hands in my pockets ain't gonna find much. maybe a button that fell off my jacket..

Now, most of you out there know how expensive it is to be alive today.  Whether you have kids or not, the cost of living has soared since our parents youth.  Tuition, rent (especially here in BC; whuddup to living across the straight from the most expensive city in Canada in which to buy a home), utilities, gas, food costs even are higher than ever.  In fact, UBC researchers have found that young families today have it harder financially and deal with a standard of living that has declined substantially from the days of the baby boomer.  In fact, they call us, "a squeezed generation."

Now, as the hipster of modern economics (I was poor before it was cool), I've noticed the rest of the Western world returning to financial strategies that were absolute necessity when I was young.  Along with walking to school in the freezing snow, uphill both ways, when I was young, no name brands were always in our cupboards,  second hand books and toys for Christmas were standard, and hand-me-downs the rule.  So seeing these suggestions in internet articles aiming to help me save money really doesn't give me too much of a rise.  That being said, I think there's always room in the Internet for one more list of ways to save money in a depressing economy.

1)  Bottle returns.  I know what you're thinking, it seems kind of obvious... but you'd be surprised how many people either don't care about their own impact on the environment, or do but can't deal with the hassle of bringing them for trade-in.  The way I see it, the deposit is tacked onto the price you pay for the product, so why on earth wouldn't you want to get it back??  Not only does taking in my bottles (and anyone else's who doesn't feel like doing the depot thing, and doesn't mind missing out on the money I get for them) help the environment, and make me a tidy $20-$60 every month or so, but it also nets me a cool two hours of GLORIOUS alone time, driving up to the depot, organizing my recyclables, and going to pick up whatever small groceries I require!  And as a SAHM of two children under three, NO alone time is to be taken for granted!

2)  I'm a woman who has experienced quite a few Christmases and birthdays.  That means I have an overabundance of bath sets in scents I either don't care for or absolutely loathe.  But it's not all bad!  Shower gel that would otherwise sit moldering in some bathroom cabinet has been repurposed in my house as bathroom hand soap!  Since going through my extensive bath product collection almost a year ago, when The Other Half lost his full time job, I haven't bought soap since.  In a pinch, I've even used it as shampoo! (Yes, I was desperate that day. :/)

3)  I admit it...I used to be a speeder.  I loved flying down the highway doing thirty over the limit at best... granted this was when I was working graveyards so there wasn't much traffic at the times I would take these joyrides, but that doesn't make it excusable, or any safer.  As a mom, I slowed down a tad, but thought nothing of punching it when alone in the car, or sometimes just to get through a light.  As a Mom working full time bringing in the only household income, this past year, I learned finally that driving the limit is not only safer, but will save you a bundle on gas costs!  Gladys (my sixteen-year-old white, unassuming Corsica) has always been good on gas, but since adopting this one moronicly simple trick, Gladys has been able to stretch quarter tanks for weeks.  You read that right.  Weeks.  Side bonus for your wallet: you don't get tickets, bank-breaking vehicle impounds, points on your license or insurance premium increases driving the speed limit.

4) Making meals from scratch is a healthy, often cheap alternative to eating out or buying processed, pre-packaged foods.  Making more than you need for one meal yields next day lunches or subsequent meal components.  Buying meat products in bulk and freezing them in bags, one meals worth at a time makes weekday cooking faster.  When your toddler won't eat her dinner, if you're like me you might be tempted to leave her at the table until bedtime, or the dinner is gone, especially if you watched her happily scarf down the exact same meal two weeks before.  Instead of turning dinnertime into an unwinnable battle, simply let her down, and package her meal separately in tupperware for the next day.  When the Booger Pile gets obstinate about her food, I tell her, "You don't have to eat it now, but you do have to eat it."  And then I offer the left overs the next day for lunch.  Combining leftovers with fresh meal and snack components is a healthy, thrifty way to avoid throwing away ANY food. One thing I've found since cutting down our discretionary spending is that an empty fridge right before payday need not be looked negatively.  It means you're wasting nothing that you spent your money on, and isn't that the very definition of value?

5) Consider planting veggies... easy ones to start with include cucumber and tomatoes.  Herbs and spices can cost an arm and a leg for tiny little bottles in the grocery stores, but many widely used herbs grow perfectly happily on the kitchen window sill.  My goal this year is to learn how to preserve foods from my grandmother.  She has multiple fridges and freezers stocked full of frozen berries, preserved vegetables, and a cellar full of canned foods like jam, pickled beets, applesauce, and more.  When you grow and preserve your own food instead of buying it, you can be sure about whats in it.  Who knows, you might be saving yourself a nasty (and expensive, after medication costs, not to mention loss of income from missing work) bout with salmonella, E coli, or some other food bourne illness.

Anyways, those are my best ideas so far for holding onto my pennies in a world that seems bent on taking them away from me.  What are your tricks for saving money today?

get out of my spot!

I have a confession to make:  I am absolutely the kind of person who will make your car alarm go off if I see you parking in the parent spots without a car seat in the back.  Yes, it's immature.  Yes, it's unnecessary.  I've been told that two wrongs don't make a right.  But sometimes two wrongs make a very pregnant, hormonal woman feel like justice has been done.

That being said, this seems to be an issue that raises some hackles, both on the sides of tired parents with young children, and on the side of Average Joe Blow, who seems to be sick of not meriting any special treatment.  This blogger wrote a post on this subject and boy did her readers let her have it!   I found this comment particularly venomous:

"This is the dumbest complaint I've ever heard. If the weather is like it is in summer and I have been looking around a carpark for awhile. I'm going to park in that spot.

I hope I never end up so self entitled about procreating/having kids.

It's not the parents god given right to be treated special because they have kids.

I should be upset because there is no "non-kid" parking. See some dumbass kid run in front of my car or have some parent and their latest designer pram scratch my nice car. Isn't that a stupid idea? Thought so.

Many people have had kids and did not need to have pathetic special car parking spots for them. I think parent parking should be given to disabled people. Someone who actually needs it."

Signed, Over Entitled Parents.

First of all, genius, it's all "non-kid" parking.  You can park anywhere you can squeeze your ride in, because there's NOTHING PREVENTING YOU FROM DOING SO.

On the other hand, I'd like enough room in between my car and yours to open the door all the way so my kid can climb in without hurting herself.  I don't like to park next to people who can't center their cars when parking because of this.  And sadly, it's a lot more likely that I'd have to squeeze one of my daughters through a space barely big enough for their tiny bodies out in General Parking than it is in the parents spots.

I mean, lets look at this objectively.  Closest to the entrance of any business are spots for vehicles driven by people with special needs.  These needs range from general handicap spots, to parent parking, to reserved police spots, to loading zones for fricks sake.  Is this guy trying to tell me that it's ok to park in any one of these on a beautiful summer day just because we're all equal?  No, I'm sorry, it doesn't work that way.  There are certain people who have certain parking needs.  You wouldn't expect the guy delivering the cases of Coke to park at the back of the lot, would you?  You wouldn't expect the police officer to walk a shoplifter almost a kilometre through traffic to his cruiser, would you?  You wouldn't expect your grandmother with the wheelchair to have to park hundreds of feet away.  And you wouldn't want your own older children to have to negotiate large, often crowded, above all DANGEROUS parking lots while you struggle with recalcitrant strollers for your younger children... WOULD YOU?  

When it comes right down to it, this is simply ignorance rearing it's ugly head once again.  People who don't have kids, can't understand fully the offense they incur when they callously take a parent reserved parking spot.  It's not their fault.

What is their fault is when they use that ignorance as an excuse to make someone else's day a little more shitty.  And if I can return that favor back to you by kicking your tire, and making you come out and shut off your car alarm, well at least you won't have to walk too far, right?

cleaning baby fists

that's the perfect metaphor for my day so far.  Basic tasks made impossible by little clenched baby hands.

At the moment I'm enduring a blitz attack by all of the Tooty Butt's bodily functions at once.  Trying to get dressed for the day?  She took one look at my cleavage and thought: "You know what those could use?  A little more vomit."  Both the Tooty Butt and Booger Pile decided they were starving at the same time, so while I peeled mandarin as fast as I could (the most obstinate, membrane-filled mandarin ever grown apparently), the Tooty Butt wailed herself into a frenzy, even after I enlisted her big sister to try rocking her calm.  When I was finally able to get to her, she immediately tried to chow down, only to get interrupted by her own bowel movements.  There's nothing more frustrating than when your desperately hungry infant won't nurse until she lets loose two or three butt rumblers in a row. With that job taken care of, she settled down to feed with a look up at me that said, clear as day, "Nothing personal, Mom, I just had to take a megadump first."

Thanks kid.  Thanks.

And lest I feel that the worst was over, as I lifted her onto a fresh diaper, she gave me a beautiful glowing smile--right before farting with her butt pointed directly at my face.  I'm telling you, infant smiles are NOT reactions to your voice, they aren't because they have gas, and they aren't because babies know all the secrets of the universe until they forget everything when they learn to speak.  Beautiful tiny toothless grins are nothing but survival instinct.  Because if I didn't get those little gems everytime I get puked/pooped/farted on, I think I'd take out everyone around me with the hissy fit I'd eventually have.  I'd be like a nuclear bomb... but not powered by uranium.  Powered by poop.

Mammalian Parenting

I've been in the parenting arena for around three and a half years, and as a reader, I've explored all kinds of literature on child-rearing.  There are as many methods, and programs being sold out there as there are parents with opinions in Western nations.  And so many of them are conflicting!  Attachment Parenting.  Tiger Parenting.  Co-sleep, NEVER co-sleep, breast is best, formula is fine.  Let him cry it out.  Crying it out will leave your child a damaged shell of a human being with no hope of ever having an ordinary, fulfilling human relationship, and dead gorilla eyes, unless you A) give birth naturally, B) breast feed exclusively until the kid can write an annotated, sourced essay on why you really need to stop breast-feeding him and C) buy my book on the only right way ever to raise a baby.

It is great that all these resources are available to parents who may or may not have had much contact with young children.  I mean, lets be honest: babies are scary.  For everyone.  With the obvious exception of the childless, there isn't an obstetrician, or neonatal nurse on the planet who didn't have a mild panic attack the first time they were handed their own little bundle of joy, and these people have years of higher education focused on nothing BUT little bundles of joy!

But with all the various methods, advice from Mom and Grandma, and half-baked semi-literate forum posts spouting half understood second-hand expert opinion floating around out there, how on earth is Average Joe Mom or Dad supposed to sort truth from truth-that-was-accurate-before-we-knew-that-washing-your-hands-after-taking-a-dump-would-prevent-illness?

I mean, obviously you have to take any information with a grain of salt.  Do your own research, form your own opinions.  But why is it that once you've found a method, or opinion that jibes with your own feelings about parenthood do you somehow always end up feeling worse about your own parenting?

To give a little perspective, lets use the Booger Pile as an example.  Just before she was born, I was given a copy of Your Baby and Child by Penelope Leach.  Leach is a proponent of Empathic Parenting, and I just soaked up her words.  She made me want to understand my baby, and figure out what she wanted so I could give it to her each and every time, creating a happy, well-cared-for infant as well as a relaxed, confident me.  And I have to give credit where credit's due.  The Booger Pile was an exceedingly easy infant who grew into a confident and charming toddler.  She's smart as a whip, and even with her tantrums, and sometimes obstinate behavior, she's really an easy child to love.

Unfortunately, any parent knows, it can be harder sticking with any one parenting method than sticking to whatever fad diet Jenny Craig's schilling this month.  As my beautiful baby grew up, I've tried all kinds of different methods and bits of advice on her, with mixed results, including even, yes, the dreaded Evil Cry it Out.  I was trying to wean her away from co-sleeping with that one, and it lasted about forty five minutes before I gave up and took her for a cuddle in the bed we shared until October of this year. And before anyone decides to flame me about it, my own conscience has had me wondering multiple times if I caused her shyness by walking away all those times her crying got to be a little too much to handle.

Even when I'm following my own preferred method to the letter, I still wonder about potential contradictions.  Leach says allow your child to suck her fingers.  The Other Half screeches that you can take away a pacifier but you can't take away a thumb.  Leach says swaddle your child for the tactile comfort and womb-like feeling around her limbs.  Darcia Narvaez believes swaddling will render your infant catatonic, and impede growth as her systems "shut down for self-preservation" after being "exhausted" by being left to cry it out.

And then along comes Dr. Peter Gray telling me about children from islands in the South Pacific who play free range close to where their older siblings go to school, amid miriad dangers such as matches, machetes, the unpredictable South Pacific ocean, and HIV-infested gibbon monkeys for all I know without an injury, squabble, or care in the world, and isn't that something compared with our own needy, phobic, attention whore Western children.

FFFFFF-WHA?

So all that work I put into being an "Empathic Parent", teaching my daughter that her needs will be met on demand means nothing because I don't consider Coke and eight hours of TV a need?  My kid has temper tantrums, and meltdowns.  Often.  She's three, and the coolest thing in the world to her involves throwing maple tree seeds off a stair case, and yelling 'hey-copter! hey-copter!'  She has simple emotions, and basic reactions.  She may demand my attention (when i haven't given it to her freely in the first place, which is my own fault), and she may whine, and according to Free Range parenting, it's all because I don't kick her outside and lock the door behind me.

Forgoing the obvious argument that I don't live on a small island in the South Pacific, and there's something outside my front door populated by heavy chunks of rapidly moving metal which have probably killed more children in the last year than the entire population of said island, it's still a ridiculous comparison to make.  Any child growing up in a semi-rural environment, with peers within safe walking distance is going to be able to be independent and autonomous at a young age. 80% of Canadians live in urban centers and it is simply not feasible to apply free range methodology to these children.  At least not the younger ones for sure. For my Booger Pile, playing without direct adult supervision is limited to when I go downstairs with a load of laundry, and will be for quite a while unfortunately.

But that's the thing.  As much as I would love to take the best part of every parenting theory out there and apply them to my own child, there will always be one more waiting around some dark corner to jump out and make me feel like a Social Services case for all that I've been doing or not doing as the case may be.  It's impossible.

Which is why I will be developing my own parenting method.  It's called Mammalian Parenting and ascribes to the theory that we've been doing something right for around 3 million years now, so lets not overthink the issue, because when we make something too complicated, (writers of Inception, I'm looking at you) We Always Fuck it Up.  And if you're in any doubt your child is truly yours...give her a good licking.  You know.  Just to make sure.

g'day mates!

Howdy!  So I haven't blogged in a few years, and now that my life has gotten a tiny bit more interesting, and just a little less stressful, I figured it must be time to start recording it again.  This blog isn't meant to be serious or focused in any way.  Just a place where I can babble on about all the things that really matter to me right now.  So be forewarned:  poop stories lie ahead.  There Be Monsters Here.  Also, don't expect me to be verbose and polite all the time.  Behind the well-worded exterior I try to put up, lurks a potty-mouth with a short fuse.  That means road rage rants, vents about kids and family, and as many interesting cusswords as humanly possible.  Because if I can't be crude on the internet, than really...where can I get it out of my system?

A little introduction seems in order.  My crazy life is populated by two sweet little girls, who hereafter shall be referred to by their preferred bodily functions, and The Other Half (sometimes Better, sometimes not) who does his best to keep me sane, and sometimes even succeeds!  I spend half my time trying to be Martha Stewart without the veneer of greasy businesswoman, and the other half staring brokenly at the pile of dishes on the counter reproducing like uneducated bunnies on X.  I used to be able to blame that on working full time, but ever since the arrival of the Tooty Butt (and more importantly, blessed MATERNITY LEAVE!!!), all I can say is that perfection is for chumps, and dirt is good for the soul.  Once the immutable law of Bedtime has been invoked, I've been known to scrapbook, read long novels by obscure authors about disparate subjects, and indulge my irrepressible Tetris jones.  You can expect posts about all of these interests, wether you like it or not.

Hopefully this blog will have a longer life than my previous few false starts.  But if I don't check in for a few days,  lets just say that I started this little venture on a good day, while Booger Pile is focused on new Dora episodes, and the Tooty Butt's enjoying a good snooze in her swing for once.  I foresee many days when I'm too busy bouncing between a potty-training toddler, a cluster-feeding infant, and a house that accumulates dirty laundry and dishes the way Lindsey Lohan acquires DUI convictions to stop for one more time-wasting website.  But at least you can rest assured that a good long absence will mean a few toe-curling disaster stories when I finally get back to it!

And on that foreboding note, I shall bid you good day.  After all, it's baloney-and-cheez-whiz sandwich time. Also, a set of tiny eyeballs just popped open, and my singing along with Dora from the computer desk isn't going to keep her calm for long.