This morning I got what started off as a typical solicitation call – someone wanted to speak to me about sending a donation to their organization.  This wasn’t a personalized call, it was one of those automatic calls when you know they’re going through the phone book.  Anyway, the person on the phone informed me that I had made a pledge that I hadn’t yet paid, and belligerently told me to send them money. 

Now, I’m pretty careful about making pledges and I’m also pretty careful to send  payment promptly for any financial commitments.  We have checkbook used exclusively for charitable donations and all requests or pledges that we get in the mail are put to the side to either be paid right away or if it’s something I don’t remember committing to, I check with my husband to be sure that he did.  (Because I keep a separate checkbook for this, it’s also very easy for me to check when someone calls and asks me to match a previous donation from an earlier time – within a few seconds I can run through the dates and see if it’s there or not, and sadly, a lot of the time, the claims have been inaccurate.)  I rarely give pledges over the phone unless it’s an organization I’m familiar with, and I even more rarely donate to an unknown overseas organization since I try to keep my charity dollars directed towards local needs.

While I didn’t remember making any pledge to this organization overseas, knowing that things can slip between the cracks, I asked when the pledge was made.  November 2006, he said.  And then I made another pledge in October 2007.  Hmm.  They’re calling me almost three years after I first made the pledge?  I told him that I didn’t recall doing that – and it’s not consistent with how I handle my money, because I wouldn’t spend more money ‘on credit’ before paying for everything outstanding.   He insisted that I promised them money, was breaking my promise, and was costing their organization money because they kept sending me envelopes .  He said I had an obligation to them and demanded that I keep my promises. 

This was an interesting (though offensive) approach to take, I thought.  I’m not very responsive to charitable organizations aggressively making demands as if they were bill collectors.  I told him to avoid wasting any further envelopes on me and for the sake of absolute clarity, that I was officially revoking my supposed pledge.  He told me I couldn’t do that, that I had to fulfill my commitment and pay for what I had cost them.  I incredulously asked him if he wanted me to send a check for a dollar to cover the cost of the envelope.  He aggressively told me that they had sent me 18 envelopes (not one single one that I recall receiving, and I check all the mail) and I owed them $1.50 for each one.  

At this point I was pretty fed up and I politely ended our conversation, though he kept yelling as I hung up. (I try very hard not to hang up on telemarketers or soliciters, because as fellow human beings they’re deserving of respect – but if they insist on continuing a discussion after it’s clearly over, I  let them know that I’m unable to continue speaking to them and then say ‘good bye’.)   A minute later, the phone rang, and it was the same man calling back!  As soon as I answered he verbally accosted me and said I call myself a religious person but I’m breaking Torah laws because I’m lying and stealing from them.  Can you say emotional manipulation and guilt tripping?  I told him he was being presumptuous about my religiousity since I certainly didn’t discuss that with him, and told him he needed to be more careful about his own behavior (he said he wasn’t religious – I didn’t think that was an excuse as I’ve never believed that only a religious person can be a decent human being!). 

I suggested he stop yelling for a minute, and asked him if he felt his approach was an effective way to convince me to donate to his cause.  He told me that I wasn’t going to give them money anway because I was a dishonest person.  He told me again that I clearly wasn’t a religious person (because of my behavior), and ‘G-d will punish you for this’.  I told him I guaranteed that I would never donate a penny in the future to their cause because of him and it would be a very good idea to make sure my name was taken off their list.  I really did hang up at that point – there’s just a limit to how long you can try to be polite!

I know that times are tough financially right now for individuals and organizations, but being verbally abusive to potential donors isn’t, well, it’s just not smart! 

Avivah

>>Would you be able to write a list of all the handy kitchen gadgets you own that help in your food preparation and preservation?<<

 Sure, I’ll be happy to.  I’ll preface by saying I’m not into gadgets – if I don’t need it, I don’t want it around.  So my list won’t be very long.

Pressure canner – I think this is the most valuable kitchen tool I have. It doubles as a pressure cooker, making cooking beans or any other food super quick, and it enables me to can any food I can think of.  That means I can buy lots of fruit, vegetables, or meat when the price is right and have a safe method to preserve it for using at my convenience at a later time.  It wasn’t an expensive purchase, and even combined with the cost of all the jars/lids that I bought, it didn’t take us more than a couple of months before the free/inexpensive food we were able to take advantage of because we had a way to deal with it that we recouped our expenses.  The more expensive the food you can, the faster you recoup the costs.  Being able to can meat at sale prices has been a major money saver.  I have the Presto 23 quart model.  

Canning jars – this connects with the above.  In addition to obviously using them for canning, I use them for making kefir soda and making lacto fermented vegetables.  Also good for storing grains, nuts, etc.  They look nice on the shelf.  🙂

Dehydrator – another very valuable food preservation tool.  Also saves us lots of money but I can’t say that we’ve recouped our costs yet.  I’m planning to give it a good workout this summer and fall to take advantage of cheap produce – I didn’t have this model yet last summer and relied mostly on canning as a preservation technique. I have the Excalibur 9 tray version.

Apple peeler/slicer/corer – this was very useful for us when we were able to get many, many pounds of free apples; it made processing the apples for canning much easier.  If you don’t need it for a lot of apples, it’s not necessary at all.  I have two, one from Pampered Chef and one from a company that I can’t remember – I paid $6 for one and $7 for another.  Hopefully I’ll have the chance to put them to use again this fall!

Food processor – we eat a lot of vegetables and this saves lots of time in preparing them.   I got a manual one to replace the electric one when it broke, but some kind of fast way to slice/chop/shred vegetables is very helpful for me.  Since the manual model chops and grinds but doesn’t slice and shread, there’s still room for me to get the electric model, which I’ll only do when the price is right. 

Grain grinder – because I like the nutritional aspect of freshly ground flour, this is a valuable addition for us.  We have the Nutrimill.

Blender – useful for making smoothies, homemade mayonnaise.

Handheld blender – I keep my main blender pareve and like being able to blend dairy soups with this. 

Good set of knives – I wouldn’t have put this on the list if you asked me a month ago.  But I just bought a new set since the knives we got as a wedding gift started to break.  The new ones are lousy even though they are the same company that made the originals and I really see what a difference good knives make (if anyone has recommendations for good knife sets in a moderate price range, please share!).

Griddle – this covers two burners on the stove and makes it possible for me to cook pancakes much faster than in a regular frying pan since I have more surface frying area.

There are other things I have which are useful, like a manual cherry pitter or a waffle iron, but they fall into the category of convenient but an extra.  You have to be careful about spending lots of money on unnecessary kitchen items.  Even if you get them for free, there’s the hidden cost of the space they take up.  To me, they have to be very useful to justify the room in the cabinets they use.  There are things like breadmakers that I don’t personally find to be of value that others swear by, so there’s really no universal list of what everyone needs.

If I had to recommend two kitchen tools that I think are worth buying for the person interested in saving money on food, it would be the canner and dehydrator. Since I got these, I feel like my food costs are going down while the amount I can buy goes up.  But you have to have an idea what you’d do with them once you get them!  They won’t save you any money sitting on the shelf. 

Avivah

I hope you all had a good and meaningful fast.  BH, here it was much less eventful than last Tisha B’Av, which was unfortunately too easy to feel the spirit of the day.  At that time, my friend’s 16 year old son died from injuries in a car accident and I went with my oldest two kids to his funeral (also attended by a huge number of people in the community), and then afterwards to pay a shiva visit to her.  It’s hard to believe it’s been an entire year – I can still remember everything from the moment I heard about the accident all the way through the funeral  as if it happened yesterday.  I called her yesterday a few hours before the fast to check in and see how she was doing with all of the emotion this time of year must be bringing up.  It’s very hard.

It’s a funny thing about Tisha B’Av.  It’s supposed to be such a sad day, but what I find the hardest is it’s usually a more pleasant and relaxed day due specifically to all the things you can’t do. Does that sound strange?  I find this challenging every year.  I sit on the floor, and my little kids get all excited climbing all over me.  I don’t chat on the phone, go online, read my typical reading material, eat meals, clean my house – so I have all this nice relaxed time to just be physically and emotionally present. There are no other things competing for my attention, and I can really be there for my family in a way that is hard to do most days of the year. 

Physically the fast was a good one, and I’m SO grateful that our weather today was much less humid than yesterday.  I was dreading the fast with hot and muggy weather.  I can handle the heat, but I tend to feel almost claustrophobic from the muggy air weighing down on me and I’m less receptive to my small children being very close to me at that time. 

Towards the end of the fast, dd12 (she’ll be 13 in the coming week) was bored so she started cooking for Shabbos.  Very constructive use of her boredom, isn’t it? 🙂  Since we’re going out for Shabbos lunch, our dinner preparations are in large part now complete, which is good since we want to work on the patio after chatzos.  I don’t think we’ll finish the details of it, since bricks at the end of each row will need cutting, and I think we’re going to come up short a couple of rows of bricks.  If that’s the case, I initially told the kids we’d make the patio a little smaller. But after digging up the area and framing it to the size they want it to be, they didn’t go for that idea, so now I’m planning to go to Home Depot to see if I can find some complementary contrasting pavers, since there’s no way I’ll be able to match up what we have.  Then we’ll have to pull up a couple of the first rows on one side, so we can edge both sides of the patio with the new pavers.  But we’ll see how it actually works out tomorrow after we get all the bricks we have left put in.  I’ll keep you posted. 🙂

At the end of the fast, the middles (ds10, dd8, ds7) starting taking the meal ‘orders’ from those fasting.  Ds10 came over to me with a pen and paper to write down exactly what I wanted, the specific foods as well as the amounts – they wanted to prepare individual plates of food for each of us for when the fast was over.  Isn’t that sweet of them?  I don’t know what made them think of doing this, but they did this for the first time this past Yom Kippur, and their initiative was definitely well received! 

But after ds10 took my order, then ds7 asked me if he could prepare my meal, so I agreed since ds10 was also preparing a meal for someone else and I saw how much ds7 wanted to also be involved. The only problem was ds7 was so tired by the time the fast was over that he really didn’t have much energy to do much of anything!  After he brought me a big cup of warm water – because he couldn’t reach the faucet for the cold water – I saw how he was dragging and suggested that he sit down and rest.  His heart was very much in the right place, though.  It’s the thought that counts! 

To break the fast, we had the watermelon that I bought to eat before the fast (but hadn’t had enough time then so had fresh pineapple instead) as well as fresh salad, potatoes, and eggs.  Dh put all the whitefish salad I was planning to serve in the freezer, but we’re all very flexible about food so it wasn’t a big deal.  We stick with our usual manner of eating both before and after a fast – though before a fast I tend to go heavier on more nutrient dense foods (like putting avocado in my salad), and after a fast I have something lighter.  (I also have an extra meal the day going into the fast.)  But I keep the proportions of protein, carbs, veg, and fat the same.  It works well for me – I don’t go into the fast feeling too stuffed to move, and I don’t go to sleep after the fast feeling sick from overeating. 

I can’t believe how fast the summer is flying by – before you know it, Elul will be here and soon after that the official beginning of the new school year.  I’m really loving our relaxed summer schedule, so I have to make the most of it while it lasts! 

Avivah 

Have you been wondering what’s happening with the patio we’re making?  It’s been a really big project due to the size of it and because of hauling all our own materials.  It’s been lots cheaper but lots more work!  It’s ended up that most of the time, we work one day, rest a day, which I didn’t purposely schedule but worked out well.  It kept everyone from getting totally wiped out.

We were hoping to have it finished by last night when the Nine Days started but didn’t make it.  For the last couple of hours in the evening, the kids were working fast and furious, trying to get it done, and realizing how close they were (earlier in the day everyone was feeling like it would take forever and there was no possibility it would be done in time, so they were moving in slow motion).  In case you’re wondering, I do actively participate in these projects even with a small infant (he’s 8 weeks now) – I spent hours chipping the mortar off hundreds of free bricks, and hauled lots of bricks and gravel.  We still have two or three hours of work on it but it’s going to have to wait until after Tisha B’av.

Midday they went to our monthly homeschool gathering, while ds16 went shopping for last minute camp things (more socks, undershirts).  If they had stayed home we’d easily have finished, and though they didn’t realize how close it would be, I knew we wouldn’t finish if they all went out. But I encouraged them to go anyway.  As the saying goes, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Actually, we easily would have been done by now but after two days of working on it and having it half finished, ds16 decided to pull it all up and start over.  It wasn’t an easy thing for him to choose, after putting in so many hours and so much work.  But he wasn’t happy with how it was turning out – the pattern was irregular and it was a bit uneven.  He told me he thought about how he would feel to have it all done and and after so much work for the final result to look like that, and realized there would be very little satisfaction in it.  I would never have asked him to redo it, but was glad he chose to because I felt the brick pattern looked somewhat haphazard.

(Parenthetically, he wanted a certain style of glasses, and a while back I jokingly told him I’d buy him a pair as payment if he made a patio for us.  He asked me if I would really do that, so I said, sure.  That was definitely a motivating factor, and I ordered them from zennioptical for him a couple of weeks ago.  He’s very happy with them, and I’m glad they came before he went to camp since that was important to him.  It was a definite win-win situation: he was happy to do the work and get the glasses, and I was happy to have it done and the glasses cost me under $30.)

Today we started our morning by going to a local art exhibit.  The artist is a friend who offered to come down and give us a personal tour of the exhibit, which was really nice of her.  The littles were very fresh from a full night of sleep and weren’t interested in standing around and listening to someone talk, so that made it a little harder.  And the baby who rarely spits up, spit up several times and naturally it was one of the rare occasions that we didn’t have a burp cloth with us – isn’t that always how it goes?  But in spite of that I enjoyed it and so did the older kids.

After that we took the littles to a local playroom where we stayed for an hour and a half.  It was very pleasant to let them run around and enjoy all the new toys.  While they did that, the middles signed up for a summer reading program.  When we finally came home, we had lunch, put the littles in for their naps, and the middles spent time studying their reading club materials and then spent the rest of the afternoon with a new bead kit, making keychains from plastic beads, kind of like macrame.  They’re pretty complicated and look really nice.

And my dh got a call from a friend in Israel today who he hasn’t spoken to in years, who called to say mazel tov on the baby.  How did he know we had a baby?  This is something fun about having a blog!  It seems one of you in another country said something to a friend in yet another country about me and my blog, and that person realized she knew me.  So she called me two weeks ago to say mazel tov.  Then that person told her best friend, who is married to a friend of dh’s from twenty years ago, that we had a baby.  That’s the friend who called today! 😆  Dh enjoyed catching up with him today.  And my blog was the catalyst for the connection – isn’t that nice?

Avivah

Today while the kids were working on the patio, I went out with the baby and dd8 to look at something someone was selling on Craig’s List, and then decided to go to a discount store near there that I had never been to, sinceI was in the area already. 

Usually when I go on a drive this long, one of my older kids says tefillas Haderech out loud for everyone.  But today since only dd8 was with me, I chose to stop at an exit so I could park and say it.  I had been feeling a little concerned about what I would do if I got stuck due to car trouble, and once I said tefillas Haderech, that lifted. 

After I did a little shopping (an hour from home) we got in the van, but it wouldn’t start.  I’ve never had any problems or indications of problems, but thought the battery must be dead.  As I walked back toward the store to see about getting assistance, I noticed a vehicle pulling out a few spaces away from me and asked if they were willing to help jump the van, for no reason than because they were the first people I saw.  It was an elderly woman with her middle aged son, and they told me they didn’t have jumper cables, but when I said I did, he agreed to try to jump start the car.  After attaching the jumper cables, it became obvious the problem wasn’t the battery.  I started thinking about what to do next – like get AAA to tow us to a local garage and call my mother or inlaws to come and pick us up – he went back to his car and returned with a paperclip.  He bent it out of shape, slid under the van, fiddled around for a few seconds, and got the car started!  It wasn’t until then that he mentioned he was a mechanic!  He told me that although he got the van started, whatever caused the problem would still be an issue so I shouldn’t stop on my way home or I’d be stuck again. 

After thanking him profusely and resolving mentally to stop at our mechanic and then get a ride home for the three of us from there, I asked what could cause something like that to happen, with no warning or indication of a problem. He told me it was probably a fuse, and then I guess he decided he could check that for me, because right after he answered me, he opened up a panel on the side of the dashboard (I had never noticed it was there!).  He quickly checked the fuses and found one that was burnt out. He told me I could buy a package of them at an automotive store, but then noticed an extra one at the bottom of the panel (kind of like how button down shirts have an extra button as a replacement) and inserted it for me, so now everything is fine!  I was glad I had cash on me so I could offer him something for his help.  He at first refused but I insisted – while it didn’t take him more than ten minutes at the most, he saved me a lot of time, money, and most of all, stress and anxiety. 

I kept thinking about how amazing it was that H-shem directed me to the one person there who would be able to help me.  Lots of people can help jump a car, but how many would have stayed around when that wasn’t the problem?  How many could have found an alternative way to get the car started?  Even if they knew how, how many would be willing to do it for free for a stranger in a parking lot?  And how many would go even further and fix the root of the problem, when the van was already running and I would have been able to get home without any more of his time and assistance?

Aren’t H-shem’s ways amazing?  He arranged my steps all afternoon so that this mechanic and I would be at the same place at the same time, just when I needed help.  Every one of those parts of my day that I didn’t think were going according to my plan were all meant to be exactly as it was. 

Not only am I filled with gratitude for today’s quick resolution of a situation I often have had concerns about occurring, but it reminds me once again how everything happens just as it’s meant to, even when we can’t see why or how.  I’m glad that today I was able to see a little part of the big picture in H-shem’s plans!

Avivah

 >>thanks! your answer really makes me feel more adequate <<

>>i am moving- gradually- from being totally intimidated by you into being inspired to do what i can and realize that i can’t do everything overnight.<<

 I wanted to respond to both of these comments, because they touch on an important issue.  I think we all sometimes fall into the trap of competing and comparing ourselves to others to our own disadvantage.  I would hate to give anyone a reason here to feel inadequate.  A danger of the internet is that when you don’t get to see someone in person it becomes too easy to idealize him/her, imagining them to be successful in every area of their lives all of the time.  But as a friend once said about a very great man who her husband was close with – “he puts his pants on one leg at a time”.  That’s wasn’t said as a put down but a reality – everyone is flesh and blood, no matter what they’ve accomplished. 

My dh was chatting with our accountant in the pool a few days ago, who said something like ‘your wife must be superwoman’; my dh really didn’t like that.  Though it was meant as a compliment, he didn’t feel it was at all.  He said to me that when a person makes a statement like that about someone else, it shows that they really don’t know them, and if you don’t know someone, how can you truly value them? He’s right.  I don’t think there is such a thing as superwoman, do you?  Maybe she’s just an illusion we all use to beat ourselves up with.  

My truth is that I’m an average person doing the best I can, sometimes succeeding but lots of time feeling like there’s so much more I could and should be doing in every area of my life.   I love sharing with all of you on this blog, and I love that I can be honest and don’t have to worry about upholding an image of always having it together.   

At times when I think about what I should be doing and pressuring myself, I have to mentally step back and remind myself to stop ‘shoulding’ on myself.  We moms tend to push ourselves way too hard and give ourselves too little credit for what we do.  It’s as if by virtue of doing something it’s no longer an accomplishment.  Telling myself that I need to do more and that whatever I’m doing right now isn’t enough isn’t exactly a positive motivator.  It’s that kind of attitude that gets me stuck in negativity. 

I find it lots more helpful to recognize this voice as the negative influence it is,  and consciously release it.  It’s always this voice that causes me to procrastinate, and it’s always when I let go of those excessive and burdensome expectations of negative judgements that I free up energy to enjoy living life and paradoxically can accomplish much more.  Sometimes I have to remind myself that being enough is enough – it is, you know.  I’ve embraced the concept of being average as a positive.  It’s very freeing when we can let go of all of those expectations of ourselves. 

Today I spoke to two women in different stages in life, both of whom had the internal voices shoulding on them.  One was struggling with not wanting to start dating for marital purposes, feeling unready but because she was a certain age she should get herself moving.  The other felt it would be a disservice to her family to have more children because she was overwhelmed, but felt that because her youngest had reached a certain age, she should be ready to have another baby.  Sometimes we say it’s the people around us who are pressuring us, but I’ve realized that it’s usually because those same voices are playing in my head that I think others are placing expectations on me.  Why do we pressure ourselves so much?  Why don’t we trust our internal messages and listen to our inner voice?  Why can’t we love and accept ourselves as we are right now?  That’s the voice of balance and reason, the one that leads us to a happy life. 

If you read something here that inspires you, I’m thrilled.  But please, please don’t use anything that I write to beat yourself up with.  There are stages of life when we do more and stages we do less.  Don’t compare who you think someone is or what they do to who you are.  Remember, we’re all just doing the best we can, one day at a time.

Avivah

I often have the conflict between not wanting anything unnecessary taking up room in the house, and wanting to have what I need on hand for when I need it.  Sometimes I lean towards getting rid of anything I possibly can, and other times I lean towards saving what may come in handy one day.  But in between I have fits of regret one way or another – like feeling sorry I didn’t save something I should have, and other times feeling there’s too much excess in and wanting to give away everything right away!  Recently, I saw online photos/virtual tour of an Amish house for sale – it was so, so neat.  Spotless, really.  Not the kind of thing you should look at when you’re postpartum and feeling inadequate about the state of your house. 

My house reflects that I haven’t been actively involved in the organization of things in the last 6 weeks to the degree that I ususally am and yesterday I decided that with the conference done, now’s the time to whip things back in shape!  I started with the attic and clothing storage.  Along with maternity clothing waiting to be packed away are non seasonal/outgrown clothes from the kids they don’t want to keep in their drawers (I always marvel how quickly kids seem to outgrow things!), but I haven’t had the boxes I needed to pack them up. 

I’ve been asking dh for weeks to pick up boxes from the supermarket to use for storage (have to be there at 6 am to get them) but he actually has a life and many other things to do so the clothing piles have been building.  Finally a few days ago we were in Home Depot together and when I saw a display of 18 gallon storage totes, I spontaneously asked him to put ten of them in our cart.  (Dh looked at me and said, ‘is this because I didn’t get you those boxes?’ – but I laughed and told him a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do!)  I really like storage containers because they look so neat and uniform, but they’re definitely not essential since you can use free boxes from the store for the same end result.  Despite the lack of frugality in buying them, for me it’s a value to have things looking neat and organized.  Our home isn’t large and we’re a lot of people with a lot of stuff – and buying nice storage containers is cheaper than building an addition or buying a larger house (not that either of those things are in the works right now!). 

I spent a few hours in the attic yesterday and didn’t finish reorganizing everything (because then I had to take dd camp shopping – and I got a few more storage containers when out with her), but it already looks so much better!  Those storage boxes lined up look streamlined and uncluttered (I chose one color for girls clothes, another for boys).  I was brutal about going through the stored clothing and giving things away if they won’t be used in the near future.  That means that I got rid of all of my clothes in the size I haven’t gotten back down to since I was pregnant with my 21 month old; someone can enjoy them now and I’ll treat myself to some new clothes when I’m back to that size.  I also went through all the girls clothes that my dd8 is too big for.  I’m keeping the baby clothes, up through size 2, but I realized that if I have another girl one day (and I really hope I have more than one girl – I need to even the boy/girl ratio around here :)), by the time she fits into these clothes they’ll be hopelessly outdated.  I now have six large boxes of clothing waiting to be donated to a local clothing exchange. 

Today I took a break from the attic and enjoyed some low key ‘Camp Wernerific’ activities with the kids.  (Until this year it’s always been Camp Imma but this week I asked them if they wanted to rename it, and for now this is what they agreed on).  Tomorrow if I get some quiet time I’ll get back to the attic and finish by organizing all the boots and shoes – it will be so nice to see everything in it’s place!

Avivah