Picking Your Battles Wisely

adMy best friend and I talk for about an hour a day, usually seven days a week. Tonight's epiphany was this:

We can't fix the bailout. We can't fix our banks. We can't fix our economy. We can't fix the consumer spending system we have ourselves in. Just what in Hades can we fix?

You see, OrangePop and I love us some yummy socioeconomics. We like it served up with a ton of research and links on the side, often with a dollup of tea snorking humor. She's a sociology major and I'm an art education major who enjoyed a few too many sociology classes in college. Explains much don't it?! Damn tree hugging Progressives....

Anyway-
I'm sick of the news. It gives me a headache. I'm tired of explaining it to others and trying to get a mediocre grasp on it myself. The results of it are far reaching and ultimately shitty. There is nothing good to come out of it that I can see so far. So girlfriend and I finally just said to ourselves "let's work on what we can fix."

What we can fix is our home budget, our credit card debt, our diets and purchases. We made a renewed commitment to learn more about the things we can fix -- like her barn. It needs a new roof and some repairs. I need to learn more about chickens too. I've managed to keep Feral alive (well.... let's be honest.. Feral has managed to keep Feral alive) but I'd like a few more. I need to re-read my gardening books, get my soil ready for next spring's work, clean up the burn pile I'm going to turn into a composting area.

We need to make "worse case scenaro" plans incase of deep recession or major economic depression. Can we continue to make our mortgages? Would we give up internet? Would the Direct TV satelite dish get cancelled? What would we do if we lost our income? what if the price of food sky rocketed? How can we save on gasoline?

Yes, these are almost doomsday thoughts, almost as depressing as the Bailout talks. What gives Orange and I some comfort though is that we are both very resourseful girls, and we've worked hard for our minifarms and the dreams of being self sufficient. We've started making steps to get there-- be it fresh eggs, home made bread or goats in the back yard.

When we look at how we live in comparison to how city folk live-- we some how know we'll make it okay. While everyone else is in line at soup kitchens, we'll be trading eggs for flour and watching our tomato plants grow. While others are living in tent cities, we'll be snacking on walnuts from our own nut trees and figuring out what to do with five bushels of cherries. (I had to throw cherries away this year. I had too many to possibly eat) It will be a lot of hard work, but better hard work than starvation, and if hard times never happen-- oh well--- our lives will still be much richer for the effort.

She and I are going to TRY to slow down on the bitching about the government. We can't be watchdogs all the time. It's not like we are going to start a successful revolution. What we can do though is share our thoughts on mini-farming, kitchen witchery and getting back to Mama Nature. Time for me to pick my battles a little more wisely-- and change the things that I actually have the power to change.

-Aggie