New Year(s)

So, the complicated thing about having your birthday less than two weeks after the New Year is that, with the passing of two major milestones in such a short time span, all the pressure to make positive changes in your life is condensed into one intense, multi-day journey of self-reflection, self-loathing, and resolution. It's like a mega-atonement; rather than metering out the self-criticism and self reflection over several months (as, I imagine, one with a July birthday might do), you're taking on all the guilt, promise and desire full-force and in your face.

To illustrate with a classy simile: it's like eating the Kool-Aid powder straight from the crinkled pouch, rather than mixing it with water, per directions. Overpowering, messy and both bitter and sweet at the same time. You may find yourself curled up on the floor, twitching from sugar shock with purple powder on your fingers and lips. But in the end, the visions you had during the process make it all worth it.

Yeah, so that pretty much sums up my previous week or so.

2011 was an intense year. Our family had to adapt to life after rationing, move into the new house, sell our old house, start new schools, deal with the incredibly hot summer (folks, do you remember July?), deal with family drama and then deal with medical dramas. Many of these things were, eventually, positive but nonetheless I was content to wave good-bye to 2011 on January 1st.

Straddling the lintels of both a new calendar year and birth year, I've had a lot of deep thoughts about what I want to do in 2012. There are many things that I want to not do in 2012, as I've been terrible over-committed the past year.

What I do want to do is spend more unstructured time with the girls, just hanging out and watching them blossom. I want to garden more and cook more. I want to dive back in to my embroidery and other crafts. And I want to write.

You may have noticed, but there was a six month period of no new posts here at Rational Living. It was completely unintentional, another casualty of 2011. I became jaded, thinking our rationing project was just an ephemeral thing and no longer relevant. The muse had vanished.

And then in December a couple of new readers stumbled upon the blog. Their comments were kind, encouraging. They made me feel like I might have something worth saying. Thanks, Gill. And friends and family mentioned how much they enjoyed reading the blog - when was I going to post again?

So, in 2012, Rational Living will once again be a "live" blog, with regular postings covering the topics of homesteading, crafting, cooking and whatever else I decide (note: there will most definitely be geeky overtones at times - you have been warned).

Thanks for being patient, kind readers.

Here's to a wonderful 2012!

--Rational Mama

P.S. Just for the record, one of the disappointing things about having your birthday less than two weeks after the New Year is that someone inevitably gives you a calendar for your birthday.

Home, At Last

Finally...

After a year of planning and doing...

After nine months on the market...

The old Rational Living house has sold.

The past six weeks or so have been a blur of painting and hailstorms and roofers and van loads of all those things we didn't bring over earlier in the name of "staging." You know, "Let's keep those dozen boxes of non-important things in the basement so that potential buyers can get a feel for what it will look like when they live here." Or, "The artificial Christmas tree is still up in the attic so that potential buyers will be like, 'Whoa! Finally, a place to put our Christmas tree when it's not December! I'm so amazingly thrilled that I want to buy this place right now!'"

Last Friday all the papers were signed and keys were handed over.

It feels so good to have that weight lifted. Now we can better plan our finances. Now we can have enough time for the new Rational Living house and land (which, friends, I affectionately call The Shire).

Now I can have enough time to write here more frequently.

Welcome home, friends.

--Rational Mama

Summer, Post-Rationing

Summer in the plains is officially here.

Today temperature was flirting with 90 degrees, and that's not the heat index. With the muggy air conditions the "feel" of the temperature was definitely in the mid-90s. It brings back memories of last year...

Last year at this time we were sweating it out, literally, as part of our rationing experiment. Trying to stay true to the period, we vowed to do our best to not run the air-conditioner in our house or cars all summer long. This meant frequent cooling showers, lots of fans, and lost sleep due to sticky sheets and misery. Eventually we caved in late June which, surprisingly, was the energy-efficient thing to do.

But this year, we are not rationing (well, unless you call reducing the square footage of your house in half rationing). And tonight near bedtime it was absolutely miserable in the house; temperature near 86 degrees and humidity level over 60%.

So friends, the air-conditioner is now on. And in all honesty it feels really, really wonderful.

--Rational Mama

Turning Off Niagara Falls

When we were calling around to the local utility companies to change over names on the accounts for the new house, the task of calling the water department fell to me.

While the house has a septic system it is, in fact, on city water and so one Monday morning I called the water folks and gave them our names and the dates of the transfer. Curiosity got the best of me and I asked the polite county employee on the other end of the line what the average water usage was at the new house. Since the previous owners were a young couple sans children (and thus, half the size of our household, half the laundry and half the toilet flushing...), I fully expected their average usage to be noticeably under our average.

So, I was understandably floored when the average number of gallons she provided was nearly 40% more than our average at the old house.

That didn't make any sense. I expressed as much and she gave me the readings for their last four months of usage. Hmmm...how and why would they be using so much more water than us?

TMOTH pondered how much extra watering they did of their (larger) garden, but that wouldn't have been the source for the readings shared, since they were taken in the winter. A good 10 minutes of head scratching had us no closer to a cause, so we tabled the discussion and figured we'd have our epiphany sometime after moving in to the new house.

That epiphany moment came at roughly 6:05am on our first morning in the new house. Up early that morning to get ready for work, I headed to the bathroom to take a shower. The shower is one of those riser extensions off of a claw foot tub and after a few tweaks and alterations to get the temperature just right I turned the appropriately labeled "shower" knob to the left.

Holy Niagara Falls! If you're old enough to remember the "good ol' days" of Nickelodeon and the familiar shoulder arch/facial expression of someone getting slimed, then you have a good reference for the impact the massive amounts of water had on this shower occupant. This was definitely NOT a modern, reduced water flow shower head.

Is this slime biodegradable? Because we're on a greywater system.

We had found our mystery water hog.

This shower head was definitely retro old-school in every way possible, including spray surface area and water output. Pure steel construction made us think that it's the original shower head, which would date it to around 1957. Ah, post-war American...when gluttonous consumption of resources following mandatory rationing was the norm. But an engraving at the base of the head says that it has an output of 2.5 gallons of water per minute, which is technically within modern ranges...

As invigorating as the shower was, eco-guilt got the best of me and within a few days I brought this home:

Not only is it eco-responsible, it gives you the excuse to repeatedly say "Power in your Shower!" in a Mr. T voice.

To conserve water and energy, all residential and most commercial shower heads sold in the U.S. must flow less than or equal to 2.5 gallons per minute. This criteria hit the books in 1992, and since then there's been a sort of black-market for high-output models of the past, fed by the demands of consumers who want that slime-bucket effect.

Better yet, uber-efficient shower heads identified as low flow must have an output of 2.0 gallons per minute or less. The model I chose above, according to Internet resources, has a flow rate of 1.5 gallons per minute which is quite sensible, especially when combined with the handy toggle button that will shut the stream down to a trickle (but keep your temperature steady) for when you're lathering and shaving.

So how is it? Slightly less invigorating but definitely less guilt-inducing. And really, who needs that kind of "I'm killing the world" guilt at 6:00am? Plus, all the resources and money we're saving will definitely allow for the shower to pay for itself within a few months.

But what to do with the old shower head? We could sell it on e-Bay to some desperate bather wanting a higher flowing shower head, but that would seem a tad bit contradictory. According to my food scale, the old shower head is close to two pounds of solid steel...at current scrap prices it could net us a whopping $1.40.

Man, think of all the things we could we do with those kinds of Benjamins!

--Rational Mama

Operation Muffin Top

As many of you are aware, when we first started the "new house" journey, we were looking at up-sizing from our 1,600 square foot American Foursquare to a 2,000+ square foot bungalow.

The "Old" House

In this new house Sissy and Eowyn would each have their own bedroom and the two and a half bathrooms would allow plenty of privacy for all. Not to mention the extra bedroom and basement space for guests and arts/crafts. We were going to be living in high (modest) style - a room for every person and then some. We were going to be bigger and better.

But as we got further into the rationing project we realized that expanding into the bigger house was actually quite contrary to the spirit of the project. Helloooo - wasn't a big part of that project to learn to live with just enough - and not too much? Did we actually need the additional space, or did we just want it? And did we really want the extra rooms, or had society tried to convince us that we did? Just like they've tried to convince me that I want a mega-grande latte espresso every morning...(Ha! Take that society! I make my own fair-trade cup of coffee in mah house!)

"I'd like to trade these vegetable juice ration coupons for a mega-grande-latte-mocha with whip cream and an extra shot, please."

A few weeks of soul searching led us to the resolution that what we wanted was extra space. But rather than extra rooms (that would need to be heated and cleaned and furnished and...), we wanted extra outside space - to expand our gardens, add chickens to the list of household critters (and food supply), and provide a haven for the girls to play and discover nature like no city dwelling could. And, we decided, we were willing to sacrifice house size to accomplish this dream.

We would downsize.

This, my friends, is basically unheard of among our peers. Society tells us that downsizing is for retirees with empty nests, not for young, active families.

It was challenging to find the right small house/modest sized land/appropriate price combination. Most options on the market were either fixer uppers (in that scary, end-of-"The Blair Witch Project" kind of way), way too small and/or ridiculously expensive. Eventually, we found the right match (960 square feet, solid construction, 2.58 acres), and it's into this house that we moved last week.

The "New" House

Moving is always a process in patience, and for this move we had to start planning months in advance. We knew that we would be downsizing from 1620 square feet of living space (plus a full basement and walk-up attic) to 960 square feet of living space (full basement and no attic). The smaller house was efficiently designed with decent-sized closets and storage, but with an overall smaller footprint and no attic things were going to get tight, fast.

The house has only two bedrooms, so we knew the girls would be sharing the (modest) master bedroom while we took over the (very, umm..efficient) second bedroom. We knew that not all of our current furniture would fit in the new house, at least not in conventional ways. If we tried to shove all our current furnishings into the new house it'd be busting as the seems. Our house would have a muffin top.

Now, I'm not a big fan of the muffin top phenomenon. I have nothing against larger folks (indeed, I am one), but the practice of squeezing into too tight and too low pants is painful, and the jiggly extra spilling forth from the top is less than attractive. Same with the house - cramming too much furniture into too small of a space just wasn't going to be reasonable. Hence, I have no muffin top, and my house will not have one, either.

In order to make sense of it all and proceed with Operation Muffin Top we broke out the graph paper.

Seriously.

I went through the old house and got rough measurements of all the big furniture, then converted it to a scale of one square on the graph paper representing six inches. We then arranged, and rearranged, the furniture in the paper rooms, sketched out to scale.

And then walked away and came back a week later and arranged things again.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Ultimately, these were some of the realizations we came to:

• The good-sized kitchen and bathroom would be our "comfort" rooms - with dimensions very similar to what we were used to there would be very few issues with space and storage.
• Getting the full upright piano to fit in the living would take some creativity.
• There was no way our expansive dresser would fit in our bedroom...it would have to go in the basement while we used a smaller, old hand-me-down from when Sissy was a baby.
• The dining table would have to loose a leaf to fit comfortably in the dining room.
• The girls' pet rats would not be able to use a spare bedroom for their location, so arrangements would have to be made to move them into the girls' room.
• Since there is no spare room, we would upgrade from our 12 year old sofa and purchase a new hide-a-bed model for when guests stay over.
• The workshop space in the detached garage would become TMOTH's man-craft cave (with space for the throwing wheel, kiln and such).
• A portion of the basement would be converted to a rough-and-ready recreation room with the old t.v., old sofa and treadmill. Plus, a desk or two for crafting.

Of course, Operation Muffin Top hit full swing during the actual move last week. We're still trying to figure out a few key pieces - every once in a while I come across a box, scratch my head and ask "Where the heck will that go?" But we're getting there.

And come late spring we will have one heck of a garage sale.

--Rational Mama

Moving On

We did it.

This was the week we made the big move to the little homestead.

Moving is always such a mixed bag of emotions...the purging of belongings, packing of memories, and finding closure with the old in the midst of excitement for the new.

And in the middle of all that poetry there's boxes, boxes, boxes. Boxes to find, boxes to move, boxes to haul up/down stairs, boxes to stack in tipsy-turvy Dr. Seussical fashion and boxes to (eventually) unpack.

We're dealing with those last two descriptions right now. Oh, how I loathe the house when it's in that "forest of cardboard" phase. It's a disaster zone that gets my special kind of crazy going. We spent 15 minutes this morning searching for clean socks and underwear. Seriously.

I've managed to get a few things unpacked, but there are still plenty of boxes to go through. And some things have made it out of their boxes but haven't yet transition to their permanent homes.

Everything is in transition, really...and that includes this blog.

Over the next few weeks you'll notice some changes to the Rational Living blog. Topics du jour will begin focusing on our efforts to live more sustainably on our small acreage, rather than our rationing experiment. There will still be plenty of history lessons as we learn how to expand our home canning, make cheese, raise chickens, make household goods rather than buy them new and the like.

Over the next few weeks, though, we'll be attempting to conquer the cardboard forest. And I imagine that one of the first "new" posts will review the in's and out's of downsizing from 1620 square feet to 940 square feet.

Possession purge, anyone?

--Rational Mama

Post-Rational Confession

So, let's see...rationing has been over for almost seven weeks.

That's seven weeks of no points. Seven weeks of menu freedom. Seven weeks of everything in the grocery store beckoning to us as potential purchases.

But I can't bear to toss out my menus/shopping lists for those seven weeks.

They're sitting in a pile near my rationing notes.

After recording all of our menus and grocery purchases every week for the rationing year I struggle with just throwing away that information for our post-rational life.

Maybe I can work up the courage, soon. After all, we'll be moving to the new house shortly - surely that will be a good time to purge seemingly worthless papers.

Right?

--Rational Mama

P.S. They'll be more post-rational thoughts to post on the blog, now that my self-imposed hiatus from blogging is over.

Victory Meal!

How did we celebrate the completion of our year-long rationing project?

With a victory dinner, of course!


What? You expected something else?

--Rational Mama

Review: Of Veg and Cheese...and Java Dilemma

In the original "Of Veg and Cheese" post I outlined how, in accordance with life in the early 1940's, we would be limited to seasonably available produce during the rationing year, with the exception of canned and frozen produce which would be subject to ration points and market fluctuations.

So how did it go?

Well, last winter was tough - no bones about it. With just one pound of frozen vegetables setting us back one quarter of our weekly blue/green points, we were forced to work with seasonally available produce. This meant mostly carrots, potatoes and cabbage. And trust me, with all other green, leafy vegetables unavailable you start to appreciate cabbage on a whole new level.

Going without fresh salad for a few months definitely helped us understand how much we really love salad, even if it's as basic as a few green leaves and a simple dressing. Luckily, growing lettuce and mesclun indoors (or in a hoop frame or cold frame) is so easy we were able to get a jump start on our spring greens.

Once early summer came around we had locally grown produce available from our gardens, the farmer's market and our CSA bag. As you know, we had a hard time maintaining our Victory Gardens, and my new work schedule made visiting the farmer's market logistically tricky. And for a second year the CSA bags were a bit of a disappointment (some of the produce was actually of poor quality); I don't believe we'll do CSA bags in the future.

On the other hand, you just can't beat locally grown fruit. This past year we consumed our share of local strawberries, blackberries, apples and pears. Nothing can beat a fruit that was allowed to ripen fully before picking...and then immediately eating it. Really, I cannot downplay the physical and sensual joy of experiencing a local "u-pick" establishment.

As far as cheese goes...well, it's a staple we never want missing from the fridge. The versatility of hard cheese (snack, recipe ingredient, sandwich topper) make it a very useful, albeit rationed, resource. And thank goodness sour cream and cottage cheese weren't rationed - they have frequently been used to bulk up a sauce or soup (the former) or add protein to an otherwise light meal (the latter).

And finally, coffee. As outlined in the post "Java Dilemma," during rationing each adult received one pound of coffee every five weeks, assuming shortages didn't throw a kink into your coffee purchasing week. Both TMOTH and I increased our coffee consumption during the past year, in exchange for shrinking our soda intake. Even with that change, though, we were never in danger of running out of coffee supplies before the next ration amount could be purchased. We even had enough of a coffee surplus to, umm, be creative.

So, what of veg and cheese and coffee after rationing? We plan to continue focusing on seasonably available produce in an effort to reduce the carbon footprint of the fruits and vegetables we eat. And we'll continue to drink coffee at our current rates and avoid heavily-sugared sodas.

And cabbage...dear, sweet cabbage. You will always have a special place in our hearts...even if you're not as frequent a visitor at the table.

--Rational Mama

Rational Ritual

This past Wednesday night we sat around the table, rolled the die and pulled scenarios from Mr. Bowles' Marketplace Scenario Randomizer...for the last time.

So interesting how doing something once a week for a year becomes such a habit, such a ritual.

Over the past year we've both cheered and boo-ed the die roll, rearranged menus to suit the scenarios and listen to the girls quarrel countless times over whose turn it is to roll the die.

In the end the last scenario of the rationing year was a dud...only half the usual amount of flour was available, but we have plenty in the pantry anyway.

The week before was a doozy, though. Eowyn wanted from-scratch macaroni and cheese for dinner when a gaggle of family was to be visiting to celebrate her birthday. But when we pulled scenarios for that week Mr. Bowles' informed us that only half the amount of cheese was available at the store. The cheese supply in the fridge was not bountiful, so there was no way we could acquire enough cheese to make macaroni and cheese for a crowd of sixteen.

As a friend said, Mr. Bowles' giveth and Mr. Bowles' taketh away.

So, we had to go to Plan B: roasted chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy and Brussels sprouts (you gotta love an eight-year-old that asks for Brussels sprouts).

It will be strange, if not liberating, to be able to make a shopping list without consulting the Randomizer. There are several aisles that I think I haven't even stepped a foot in during the rationing year. Everything in the store will be available for purchase. Everything.

And I know that I originally said that I would compost the Randomizer when the rationing project was complete, but now I am (based on a reader's advice) considering holding on to it for a while.

Some habits die hard.

--Rational Mama

Overkill?

One of the best things about having the most amazing library between the Mississippi and the Rockies in your neighborhood is being able to take advantage of their awesome collection and reservation system.

Since we're trying to figure out what eating will look like after rationing I reserved a bunch of ethical eating titles last week. Not surprisingly, most of the titles have been sent my way in the past few days.


I'm not sure I'll get all of this read within the three week check-out period, but that's what the "renew" button is for!

--Rational Living

Review: Rationing: The Not-So-Sweet Life?

When writing the original Rationing: The Not-So-Sweet Life? post I bragged that our household limitation of 8 pounds of sugar per month "doesn't seem that daunting to me." Even without the availability of prepackaged sweets and cookie dough from a tube I felt that this was one ration that was completely manageable.

And you know what? I was right.

Maybe it's because our family doesn't keep a cookie jar regularly supplied, as was the norm in the 1940s. Or maybe we ate fewer sweets. Either way, we adapted quite well to the the sugar restrictions. Cookie craving? Better get the recipe book out because you're not getting any unless you put in the effort. And there were several nights when I would have loved a warm, gooey cookie straight from the oven but was too lazy to actually do the work. And that's probably a good thing.

Granted, I did buy the girls Twinkies at one point, since they are a treat that is historically accurate (well, at least in form - I'm not sure if all the same preservatives and artificial colors were used in the past). The girls loved them.

Otherwise, I could go several weeks without claiming our sugar rations and still have plenty available on the shelf. The only time I had to be careful and make sure we had a copious supply was during the summer canning season.

One thing we did fail at was the interest in buying mostly sustainably-grown sugar. That will be something to consider while we make plans for life after rationing.

--Rational Mama

Reality Check

I was at one of those mega-market grocery stores the other night.

That night (and all during rationing) my cart contained basic staples like flour, sugar, butter, cheese, bread, a small amount of meat, beans, cereal, maybe a frozen or canned vegetable and seasonally appropriate fresh fruits and vegetables.

This seems very normal to me.

The person in line behind me the other night had three economy-sized packages of frozen burritos, frozen blueberry waffles (artificially flavored), frozen tater tots, several frozen dinner entrees, a few bags of chips and two flats of bottled water.

I have to admit I stared a little; I was simultaneously amazed at how different our two purchases were and by how little real food was piling up on the conveyor belt behind my purchase. I was very aware that a significant portion of the volume of their purchase consisted of artificial colors, artificial flavors, bulking agents, salt, high-fructose corn syrup and other quasi-food substances.

If that's what life after rationing looks like then I don't want to leave rationing.

--Rational Mama

Review: Rationing is a Gas! Gas! Gas!

One of the first posts about the rationing year project concerned gasoline and mileage rationing. In it, we described how gasoline was rationed during WWII and the issues we were wrestling with in trying to come to some sort of modern equivalent. In the end, we came up with a self-imposed mileage ration of 193 miles per week combined for our two vehicles.

So...how's it been? Well, once we project out an average weekly mileage for the last few weeks of rationing (plus the mileage for a holiday round trip visit to Wichita) and add it to our already documented mileage we will have traveled (in our personal vehicles) roughly 10,007 miles during the rationing year, which is just slightly under the total miles of 10,036 allotted to us during rationing (193 miles per week x 52 weeks).

We're all pretty happy that we stayed within our limit and didn't fall into the trap of going farther (literally) even though we knew there wouldn't be any real consequences for us if we did go over our rationed amount.

In order to stay within our ration we definitely had to be mindful about how and when we were driving. We became pros at combining/consolidating trips and had to be extra careful with miles when the girls had out-of-town swim meets every other week during the summer. Our "vacations" consisted of two short getaways to Kansas City and one trip to Wichita to see family. Our mileage allowance did not permit a more grand vacation even if we incorporated some carpooling and I occasionally walked to work.

And to be honest, we were all feeling the lack of big getaway by the time autumn arrived.

As a family we have to decide how we will handle mileage after rationing is over. All of us agreed that we didn't want to remove mileage off the radar completely, especially once we reviewed the math.

During the rationing year our 10,000 miles were considerably below the national average; the average adult American drives 12,000 miles per year, which means the average for a two-driver household like ours is 24,000 miles per year. By following our rationing limits we drove 14,000 miles less than a comparable family.

Fourteen thousand less miles means fewer gallons of gasoline (and more money in our pocket). Using a very modest estimate of 20 miles per gallon, 14,000 miles equates to 700 less gallons of gasoline. Each gallon of gasoline creates 20 pounds of carbon dioxide, so by travelling 14,000 miles (or 700 gallons of gasoline) less than the average two-driver household we avoided dumping 14,000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air.

That's seven tons, or the equivalent of 1,400 10lb bags of potatoes, or roughly four mini-vans! After that kind of a realization, we can't just abandon mileage/gasoline rationing completely.

So we've decided to keep tracking our mileage but give our family a slightly higher allowance so that more frequent weekend trips and a decent vacation (likely to involve driving) can be incorporated. We are also aware that we will likely be using more miles next year for basic errands (more on that development in a later post). Taking all these things into consideration we have decided that our new, post-rationing family limit for mileage will be 15,000 miles combined for the year. This gives use a weekly allowance of 288 miles - nearly 100 miles more per week than during rationing! The trick will be to not squander those miles but to save them up for the fun stuff.

Pondering all those extra miles and the possibilities seems like a luxury. Where will we go first?

--Rational Mama

Randomizer Breakthrough

This is what happens when you use Mr. Bowles' Marketplace Scenario Randomizer every week for nearly a year.

I used some sticky tape to fix the hole - it will have to do for the final three weeks.

The good news is that the randomizer is completely biodegradable and will be composted after the experiment.

I have to admit, though, that I think we'll miss the Wednesday night ritual of rolling the dice and pulling scenarios. We'll have to find something to fill the void.

--Rational Mama

Ponderings

A few weeks ago one of the readers at church read a passage that really struck a cord with me. I thought it was a succinct, well-written outline of some of the thoughts we're pondering as we start making decisions about life after rationing.

I asked the reader for a transcript of the text and I received the following excerpt from Beyond Guilt, by George S. Johnson. My apologies for taking some liberties with the text, as all emphases are my own.

--Rational Mama

....................

Guilt, powerlessness and fear are three dragons that paralyze many people in efforts to move beyond charity toward oppressed people.

The appeal for charity, feeling sorry and sharing our resources is the beginning, a good starting place, but it is only the first step.

There is a saying that helps to explain the challenge to work for justice, not just for charity. “If people are hungry, you can give them some fish and they will live another day. This is called relief, [or charity]. But if you not only give a fish, but teach them how to fish for themselves they will be helped to feed themselves in the future.” This is often called development.

That sounds good, but it can be misleading if it is not followed with the next step.

There is a third part of that saying that is critical to our efforts to move beyond guilt. We must not only offer the fish (relief) and assistance in learning how to fish themselves (development), but we must move over in the pond and GIVE them a place to fish. And, we must stop polluting the pond where they fish … And we must give them a fair price FOR their fish.

This third step clearly has many facets to it. It is called working for justice, fairness. Justice includes efforts to end oppression and unfair practices of the domination system.

Moving from charity to justice is difficult, because it calls for careful listening, increased awareness, and critical thinking about the attitudes and values that have brought us to this current crisis.

To avoid feeling guilty, we may stay at surface-level analysis. Guilt may be preferred to making changes or facing the pain and uncertainty of solidarity with those who cry for justice.

Could it be that, while we complain about guilt, we actually prefer it to enlightened analysis and action?

To get involved may lead to changes we’re not ready to make. Beliefs and values may be challenged. Systems that have blessed us may be examined and found wanting. Our security and prosperity may be jeopardized.

We can surely sleep better at night when we are ignorant of the reality of human suffering and its connection to our acceptable lifestyles.

T-Minus 26 Days and Counting

Can you believe it? We have less than a month left of rationing! The end is near!

So, how's it going?

This is traditionally a very busy time of year for us; between Thanksgiving and the middle of January we have four family birthdays, three holidays and two birthdays of very dear friends. Plus, this year we're dealing with trying to decide what life will look like after rationing and all of the house stuff. Luckily, by now we're whizzes when it comes to rationing and it doesn't take much brain power to come up with a ration-friendly menu and point total.

In fact, we've gotten so accustomed to rationing that lately we're using only a fraction of our points. During previous months I tried to use up all our ration points as best I could without crossing that fine line between maintaining a surplus and hoarding. After all, ration points seldom went unused during the 1940s. But at some point that tactic seemed to contradict the idea behind rationing - focusing instead on wants rather than needs. And so I've been trying to "shop" the freezer and cabinets, so to speak, and use what we already have on hand.

As a result we will be ending the month of November with a surplus of 95 red and 45 blue/green points (!).

We are starting to make some headway and consensus on what life will be like after rationing. Some small changes, some big changes, some things dropping to the wayside and some things status quo. Over the next month I'll be revisiting some of the original rationing project posts to bring you up to date.

In the meantime, thanks for sticking with us!

--Rational Mama

Blog? There's a Blog?

Oh, hi.

Hello blog visitor. It's nice to have you visit. I promise we haven't ditched the blog. Really, really promise.

We're still rationing our little hearts away, but just very busy with all the crazy fall stuff that covers us in an avalanche of responsibilities every October: homework projects, Halloween costumes, parties, school conferences, etc.

I'm hoping to get some new content up in the next week or so - a few historic recipes and insights now that we're down to just two months (*gasp*) left of the rationing project.

Oh, dear...that means there's less than two months until Christmas. Yeah, things are going to get even busier around here.

But the blog shall not suffer!

After all, we wouldn't want to disappoint the fabulous readers that have made this journey so interesting and fun. Did you know that an average of 35 to 40 visitors come to the blog each day? No? How 'bout this: the blog averages around 50 page views a day.

Not too long ago the blog had almost 100 page views in a single day.

That just blows my mind. Really. When we started this project and the blog we were hoping that maybe a few (mostly) local folks would join in and provide commentary, questions and insights. Instead, the blog has had over 5,500 visitors and is edging towards 9,000 page views. Visitors have come from all six permanently inhabited continents. How crazy is that?

I can only hope that the next two months (and beyond) will be as thought-provoking and worthy of your attention.

And maybe ya'll can help suggest to us what our life should be like after rationing. Because, frankly, it all looks a bit overwhelming from down here in the trenches.

So grab a chair and a beverage, let us know where you are and what you would do after rationing if you were us.

--Rational Mama