Going Green......homework gone wrong!

As part of my idea towards a move to a more tranquil life, I have been reading up on becoming more green. Yes, more green, because before we moved we hadn't been totally barbaric, we did recycle (for the most part), had a small 10 by 10 plot of a garden, plus raised chickens in the city! Still here in this tiny apartment, it's been very difficult, not to mention costly, to start being more green.

The latest book I read was The Essential Green You by Deidre Imus, it's a great book with a lot of important eco-information. She sites multiple resources that basically say we are being killed by toxins in foods, cleaning products, cosmetics, clothing, just about everything. In fact the book has got me quite paranoid. Where do I start, we'd go bankrupt trying to turn everything organic at once. I've got to take small steps.

My goals for now are to buy organic produce(and wash the non-organic stuff real well with purified water), look for healthy choices in cosmetics, and read labels to find what I need made from the least ingredients possible. We will all around try and use less and recycle more. I hope to succeed here and create larger, greener goals when we get into our new home. On the road to increased health, bodies, minds and spirits!



This post was in response to a homework assignment. I was supposed to think of a color before I went to bed last night (that was RED). When I woke up I was to record the first five things that I saw that were that color (Red- Spatula, Tooth-paste, green bag, crocheted shoe-laces, hand-soap) and then try and connect them in a narrative. What went wrong? I sat down to write and thought "green"!!

Luck

The recent Saint Patrick's day festivities got me thinking about luck. Who has it and who doesn't and why? Lately, I've felt truly lucky in my life, but other's looking in might not see it that way. I think the biggest part of luck is attitude and belief!

At the top of my luck list, I am so very blessed to be in a loving relationship and have two wonderful daughters. Sure, there's been plenty of work in raising children and keeping that spark in our relationship, but there is so much more involved than work. There's that intuition in parenting, that magic in love, all thrown in at the right moments by luck!

I have this little skill bestowed to me by my grandmother where I'll just be strolling along and happen to glance down and find a four-leaf clover. I'd say I average finding about thirty in the spring and summer each year, and my grandmother did the same.Family and friends think it's just so strange, because they'll search and search and never find one. Do all these clovers make me a lucky person? No, I don't think so, I believe that comes from an innate attitude, an outlook that I am lucky and good things do happen every day.

In his book The Luck Factor, psychologist Richard Wiseman wrote about his study of four hundred self-described exceptionally "lucky" and "unlucky" people. His study came up with basic principles and characteristics of "lucky" people. Do you fit in?

*Lucky people tend to maximize chance opportunities
*Create, notice, and act on these opportunities
*Very effective at listening to their intuition
*Do work (like meditation) that is designed to boost their intuitive abilities
*Lucky people tend to expect to be lucky
*Create self-fulfilling prophecies because they anticipate positive outcomes
*Lucky people have an attitude that allows them to turn bad luck into good

Yes, that's me, always looking on the bright side with a positive attitude! I feel so lucky to be lucky! If you don't fit into these characteristics, work on it, you could just change your luck!

We're Moving!

It was a dreary October morning, I was working at our dining room table with my two daughters on a learning project, when the phone rang. My husband, Eddie, was calling from work. He said "I've got some shocking news.." His company was closing the plant that he had been working at for the past fourteen years! Luck lily, he had an option to stay with this New England business that he had put so much into. On the phone, he told me that he was given the option to move to their Dartmouth MA location, Londonderry New Hampshire, or else he could take a lay-off and get his resume out. He said "What should we do?" I said "We're moving to New Hampshire!"


After that morning, every minute since then has been a whirlwind! I instantly called our realtor and had her put our house up for sale. We lived on a main road, an actual state highway, in an urban city. By some miracle our house sold in twenty days and one showing! My girls and I worked tirelessly to purge our belongings and pack only the necessities into a POD. Meanwhile, Eddie started his job and stayed in a hotel. The holidays flew by, our families mourned us moving. All along we visited New Hampshire whenever we could and searched for a house to buy.

This economy is a "buyer's market" right? Well, sure it seems that the deals are abundant, but everything is in a "short sale". Our search is for a classic three-four bedroom with some local character. Maybe some land for a mini farm or a lake or forest near by. We've been bid out and sent through hoops trying to get the best deal on a number of short sales and foreclosure. Finally, we settled into a two bedroom apartment in a town close by to Eddie's new job. Well, sort of settled!

I was so quick to embrace our family's move here to New Hampshire because I saw a new life for us, a chance to throw our busy schedule to the wind and get back to the basics. I want my children to fall in love with nature here in this state loaded with mountains, lakes, and forests. Yes, we homeschool and lean towards unschooling ( http://www.unschooling.com/library/faq/index.shtml ) The girls and I knit, read, bake, and explore the outdoors almost daily, but I wouldn't say that we were "whole living" and I want that for all of us.

As of now, we are surviving in this apartment in this busy little city with three grocery stores and a Walmart. All of our hopes are holding on this cute little lakefront house up in the "backcountry". Keeping our fingers crossed that all the red tape of a short sale sails through the banks in our favor! For now we'll await the happy day that we hear the house is ours, or the disappointing news that we lost another one.