I’ve been working on a followup to last November’s blog “Defending Boundaries” (or, as I originally typoed it, “Definding Boundaries”). Will try to have that later in the week.
But today I’ve accepted an invitation from a friend to go to the Big City. Not just the local Big City with the Wal-Mart (population 10,000 or so), but a real big city. Where I get to do something I’ve never done before — visit an Ikea store. Since I’ve always loved Scandinavian furniture, this could be dangerous — even aside from what friends assure me are the many other addictive attractions of Ikea.Send me your best “resist temptation” vibes …
In the meantime, here are some netly gleanings, beginning with one I need to memorize:
- Thrift. A reminder: It’s not about being stingy or tight. It’s the future and living well.
- Why can’t we end the drug war? There’s too much money in it, sez the Clueless Ms Clinton.
- Radley Balko interviews Stewart Rhodes.
- Here’s another one that really rang bells. For gays it shouldn’t just be about marriage, but about questioning the very values underlying marriage and relationships — and relationships with Authoritah. Anybody who looks at history from Seneca Falls onward can easily see that winning the vote set the women’s equality movement back by decades. Everybody said Okay, we’ve won. Now we can go home. I’ve long thought gays risk doing the same by focusing on getting governmental permission to marry.
- Dumb burglar.
- I apologize for being a little late with this one (I’ve been saving it, meaning to comment you know). But the feds’ plan to give the border states their very own custom “gun control” has been pushed back.
- One Good Dog. One good dog book that is. P.T. recommended this novel the other day. I got my hands on it quickly — and it had me right from the prologue. It’s the story of a tough dog who never had a break and a tough man who never gave a break to anyone — until, after a moment of rage, his privileged world fell apart.
- One good dog novel deserves another. I’m simultaneously reading The Art of Racing in the Rain — which is about a dog, a race car driver, family, life, death, and the importance of opposable thumbs.
- ADDED: Hm. Maybe the Tea Party hasn’t been totally coopted by neocons after all.
Cheers. Now I’m off to Temptationland. Where there’s not only an Ikea, but a WinCo (OMG, the incredible prices on bulk foods!). AND a Trader Joe’s. I may be doomed …
New Thrift, Love the idea. I’ve been very happy to see that credit card use has been down for the last two years until January when they started heading back up again.
We try to show our children how to save and to give. We make a big deal about the money they earn or receive and have a sit down with them to talk about what they can do with it. The two you must do’s are set 10% aside for G-d and 10% for saving. Then we help them with ideas on what to do with the money. If they want to buy a doll, we find out how much it cost and compare it to what they have. Some times they change their mind other times they want to save up to get it.
When we go shopping we take out cash at the ATM instead of using the debt card so that they see “money” being given over and not plastic.
Because we are thrifty, our food bills have gone down, we are almost done paying off our foolish pre-family spending on credit cards, and we have a nice emergency fund we add to most months. All this on top of our giving to our two churches and other worth causes.
It is not easy, we are not as well off as we want to be, but we have a place to stay, cars to drive, food to eat, and are heading in the right direction. We do a happy dance each month as we see our interest payment on the CC get smaller and smaller!
The war on drugs is like the war on Pashtuns. The only persons that want it stopped are the victims (taxpayers, users and Pashtuns). The drug and defense cartel’s want to keep the wars going to increase their profits. The “enforcement” communities want the war to keep going so it will increase their profits, morality be damned. The wars are great examples of the govrenment favoring certain markets with money taken from taxpayers.
Key to not spending money? Forget your checkbook at home with your debt card in it. Ask me how I know!
Don’t forget to come back, Claire!!! Sending you thrifty vibes… and wishing there was such a place even remotely close enough for me to go.
Not that I really NEED anything, mind you. Except at the bulk foods store, of course. 🙂
Have fun!
Hmm. Might be too late with this for it to do you any good, but Trader Joe’s is a bit of a Paleo heaven. As a recovering PB&J hound, their Almond Butter (Raw, unsalted crunchy) is my Methadone. And they have bags of raw almonds and whatever else as well. My. Must. Have. Staples.
Oh yeah! This evening I finally took the time to check out the jewelry I bought from you this last go round. Really, REALLY nice. The Dove will get the beaded one on Monday, your favorite (what was it called again?) will be for her birthday. Each so unique! The more time I spend looking at them, the greater appreciation I have for the muse you were running with at the time of their creation. Always a pleasure.
Link: http://www.serenityhillgems.com/index.html
Heck lady
at Winco, Trader Joes (aka home of dried apricots) and Ikea in one trip – jeeze we won’t see or hear from her for DAYS !!
LOL, thanks for the thoughts, guys. Where IKEA was concerned, turned out I was on no danger of losing my grip on the New Thrift, the old thrift, or any other thrift. The place was so huge and so overwhelming, shopping there would have been like trying to buy Sweden!
But WinCo … Oh, now WinCo, that was another story. A.G, we never made it to Trader Joes, but as I suspect MS Jordan understands, if Trader Joes is Paleo heaven, WinCo is even further up in the nutritional empyrean. I’ve only been to a WinCo once before, but I remembered it as awesome and it’s even better than I remembered. For those of you who don’t have one anywhere near you — and that’s most everybody, unfortunately, because WinCo isn’t that big a chain — it’s amazing. It’s “just” an ordinary, neighborhood supermarket. But every WinCo has bins and buns of nuts (including raw nuts), dried fruits, trail mixes, legumes, flours, and hosts of other things at prices about half what you might find in a health food or natural food store. Once you can drag yourself away from the bulk food bins, prices in the rest of the store are just as impressive. A big tub of hummus (which would cost about $7 at my local grocer): $1.68. A 24-ounce container of whole-milk Greek yogurt: $2.50. (I can’t get that at all locally, but the non-fat yogurt I can get here costs nearly twice that.)
MamaLiberty, if you have the choice, go for WinCo over IKEA.
Wow. It was better than drugs. Sorry I didn’t post anything this morning, but I was still in withdrawal. 😉
A.G. Awwww … Thanks for the plug. I’m glad you liked the jewelry, and I hope your Dove does, too. Because very few people have bought any since the crash of 2008, I haven’t been making more. But you really did get me inspired.
Judy — LOL. Okay. How do you know?
Oh, wait. I think you just answered that.