A little fear is Healthy... right?

People are scary... In the computer age, you don't know your neighbors the way you used to... or that is, you have millions more neighbors... people that you've never met that know all of your secrets.  Sometimes this is great.  I've met women all over the country through online playgroups for my two kids.  We've visited with them, exchanged pen pal letters for the bigger one, and stickers for the little one.  Holiday gifts have been sent and received, some random packages that you find on your doorstep when you come home for no reason other than your friends were thinking of you.  We've supported one another through marriages, divorces, new babies and loss of babies.  The internet is a grand thing.  Its kind of fun going through customs into Canada, how long will you be staying? Just the day.  Purpose of visit? Seeing friends.  How do you know these friends?  Umm... we met on the internet.... I usually skip that answer and go with we're part of a parenting group!

So why is it, that I go to buy something on Craigslist, and find myself paralyzed with fear?  Oh, right... psychotic sickos.. that's why.  So we plan ahead.  I'm buying something for $1... it is perfectly reasonable that this woman wouldn't want to drive to meet me somewhere (cause there goes the profit margin!), so she gives me her home address.  I run it through google maps, print it out, set it on the ledge to the stairs and leave the house. (Note to my friends, if I ever turn up missing, I don't have my directions with me... that's my "insurance" policy, memorize the directions and leave them at home for the hubby to find).  The woman's house is all of 4 miles away through 3 backroads (we're kind of neighbors).  When I arrive ten minutes later than I planned (oops), she comes to the door and she asks the inevitable "did you find it OK?"  This is where I excercise my insurance policy "oh yes, good thing it was easy to get here, since I left my directions at home!"  Now she knows that I've left a trail right to her doorstep if she pulls any funny stuff.  I pull out my dollar and we make the exchange. 

Then she surprises me.  I'm still on guard, I don't know this woman.  She asks, "do you want some perennials to take with you?"  I only brought my dollar with me, so I politely decline, when she explains that she rescued these from her friends greenhouse, they were headed for the trash, and she wants to give them a second chance.  We proceeded to load my car up with a flat of creeping phlox, a flat of portulaca, a HUGE hibiscus, and 2 more flats of perennials.  As I'm about to get into the car with the kids, she asks if they'd like to see some chickens.  Now my guard is up again.  But, the kids want to see chickens, what can you do. 

Off we go up into her yard, where she has 4 week old chicks, and some 8 week old chicks, and a batch of 4 freshly hatched bantams with their momma (and daddy and aunts) and a big (HUGE) ol Rooster named Rodney, and a bunch more up in a little shed that she let out to run around beneath a mulberry tree.  My kids, not known for being brave, boldly followed the largest chickens right over to the mulberry tree and stood in the middle while the birds munched.  The rooster came over and joined us for some of our visit.  They were in awe!   She had chickens with funny hair doos and a bunch of eggs she'd already collected.  She talked to me about how the chickens would get broody if she didn't pick their eggs up soon enough, so she'd have to let them hatch.  She showed us themomma bantam sitting right on her day old chicks.The kids laughed as Rodney the rooster attempted to... ahem.... get a piggie back ride  As we were headed back to the car, we saw even more chickens.  They'd just built them a new coop.  and put it out under the mulberry tree.  Already thinking like a farmer, my big guy noticed that the holes in the chicken wire were big enough for the mulberries to fall through, and my little one pointed out the rectangle of picked clean grass beside the cage (where they had been the day before.).  And then we left. 

So what started out as an overcautious trip to pick on one silly little thing turned into a lesson on farming for my kids, and landscape work for me.  A little fear seems healthy, as long as you can still put it aside when the time comes!

Editing to add a pic of our columbine rock garden...

Wordless Wednesday

Momma, How Much is a Trillion?

Okay, so no one asked me this today, but after hearing a little mis-information on the radio this morning, it got my gears turning (and grinding a bit...).  It was a really simple mistake, I caught someone saying a Trillion dollars is a million Billions... that's not quite right... a Trillion dollars is a thousand billions, or a million millions (a million squared).  There's 12 zeroes after the trillion... that's a lot of 0s

Our country owes SOMEONE 14.5 Trillion bucks... If that number is accurate (lesson of the day... where does that website get their info? I don't know, but the number does roughly match what I've heard in other media sources, so I am using it for blogging purposes, I wouldn't trust it if, say, I was writing a check to pay off my share.  When you hear information, check your sources people), each tax payer in the US has an extra $130K in debt.  Its our country, it's our debt. 

I can only speak for myself, but whether the money is owed by the government on my behalf, or owed by me personally, it's unsettling at best.  The personal debt of my family is less than the debt the government has incurred "on behalf" of both my husband and I.  We're not rich, but we're not impoverished, so when the amount the average American "owes" is more than what I am comfortable owing as a 2 working parent family, something needs to change. 

Every now and then, I venture off into some conspiracy tangents, but I try to keep them reigned in.  Really, I'm not worried who it is making the decisions to put me into debt... what I am worried about is the alarming rate it is increasing, and how to make it stop.

Here's a few things to consider-

Who makes the money, as in, what agency is responsible for literally creating money.  It's NOT the US government.  The Federal Reserve, while in theory has oversight from our government, in reality is a seperate institution, sanctioned by the US government, but not tied to it, other than having the power to tell the little banks what to do, and loaning their printed money to the government at interest.  The US has the power and authority to print their own money, they just choose not to (Interestingly, JFK tried it for a bit, printing Silver Certificates, legal tender-money backed by silver sitting in US coffers... No president has done that since according to my research)

How does the national debt compare to your personal debt?  If you add in 130K for each taxpayer in your family, how much more does your debt add up to?  How do you feel about that?   What if you were given the option to pay it off?  Would you?  Could you?  Is it feasible in your lifetime to pay off an extra 130K? 260K?  Will your kids grow up saddled with worry about if their government is going to allow an outside agency to create inflation that drives away industry and jobs?

If you've supported social programs in the past (or present) that the government funds, does it feel different to know that you 130K of public debt, that you own, increases with each program?  That whenever we provide free health care, that the cost of services is being added right in there?  If you were going to get a bill, you might ask up front how much the service would cost, but since the government doesn't really advertise the idea that you are your own soverign nation, they don't tell you the cost, or encourage you to ask... they just put it on your tab.  Or your kids tab... or your grandchildren's tab.