Comments (1)

By Penny, July 7, 2010 9:06 pm

It's a bit dark in the picture, but trust me, they are lovely!

Unfortunately, since I went to Albany, only two ducks have survived.  They now go into their house at night without trouble, but it is sad to have lost the others.  Particularly, I miss the drake, so I will share a story about him.  A few days before I left, he was in a Mexican standoff with our half-Lab, half- Chesapeake retriever.  Doo-di-do0-di-doodli-doo, wha wha wha. They were staring intently at one another when he lunged forward and bit her nose.  As she beat a hasty retreat, he got her again on her backside.  Rather embarrassing for a retriever, but entertaining to watch.

Well, I am mostly back in shape after the pnuemonia, though now it is horribly hot here. Like, triple digit hot. However, I have managed to get four half-pints of cherry jam canned and six quarts and a pint of cherry pie filling.

  My kitchen is generally clean, something of which I am exceptionally proud.  It makes it so much easier to cook when the kitchen stays clean! 

Hope you all are finding ways to stay cool.  Ru, the retriever, likes to wallow in the duck pond.  Alice, a beagle, lays on her back on the bed, stretched out in front of the fan.  Twain, her brother, crawls under the bed and stays there.  I drink a lot of water, while DH drinks scads of diet Mountain Dew and iced tea.  The weather is supposed to break tomorrow, and I for one, can’t wait, considering my poor garden is wilting, thanks to all the heat.

Comments (0)

By Penny, June 28, 2010 6:09 pm

While not the most frugal activity, I just returned from the AERO conference.  It was one of the most singularly uplifting things I have done in a while.  My current place of employment is one sucking quagmire of negativity and hopelessness.  Thanks to educational movements like “standardized testing”, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), and Race to the Top, teachers are being forced to abuse children, by ignoring their strengths and emphasizing their weaknesses.  We aren’t allowing them to develop their own interests and inquiry.  It’s shameful.  This conference, however, had over four hundred people dedicated to changing that.  I was able to hear so many different ideas and concepts to which I had never been exposed.  It was a paradigm shift of ginormous proportions.

As such, my coteacher and I have vowed to make our classroom as dedicated to the democratic principles espoused by democratic education.  How can we expect them to become adults who participate in a genuine democratic society if they never have as children?  I truly wonder if the reason the beaurocrats discourage any cultivation of innovation in students is because they are more easily managed as citizens.  If you’ve never had your rights as a child and young adult, why would you expect any as an adult? It’s a scary thing to contemplate, but I don’t think I”m wrong, considering that our current model is based on the Prussian model that was designed specifically for controlling the masses.

At any rate, we plan to do the stupid, unimportant paperwork nonsense that the administration loves.  Beyond that, we plan to ditch curriculum and meet the kids where they are.  Allow them to choose, as much as possible, what it is they want to study. Of course, since we teach 10th and 11th graders, they are mainly either brainwashed or broken by the system.  We’ll try to heal as many as we can, though. 

We will become involved in meetings and committees, asking the tough questions when no one else will.  When others complain, instead of being sucked into the negativity, we will look them in the eye and ask them what they propose to do about it.  We want to contact parents and community members and get their support and find out what it is they want for their children. For the first time possibly ever, I am looking forward to starting this year.  Instead of selling out, I’m going to take a stand, for my students, myself, and even those children who come after.  Maybe I’ll loose my job, but at least I’ll go down swinging, holding onto what I know to be right, instead of kowtowing to people who have no idea what my students need.

On a totally different note, I just found out I have pneumonia. Woo, fun.  Makes gardening pretty difficult when you are sucking wind just walking the six feet out the door.

Comments (7)

By Penny, June 22, 2010 6:37 am

We, over the last three weeks, have lost most of our Khaki Campbells to an owl.  Up until yesterday, we had five khakis and one Pekin left.  Thinking we had thwarted it, we put them in the backyard over night and that seemed to work.  Until last night, that is.  It got two of them last night, so our merry band is down to two ducks, a drake and a Pekin.  There is much sadness here, because I feel like we didn’t protect them well enough.  We will start putting them in their house at night, but that doesn’t help the dead ones now.

We are debating whether to get new ones or just keep the few that are left.  We can order them from McMurray hatcheries and get a guaranteed run of females to bulk up the harem, or we could buy an incubator, but those things are rather expensive.  Sigh.  Wish my latest update was a bit more chipper, but that’s the way things go on the Copperwyre homestead.

Actually, I’ll end on a happier note:  the garden, while weedy, is coming along fabulously. We have incipient watermelons on the vine and the beets were small, though tasty. Hope things are going better on your homestead!

Comments (1)

By Penny, May 6, 2010 12:25 pm

A good way to save money is to do home haircuts.  Of course, it helps if you have a husband who trusts you implicitly or believes that hair will grow so it doesn’t matter.  First, I had him wet his hair.  Then, I combed through it.  Considering his hair was quite long, I cut off in a straight line all around his head. I just eyeballed it, which did not make for the best line.  Then, I divided the hair into sections and pulled the section straight away from his head.  Using the comb and my finger layed across the top for a length measurement, I cut off the hair.  After I went around his head, I trimmed up any spots I missed.  We saved about $20 by doing his hair at home.  Don’t worry, it won’t stay as blocky looking after it dries. 

Isn't he handsome?

Comments (1)

By Penny, April 15, 2010 6:17 am

Oh, emergency fund, how I love thee! Let me count the ways….

1. What is it?For those of you not in the know, an emergency fund is for, well, emergencies.  It is only supposed to be used in the case of dire necessity. Some acceptable examples might be a medical emergency or your house burning down.  (*smirk* considering that happened last year, I can snicker about it.) However, my husband and I will tap ours for a once in a lifetime “steal.” 

2. When should you use it? Since we are planning on living on a homestead, we might buy a piece of equipment that comes onto the used market that is such a good bargain that we might not see it for so cheaply again. As a caveat, don’t buy it just because it’s a ”bargain.” Be sure you will be using it or that you can sell it for what you paid for it.  We just recently bought an antique work bench for the kitchen, as it was a good price and I needed a surface into which I could drill holes for my wheat grinder.  Refinishing the top which was stained with oil and unidentifiable gunk will only add to its resale value, so I will actually be able to sell it for more than I paid, should the need arise.

3. How much?  Oooo, a sticky question indeed. Some professionals, such as Dave Ramsey, recommend $1,000 while you are paying down debt.  Others recommend anywhere from three to six months’ worth of expenses.  Before our disaster, we had $1,000.  After a conversation, my husband and I decided that our “emergencies” are likely to be close to the $1,000 mark, so it is unprudent to only have that amount in savings.  We have decided to first shoot for the 1 month mark, seeing how that fares, and adjusting.

4. How does this fall in with our 60in 2 plan? Well, any money above and beyond the emergency fund will be sunk into the 60 in 2 account.  Right now, we have money in there, but, short of severe injury, we will not be doing anything with that.  After we get a certain amount in the 60 in 2 account, we plan to purchase CDs with some of it. 

5. Where to keep the emergency fund? Considering that the money needs to be accessible, we keep it in our local bank. It is in a savings acount linked to our checking, which can be accessed from the ATM, the bank or the internet.  The excess funds we keep in INGdirect, because it pays hire interest rates and the money is only accessible after a two day waiting period.  Once we save an alloted amount, we will put some of the INGdirect savings account money into CDS. CDs will make the money even more difficult to access, assuring that we will only touch it in emergencies.  Because of the falling economy, DH and I have also discussed putting some of it into silver, though we haven’t taken any steps in that direction.

  Since the emergency vet visit, we have been tightening our proverbial belts and will be putting any extra funds into our emergency account in order to get it back to pre-ordeal shape. The best part of the emergency fund is that we are free from credit cards.  When I cancelled by card, way back in the fall, I was afraid that we would need it.  However, since we have our emergency fund, we rely on ourselves.  We have a great sense of self-reliance. For us, the emergency fund is the insurance we created for ourselves. An emergency acco

Comments (7)

By Penny, April 14, 2010 9:12 am

After this weekend, I am once again reminded that pet ownership is in no way a frugal activity.  Since getting DH’s new hunting dog, we have had all the vet bills incumbent with a new puppy, to the tune of about $300 so far.  Just when I thought that was bad, things got worse.

On Friday evening, our beagle Alice Walker Copperwyre began shaking and didn’t stop. She was having a seizure and not a short one as is normal.  Of course, Murphy’s law and all, she had it a few minutes before our vet’s office closed.  This meant that we had to go to the emergency animal hospital.  They gave her Valium and muscle relaxers, keeping her overnight for observations.  All told, this came to a whopping $680.  She needed a checkup with our regular vet, who only charged us $56.  Turns out she will need medication everyday, adding a monthly expense to the pile. 

Being a responsible pet owner is in no way a frugal activity.  Yes, you can cut expenses by shopping for the best price on dog food.  We get ours from a local feed store for $19.00/ 50lb bag.  I have also dabbled in homemade dog food from a recipe, considering DH hunts so much that we have excess meat. However, if you are going to own pets, you may want to make sure you have extra in your emergency fund just for your pets. Trust me, you don’t want to make a decision about your beloved pet based totally on finances.

To be fair, pet owners live longer and have less stress, but I doubt that you can recoup that monetarily.  Even though I am a “frugalista,” I choose to keep pets, because they are a joy to have.

Comments (3)

By Penny, March 30, 2010 12:33 pm

After a long silence, I am back to joyfully announce a plan to get our own homestead. As many of you know, I have been increasingly disgusted with the public school system. What you may not know is that my husband was equally disillusioned with his college education. Everyday, he would come home from class, complaining that he had learned nothing or, worse yet, that his professor had been wrong!  Looking at our goal of a homestead, we realized that DH finishing school would put us no closer to our goal, and, in fact, would put us farther behind because of the added debt from the student loans.   

 Bearing this in mind, DH came to the conclusion that it would be best if he quit school so that we could work towards a deadline for a homestead. Here’s what we’ve done.

1. Picked a number and a date. We have replaced “someday” with two years.  We are going to shoot for having $60,000 saved in two years.  Will it be hard? Heck, yeah! Doable?  We think so.

2. Budget.  Okay, seems like a no-brainer, but we have been pretty lax with keeping the totals of our spending.  I made up a spreadsheet with a budget and a running total for each of our categories.  It has only been a month, but it is up to date.

3.Reduced spending.  We examined our different spending categories.  There were several “fixed” spending categories that were not quite as fixed as we thought.  We have managed to knock off at least three hundred dollars from our monthly budget.  For instance, I applied for a loan deferment for my student loans, with the hope that I will be able to forgiven for part of my loan. That deferment will free up money for our monthly budget, even though I will still have to repay it.

4. Make more money.  Between us, we have come up with several ways of making more money. The obvious would be DH finding employment, though we are waiting until after the new puppy is housebroken.  Putting an advertisement in Craigslist, we are going to rent out one of our rooms, which will definitely help with income. In addition, I am trying new ways to increase our income.

5.  Psyching ourselves out. I hung a white board in our bedroom, behind the door.  On it, we keep the debt and savings totals for our goal.  We list every little bit of money that we get that will be added to the totals.  Also, I have posted little Post-it notes with the phrase “60 in 2” on my notebook, our fridge and even over my desk at work.  In addition, whenever we choose not to spend money, we say the phrase “60 in 2.”

 Hopefully, with all of our hard work, we will be able to reach our goal.  Having a specific goal will motivate us much better than an ambiguous “someday.” It will be much easier for me to stay at my job when I can see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

Comments (0)

By Penny, March 15, 2010 7:17 pm

Well, folks, I am still here, plugging away. Unfortunately, there was a computer accident, so I am without the means to post frequently with pictures.  However, I promise that, as soon as I can, I will post a how-to about creating pots from newspapers and pictures of my seedlings.  

Sweet alyssium, lavender, chamomile, rosemary, and a few tomatoes have started coming up. I still fear that the peppers may never germinate, though I am holding out hope.  More to come on our indoor lighting scheme, involving two L brackets, screws, rope and an aquarium light.

Miss you all!

Comments (3)

By Penny, March 5, 2010 8:51 pm

On Feb. 22, I planted some seeds in newspaper pots in my living room.  I started Bull Nose Bell Peppers, Brussel sprouts, lavender, rosemary and chamomile. In order to have some greens in a hurry, I also started a large porcelain pot with lettuce.  Today, March 5, I have noticed that the peppers and Brussel sprouts are up! Yay!

Blurry picture, but I promise that it is leaf lettuce!

Yet another blurry picture, but they are baby brussel sprouts!

Comments (8)

By Penny, February 27, 2010 3:40 pm

I don’t typically type emotional blatherings on this webpage, but I wanted to explain why I haven’t been on in about a week.  I find my motivation for many of the things I enjoy starting to slide. However, tomorrow I will share with you things I have gotten done.

I hate my job. No, seriously. I found myself backsliding from apathy to animosity.  Here I am, squarely in bitterness land.  I don’t think I can continue to compromise my belief structure this way.  It’s demoralizing to sell out my values everyday. And for what?  A salary? Benefits? It is an abysmal waste of time to keep a job out of fear.  To quote Dolly Freed’s father, “Sure, you have security, but the slaves on the plantation didn’t starve either.”  Right now, I am supporting a system that is modeled from the Prussian model, designed to create workers and squelch any creative thought.  We are schooling our children, not educating them. The length of adolescence keeps expanding, independent of any logical thought on the matter.  Why should a parent of a college student think it’s acceptable to call a professor on the student’s behalf?  Why would a twenty five year old law school student find it acceptable to renege on a rental contract because he “found a better deal’?  Our population is largely becoming infantalized and shallow, only interested in clothing, gossip or sports.  And why?  Because we schooled them to be this way.  A shallow populace is easier to control and manipulate, whether it be employees or citizens.  Anymore, our most sucessful inventors and entrepeneurs are high school or college dropouts.  Mind you, education is one of the most important processes; however, education is not the same as schooling. In my personal experience, most of the people I know who are intelligent and introspective are not graduates of college; some did not even graduate high school.  Now, I do know people who are college graduates and have the aforementioned qualities, but I know many more college grads who are just as superficial and shallow as the “uneducated.”  Education is a lifestyle choice which has absolutely nothing to do with school. An educated person is able to self-teach or find his own teacher.  He is willing  to try things and even fail, then get back up and do it again.  Resilience is critical to education and sucess.  Really, it’s just a matter of getting up one more time than you fall down. 

All of these thoughts have been rolling around in my head for a while now. By and large, I have been rather apathetic to the body politik involved in school.  However, I have been moving towards aggression, slowly but surely.  For instance,  a student threatened a teacher with bodily harm. As is procedure, the teacher wrote up the student, assuming that the necessary steps would be taken to remove the student from school.  Nope.  The school refused to adequately or effectively punish the student.  The teacher had to go outside the school and press charges against the student.  Now, the school is targeting the teacher because he “went outside the school.”  It’s ludicrious.  Teachers’ grades are examined for failure rates, though no one bothers to look at why the students are failing, largely because they refuse to do most of the work.  Exclamations of “fuck this class” and “this class is bullshit” loud enough to disrupt the entire class will only get you one day of In school suspension, which by the way, has been reduced from being a full day to ending at 1pm, so that the administration can code the ISS as a time out instead of a full day suspension. It is so they can report to the state that the behavior problems are diminishing.  This is just the tip of the iceberg, as it were, explaining my anger which is starting to seep out of my skin. 

I am transforming from the cheerful employee to the sarcastabitch from hell.  For those of you unfamiliar with the idea of a referendum, it is a request for higher taxes from our local taxpayers in order to fund projects.  While the superintendent was pitching the referendum to the staff, because he wants us to call people to get them to vote for it, he said, “can you hear me?”  Without thinking, I replied, “unfortunately.”  Apparently, I said it loud enough to be heard four rows up from where I was sitting.  I am having a harder time containing my anger at students who absolutely refuse to work, but then apologize for their behavior and want to know why their grade is bad. They will ask for help, after having been complete assholes.  Somehow, they have been taught that you can get away with being a jerk, so long as you say “I’m sorry.” 

On Thursday, the proverbial straw fell onto this camel’s back.  I was teaching “The Speech to the Virginia Convention” by Patrick Henry, the one featuring the immortal words “give me liberty, or give me death!”  This brought about the concept of dying for honorable reasons.  Nope, nothing is worth dying for or getting hurt.  They would rather be alive under any circumstances, even slavery, because at least they would be alive. My hope for our country took a serious blow and is currently on life support.  I know that it is popular these days to say that they are “just children,” but I don’t believe that for a second.  They are from the ages of 15-20 (yes, I have some twenty year old juniors); they are adults by most generations before. I was so depressed, that I went home and did nothing. I mean, absolutely nothing. I wouldn’t even get off the couch to cook. DH asked me if I was hungry, to which I responded, “yes, but I don’t feel like doing anything about it.” My plan was to just be hungry rather than do anything.  DH had to cook dinner, which was delicious, because I felt so broken. I have gone up at least two sizes of clothes and added thirty pounds over the course of the last five months because the stress makes me want to eat or punch people in the face. Since, obviously, I can’t accost people, I eat to allevate the stress. 

I can’t do this anymore.