Make it Stop

I am sitting here, trying my best *not* to listen to the rabid Republicans in the next door office.

I am mostly moderate, except on certain issues. Over-all, I’m probably closer to a Federalist than any current party.

The thing is, they keep propagating misinformation and propaganda between them and it’s driving me absolutely insane. I want to jump in, but I know damn well that it will not do anything to help them or me. There’s nothing that I can say that will sway them because obviously 1) I’m a woman and everyone knows women are nuts and 2) I’m obviously a liberal because I don’t agree with them.

Just suck it up. Keep my mouth shut and approach things from a different angle.

I just want to strangle them with their hunting gear.

Things I learned, but just now applied

You know how you can tell an alcoholic? You can smell it on their skin.

It’s not their breath. It’s subtly out of their skin. Like their own private perfume.

It’s a diagnostic tool.

One I wish I didn’t have because it’s hard to bite my tongue. I’m not in the field anymore. I really shouldn’t stick my nose into someone else’s business.

Yet, I worry. Someone with kids and a wife and a lot of other positive things. He doesn’t fit the diagnosis of an alcoholic because it doesn’t impair his functioning. Still, it’s more than your drink every night drinking. More than a maintenance alcoholic. I know other people who drink often, and a lot. They don’t have the smell. The smell comes from a chronic, excessive amount of alcohol in your system.

*sighs*

Price Crunch leads to Less Crunch

USA Today reports on the downsizing of products in Shoppers Beware.

Most of the product-line presidents responded that it was due to increasing commodities prices.

I understand completely. I own a small bakery. We’re in a very tricky position. Our costs for ingredients is going up. We only use normal, natural ingredients. We have no preservatives or other chemicals in our products. We have limited woman-power and handmake our products.

That means that simply in general we have a pricing problem. Some people have a problem paying our prices. If we raise our prices even a few cents, we’re going to lose the main thrust of our selling (3 cookie packs). At Mrs. Fields you pay 1.09 for one cookie. With us you get three cookies for 2.00. Still, that’s pretty pricy for cookies, handmade or not.

But that doesn’t change the fact that milk, butter, wheat, and chocolate costs are increasing. Not to mention transportation costs, shipping costs and a hundred other little costs along the way. Our prices can go up. Sure, they can, but people still expect to pay the same price for a cookie that they paid when they were kids.

Also, our product is a luxury product in a way. How many people are willing to pay prices higher than the supermarket for cookies.

Maybe we should take a cue from Chips Ahoy and cut the size of our cookies in half….

Hyper-Awareness

Oddly, today, I am almost hyper aware of my surroundings. The colors and edges seem sharper, more in focus. And, no, it isn’t because I cleaned my glasses.

I have no explination for it.

Still, I can tell you that the shine on my Kleen Kanteen is has at least seven variations of silver. The light from the flourescents above gleam on the top curve. The back is mostly in shadow. It looks like an excercise that my art teacher would have given us back in the day to learn shading or stippling.

The flourescents for their part are humming. Not buzzing. If they were buzzing, I’d be insane and already on the phone to get them replaced. No, humming, with the electricity that runs through them. It’s as if I can hear the electrons sliding from one side of the light to the other. They’re so full of spit and vinegar that they’re humming with energy.

The air feels colder in my lungs than ususal, even though my office is always like living on an ice flow. The air just seems fresher today.

My ears feel sharper, my nose stronger, my eyes clearer. It’s like waking up channeling my totem wolf.

For all of me, I wish I could just abandon work and go exploring. I have energy today and the world calls to me to come and play.

When Bad things happen

My office-mate might annoy me at times, but underneath it all, he’s a good guy.

Both of his kids are seriously ill and have spent a lot of time in the hospital.

His wife might be losing her job.

If that happens, the combination of sick kids and unemployed wife, will probably lead to lost home. They just can’t afford the payments.

It makes me sick to my stomach to think about it, but I also don’t have any solution I can offer them. I can’t take them in. I can’t pay thier mortgage. I can’t pay their hospital costs.

The only thing I can do is listen.

It sucks.

Seriously, bad stuff happens to good people all the time. These folks didn’t take on a mortgage that they couldn’t pay. And now, in the last gasp, I don’t know if they will even be able to sell their home. I’ll give them the name of a good realtor, cut coupons for diapers and pedialyte. That’s all I can do right now.

I wish to all the Gods that I could do something more.

Economic realities

I’m trying to become more aware of everything in my life. What I eat, what I wear, what I buy, what I don’t.

There are some hard facts to be faced. I have credit card debt. I’m on the mortgage with my parents on what is currently a rental property. We bought it before the market busted and hoped to actually live there. Although with the gas prices being what they are, it’s nice not to have to commute from that far out. My parents are retired, so it wouldn’t bother them for too long. (Dad’s on his second job and retiring in five years.)

I’m going to try to take a look at the economic impact of my choices, the ecological impact of my choices, and the social impact of my choices. I’m not going to be preachy about it or anything. As always, this is more for me than anything. It’s a way to organize my thoughts. And heck, I’ll consider this my “real” journal. I’m not trying to live up to anything, but maybe I can document a little bit of my life.

Wanderings of a Mad Mind

Now, originally, I thought this was going to be a personal finance blog.

Then, I started thinking that it was going to be an evironmental blog.

But, it’s time to be honest, this is going to be a weird sort of blog where I just post about life, the universe and everything else.

There’ll be laughs. There’ll be tears. There’ll be hopes. There’ll be fears.

There may be snippets of poetry or un-realized snippets of plot bunnies.

There will be outrageous theories and links to randomly interesting crap on the net.

In other words, it’s just going to be a mad mishmash of whatever is on my mind at the moment.