“Simplify, simplify, simplify, I say!” ~ Dana

It all started with my husband and I hating our lawn. It seems like no matter what we do to it, there are big brown spots that appear on a regular basis. We’ve increased the water time, fertilized, and yet, there they are. Big brown spots.

So since we are in this record draught here in Southern California, and since our water district offers a cash incentive to those who convert at least 1,000 square feet of turf into draught tolerant landscape, we have decided to eliminate our front lawn completely, and rework our backyard to reduce the amount of turf by about half. I won’t go into how it seems un-American in my head to not have a front lawn, but that is a different issue altogether.

In the back, we decided to put in five huge, raised planter boxes that I will use for a major vegetable garden. My husband half-joked, half-seriously-asked, “You know that if you plant all these vegetables, you’re going to have to actually work outside, right?” Hardee-har-har. But wait, he’s right. It’s not the work that is making me shudder right now, but the time that I will need to find to fit it all in. Like most of us in this modern world, I feel stretched for time as it is. Between raising two daughters under the age of four, keeping our house livable, planning and cooking our meals, I have to make a concerted effort to carve out time to write for this blog, to see friends, to visit family… and to be honest with you, I feel like I fail at the “fun stuff.” Big time. So how on earth am I going to fit in time to maintain and grow a successful garden?

This had led me to evaluate what I do on a day-to-day basis. Although it feels like there is nothing that I could cut out to give me more time, when I really paid attention to my days this past week, I’ve found a very simple answer: I am going to pretend like I don’t have a smartphone. I am amazed at the amount of time that I spend checking emails, which is ridiculous because all of my emails are from other blogs or from shopping websites. There has only been one email from an actual person in my inbox this whole week. I also check Facebook like a fiend. Damn it. I can’t believe I’m admitting that, but I do. And Instagram. Oh my gosh, I need an intervention.

I started carrying my phone constantly a couple of years ago, when my dad got really sick. My excuse was that my parents “might” need to call me, there “might” be an emergency, and I wanted to be readily available. (Mom, I know you’re reading this, and I’m not blaming this on you!!) And then it became just so easy to quickly check my newsfeed, to snap a few pictures of the girls, check-in at whatever fabulous place we were spending the afternoon, and suddenly, I was hooked.

And what I notice now, is that I’m checking it constantly, which only means that it takes me longer to complete the tasks that I do during the day. The constant quick checking, I’ve found, also makes me feel kind of frantic. I am hurrying to get my chores done, but I’m also hurrying to read a funny article that someone has posted. Then I see a quiz entitled “10 Questions that will reveal your inner Disney Princess.” It’s only 10 questions, right? I can easily zip through that. So I do. But all of these little quick reads or quizzes or other wastes of time really make me feel unfocused. My attention is on a bunch of extra things, which add nothing of value to my life. I miss the days of a quiet mind, and let’s be honest. I already know that my inner Disney Princess is Belle.

So I am going to channel my inner Henry David Thoreau and “simplify!” And I’m going to grow good vegetables. Instead of wasting my precious time reading crap on the Internet, maybe I’ll finish the books I’m reading faster. Maybe I’ll get to the literature that I’ve got on using essential oils in the home. I bet you I’ll even have time to make larger quantities of all-natural products to put up on our Etsy store.

But first I’m going to have to do some reading on vegetable gardening.

She Shamed Herself, and Other Thoughts

Maybe, like me, you had no idea that the latest Bachelorette had sex with one of her suitor/contestants, and then sent him home.

Maybe, like me, you think the Bachelor/Bachelorette franchise is one of many examples of troubling but ultimately unimportant immorality in society today, along with Justin Bieber, the Kardashians and Rush Limbaugh.

But then I saw this headline: “Who is Responsible for the Slut-Shaming of the Bachelorette?”

Facebook has been rocking this week with posts and counter-posts promoting “I don’t need feminism because” and the satirical responses “I don’t need feminism because…” and “Confused Cats Against Feminism”.

We know this issue is a hot button, because when I wrote the piece about conservative feminists and arrogance, it struck a cord with some of our readers.

I was working from the place that feminism means that women are equal to men and should be treated as such under the law.

Not that women are better than men.

Not that women can take the place of men.

Not that men are an inferior, violent and dangerous species and women should bring back Amazon warriors to guard us all in some utopian, female-only bastion of moon cycles and extended breast feeding.

But that is how the conservative half of the culture views the political face of the feminist movement today. I looked at the anti-feminists statements, and agreed with the sentiment of many—that being a woman is not a disadvantage, that we should work for equality, not entitlement and supremacy, and that we are able to take responsibility for ourselves and our actions.

But these young women, with their signs? They’re feminists. How come they don’t know that?

The movement has a problem these days: ready, fire, aim.

Like this Bachelorette slut-shaming thing.

Bachelorette Andi agreed to find a husband on TV, picking from a pool of men chosen for their good looks and/or professions, in only eight weeks. This after she volunteered to be one of the pool of women chosen for their good looks and/or capacity for drama on the last Bachelor. So we already know that she is not a paragon of integrity.

But more than that, the way she behaved deserves censure from women everywhere. This is not about her sexual freedom. And this is not about the double standard. Yes, its’ true that men are treated differently for the same behavior, but I for one appreciate the good ol’ boys from the simple standpoint that it makes the a-holes easier to identify. I’m sure men would say the same about some sub-culture of women.

This is about Bachelorette Andi buying the true anti-feminism, that her worth only goes as far as her looks and her willingness to put out will take her.

Should the male anchors at FoxNews be popping off about her, as if they have no moral skeletons in their closets?

Of course not, but humility is not a strong point over at Fox. Those guys are good ol’ boys, so we know what we think about them.

What should be happening is that instead of defending her behavior by accusing others of “slut-shaming”, feminists everywhere should be hanging their heads in despair.

The goal used to be freedom to raise daughters strong in their heads, hearts and bodies, who dream big and do big things wherever their sphere of influence might be.

Now the movement seems to defend a woman’s right to a complete lack of sexual or moral boundaries, but ridicules women who believe in marriage, motherhood, religion and country. We defend Bachelorette Andi’s right to demean and devalue herself, instead of worrying how it is that she grew up with all the advantages of over 100 years of feminism and STILL DIDN’T GET THE MEMO.

My grandmother went to college in the ’30s, when 26 states still had laws prohibiting the employment of married women. She joined the Navy as an RN and served in the Pacific during WWII. Then she spent the next 50 years providing the economic stability in her family that sent my mom to college in the 60s.

Is this why she did all that? So women today could sleep around?

Today’s feminism is messing with my grandmother’s legacy.

And that’s not cool.

Just Take a Moment ~ Guest Post by Amy

Meet our friend Amy, wife, mom, teacher and Troop Leader extraordinaire. Two weeks ago she traveled to New York City for some friendly rest and relaxation, which was all good right up until it was time to fly home. Then the travel gods, who call JFK their second home, frowned.

So, imagine you were boarded onto your flight, all settled in. And then the pilots tell you that your plane needs some more fuel due to bad weather. And then a bit later, they tell you the weather is too bad and the flight is cancelled. Pick up your baggage at the carousel—outside of security. And by the way, the next flight is tomorrow morning and there’s a limited number of hotel rooms, so only families traveling with kids and those who need special assistance will get them. Everyone else will sleep on the floor. By the ticket counters. Outside security and the food court and the airline lounges and the nice comfy bench seats in Terminal 5.

“Holy Mother!” I texted her. “Can’t you check your bag for the morning flight and go through security???”

“Well” she texted back, “they’ll do that, for a $120 fee.”

Are you kidding me? At this point, I would have been the large and loud lady at the ticket counter, running my mouth on the (800) number while blowing up the AA Facebook and Twitter on my iPad. And I would have missed what happened next in my selfish, self-righteous anger.

But not Miss Amy.

Today I felt I had a choice to make. I could be upset at my situation and go into myself (which most of us prefer), or I could “make friends wherever I go”.

I chose to make friends.

I happened to be in New York with my best friend for a week get-a-way. Jennifer is a historian so we hit all the museums we could, checked Woodstock and Cooperstown off the bucket list and ate our way through the City. It was a wonderful week.

On the day of our departure, Jennifer received a text from her airline that her flight was cancelled due to weather. So I called my airline to see if we were on schedule and was relieved to hear that we were.

At first, all was well. I boarded my flight and I started chatting with my seatmates, a couple from southern Australia. They were headed to the “Big Easy” and they asked if I had been. My eyes lit up like Christmas because New Orleans is one of my favorite destinations. I told them all of my favorite places.. Then they said they were headed to San Francisco after that. Ironically I attended college near there and helped again with recommendations. We laughed that I was their personal trip advisor. We discussed dogs, kids, careers, all before we had even taxied to the runway.

Unfortunately the weather started to change and the pilot informed us that we didn’t have enough fuel in the tank. We had to return to the gate to add fuel for a different flight plan and then we would be off.

In our time parked at the gate I went to the bathroom and saw a beautiful young girl who reminded me of my daughter, Alyson. I smiled and thought to myself how much I missed my girls. Then all around me, texts alerts started binging. You guessed it: the pilot said that our flight was cancelled. “Sorry but it is what it is.”

All the typical reactions happened, but somehow I was calm. I was stuck in the back of the plane, and waited while others were grabbing their luggage and deplaning. I passed the little girl, whose mom was speaking in another language. I smiled again, grabbed my stuff and headed out.

At the baggage claim, a woman asked me in very broken English “What happen?” She had two kids and herself. I tried to explain in English, but her face was confused. As we waited for our luggage, I tried to download a language app she beat me to it. She asked through her app “Where do I sleep tonight if no flights?”

I determined at that point I was going to help. I needed to help. My heart made a burst that said Remember the time that you were lost in Paris and people were nice to you? Be that person today for someone else. Help a family get to where they need to be. Strive to show some grace and love in New York. I promised to stay with her. We introduced ourselves, which was when I realized that this was the mom with the Aly look-alike, who I hadn’t noticed before because she was asleep in the stroller.

We went through the whole voucher and boarding pass process together, passing her phone back and forth, using the app to translate. By the end, I was confident that she knew what she needed to do and she and her kids would be ok. When it was all over, she handed me her card and said through the translation app that I saved her and her kids. She would have been lost. She gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek before she and the kids left in a taxi to their hotel.

After they left, and I finally got settled on the marble floor. I thought to myself, what a great way to show compassion. This mom was lost without someone to assist her. Life at the airport—on the outside of security and the food court—would have been miserable. She would not have known which questions to ask or how to navigate the airport/airline system without some help.

And it was easy. It just takes a minute to see someone needs help. It takes courage to ask for help, but it also takes courage to “make friends” and help those in need. I know that God used me—put on that plane specifically to help Julia and her family.

What was the cost? Time I would have spent anyway. What was the reward? Relief in the eyes of Julia and her two kids. It’s a good reminder that we have to take a moment outside of our own life and see the ones around us.

Amy (right) and her friend Jen at Live! With Kelly and Michael, where they met The Rock.

DIY Chicken Broth

I have noticed that more home cooking calls for more chicken broth.

Soups, stews, rice, quinoa, roast—I end up using a ton of it, pretty much all year round. And the only way it comes organic at our store is in a 32 oz container. I never use it all at one meal unless it’s the holidays so I end up tossing whatever is left after a week.

More than once I wondered why they don’t sell it in one cup pouches. And then a few months ago, as I cleaned up a carcass after a roast chicken dinner, I wondered something better: “How hard is it to make my own broth?”

At first I wanted to make Rebecca Katz’s “Magic Mineral Broth” from Cancer Fighting Kitchen, but it has chicken, carrots, leaks, onions, celery, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, garlic, parsley, kombu, peppercorns, allspice and bay.

Yeah, I don’t know what kombu is either.

So I reached for my other cookbook bible, the BHG New Cook Book, circa 1990.

First make this, or buy a roasted chicken at the store.

Keep the carcass in the refrigerator until you’re ready to use it.

Then into a large pot throw:

1 chicken carcass (I leave bits of meat hanging all over mine)

3 celery stalks, chopped

2 carrots, chopped

1 large onion, chopped

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon thyme

1 teaspoon sage

½ teaspoon pepper

2 bay leaves

6 cups cold water.

Bring it to a boil and simmer for two hours.

Then I strained it and measured it out into one cup portions to freeze. It’s much less salty than the store bought version so the real flavors come through and it’s wonderful to cook with. I use it instead of water for my quinoa and rice, which gives both enough flavor that my kids are not missing those pre-seasoned salt bomb boxed rices.

Our roasted chicken recipe calls for stuffing the chicken with citrus. The first time I made this broth, I took the lemons out of the carcass before starting the broth. An hour later, I was shocked to find a lemon floating in my broth.

“Who put lemon in my broth?” I asked my husband and son, both of whom have official cooking rights in my kitchen. Blank faces. An hour later, Kate came in and asked “Mom, what’s broth?” Turns out she was the lemon bandit. She thought I was making soup and she was pretty sure—from all her cooking show experience—that it needed some acid.

Thanks, Cutthroat Kitchen.

And she was right. So in this picture, you can see I left the lemon and grapefruit in the carcass.

Tasty!

#BeReal

My brother has a theory about fear and politics.

He says that since the fall of the Soviet Union, we in the US do not have a common boogeyman. We used to fear and hate the Soviets, but during the 90s, the Wall came down and we lost our villain. So we turned on each other. Feminists, religious conservatives, homosexuals, immigrants, the poor, the rich—each took their turn on center stage as the new “boogeyman”. But the fear was never a consensus, so it drove us apart along political lines. When 9/11 happened, not even that united us for long—only long enough to dupe us all into one war we didn’t need to fight, driven by fear of what might happen.

Now we’re chewing on each other again and almost every single divisive political disagreement is grounded in fear. Gay marriage will ruin traditional marriage! Raising the minimum wage will tank the economy! The Hobby Lobby decision is the first step to women being required to wear burqahs!

Fear is everywhere.

Take the gun rights argument. You know Dana and I respect anyone’s right to hunt as long as they consume, and to own a firearm to protect their family.

We are not on board with high powered and semi- or automatic anything. We don’t see the point.

But folks will get all hot and bothered over their right to guns that have no other purpose than to turn living things into a pile of ground meat. The anger is always laced with fear of what might happen. Like we might be invaded. Don’t ask by whom, no one knows. But we need to be ready.

I saw it with the border protests in town too. Lots of worry about disease. Horrible, awful, possibly incurable things like strep throat. Lice. Measles. People were whipped into a frenzy, one man yelling at the cameras that he had to protect the health of his kids, wife, parents.

No matter that there was an outbreak of measles in Temecula this winter, due to unvaccinated kids.

Maybe Guatemalan measles are deadlier?

That just might be true.

And then last week, the plane crash in Ukraine. I found out about it on Facebook, since we were on vacation. I read the article and then commented on the post: “Dude.” Which in Jen speak means “That is one f-ed up and sad situation.” To which the poster replied “So scary.”

Sad? Reprehensible? Immoral? Incredibly irresponsible and just plain STUPID?

Yes.

But scary?

We can take any situation at any time and twist it into a horror movie, but that doesn’t mean the horror movie will happen.

Of course, horror movie scenarios make money, for news stations and politicians. People we should be able to trust, people who say they stand for our good, are using fear of what might happen to boost ratings and win elections.

And we’re so used to it that we don’t even fight it anymore but let me tell you: this nation was not founded on fear. Good Lord, if the Puritans had stopped to think what might happen, they wouldn’t have gotten on the ship.

And the worst did happen, by the way, and they survived. That’s the blood that runs in our veins.

I’m done being scared. I want to live here, and now. I want to live in truth and light, not rumors and shadow. I am not talking about turning a blind eye to the state of the world and living in blissful ignorance. But I wish we could all stop looking at what might go wrong and start seeing what is going right.

We should find the courage to hold our leaders and media to this same standard. All we have to say is this:

We are not little children. We are God-loving folks and we are not scared of the dark. We work hard, we support each other and we deserve the truth. You think the truth is boring. You think we need a boogeyman. We have news for you: Main Street USA is about as real as it gets and our lives are not boring. They are beautiful and fruitful, even when they are hard.

That’s the truth.

So stop inventing ways to tell stories that try to make us feel like the world is blowing up and caving in on us all at once. Stop telling us about what might happen. Be real.

That’s our new hashtag: #BeReal. A challenge, a reminder and notice served that we aren’t buying fear for fear’s sake anymore.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: