15. Sometimes you have to do it exhausted.

March 31, 2015March 31, 2015 / lubimur / Leave a comment

After working 10 hours at work on a Monday – the start of a week where corporate politics has crapped all over everyone’s good mood and job security – I came home, cooked dinner, and kicked up my feet to watch a documentary (Farmageddon) with my first born before heading off to an early bedtime. I knew she only had about 30 minutes of watching before she had to take off to go exercise with some friends, but that was cool because I figured she wouldn’t be that into it anyway. She was digging it and as she was leaving she said she was going to finish watching it this week. I settled in to watch the rest before going to bed, but after about 10 more minutes I was so disgusted with the way of things in this society, and the drive to free myself from my shackles was so great, that I got up and went outside to dig and plant even though it was getting dark. I planted another tomato plant and some snap peas. It wasn’t much but it was something.

If I’m not going to do it tired, then it might not get done at all. I am so over being dependent on the way things are. It’s exit strategy time.

The Challenges of Getting Ahead of the Curve

March 28, 2015 / lubimur / 2 Comments

SuburbanResilience

Warning: the following is a rant.

As a single dad with a household to maintain, and very limited resources, it is so very apparent – and constantly so – that no man is an island. When money is limited and time is as well, any single person out there struggling at the 9 to 5, in a world they don’t really belong in, can’t achieve the level of independence that someone with a supportive spouse can. There is just too much work and too many moving parts for the paltry two days you get for doing everything that needs attention. Not only do we have to take care of things that every one of the sheeple have to deal with – paying bills, grocery shopping, oil changes, laundry, mowing, changing light bulbs, cleaning the bathrooms, cleaning the kitchen, etc… – but we must also find time for putting systems in…

View original post 462 more words

Mimimalist efforts de jour: 3/27/15

March 27, 2015 / lubimur / Leave a comment

Threw away another magnet off of the fridge
Added Dave Ramsey kit that I found in my closet to the “get rid of” pile (stuff that will be donated or sold). I’ve gone through it twice and know it quite well. Have had some of the principles in place for years.
Threw away a pair of dress pants that are old and don’t fit, but kept around “just in case” because I don’t have very many pairs of dress pants (two that actually fit correctly). As a resilientist – or prepper if you must I have to have a redundancy in place should something happen to ruin one of my two pair that fit.

March 22, 2015March 22, 2015 / lubimur / Leave a comment

Check out what I just did, it hits on chef, minimalism, organization, efficiency,…whatever…something.

It’s a magnetic knife strip!

As I streamline (minimize) it helps if I organize things along the way. To have less stuff and have it in disarray only helps to a point. To have it organized enables one to identify the necessary, and the varying degrees of importance of what’s left beyond that. My minimalization will be less austere than others, because of my priorities. A prepper is always going to have stuff around that he hasn’t had a need for in 18 months.

If it is minimized, but still mixed in with the important, it is harder to evaluate the non-essential pieces – to impartially see if you can cut more when they are all snuggled up next to the necessary pieces.

Anyway, it looks cool, they are the knives I use 97% of the time, they aren’t banging up against the riff raff getting dull, they are never buried under the knife I don’t want to use, I don’t have to look through the knife drawer to see if it is even clean and available…all I’m saying is yay!

Limiting My Sugar Intake

March 21, 2015 / lubimur / Leave a comment

Sugar has once again popped up on my radar. Not because I have started consuming more of it, but as I have read various articles I keep coming across links to sugar and its problems. I mean, everyone knows it isn’t good for you, and everyone knows to try and limit it; I definitely do since I have juvenile diabetes. I very rarely eat cookies, cakes, donuts and the like – and I mean very rarely, but I refuse to be afraid of some sweetness added to my coffee or the (not so ?) occasional treat like some ice cream or a mini candy bar. I do avoid HFCS whenever possible, and try to use honey or perhaps raw sugar when I do sweeten something.

I’m not going to go into the ills of sugar right now, but what does it mean to limit it? I have come across a book I think I am going to order – my oldest wants to read it as well – called Year of No Sugar by Eve O. Schaub. On her blog she talks about just how insidious sugar actually is. It’s in everything. But shelving that for a moment, let’s get back to the point: limiting sugar.

“Nancy Appleton’s extensive research on sugar led her to uncover the fact that, for healthy individuals, the threshold of added sugar is two teaspoons at one time, no more than two to three times a day, totaling two tablespoons altogether.^31” – www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/zapping-sugar-cravings/

If you continue reading the article in the link you will find that white flour function similarly to sugar, but since I have illuminated bread and pasta from my diet, as well as most starches (that I am aware of) I don’t have to factor that in to my equation. So here is My goal: to limit my sugar intake to no more than 2 tsp, 2 times per day. Shouldn’t be that hard right? I mean, I pretty much only add it to my coffee. There is the issue of the apple juice I love to mix with tequila or rum however… And what about fruit?

Well the article above goes on to state that “Whole foods contain a cornucopia of vitamins, minerals, fiber, fat and other co-factors that mitigate the dangers of the residing sugars. Body chemistry is not as affected as with more concentrated and isolated sugar sources. Moreover, once a person’s body chemistry is stabilized, these more subtly sweet, whole foods will often be enough to satisfy sweet cravings.” … “If you like fruit, the less-sugary choices of berries, cherries, and apricots are best.”

So there you have it, 2tsp 2-3 times per day of honey, maple sugar, or raw sugar. (I can safely say that most of my intake will be honey, as I prefer to use honey since it has other health benefits besides being a natural form of sweetener).