This is for Jo

Hi Jo

I live on the West Coast of Canada, in a temperate rainforest, where the mountains meet the sea. It is glorious. Check it out.

The 'temperate rainforest' kind of gives away the climate: not too hot, not too cold, lots of wet. I actually like rain so it doesn't bother me at all. What I love about living here is how green everything is, that you can wear sandals almost year round, that we're pretty relaxed here, that multiculturalism & tolerance are the rule, that you can sail & ski on the same day (if you were crazy enough to want to). What I don't like is that Vancouver is becoming a really LARGE city & I'm not really a large city sort of person. I'm kind of a small city or large town sort of person. The other big problem with Vancouver is that housing prices are astronomical.

Where else would I want to live? Well, what I'd really like is to stay here but have a trust fund. :-) If I were moving, I'd like to be near the ocean & I'd like it warm. None of that dry heat crap for me.

Re the food budget: I've capitulated. I cower before it and just hope it won't beat me up too much each month. I've discovered that there are many things I don't want to compromise on & those tend to be expensive. For us, fresh veggies & fruits are a staple. So is pure butter at $5/brick, and organic eggs at about $.35 each. A batch of home-made cookies costs waaaaay more than the store bought, chemically laced, yummy ones. We make home-made cookies because I like to control the ingredients, not because it saves us any money.

We don't eat beef. We use Yves Cuisine 'Just Like Ground' instead. I also buy a bit of organic chicken, some pork (hard to find organic pork though), and wild Pacific sockeye salmon each month. Not exactly budget items, eh?

My cheapest meal is vegetarian lentil soup. Luckily everyone here likes this one & will eat tons of it. They like it best when it's served with home-made corn bread & salad.

Lentil Soup
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, finely minced
1 smallish carrot, coarsely chopped
3/4 cup green lentils
1 bay leaf
2 whole canned tomatoes, drained, seeded & coarsely chopped; OR 2 whole fresh Roma tomatoes, seeded & coarsely chopped; OR 2-3 Tbsp. of spaghetti sauce; OR 2 Tbsp. of ketchup..... (you get the idea? Some tomato thing. If you hate tomatoes, skip it; it turns out fine without them)
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. fresh ground pepper

In stockpot with 1 Tbsp butter (OR 1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil) saute onion, garlic & carrots until tender, about 5 mins.

Meanwhile, rinse & pick over your lentils.

Add the lentils, bay leaf, tomatoes, salt & pepper, + about 5 to 5.5 cups of water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat & simmer until lentils are tender, about 40 minutes.

You can stir in a handful of chopped fresh escarole or spinach 5 min before serving.

Top with croutons, drizzle some extra virgin olive oil on top of the croutons.

****I usually double the recipe & this serves all 4 of generously for dinner (with salad & cornbread) and leaves 2 smallish helpings for the kids' lunch the next day.

Cleaning routines: Umm, no don't have one really. I try to clean the bathrooms & vacuum everything one day each week, usually on a Monday. Then I do it again throughout the week as needed. I do laundry all the time; our machine is on at least once a day.

Internet monster: I struggle with this too. It's all complicated by the fact that I write (which means being at the computer but disciplining myself to not surf or read e-mail), and I also do some contract work from home (which involves a lot of e-mail). When 'school is in' & we're all being very disciplined and organized etc., the rule that works the best is that I'm allowed to be on the computer until the kids' breakfast. Then it's no screen time (computer or video) for anyone until late afternoon. So it's all up to me to get up early. The earlier I get up in the morning, the more time I have to do my work. During the day, my attention has to be with the kids. If there's something we want to 'look up' I generally write it down & we do it in the afternoon, after the other schoolwork is all done.

One exercise I did this year was called pie of life. You start out by taking an inventory of all the things you do each day. Write down things like brushing your kids' teeth, or folding laundry, or paying bills, making 3 meals & 2 snacks, exercising etc. etc. Write down everything you can think of in an 'average' day, or make different lists for weekdays & weekends etc. Really think about how much time things take & write it down. Test the list out for a week & see if things take as much as you think or more. I totally underestimated how much time it took to do the teeth etc routine for example. Take your time with this and be as detailed as you can.

At the end of the week, take the lists & make a pie chart out them, with different colors representing the different categories of your life (chores, homeschool, sleep, exercise, work, etc. etc. - whatever it is that you do)

Then really think. Where do you want most of your energies going? Are you living your values? Have you given yourself enough sleep, exercise and relaxation/recharging time? What does your pie look like? When you take out sleep & hygiene & chores, how much time is really left? And how do you want to spend your energies during that time?

When I did it on paper, it turned out that my days should be roughtly 27 hours long. No wonder I always felt rushed & out of time! Something had to go. I unsubbed from most of my e-mail lists, & stopped visiting msg boards. I still maintain some contacts & obviously I'm doing the blog thing, but I find these are more satisfying and less time-consuming than the boards & e-mail lists. I've discovered I have more time for exercise and for knitting.

Oh & timers are not just for kids! Timers can be very useful to help manage adult time as well. Set timers for things like reading blogs or answering e-mails. If you don't make it before the 'ping', it's OK. You'll catch up another day. I find that if I know I have only 10 minutes to do a task, I'm more focused and efficient.