To blog or not to blog
Yes that is a question I face almost daily, if not several times a day. It seems that once you start to blog the desire to just jot everything down becomes very addicting.
I know from looking at this blog that you’re thinking ….how come there is not much here?….The answer is that there is but most is just started to vent. Then I read it and cringe and leave it in draft form to clean up later or I delete as being much to eclectic to post. Eclectic a much more politically correct term then crazy rantings I think. So I have decided that instead of making them all pretty and more rational sounding that I’m going to just start posting them as they are written. So this is your warning that all postings here may not make sense, probably won’t be about the same things, could possibly give nightmares, and may offer insight into my seriously deranged mind (I prefer to think of it as thinking outside the box).
Since you are reading them here I also decided that you don’t want polished and politically correct writings but just the honest impressions of someone who doesn’t see why everyone has to follow the pack. Lemmings have been said to follow the pack to the extent of falling off a cliff to stay with them, I personally have the fear that us humans have the same capacity for stupidness in the name of fitting in. Take a look at corsets, high heels, tight jeans, cell phones, botox, and any of hundreds of things that someone (probably an ad exec) said that we couldn’t live without or we weren’t “normal”.
When you think about just that word, “normal”, on it’s own it should scare you more then being “odd”. A synonym for “normal” is “average” and how do you get an average? You take all of it the extremes on both ends as well as those in between add them together and divide by the amount of individuals that was decided to be studied. So in other words there is no one who is really “normal” or “average”, ok in the laws of mathematics I’m sure the odds are that there are a few but taken as a whole it would be a slight percentage of the whole. Enough of that subject this post I could do pages on that topic alone and it’s to late at night for me to even be semi-coherent in doing it.
So in essence I welcome to read my musings, but I do so with a warning that they will follow no rhyme or reason other then that the thoughts fluttered through my mind. If you want to read something that is written to educate, help, or encourage you have most likely come to the wrong place. This is for entertainment purposes only (for you the reader) and stress release and ranting (for me the author). I do welcome comments and even invite you to leave them. I will respond if a question is asked or rant about it in a post if it strikes my fancy. If you are looking for my serious writings they are found other places and me be shameless I have links (that I need to update, hopefully they will be before you read this) on the menu on the right. Right now I am writing for Off-Grid.net, a website that is dedicated to living a self-sustainable lifestyle, Cheapskate Moms (new site), that is to be full of tips on how me and some friends make our dollar stretch, and any place else that will let me put my two cents in.
Hi I’m Kelly!
I would like to introduce myself. My name is Kelly and I am on a journey to make the lifestyle of my family and myself more ecofriendly and self-sustainable. I believe that I have be very lucky to experience living a self-sustainable lifestyle early in my childhood when visiting my paternal grandparents.
They were “hill people” who had moved to the city for work and brought the ideas of producing your own food, fixing things when broken, and helping neighbors as the norm, etc. Of course my Mother was just the opposite if it didn’t come from the supermarket then you didn’t eat it, you bought everything new and replaced it when broken. Since opposite attract but rarely stay together my parents seperated early and I lived with my Mother. So my experiences with my grandparents lessened and I started my adult life after my Mother’s example.
Though I always dreamed of eventually becoming like my grandparents I just figured I would need to move to an existing homestead to do it. Since I felt that I was trapped in that lifestyle as with life your dreams keep being moved to the next day, week, month, or year. Once children entered the scene then I just hoped to keep up with their needs.
All that changed when we noticed how unhealthy most children seemed to be around us. They have allergies, asthma, colds multiple times a year, and so on. That started us on taking out fast food and processed food & snacks and looking for healthier ways to prepare meals. The difference was noticeable, to us at least. Our children rarely visit the doctor and when sick we rely more on my MeMaw’s remedies then anything else. You know lemon and honey tea for a sore throat, homemade chicken noodle for a cold, vapor baths and so on. They work extremely well even if they need more dosage and my children are bothered less by ailments because their bodies have had a chance to become resistant naturally.
To make changes in our current home it took a fire to occur. When we lost our home to a spontaneous fire we thought our dream of moving to a healthier rural life was gone. So we decided to rebuild the parts of the home that were lost more efficient and in line with our dreams. We downgraded such things as carpets, cabinets, and furnishings to upgrade our appliances to the best energy star available, better windows, increase insulation, and improve the interior for a better air quality and sunlight use. Those had an immediate impact. Then changing to CFL’s and putting most electronics on power strips, which can be turned off when not in use, just increased the amount of efficiency.
When we first bought our 1953 brick cape cod home our electric bill started at $500 and top out mid winter/summer around $975. Now even with the energy cost increase we top out at $500 and barely make that. That is with six people, 4 of them growing children (1 hitting pre-teen and the rest not far behind), my husband running a home based computer programming and developmental consulting on the side, and all the other assorted pets, friends, family, and in-laws that come to stay a few months out of the year.
So now we are working on taking a suburban home off the grid and doing it without alarming the neighbors. Since the economics of today’s life has made it harder to have the resources available to do this all at once we will be piecing this together over the long term and I invite you to join us on the journey. This blog is the place for me to share my story on a personal level as my other blog is more for getting the information people looking into this lifestyle need out there. So leave me a message or even visit my forum at www. OffGridUSA.com and talk with me there. I’m always looking for new friends, ideas, and comments.