Transparency

So, here's an update on our Buy Nothing New challenge. We've done remarkably well, but we do have 2 items we need to purchase. First, we are out of lunch bags, again. I did this last year and had the same results. What is it with lunch bags? I think we go through way more than we anticipate. How did we come to this point? I don't understand it.

The second is this. We finished our book (Don reads to kids every night before bed) and we need the next one in the series. These are not life or death needs, but Don and the kids feel that both items fall int the category of "school needs" in our Buy Nothing New Loopholes. Hmm. I am ruled by the masses. Off we go. But - for future books in the series we are reading, I'm going on Amazon today to buy used copies. Lunch bags are kind of hard to come by used.

Anyway, in the spirit of full disclosure, this is my confession of leading a life of self-justification.

Temptation

So, the shopping habit is hard to break. Now, don't get me wrong. I really hate going to the grocery store, and I also hate running errands, but when you run out of something that seems essential, it is so tempting to make a run "just for this one thing." My problem is that one thing inevitably turns into many, so I worked through my need to go through the store.

Don was the first to discover our deficiency.

"Do you know where there's any more deodorant?"
"Did you look in the basement?" I asked.
"Yep, on the top shelf next to the shampoo and soap and stuff. None there."
"Well, does Bren have any?" Did I really ask him to use our 13 year-old son's stash?
"Uh, he has a microscopic amount, but I think I risk abrasions from the plastic if I use it."
"Maybe we could just use baking soda or something." I suggest with a smirk. He didn't think that was as funny as I did. He decided to take matters into his own hands and decided a run to the drug store was in order.

One thing you need to know is that Don is legally blind. He hasn't driven a car in over five years, and while he can see just fine what he's looking straight at, he has no peripheral vision so the DMV took his licence away. This fact does not deter him. He has to be the most mobile man without a licence I've ever seen. He runs dozens of miles a week and rides his bike as well. So today, when he discovered our lacking essential toiletry item, he hopped on his bike, rode the 7 miles into town, picked up several sticks of under-arm refresher, along with a diet coke (also essential, of course) and then headed for home. This errand took him about an hour and he was happy for the chance to get out and about on his own.

So, there you have it. Our first official cheat. Deodorant. Acquired by a blind man on a bike.
I don't fault him. I mean, he is an athlete after all, and antiperspirant is important when you do a 5k as a warm up for your next day's run. Still, I despaired the purchase. I can't believe that with all the tooth brushes, tooth paste, shampoo, conditioner, mouthwash, soap and other personal care products we had no deodorant.

What would you have done? I need to find a more viable alternative to baking soda, in case this happens again and Don's not up for a 14 mile bike ride.

No Day Like Today

Well, I finished my grantsmanship training. It was a fabulous week-long certification course in grant proposal writing and non-profit program development. I learned so many valuable principles and got to work on a team to prepare and submit a grant for review. The program we were proposing is part of an actual working non-profit organization called Chosen Children's Kinship Placement. They work to place children, who have lost their parents due to HIV/AIDS, into foster care with their family members, rather than institutionalize them in orphanages. There is extensive research done on the value of this model over the typical western warehousing model. It's an interesting paradigm because Western countries are generally all about funding orphanages over any other model because of efficiencies of space/personnel. But, in the West we do not put our children in orphanages, we use a foster care/kinship placement model. The hypocrisy is glaring. Anyway, I hope they get their funding. We all worked hard and the hours we spent represent only the tiniest fraction of time the project founder has spent.


Learning the grantsmanship process was both informative and entertaining and I'm glad I went. Still, I am plagued with questions of where to go from here. I have text books that I'm trying to make my way through. I spend an average of an hour per chapter just reading, then there are assignments that will take hours to complete. I have papers to write on top of the regular homework and, in all, I estimate I have a good 360-450 hours of work ahead of me just for my classes. I'm not sure when I'm going to devote any time to my business of saving the world, but for today I did take time to reconnect with my husband while the house was all quiet, and I did read to my children for a little longer than usual.