I just set a timer for one hour and told my children on pain of death that I don't want to hear anything about Easter until the ding.

I am a little worked up. so I'm going to write a blog post.

I just listened to President Obama say that he's going to do something different- going to effect swift change in Washington. He said the failed economic policies of the past have gotten us into this mess, that we didn't have time to wait and see, that we must act swiftly.

Has he forgotten, or is he just lying?

He has the same people working on this who were working on this mess when it got messy.

We've already done a bailout. We've already pumped worthless money into the system. We've already done stimulus. That was BEFORE he came into office.

SO HE IS DOING THE SAME THINGS!

There has already been a great depression. THIS WAS PREDICTED. People know knew, knew that this was going to happen.

IF PRESIDENT OBAMA REALLY WANTS TO DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT, HE CAN START WITH THAT. LISTENING TO THE PEOPLE HOW KNOW.

Economics is just economics. Natural principles, laws, like gravity. It doesn't doesn't matter how I think things should work, gravity is gravity.

I have to go read some stories to the kids now, so I'll just leave it at that.

Get Ready...

History repeats itself...

A sneak peak at what's coming. The writing is literally on the wall here in this video. Get your house in order. NOW.

Sometimes, I can't believe all this weird stuff has happened to me, because sometimes, sometimes, I feel so normal and ordinary.

Sailing by Ash Breeze
Essay on Carry On, Mr Bowditch by Jean Lee Lathom

Would you like to be happy? Is there something standing in your way?

Are you waiting to win the lottery? Are you waiting for your children to grow up? Are you waiting for your husband to grow up? Are you waiting for yourself to grow up? Are you waiting for the government to make better laws? Are you simply waiting for things to get better?

Or do you look to the past, wishing that something different had happened to you? Did your teachers provide you with a poor education? Did your parents fail to leave you a big inheritance? Were you made fun of as a child? Are you unable to move forward, because of where you come from?

There is a secret to finding happiness. With this secret, you might even do great things and change the world. If you had the opportunity to know the secret, would you take it?

In the book, Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, Nathaneil Bowditch had lost everything. He had a great mind and was destined for Harvard. But when he was 12 years old, his family fell on hard times, and he was sold as an indentured servant. He was bound to serve for 9 years as a bookkeeper in a ship chandlery.

Because of circumstances beyond his control, Nat watched all his dreams fall away. All he could do now was wait for his 9 years of servitude to pass. And when he gained his freedom, he would then be too old to go to Harvard. He missed his opportunity. He lost his chance to become great. He quickly realized he would be unable to develop and use his God-given talents.

At his first day of work in the chandlery, Nat was presented with two mentors to choose from. The first confirmed his destitution. “I’ve heard of you. Master Watson’s brightest student you were,” Old Ben Meeker told him. “And now you’re becalmed. Just like I was at your age. Wouldn’t think to look at me I was bright as a dollar once, would you? But I was. Wanted to make something out of myself. But I didn’t have a chance. Taken out of school, I was. Just like you. When I look at you, I can see myself as I was thirty—forty years ago. Becalmed I was. Just like you.”

Before Nat could reply, the second mentor appeared and dismissed Ben Meeker with the truth. “Bah! Only a weakling gives up when he’s becalmed. A strong man sails by ash breeze!”

Sam Smith went on to explain to Nat that sometimes when a ship is becalmed, with no breeze to fill its sails and move it forward, the only way to move again is with ash breeze—by moving the ship forward by manpower and oars, made from the wood of the white ash tree.

Nat decided he liked the sound of that, and he chose to hearken to the wisdom of Sam Smith instead of the discouragement of Ben Meeker. From that point on, Nat chose to sail by ash breeze.

This simple choice changed Nat’s destiny. If he has resigned himself to the simple arithmetic of bookkeeping that he had been bought to perform, he would have ended up like Ben Meeker, working at the chandlery forever.

But he chose to sail by ask breeze. Nat took every opportunity he could to learn and improve himself. Working in a chandlery, he learned everything he could about ships. When he came in possession of a book, he studied it. If it was in different language, he learned the new language, and then studied the book. He wrote down everything he learned and would seek out other mentors to teach him more. He learned simply for the love of learning. Despite his circumstances, his loneliness and his disappointments, Nat found a great deal of contentment and happiness sailing by ash breeze.

After his 9 years were up, Nat found that he had many opportunities. He had built a reputation for his intellect. Eventually, Nat ended up sailing the seas. He already knew much about sailing from the chandlery. He found that navigation was much like surveying, which he had learned about earlier. Again, he took every opportunity he could to learn. And as he learned, he invented a new way of calculating the ship’s position. He studied the log books, and discovered many mistakes that caused ships to go off course and crash. By the end of the story, Nat had created a new log book with correct charts and instructions on navigation, which became the standard for sailors the world over. This book greatly improved navigation and corrected many errors in the old log charts. This saved many lives. He was awarded an honorary degree from Harvard.

Nat couldn’t change his circumstances. He couldn’t change the past. He could have waited around for someone else to come and fix his problems, but he would have been waiting for a long time. Instead, he chose to change his perspective and change his attitude and sail by ash breeze, making the best of what life had given him. Along the way, despite being deprived of his opportunities, he still gained the education he needed to accomplish his mission in life, and in the end, he saw his dream of becoming a Harvard Man realized. I wonder, had his circumstances been easier, would Nathaniel Bowditch have made such a mark on the world? I wonder which path would have made him the better person.

Are you becalmed? Are you stuck in the past, or stranded in the present? Are you waiting for a breeze to come along and move you forward? You might be waiting for a long time. You might try a little ash breeze to get you going again.

Who Knew Charlotte's Web was So DEEP?

I just read the 3rd chapter of Charlotte's Web to my kids, and Wilbur gave up his freedom for a bucket of slop! I never realized what a profound lesson this is.

All the barn animals were yelling at him, trying to tell him which way to go, and he couldn't figure it out for himself. He couldn't pick the right voice to listen to, so he chose the slop.

The slop!

How many of us choose the slop when we could be FREE?!

Needing Less...

These past few weeks have been quite an adventure for our family. We have thoroughly purged our home, down to the essentials. We threw out a ton of junk, freecycled stuff, and packed away box after box into a storage unit. It was a ton of junk I threw away. I mean it, a ton!

The house is big and empty now.

We were living in this big old house with our garbage.

I grew up in a family of pack rats. We kept everything. I'm not kidding. We had 3 clothes baskets full of socks seeking mates, and we kept those baskets the whole time I was growing up. For all I know, those baskets are still in my father's house, but hopefully his new wife had the sense to throw them out. Because, aftera quarter of a century, chances are, their mates are not going to turn up.

That's how it was. The more stuff we had, the better we felt. For the moment. But it was a lot of stuff. And no one put in the immense time it would take to care for and organize all that stuff. So you could never find what you needed, and if you couldn't find what you were looking for, you just went out and bought another one. Another can opener. Another hairbrush. Another sewing machine.

Plus, being in all the clutter makes your mind and your thinking very cluttered.

It was pretty crazy. Of course, my parents were crazy, so we can't really be surprised, the kids in my family, now that we're grown, looking back and realizing how crazy that house was, how crazy our lives were. Pretty crazy.

So, what do you do when you grow up in that craziness? Are you doomed to become crazy yourself?

Doomed, no. Likely to repeat it, yes.

However, there is hope when you know you're not doomed. Because you know you have a choice. It's hard to make a different choice, but you do have a choice. Once you realize that, you can choose to be free or to remain in the bondage of a sick family cycle.

So, I have been working to move to the less crazy end of the spectrum since the day I realized I grew up in crazy. You know, when you're growing up in it, you don't realize it's crazy until you're a little bit older.

One thing I learned a few years ago was life changing for me. This is what it was:

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO KEEP ALL THAT STUFF.

Laugh if you must. But honestly, I never knew. I would keep every single crappy little broken Happy Meal toy (you know, you end up having like 10 of the same one if you do this,) because, well, that's just what you do! We ended up with a playroom full of toys- some nice, most crappy. Why?

Well, when I stopped to ask myself why, I didn't have an answer. Why then heck was I hanging on to all these toys? My kids weren't playing with most of them. And you don't need 10 of the same broken crappy Happy Meal toy, do you?

It was like the heavens opened and the angels sang, and I realized, I DO NOT HAVE TO KEEP ALL THIS STUFF.

That was when I started decluttering.

Simplified my life. Made a lot less work.

And I've been decluttering ever since. It's been a learning process, you know, because you start going through the junk, and you start thinking about the totally unlikely event that is sure to never happen when you might need it, but of course, if you really think about it, you know you'll never be able to find it anyway when you do need it... I digress, but surely you can see the severe handicap that pack-rat habit was for me.

But this, getting rid of everything but what you really need and will really use, is a completely new level for me.

And you know what? I really like it! I am learning a very interesting thing right now:

It's not that I don't need all this stuff...

It's that I NEED LESS. I need to not have it. Why am I saving it? I'm still packratting, even after all the decluttering, it's still packratting, just on a smaller scale.

My life would be better if I HAD LESS.

Won't the Good Lord provide for me, when I am in need? Could someone else be using this stuff that is just sitting around in my closets, cluttering up my shelves, filling up my cupboards? (I am not talking about food storage or emergency supplies and such, truly useful things that should always be stored in any home, accessible and ready to be used when the emergency presents itself.)

When we move into the new house, I am going to bring with me this new level of simplicity.

I still need my books. Books I can't have too many of.

And the kids need art supplies, which they have been dearly missing.

But the rest of it... Do we really need it? Might we be happier without it?