Santa man

For more December Views click here.

It’s been a warm fall/winter here in West Virginia – and no one is complaining! The sky looked rather cool this evening so I snapped a pic.

This post if part of December Views, click here to see other participants’ views.

Katie’s tree – she’s a non-traditionalist. Just like her mama.

I did December Views in years past (but not last year), stumbled upon it again and have decided to join in! Yay!!

We went to the Huntington Christmas parade this evening. A chilly night full of small town goofiness, lots of candy, and Christmas cheer. A totally blissful evening!

For more December Views – click here.

So, let me start by saying that I am not into resolutions. At all.

But there has been a confluence of things swirling around my head for the past few weeks. The “Occupy” movement has been both an inspiration and a let down. And my recent involvement in a church-related program, Mission 1, has me motivated to do more hands-on giving.

Mission 1 was a national program through the UCC. I saw information about it while cruising through the ucc.org website, which I am wont to do. They had set some lofty goals – collecting over 1 million food items for local food pantries around the country, writing over 11,000 letters to US Senators and Representatives about food-related issues, and donating over $111,111 each to Neighbors in Need and for East African Disaster Relief through the UCC – all within 11 days (11/1/11 – 11/11/11). Wow!  How cool is that? I immediately contacted my pastor and asked if we could participate and he said yes (of course).

So, she who comes up with the brilliant idea must implement it. After picking the brains of a few other members I came up with some major goals for our little congregation – collecting over 5,555 items of food, sending 111 letters, and having over 55 people send in donations. All this for a church that averages about 100 people at Sunday services. We decided to do a door-to-door food drive, set up bins at local businesses and offices, set aside a Saturday to have a tent setup at church to receive donations from the community, organized the letter-writing campaign, and ….I think that’s it. This involved a lot of “marketing” to the congregation and the local community – I was a press release-writing, Facebook eventing, signmaking, event-coordinating machine. I had a small cadre of people who stepped up to help with different aspects of the program and we kicked it into high gear starting in mid-October.

We received press in the local paper and TV stations. We had donation bins set up in grocery stores. We had people who walked literally miles of streets for our door-to-door food drive. We had people who looked like they needed our help donating a few bucks to us as we held out donation buckets on the street. We came together as we never had before, we had people from the congregation step up and become shining stars during this process. I could literally watch as they “caught the spirit”  – it was a really exciting time for all of us.

Our final tallies were 6,235 items of food, 141 letters written, and 67 donations made. A truly awesome accomplishment for our little congregation!

But, me being me, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what more I could have done - what other businesses could I have hit up, how many more blocks could I have covered for the door-to-door drive, how could I have organized it better? I was exhausted but glowing by November 11 and the following week when we delivered all of the food I was positively ecstatic. It was a similar rush to what I felt when I was in New Orleans helping rebuild a church. I love seeing the concrete proof of all of my hard work. It helps me visualize all the people that will be directly affected by the work.

And then there’s this little nugget I recently read that indicates that people that give to others are happier than those that spend on themselves. Something I can attest to, at least anecdotally.

So enough about that, on to Occupy. I admit to a love/hate with the Occupy movement. I love that it has highlighted the many inequalities and injustices going on in this country every day. BUT, I need more action from the Occupyers – they need more strucure and more incremental concrete goals. The Tea Party has the backing of billionaires (Koch brothers!!) to help them with organization, which has made it so vocal and powerful. A billionaire angel would be fab, but even without one we need a organized network. Talk is good, action is better.

So, I’ve been mulling over what more I can do to make the world a better place, what more I can do to leave a good example for my children so that they will make the world a better place after I’m gone. What are the issues that are important to me and what things can I do to improve those situations. And I also want to test this “giving makes you happier” hypothesis.

So to wrap this all up in a bow I present Revolution Resolutions. Each month of 2012 I’m going to tackle a specific new action to help improve my/your/our world. It may be eating entirely vegan for a month, seeing how little garbage my family can produce in one month, working with a specific organization for a month. We’ll see. I know for the entire month of  January I am going to help out one charitable organization every day. It may be a (small) monetary donation, a direct donation (like pet food for a local no-kill shelter), or volunteering at the organization itself. In February I am helping put on a peaceful demonstration in support of gay marriage – so I’m thinking that will be Marriage Equality month. I’ve been kicking around the idea of starting a WV Marriage Equality organizaton so February may be the month for that. I’ve also been thinking about planting vegetables around our church – to feed both our church community and to donate to a local food pantry. And I’m also planning another mission trip with my church so there will definitely be a “mission month” when we will be in full swing with fundraising and planning for the trip.

So that’s it – “big” ideas to take into the community and “small” ideas that we implement at home – all brought into the light through resolutions I create in my life to help with the broader progressive revolutions going on in the world. I can make this world a better place, all I have to do is take mindful action.

Give, and then give again.

So, I’ve been a little quiet recently. And there’s a few reasons for that. I was gone for almost a week, we had a long-planned family reunion at the beginning of the months. It was fabulous. Beautiful scenery, great food (the families took turns cooking), and lots of laughter.

The other reason is that my husband lost his job right before we went on the trip. Yep, we went from a family of four scraping by on one salary to a family of four with no income. Obviously a huge blow.

We received Chris’ last paycheck as few days after he was let go – I immediately paid all of our bills for October. That felt good – and gave us some breathing room to collect our thoughts.

Before we left on vacation we were offered a tandem job for a small company. Yay! Feeling good, we went on vacation – and came back to find that job offer was off the table indefinitely. Crap! Plan B – I took a full-time job with a local company – I found the job through our church family. No benefits and I’m making a lot less than Chris was – but it’s a good job – working for and with good people. I started the day I found out about the situation with the first job offer. Today marks one week of being back in the full-time workforce.

If this had happened six months ago we would be in a much worse situation. Minimalism and simplicity have helped us reduce our monthly expenses, have given us a small emergency fund (that we accrued by trading in our minivan for a used Carolla), have given us food in the freezer (from our very own garden!). I know we don’t need to buy anyone any clothes through the end of the year – I actually I know that we are totally good on all household goods – the only things we “need” are food and a few consumables. Heck, I’ve already eliminated buying paper towels, dryer sheets, laundry detergent, cereal, and meat. We’ve been enjoying the Roku we bought last month – and are about to cut the cord with Direct TV. Our credit card debt is under $200.

We’ve also reduced our electric and water use by a lot. I just received our electric bill and checked at the bottom to see our usage compared to last year. We cut our usage by almost half! Last year we used 1250 KWH, and the average temperature was 64 degrees. This year our usage was 665 KWH and the average temperature was 61 degrees. Cutting out the energy vampires, line-drying our clothes, reducing shower times, and whittling down our reliance on our a/c and heater have all contributed to this. Cool.

And my “want” list is miniscule – some reusable bags for buying bulk items and produce would be nice, some fabric napkins/cleaning cloths, and some fabric hankies are all on my wish list – but I know we can live without all of those things.

Add my dog nanny job, some freelance I’ve done recently and some upcoming  freelance potential and I think we’re going to be ok. Chris is doing some freelance stuff and is working hard to find a job.

One of the amazing things that has happened is finding out how loved we are here in Huntington. So many people have called, emailed, and FB posted to check in on us, give us job leads, or just offer support. A few have even pressed money into our hands or sent anonymous cards with cash. The first time it happened I was really rattled – my pride kicked in big time and I wanted to track down the person and give them their money back. My pastor talked me down and made me realize I was just being shown how much I was loved. So I made a larger than usual offering the next Sunday at church and have squirreled away the rest.

Until then we will keep on keeping on.