Knitting: I finished my sister’s baby shower present and I’d love to show you pictures, but I have to wait until after the shower so she won’t find out what it is. It took me longer than expected because I’m still not a competant knitter and my gauge swatch wasn’t big enough for an accurate gauge so I had to start all over. Oh well. It’s done now and I love looking at it, with its smooth stockinette stitch. Yay! I’ve also started my husband’s scarf; he expects it some time around 2020, so I aim to get it done before Winter starts. Due to time constraints and the fact that it’s knit using fine yarn and size 3 needles, I might get it done by Christmas, but only if I work hard.
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Going outside: Haakon has decided that being outside is the BEST THING EVER. We go outside every day. If it’s raining, we try to stick to the balcony or wait for a break in the downpour before heading out, but rain or shine, he loves it. We go out once in the morning (usually to the play ground and a walk up and down our street watching animals and picking berries), once in the afternoon (to the pool if it’s warm and sunny or a repeat of the morning if not) and occasionally after dinner as well (to Livingston Park, where he can watch the dogs and then play on the equipment). Even so, he pitches a huge fit when we go inside. The outdoors are where he wants to be and I dread Winter. He’s also walking now and has officially moved past the Zombie stage to the drunk stage. I’m sure any day now he’ll be a normal human walking.
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Cooking: I rendered my own lard! I got tired of using the hydrogenated crap from the store, found a farm that has it and got a big thing of fatback for free with the skin still on. The bristles were scrapped off but it was still a bit disturbing. But the lard is awesome; white, creamy fat that has less bad fat than butter even if it has more fat overall.
I’m trying my hand at croissants today. We’ll see how that goes.
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Gardening: We have tomatoes growing! They’re still green but they’re there. We have 8 at last count and my heirloom tomato is getting ready to blossom finally. Our store bought pepper plant blossomed but has formed no peppers. It’s simply too cold and our balcony doesn’t get enough sun. We harvested our cucumber and now have two more growing large. The smaller ones seem to just wither away. I wish I’d planted more than one.
I checked out a book about gardening in northern climates and it’s filled with such gems as:
“The climate up north is often known as 8 months winter and 4 months rough sledding” and “Some days, it’s even hard to rejoice over a south wind, because just as often as not it’s only the north wind coming back.” It’s full of good advice on wind breaks, where the best place to have a garden is if you live on hilly terrain, windblocks, micro climates, etc.
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House hunting: As soon as my husband gets a full-time job, it will go “richtig los”. We’ve already started scouring NNEREN . We found a house we fell in love with and thought it was awesome, perfect, a real fixer upper, let’s ignore the fact that neither of us are skilled contractors….and then found out that it had actually sold around the same time we discovered it and the system just hadn’t updated. We were extremely bummed out, but renewed our search and have found a few more houses that have potential and hopefully we will refrain from falling in love with any of them. It will be hard though—we do this sort of thing constantly.
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Armchair politics. I didn’t go to the “Town Hall meeting” in Portsmouth. Haakon hates his car seat and I wasn’t going to subject him to an hour of it just to stand in a loud crowd when he hates loud noises. But it would have been worthless. Our dear leaders have already made up their minds; we’re going to have universal health insurance. Those of us against it are simply misinformed and obviously don’t know what’s best for us. I’d care more than I do, but I don’t because of two things:
1) At least nationalized healthcare will prevent people from pretending that the problems with our healthcare system are all due to the free market. Over half of the healthcare dollars spent in this country are from the government and the numerous regulations surrounding the health care industry make it nothing close to free market.
2) We can’t afford it anyway, so it’s kind of like my husband and I debating whether or not we should buy a BMW. or a Lexus. Who cares, we’re not going to get one. The US has $70 trillion in unfunded obligations and debt. We have no way of paying that, short of inflating the dollar to toilet paper and raising taxes to about 90%. Health care for all? Sure, why not! I’d also like a BMW with a leather interior and sunroof while we’re at it. They’ve conveniently set the healthcare to kick in in 2013 because “the recession will be over by then.” So will the next election, so Obama won’t be face with the consequences of the bill until after he’s re-elected. Or if he’s re-elected. His approval rating is about as high as Bush’s, so let’s not expect too much.
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Reading blogs: I discovered a great blog, A Homesteading Neophyte. I clicked on it originally because it said she was from Kansas and since I’m from Kanssas, I figured why not? Then I found out she voted for Ron Pau l and I fell in love. I read the blog back to 2006 before stopping and just waiting for regular updates. I can’t recommend it enough. It’s enjoyable, they have animals, they’re in Kansas. They talk about Kansas-y things. Go to places I know of (Yoder? Exploration Place? The Zoo!) and deal with tornadoes. They also get to plant outside in April. Gr. I’m not bitter….technically, we’re in the same planting zone as northern Kansas. They’re in southern Kansas and have like, an extra four weeks. Odd, it seems longer than that.
The tea parties in April were well-publicized events attempting to draw attention to the high tax rates in the United States and they sure didn’t do a very good job of it. Most people went, waived their signs around,applauded speakers and were very patriotic before returning to their real lives of going to work and paying taxes. In other words, they weren’t very serious when they said they were upset at the high levels of taxation and government spending in the U.S.
But what if you really are upset and are looking for a way to opt-out of mandatory taxes? Obviously, you can’t just stop paying them. I mean, you could, but since you’re not a high-ranking government official, you’d actually go to jail. But there are certain things you can do to avoid paying taxes and are perfectly legal.
1. Excise Taxes
Excise taxes are taxes levied on specific items; consequently, they are very easy to avoid. All you have to do is stop buying those items. Stop smoking. Barring that, grow your own tabacco for personal use. An advantage of doing so is that tabacco water is a natural pesticide. Stop drinking, or better yet, brew your own liquor. Quit driving so much and either carpool, walk or ride a bike. Remember 0-2 miles is walking distance, 2-10 miles is biking and anything above that is driving distance. This should dramatically cut down on the gasoline tax you pay.
2. Sales Tax. Obviously, no one can completely stop buying stuff, so this tax is harder to avoid. Most Americans can, however, decrease the amount of things they do buy. There’s an old saying that says “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.” This is a great way to avoid sales tax. Instead of buying a new pair of shorts when one rips, sew it up or patch it. Buy used, at garage sales or thrift stores. While you might still pay some tax, it will be less than if you bought new items. Do your shopping in states with no sales tax or a lower sales tax. In New England, this means driving to New Hampshire. If you live in Wichita, KS, it means doing your shopping outside of Sedgwick County, which has a ridiculous sales tax to fund their stupid arena. Grow as much of your own food as possible. While some states have a lower sales tax on food, a tax is still a tax and most people have a bit of land they can use for food growing purposes. It also tastes better.
3. Income Tax. This one is still harder to avoid. Unlike a lot of people, I recommend always filing your income tax return, for several reasons. First off, while you’re not required to file it if you earn under $5,000 a year (or has it gone up now?), they still withhold income tax from that amount and you won’t get it back unless you file. When I was a poor college student earning very little, I filed and they sent me a check for around $13. If your goal is to impoverish the government, making them review your law-abiding income tax filing and then pay to mail you a check is definitely worth it because they lose money on the scheme. Other than that, maximize your deductions. Ever wonder why the rich don’t protest much when the government raises taxes on the wealthy? It’s because they deduct so much, they never pay close to the percentage the government pretends they are. I’ve heard forming a LLC is a great way to do this, but I’m not a tax accountant so don’t take my word for it. Other than that, seek to minimize your income. I know, most people want to maximize it so they can be rich, but what’s the point if earning more just means you have pay more of your income to the government? Ideally you should seek to earn at a point where your deductions are maximized and your taxes minimalized, but if you want to get really extreme, you can set up your expenses so that you can get by as little money as possible. This means having no debt, and in all likelihood followin the advice outlined in the first two sections: grow or make everything yourself as a sort of modern day Thoreau. It’s extreme, but I know people who do this and who pay no taxes. There are also other taxes, such as a capital gains tax, that are closely related to income taxes but are easier to avoid. If you don’t want to pay capital gains tax, don’t invest.
4. Property Taxes. The hardest to avoid, property taxes mean that you are rent to the government for the right to continue living on your private property. If you don’t believe me, stop paying them. Just like a landlord whose tenants have stopped paying rent, the government will evict you. There really is no way to get around it, but you can minimize it by owning minimal property, owning marginal property (say, property located next to an airport, railroad track and highway), and doing very little to improve your property. Unfortunately, this might hamper your ability to become self-sufficient and avoid paying other taxes. You could always rent, but then you just pay property taxes indirectly via rent to your landlord. I guess living in your car would be a reasonable solution, but you pay taxes on it, too, in order to register it. Several homeless camped on some islands in the middle of the Merrimack in tents, so I suppose that’s one solution.
Does all this seem a little crazy to you? A little extreme? I mean, come on, who would go to those lengths to just avoid paying taxes? And, what about all the good that comes from paying taxes? The gas tax pays for our roads, for example, the property tax is for education and the income tax does everything else!
Oh, I’m sorry…you mean, the gas tax we pay despite the fact our infrastructure is crumbling and government continuously uses that money to pay for other stuff? You mean the property taxes we pay so that we can spend $8,000 a year pretending to educate children, who still remain ignorant? And the income tax? Is used to pay interest on our national debt. As far as getting all the bang for our buck, American tax payers have been royally screwed.
Taxes we pay are not being used to provide valuable services for the people. They’re being used to invade other countries and to bailout Wall Street. What we don’t pay in taxes today, we’ll pay in taxes tomorrow in the form of money our government is borrowing from other countries. Governor Meldrim Thompson of New Hampshire was fond of reminding everyone that low taxes are the result of low spending. Remember that the next time you’re at a Tea Party or the next your government insists that all they have to do is spend a few billion more dollars and the economy will be hunky dory again.
Filed under: New Hampshire
I’ve been thinking a lot about food lately.
This partly happened by chance. You see, my husband and I have been anti-high fructose corn syrup for quite a time now and we avoid eating anything that includes it. One evening, my husband went to the bathroom and I leapt onto his computer and began browsing Netflix instant view to see if there was anything I could watch really quick in the 5-10 minutes before he got back. Sitting there, in my suggestion, was King Corn. I pressed play. My husband returned and looked slightly crestfallen that I had ursurped his computer again but as soon as I mentioned it was about corn, he sat down and watched.
From the video we learned that thanks to the corn subsidies, America’s food chain is totally messed up. You’ll have to watch it to see for yourself, but I immediately became fascinated about where our food comes from. I then read “Animal,Vegetable, Miracle” and “The Omnivore’s Delimma,” both of which discuss organic farming and the importance of eating locally. As far as organic farming is concerned, I’m won over and I was a hard organic skeptic for many years. But basically, the evidence is that organic farming produces food that contains more nutrients than food produced on artificially fertlized land and it also makes soil that is healthier and less prone to erosion. I’m also completely sold on eating free range eggs and meat from pasture-raised animals, as they tend to have higher amounts of healthy fats and more nutrients than CAFO-raised animals and eggs.
What I am not completely sold on are these books’ arguments for eating locally and supporting local agriculture. Their only argument that resonated with me is that produce loses nutrients and quality the farther it has to travel before eaten. So a tomato consumed in January from Chile is less healthy and tastes worse than one from New Hampshire (well, for me anyway) consumed in July. Logical. I dig it.
The rest of their arguments…well:
1) It’s important to support American agriculture because it’s American. Yes, fine, let’s all take a break and chant USA! USA! USA! It’s still not a good reason. Why should I refuse to buy from other countries just because they’re foreign? My husband’s not American. I guess I shouldn’t have married him?
2) If you eat locally, you save blah blah blah barrels of oil that are used to transport food from way over here to way over there. Yes, and if I never travel more than a day’s walk or bike ride from where I live, I’ll save that much oil, too! It doesn’t, however, mean I’m going to do it. Ironically, Barbara from “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” drove from Tuscon to Virginia then up to Canada, then back to Virginia and flew to Italy during her year of eating locally. The fact she drove a hybrid takes away some of the oil, I guess, but sheesh. I guess that’s why the bi-line isn’t a year of living locally.
3) The Europeans do it—and look how cool they are! Argh. I hate this argument. Americans have a love-hate relationship with Europe, meaning that half the population looks up to Europe and wishes we were more like them while the other half hates Europe and wishes they would go away. We have a very difficult time realizing that it has its faults, just like every where else in the world. But both books made points of glorifying how European countires have their own food cultures that they still rely on to guide them when they eat (Finland’s revolves around only eating food that looks like shit) and how sad it is that the US doesn’t (never mind that it does or did and, much like Britian, it suffered tremendously during World War 2). Europeans, they argue, support their local farms and are a lot closer to where their food comes from. Well, yes and no. My host family was very close to where their food came from. My host Oma kept chickens, so we always had fresh eggs, and she made tons of jam and marmelade. My host dad kept rabbits and got ducks before I left, all for food. And they had a huge garden and two cherry trees the supplied most of the produce in the warmer months. When we went to a Richterfest, the hosts slaughtered a sheep and had it roasting on a spit. The other two sheep remained grazing peacefully in a field nearby…
But this experience is not really the norm for most Europeans today, just as it isn’t for most Americans. My host family was exceptional being that my host parents were not only from small farming villages but also lived in East Germany, where being close to your food source was a big plus. When I lived in Berlin and visited Finland, just trust me when I say a lot of stuff is imported, frozen foods are eaten a lot and people don’t spend hours crafting the perfect midday lunch as Italians were portrayed in the two aforementioned books. Unless they’re professional cooks, they just don’t have the time.
Having said all that, I will most certainly check out the farmers market this summer to see what kind of produce it offers and will continue to patronize local pick-your-own farms for apples, blueberries and strawberries because the experience is fun and fesh strawberries are always worth it (I swear, everytime I buy them at the store, they rot as soon as I leave).
Furthermore, this foray into food and finding out where it comes from led my husband and I to decide that when we buy a house, we definitely want to get some land with it, anywhere from two to five acres, so that we can have a little farm. By little I mean a garden to grow vegetables, some fruit trees and some chickens. By farm, my husband means we-are-going-to-grow-everything-ourselves-including-wheat-and-I-want-goats-or-maybe-sheep-along-with-chickens. I think he’s insane because he has no idea how much work it involves, not to mention the fact that we’re both city folk, and not to mention the fact we live in New Hampshire, a land of trees, rocks, long winters and precious little topsoil. We have almost no knowledge of farming or raising animals. But we agreed we’d make a plan (we’ll call it our “Five Year Plan”) that will lay out step-by-step how we’re going to do this. We also agreed that if the chickens are a success, we’ll get a pig. This is due to the fact we both read an article discussing how good acorn-fed pork is. Lasse gets to do the slaughtering.
But it is exciting to have a plan, however crazy it may be. We have a goal to work towards while we live in our tiny little apartment, which makes it all a lot easier.
Filed under: New Hampshire
Gardening in New Hampshire is a lot harder than gardening in Kansas. In Kansas, you just went outside whenever it got warm enough, turned over some dirt, planted some seeds and then watered occasionally until you got a plant.
In New Hampshire, this process is complicated by a few matters. First, it doesn’t get warm enough to plant things that are suseptible to frost until May or June, so you have to start your seeds inside in trays or just buy the friggin plant. Secondly, if you try to just go outside and turn some dirt over with a shovel, the first words out of your mouth will be “f—-ing rocks!” They don’t call it the Granite State for nothing: every time you put your shovel in the ground, you will hit a rock. Sometimes it will be really small, other times it will be the size ofa table and you either get some dynamite and blast it out (unlikely) or work around it. This is why most landscaping in New Hampshire incorporates boulders. They had to do something with it. Aside from the rocks, you have the whole tree issue, which was also not a problem. Where there are no rocks, there are tree roots. There are also tree branches blocking the sun. Both must be dealt with. I get the feeling that farmers who settled in New Hampshire must have been really desperate, otherwise they would have never settled here to farm.
Because of these two issues, most gardeners in New Hampshire opt for raised beds. They buy dirt, build large beds above ground to put the dirt in, then tansplant the seedlings as soon as they’re big enough and the weather is warm enough.
Fortunately for me, I live in an apartment and don’t have to deal with these problems. Still, the husband and I want to have a bit of a garden. We want to try our hands at raising food. It’s been ages since I’ve gardened and I’m getting really tired of paying high prices for herbs at the grocery store, only to have them rot on the way home. I swear, they have some sort of built in sensor that says “Okay, we’re out of the store…turn brown now!” So, we’re going to attempt a balcony garden.
We have 6 window boxes which will be hung on the balcony, two containers on the ground, and four topsy turvey planters that I’ve heard work really well. We also have innumerable milk cartons that I’ve repurposed because I’m classy like that. But hey, whatever works works.
To begin with, I bought a few seeds (cilantro, parsley, basil, oregano, green onions, carrots and swiss chard) and planted the herbs in one window box to get them started. Then I knocked the darn thing over while shutting the blinds. I scooped all the dirt back in, but figured I’d better replant since who knows what happened to the seeds? A few days later, they started to sprout. A few weeks later, and I realize I have no idea what is sprouting since it good be the original seeds or the later ones. So I transplant out some of the seedlings to keep until I know what I have growing. Yesterday, I try some and realize that I pretty much have 8 plants of cilantro growing. A google image search told me that my basil had finally sprouted. So, I decided to take the sprouting tray we bought finally and try starting my herbs again in there, this time with labels.
In addition to planting herbs in the sprouting tray, we decided to try sprouting our tomatos and peppers in there, too. So, eventually we should have in our balcony garden Bell pepper, hot pepper, cucumber, big tomatos, plum tomatos, swiss chard, carrots, green onion and the herbs. Some people say start out small and see what happens. I say, start out big and learn from your mistakes!
If the bell pepper and tomatos don’t sprout or don’t get big enough soon enough (very likely, I should have started them in March), we’ll just buy the stinking plants. On the plus side, my swiss chard (planted at the same time as the others), sprouted yesterday. This means that the dirt is warm enough for swiss chard, which starts at 50 degrees but must not be warm enough for tomatos and peppers, which start at 70F. So I’ll be working to get that temperaturer up. Think happy, sprouting thoughts everyone!
Lasse and I trooped up to Concord yesterday in order to sign against two house bills that would regulate homeschooling.
For those of you not in New Hampshire, a brief back story is necessary. About 3 years ago, homeschooling laws in New Hampshire were a bit stricter and free stater Dawn Lincoln went about changing them. She worked super hard and managed to change the laws to make it a lot easier. Now all you need to do to homeschool is notify the local school board, agree to be supervised by superintendent, private school principal or the State Department of Education, and either collect a portfolio of your child’s work or have them take a standardized test each year.
Well, enter Representative Day, who is the worst sort of politician: the One Who is Just Trying to Help (link goes to another blog post with a video of the hearing). Apparently, there might be some homeschoolers out there who aren’t actually aware of the RSAs relating to homeschoolers and they just might not be instructing their kids in all the subjects required under New Hampshire law. So, in order to help this dreadful situation, she introduced two bills. One would require parents to acknowledge that they understand the homeschooling laws andd the other would require a portfolio review and standardized assessment every year. The portfolio would have to be reviewed by either a superintendent or “certified educator,” and said educator must also administer the test. I guess homeschooling parents have been slipping their kids the answers to the standardized tests or something. And we all know that never happens in government schools. If the child doesn’t do well enough on the tests and porfolio, they have to meet with the superintendent and come up with a remedial plan and if they don’t do better after that, they can’t homeschool anymore.
Got it? Let me just note for one second that if the government had put in these policies in regards to the schools it runs, public schooling would have ended years ago because the majority of kids would have been pulled out for failing to meet standards.
Well, I guess Rep. Day learned a very important lesson yesterday, namely that it’s bad idea to mess with people who can just drive to Concord whenever they like because they have a very flexible education schedule.
We arrived at 1:30, found the hearing had been moved to the Representative’s Hall, ran over to the State House and found it was PACKED. Now, mind you, Rep’s Hall seats over 400 people. Then they have the visitor’s gallery. All packed. Apparently people were standing in the aisles, in the hall, on the stairs, and there was a long line on the first floor of the state house as well.
Never in my life have I seen so many people in the State house for a single bill, not even when gun bills are involved. Newspaper estimates reckon there were 1,000 people there, most of whom were against the bill and I’m willing to bet that the chances of it passing are nearly zero.
It really makes me love New Hampshire to see how many people turn out to defend their liberties, especially since Wednesday was our first day of warm weather in months. How many other states have such dedicated residents?
On an unrelated note, this is not the only bill this session that was intended to help. Some other hapless rep introduced a bill to require licensing and mandatory vaccination of horses. Horse owners around the state got up in arms over the bill and the rep backed down and asked for the bill to be killed. Apparently she didn’t expect horse owners would object to having to pay $50 per horse as well as pay a vet to administer shots most did on their own. She thought that paying $50 a horse was a way the horse-owning community could “band together” and help the state out, since it has run quite the budget deficit. Seriously, if she wants donations to decrease the state budget, why doesn’t she just ask for them instead of trying to pass asinine laws?
Ob in guten
oder schlechten Zeiten,
ich werde Dir stets
viel Glück bereiten!
My host family sent me a package for Christmas filled with baby stuff and other goodies, one of which was this little man, a Wolmirstedter Glückswichtel. He promises “If in good times or bad, I will always prepare a lot of luck for you!” It’s a heavy promise in times like these.
It’s amazing to realize that I’m living in the first real recession to hit the US in about 30 years and I couldn’t be less thrilled about it. Since the recession started in December 2007, it means we’ve been in a recession the entire time Lasse has been in the country. Consequently, his job search has been long and difficult and certainly not helped by the fact that he would really love to have a job as an analyst in the finacial field. You know, the exact same field that got clobbered already in the recession. Then Lasse stumbled on translation work and we found an undiscovered wealth of work, so I quit my job to have Haakon….and then the translation project that we thought would give us enough income for a year in just a few months got cancelled.
Can you say, “oh shit?” We most certainly did. That began 4 months of no income, from September to January we lived off savings while waiting for Lasse’s security clearance to go through so he could start this other translation job. It sucked ass and there were times when we seriously considered just packing up, moving to Finland and making good on his parents’ promise to find him a “good job in the government” there. But Finland isn’t home…and home is New Hampshire.
Now things are getting worse with the economy and it seems like every day you hear about more companies laying people off, or going bankrupt and people who are about to do the same. Friends we thought were well off are turning out not to be as well off as we thought.
And you know what? It makes me feel pretty damn lucky. If Lasse had gotten a job in finance field like he wanted, odds are he would have lost it by now. Most companies seem to fillow a “Last In, First Out” policy on their human inventory. We would have been stuck without an income and no backup. Currently, Lasse has 4 jobs. They’re all contractor positions, which means that some months are very good income wise (like January, for example) while other months are slim pickin’s (March). But, it also means that he’s home all the time and has a lot of spare time to do things with me and the baby when work is slow. If Haakon has a bad night and I didn’t get much sleep, Lasse takes the baby and I get to sleep in. He does laundry and has time to work on side projects, such as his blog (which you can find conveniently located in my blogroll. It’s the one that’s not in English. You should go there and coughclickonadscough.), going to the state house for bill hearings (which we’ve only done twice, but we’re doing it again tomorrow), and that sort of thing.
It helps, of course, that our expenditures are very low. If we needed to, we could live on $2000 a month (and $950 of that is rent). We have no debt and used to have savings (we’re working on rebuilding those…). We’re very lucky that we didn’t give into temptation and buy a couch and recliner or a new car or anything that we wanted since we got our apartment. We still use the futon I bought off of craigslist when I moved to New Hampshire and my car is 14 years old, but still going strong. Everytime I think something’s wrong with it, it turns out to be something very minor, such as the battery being dead, or the cap for the clutch fluid not replaced properly. We’re hoping our patience will have paid off and we might be able to get a couch at least this month, from January’s income. We’ll see, though.
We’re also very lucky that both of us are healthy and that Haakon had a normal, uncomplicated birth. Apparently, it costs $16,000 to have a baby in a hospital in New Hampshire. My boss was complaining about it to me because our insurance at work only covered 80% after the deductible. “So I still have to pay over $3,000! Kids are expensive!” He stared at me when I mentioned that I only had to pay $1,000 because the midwife only cost $5,000. If there had been complications, it would have been a lot worse, not just financially. One of my co-workers had an emergency C-section at 32 weeks due to pre-eclampsia and her son was transferred to Boston’s Children’s Hospital. They had to continuously travel down there until he was well enough to be released and it was quite some time. I couldn’t imagine not being able to spend time with baby and having him an hour’s drive away.
We’ve also been very lucky in that we have hardly had to buy Haakon any clothes at all. Most of them have been given to us, some at our baby shower an others from friends who didn’t need them any more. My host family sent me two large packages of clothes from a friend who had had a son earlier. A former neighbor of mine has been generous enough to give me all the clothes her grandson grows out of, though the story behind this is rather sad. Her son knocked some girl up who was on crack and the baby was born addicted, so they took him away as well as her daughter and gave my former neighbor custody of them both. He’s grown up well though and is now fat, happy and well bonded to his grandmother. The amazing thing is that I pretty much have clothes for Haakon until he’s two, depending on how fast he grows.
The funny thing is that I have so many clothes for Haakon, I have really too many. So, I’m looking to give some away. A friend in Germany is pregnant with her first baby and it turned out to be a boy, so I’ve packed up a box of baby clothes for her so she should have a good selection of clothes at least for the first 6 months. The good thing is that her baby is being born in the spring, so a lot of the newborn clothes Haakon didn’t get to wear in the fall should be perfect for her baby. I figure it’s one of the ways I can spread the luck around, so to speak. It’s nice to be able to give occasionally, instead of just receive.
I don’t know how bad this recession is going to be (though I’m hoping for the best, I also like to expect the worst), but I do hope that no matter how bad it does get, I can at least look at the bright side of things. Or that the Glückswichtel will work his magic. I put it on Lasse’s desk, just in case.
Filed under: New Hampshire
Apparently the power outge in New England has been making the news around the world. I wouldn’t have known because we have been in the midst of it since 9:45 Thursday evening, when we lost power without warning. We just got it back on a few hours ago and I tell you it’s wonderful.
Is there a page in the baby book for "Baby's first power outage"?
Our apartment complex handled things wonderfully. They provided generators to keep the heat and hot water in the buildings–alternating the buildings every 8 hours or so, though last night they must have gotten enough for every building to have one because we had been on a generator since yesterday evening. That’s a lot better than a lot of New Hampshirites have. It’s been extremely cold here as well and a building will quickly get down to 20 F without any heat. Brrr!
It was fun in a way; my husband and I have started a running list of things we need to survive without electricity and renewed our determination to have our future house be as much off the grid as possible. When we have the money, we’re going to buy an electric lantern, some tall white candles (these sold out first and the flashlight section of the store was picked clean) along with some candle holders. More matches would also be useful.
At any rate, I hope the rest of the state gets power back soon. I’ve heard it will be a up to a week in some places, possibly longer. You’d think we were in some third world country with those estimates, but I guess that’s what happens when you have a rough, tree covered terrain and small windy roads.
It’s been a rough week. On the job front, Lasse is inching closer to having paying employment, which is good. But he won’t find out if he gets this job in Maine until after November 24. Ages away.
Then on the family front, my brother had another psychotic break. He’s schizophrenic and this is his third one. It wasn’t unexpected, really, my sister and dad reported he’d been acting funny around the end of last month. We were more or less holding our breaths, waiting for it, but hoping it wouldn’t happen.
The bad thing is that this time, I’m not around to help out when the shit hits the fan. All the other times I’ve been in Wichita and helped my sister out taking care of her kids so that she can concentrate more time on my brother’s health. Last time, I undertook the challenge of cleaning my brother’s apartment (believe me when I say challenge). This time, I’m undertaking the challenge of sitting halfway across the country, saying “I wish I could do more…” while also feeling relieved that I moved out here so I wouldn’t have to deal with this kind of stress.
This time my brother’s being a lot more vocal about what it’s like when he has a psychotic break. Aside from his typical anger and talk about how he’s going to “bust outta here (here being the mental hospital),” he’s told my sister that his mind is under attack and he doesn’t think he’s going to win, sometimes he has thoughts everybody cheers. He’s started twitching, which my sister thinks might be a side effect of his medication, but he assured her it was “Sarah” kicking him. He knows something’s wrong with him and that he shouldn’t experience this sort of thing, but at the same time, he can’t get them to go away. He wants to be alone, but he never can be.
Even worse is how this is affecting my nephews. My youngest nephew is (hopefully) too little and too carefree to be really bothered by it. But not my oldest nephew, who has always been more introverted and sensitive. He started crying last night and told my sister how he felt like his whole family is falling apart: “First Shelly moves away and now Uncle’s in the nut house.” Then he got in trouble today at school for not paying attention and painting a wall in his set design class that wasn’t supposed to be painted. I imagine with all the stress that’s on him at the moment, he isn’t paying much attention to anything around him. I wish he could just stay home and chill throughout all this instead of being under constant pressure, but then my sister would have even more to do on top of her job, her family and all that.
To make things even worse, my parents are on vacation in Greece at the moment (a paid trip through the foreign exchange organization my mom works for). So it’s my sister shouldering all of it, with only my brother-in-law as back up.
On the plus side of all this, we’re going to Finland for a week! Lasse’s grandpa died* and he has to go to the funeral, so his parents sent us money for plane tickets and Lasse’s really looking forward to it. I was, too, before my brother went crazy. Then I started thinking about maybe going to Wichita instead. But if I don’t go to Finland, Lasse won’t go. And I am still looking forward to it: it’ll be nice to get out of the country again and go somewhere else, even if the weather is shitty and it’s dark all the time. It’ll be an ice change and we can register our son with the Finnish authorities so he’ll have citizenship there, too. The only thing that I am nervous about is flying international with an infant. Everyone else on the plane is going to hate us. Sorry, other passengers. I feel your pain. I really, really do.
*trust me, this isn’t really that sad. He was 97, had dementia, and a predilection for beating up men 20 years his junior once it got really bad. No one was really surprised when he finally went. He led a full life and was ready to go by the time it ended.
There are a lot of people in the Free State Project who don’t vote. They have a lot of reasons for this, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not. Then there are some reasons that are just plain ridiculous. For example, one of the reasons they don’t vote is because they view voting as coercion, an act of force against others. You see, one of the goals of anarcho-capitalists is to minimize the use of force against others and to create a society where all human interaction is voluntary. Voting, when seen as an act of coercion, flies against this in their minds.
Okay, fine, I can understand where they would reach that conclusion. Afterall, people voting for unconstitutional entitlements and electing people who are anti-liberty is why we have lost so many of our freedoms and find ourselves in the situation we do today.
However…
Most of these non-voters carry firearms. A lot of them open carry. They aren’t shy about it, they just do. Now, I firmly believe in the right to bear arms (and I’m not referring to the second ammendment. I consider it to be a natural right), but I can’t help but feel that this doesn’t make any sense. A firearm has the capability to not only be a show of force if you’re open carrying, but contains within it the ability to kill someone. So, they won’t vote because that’s exerting force over others, but they do carry guns and are apparently willing to exert deadly force against anyone who goes against them* . Does this make sense to anyone else?
Maybe the guns they carry aren’t actually loaded and are just symbolic of their individual sovreignty. In that case, if they’re mugged, that must create an interesting situation:
Mugger: Give me all your money! Oh crap you’re armed.
Moral Non-voter: Oh, no worries, it’s not loaded. You see, I don’t believe in the use of force against others. I believe in a society where everyone interacts on the basis of cooperation and–
Mugger: So you have a gun, but it’s not loaded?
Moral non-voter: No, of course not. That would be wrong! You see–
Mugger: Alrighty then, I’ll have your wallet and your gun! *yoink*
Moral non-voter: No! That’s immoral! You can’t do that! It’s wrong! Come back to the light!
But alas, I doubt this is how it plays out. In all likelihood the guns are loaded, and they would use that to their advantage in such a situation.
It would seem more logical if they were willing to vote to defend their rights as much as they were willing to use guns to defend themselves against those who would do physical acts of aggression against them. Afterall, self-defense isn’t immoral…is it?
*I eclude from this category those who do not vote and also do not carry arms but engage in Gandhi-inspired peaceful resistence and consider themselves pacifists. At least they’re consistant.
(Also, I know that there are other reasons people don’t vote: if you’re not voting because you don’t care, that’s fine. If you’re not voting because you don’t like anyone running, that’s even better. Don’t vote just because some dumbass celebrities make stupid commercials urging you to.)
In the two years I’ve lived here, Manchester has really grown on me. When I first came here, I thought the city was ugly: too many old mills, too many ugly looking apartment buildings and all that. But lately I look at the old mills and think, ah! History! I look at the apartment buildings and think, ah! East coast architecture! It’s unique!
But one thing I will never, ever like about Manchester is its chronic inability to celebrate holidays on their proper day. They always have to celebrate it before it actually happens. Memorial day is celebrated either Saturday or Sunday (it’s observed Monday). The Fourth of July is celebrated on the third. St. Patrick’s Day was celebrated roughly two weeks before March 17….sometimes I think the only day they celebrate on the correct day is New Year’s. And that’s only because celebrating it a week early would make it fall on Christmas.
Halloween is no exception, but it’s probably the most ridiculous example. You see, Manchester is the biggest city in New Hampshire. That also makes it the scariest. When I worked in Epping, my co-workers who lived there seemed shocked I made it to work every day in one piece. Since Manchester is the only place in New Hampshire that has a real crime rate, the general impression is that you can’t leave your house after dark without getting mugged/raped/stabbed/shot or just plain murdered. So, in order to keep the Precious Little Snowflakes in Manchester safe, Halloween is celebrated the Sunday before it falls. In the middle of the afternoon.
I never realized how lame Halloween costumes look at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon. They don’t look scary, they just look stupid. I wonder if anyone even bothers with having haunted houses when they hand out candy. What’s the point? They’re not scary if the sun is shining brightly, birds are singing and the sky is the color of blue that just screams “ghosts? Goblins? Humbug!”
At any rate, I forgot Halloween was celebrated on Sunday in the middle of the afternoon. So Haakon didn’t go trick-or-treating (he’s too young for candy anyway). The only reason why I remembered trick-or-treating was going on anyway was because we went grocery shopping and I nearly ran over some parents escorting their kids dressed in funny looking clothes around town–in broad daylight.
Sigh. If I move out of Manchester, it’s going to be because of their lame-ass Halloween policy. I want my kid to be SCARED on Halloween! That’s the whole point!
