Non Consumerist Christmas Plans, DASHED!

Its been a rough few weeks for my family.  First, my mom got an infection in a broken tooth she had been unable to get fixed for a while.  It made, her terribly sick.  Then, I got tonsillitis, and my mom and Elijah both caught what I had, and we were sick for weeks.  Then my mom got her tooth pulled.  Three days later, last Monday, was the final blow (knock on wood).  While leaving work, my mom slipped on the ice and severely broke her ankle.  I mean SEVERELY.  Her foot was turned around backwards.

So now she’s basically bed bound.  We had plans to go check out a traditional German Christmas festival down town (its somewhere on 16th Street mall, if you’re interested in going).  We wanted to go to the Georgetown Christmas festival.  We wanted to go to Zoo Lights at the Denver Zoo.  We wanted to go to all the Advent services at church, and Sunday services, and Christmas Eve candle light services, and Christmas morning services.  We wanted to do a lot of things, to appreciate the spirit of the season through activity more than gifts.  But we can’t do any of those things now, because my mom can’t walk.

She has crutches, but its hard work doing those things on crutches, if not impossible.   We might still do Zoo Lights next week, because the zoo has wheel chairs you can check out, and we’re still going to try and get to Christmas Eve and morning services at church, but beside that, all of our Christmas plans are dashed.  To top things off, my mom had not done one bit of shopping for me and had only gotten one gift for Elijah (she wanted to do more), and now she is unable to do it.  I understand why and don’t mind not getting gifts on Christmas morning, and Elijah won’t know the difference if he gets one gift from Grammy or a thousand, but my mom is pretty upset about it.  She loves to give just as much as any mom or grandma, and this year she won’t be able to.

I have felt a great urge to make up for all of this, and have spent more than I wanted to on stocking stuffers for all of us and a “gift” for myself (a Deepak Chopra book), just so that we all have something on Christmas morning, and it will still feel like Christmas for my poor mom. 

I am however pleased because I had decided my big gift for her would be the same thing I was doing for my sister, home made spa products.  She knows I did that for my sister, and as I was showing her my sisters gifts, she said “I wish you had done that for me”.  Ha ha ha ha ha!  I did!  So at least I know she will like her gift.

What’s bothering me most of all is how hard it is to take care of my mom, my son and the house.  I just can’t seem to keep up!  The house is a mess, and I’m going to be spending a lot of time over the next two days making sure that its at least clean for Christmas.  When my mom scoots downstairs on her butt (because our stairs are too narrow to get down on crutches) on Christmas morning, I don’t want her to be distracted by a dirty house.

Tomorrow, I will post all about my successes and failures with my Christmas shopping goal to do everything off of Freecycle, Craigslist or homemade.  I will make sure to include pictures.  This is, in essence, the first Christmas I’ve put together entirely by myself, so I think a few failures are normal.  I’m working out the kinks.  Next year, my economical, green Christmas will go much more smoothly.  I learned a lot of valuable lessons this year.

EWG’s tips for a healthy home

Want to make sure your home is the healthiest possible environment for your kids?  Here’s a great list, for those who aren’t up on this.

I was telling a friend the other day about how parabens and pthaylates can wreak havoc on a developing boys reproductive system, and told her “I want my son to have a big wang and a high sperm count one day.”  I don’t think it had much of an impact on her, because her son’s penis is bigger than my son’s and she uses products with parabens and pthaylates.  He just has lucky genes.  I’ll bet my son grows up to have more sperm though.  Ha!

No Christmas Gifts This Year

In my effort to have a greener, less consumerist Christmas, I am scaling back on presents.  I’m not eliminating presents, but I’m scaling back quite a bit.  I mentioned my digital cook book idea (its a Word document with a collection of recipes in it, Breakfast, Appetizers, Entrees, Desserts, etc) which I’ll be emailing out to friends near and far as a free but thoughtful gift.  But maybe I want to do a little something more for them?  Maybe I want to give a gift of experience.

Enter No Christmas Gifts This Year, an e-card service that gives you the opportunity to give a friend or loved one a gift of experience of their choosing, for free.  The recipient gets the ecard and chooses from a variety of activites listed in the card.  What they choose is what you’re obligated to give them for a present.  Activites listed include “Learn a new skill”, “Play at the park” and “Cook a meal”.

I think I’ll be adding this to my gift arsenal this year.

Finding Local Food and products

I’m a big fan of buying local.  Part of it is because I believe I live in the best place in the world, and therefore all products that come from my local area must also be the best.  I also believe that everyone should believe this about the place where they live.  Unless you live in Newark, NJ.  (Okay, that’s probably only funny to me, and maybe a few of the dudes I was deployed with who were from Newark.  Its just a joke though, seriously.)

But not everyone knows where the nearest farmers market or u-pick farm is, so here are a couple of resources to help you find them.

Local Harvest

Farm Fresh

Pick Your Own

Lets review about local products, if you aren’t familiar with the benefits.

There is a lot of debate about whether its best to buy local or organic, as far as health and environment are concerned.  I think every one can agree, however, that if you can find and afford products that are both local and organic, that would be ideal.  I don’t know which is better, they both have their pros and cons.  It might actually end up being a wash, organic has just as many benefits as local does, the benefits are just different.  What I do know is that local is most often cheaper than produce that was shipped from far away, whether its organic or not, so local is a really great option for me, and probably is for every single mom.

Here are the other benefits of buying local foods and other goods:

• Local products are not shipped very far, thus reducing the amount of fossil fuels burned getting from where it’s produced/farmed to you.
• Local produce and food tastes better, because its picked closer to perfect ripeness and is fresher when you buy it.  Shipped produce is picked well before it is ripe, so that it will ripen (instead of rotting) while it ships, and therefore has less flavor than ripe produce has.
• Local produce and food has higher nutritional value, because its picked closer to perfect ripeness and is fresher when you buy it.  Fresher, riper food has the highest nutritional value.
• Buying local keeps more money in your community, where it is more likely to come back to you either as money, improved local economy, or improved infrastructure within your local community.
• Buying local does more to rescue the national economy than bying stuff that has been shipped a long distance at big box retailers, because most of that money spent at big box retailers actually ends up going to the countries where the products were manufactured (think China).
• Buying local is a great way to immerse yourself and your family in your local community, providing tons of opportunity to meet new people, make new friends, and get a lot of networking done.
• Buying local is a great way to educate your self and your family about where the things you use come from and where the things you use end up.  It helps you to see and really feel part of the big web of life in which we are all entwined.  Its a real eye opener, helps to expand the mind, makes you feel like you’re part of something bigger than yourself, etc., etc.

Myths and Facts about single parent households

I found this awesome site on O Solo Mama that busts some of the commonly believed facts myths on single parent households.  I think all single moms might be interested in this one.

Myths and Facts on Fatherhood and Family Law