Down the Rabbit Hole

 Last week's blog... yuck.

The part I think I should feel penitent about, well, I don't. The part I feel bad about is confessing my sins. Not the sins themselves. I don't know. That's not quite accurate either. It's complicated? Living with the ADHD mind.  

I am in a place where I know I need help learning to navigate my finances. I don't make enough on SSDI alone to live. But with my supplemental incomes I do. I can live. And we should be able to pay our bills and eat food without strife or worry. But there's not enough to be spendy or to pursue the American dream.  And certainly not enough to "farm." Any kind of farming involves risk. If you are an agricultural farmer you have to take a giant risk that your investment and hard work will yield you enough to balance not only your initial expenditures but the disasters that come along in the mean time (hail, tornadoes, drought, flooding, freeze, etc.). With livestock, in our case goats and poultry, you risk that your does will get pregnant and produce, which we're experiencing the "oh crap she didn't take" side of that right now. You're believing that you are capable and will be successful at keeping your does from your bucks when you don't want them to produce. Chickens won't get sour crop or egg bound. Or any other horrible things you get to gamble on when you read those social media pages about all the terrible things that will befall your fowl. Fowlpox. Coccidia. Marek's. To name a few. Lice and mites. ewwww. Anyway, it's a risk. No matter what. But to be a farmer is a risk that is heavy on the "it takes money to make money" side of business. I need to invest in this high dollar billy in order to create a line of goats that is worthy of the prices we are asking for when we have kids. We need to keep chickens that lay the eggs we want for our rainbow flock. We need to keep buying outgoing, social animals that engage with people if we want to pursue the dream we have of a petting zoo type of experience. 

Feeling remorseful... or not. So having jumped in and admitting that yes, I do need help learning to reign in my spending or more accurately to learn to be financially responsible, I have instant feelings of hopelessness and failure. I often refer to someone I love and say, "she's &$ years old and not getting any younger, she's always done it this way, and I know better than to think that she is going to change now." So what makes me think that I am going to be able to drum up some sort of backbone/will power and some kind of ability to learn, retain and put into practice new ways of thinking in regard to money?! It seems kind of audacious in the sense that it seems rash and reckless and maybe even an tad insolent. Is there any real chance I can change and retain the change and still be a relatively happy human? Because this human is happiest when she's acquiring animals. 

So it's crazy to think I can go on living like I do. Less than paycheck to paycheck. Hoping and waiting for things to work out. But it seems crazy to think that I can change my frame of mind in regard to spending and to be able to see long term costs involved with say... acquiring animals. It's not just an $8 pig. It's an ongoing expense of food pellets. And someone said that potbellies don't need to be given grain pellets because they can free range.  But nothing, and I do mean NOTHING, makes Cupcake happier than her daily ration of grain. She gets very happy. There's the cost of maintaining a pen for her and creating and maintaining a pen for other critters since she occupies that "extra" pen now. There could be vet costs. And I do not know about pig feet. Do they need their feet trimmed? 

On another note.... Cupcake is quite the addition. She is vocal, and she is hilarious. I really enjoy her. She talks to me a lot. Yesterday she lay her head on my foot because she was happy to see me. When I come out the door she comes running from wherever she is. Well, in the short day and a half since I started letting her free-range during the day. She's happy to go into her pen at night, that is where her feed is. Oh yeah.... 

 

Cupcake with Charlotte. Don't be surprised if we have a web that says "Some Pig"

And a bag of chips (or should I say a Cupcake for dessert?)

 My life really is all that.... and a bag of chips. Somedays those chips are cow chips. Somedays they are rabbit raisins. Somedays they are Tomato basil Sun Chips, a fave. But my life is a spectrum of joy and mundane-ness, and sorrow, and crisis. And I'm the one who built it, and I'm the one who "gets" to live it. 

Currently I'm grieving my inability to handle money well. Some of the things I am wondering.... is it too late to make a permanent/positive change? Have I reached a level of misery that will get me to a place of willingness? Because in order for change to happen, I have to have more than a mouthful of willingness. I have to have a willingness in my heart. And dare I say it, even in my soul. I have come to the realization that I like the way I spend money. I don't like being broke and facing endless financial crisis, but I like the moments when the auctioneer says... "you want a pig? $5...." And for $8 we bring home a pig. A pig that I was none too sure of. She screamed a lot. and she was LOUD. And she was larger than what I really wanted to start out with. A pig. A pig named Cupcake that in a short 10 days has won our hearts. She talks a lot. She doesn't scream anymore. She is tamer (more tame?) than she appeared to be that first night. She likes belly scratches and butt scratches and someone to have a conversation with. She likes watermelon and cantaloup and maybe bell peppers. But she LOVES her grain. She talks about it. She talks to it. She wags her tail when she eats it. She likes it when I change her water. She loves her clean water. 

So here's the rub. She didn't cost us much at all. And right now she gets one scoop of pig food a night. And the bag was $16 for 25 pounds. How can anyone hate on that?! That's reasonable, right?! But ongoing, yes. And who knews how much it will cost in the long run, right? And let's be honest, we don't really need an additional $16-20 a month on our Tractor Supply order. So maybe the pig should go back to auction. Really?! We are now emotionally invested in her. We have a plan to have a free range pig that follows us around and does her own thing and lives her little potbelly life doing piggy things. So I'm a little heartbroken thinking about reselling her.

We do have a dream and a vision. To grow this into an interactive farm experience for kids. We will offer bottle goat feeding when we have kids. And you can give treats to the goats and the chickens and the rabbits and the pig. 

But does it align with becoming fiscally responsible? This is as of yet undetermined. I can kind of guarantee that keeping the rabbits, though they are not expensive, will not become a money maker. or a break even-er. 

So last night in talking with my kiddo, we decided to sell the pig and the rabbits. Kind of breaks my heart. But currently they (rabbits) are all in cages down low to the ground and I would call it temporary housing at best, or the equivilance of living in government housing the ghetto at the worst. Well not Star. She has a pretty nice set up. I don't think she appreciates it much, but it's good. But thinking about the investment of making or buying a rabbit hutch with four apartments or more is a bit daunting. But they need better. Both Wally and Mochi are in need of having their basements cleaned out (all the poo under the cages). I dread this. For reasons that are glaring and obvious... like ewww. But also like... time. Who has time? And work in the what? The heat? or the dark? Well, maybe both at this particular time.

All this drama to really say.... Hippie Chick Farm needs donations. I am in need of an immediate cash payment to the county to keep our house from being auctioned for taxes. (What kind of dumbass lets this happen... well, I know one). We need some supplies. We need more food/water dishes that are larger and not easily dumped over. Both the giant dog and the boy goats like to drag water bowls around and slosh them and spill them. We need old towels and blankets. From your garage or basement, from Goodwill or garage sales. Thread bare is just fine. Old t-shirts also work. But there's too much bathing and transporting and house in cages and mopping up of the spills and accidents. These are the immediate needs that would improve our lives or the lives of the animals we love. 

I need educated in an empathetic way. And if your going to say the envelope thing, please explain to me how you made this work for you because I cannot for the life of me figure out how to live on a cash system in an electronic bill-pay world when I live 15 miles from my "bank" to put money in the places it needs to be for electronic withdrawals. Mostly I need prayer. Because I need to be willing to try whatever system will help me and a system without dopamine rushes via animal acquisition doesn't sound like something I'll be able to do. I'm on the edge of the cliff, the willingness is right there, just out of reach, but almost. so close. 

I don't know how to put a qr code on here, but my cashapp is: $carriehippiechick. And my mailing address is: 4411 S Woodberry Road, Burrton, KS 67020. That's also my physical address if you want to drop off blankets and such. 

Meet Cupcake!

Click on the photo to go to TSC website

Poverty? Generosity? Are they so terribly different?

Today I have been dwelling on my Dad's American dream. and just on my Dad. The man that I miss immeasurably. My dad was a generous man. Money sort of just sifted through his fingers, whether he was helping others or financing something he thought he "needed." Or a biggie of late, something he felt would help him on the farm. But money management was never his strong suit. If he had it, he spent it. If he didn't have it, he would find a way to get it, so he also spent it. Well, this is a habit that is deeply ingrained in me. Sometimes the one I am being generous to is myself. Right out of my bill paying income. Ugh. This is a curse. But it was a gift from a man who I found to be extremely gifted and generous. And I do not think his generous spirit was or is in any way, shape or form, a curse. It was a gift. But sometimes it cost him more than financially savvy people would have spent (emotionally, physically or fiscally). So my head really knows that I would be better off if I could learn a more responsible management of money. But money, in my book, is a means. And therefore has no value in and of itself. So it doesn't stay. Ever. It just sifts through my fingers like sand. But what I never knew until about five years ago, when I started really listening to my friend and pOVERty expert, Rebecca Lewis-Pankratz, is that this is a fairly common trait among those of us in poverty. Because we live with a poverty mindset. "Spend it before it's gone." Or... "we will be without again soon enough, enjoy it while it lasts." So you can see how this works against the very idea of getting out of poverty. Because when you spend it before it is gone, it is gone sooner than if you would have waited. And then the cycle of living without is perpetuated. But let me say this, myself, and people like me, we stimulated the economy with out stimulus checks. People in poverty know how to spend money! We ain't puttin' that away for if we need it! We need it! And we need it now. So in recapping: people like myself, who have lived any length of time below certain income levels (or who have been raised with this certain train of thought about money), we are the spenders, the givers, the crazy-generous people. We give gifts, we buy dinners, we have too many pets and we have toys that our kids don't play with (like the trampoline in my backyard). We are also the behinders. Behind on the gas bill, behind on the rent, behind on payment plans, behind our more progressive neighbors who have nicer lawns, more curb appeal, more middle-class-looking homesteads. And we are, at some point, the desperate. Desperate for a loan, a few bucks, for help getting out of the muck of our financial destitution. And truly: need breeds scarcity. Which perpetuates the ole cycle. Because now that I am in desperate times, I can feel the pressure building as I don't have the cash-flow or the freedom to be generous, to spend lavishly, to reward myself for being a relatively good human. And *BOOM*! Money comes in and I explode all my best laid plans in order to fill the need to give, to get, to spend. And just like that. It's gone again. And begins the cycle again.

So what I want you to know is this....

We (I) can change this. But it is not a simple choice. It IS a choice. But there is nothing simple or easy about it. It isn't likely that one day I'll wake up and say, "today is the day I am financially responsible" and it magically happens. One way I know how difficult this is, is because I say this to myself about once a month and I get really serious about it at least twice a year. So far, it's a no-go. I know that in order to change my chemical dependency and SO (significant other) dependency, I had to get really, really, REALLY miserable. I think this is the same. But so far, I can only be "good" and refrain from my spending habits for about so long and then I just say "chuck it" (and if you believe that is my phrasing, you should probably read yesterday's post which held a different level of transparency and honesty and will bring you up to speed) and I reward myself for being so good for so long. All my hard work is just chucked.

Why tell you all this? Well, because it is part of my story for one. And it is part of something bigger, some part of the whole class/hidden-rules/poverty/trauma cycle. I will connect more dots tomorrow. Today just know, that I appreciate you all for your love and generosity, and I will happily give you gifts of money or time or both or either.  When I have those commodities, they are for sharing. Can I get an Amen?

When you save the world, maybe you could start closer to home....

I like to browse facebook in the mornings and read blogs about teaching. But lately, a lot of what I am finding seems to me to be about piety and tooting ones own horn. There is a certain allure of heroism to teaching. But lately a lot of times I read what people are tooting about and I think.... rich kid problems. I have long been aware that I don't fit in with my peers. And there are a number of reasons for this. One of them is my lack of finances. And a lack of knowledge to change the way I spend money. Don't get me wrong. I've heard people talk and I have seen the books, some of which I have on my shelf. But what I know is that to build credibility with me, you really have to do more than blow smoke. And you probably aren't going to be some author making money off the backs of us poor folk telling us how to gain financial freedom. It really just makes me want to flip you off and say.... "take that!" What I mean when I say that I lack knowledge is that my parents are horrible at money management. And when I was a kid, they were constantly getting bailed out by their parents. A pattern I still hold to today. Ha. I have not had to do this for a while, but yeah, working for $12/hour, paying bills and buying groceries for a kid with food allergies.... I just couldn't make it work. So don't chastise me for not having enough money in savings to pay (what is the proper amount?) six months of bills in case of emergency. Ha. Every month is an emergency. Truth. Have circumstances improved? Most definitely. Do my children have clothes to wear? Yes. But even last year, I accepted (asked for) help clothing my elementary age kid. My parents were happy to oblige. Yay. But you know, they won't be around forever and I live in fear that I'll never get it together and I'll be stuck out here in the real world, not able to cope. "It's easy" you say. "Just do it" you say. Sounds simple enough. And I am pretty good at spotting faulty financial reasoning when it comes to other people, but for myself, well, IF I spot it, it is generally in hindsight. The other thing is that I can at times adhere to a rigid financial budget. But after awhile, I am going to go off the rails. For real. A few years ago, I blogged in a totally different blog in a different bloggyland hemisphere about just wanting to get to the place where I can take my kids out for an ice cream if I want to! I still can't really afford that, but sometimes we just do it. I also know the tricks.... Sonic has 1/2 price milkshakes at night, Braum's soft-serve yogurt cone/cup (gotta skip the cone for the allergic one) is less than $2, happy hour drinks at Sonic, and fountain drinks at the grocery store (about half as much as at the convenience store). Just to name a few. But I also know this.... a trip to DQ for ice cream will cost as much as eating a meal out and could buy groceries for several days unless I am a really careless shopper, and sometimes I am, but most of the time I am a penny-pinching grocery guru, able to squeeze more out of less, and creative in my use of meats which means fewer meats on the grocery list. Three years ago as a first year teacher, I made a scant $1000 a year less than I did last year and yet.... if we still ate the same as we did that year, with meat in the menu, we'd be paying 2 or3 times as much for groceries. And you thought meatless Monday was all about your health. The truth is that we eat hotdogs, mac-n-cheese and convenience foods because we can afford them. We can afford potato chips and hotdogs. We can't afford organic beef and/or organic fruits and vegetables. But as a general rule, I can afford a bag of pinto beans for meatless Monday. Also, grocery shopping wears me out. So after a grueling experience with figuring costs and endless mental chatter ("do we really NEED this? maybe I should put it back? Well, I have to put something back.... not the medicines, we need those. I guess it will be the bag of fresh fruit." *sigh*), and putting things back on the shelf and exceeding the budget and telling the clerk that I changed my mind, I didn't really need THIS item after all, well, I don't have the mental energy to figure out where I could have cut costs and how I could shop at the OTHER grocery store, the one that actually carries the good organic foods. I truly believe in my heart that if we ate more whole foods and less garbage (hotdogs, chips, chicken nuggets, etc.) that we'd all feel better and we'd overcome a fair amount of health issues. But I am exhausted after I leave the super center and they really don't carry the good stuff. They have made it easier to shop for the allergic one, but organics, not-so-much. So if I mentally survive this shopping experience, and trust me, it is almost always an experience, I have nothing left for healthful options from other stores. If I didn't already buy it, we don't need it. That's my motto by the time I leave the store.
So while you are posting on your social media about saving the world while looking down on me for not fitting into whatever mold you've tried to cram me and my family into, we are over here, on the other side of the tracks, trying to survive. And don't get all high-and-mighty about how shocked you are that a teacher in your district qualifies for food stamps. Teachers don't get paid all that much. Believe me, it's more than I've ever made before, but it still is not that much. And we lost our benefits because I couldn't produce a pay stub for my unemployed 18 year old. That's right. We lost benefits because she has no income and they asked for proof of her income. Seriously? The system is jacked up and don't even get me started on the new withdrawal restrictions designed to stop abuse of people withdrawing cash benefits. Yes, unfortunately, I live in Brownbackistan. I did vote and it wasn't for him. But someone did and I personally don't want to hear about how you are going to go out and change the world. It looks to me like you already did, just by your vote. And yet, you can't see the need right here. You cannot see that beneath your pious nose is a world that you pretend doesn't exist except to name-call and wonder why I can't take better care of my children, because it looks so easy from your two parent family home in white suburbia. Thank you for teaching us system-abusers a lesson.