Delirity

I’ve had an ongoing love affair with paper and notecards for many years now. Today, while hitting up one of the malls in Texas, I spotted a Paper Source. I’ve ordered cards from them before online, but was alwas bummed I couldn’t go check out one of their stores. It was amazing. And I managed to limit myself to 2 sets of cute notecards. I could have bought much much more, but I came out with the beauties below. 

I figure buying some new notecards would help me get back into the habit of writing notes to friends and family. This isn’t to say that I don’t already have plenty of stationary… but I love it so. And, this at least goes along with my new view on buying stationary: only buy nice paper goods. These aren’t super high end or anything, but they’re definitely nicer than the $1 packs that I sometimes pick up at Target or the $5 packs I get at Hallmark. Plus, they’re much more unique! 

Oh yea, and it turns out that they opened one of these stores in Portland sometime in the past couple of months. I think I would have been better off not knowing!

I’m having trouble  believing that there are only 10 weeks left in 2008. 10 weeks! I just decorated for Halloween, I haven’t thought about Christmas gifts, and it just started getting cold! Since there are only as many weeks left as fingers on my hand I realize that now might be a good time to really focus on the things that are important to me. They say it takes 3 weeks to make a habit, so with 10 weeks left I should have this stuff down pat by 2009!

Me: Healthy eating, enough exercise and sleep and keeping up my me-time

My husband: Do something nice for Jesse every day

Our life together: Help solidify plans we’re working on for next year (big transition year!), make sure our finances are in order, keep track of the little details that can so easily get away from us, keep apartment clean by little nightly spurts (not weekend marathons)

Family & Friends: Get back to my letter writing (I know this is as much for me as it is for them), be sure to tell people how much I appreciate them, do something thoughtful for someone at least once a week

These are all things that I try to do on a regular basis, but they sometimes fall by the wayside when things get busy or stressful. My goal is to practice keeping these things up all the time since they make me and the people around me happy.

I’ve been completely spoiled by our CSA. They provide us with pretty much all the veggies that we eat. The rest of the food we eat comes primarily from New Seasons where we’re able to get local free range beef and lamb (and some occasional fowl or pork) and wild-caught Northwest seafood, plus organic/local fruit and any bulk beans/rice/cereal we might need. I love that I’m able to get such local, fresh groceries. 

Today I went into Winco (a Northwest grocery store that is employee-owned!) to get some spices (they sell them at incredible prices in bulk) and I felt overwhelmed. I used to go there once a week, but now I mainly go when I need to buy spices or nuts in bulk or bananas. I like the store because being employee-owned and Northwest operated makes me happy, but it’s sort of like the WalMart of grocery stores – it’s all about the low price, not necessarily the quality – and the tall aisles are getting more intimidating to me than they used to be.

A few weeks ago, Jesse and I finally headed down to the Bob’s Red Mill store in area. That’s right, Bob’s Red Mill is in Portland (well, Milwaukie actually). It was awesome. It made me dream of buying enormous bags of gluten free oats (which they’re currently out of). For now I settled on trying some of their gluten-free pizza crust mix – that may actually be what’s for dinner tomorrow!

I love that we have reasonably priced local grocery options here in the Portland area. New Seasons may be similar (but better!) to Wild Oats, but I believe they do a better job of sticking to local items and they’re cheaper. Have I mentioned that in addition to buying local, I love to buy in bulk?  It’s the best – cheaper and it helps save on packaging materials and trips to the store. Is it weird that I enjoy grocery shopping so much?

I know that there are many places where you see poverty that is worse than in the US. Even so, I believe that change starts at home. When I start thinking about how to help deal with the issues of poverty that surround us, this is where my thoughts take me:

• Have I protected myself from sinking into poverty? – Yes, I believe that my personal and financial plans are sufficient. If I believed that I was not sufficiently protected I would start with myself. It sounds selfish, but if you aren’t clothed and fed and doing alright mentally, it is almost impossible to help other people.
• Do I have loved ones who are in poverty? – Not currently. If I did, I would find ways to help them. It might not be with gifts of money since we don’t have a lot extra, but perhaps by lending my time or resources.
• Are there things I can do to help others in my community? – This is the level of help that we usually focus on in our family. We donate food. We donate clothing. And occasionally, we donate baggies of snack foods (healthy snack foods) to folks in parking lots or on street corners. It isn’t a lot, but I like to believe that if everyone finds their own little ways to contribute, we’ll all be in a better place.

In April this year when our local Wild Oats was going out of business, I bought a pair of these Bucky Booties for $25 – you throw them in the microwave for a minute and they make your feet warm and toasty. My husband had to convince me that they would make me really happy. I thought they were too expensive. But then again, the weather was warming up and I was forgetting about how cold my feet get.

These slippers aren’t good for walking around the house, but they are great for when you’re staying stationary. Like in front of the computer.  Seriously these are one of the best inventions ever (and really awesome on cold days when I’m working from home and in front of the computer all day long!).