Today's Accomplishment

So, since we were chosen to be the next Habitat for Humanity family, Dan and I get to do 250 volunteer hours each. Part of my hours have been spent registering Monterey County's H4H for Disney's "Give a Day. Get a Day." program. Shortly after getting this set up, I noticed a critical problem.

We didn't have control over what volunteer opportunities were posted.

Why? Because at some point, someone registered our local H4H with 1-800-volunteer, a service that hooks volunteers up with organizations who need them. The Disney program pulls automatically pulls volunteer information from this site. Sadly, no one at the local H4H knew anything about 1-800-volunteer.org Thus began my mission, to find out how to log into our account, so we could edit our volunteer opportuities....

It began by calling the H4H support center for affiliates. Last Friday I left a message. I called back today and talked to 4 people. Nobody knew anything about 1-800-volunteer. "Two phone calls?" you say. "That's it?" Ah, but let me tell you about those phone calls. Problem #1-- I really don't know what I'm talking about. I don't know the vocabulary I need to turn this 15 minute drama into a1 minute explanation about what's going on. The support center asks, "What's 1-800-volunteer?" and, quite frankly, I don't know what it is myself. But I do know it's what's getting in my way. Problem #2-- It's raining. Which mean Normandy and Zerin are running around the house playing, loudly. And every 5 minutes I need to fix Zerin's lego truck 'cause breaks. And they're hungry. And I can't get through a 10 minute phone conversation on the best of days. I can barely think about laundry, let alone how to talk to a stranger about something I know nothing about when they act like this.

At some point, I realize that I'm better off contacting 1-800-volunteer directly. And this is the gold mine I was hoping for. At 4:03pm, some very nice guy answers the phone. He knows exactly what I'm talking about before the I finish my convoluted sentence. He transfers me to the all powerful Gilda. She can fix it. Without batting a mascaraed eyelash or breaking a manicured nail. And that's it. I have a user name. And a password.

And hungry kids who demand dinner. And legos to clean up. And laundry to fold. And dishes to wash. They all threaten to destroy the success I feel from accomplishing one thing in my 18 hour day. The one thing that can not be undone by 4 busy, smart, beautiful children. No matter how hard they try, they can't take my username and password.

Lysa

Our house:

The stairs... they don't go anywhere yet.

The Living Room.

The kitchen.... "Hi, Heather!"

The garage and the girls' room above it.

Beef Stroganoff-- Gluten Free

Tonight I made a yummy gluten free dinner. Here it it:

2 lbs beef, ground or chunks

2 cups stock, beef or chicken

1 onion

1-2 tsp red pepper

salt & pepper, to taste

1 1/2 cups sour cream

Brown beef and onion. Add stock, red pepper, salt and pepper. Simmer 3o minutes. Stir in sour cream and warm through. Serve over rice.

Because Anya's eating casein free and gluten free, I took beef out for her dinner before adding the sour cream. This could also be served over egg noodles.

I served this with steamed carrot sticks, which was a nice change from carrot coins.

Cooking without gluten or any kind of dairy has been a challenge. I gotta say we're pleased with the results so far!

Family Government, Pt. 2

So, about a million days ago I wrote about why socialism, at least on a family level, is bad. As mentioned before, when things are taken, the taker and the took from miss out on benefits. I focused on what the taker loses in the last post. In this post, I'm going to focus on what the taken from misses when the opportunity to "give" is removed.

If daughter A has $32.50 and daughter T needs $3 more to buy a DS game, you can be sure an interesting conversation will ensue. A used DS game typically costs about $25 at the GameStop, (my kids never buy new-- topic for another blog.) Which means that daughter A has about $4 that she doesn't need after paying for the game and taxes (money the government takes from you to pay for things like police, schools and roads). Daughter T will then ask if she can have $3, with the promise to share the game, letting A play first and whenever she wants, unless T herself is playing it.

A is always excited at sharing her excess $. She really and truly understands the meaning of giving. She knows her heart feels happy when she gives what she doesn't need. This is obvious by the smile on A's face and the excitement in her voice when she explains to me the terms of the $ giving. T is very grateful for the fact that A has shared and recognizes the goodness in her sister. T feels grateful and love toward A and shows it by keeping her promise and hugging. These feelings of love and gratitude extend beyond the store walls, into the van and our home. Seriously, there is peace for quite some time as the sisters share with each other, and their younger siblings.

The happy feelings associated with giving are universal. They extend to all who give willingly and with love. They come when we are honest about what we can give: time, talents, smile or money. When the government mandates that we share what is rightfully ours, those good feelings do not surface because the choice to give is not our own. It's the choosing itself that brings the feelings of happiness. Knowing that we did something good because that's the kind of person we are. We can also often directly see the benefits of our giving, when we give it. We get a thank you, a smile in return or a glimpse at the long term benefits of our gift. We have a personal relationship with the receiver.

The humble feelings associated with receiving are also universal. When we really and truly need, there is a unique feeling in the pit of our stomachs. A certain, I don't know, knot of emptiness. When that knot is relieved through the gift of a helping hand, food or $ donation, we feel our relief and gratitude. We understand what it means to be on the receiving end, and these feelings encourage us to give what we can, when we can. A pay it forward attitude. We feel our connection to humanity through the gift, we feel loved.

When the government takes and gives, the connection is lost. The gift becomes a tax. The humility becomes entitlement. And let's face it, if I give $10 to the guy pushing the grocery cart laden with blankets and empty soda cans, he gets $10. If I give it to the government to give to him, maybe he'll get $5. (A certain type of math I didn't learn at Pinelands.)

As a family, we're experiencing a time when we are less able to give. I'm realizing exactly how selfish I was prior to our personal economic downturn. I know that when we emerge from this recession, I will be more giving of my financial resources. I suppose if we had never had this need, I wouldn't understand this about myself. In the meantime, I am giving what I do have. My time, my talents. Perhaps instead of looking to the government for a hand-out, we should look to each other to see what we can share, what we can give to each other.

Sea Shell Returns to the Seashore!

Sea Shell is back! This time she is joining the whole family at a more easily recognizable location! Post in the comments section if you think you know where we are!

Family Government, Part 1

There's been a lot of talk lately about the dreaded Global Warming being a highway that will drive the world to Socialism. The idea being that industrialized people/countries will be required to purchase "carbon credits" from less developed nations, thus distributing the wealth from wealthy nations to poor nations.

I don't know whether or not this is true, and the truth of the ClimateGate theory isn't critical to my blog today.

All this talk of wealth distribution got me thinking about the idea of socialism. I am not a philosophy major. I never was big on discussing the finer points of distinction between fascism, socialism, communism or Marxism.... that's a lot of isms.... My general understanding is that they all basically advocate taking from those who have and giving to those who don't because it isn't fair that someone has more than another. So, what's wrong with that? What's wrong with sharing?


Nothing is wrong with sharing, as any pre-schooler learns. Pre-schoolers also know that taking isn't sharing. Taking hurts the person you take from. Imagine the scene: A two year old walks up and takes the fire truck her brother is playing with. "I'll give it back in just a minute. I want to play with it." The brother's face falls, his eyes getting big, lower lip quivering with shock. The big sister walks away smugly and, having gotten something for nothing, plays with the firetruck for 30 seconds, tosses it aside (literally) and walks away. What has anyone learned? The brother learned not to trust his sister 'cause she takes his stuff and the sister learns she can have whatever she wants. And she doesn't even appreciate it.

On a more macro scale, a person who takes learns they can take. They don't appreciate it, nor do they treat what is given to them with respect. This applies whether what's being taken is a toy firetruck or money. It's could be called tax or carbon credit or welfare. Most importantly, the taker doesn't learn how to work hard. And let's face it, life is hard work, whether you have to study spelling words, take care of kids, jockey a desk or run a business. Without a basic ability to work hard, a person will never succeed at life, regardless of their job.

Taking also deprives an individual of the lesson that life isn't fair. It's not fair that one child grows up in poverty and another with extreme wealth. It's not fair that one family struggles to pay the medical bills for a sick child, while another family barely suffers from the common cold. The fact is, life is not fair. Through this understanding that life isn't fair, we can learn to be happy, despite what we don't have.

This is why we will not practice socialism in our family, however, we do occasionally practice dictatorship, capitalism and anarchy.

The second part of this little blog on family government will discuss what the "giver" and "taker" miss out on when things are given instead of taken.

Lysa

PS-- No children were ignored in the writing of this blog, which is why it took 2+ hours to write, and still sucks.

Important announcement

ATTENTION:
Every banker, lawyer, political and last surviving family member who wants to give me money, please FedEx a check to my address. I'm in the phone book. Thank you for choosing me to receive large amounts of unearned cash.

Sincerely,
Lysa

Something to laugh about

bwah hahahahahahahahaha. I'll save this one for Zerin, when he's ready... actually, the Tiger might motivate him....