Finding Employment During a Down Economy

My husband lost his job two years ago.  I quit being a full-time stay at home mom and got a part time job at a local fast food joint.  It’s been a rough two years.  Both of us are degreed professionals but are struggling to find adequate employment.  Too much experience, not enough experience, the wrong kind of experience.  Ugh.  It has been frustrating to say the least.  I tried to go back to school, but wasn’t able to afford it and couldn’t qualify for a student loan as I have not been able to repay enough of my original school loan.  It’s a vicious cycle.  It is a pity that this country holds the abilities of teachers at such a low level that we are both virtually unemployable.  It doesn’t seem to matter that the skills of teachers are highly transferable into any field.  Sigh.  But I cannot look at the doom and gloom side of it.  I must remain confident.  I am a professional and  perfectly capable woman who would be an asset anywhere.  Oh, yes, we are starting the school.  But that is going to take time to get off the ground.  Until then…  we must eat and pay our bills.  So, I keep looking.  I’m updating my graphic design skills (might as well make us of my art degree, right!)  I keep blogging, I keep learning something new, I keep writing, I keep on keepin’ on.

Right now I am working on:

• finish writing the parenting book
• develop basic skills curriculum for Pomegranate Gardens School and to publish as a home schooling resource
• develop brochure to start advertising my skills as a freelance graphic designer
• develop Pomegranate Gardens School brochure
• continue seeking full-time employment that will support my family until I am able to support myself through other means.

There…  That’s not too unrealistic.   I have time lines set for each goal and work steadfastly each day.

Action or Assessment?

I am not sure what to do.  I am a recovering victim of incest.  Yes, it’s ugly, but it’s a fact.  While I have finally learned to forgive my father…  there are still a lot of conflicts within my life that are a direct result of this sad and ugly past.  One of these conflicts is the near estrangement of my relationship with my mother.  It all started with Pork Chop stuffing himself with 3 pounds of chocolate in a matter of mere seconds (he doesn’t like chocolate) and my father following Pumpkin around calling her by my old pet name.  Yeah…  I freaked.  And I called my mother the next day and told her that my father was not allowed near my children any more.  She kept telling me that I needed to forgive him.  Forgiveness does NOT mean blindly trusting that my father is not a predator and will not take advantage of my children.  I stood firm with my mother.  I offered her the opportunity to come over whenever she wanted without my father.  I offered to meet her with the kids at a half-way point so she wouldn’t have to drive all the way to my home.  Nothing doing.  In fact, she still calls up asking if we will bring our family to spend time in some function with her and dad.  It’s depressing and frustrating because I love my mother, but I refuse to expose my children to my father.  The last time we saw them was Christmas.  Mom and Dad showed up laden with presents and spent an uncomfortable hour perched in my living room while the kids opened their gifts.  Big expensive gifts.  I got a digital camera and Pork Chop got a PSP.  Bribery?  Maybe.  I felt so awkward, I didn’t even open up the package to the camera for weeks.  I knew it was stupid.  I knew I was putting it off because of my own feelings of guilt and trauma.  Needless to say.  I have finally started to use the camera, but nowhere near to the extent of my capabilities.  I mean, I have a degree in photography!  I am used to walking around with a camera taking pictures of everything.

Yes.  I am slowly healing and recovering.  My relationship with my husband and children are blossoming now that I have forgiven myself and my father.  But I still have issues.

A couple of days ago, I woke up in a cold sweat.  I was totally panicked.  I had a dream of my father taking advantage of myself and other little girls at the school where he works.  (Yes, I know I’m a grown woman now, but this is a dream.)  My father is the custodian at an elementary school.  (5th-6th graders).  You heard me right.  He works near children.  Now, I had always thought that his affliction was targeted only to family members (his sister, myself, my children).  But what if this is wrong.  Is this a call to action?  Do I need to contact the school and spill my ugly history to a small town elementary school where everybody knows everybody?  Or is this my psyche still working on self healing?  Is this dream just a sign that I still have some issues to resolve?

Mom on the run from big pharma and the government

My thoughts and prayers go out to the Hauser family who are now on the run for not submitting to a court-ordered demand to have their son injected with chemotherapy.  The parents are facing criminal neglect charges all because they supported their son’s decision to refuse chemotheraphy.  This is truly frightening that Big Pharma now has this much control over our lives.

There are alternatives out there to toxic medicine.  The problem is those alternatives don’t make any money for the pharmaceutical companies.  Let us be careful in how we judge others in their life choices.  I know a lot of my friends think I’m a little daft for refusing to even take tylenol when I have a headache.  But it is my choice.  And they continue poppinig all their pills even though I think they’re crazy for injesting so many drugs and chemicals and thinking it’s safe just because it’s considered safe medicine by the medical community.

I’m interested in reading Bill Henderson’s book, Cancer-Free:  Your Guide to Gentle Non-Toxic Healing but haven’t yet gotten the book.  If anyone has read it, please let me know what you think.

Your God-Given Gifts

I watched Amadeus again last night.  One of the things I love most in the world is reading a book and watching a movie and getting something different out of it each time.

That happened again last night.  I was listening to Salieri complain to the priest how God had cheated him by giving him this desire to create music for God, but not the talent; but Mozart, a crude and rude “creature” was given the voice.  All of a sudden it hit me…  what if Salieri’s gift wasn’t to BE the voice, but to recognize and support the voice?  Then how would things have been different?

Oh, I know Amadeus is not historically accurate.  That doesn’t matter.  How many of us are running around wishing we had a specific gift and harboring jealousy over someone else’s gifts and talents.  What if we are just not recognizing what our gift truly is.  It’s something to think about.

I Am What I Eat

On my quest to become a more healthy person I started weeding some foods out of my diet.  And of course, this meant that the whole family got to participate in this wonderful journey – whether they wanted to or not.

Now, I’m not a fan of fad diets.  In fact, I don’t believe they work – at all.  But this is a little different.  I am going on the definition of diet to mean what you eat regularly, instead of a temporary and insane fasting of sorts.

STEP ONE

So, to start, we began with elliminating all MSG from our diet.  Well, this was actually harder than it seemed.  MSG is in everything.  Even chicken stock.  So after much searching and label reading, that synthetically created and addictive ingredient is virtually out of our diet.  I am still trying to find dashinomoto that is MSG fee.  No easy feat since I live in the US and it is hard to find that item anyway.  And lord!  Trying to find sausage that doesn’t have MSG in it will make you want to tear your hear out.  We were eating the Bistro brand sausages which are minimally processed, contain no MSG, and only naturally occuring nitrites created from celery juice…  but of course, the grocery stores stopped carrying it.  So, when it doubt, we try to at least purchase locally made sausage.

STEP TWO

We then went on to get rid of high fructose corn syrup.  Yeah.  This ingredient is in EVERYTHING.  Thank you US government for the sugar embargo.  The easiest way was to just pretty much stop eating processed foods and make everything ourselves.  Good thing we were almost doing that anyway.  We still get it in the store bought breads we eat.  But meh…  baby steps people, baby steps.

STEP THREE

We have been trying to eat as much natural and organic foods as we can get our hands on.  This includeds REAL sugar, not sythetic aspartame or splenda; REAL butter, not margarine; REAL oil – coconut, olive, peanut, grape seed, not artificially created canola oil.  And we don’t use a lot of it.  I don’t sit around eating spoonfuls of butter.  And I found out, that when something is reduced fat, that means they add sugar to it.  Yeah…  So we started eating full fat yogurt and drinking whole milk.

Just by following these three steps, as imperfect as we have been at it, I’ve managed to finally shed 10 more pounds of post baby weight.  Yay!  Went from a size 14 to a size 8.

The next step is to switch to grass fed meats and raw dairy products.  But this will be more difficult.  But remember, if I am what I eat, then the cow (or the chicken, or the pig, or the whatever) is what it eats.  And if it’s eating junk food…  well, you get the picture.

Just to Make You Smile :)