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I’ll bet you guys though that when I lost my job that I’d be blogging more often. Well, so did I. But instead I’ve been spending more time playing with my son, hanging out with the Holistic Moms and pursuing some of my hobbies, such as cooking, crafting, reading and spending time outdoors. Its been a very fulfilling lifestyle, and I wish it could last forever.
But, I know its not going to. As we speak, I’m applying for a seasonal night time job and applying to go back to college next semester to finish my bachelors in environmental science. Or I might change my major, considering that I don’t really intend to make a career out of anything I can major in at the Metropolitan State College of Denver.
I also really want to keep this blog active so I can share with the world what I’m doing now in my newer, better life. I am probably getting out of the Army in January and I’m moving on to bigger and better things. I am grateful for everything that the Army has given to me, but for this Soldier, it is time to move on.
I’m working very hard on a home made Christmas. I have to be even more strict about it this year because my income has dropped so dramatically. I’m also scouring Freecycle, and hopefully putting to good use what I learned last year in my first attempt at a Freecycle Christmas.
I’m trying to get more involved in community activities and I’m doing a lot of interviews for doula work. I expect to be certified within the next six months. I’m moving forward with my midwifery training, and feeling really good about the present.
I look forward to sharing all of this with you again!
Here are my birthday wishes for today, my 26th birthday.
- I wish everyone in this country had access to top quality health care. Health care that includes as many holistic options as conventional ones.
- I wish single mothers got paid as much as married mothers. I wish mothers got paid as much as single women. And I wish all women got paid as much as men.
- I wish parents who abandoned their children would be held accountable for their actions, and that conservative talking heads would stop spouting cruelty about the parents who actually do stick around.
- I wish every consenting adult is able to make a legal commitment binding them in love to any other consenting adult.
- I wish the government would stop subsidizing junk food.
- I wish the whole world would go see Food Inc. and The Business of Being Born.
- I wish you would become a fan of Rock Your Birth Doula Services on Facebook.
- I wish all single moms, and especially all single pregnant women, would read Mari Gallion’s book, The Single Woman’s Guide to a Happy Pregnancy.
- I wish that President Obama would actually do something worth getting the Republicans this angry.
- I wish people would start voting for third parties.
- I wish world governments would take the 350 goals seriously.
- I wish Whole Foods hadn’t bought out Wild Oats, and Wild Oats hadn’t bought out Alfalfa’s.
- I wish Placebo hadn’t cancelled their American tour.
- I wish this country and culture would make ease of breast feeding for all women a top priority.
- I wish the United States had a maternity leave policy like Canada does. One year off at 60% of your pay, plus one optional year off, unpaid.
- I wish mothering were recognized as the full time job that it is.
- I wish men would stop lying about how tall they are.
- I wish companies built consumer goods to last, instead of to break, become obsolete, or go out of style within a year or two (or less!).
- I wish we’d get serious about alternative fuel and energy resources.
- I wish CAFOs would go away.
- I wish we would crack down on companies who hire illegal immigrants, instead of cracking down on the illegal immigrants individually. Companies who hire illegal immigrants usually do it so that they can commit grievous human rights violations without fear of penalty.
- I wish we focused more on Fair Trade and less on NAFTA.
- I wish all chemicals had to be tested for safety before they are put on the market in consumer goods.
- I wish drug companies weren’t allowed to advertise to the general public.
- I wish there were an ocean in Colorado, and also a place where avocados, bananas and citrus fruit would grow, then I would have no problem going to an entirely local diet.
- I wish I could speed read.
- I wish that I will be able to send Elijah to schools that don’t focus on standardized tests, especially not in Kindergarten. On that note, I wish every parent in America would read Crisis in the Kindergarten.
- I wish I was a size 10 again.
- I wish my mouse would stop doing the weird stuff its doing.
Now I’m going to go make some potato soup for my birthday meal. Yum.
I am dead serious about this. I read while I drive. Even when Elijah is in the car.
I know you’re all waiting for the punchline (if you haven’t guessed it yet), so here it is. I’ve discovered audio books.
I love to read. I always have. I was reading before I was in school, and its always been my favorite past time. I never thought I would ever stop reading. Until I had a baby.
Maybe I didn’t stop reading entirely, but my reading time was severely cut back, and most of what I was reading was parenting books, and then doula books, and now midwifery books. While I love reading this stuff, I miss reading fiction, and other subjects as far as non fiction goes. But I was working more, commuting more, and when I got home, I had a baby to take care of. When did I have time to read? I did most of my reading while pumping breast milk at work, two or three half hour breaks a day (my work was super generous and accomodating for pumping milk, more companies should be like my work was). Other than that, I didn’t get to pursue my favorite past time really at all.
At the same time that I had to give up one of my favorite past times, I had to increase one of my least favorite; driving to and from work. I HATE commuting. I’m not much of a fan of driving in general, but the worst is driving in rush hour on the way to or from a place you never really wanted to be in the first place. I have a 50 minute commute to work in the morning and an hour commute home at night (traffic is better at 6:30 in the morning, when I leave, than it is at 5 in the evening, when I go home). Trust me, if I could take the bus to and from work, I would, but there are no lines that will get me from my house to my work in a reasonable amount of time (less than three hours).
Anyway, since discovering audio books, my commute is finally bearable. In fact, some days I actually look forward to it. And in the three months since I discovered audio books (or rather, discovered that I enjoyed audio books), I’ve read more than I have in the whole 18 months my son has been alive!
I got my first audio book quite accidentally. My Holistic Moms Network group was doing a book club for the book A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle. I had heard a lot about this book and wanted to join them, but wasn’t sure if I’d actually finish it, and I didn’t want to spend money on the book if I wasn’t ever going to finish it. One day at work, about half way through the month we were doing the book club, I got an email about a service that provides free audio books to service members through a service that works kind of like Netflix (they mail you the books, you listen, mail them back). I checked out the selection. It was mostly books on how to improve your leadership skills, not the kind of stuff I was interested in reading, but low and behold, there was A New Earth. I signed up and ordered it, along with Total Money Makeover, The World is Flat, and An Inconvieniant Truth.
The first books that came in the mail were A New Earth and Total Money Makeover. I listened to A New Earth First, and it didn’t take me long to realize that I was developing an obsession for audio books. It was great! I could drive and read! There were so many more books I wanted to get under my belt!
Since the selection at 3Leaf Group (the Netflix like service) was pretty lame, I got the brilliant idea to see what kind of selection my local library had. I had not had a library card for my local library since I was 15 years old. I had abandoned my card after the Columbine shootings, because the park that Columbine High School and my local library were both in was closed up and police taped off for a month, and I was unable to return my library books, but they continued to charge me late fees! I didn’t think I could get a new library card, but when I saw how good their audio book selection was, I had to try. I signed up for a new card online, and picked it up on my way home from work.
I am just flabbergasted at how much reading I’ve gotten done for free, without sacrificing time from anywhere else in my life. So far I have read:
- A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle
- The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle
- Total Money Makeover, by Dave Ramsey
- The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
- The Last Days of Dogtown, by Anita Diamant
- Midwives, by Chris Bohjalian
- The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan
- An Inconvieniant Truth, by Al Gore
- And I’m currently working on In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan
I can’t get enough. As I’m writing this, I have another window open to the Jefferson County Libraries website putting audio books on my hold list. Even if you’re not a big fan of reading, I think audio books are a great option for you. Its enough like reading to satisfy the bookworm, but its different enough from reading to entertain the person who prefers radio or television. In fact, listening to an audio book is very much like listening to a radio program. You can pick something funny, romantic, tragic, informative, whatever. Who doesn’t like to have a story told to them?
While designing my superhero alter ego, I tried to think about what an eco nerd, natural birth advocating, lactivist, attatchment parenting, feminist superhero might look like. Perhaps she would wear a hippy, wrap around skirt. She would be clad in green. She would carry a walking stick, made of sustainably grown bamboo (of course).
And what the hell? She would wear a monocle and have a skull on her costume. Yeah!
Yeah, I’m not on the list. Nor do I deserve to be, I don’t keep up with this blog enough. But I thought I’d share the list with you, because I think its a great one. I’ll be adding these blogs to my regular reading.
Who’s Who of Single Parents on the Web
Check it out!
