Buy less May 10, 2008

Let me tell you all about the buying goals I have been working on since Lent. I was going through some spiritual havoc over the season of Lent, and did a lot of soul searching (Lutherans, unlike Catholics, do not really give something up during Lent - although sometimes I do - its more a time of deep spiritual reflection and devotion) and this is what I came up with. Actually, come Easter time (the end of Lent, for those of you who don’t know) I had more of a skeleton of a plan. I’ve been fleshing it out through trial and error since then, and there’s probably still a lot more fleshing to do.

Anyway, the goal is to buy less. How much less? As much less as I can. My life is crammed with stuff (I’ve mentioned before here that I have a compulsive hoarding problem I’m trying to work on) and its not really doing anything for me except making my life more cluttered and stressed. So in addition to getting rid of the useless stuff responsibly, I’m really focusing on halting the in flow.

This has greater implications than just helping me get a handle on my hoarding problem. Our culture of consumerism is terrible for the environment and the main cause of global warming. All of this stuff we buy and use takes energy to produce, ship, use, and ship to the dump once its thrown away. Not to mention all the other chemicals, toxins, waste, byproducts and other unpleasantries associated with the production, use and disposal of consumer goods. Its in the best interest of our planet and our own health to buy and consume only what we need.

Also, the best way to save money is to not spend it in the first place. Duh, right?

So here are my rules, as they stand. Or should I say my goals.

#1 Buy only things that are consumable - food, personal hygiene products, diapers for Elijah (although I try to use cloth as much as I can), etc, and buy only consumables that you need (healthy, balanced food, only the basics for hygiene). Buy them as cheap and responsibly as you can.

#2 If I need something I don’t have and isn’t a consumable, make it or obtain it for free off of Freecycle or from a friend or family member

#3 When I must buy a non consumable item (for example, new clothes for Elijah, who is growing so fast I can hardly keep him clothed), buy used.

#4 If I must buy new, get it organic and local if possible (or as sustainable as possible). Avoid packaging and excess shipping.

So far I haven’t physically saved a lot of money, instead I’ve paid bills, but that’s equally as important. I can see the savings coming though. Other things I’m doing with money that isn’t being spent include

I started a retirement account. I can get one through my work, if you can, you truly should do the same. If your work doesn’t offer something like that for you, then see about getting involved in a financial institute or something. Hey, I don’t claim to be an expert. Maybe there’s something on Get Rich Slowly. This is why I read that blog.

I started a College Invest account for Elijah. I’d like for him to not have to join the military to go to college, like I did. I’m going to do the best I can to teach him discipline (which was really my biggest problem that prevented me from going to college, and the military fixed it for me), and I will put aside as much money for him as I can afford. Right now its only 25 bucks a month, but as I get more bills paid down, that amount will grow.

I also plan to start giving a set monthly amount to my church, probably something very small, like 20 bucks a month or something. I also let myself join the Sierra Club again. I hope that eventually I will be able to afford to tithe to other charitable organizations as well. I’d love to give some money for the crisis in Myanmar, but they aren’t letting aid through, so I will send them all my prayers instead.

Finally, I want to invest in some green companies. The Sierra Club offers ways to do that, and I’m going to look into it further and let you know what I find.

Now, these rules aren’t set in stone. I take vacations from them sometimes (this weekend, for example, I’m going to Chocolate Fest, and I might spend a bit there on some very un necessary consumables), but having them solid in my memory makes the vacations fewer and smaller. I also have a list of things I want to buy in the future, and I think about them before I buy anything else. For example, I want to put bamboo floors in my new house when I get it, and I want to paint Elijah’s room blue with low or no VOC paint, and then I want a new bed set made of organic cotton and some wool pillows. Next year, I would like to go on my church’s annual trip to India. Those are medium term goals and they help me to keep my eyes on the prize.

The other Lenten plan I made had to do with responsible eating, but I’ll blog on that later.

Speaking of religious stuff May 1, 2008

I am ELCA Lutheran, in case you all are interested.  We’re the crazy, progressive Lutherans.

This is a message from an ELCA Lutheran bishop my mom sent me.  I think its a nice cause, no matter what your faith background is, so I’m posting info on it here.

a message from Bishop Bjornberg “give of what we have received” Dear partners,Among the current topics in the news, two subjects are persistently prominent.  The first is the disturbing spectrum of stories about the growing world food crisis.  From ethanol production, to rice shortages, from the ongoing famine in Darfur, to the possibility of crop failures in Eurasia, collectively these strands come together in a frightening way.  The United Nations relief agencies plead for increased support.  Asian governments block exports of rice from their nations.  Like you, I cannot say what is looming, but I tremble at the possibilities.The other constant headline is the arrival of economic stimulus checks in the mailboxes of U.S. taxpayers.  The economy is in a downturn, and some families are struggling to hold on to their homes in the midst of the lending turmoil.  But certainly many, if not most, of us have the resources to feed our families. Perhaps this is the time for us to speak a prophetic word to the followers of Jesus.  Perhaps this is a time for us to boldly suggest that we who count ourselves disciples of the Risen Lord should give of what we have received.  We can give a portion of our economic stimulus check, perhaps even a tithe, to ELCA World Hunger.  In all the many lists of suggestions about what we might do with this windfall, I have not seen one suggestion that we might share our gift with the hungry. I hope you will raise this issue within your congregations.  I invite you to join me in speaking and in sharing. In Christ, Bishop Allan Bjornberg

Christianity and conservation May 1, 2008

I am a Christian.  I go to church almost every Sunday (every now and then I skip out, what?).  People are often surprised by the level of my faith (which I don’t think is that outrageously strong, or anything, its not like I’m an aspiring pastor or anything) and the level of my passion for environmentalism.  I am surprised by the amount of people who claim to be Christians but could care less about the environment.

Now, its been a long time since I read Genesis (and yes, I did read it, and half of Exodus, when I was 14, but then I got bored and moved on to some Sci Fi), but I’m pretty sure that after God got done making the heavens and the earth and light and water and plants and animals, he decided to make some people, and he told those people to keep an eye on everything else that he had made, and to take good care of it.  That’s paraphrasing, of course, but I’m pretty sure that’s what the general idea was.  I am reminded of it every time my pastor reminds us - and he does often - that we are instructed by God to be stewards of his creation.

Whether you are inclined to believe that the creation story laid out in Genesis is literal truth or more metaphorical, I think we can all agree that God probably worked pretty hard making all of this.  And if I may say so, He did a kick ass job.  And I don’t think he spent all that time setting up the vast perpetual motion machine that is the Earth just to watch us trash it.

I might be wrong.  I’m not God.

But I do know, metaphor or literal, it says in the Bible that we are supposed to take care of the earth.  I do know that the Christian morals I have learned over my lifetime emphasize respect, particularly respect for God, and it doesn’t strike me as very respectful to neglect or (as is more accurately the case) downright abuse His creation.  When God put Adam and Eve down there in the garden, did He say “Now go forth and consume all that you can, and if you cannot consume it, destroy it in whatever way is most pleasing for you, because I made all of this not to nourish and provide for you and the rest of my creation, but rather as cheap entertainment for humans, whom I intend to have a relatively short lifespan, as species go.”?  Of course not.  He told us the same thing he told everything else, to be fruitful and multiply.

Yes, the same thing he told everything else.

And I believe, and my pastor (who has way too many doctorates in theology for me to refute) reinforces this belief, that any additional instruction that was given to us was to take care of everything else. 

And not to eat the fruit from that one tree (and for an interesting interpretation of that Bible story, I highly recommend the book Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn). 

So, the only thing that makes us any different from anything else, apparently, is the expectation that we are to take care of everything else.  What we are doing, then, by destroying the creation, is much the same as if a baby sitter were to kill the child she was watching.  Not only did the baby sitter do a terrible job at her assignment, but she - a child herself - went ahead and killed her own kind.

Who among us claims to love God, yet continues to consume and destroy His creation as if he is itching to create another one for us?

I don’t want to pass judgement or anything, but it seems ass backwards to claim to be a Christian and not be an environmentalist.

My birth story March 23, 2008

This is my real birth story, complete with all the gorey details.  If you don’t want to know them, don’t read it.  Seriously.

Late Tuesday (Nov 20th) night, or possibly early Wednesday morning, I started having contractions. They weren’t bad, but they were different than any I had had before, and I wondered if perhaps it could be the very beginnings of labor. I was able to sleep between them pretty well, but they were strong enough to wake me when they happened. They seemed to be a good distance apart but I wasn’t paying attention because I was trying to sleep.

When I woke up Wednesday morning I went to the bathroom and found a big clump of bloody mucas on my toilet paper. I knew I had lost my mucas plug, so I started paying attention to how often the contractions were coming, and it seemed to be every 10 to 15 minutes. I already had a doctors appointment scheduled for that morning and was anxious to see if I had made any progress and if the doctor thought I might finally be in labor. When I was last at the doctors on Monday the 19th, my cervix was just barely starting to dilate, not quite a centimeter. This time I was dilated to almost three centimeters, the doctor said, and he predicted that I would have the baby the next day, which was Thanksgiving. I had been afraid the whole pregnancy that I would have the baby on Thanksgiving and miss my mom’s turkey and stuffing, but I was actually very excited when he made his prediction. I knew this Thanksgiving I would have something to be thankful for that I would remember the rest of my life.

As we left my doctors appointment I called my doula and let her know what was going on. We decided that in order to keep things moving along at a good pace, I ought to stay active, but it was awfully cold outside, so we decided to go walk the mall. I had wanted to go bowling, but my little sister who hates bowling was in town and we didn’t want to leave her behind, so we opted for the mall. We walked the mall for a couple of hours and discussed another option for keeping things going that my doula suggested, taking a small dose of castor oil. My mother had taken castor oil when she was pregnant with me and said the only thing it did for her was make her sick out both ends, so I was afraid to do it. But my mother had been instructed to take 8 oz of castor oil alone, while I was instructed to take 2 oz in some juice. I decided to give it a try, and on our way home we stopped and bought some.

When we got home I took the castor oil, which was really gross, and made myself comfortable to watch some movies with my mom and my sister. Occasionally, I would time my contractions, which seemed to be happening between six and ten minutes apart. Soon my sister got the idea that we should go out to a local resteraunt, a 50’s themed diner, for some cheese fries and malts, which sounded great to me, so we went out. While we were there the castor oil kicked in. I felt really icky, and suddenly couldn’t tell the difference between the contractions and the gas pains I was feeling. I had no idea how often the contractions were coming.

As the night went on, I spent an awful lot of time on the toilet, which wasn’t agreeing well with the terrible hemmorhoids I developed while I was pregnant. I kept finding large amounts of mucas on my toilet paper when I went to the bathroom. Eventually I could tell the difference between the contractions and the gas pains because the contractions were getting stronger and the castor oil seemed to be wearing down. My mom was staying up with me to help time my contractions, but they were totally irregular. They were ranging from ten to two minutes apart, lasting from 20 to 90 seconds. She was very worried because her labor with me had been very much the same, and after she had labored 41 hours, my heart stopped beating and she had to get an emergency cesarian. The only sleep I got the whole night was when I managed to fall asleep between contractions while I was in the bathtub. The bathtub was a godsend.

The next day our doula was calling to check in every couple of hours, but there was never anything new to report. My mom decided to go ahead and start making Thanksgiving dinner, joking that if she started making dinner, we would need to go to the hospital soon, but if we didn’t make Thanksgiving dinner, the baby would never come and we would have missed Thanksgiving for nothing. By the time dinner came I was really starting to get frustrated. My contractions were getting worse and worse, and friends were calling and texting me to see what was going on and there was nothing new to report. I felt embarrassed and foolish, like what I was feeling wasn’t legitimate because it wasn’t going anywhere.

After dinner, my doula called to check in again and after describing what was going on she explained that it was beginning to sound as if the baby was posterior. She gave me some exercises to do in the hopes of turning the baby. The first one was to walk up and down stairs sideways. We live in a condo, so the only stairs I had were outside. I bundled up and walked up and down the stairs outside for fifteen minutes, which actually turned out to be quite a workout. The next thing she had me do was lunges with one foot up on a chair. She also had me get on all fours on the floor, stick my butt up in the air and lower my upper half down on the ground, for twenty minutes. This was a very uncomfortable position to sit in, and it was especially bad when I had a contraction, and when I was resting from that position I was supposed to stay on all fours with my back strait, or to lean my front half on my birthing ball.

By 11 things were getting really bad, and I knew that I still had a long way to go. I was getting scared that I would be too tired to deliver my baby if I couldn’t get a little bit of sleep, and I was starting to think that I wouldn’t be able to handle a natural birth. Perhaps I was just too much of a wuss. I had been trying not to think about it for hours, but now I couldn’t stop the thoughts, and I decided that we needed to go to the hospital, and if I hadn’t progressed any further than I was at my doctors appointment the morning before, then I would probably ask for an epidural so that I could get some sleep. I was feeling pretty lousy about my descision, but I was really starting to doubt my ability to handle the pain I was feeling.

While we were driving to the hospital I noticed that my contractions were coming pretty regularly at about 4 minutes apart, so I started to have some hope that maybe the exercises had worked. When we got there and checked in my nurse came in and told me that she had read my birth plan and that she was excited to help me achieve the natural birth I said I wanted. I was feeling guilty then about wanting an epidural, the nurse was very nice and encouraging. I decided I would wait a little bit to see how things went before I made up my mind about the epidural. I mentioned while she was asking me questions about my medical history that I had a feeling of needing to have a bowl movement, but since I had taken the castor oil it was as if my butt hole had gone on strike. She seemed very concerned that perhaps the feeling of needing to poop was actually an urge to push, and she examined me immediately. I wasn’t ready to push, but I was almost 4 cm dilated. That was very encouraging. We called our doula, Brandy, and told her that she should probably come down soon. She asked how soon I thought I wanted her, and I said as soon as she could come, because I thought she would help me to resist getting an epidural.

The details are a little fuzzy as to what happened from that point on, but maybe an hour or two later Brandy got there. She suggested that I get into the Jacuzzi tub, which sounded great to me. The contractions felt so much better when I was in there, and I decided that I wanted to labor in there as much as I could. My mom and Brandy sat in the bathroom with me and my mom held my hand through the contractions. They got more and more intense as time went on, but I seemed to be feeling more and more euphoric between them.

At 7 am our first nurses shift was over and we got a new nurse who was a little bit older and was less receptive of my wishes for a natural birth. She wanted to monitor me a lot more and Brandy had to be much more sneaky about giving me drinks of water. Soon I was found to be 7 cm dilated, and I knew I was then in transition phase. I kept waiting for it to get really bad, but as much as my contractions intensified, I kept getting more and more euphoric. I determined that I was “high on hormones”, it was the only explanation. It wasn’t as though the contractions didn’t hurt, but I was just feeling so good at the same time. It was a strange feeling. I was also very hungry. We had noticed earlier that there was a menu in the room for food you could order in after you had the baby, and I started looking at it deciding what I would order. At one point the nurse hooked me up to the monitoring equipment and went to get the doctor, my mom started eating some trail mix and Brandy was talking about eating some graham crackers. I asked Brandy if she would give me some graham crackers, and she said “Sure!”. Brandy had always been very clear that she believed women should be able to eat whenever and whatever they want while they were in labor, but she did tell me that never before had she known a woman who wanted to eat while they were in transition phase. She gave me one square of graham cracker with some peanut butter on it and right as I was finishing chewing the doctor came in to check me. I was almost busted!

The doctor checked me and said I was 9 cm dilated. She asked me if in order to get things moving along I would like to break my water. I was feeling really good, and I knew that breaking the water could take 45 minutes off the labor time. I figured now was the time to do it, and said “What the hell? Lets do this thing!”

The minute they broke my water things got really intense, and I wasn’t feeling so great anymore. I was crying a lot, and I peed myself several times. I thought I was going to throw up that graham cracker and get Brandy in trouble, but I never did. As hard as that last hour was for me, my mom and Brandy and my sister were right there the whole time. A woman in another room was screaming, but I couldn’t hear it. I could only hear my sister talk about it. I was crying at one point that I wished I had gotten the epidural, but then I said something along the lines of, “No, I guess I don’t really”. I felt very scared on one hand and on the other I felt very safe with my mom there. It sounds silly, but I was so glad I had my mommy with me!

The feeling of needing to poop was overwhelming, so I decided I was going to try to poop right there on the hospital bed, I didn’t care who saw. I became very hot, so I ripped off my hospital gown, and my sister got me cold compresses to put on my head and chest. Then I was very cold, so I threw the compresses off of me. I wanted to get up and walk, but the nurse kept saying she wanted to monitor me for twenty more minutes. Every time I tried to move she said “Just twenty more minutes”. I started crying for the doctor. I knew it had to be soon and I wanted to be checked. The nurse must have left, and then my mom suggested maybe I would like to squat and use the squat bar. That sounded like it would feel much better than the lying on the bed, so I said yes, and Brandy told my mom that she better go ask the nurse for the squat bar because the nurse wouldn’t respond well to her. That was my first realization that the nurse and my doula were having some tension between them.

The next thing I knew the nurse was in the room with her fingers inside me massaging the last lip of my cervix away. Then before I knew it I was pushing. At one point they started disassembling my bed, and they asked me if I wanted to roll over. I don’t know what I was thinking except that maybe they would be sitting me up or that I would get the squat bar soon, but I ended up flat on my back with my legs up in the air. It wasn’t very comfortable, but nothing was at that point. They wheeled a mirror in so I could watch the birth, and as soon as the doctor said “Can you see the head there?” I focused on it and nothing else. At first I couldn’t see the head, but soon I recognized it and when I saw it and could see it slip away when I finished the push I became very motivated to get it out as soon as possible. A few more pushes and soon it wouldn’t slip out of sight when I rested. I pushed harder and harder. I didn’t know when I was having a contraction anymore, it all felt like one giant contraction, so I just pushed whenever I could muster the strength to do so. I felt a terrible burning sensation and I said “I’m tearing!” but Brandy assured me that I was just stretching. I remember thinking “Yeah right, don’t lie to me, I can feel myself tearing” but it turns out I really wasn’t. Soon the little head was all the way out, and I knew all I’d have to push out now was the shoulders and the rest should come slipping out real easy. But when I started pushing for the shoulders the doctor grabbed the baby and just yanked it out of me. It felt like this giant suction cup getting yanked out of me, and at that point I did tear. I don’t remember feeling the tear, but later Brandy said she could tell by the look on my face that I did.

None of that really mattered anymore though. I heard my mom say, “Oh its a little boy” and I was just so amazed that this little baby had actually come out of me. That I had made him. I named him Elijah Eugene, he weighed 9 lbs, 4.5 oz and was 22.75 inches long. I pushed for forty minutes.
Afterwards all the nurses were coming to see me and asking if I really had a natural birth and pushed my baby out in 40 minutes. I guess they don’t see a lot of natural births around there.

Even though things didn’t go exactly as i had hoped towards the end, I am very happy with how the birth of my son went and am so grateful for the experience. It was a miracle, and yet so mundane and normal and natural, and I totally had the spiritual experience I was seeking when I decided to have a natural birth.