Mish Mosh Friday

It's Pig Portrait Friday! Meet Ramona. This is the pig that Maya, Mina & I adopted from the Farm Sanctuary. If you recall, after our traumatizing visit to Native Foods where we cried over seitan sausage pizza leafing through pamphlets titled: The Truth About Factory Farming, we resolutely decided to sponsor a Farm Sanctuary animal. Maya was ready to give up all her allowance to do so and Mina was willing to give up eating pork. She has backslid once -- no thanks to Husband -- and declared while sucking on a pork rib, "This ain't my pig." *sigh* Anyway, I told the girls after that fated Native Foods visit, that as one of their birthday presents (one bday is in April, the other in May), we would sponsor a pig. They were thrilled, but not as thrilled as when we received the packet introducing us to the lovely and surprisingly calico Ramona. Ramona, at one month old, was found in a sewage drain losing a battle of the tread. A passer-byer scooped her up, cleaned her off and dropped her off at the Farm Sanctuary. She was nearly dead and blind in one eye. They believed Ramona had either fallen off a local transport truck or had escaped a nearby factory farm. After some treatment, Ramona has regained all sight and is running around loving life. We're happy to be part of her life.


In other news, I recently read an article about a book called Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping by Judith Levine. Levine, a New Yorker, and a former automatic consumer (like most of us), mindlessly bought morning lattes and afternoon snacks. She ate out more than she realized. Her personal list of wasting money goes on and on. She was sick of her meaningless contribution to our society's over consumption so she decided to experiment for one year as a non-consumer, buying only "essentials" as defined by her and her man whom she's lived with for over a decade. Critics of the book question whether a $55 haircut and cat medicine are essentials, but the point is she became cognizant of shelling out money without checking the motivation or the actual bottom-line. Admittedly, this was very hard for her. She and her man became bummer friends declining constant invites to the movies and dinner. They handmade birthday presents. She craved clothes shopping and even slipped once . . .but on the upside, her knee-jerk response to spend was nearly completely squashed, she paid off an $8K dollar credit card and experienced what she describes as the most meaningful year she's had with her boyfriend in their 13 years together. All of this has made me think a lot about my own over consumption and wastefulness. It has made me realize that I had lost focus on some financial goals -- though we are humming along ok -- but if we were to be more aggressive, how much closer and faster could we get to the big picture? I think I had lost focus because our goals had become blurry. We live a fine life, not extravagant, but comfortable and sweet. I had not been looking beyond the current comfort and relief of this comfort. This caused me to tune out my own looming, moderate credit card debt and the very slow-building safety net. I've decided to do my own non-consumer experiment. A four-month plan to see what we can achieve financially. I mapped out my own essentials and thought about a more moderate plan for upcoming birthday parties and trips already planned. My biggest goal is to be conscientious about every dollar spent. Do I need it? Is this taking away from the Big Picture?

That said, ironically I just got my haircut for the first time in nine months. That was an essential if there ever was one considering my split ends were about to spontaneously combust at any moment. I am deathly afriad of getting my haircut for good reasons, but I found someone competent -- finally. I feel like I've stepped into the year 2006 and I'm thrilled with the moderness of it. My camera took a shit this morning or I would've shared - sorry! But it's a long shag, with side-sweep bangs. I'm not sure about the bangs yet, but the funness of it has got me all giddy. However, this morning I laughably realized that I may have cut my hair exactly like Marigoldie, Maven AND Andrea at hula seventy. Dudes, I now have the Hip Blogger Cut. Sorry for subconsciously biting all y'all’s style.

On to Gratuitous Gorgeousness Friday. Husband and I recently found some old pictures of the girls. They slay me with devastating feelings of mushiness.