November 11, 2019
***FYI: I have been collecting donations for our Lakota families (will continue until Nov 17th). Details in the Giving paragraph of this post. Half of any proceeds from the blog during this time (see sidebar) will also be added to those donations.***
I’m both thrilled to be able to do this work and sobered by it every single time. It’s most certainly an exercise in gratitude though that’s not why I do it.
I discovered the Okini last year and a group of friends pooled our money to buy holiday gifts for children who wouldn’t expect any gifts. This year, I had to start earlier in the year if I still wanted to do it, and of course I did, so I had to pace myself. It takes a lot of time and energy so I accepted that I wouldn’t be doing the holiday Okini.
Delving into this process of buying things for people who need it, I’m reminded again and again, there is so much many of us can take for granted:
- Basic clothing: Folks on the reservation don’t have seasonal clothing. Heck lots of the kids are growing fast and don’t have next size up shirts and pants, nor do they have winter coats.
- Heat: They often need warm blankets, space heaters if they have electricity to run them, and/or a hatchet to chop wood for heat.
- Light: Some families have to chop wood, or rely on space heaters if they have them and electricity, or bundle up in sweaters and blankets if they have neither.
- Some of our families can only cook food out of a can on a hot plate if they can get one. That’s assuming they have electricity.
- The ability to shop and have things shipped to your own address. For Americans, how many of us have to even think about whether a national chain store will ship basic goods to us if we’re domestically located? Hawaii and Alaska don’t always get the free shipping but it’s usually not a question of whether or not you will even be able to order at all. As I shared with the giving group, there are many stores that point blank won’t ship to PO boxes. For those that will, many items won’t be eligible for shipping to specific regions. I ran into this problem over and over, for every family. For our second family, I picked 18 items at Target. A grand whopping total of 3 of them were eligible to be shipped to their PO box. I had to start over, at least a few times, to get it right.
We have an unbelievable bounty when we think about the baseline they’re starting at.
The process of shopping was a bit of a throwback to my childhood. I lived in homemade clothing and hand me downs. We only bought clothes from yard sales for years. I didn’t know that clothes came from stores or how to shop in a store until I was 13. I certainly didn’t know how to look for things that fit! Similarly, many of these children and adults have never shopped for themselves so they didn’t really know what sizes they needed, they make do with whatever they’re given.
After determining which stores would ship to PO Boxes, I narrowed that list further to stores that have published sizing charts, free shipping and great prices. I considered shopping thrift but the cost of shipping is so high that it’s cost prohibitive, or negates the savings so we’re spending the same as you would on new things. Between the two options, I decided it would be nice for our families to receive new things. When you don’t have much, getting hand me downs is appreciated but it’s unusual to get anything new.
As money came in, I searched the sales to see which family we could best help with the essentials. I combined coupons and sales and then once orders were submitted, I updated the volunteer coordinators with every tracking number so they could confirm that the items were all received. I opted for consolidated shipments every time I could but sadly that’s not often an available option so each family’s orders ranged from 3-8 shipments each.
As of Friday November 1st, we had pooled a total of $1,141.33. I spent $5 more than we had so that was added to our personal contribution.
What did our money get?
We helped 5 separate families! I chose a variety of groups: a single adult facing homelessness, a single adult who took in an infant grandchild, a single parent with an elderly parent and young child, and a single parent with 7 children. That makes a total of 4 adults and 8 children we were able to purchase for.
Family 1: 2 pairs of sneakers, 2 pairs of jeans, 11 pairs of socks, 6 shirts, 2 pairs of jeans, 2 pairs of pants.
Family 2: 2 giant boxes of size 2 diapers, 2 giant boxes of size 3 diapers, a giant box of wipes (800 count), shampoo, conditioner, laundry detergent, hand soap, 10 bars of soap, instant coffee, tea, sugar, salt, pancake mix, syrup, mashed potato mix, 48 packs of instant oatmeal, 12-pack of canned beef barley soup, peanut butter, strawberry jam, whole grain fruit bars, Nature Valley bars.
Family 3: Shampoo, conditioner, lotion, toothpaste, toothbrushes, floss, underwear, socks.
Family 4: Seven warm coats, eight blankets, 7 multi-packs of underwear and 15 pairs of warm socks.
Family 5: Warm slipper socks, 2 pairs of warm pants, 2 warm shirts, 1 warm sweatshirt.
Why do this?
I suppose someone is going to ask this question, if only in their head.
Short answer: because I can.
Longer answer: Because we are so incredibly blessed to have enough good health to fend for ourselves. (Even though I’m not religious, I do feel that blessed is the right word.) We have love, we have the means to take care of each other in our little family, and we do that well enough to think beyond our own noses. We have enough to give to others without hurting ourselves.
I don’t expect to see any return on this. I do believe this is an investment in making life a little bit better for people in our global community, though. When I die, I won’t regret working hard to try leaving the world just a little bit better than I found it, in some small way.
Last and most importantly: thank you.
I’m so grateful for having this community where you felt moved to be part of this work.
I’m so grateful for having enough, every day, so that I could put my time and energy into this. I’m so proud of our group of friends who give to help others be warmer, be fed, be a little less uncomfortable, without expecting anything in return. Thank you for caring. Thank you for coming together and making this possible.
Together, we made a difference.
November 8, 2019
***FYI: I am collecting donations for our Lakota families until Nov 17th. Details in the Giving paragraph of this post. Half of any proceeds from the blog during this time (see sidebar) will also be added to those donations.***
1. PiC bought a sack of bulk pumpkin seeds for my snacking needs. They’re low carb and yummy.
2. I filled in some gaps for our last two Lakota family’s needs with the last of our funding.
3. I spent Sunday in my version of quiet contemplation. It was the anniversary of Mom’s passing and I wasn’t sure how I’d feel but I chose to embrace being the only human around the house on this day and do whatever I wanted. That meant I organized two dresser drawers, the bathroom vanity, and our master closet. That felt soothing at the time but maybe it was just pushing off feeling the feelings in their right time and place.
4. I was eaten up by the bah-humbugs on Tuesday. That’s not the good thing. The good thing is trying something that seemed to work: not trying to force myself out of the mood but rather just letting the feelings be and working while I’m feeling it. I was practicing this with JB but forgot to practice it for myself.
5. I got a slew of catalogs from LL Bean, Amazon, Shutterfly and Tinyprints so I took this opportunity to tell them to stop sending us paper catalogs in the mail. LL Bean chat was the easiest, it took less than one minute! Amazon took longer but you can use this link to turn off postal mail for yourself. For Shutterfly and Tinyprints, I had to log into my account to turn off postal mail there.
6. Ah ha! I finally identified three of the many weeds dominating our yard that we need to get rid of: Star Thistle, Spreading Hedgeparsley, Prickly Lettuce. There are more and I’m trying to identify the most horrible one. It has cute tiny yellow flowers and spreads close to the ground with ferny leaves. Underneath the green and the innocuous flowers, it’s hiding ten thousand little stickers. I hates them, precious. I’m hoping this is the first step to correctly eliminating them instead of accidentally helping them propagate forever.
7. It turns out Seamus’s nightly pacings were anxiety over needing his family all in one place. Once that happened, he slept the deep sleep of the just.
8. JB asked me very politely to watch the beginning of a show with zir “because it is scary and I cannot handle it.” When did my child turn into a semi articulate person???
9. I’m thinking about adding VWESX to our portfolio instead of carrying on with VBTLX. Hattip to Nicole and Maggie for mentioning it. I only want to hold one of each type of fund (domestic stocks, international stocks, bonds) but I might consider an exception for this since it’s a higher yield.
:: How was your week?
November 1, 2019
***FYI: I am collecting donations for our Lakota families until Nov 17th. Details in the Giving paragraph. Half of any proceeds from the blog during this time (see sidebar) will also be added to those donations.***
1. We’ve had two days of lovely warm sunny weather and I cannot even tell you the difference it’s made to my mood, stress levels, and good cheer. It’s amazing.
2. It’s high wind and fire season in CA again and this year we’re directly affected by the widespread PG&E power shutdowns. Not awesome. We’re lucky in that we don’t rely on electricity for essential medications and lifesaving or life-sustaining equipment so it’s only a big inconvenience. Many others are not so lucky and are being badly affected by these shutdowns, and cannot afford to just pay their way out to get the medications, generators, and other necessities to stay alive and well.
3. We were able to visit a friend this weekend and it was so much fun. I can’t remember the last time we’ve gone visiting as a whole family where we could mostly relax. Parenting mode is always on but neither of us had work on the brain and we were just out having a few fun adventures. Also tacos, tacos, and more tacos. By our third meal, even JB was suggesting we have tacos again.
4. Friend gifted me a backpack she didn’t need when PiC made fun of my very broken down 12? year old Swiss army backpack I’ve resisted replacing because frugal. The strap is frayed halfway through and all the zipper pulls have broken from age 😆. The new backpack is in great shape and JB immediately tried to steal it.
5. I’ve been waiting for one of these Target promotions: We spent $28 on 4 sets of shampoo and conditioner at Target with a $5 gift card coming back, so we now have 224 ounces of shampoo and conditioner for $25. Comes out to about 11 cents per ounce. Not bad.
6. We are dealing with a really stressful situation this week, and next, with a death in the family. The arrangements have been unbelievably complicated and everything that could go wrong with them has. We’re coping as well as we can, and I’m grateful that while it’s going to be expensive, we should be able to take the hit. LOTS of deep breathing in the meantime.
:: How was your week?
October 25, 2019
***FYI: I will be collecting donations for our Lakota families until Nov 17th. Details in the Giving paragraph. Half of any proceeds from the blog during this time (see sidebar) will also be added to those donations.***
1. I’ve been sick as a dog. This nasty virus has been making the rounds and wrecking everyone in its path. PiC took JB out for six hours of fun and errands on Saturday so I could spend all that time in bed (save for walking the dogs). It was like a little vacation. A really short one but nevertheless amazing and needed. In that time, he did a big grocery run, cooked dinner, prepped snacks and dinner for the weekend because he’d be away all day Sunday, and bought me special cheese and capicola. Nommmm… If he didn’t have a few flaws, he’d make me nervous about being an imperfect person with a Perfect Partner.
Related: I’d made (extremely rare) plans for next weekend with a friend. It’s a big commitment that I was really (x100) looking forward to. I have to wonder if my immune system decided to quit on me to punish me for the audacity of trying to make plans to see people like normal people do. Humph.
2. Speaking of dogs, we bought six sacks of kibble on sale. I get to not think about kibble sales for 2-3 months! YES.
3. PiC had to be away in the morning and afternoon on Sunday, with a stop in the middle where he walked the dogs during my first bout of dizziness. We filled our time in the most leisurely way possible: we wrapped and decorated Christmas gifts. We made gift pouches. We snacked four times and didn’t even cook one time. We spent an hour in bed with a pile of books when my dizziness overwhelmed me, until I felt able to get up again. We walked the dogs slowly and enjoyed the outside air.
4. I made a random sale on Poshmark for a small ticket item, it’ll net maybe $2. That’s fine! The shirt is going to a good home and I get $2. That’s my first sale in months! And it’ll cover postage for cards I need to send to niblings who are going through a traumatically hard time right now.
5. I’ve worked on a total of four families with our Lakota funds so far. One of them has 7 children. If we have more funds come in, we’ll be able to help kit out the 3rd and 4th families more completely! That would be so awesome. I know it’s ambitious but with all the lovely contributions, I’m secretly hoping we can expand to a fifth and sixth family.
6. We’ve had some bad news that will be logistically complicated and expensive. I don’t know what the numbers will be but we should be able to foot whatever bills come.
:: What good things happened this week?
October 18, 2019
***FYI: I will be collecting donations for our Lakota families until Nov 17th. Details in the Giving paragraph. Half of any proceeds from the blog during this time (see sidebar) will also be added to those donations.***
This is my weekly list of things that were good this week, even if they weren’t all unadulteratedly good things. Please share your good things in the comments!
 1. My new reading glasses arrived! We even had the frames adjusted for comfort so they curve behind the ears. I’ve never had an optician advise me on this particular thing you do to make glasses comfortable so I’m very excited for the unprecedented level of comfort and for the (I hope) elimination of constant headaches now that my prescription has been adjusted. Fingers crossed!
2. We committed to another stage of a series of health surveys and clinical visit for a study that I felt was worthwhile to sign up for 5 years ago. It’s a study to help kids. This stage is time intensive (estimated 6-7 hours) and so they’re compensating us with $200 in gift cards. Our first $100 gift card was issued this week, the other will come in a few weeks after we finish the last set of information. It’s not an easy way to make $200 but that money will really help since it was something that I wanted to do.
3. We’ve received amazing contributions for our Lakota families. I’m REALLY excited that we’ll be able to send some good packages. There are so many families on the list and I’m
4. Sigh. So. On the plus side, we got approved to use the Earthquake Brace and Bolt program. We applied a year ago and funding was finally approved. The minus side is that when I inquired about the retrofit discount with our insurance agent, it turns out that our earthquake and homeowners’ insurance was artificially low because somehow they got the wrong foundation information and I missed that. Our homeowners premium is going up 30%, and the CEA premium is going up 70%. With the discount, after we complete the work, it’ll “only” go up 30%. We really have to get that work done!
I know that the plus side of this is that it’s better we find out now that we’re underinsured when we can do something about it than after a disaster when we wouldn’t have get enough money to cover all the repairs. But it’s a painful plus. I’m crossing my fingers for good bids from the EBB contractors and that one of them will do the work really well, or that our private contractor can beat their price even with the FEMA funding in which case I don’t have to worry at all about quality. I suppose another weak positive is I can pick up another churning credit card with the policy increases, but that will require some time to strategize and I have none to spare.
I do solidly appreciate that when I did the initial research, I decided that I didn’t want to deal with the contractors directly (I have too many things on my plate right now) and handed that portion over to PiC with a deadline. He called, talked to them, set up appointments and met with them without a single reminder from me because he’s awesome like that.
:: How was your week?
October 11, 2019
***FYI: I will be collecting donations for our Lakota families until Nov 17th. Details in the Giving paragraph. Half of any proceeds from the blog during this time (see sidebar) will also be added to those donations.***
This is my weekly list of things that were good this week, even if they weren’t all unadulteratedly good things. Please share your good things in the comments!
1. I redeemed my Bing points for a Target gift card: $25. I keep stalling, mostly because I like seeing large point totals, and a little bit because I worried that I’d just spend the gift card money on regular household needs instead of saving it for my robot vacuum. I’ll try to behave.
2. Dear friend gifted me a beautiful rice filled heat pack which has been such a boon for my sore neck and back. Since I can only hand sew, and rarely do I have time or does my body not hurt too much to do it long enough to make such a pack, this was the best gift.
3. We all got our flu shots and planned for it to hit us reasonably hard. It was a good thing. We spent the remaining part of the afternoon on the sofa with a movie while PiC cooked dinner, and then JB and I all headed to bed by 7 pm. I wasn’t planning to stay in bed after reading to zir but was out like a light and got the longest night of uninterrupted sleep in recent memory.
4. Speaking of valuing local things, we completed my quest to find a local independent bookstore to shop from! I won’t always be able to patronize them because I still have my physical limitations that knock me down for days at a time if I don’t respect them but I’m glad to have a place to go when I’m able and we’ll give them as much of our business as possible. We’re choosing to spend a little more to help keep a valuable shop in business.
We enjoyed their small kid section which had some toys for kids at kid sized tables and chairs and the owner was nice enough to not mind our hanging about for hours. We bought a pile of new and used books as gifts and requested a special order of a few more book for gifts. I also learned from the store owner that they had to pay to show up on indie.org and that’s why I couldn’t find them on there before.
5. I decided to satisfice my new glasses. After having done some research online at Zenni where it would have cost me $52.11 after a coupon for the exact same pair that I got last year, I went to Costco to price out a comparison pair. Costco is an out of network shop, but VSP will cover $80 frames and part of the lens cost. This is my first pair in two years, third pair in 15 years, so I decided that instead of spending another precious afternoon seeking out an in network provider, I decided that a $60 set of frames and $57 for the lens and copay were manageable. I take good care of my glasses and don’t replace them until I absolutely have to, but I’ve also been having migraines for 3 months so having the process started now makes more sense than suffering for another month or two while I vet another provider and eventually finally find the time to go to their office. I still have twinges of not having sought out a way to get the glasses for just the $25 copay but I’m going to have to be ok with this.
6. Ally announced they are offering commission-free trading on all U.S. exchange-listed stock, ETF, and option trades. Yay! I don’t buy or sell often but I like free.
:: Why does 57 degrees in the Fall feel absolutely frigid whereas the same temperature in spring and summer months is just chilly? How was your week?
October 4, 2019
This is my weekly list of things that were good this week, even if they weren’t all unadulteratedly good things. Please share your good things in the comments!
1. Our neighbors were in a horrific car accident last week, we’re so grateful that they’re all ok. I’ve known so many people who got into terrible wrecks, and we’ve buried a few of them, that it gives me a touch of anxiety every time JB and PiC go off together.
2. My eye exam put me out of commission all day. The doctor warned me that it was possible I’d lose 4 hours after the dilation but I didn’t think it’d be quite as bad as it was. Normally I really can’t afford that kind of time off with my workload, the past 14 months have been awful, but I caught a small break this week in that my urgent stuff was done before that appointment. Small favors.
3. We had a fabulous, though short, visit with a dear friend who happily embarked on culinary adventures with me. I’m so proud of myself for working on seasoning this dish well enough that the flavors were complex and not the one note that only salt, pepper, and chicken broth were initially bringing to the table. The adults approved and JB came back for seconds, then thirds after dessert. The biggest compliment!
4. I finally found time to read a novel from a fellow blogger: Family Trust by Kathy Wang. I’m still marinating thoughts because there was so much there.
5. Who’s got two thumbs and is super jazzed that Target’s Market Pantry brand green beans are regularly 55 cents a can, beating Costco’s 61 cents a can? THIS LADY. Seamus has been giving me the business for not having his expected veggies in his dinner. Costco, our main supplier, has been out for ages! I made do with extra carrots and sweet potatoes but the green beans are the cheapest and lowest cal supplement (34 cals per cup, vs 62 cals for carrots and 180 cals for sweet potatoes). We need low cal and filling to keep this old guy lean, it’s easier on his arthritis.
Bonus, I can pay for it with gift cards so those Bing rewards are feeling extra special. WOO. Now I need a sale of some sort to apply to their already cheap regular price. You’d think it was ridiculous to be thinking about saving 6 cents a can, and yes that’s just $21.60 a year, BUT with a recurring quarterly bill of $400-450 for just two of his FIVE DAILY medications, I have to look for every penny of savings that I can find.
6. If JB wants a Halloween costume, that has to be settled NOW. Ze finally picked a costume and while we couldn’t get it as a hand me down from anyone, Target had the costumes. The popular color was selling for $35 and a less canon color for $20. Since I’m not about to pay $35 for a single use item, and the cheaper one was one of zir top favorite colors anyway, that’s the one we were getting. But I made myself wait. There’s a fine balance between getting everything done early and not paying full price for non essentials and that’s the only highwire act you’ll see me engage in! Two days later, voila! 30% off Halloween costumes! Brought that sucker down to $14 with free delivery when combined with the canned green beans goldstrike. Now ze needs to love the costume and wear it at least twice.
7. Every year, my birthday present to myself is giving the library a check to buy a diverse list of authors I want to read, in e-books. This means I get to enjoy them and other people can too. I sneak back to check back on the status of those books and am elated when I find they’re waitlisted. That means people are reading them! And I hope enjoying them. I’m starting my wish list for next year now: Rena Barron’s Kingdom of Souls trilogy.
8. Earnings from MyPoints have been incredibly slow in the past two years so I’m happy to finally have enough points to redeem for a $10 Amazon gift card.
:: You know the hard thing about emotions and chronic pain? As much as I can look back and say I had lots of little bright spots in this week, it was still really hard to feel happy because every single day has included hours of flare-up pain. How was your week?