McDonald’s Coffee is the Cause of the Recession

Yeah, I can’t wait to see what their lawyers have to say about this entry. But, bear with me on this for a moment.

Currently, McDonald’s is running a coffee promotion where any sized coffee is 69 cents. Sweet! I can buy a large for only 69 cents. Look how much money I’m saving you honey. Except I really can’t drink a large coffee. It gets cold before I can finish it so I end up throwing half of it away. So if I’m throwing it away, am I really saving any money?

So I’ll get a small. That’s a more reasonable size anyway. But, if McDonald’s has “averaged” out the cost of their coffee, then they’ve overpriced the small in order to compensate for losing money on their large. Or, they’ve decided that it really does cost 69 to make a large coffee and are overpricing both the small and the medium.

Do I buy the small because it’s what I need, or buy the large because it is a better value?

Actually, while writing this, I see that Pizza Hut is doing the same thing–$10.00 pizza, any size, any number of toppings. Now who wouldn’t order the large, meat-lover’s pizza with every topping possible. Think of the deal you are getting! Think of how much money you are saving!

And that is the cause of the recession.

It really isn’t McDonald’s or Pizza Hut’s fault. They are just appealing to our addiction to “the deal.” We don’t really need the large, meat-lover’s pizza with every topping possible any more than we need the large cup of McDonald’s coffee. But we want to think that we are getting more than what we are paying for. The problem is, we are confusing wants with needs, and needs with values.  We are willing to accept short-term reward at the cost of long-term consequences. One look at the credit card fiasco and mortgage debacle will prove it true.

Two + years ago, we decided to put an addition on our house. Part of it we were paying with money we’d saved (yay us, we’d actually saved something), and part of it we were financing through a line of credit. We wanted to make sure we could actually afford the line of credit (yay us, although in hindsight, it does seem like a no-brainer) and only borrowed what we needed.

Can I tell you how hard that was to do? Banks didn’t want to loan us that “small” of an amount–and I’m not talking hundreds of dollars or even thousands of dollars. This addition was in the 10s of thousands of dollars and no banks wanted to give us the money. More than one bank urged us to basically refinance the house for THREE TIMES what we needed and “use the rest to invest or take a vacation.” I got offered better rates for the more money I borrowed — “think of the money you are saving” I was told.

Luckily, I stood my ground and located a company that would loan me my “paltry” amount (although even they said, “We could give you a better rate if you took out an extra $20,000. Just put it back if you don’t need it.”) Okay, I don’t know about you, but if someone “gives” me an extra $20,000, I’m going to spend it.

But look at how many other people took the financial experts’ advice. If we’d done as they’d suggested, we’d be one of the houses in foreclosure.

It’s time for all of us to step back and take a breath. Stop buying what you don’t need. Stop using “a good deal” as a reason to purchase something that isn’t quite right for you. The odds are, any money you saved will be lost in the fact that the item doesn’t meet your needs. You will throw away the extra coffee, get heartburn from the overly big, too rich pizza, or be lost inside the oversized house.

Buy according to the value that the item has. I price my clothes by “cost per wearing.” If I want to buy something very trendy, I spend less money because I know I’ll only wear it a couple of times before it goes out of style. But long-term items–coats, some pants, sweaters–I price per wearing. If I have a coat that I’ll wear for 10 years (and I do have more than one that is 20 years old), I don’t think twice about spending $100 on it. That’s $10/year and even wearing it for only four months is still less than $3.00/month.

As we finish out this recession (hopefully it won’t be around for too much longer) reconsider how you are spending your money on the “stuff” that is in your life. Make sure it is something that you need–something that brings value to your life and isn’t just “a really good deal.” It isn’t. It will cost you a lot more in the long run. And if you made the “improve your diet” resolution, lay off the meat lover’s pizza and large McDonald’s coffee.

My Sushi New Year’s Resolution

Okay, this isn’t my entire resolution for the new year, but rather a knitting resolution–the whole knogging, blitting thing (knitting + blogging) thing makes me happy.

I hesitate to even write this because I actually haven’t seen what I’m about to do and no one EVER does anything unique anymore. I’ve googled and binged it–a sushi scarf.

There are long scarves that roll up to look like a sushi roll.
	Individual crocheted sushi pieces…
and even a felted crocheted clutch.

But not a crocheted sushi scarf the way I want to make it.

So I sketched out some ideas–I’m thinking of some rolls (done as flat circles) and some basic sushi (done a rectangles), some ginger and wasabi (hyperbolic plane), and then stitched together as a scarf and held together with–you guessed it, chopsticks.

I have no idea how long this project will take. I don’t know how long it will take to make A LOT of sushi pieces. I could probably do the math–if each piece is about 2 inches long and I want the scarf to be 4 inches by 72 inches long then I would need–uhm…72 / 2 = 36 pieces x 2 (double wide) is 72 pieces. Duh. Okay, Tennessee public school system. Seventy-two little circles, rectangles and hyperbolic planes? (okay, here is a crocheted hyperbolic plane) That is a lot of crocheting. The project is too big.

New Year’s Resolutions

And that ’s when I thought about it as a New Year’s resolution. So often we make HUGE new year’s resolutions.

• Lose 20 pounds
• Write a novel
• Quite smoking
• Run a marathon

These are GIANT things. And within a week or a month, they are by the wayside and we are feeling terrible that we couldn’t keep our resolutions. The fact is, MOST don’t keep New Year’s resolutions. Why? Because we bite off more than we can chew (unless it’s me and I’m biting off a rainbow roll).

If, instead of looking at my sushi scarf as a least 72 little circles, rectangles and hyperbolic planes, I looked at it as one piece of sushi a day. They are small–how long would it take me? I did a quick experiment and was able to crochet a 3″ circle in about half an hour. Given that the sushi one might take a little longer because I have to change colors, I could still probably crochet one up in less than an hour. If I made one a day, I’d be done in less than 3 months. Even one twice a week would have me finished before I rang in 2011. Small steps.

So don’t try to make big resolutions–make small ones.

• What if your goal was to walk for 20 minutes every day? Or to replace one meal item with a vegetable (that doesn’t mean candy corn). By the end of they year, you would have lost your weight.
• Don’t give up smoking all at once–give it up for one day. Just one day. And if you do it one day, then try for two days. And three. And if you slip up, go back to trying to do it just one day.
• That novel doesn’t need to be written in a year (I’m talking to YOU somegraphx). A page needs to be written every day. Just one page a day.
• And the marathon (you are crazy Beth) is 26 miles (give or take a few yards). Training for it is running a little every day. The marathon training web site says your longest training run should be 18-20 miles and that you should run only 4 times a week. Okay, that isn’t 18-20 miles 4 times a week– it’s 3-5 miles, four times a week–at least in the beginning.

The other point of making a resolution is to actually enjoy the process as much as the goal. I love to knit and crochet. I also like instant gratification (who doesn’t). What is more gratifying than being able to complete a cute little circle during a House or Bones episode? I could do some ginger during The Big Bang Theory. And making sushi is going to make me want to eat it and that will help me lose weight! How’s that rationale?

I’ve discovered that even the most mundane tasks, when done with purpose and intent, aren’t horrid and can even be enjoyable (I do draw the line at the litter box). Doing dishes without purpose and intent is frustrating and exhausting–another set of dishes? Do I run a diner or something? Are these kids just opening the cabinets and putting the dishes directly into the sink without even using them? Really, can we not use ONE glass per person per day?

But when I try (hey, I’m a work in progress) to think, “Wow, this water is so warm and the soap is so soft. Isn’t it great that my family has food to put on a table. It might not have been the fanciest meal, but we all sat down together which is an accomplishment in today’s society. And these dishes–my husband picked out these dishes when we registered 1 million years ago. And I have such a wonderful, remodeled kitchen to wash my dishes in. Before, I was stuck in the back of the house, away from the family and now I can be in the same room, watching TV with them or listening to them fight over the Wii remotes—whoa, bring me back to Zen. Warm, soapy water.”

I think you get the picture.

So my tiny New Year’s resolution is to make a sushi scarf. I may finish it in three months, or a year. I will write a little bit, every day. It might be here, it might be in a short story, it might be in a novel. But every day, I will put something on paper–

But, in all things I take on this year, I will attempt to enjoy the process. Happy safe, healthy, prosperous new year, everyone!

Advent Conspiracy Promo Video

As my pastor said on Sunday, “What if Christmas, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”

We now resume our regularly scheduled life…

already in progress.

Wow, December 1st. I’ve been outside. The sun is shining. Grass is growing–okay that’s a little weird. My children look bigger, my house looks dustier.

Yes, I’ve just crawled out from my month of writing dangerously– NANOWRIMO. I did it! I did it! (Why do I hear Dora the Explorer singing that?)

The official final count: 50076 words. Some of them I might actually keep once I start the editing process.  For those of you who haven’t been inundated by nanowrimo information, (which, by the way, stands for National Novel Writing Month although they should change it because it is now international, but innowrimo just doesn’t have the same ring to it), here’s the low down.

Nanowrimo began ten years ago with 21 people getting together to try to write novels in 30 days. Today, 167,201 crazies from all over the world got together (virtually and in real life) to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. This year 98,044 of us wrote at least one word and 32,149 people besides me, can now call themselves “author.”

Really, don’t you just find that amazing? For one month, almost 100,000 people were engaged in a common goal. I was writing along side soldiers in Afghanistan, someone who only writes his novel out by hand, students who are at sea, and people serving in the Peace Corp. We had one common goal for the month. Even though I didn’t know most of these writers, I cheered for them when they made milestones, urged them on at roadblocks and cried at their failures. We don’t win any money, most of us (like 99%) will never have our stuff read. Of the 1% who do have their novel read, it will likely be by someone who loves us very much and has nothing but nice things to say about it–FYI–they are wrong, they just love you. It’s okay, I expect my loved ones to do the exact same thing. It’s their job.

Collectively, we’ve written 2,147,483,647 words.

Our only reward is bragging rights. I mean, how many people can say they’ve written a novel?

Is it easy? No. Is it fun? Not always. So why do I do it?

Because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have a new novel sitting on my laptop (and backed up about 40 different places). This is actually my third one. And I am just as impressed with myself for this one as I was for my first one. 

I failed last year–just couldn’t do it with a new baby in the house. And in case you think that’s an adequate excuse, there was one woman last year who GAVE BIRTH during the last week of NaNo and STILL finished her novel. So no, simply having a 9 month old in the house isn’t really an excuse.

I have a friend of mine who is a runner. She runs in marathons. Personally, I have no idea why she does this. She runs in the winter. She runs in rain. She runs everyday. She has shin splints and sore muscles and blisters on her feet. But she still does it–even when she doesn’t want to. Because in the end, there is nothing better than proving that you can accomplish some  that a lot of people can’t do AND (more importantly) doing something that YOU didn’t think that you could do.

So now, sleep deprived and family deprived, I look around at what I learned this year at Nano:

1. First and foremost–my husband is awesome. He did so much to help me make my goals–even when I might have gotten just a tiny bit cranky and a little bit whiny. He took the kids on weekends so I could write. He picked up the slack on the housework (Oh, the humanity! The housework!) so I could write–if it hadn’t been for him, the kids would be wearing shorts, ballet slippers, a “frankie says relax” t-shirt and a fake fur coat to school–and that’s just what The Boy would have to wear. The Girl would probably actually think that’s a good look. You know, she could pull it off.
2. My children were also very fabulous during this past month. I had some wonderful conversations with The Girl because she ONLY wanted to talk to me if I said, “If no one needs anything, I’m going to write for a little while.” That got the information pouring from her. But I was overjoyed when calling her to the dinner table, that she said, “Hold on, Mom, I’m finishing the sentence on my story.”
3. And The Boy, cheering me on and singing me his own song about his mom finishing Nano made my heart sing. I do, however,  have to apologize to my children–they really did get a lot more Halloween candy than what was in the bowl–chocolate was my fuel of choice. And in a pinch, Skittles (gag) will work too.
4. I’ve also come to realize that Facebook will likely be the downfall of mankind and I think that God must have personally intervened with Algerian Solitaire to have me win so much. Whenever I was stalled, I would say–”just one winning hand and then I’ll go back to writing” and poof– I would win. On the flip side, Facebook was a great motivator–knowing that friends from all parts of my life were rooting me on and questioning my Solitaire scores (why aren’t you writing) really pushed me to finish the book.

Writing a book is a lot like being privy to another world. I created my characters and their world, but like real humans, they apparently have free will. They did things that I wasn’t planning–I know, H, that sounds very weird to you–and I had to write their way out of the problem. How I longed to be writing a fairy tale when I could just say, “and then the fairy godmother appeared and fixed everything.”

But then it wouldn’t be a very interesting story if that happened. Kinda like what God let’s us do with life. It wouldn’t be very interesting if He rescued us with a simple “poof.” Nope, like my characters, we have to work our way out of our messes. And, like my characters, in the end, we are much different than we were when we started our journey.

So, if you haven’t heard from me all month, I’m back. Ready to keep writing. And maybe a few of my words will actually be put together in such a way that they mean something.

And if you’ve ever had the urge–even a little one–to be able to say at a dinner party, “well, when I was writing my novel….” then consider joining me, and  167,200 of my closest friends next November when we begin the task all over again. By the way, Nanowrimo is a non-profit company that provides educational material to children–encouraging them to take up writing and reading. I HAVE to give a shout out to the 5560 kids–yes KIDS who finished their novels. Perhaps a nice little donation might be in order?

Something Worse than Winter Oreos

Whoever decided to make mint flavored Oreos that look like they are “normal” Oreos should be shot.

There is something very wrong about expecting the filling to be one flavor and discovering it is most definitely NOT. If this keeps up, I might have to actually stop snacking on junk food at the office. And there is something equally wrong with that. Now I have to go buy an entire container of “correct” Oreos to get the minty taste out of my mouth.

I have no doubt that some of you reading this will have entirely inappropriate comments to make with regards to my dilemna. Let the Oreo wars begin.