You Start Monday

After being laid-off for about 6 months, my son-in-law got a job. It's not with his former company, but it is a job. At least now he can also do some of those part-time jobs that he wants and enjoys. And the health insurance will be good. No more Cobra and the high payment now!! Way to go JSS!

Depressing News from the News

It is so depressing to listen to the news this morning. Father shoots and kills his 5 children then self in Washington. Three police officers killed in a hail of gunfire in Pittsburgh. Man barricades self and 4 hostages in house. Hours later police find the girlfriend shot dead and gunman dies at the hospital. He had lost his job. Gunman from the NY massacre was wearing a bullet-proof vest and was made fun of because he did not speak English well and he had lost his job. The common thread of most of these shootings was the loss of their jobs. Is this the beginning of more carnage because of the down-turn in the economy? How sad that when faced with the loss of one's job the only answer becomes death by guns. Is there a way to give people hope and help? When will the carnage be addressed by government? Or am I dreaming? My fear is that more deaths will occur by the result of guns because the idea has been planted in the heads of those who seem to have no hope. The news story of violence by guns becomes the solution. We need to pray that God will turn this around. And we need to be ready to help.

Stimulus Plan and Going Green

Are they a contradiction? A person can buy a new vehicle for $6,000 less than the list price. The price for the new one is also several thousand dollars less than a two to four-year old used car of the same make and model. I can understand this part of the stimulus plan. Buy new, keep people working. But I don't understand what will happen to all the used vehicles that are now out of reach on pricing, yet very usable. We were sucked into the plan. We bought a new Vue and received the huge savings. We had been looking at used ones, but couldn't touch the price of the new. I like my car, but it is a stripped-down model of the Vue from just 4 years ago. Our daughter owns a 2004 Vue. She really likes ours and would love to have it. That is, until she drove ours. Hers has far more standard luxury items and more room for seating behind the driver. Ours has been stripped-down and squeezed together. (Glad we kept our van.) While on the outside you can tell ours is new, inside is proof that new is not always better! What about recycling? Reusing? Reducing? Seems the plan is just creating more while discarding more.

Old Papers Reveal Much

I did it. I spent the day going through my dad's papers that he had saved for years. The papers included canceled checks, tax returns, pay stubs, EOB (explanation of benefits) and a few very unusual items. One of those items is the goatee from my dad. For the Centennial celebration, he grew a full beard. When he cut it off, he did so in stages. At first I thought it was a mouse or something worse. If he had known it was in the box, he would have had great joy in looking at it and reminiscing. I found tax papers all the way back to 1942, the year my parents were married. I couldn't believe the paltry sum of money he made for the year. No wonder he felt so rich with his miner's paycheck in his later years of work. I also looked at the farm income portion of the tax returns. We had a large apple orchard, chickens, swine, and farmed (put out in beans or corn) our land as well as the fields of the neighbors. He brought in a nice sum of money for the sale of all those mentioned items, but when he figured the cost to operate the farm business, he showed a loss of $35! I couldn't believe it. I ranted to my husband that we had done all that work for the entire year and suffered a loss! Dad experienced a loss about every other year. The years he made a profit revealed less that $500 a year and usually closer to $100. I called my brother who is 18 months older than me to share the news. He and I were the ones who did the vast majority of the farming with our dad. When I told him about the loss of $35, he burst out laughing and said we should have just burned the $35. My husband said my dad probably did the farming to teach us how to work and to keep us out of trouble. Somehow being thankful for that lesson doesn't feel really good at the moment.

Sign of Hard Times

The other evening I looked through the classified ad of our local newspaper. It's something I do when I've read both daily papers and still want to read. Anyway, I was surprised to see the number of pets listed in the pet section. Usually in that section there will be one or two listed for "free" and several for sale, but that particular day there were at least 20 ads for free pets and each ad listed multiple animals. I wonder if this is a further sign of our worsening economy. In times before, people would have kept the litter of pups or kittens, but now must get them off their hands. I certainly hope that with the new leadership that we will begin to see a turn around in our economy soon for all our sakes.

Wish I Had a Pond

I rode to the Big City with my husband yesterday to pick up the supplies for us to build our pond. The business had several ponds and waterways built on site for customers to see, drool over and want. There were signs posted listing the name of each pond, cost for the supplies, along with cost for their company to install the whole thing. Wish I had the money to be able to hire them to do it. But then we would miss the opportunity to "bond" while struggling through the process. We would also miss the opportunity to drive all over creation searching for the rocks to use in the project.

Samaritan's Purse

If you have a little money left over this Christmas and want to use it for a worthy cause check out this site. For a very small donation you can provide so much for children. And you don't have to wrap it.

Just Pull It

I went for my second appointment for a root canal and crown. Wish I had been more sedated when I got the bill--$1,594. Maybe I should've just had the tooth pulled. It wouldn't've hurt so much!