and wash all of the newly dirty ones I created tonight.

Being able to do household tasks, particularly food-related ones, really gives me contentment. I feel confident that I am coping with life well when the flat is reasonably tidy and the food situation is not completely erratic. I do find it very difficult to keep up with domestic tasks when I work full time. Weekday evenings are notoriously bad for being able to cook a dinner as well as tidy and still feel like Joel and I get some time to talk to each other. So often, things are not as tidy or organised as I would like. However, those things are less important than building up our marriage and ensuring we are on the same page and don't feel neglected by each other. Often, we leave the housework (but probably not as often as Joel would like :-).

I was able to do so much this evening because -we had leftovers for dinner -Joel went over to Michael's this evening to get advice on fixing his bass -my evening event was cancelled.
So you can see this is not generally possible to get to accomplish so much on a weekday evening.

I consider this evening an energising break. Does that sound strange, when I spent it doing tidying, cleaning, and cooking? That is what I enjoy doing. Mostly the cooking part, although I do really enjoy washing dishes when I am not rushed and overwhelmed by lots to do.

I came across this article that I had read a couple of months ago, and thought it was worth sharing with you. It is about the value of homemaking/householding. Another excellent read is this article from Rhonda at Down to Earth (which incidentally would be my most recommended blog).

In the last couple years Joel and I have become more and more wanting to be responsibly domestically. This includes eating food we make ourselves, so we can avoid additives and get more natural flavour and nutrition; cleaning with natural ingredients like baking soda and lemon juice to we don't use unnecessary chemicals in the home; and making it recreational to cook. Incidentally, all of these things not only ensure we are healthier, but they also save money. There are loads of areas we have to improve in, mostly because we don't have time to do all the things we would like, like baking all our own bread (although that was working well for a monthish in the late winter).

The challenge we have at the moment is that both of us are 'working' in some form or another, and thus we do not have a homemaker. We hope that in the future I will be able to stay at home, and this will be a priority for us. I look forward to being able to focus more on making wise household decisions and building my skills in areas that are often forgotten these days.

I know many of you who read (women and men) are very skilled at various aspects of homemaking. Do you find contentment in it? Fulfillment? Joy?
Of course if you have any tips of easy ways to make our lives simpler and more homemade, do share!

Okay I suppose I better get started on the rhubarb crumble, seeing as Joel doesn't like rhubarb!

Update: Mm that rhubarb crumble is delicious, with custard (storebought, not homemade!) over it. I think Joel may even like this one (though he will never admit it!).

PS Grandma B, I would have used your rhubarb crisp recipe but somehow have lost it. :-)

Celebration!

Happy one-loan-down-one-more-to-go Day!!!

As of this month, I've paid off my smallest student loan! This is incredibly encouraging to me, and having just one more loan (I'm not even counting Joel's at this point) gives me hope that there will be an end to loan payments!

Following brilliant and sensible advice from Get Rich Slowly, and another article that I cannot seem to track down anywhere, I am keeping my persistent determination strong. Instead of seeing this loan pay off as a break for the bank account, I've raised my other loan payment by the difference. I was paying about $50 for the newly paid off loan, and $100 toward my other one, but now since the small loan has been paid off, I just increased my other loan payment to $150. I've been paying that much toward loans the last 2 years, and despite low wages and many financial hardships, we've been making it, so now is not the time to decrease payments! This way I'll be able to pay off my final loan sooner rather than later. I asked the woman on the phone how long it would take me to pay this off at the new payment rate, and she said until 2015. Seems like an awful long time, but hey it will be here quick! About 6 years (If that seems like a long time, just think, 9/11 was actually 7 years ago tomorrow). And if things go as planned, I will be able to increase my payments at some point and pay it off even sooner.

Also, we aren't paying towards any of Joel's loans at the moment b/c he's still studying. This helps me to be able to focus on paying off my loans.

Celebration! Everyone pick up a penny off the sidewalk in thanks for my first loan paid off!
You can do it too!