Give Blood - A No-Cost Way to Donate

When I was working in a school district, the Blood Bank bus visited one or more of our campuses several times a year, so it was easy for employees to occasionally donate since they came to us. But since I've been working at home, it was harder for me to remember to donate blood.

Last year I learned that the Blood Bank comes to my hometown two days every eight weeks at two locations in my hometown, so it's been easy to get into a routine of donating blood with them. If I can't make it one day, I can go the next.

I'm currently living off of my savings, and I need it to last as long as possible so I've really had to watch my spending. But giving blood is a great way for me to contribute something important without affecting my savings.

It's a part of my calendar now.

Burning Money

Over $15,000 is the average amount of credit card debt in the American households that have debt. Michael, from BusinessInsider.com figures if a person carries that amount of credit card debt, paying an average current rate of 12.83% over a period of 40 years, they would pay the credit card companies over 2.6 million dollars. Did you get that? 2.6 MILLION dollars!! In interest, which means one has nothing to show for spending 2.6 MILLION dollars. 

Think of what you could buy for 2.6 million dollars:

• A house, paid for. 
• Several vehicles, paid for. 
• College degrees for your children, paid for. 
• Nice vacations, paid for.
• A very comfortable retirement, paid for. 

If people turned around and saved the same amount of money burned up in interest payments, they would be millionaires by the time they retired. 

But no, we've trained ourselves to satisfy our every want, on credit, with little thought to how much money we are throwing away in interest due to our impatience and greed.

In the early years of my marriage, my husband and I paid over 15% interest on a $40,000 home improvement loan. We refused to think about how much money we paid to the bank each year due to our inability to wait until interest rates dropped dramatically or until we saved enough money to pay cash. We thought everyone operated this way, that living with debt was normal behavior. And based on our government's modus operandi and example for us to follow, that's the dysfunctional truth.

I never had $15,000 debt on my credit cards, but I did my fair share of interest payments and late fees and even bank overdraft charges in my younger years because I was ignorant about managing my personal finances. And I wasn't disciplined enough to change my sloppy ways until it finally dawned on me how much money I was throwing away every year.

One of the few people in the media promoting debt free living is Dave Ramsey, and it's exciting to listen on the radio when a person or couple calls in to do their debt free scream. I hope to be able to do that one day. Ramsey is a rare voice of sanity and self-control in our out-of-control, over-indulged culture.

Today, I use one credit card to earn travel miles, and I pay it off at the end of each month. Credit card companies are the modern day loan sharks, and they're laughing all the way to the bank as they prey on folks' ignorance and weaknesses.

Keep sweeping

I remember as a young mother driving down a street of very small and humble houses. I saw a woman sweeping the porch of one house and wondered what motivated her to do that. Did someone tell her to sweep the porch? Did she sweep the porch on certain days? Did she sweep the porch only when she noticed it needed sweeping?

My house and porches and carport at that time were big, and it was easy to get behind when it came to keeping it all swept clean. My biggest motivation for cleaning occurred when company was coming, and I felt guilty that I didn't give my family the same consideration on a regular basis. They deserved better than that.

It's taken me years, but I've finally learned to pick a time to clean the floors, which I do once a week unless we've been extra messy, and then I'll use a whisk broom and dustpan in-between times. Tomorrow morning, I'll vacuum the hardwood floors and rugs and then steam-clean the hardwood floors, (for which I gladly abandoned the mop for a light-weight steam cleaner). With the size of our house now, I can get it done in an hour. The porches take about fifteen minutes. And it feels so good to walk on clean floors for a while. Then I don't give it another thought until next week.

Have you ever watched an archeological dig on television? How did entire structures and civilizations get buried over time? I've decided that somebody got behind on their sweeping.

10 Reasons to Have a Porch

1. A porch is a place of peaceful contemplation and enjoying the flora and fauna. 

2. A porch is the best spot to park rocking chairs, which invite folks to sit down and enjoy some face-to-face, tech-free conversation.

3. A porch is the poor man's counselor's office.

4. A porch is doubly special when it has a swing attached. It's my favorite place to hang out with my grandchildren and rock the baby to sleep.

5. A porch is an oversized playpen for children, pets, and adults alike.

We made a simple rolling gate out of a section of fence to enclose the front porch for pets and little ones.

6. A porch is a great place to read and expand the mind. I don't need my reading glasses when I'm reading on the porch.

7. A porch is a good place to shell peas, eat watermelon, crochet or knit. 

Every time my grandson Finn visits, we find a new stack of sticks on the porch, leftover from his imagination.

8. A porch can be a magical anything to child's imagination. My grandchildren regularly turn the back porch into a food store, or a fort, or a miniature town with wood blocks.

My grandkids think we built the ramp just for them!

9. A porch is a good way to stay connected to the neighbors.

10. A porch is the smile on the face of a home.

Home... work... home... work

Sometimes women, especially my generation and younger, are in the workplace because they bought the hype about not being fulfilled unless they have a career. Or if a woman desires to do both, she's too exhausted after work to handle all the responsibilities of the house and children as well as she would like.

Other women work outside the home because the household expenses require two incomes.  Sometimes it's because they have become used to a lifestyle of more. But if the wife's paycheck is primarily used to pay someone else to take care of the children, clean the house and mow the lawn, or to buy new clothes for the job, or for more expensive convenience foods or eating out all too often because the wife  is too tired to cook, is that extra paycheck really making a difference? Or has it brought on a whole new set of frustrations and responsibilities to deal with, at the expense of one's home life?

Most men have become very comfortable with the idea of their wives helping bring home the bacon, but too many remain in the dark ages when it comes to sharing the responsibilities of the home and/or children, which too often fall heaviest on the shoulders of the wife. Some women handle managing work and home just fine, but for me and many others, it was a real struggle.

Most of the time and preparation in our teen and young adult years is focused on education and a career. How much training do we receive for marriage, household management, and raising children? It's no wonder many experience difficulty in these areas when too much of those responsibilities is often learn by trial and error.

In my younger days I really believed the myth about having and doing it all. I had a variety of jobs through the years, but my heart kept pulling me back home with my children. Then my mind would argue that I wasn't fulfilled since I wasn't working at a paying job, so I would go back to work. Then something always suffered-- usually my home and family. And when I was back at home, I would over-commit myself to community service because I felt guilty about not working outside the home. It was a vicious cycle. I began to think something was wrong with me because I couldn't do it all and do all of it well.

I've since learned that I can do most all of these things well, but not all at the same time. Like the Bible says, there is a season for everything. Whether our work is in the home or outside of it at this time of our lives, we need to get off the guilt treadmill and come to terms with our capabilities and limitations. I learned that I function best having a part-time job, and I still have the energy and time for my family and household responsibilities.

My parents and I moved in together four and a half years ago. Five months after their arrival, my mother started slurring her words, which eventually was diagnosed as Lou Gehrig's disease. She lost her ability to speak after two years, and when her limbs started failing her last year, she felt so bad about my dad and me having to do everything for her. She even wrote me a note saying that we needed to put her in a nursing home, which broke my heart. I told her she had a lifetime of credit built up for all the things she's done for us. She was a stay-at-home mom until I was in junior high, and then she went to work in order to pay for her kids' college. All four of us earned college degrees without Mom and Dad going into debt. They always lived within their means, and their frugal lifestyle didn't hurt us one bit. I'm so grateful she chose us over a career when we were young, and when she did enter the workforce, she was good at that, too, because she put people first.

My grandson & my son wheeling their Gangy around at the Riverwalk in San Antonio

We need to weed out the unimportant, unnecessary, and unproductive activities in which we have over-committed ourselves, and learn to be satisfied in the knowledge that we are doing the best we can at this point in our lives. If we're not, that's something we can change. And if it involves children and spouse, consider their needs first and foremost. It won't be our career that stands by us in our twilight years that come all too fast; it's family and friends. So invest the best part of your time in them.

*  *  *

The bulk of this post was originally written in 1999. The part about my mother was added today.

Dream on!

A group of discipline [out of shape] women decided to [go temporarily insane for a while] start walking at the high school track at 5:30 a.m. during the weekday mornings. 5:30 a.m. was still dark, and that's prime sleeping time for me, but I determined to stick it out for several weeks.

One morning the alarm went off at 5:15 a.m. right in the middle of a wonderful dream with me dancing with Patrick Swayze. I rolled over and tried so hard to go back to sleep, but the dream was gone. I dragged myself out of bed, dressed, and trudged to the track where I whined to the ladies that I had sacrificed greatly to go walking with them that morning. I told them that I had been dancing in Patrick Swayze's arms just minutes before. My husband need not have worried, though. You could've driven a freight truck between Patrick and me because for some reason we were dancing the polka!

Aren't dreams strange? How in the world do our subconscious minds dream up things we would never imagine in our conscious state of mind? And how does our minds surprise or shock us in a dream, when it's our own minds thinking it up in the first place? Have you ever dreamed that you were asleep and dreaming and woke up and thought you were awake, but you were actually still asleep? I have, and it's really confusing.

This one looks like I'd just awaken from a nightmare at camp

A recurring theme in my dreams when I was young was that if water was present in any form or fashion, the dream turned into a nightmare. If we drove our car over a bridge, the bridge would collapse into the river or bay every time. If there were rain clouds, a tornado would come. In one dream a group of us kids were running around barefooted in a backyard. I ran by a mason jar full of water sitting in the lush carpet grass, and I thought it would feel so good to kick it over and step in the cool water. So I tipped it over with my toes and stepped onto the wet grass.

Doesn't that sound nice? Doesn't that sound safe enough? But the next thing I knew, I went falling through the ground like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. I felt the terrifying sensation of falling, and when I opened my eyes in my dream, water was falling every direction like Niagara Falls along with me. That just wasn't fair! How could a simple jar of water turn into a nightmare? I would never have thought that up while I was awake, and yet it was my own mind that created that dream.

Some dreams we do have control over, though. Those are the dreams we have while we are awake. Everyone should have a dream to pursue in this short lifetime. Sometimes we flounder around for years not knowing what we want to do with our lives, or we take things as they come and chalk it up to fate or the hand we've been dealt. Or we sit around waiting for the lottery to hit, believing only then that all of our dreams will come true.

My mother and grandmother quilted 30 quilts during the four years Granny lived with my parents

Too many of us don't realize the power we have within ourselves, which for me is Christ, to make our dreams come true. Often times it takes hard work to attain and keep our dreams. Many of those who are living their dreams didn't necessarily have the greatest skills or talents, but they had a great will to persevere and stick with their dreams. Too many quit when times get difficult. Or we think the dream is impossible to attain when we look at the big picture. But like chores, we need to break up our dreams into manageable, achievable goals. And write it down! I can't tell you how many times dreams were accomplished after putting pen to paper.

With my grandchildren reading my daughter's and my first picture book

What will it take to achieve your dream? More education or training? Then get it. Do you need to change some habits in order to achieve your dream? Then do it. Sometimes the most rewarding times of our lives is the actual pursuit of our dreams.

What is your dream? Has it been tucked away too long in the recesses of your mind? Get it out, dust it off, and go for it. We all dream when we're asleep, but the greater dreams are the ones we consciously make happen when we're awake.

Pay it Back or Pay it Forward

Years ago I attended a week-long conference that was quite a commitment and test of endurance in San Antonio an hour and a half drive from my home town. Monday - Thursday were three-hour sessions in the evenings, and Friday and Saturday were full days. Our conference leader told us that he used to not charge people to attend, but he learned that the people were more committed to attend all of the sessions if they had invested something in it. If it didn't cost them anything, they didn't feel obligated to follow through with it.

That's often true about many things in life. How often do you see rent property go downhill in appearance and wear and tear versus a home that is owned by someone? In the small, private school where I was a facilitator, I received the most criticism and fussing from the parent whose child's tuition was paid by a generous benefactor.

I've seen firsthand how the work ethic, honesty, pride and motivation for people to improve themselves are destroyed by a government system of paying someone for nothing in return. I've seen multiple generations learn to beat the system by getting paid cash so it's not reported as income all the while they are still receiving government benefits. I've seen men come ask my former husband for jobs, and when he said he had work for them to do, they turned him down, saying they didn't want to work, but they had to show that they had made some effort to find a job in order to get their government check. I've seen women have more children in order to receive more money from the government. I've seen couples who didn't get married so the woman could get cheap government housing as a single mother, but the man lived with her anyway. A friend of mine who worked in a tax return service regularly saw people trying to cheat the system. A single mother would claim her children as dependents one day, and the next day, the grandmother would try to claim the same children as dependents.

I had several fourteen year old boys in my sixth grade class who didn't even try to learn while they were in school. They had been failed the maximum number of times and knew they would be passed on to the seventh grade. When I asked one of them how he was going to support himself if he had no skills, he told me he was going to get a check like his mother got. Several years later, I saw him standing outside the door with his girlfriend and baby, waiting for the Department of Human Services to open. He was true to his word, and the devastating cycle continued.

Government welfare was meant to be a temporary help up, not a generational lifestyle. It gets people used to living on the path of least resistance, for little or no effort on their part. When things come easy, people tend to get lazy. Working hard doesn't come natural for most of us, and being rewarded for doing nothing over a long period of time definitely doesn't reinforce good work practices.

I know a single mother who used government assistance so she could get her degree, and she was able to get a good job and support herself and her family. She's been a tax-payer and contributing citizen for over thirty years now. That's how it's intended to be used.

I get frustrated when I see students get through school by any means possible, and graduate by the skin of their teeth only to realize they have little skills to be productive citizens.

I get frustrated when I see a political party build its voting base by offering free stuff and services they don't have the money to pay for it, or extending unemployment payments instead of creating a healthy environment for creating jobs in the private sector, where the real tax revenues come from. When the biggest employers in a town or city are government employees, where is the money coming from to pay those salaries?

If a person is getting government assistance, they need to be actively involved in:

1. getting more training/schooling for a better job or 
2. self-improvement by using the public library's resources and taking advantage of any training opportunities available or
3. doing some kind of volunteer work that would take a bit of the load off the government in return for receiving a check 

Some places to volunteer include: the public schools, on the streets as a crossing guard, the food bank, nursing homes, charitable organizations.  And any healthy person can pick up trash in the parks and public areas or neighborhoods. If someone has helped you along the way, you need to pay it forward by helping someone else in need.

And oftentimes a volunteer or parttime job can lead to a full-time job when people see one's good work ethic and attempts to learn. The Bible has a lot of good common sense about human nature, and one of the principles about working says, "If you don't work, you don't eat." [II Thessalonians 3:10] and that is referring to able-bodied adults.

How long would a business last if it paid millions of its employees not to work? It'd be out of business in no time, and yet our government is doing exactly that, and they're putting half of the bill on a credit card! Paying someone not to work is like putting the carrot at the wrong end of the donkey, and it's sinking us.