Happy 100th Post to Me! - Enter the Simple Giveaway

100 roses

Well, this is actually my 102nd post.

Hmm, I should probably do a giveaway or some other bloggy thing to celebrate. Have to think on this. Check back later to see if I've put something together.

O.K., I've thought about it. I will give away a copy of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver.

To be entered in the giveaway, you have to comment (to this post) about the following questions:

Which provident living activity (health, education, food storage, social and emotional strength, resource management, employment or humanitarian aid) is the hardest for you to do? Why?

You have until Friday night to get your comments in! I'll post the winner on Saturday! Good luck!

Tuesday - Education

OK, so most of my readers either a) have already finished a degree and have already been there/done that b) are busy taking care of munchkins and don't have the time/resources to go to college. I am a & b.

So should I just skip Education Tuesdays? Well, of course not.

A quote from the Provident Living site says " When we have knowledge and wisdom, we are better able to discern truth from error and make good choices. Education and literacy are also keys to personal growth, preparation for suitable employment, building strong families, service to [others], and making a meaningful contribution to the society in which we live."

In Proverbs 4:7 it says "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore, get wisdom: and with all thy getting, get understanding."

So look to those things that are around you - your children, your family, and educate yourself about families. Or educate yourself about things that are interesting to you - gardening, the Civil War, car maintenance, whatever. Or learn about things that could translate into a career - computer programming, accounting, writing. And there are so many ways to do it. Find books at the library, find a workshop, take a community education course, meet with other people with similar interests, or maybe take a class at a community college or university.

I've already talked about my current goal for this area which is to follow the 9th grade curriculum outlined in the "Well-Trained Mind." In addition to this, I am taking an on-line course on Montessori education for preschoolers, and I attend our monthly Women Living Wisely meetings to learn more about Provident Living. We also have a book club through our church, but the meeting time conflicts with my teaching preschool, but it is something that I think would be interesting to get involved in someday.

Monday - Health

I know quite a bit about Health. Probably much more than an overweight, out of shape, 40 something person would appear to know. LOL

My schedule is fairly busy, and I'm at home, watching children, for much of my day. And I hate to be cold. And I'm particularly UNmotivated in the mornings to exercise, and I'm often busy in the evenings. So I rarely exercise. But this has GOT to change. I've recently lost about 20 pounds, and I've got many more to go, but I know the key to continuing to lose weight will be to increase (start? LOL) my exercise.

I'm going to focus on walking for right now. I ran track in high school, and I would like to eventually compete in races, but I need to take one step at a time (sorry, bad joke.)

This week, my goal is to walk for 45 minutes five days a week. I will do it from 1:30 to 2:30 pm. This is a time when I am generally not doing anything besides checking on the computer or reading, etc.

OK, time for a little change

I am still going to post stuff about the Simple Family, and basically anything else that I feel like, LOL, but I'm going to put my focus on this blog on talking about Provident Living. Every day, I will post about one of the areas of Provident Living. So from now on, here is the schedule:

Mondays - Health
Tuesday - Education
Wednesday - Home Storage
Thursday - Social and Emotional Strength
Fridays - Resource Management (but Titled Frugal Fridays)
Saturday - Employment
Sunday- Humanitarian Aid

Like I said, I will also throw in posts about whatever I feel like too, and post them whenever I feel like it. Just to keep you on your toes.

Frugal Fridays

I'm pretty frugal. Most of the time, I look at it as a fun challenge, but there also is the fact that we sort of NEED to be frugal too.

So I'll be posting a frugal tip every Friday. Until I don't, LOL, since I tend to get started on stuff like this, and then drop off after awhile. Not every frugal tip will work for every family, and that's o.k.

So the first frugal tip is: Stay At Home. We only have one car (this will probably be my next frugal tip) and so most days, I am here without a car. It is easier to not spend money if you have to walk to the store.

I used to think I was smart

And in some people's eyes I was. The problem was/is that I wasn't smart, I was just really good at memorization.

I went to public school, and enjoyed school for most of my elementary school years. But for much of my elementary schools, I went to an elementary school that was well, very 70s. I went there from 2nd to 5th grade, and everything was very individualized, and project-based. During 4th and 5th grade, we had a project during half of the year, and all of our schoolwork was related to the project. In 5th grade, we picked an occupation, and then did schoolwork related to it. I picked an archeologist (seriously? Can you seriously see me as an archeologist?) and so I to create tools, a budget, detailed reports about what I was looking for, what an archelogist does, etc. It was a really great way to use academic skills in a real life way.

But then in 6th grade, we moved across town, and I finished elementary school at a "typical" school, and went to a "typical" junior and senior high. The high school I went to was supposed to be the best in town, and 98% of the students went on to college. I did three years of Math, 4 years of Science (including a semester of Microbiology), 4 years of Spanish, 4 years of Engish (including a year of AP English). I graduated with a 3.8 GPA. I did well on the ACT. I was offered scholarships at two different schools (and yet for some reason, picked a school that wasn't offering me a scholarship. What was I thinking?) On paper, and on tests, it looked like I was smart.

Even through most of my undergraduate classes, I did well. I was an English major, and so I read more of the English "classics" than other people. But my senior year was tough for me because all of a sudden, I was supposed to have an opinion on something. I was supposed to have read other things, from other areas, and make connections. I was supposed to be able to know how to argue my point. I still did well, but I was starting to realize that I wasn't as smart as I thought I was.

And then a couple years later, I went back to do a graduate degree in English. And I didn't do well. I remember always feeling like I was drowning and I felt like I was having a constant panic attack. Graduate school used very little in the way of memorization, and focused heavily on critical thinking and original thought. I quit after a year. Years later, I did finish a graduate degree, but this time it was in Technology with an emphasis on Training and Development and Project Management. I had been working as a Trainer for 3 years before I started the program, and the focus on the program was more on practical skills than theories, so I was able to do well in the program. But deep down, I knew that just because I got a master's degree, it didn't mean I was smart.

Almost everything that I learned from sixth grade on I was unable to recall because I had just memorized it. And the older I got, and the more people I met, I realized that I hadn't read SO many things that I should have - I never read Plat0, or John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. I've never read The Declaration of Independence, Rousseau, or Karl Marx. And not only did I not read any of these classics, I didn't read Newsweek, the New York Times, or even the local paper. Well, I read the paper, but I mostly glanced at the front page, the Life section, and the classified. And that was only every two weeks or so.

I never learned grammar well, I never learned logic or rhetoric. Not that it would have mattered because I just didn't know enough about past or current events to be able debate about it, much less point out people's flaws in their arguments.

I never learned how to question things. Even in my favorite high school subject, Science, I just memorized the facts instead of ever asking "Why?"

I also didn't use my Spanish or play the piano much after high school and much of those skills are lost as well.

So I've decided that it is time to learn. Really learn this time. So I'm going back to school this summer. I'm not taking classes at the university or the community college. I'm not taking a workshop. But what I am doing is looking at the Classical Curriculum (I'll specifically be looking at the curriculum outlined in The Well-Trained Mind by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer) for 9th graders and I'm going to be studying those things - yes, even the Math! I'll be working on Vocabulary, Writing Exposition, Rhetoric, Grammar, books from the Ancients (5000 BC to 400 AD), Algebra, Latin, Drawing, and Piano. And then maybe next year, I'll do the 10th grade curriculum, and hopefully continue until I complete the 12th grade curriculum.

And then maybe, just maybe, I'll be smart. But I'm not doing this so that I can look/feel/be smart. I honestly just want to really learn these things. I do REALLY enjoy learning. I always said that my dream job would be to be a researcher and just work 40 hours a week in the library, learning about this thing and then that thing. I discovered way back in 5th grade that my dream job is NOT to be an archeologist. LOL

What Was Lost Is Now Found, Part 3

There once was a three year old girl who lived with her mother and father and four year old brother. The girl was cute and sweet, but very precocious too. She didn't get in trouble much, but when she did, she got in a LOAD of trouble.

One day, the mother took the girl and her brother shopping. They went to a store in a large mall in a very, very, large city. The mother was looking at clothes. The boy stood there patiently by his mother. The girl looked at the mother. The girl looked at her brother. And then she ran. She ran and ran. She ran out of the store and started going to other stores.

Meanwhile, the mother had discovered that the girl was gone. She asked the boy if he knew where his sister was, and he said "No, mommy. I'm sorry." The mother frantically looked for the girl. Minutes passed, and the mother still couldn't find the girl. Nobody seemed to want to help the mother find the girl either. The mother paused for a brief moment, and a woman came up to her. She said, "Have you lost a child?" The mother said "Yes, I have! Have you seen her?" The woman said "No, but I will go look for her." The mother gave her a description of the little girl. The woman said "You stay here and wait to see if the girl comes back." And the woman went off searching for the girl.

By this time, the girl had been gone for quite a while. She had wondered in and out of stores inside the mall. Finally, she decided to go outside and then went to a shoe store that was only accessible from the outside of the mall. The girl wandered through the aisles of the store, and a store worker finally came up to her. The clerk asked her if she would like some candy, and the girl said yes. The girl followed the clerk to the back room to get a sucker.

Just then, the woman who was searching for the girl came into the store. She walked up to the desk and asked if they had seen a little girl. Just then, the woman saw the girl in the back getting some candy from the other store clerk.

The woman took the girl back to her mother. The woman told her the story of how she found the girl. The mother asked her, "But how did you think to go to the shoe store when it was only accessible from the outside? And why did you still ask if they had seen her when you didn't see her in the store?" The mother thanked and thanked the woman. The mother told the story many times to the girl over the years and told her about her "guardian angel" who had found her that day.

And the girl grew into a grown up girl, and had her own children. She still thought about the woman sometimes, especially now that she was a mother and thought of how her own mother must have felt when her child was lost.

And then one day, the grown up girl was at a park with her husband and three children for an Easter Egg Hunt. There were so many people, many more than she had thought would come. She was watching her nine year old daughter collecting eggs while her seven year old daughter and four year old son were playing on a nearby slide. Every few seconds, the grown up girl would glance over at the slides. And then suddenly, the seven year old girl was at her side. The grown up girl said "Where is your brother?" and the seven year old said "He is still on the slides." The grown up girl went to the slides, but her son was not there. The grown up girl and her husband started calling for the boy and ran in different directions to find him. The grown up girl paused for a moment to look around, and a woman came up to her. She said "Have you lost your child?" The grown up girl said "Yes, have you seen him?" The woman said no, but she said that she would look for him. The grown up girl gave her a description of the boy, and the woman went off looking for him. The grown up girl asked that his name be announced over speakers. When she still didn't see the boy, the grown up girl decided to walk down the sidewalk and see if the boy had walked back to the car.

By now, it had been 15 minutes. The grown up girl was getting frantic. She thought of how she had been lost when she was young. She had been lost for much longer than 15 minutes. But it was a different time. People were different now. And it would be so much easier now, out here in the open, with all of the people at the park that day, for someone to just walk off with him.

The boy wasn't at the car. The grown up girl started walking back towards the park. The grown up girl started crying. It was too much for her to take. And then she saw it - the woman was running towards her. The woman started yelling "He has been found. He is with your husband." The grown up girl cried harder and started asking "How did you find him?" and then just thanked the woman over and over again.

If you haven't already guessed, this story is about Me. I am the little & grown up girl in the story. We lost Super last Saturday at the town's Easter Egg Hunt. I am still having nightmares about losing him. I'm still having him sleep with me every night so that when I wake up, I can see that he is here.

He was found by Mr. Simple wandering at another area of the park. Super started walking back when he heard his name announced, and then he saw Mr. Simple. The woman saw Super walking with Mr. Simple and gave Mr. Simple the 3rd degree to make sure that he really was his dad and not some person trying to act like his dad.

So on the way home, we talked with the kids again about what we should do if we get lost or if someone tries to take us. But I also told them the story about how I got lost one day and how a woman helped my mommy find me, and how many years later, a woman helped Super's mommy find him.

So thank you to the two women in my life that helped me - when I was lost, and when I had lost someone. I don't know the women's names, but I'll be forever grateful to you both. Foremost for helping with the situation, but also to help remind me that there are wonderful, caring people in the world. Thank you for the two guardian angels that were sent to me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.