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Our housemate has moved into his own place after being here a year, and we are very happy for him, as he worked really hard to get from where he was a year ago to where he is now.
This leaves us in a quandary however, do we get another housemate, or do we become really, really poor? My child support, minuscule as it is, runs out next month, and thanks to the rise in the cost of living, and Austin property taxing us into homelessness, we are facing the decision of do we get another housemate, or do we suck it up and pray nothing bad happens?
Moving is not an option at this point, we couldn't get another house in town for what he owe on this one, and renting isn't an option due to pets. The main problem is that we do not like sharing our living space. We've had housemates rip us off and trash our house, not to mention bringing strangers into our home at all hours of the night when our son is here. The garage is set up as a small apartment, sans bathroom. To put in a bathroom we would be looking at 10 to possibly as much as 20K because of the nanny state permit process. Even a powder room is 10k+, because there is no water anywhere on that side of the house.
We could put in an off grid bathroom, but that takes a certain kind of person to use one. Not as bad as an outhouse, but you definitely have to think ahead more than just turning on a faucet.
We've got a couple of weeks before we need to make a decision. So throwing it out there in the hopes the Universe will slap me in the head with a workable solution.
I am not a humanist. I know this may come as a shock to some of you, but no, I am not. (Sarcasm, since some people just flat do not understand the concept.)
I do not like people. I like PERSONS, as in individuals, but I do not like the human race as a whole. I do not feel that I need to hold the hand and stroke the ego of every privileged little girl sitting behind their computer, sipping a Starbucks with their metaphorical hand pressed to their lips in fake moral outrage.
My sister has a saying, "I can feel you, but I just can't reach you." If you are offended by what I say, then stop speaking to me. I'm not interested in justifying my opinions to you. They are mine, and if you don't like it, then step off. If I don't like yours, I will certainly drop you from my social sphere without a second thought. I have a limited amount of time and energy, and most people are not worth it for me to waste that on some trivial crap I don't care about.
The holidays are upon us yet again, and this year is bittersweet. My son will turn 18 at the end of this school year right before he graduates, and this will be the last holidays with him as a 'child'. While I have not attended a big holiday family thing since he was a baby, we've always had a quiet holiday at home. Being divorced from his biofather meant that we only got to spend every other Yule morning with him, but we always have something special when he comes home the 26th.
An old high school bud from Facebook posted about how his mother would get him up in the mornings to go to school. It occurred to me that I did not have this experience growing up. My mother returned to the workforce five years before I was born, so I don't remember a time when she was home, except on the rare holiday vacations. My wake up to go to school from the time I started at 6 was a phone call, because mother was already at work by the time I had to get up. So at age 6, I was left alone to get myself ready, feed myself, and walk to school, which meant crossing the major road though town, old Sheppard Road. My mother also neglected to do things like teach me how to bath and care for myself, how to dress properly, things like that, so my schoolmates had a field day with me, I was the target growing up for every bully in school. Add on top of that being an Aspie with zero support or understanding and being chubby in the days of Twiggy, I never had a chance.
When I was little, my brother was in the Navy, and the times he came home were the best. One vivid memory I have was waking up right before dawn on the 24th to the smell of coffee, getting up and going into the kitchen to see my brother and his wife making coffee and sorting through their luggage. My maternal grandparents were still alive, and if you have never had a holiday with an old world European family, you have missed out.
As I got older, holiday gatherings got bigger. My siblings married, had children, single friends started straggling in as well. One year we had 4 or 5 families, and various singles as well, there were so many people and so much food, it is a good thing my sister lives in a huge house, we would have all never fit anywhere else. While these gatherings were fun, they were a huge stress for me, and unfortunately, no one understood about Aspies or any kind of social anxiety, people like me were just considered weird.
After we moved to Austin, we went back a few times until our son was born, and after he was old enough to understand what the holiday was all about (Presents!) we did not travel with him on the actual day. So that was the start of the smaller holiday gatherings with friends. The ex was very social, me, still not so much. After he and I divorced, and I remarried, my holidays became much smaller and more manageable, just us and a few close friends. And even thought I have to do all the cooking, I have to say I look forward to the holidays much more now, but I am glad I do have the memories of the huge family gatherings. My son had both, the ex has huge holidays with all the surviving family and we have the smaller quiet holidays were no one gets out of sweats and there is no schedule. As this year will be the last, we will enjoy it, and look forward to moving into the next stage of our life, without underage children to worry about. The Wheel turns, and life goes on.
I was reading a blog this morning about a young woman who has dieted most of her life since puberty. It broke my heart when I read about her coming to the realization that she will never be 'a slender perky blonde'. A comment from her sister made me even more sad, and reminded me of the abuses I suffered because my half Italian/half German mother wanted to be Twiggy, and a fat child made her look bad.
When I was 9 the diets began, and I was forced to share them. Weight Watchers during the fish and liver years, the banana-and-water diet, the cabbage soup diet, you name it, if it was out in the 70's, my mother forced it on me. When diets didn't work, she started trying to starve me which caused me to steal and hide food, and at 12 she took me to a doctor who gave me speed and vitamin injections. When an incompetent nurse put a shot into the nerve cluster in my lower back, it caused me such pain for weeks that I hysterically refused to go any more. Probably a good thing on my part, otherwise I probably would have stroked out from all the speed by the time I was 13. Being born with hypoglycemia, I was sick and miserable most of the time. It didn't help matters that a good friend of my mother was a tall thin woman who had tall thin blonde girls. The one who was my age was held up to me all through my youth as the epitome of ideal feminine beauty, she was thin, blonde and a cheerleader. This girl and her friends were allowed by the parents to bully and abuse me in the hope I would be fat shamed into becoming like her. After being beaten up by some of them, I stopped socializing pretty much at all, preferring my pets and books to having to deal with those little brat bastards. Their mantra all through elementary and jr high was the old standard, "Fatty Fatty 2 by 4, can't get through the bathroom door."
Entering high school, I saw others beginning to date. As we were in a small town, my sister told me "Never date a boy from your school, if you sleep with them, you'll be called a slut, and even if you don't, he'll still tell all his friends you did." So I didn't date until I started driving, and through a friend met his cousin, a blond blue eyed Aryan boy from a 'good' family (Meaning they had money.) who lived in a larger community a few miles away. When I brought him home the first time, my mother turned to me and said "I don't know how you got such a good looking boyfriend, you're so fat!" Let me point out at this point, I was not fat, only about 20 pounds overweight. Lovely thing to say to your 16 yr old daughter.
As I got older and entered college, the abuse didn't end there. Like many abused children, I had a perverse need to please my parents and spent way too much time trying to make them proud of me or even love me. I was an unwanted child to begin with, and such a huge disappointment. When I married at 19, I picked an abusive man, so it continued. I spent most of my young adulthood being told how I was lucky to have such a 'good man'. When I was 30, I finally cut off most of my family. I had moved to Austin, and found a community of like-minded people who didn't give a damn what I looked like, what I wore, what my hair looked like, what gods I worshiped, or anything else. I began to heal with help from friends who had been though similar abusive relationships.
When the Internet when online, I began to meet more and more people who had similar experiences. In the early 2000's the Fat-O-Sphere came into being, and HAES, Health At Every Size. The bullshit BMI has taken a toll on even more people, causing them to harm or even kill themselves in search of the Myth of Thin. BMI was a formula written by an astrophysicist to measure the mass of planetary bodies in space. Not sure what idiot decided to could be applied to humans, and does not take into account that muscle weighs more than fat, making most athletes 'obese'. I got rid of my abusive ex, and met a wonderful caring man online who later became my husband.
I have since learned that I do matter, I'm not a failure, or any of the things my parents or the other kids used to call me. It was a long hard road. I do slip up sometimes and slide into that way of thinking, and have to remind myself that those people, like the blonde cheerleader and her fucked up friends, don't matter to me or my sense of self-worth. I am a happy person now with a satisfying social life and great friends, a fabulous career as a baker, a wonderful husband, and a son who could not make me any prouder. He too has had to overcome abuse from his biological father and severely mentally ill step siblings, but we have worked through it, and he is a happy well adjusted teenager fixing to graduate high school and head off to college. For those still living in the hell that is fat phobia and fat shaming, take hope, you are not alone.
Anyone who has known me for any length of time knows I am a hippie at heart. I was born in the 60's, and mostly raised by my older siblings, since I was an unwanted pregnancy at the end of fertility. I went to places with my much older beatnik and hippie siblings that most small children probably should not have been exposed to. As I got older, and my siblings "grew up", I still stuck to wanting a more commune/rural existence. After getting married and being brainwashed that I was being 'childish', and should grow up and become an adult, I went to college, got a job in my field, and started down the long road to misery and depression.
After getting rid of the husband and others who turned me into this unhappy person, I began to reexamine my life. I knew I wanted to return to a more rural community based lifestyle, but now due to joint custody and other considerations, I am stuck in the big city of Austin, right smack dab in the middle. (It was the north end when I moved here.) As I got older, my health issues began to catch up with me, and living out in the country became problematic. What to do, what to do?
During this time, I started reading about urban agriculture, and how Cuba used urban agriculture to turn their food crisis around after the collapse of the Soviet Union (The main source of their daily food supplies.) left them without even basic foodstuffs. One family in California have even managed to produce thousands of pounds of food on their standard city lot, as well as brewing their own biofuel. They have an entire family however, working the small urban homestead.
Owning a house in town on a standard city lot, I have tried with mixed success to raise a portion of our own food. My physical condition limits me, and I need some young strong backs to do the work. What I would like to do it build a tiny off grid house/yurt/tipi (Another interest of mine.) in the back for someone to live in while they work the 'citystead' full time. (Leaning heavily towards tipi on a foundation or deck.) In exchange for living space, the person(s) would help tend garden and small livestock, do handyman work around the place, and take a share of the food produced that they could consume or sell/barter. Any takers?
Last week while ripping off and nibbling bits of warm sourdough she had just purchased from my basket, the Funkytonk Famer's Market manager lady asked me "So why aren't you selling here?" All the reasons ran through my head at that moment; I'm not ready, I can't make enough stuff to satisfy a large group, I can't do that much outlay at one time, etc. My answer? "I don't know, so why don't I?" She said just bring a table and set up, so I am this coming Saturday. Because I want my items to be fresh and not day old, I will be getting up 1 a.m.-ish on Saturday morning, to make the 9 a.m. opening time with fresh warm out of the oven goodies. The only thing I do beforehand is candy, so toffee will be made later this week.
Come on down on Saturdays, pick up some fresh bread or brownies, and support local business. The veggies are great, there's lots of cool people to talk to, and there is also usually a flea market set up as well.
I really suck at this blogging thing. I think of all kinds of cool things I could write about, rants about world issues, that kind of stuff, oh look, a squirrel! Having two small businesses, a child in his senior year, and the rest of life seems to take away any time I might have to write. With the new year fast approaching, I'll try to be better about it. (Hey, at least I remembered my password this time!)
I do have to admit that Facebook takes up WAY too much of my time, like a lot of people. Why actually sit down and work out long and involved thoughts, when you can whip something off in short 2-3 line comments. (I don't use Twitter, but I hear the same thing about it.) As an Aspie, I love being able to interact with other people, yet still have the ability to keep my distance if things get too involved. That is one of my major faults, I get way too involved with others, to the point it affects my own life. It is a very difficult skill, to be able to be 'friends', yet not let someone else's life overwhelm your own. Add on top of that the Aspie thing, and there is a situation for disaster in the making if there ever was one.
With discovering Etsy, I finally found a place to sell the various artsy stuff that I like to do in my non-existent free time. I'm restructuring my week to do the bakery half the week, and artsy stuff half the week. It has put a serious crimp in what little social life I have, which feeds back into the Facebook issue. I wish one or the other would take off, and I could concentrate on one, but so far things are not turning out that way. I'm considering returning to personal chef work to bring in some extra income.
Another new thing that is totally wiping out my time is the CSA box we started getting 2 weeks ago. After shopping at the farmer's market for a while, we decided due to several factors that a dietary shift was in order. We had been succumbing to eating out as grocery costs climbed, and I got busier. With the drought and the demise of the flock, we had pretty much given up our daydream of growing enough food to feed us, plus some to sell. Enter the CSA.
I had wanted to join a CSA from the first time I heard about them. Moving from a rural community with fresh food available year round to the big city was a huge shock. The quality of our food dropped off big time, and we fell into the eating out trap. When I cooked, I missed those flavors of truly fresh food. When the economy crashed and factory farm food became nearly expensive as organic locally grown, I started really checking out the local CSAs. Shelling out $300+ at one time was a bit scary though, so when I saw that Johnson's Backyard Garden had a short term CSA box, I was willing to give it a try. I figured if it sucked, I was out $150, and 4 weeks worth of time. If the box worked out, then we would have no excuse and every reason for eating better.
The first box came, and it had a ton of great veggies. However, the problem with this ton of fresh veggies is getting them dealt with before they go bad. Cooking from total scratch takes up a good half of my day, like it used to back in the homesteading days. I do have to say that the food is great, and we are all going to feel much better. We've already started losing weight, which had crept up during the eating out times. And combined with the organic meats we are getting, the meals are better than anything I've had eating out, and I've eaten out in some pretty swank places.
All those things combined have pretty much sucked away any time I had to write down the random thoughts flitting around inside my head, and I've been missing it, so I will squeeze in some time to dash off things as I think of them. (I hope!) I foresee lots more coffee in my future!
