Ode to the Farm

I grew up on a farm in Barry County, Michigan, specifically in Prairieville. I lived in the home my grandfather was raised in until I moved out in 1993. My mother was given the house. After my mother passed away, my sister bought the house. Over the hill was my grandparent's house that they built. My grandfather cut all the lumber, which I always find amazing.

I just received an email confirming that my grandpa will be signing a sales agreement on the farm in the coming week. I never thought I would have a problem with the idea of him selling. I was always just concerned that he would receive a fair price. I was on the phone with my husband as I read the email. Suddenly I was in tears. Where were they coming from? It dawned on me that I never took my kids out to see the big rocks in the field, boulders really. Probably remnants from the glaciers. They were huge. You could lay on the top and nap on their warm flat surface. There were 3 of them, I think. Margie will probably remember playing back there, making crosses to lay of what we thought were ancient indian burial grounds ;) We had a junk pile close by that my mom would dump our old toys and such. So we would go pull our old toys out of the dump and put them in our boulder play house. See the boulders were buried in some trees. It was kind of secluded from the field. There was old barbed wire around where we set up our play kitchen. We even had a small group of trees that were our bathroom where we would pop a squat. (I peed outside a lot as a kid). Great memories!

Then there is my grandparent's home. Growing up next door, we were there a lot, mainly in the winter. In the summer they were busy on the farm. But my grandma, even in her late 60's, early 70's (I could probably do the math to say for sure but I won't) would take us out sledding on the hills in the field. Or we would rake a huge pile of leaves and jump in. There was always so much to do.

They had barn cats that my grandma would feed. She was so funny. She loved those cats. I remember watching over their house when they were gone on a trip and her wanting to make sure we knew how to feed the cats "correctly". She would take a bowl of cat food and piece by piece, she would smear room temperature bacon grease on each piece. Sure, the cats probably had high cholesterol, but she loved those cats.

My baby sister, Stephanie, held her wedding there in 2002. I can imagine she is going through a lot of the same emotions.

A lot of emotions are hitting me that I just didn't expect to be triggered by the sale of the farm. It is like the farm was an extra family member. My kids never saw the rocks. They never saw the farm alive and working. They didn't get to explore the woods and see if they could find the "quick sand" that I heard about but never saw. They never got to sit in the peace of the hidden field, shielded by 4 sides of forest. What is really sad is that we had the chance to do a lot of those things and we never did. I am tempted to jump in the car and drive out there and take the kids on a tour but with it being deer hunting season, I would be afraid to, as that too was a rule we always followed this time of the year. It just wasn't a time of the year to be out wandering the approximately 400 acre farm.

To the Hermenitt farm, we will miss you!

Things I can't Think About

I can’t stand to think about health care reform. While I am all for reform, our government, both democrats and republicans, can’t get it right. I am scared we will be in worse shape then we are now. Pharmaceutical companies are already raising prices in advance of the coming changes. As an uninsured, this hits me harder than the insured. The insurance companies negotiate their prices. I don’t and I can’t. Same thing with hospitals.

Have you had a procedure done without insurance? Years ago, my husband had a colonoscopy without insurance coverage. When the bills piled in, it was so confusing. We had service codes that were identical on multiple bills. I did a little research online and found a site that would give you the Medicaid pricing for each code. Mine were no where in line. Plus a doctor would charge you one code, the hospital would charge you the same code. What? That, to me, seemed like double billing. We all know it happens. But when I questioned it, all I got was a denial. No feasible explanation. No negotiating happened. I got no where for a lot of work.

Fast forward a few years. Another procedure needed. This time it was a CT or something. Jason had the foresight to call ahead and get a price. He had the billing code and it was an easy task. They gave him the price with no problems. We get the bill. Does it match what was quoted? Not even close. What was the problem? They used the wrong billing code. Do you think that happens often? I am sure it does! Would you know if you were billed the wrong code? If you didn’t call ahead, you would have had zero idea. Thankfully, Jason saved the code so he had a leg to stand on when he questioned the billing department. If I remember correctly, the price doubled from $400ish to $800ish. Unacceptable!

While I am anxious to have insurance, I am not so sure how affordable it will be. Will it be better than the insurance we purchased for our family a few years back? We paid a fairly high monthly amount (I believe it went up to $700+ a month before we canceled.) and it seemed like nothing came off our deductible. That left for even higher monthly out of pocket expense. Isn’t the key to health, preventative care, or at least early care? If my doctor’s appointments don’t at least come off my deductible, is there any incentive to use your family doctor and not just go to the hospital? Or wait until it is so bad that you are more expensive to care for? When I purchased the insurance, I understood it had a $1,000 deductible, $2500 family (if I remember correctly). What I didn’t understand was that none of the basics in care would go towards that deductible. Fortunately, with one child with type 1 diabetes, he qualified for Children’s Special Health Care so all of his supplies would be paid by Children’s (as a secondary) so our deductible would end up being met around October by just his supplies. Now if we could only stay healthy until October ;)

Another thing I can’t think about, the economy and what is being done to turn it around. We are self employed. We will always be self employed. We are just self employed kind of people. Our current business is in the automotive industry. At Bumper 911 we repair plastic parts on cars for dealerships and retail customers. Years ago, we only worked with dealerships. Thankfully we had the foresight to broaden our base and search out retail customers. With car dealerships not selling cars, we aren’t doing work. The “cash for clunkers” program hurt the used car industry, at least in this area. The financing industry, pulling floor plans, (floor plans are the financing programs that dealerships use to finance their inventory) has killed the rest of the remaining used car lots and some new car lots. We haven’t done a drop of dealership work since July….JULY! We have been living off retail work and selling a lot of the contents of our home.

My sister wrote about the economy and said it best when she said it all starts with manufacturing. If we can’t get manufacturing going again in this country, we have no hope. My dad has always said, “We don’t make anything in this country!” We don’t. Our economy is largely service and healthcare. We have all watched a lot of service positions head overseas, and if you haven’t noticed, a lot of healthcare is heading there too. We don’t even require our FDA approved drugs be manufactured here! We have all watched the happenings in China. Do you want your insulin manufactured in China? I don’t!

I almost can stand to think about the cure. It brings such mixed feelings. I know the cure is out there. Diabetes came into our lives January 31, 2000. At that time I was confident that there would be a cure in 10 years. As you can see, we are coming up on 10 years. I promised my son that there would be a cure before he starts driving. (Ok, maybe that was more of a promise to myself as I don’t even want to think how nervous I will be then.) But just think of the parents of 40 years ago, or 80 years ago. They probably told their children the same thing. I can’t bare to see my son living with this for the rest of his life. Technology has come so far and there are so many possible cures out there. How can I even worry that the cure won’t come for my son? I just do. I find myself fixing a meal for the family and thinking, oh my god, my son is going to have to eat gluten free for the rest of his life. Again, probably not, but it is possible. Sure he has been gluten free since June of 2005, but at times it hits me like it is a new diagnosis. The only activity I have found to relieve that feeling of helplessness is to participate in fundraising for a cure. Because of my own paranoia, I have chosen to help by raising money directly for my favorite researcher, leaving out all the middle men. Help Cure Childhood Diabetes was set up to do just that. Being part of a ground floor operation to fund a cure is exciting. It is a way to think positive about our children’s future. To feel some sense of control. Still, there are those mornings, like this morning, when I am reading over the forum at Children with Diabetes, that I just get down. That I feel those doubts. But, compared to the other things I can’t bare to think about, this is one I feel that I can spin to a positive energy.

What can I do about the other two heavy hitters? Well, I can do my best to purchase locally, to build my local economy. I can do my best to buy made in the USA products, but that is harder than the first one. How much is really made here anymore? Let your voice be heard through your purchasing power. Quit using credit and debit cards when possible. The use of these cards drives up prices (as the retailer has to cover the fees from the card companies) and puts money in the pockets of the snakes (credit card companies). Quit being a victim of the banking industry. Show your power by choosing cash. Can you imagine what would happen if everyone spent cash again?

Thanks for listening to my rant. I just get so overwhelmed thinking about this stuff. Writing about it at least gives me a small sense of power in what seems like a powerless world.

Makin' Money

So, I am always trying to find ways to make some extra money. While playing with my blog set-up the other day, I checked on my AdSense account and found that I actually had a balance of $14+ dollars. Wow! I had forgotten about it. Pleasant surprise.

So I got to thinking, could I get more revenue from my blog? Of course, it will require generating traffic, I will work on that next! :)

So I went to work. I have added some to this blog. While there are many more available, I will try to limit the product pages to ones I do use or would use. Earn revenue from your website's traffic.

So, when you visit my page, make sure you check out the advertisers... You can do this too, with your blog.

Other money making ideas...

I am weighing different ideas for making some extra money. Besides building my blog, I am considering learning how to crochet or knit. I have lots of time, why not.

I also like to make this wonderful ice cream topping called 'wet nuts'.

I would consider one of the work at home jobs, like customer service, but living in the country, I don't have DSL or cable internet, so I don't qualify.

I don't want in home daycare. First off, that brings a lot of illness and with a child with numerous health issues, that sounds like a nightmare. Second, we won't be here for long. Third, my heart wouldn't be in it. I know I wouldn't pay me to do daycare ;)

Either way, I would like to find some passive and active income that can be performed while living in an RV, on the road.

Customized Christmas Gifts

While searching around for a site to make promotional materials for HelpCureChildhoodDiabetes.org, I was reminded of this great site. You can even make personalized shoes! Check it out!

Cutting Cost

With our current economic state (and I mean our family, but could be said as a country) I find myself, racking my brain, everyday, wondering how I can cut household costs. Being a stay at home mom, I figure my contribution to the family is to save money. With my oldest son having celiac disease, I do have to be somewhat careful as to what I bring into the home. Mind you, we live a extraordinary life style so not every tip will apply to everyone, maybe it won't apply to anyone, but this is what we do. Here are some money saving tips that I will pass on to you:

1. Groceries - I did a year of The Grocery Game...maybe it was 2 years. It saves a lot of money but is a lot of work and a lot of shopping. Living a little farther out of town, I would have to do all my shopping in one trip and running store to store was just too much. Plus, I don't like to shop! Instead, this year, I have moved more towards buying in bulk. That doesn't mean Sam's Club per say. I do buy some items at Sam's. But I also do a lot of shopping at Gordon Food Service. I also try to just buy basic ingredients that can be used many different ways. For instance, if I buy rice, chicken, vegetables. I can turn those three into quite a few combinations. I can stir fry. I can do a casserole. I can do each as a separate side. I could make a soup. I could probably continue. I also like to buy dry beans. They are cheap and just take a little planning to use. I also try to make my own bread. It really isn't hard to do and again, just takes a little planning. We don't buy bottled water and rarely buy pop. I have been getting by on about $400 a month. We are here, eating in the home 3 meals a day, 7 days a week. We also try not to buy too many specialty gluten free products. We do buy a pancake/baking mix and noodles. Those are really the only two items we buy right now. We may have found a new gluten free bread to love, so that might raise so of the numbers. Oh, oh, another great buy...popcorn! Buy it is a large bag in bulk and pop it on the stove, the way we used to! Not only is it cheap, it taste so much better!!!
2. Vehicles-we only have one. Yes, one! My husband's schedule is really flexible right now so it isn't a problem. This cuts down on insurance, gas and needless driving. Unless my husband becomes a workaholic, I don't see any reason we will go back to having more than one again.
3. Clothing- As homeschoolers, we really catch a break here. We don't have back to school shopping. We only buy when it is actually needed. That means, for instance, in the winter, I don't bother buying anything but a pair of snow boots for everyone. No one is running around in shoes so why buy them? We buy pants when they need pants because they have grown out of them, etc.
4. Home heating- while we are home all day, we can't really do the "turn the heat down when we aren't home". So this year we are trying something new. During the day, I keep all the doors to rooms not in use closed. We are trying an Eden Pure heater in the main living area. So during the day I leave the furnace down to 60 degrees and just run the Eden Pure. We produce heat through our bodies, appliances, passive solar (if we are lucky to see the sun), cooking, etc. Then at night we pull the Eden Pure into our family bedroom and only heat that room at night. Again, the thermostat is still set at 60 or less overnight. Then about an hour before we get up, I will turn the thermostat back up to 70 as I can't stand to get out of bed to a cold house. The one down side to this, the toilet seat is really cold in the middle of the night. We also use thermal drapes on our windows. This helps hold the heat in at night. On a sunny day we will open the drapes on the large window in our living room as it is facing south and grab as much heat as we can. Again, we close them when the sun is gone.
5. Phones- we have a house phone. We were using it for faxes. We haven't sent a fax on it in months. We do have it at a bare minimum, only paying for basic service, no caller id, no call waiting. We don't even pay for an long distance. I spoke with someone at the phone company and she was able to put me on a little higher price per minute but there is no monthly fee. We really don't use the long distance, but we still have the option if we need to. BUT, we might be dropping the house phone...not sure yet. Our cell phones are a much bigger expense. Jason still has an old plan that allows for free incoming. I renegotiated a plan with Sprint that for $29.99 I get 200 minutes, free mobile to mobile, free nights and weekends. This allows me to communicate with my husband as much as I need to with no worries. In order to get decent internet access, we pay for a Sprint broadband card, but that is unlimited (not sure if they still offer them that way). There isn't really anyway to cut those down any farther other than to eliminate a cell or the house phone.
6. Television- while I would love to go to just digital local channels, through an antenna, Jason isn't game. His hobby is mixed martial arts (think Ultimate Fighting, aka cage fighting) and he watches a lot of programming on direct tv, so we keep it. He has cut back on the Pay Per Views. With a lot of options on the internet for tv viewing (like your favorite shows), it could be an option to drop it all together.
7. Life insurance- we are still paying our life insurance. Sure, we (the adults) don't have health insurance. But if one of us dies, (maybe from lack of health insurance, just kidding!) the rest of the family won't be destitute. We only carry term life. I have noticed a push from our agent to switch us to whole life...NO WAY!!! But, when times are tight, the life insurance still gets paid. I don't know how I slept at night without it!
8. Taxes- our last main monthly expense is this lovely little tax bill we have with the IRS. Year ago, when we had a decent income, we were left with a good sized tax bill. We have been paying monthly on it ever since. With our decrease in monthly income, that payment became a real burden. And I don't know about you, but I know what happens when you own the IRS money...they take whatever of yours they can find. So it was a simple call and they lowered my payment for the next 6 months. The good news is, by the time that 6 months is over, our bill may have been wiped out by our anticipated large federal refund this coming year. :)

So obviously, we still have some cutting that could be done. But for now, this is what is comfortable. No one wants a miserable husband so I won't pull the cable. ;)

When I get done using up all the laundry detergent I have stocked up from my grocery game days, I will give making my own a try. :)

Do you have great tips? Leave them in the comment section!

Help Cure Childhood Diabetes

Ten years ago this January 31st, my son, Westin, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile diabetes. He was two years old and we have zero type 1 diabetes in our families. I remember, after being admitted into the hospital that Monday night, all the doctors and interns coming in to ask us the same questions over and over again. (Eventually, that is what they do in a teaching hospital.) Do you have any family history? Did you see any symptoms? What led up to this? And the part I will always remember, and laugh at, is the statement I heard so many times. "Wow! He is two years old? We never see type 1 in patients so young!" At the time, I didn't know any better. Great, we were "exceptional"! Just what I wanted to hear.

The truth is, type 1 diabetes in the 4 and under is the fastest growing group to be diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. We weren't alone! I have many friends whose children were diagnosed as infants. In addition, some 90% of all cases have zero family history. In another study I read about in The Autoimmune Epidemic, 1 in 648 children and young adult under the age of 19 have type 1 diabetes.

Autoimmune diseases are on the rise at an amazing rate. One researcher that is really making progress in understanding the autoimmune disease of diabetes is Dr Denise Faustman. Her research may hold a cure for not only type 1 diabetes but also other autoimmune diseases like MS and rheumatoid arthritis. To learn more about her research, check out this new website, Help Cure Childhood Diabetes. It has a great video that explains Dr Faustman's research.

It makes sense, her research. Unfortunately, what is good for the people isn't always good for business. Funding for this kind of research would usually come from pharmaceutical companies. But this potential cure would not be a profit center. Companies, whether pharmaceutical or not, have one duty, to make the largest profit possible. They aren't people with an interest in curing diseases with a method affordable to even third world countries. They are businesses and they have certain obligations to the share holders.

The Help Cure Childhood Diabetes website was built by parents of children with type 1 diabetes. We have a great interest in seeing this disease cured. This website will help get money directly to Dr Faustman's research while cutting out the middle man, aka fundraising non profit organizations. While organizations like the ADA and the JDRF have raised remarkable amounts of money, they have expenses like salaries and advertising budgets. I want to know where my money is going and I want it all (100%) to go to the research for a cure.

Please, take a few moments and watch the video on the site mentioned above. If nothing else, it is quite educational. (Ok, you can see the homeschooler in me looking for any opportunity to learn something new!) If you usually give to charities at the end of the year, please consider this cause. We have to do this in a grass roots effort to see that it gets funded. How else will we know if it will work? Also, speard the word. :)

Nothing is more comforting than...

FOOD IN THE CUPBOARDS!!!! Our family sits in this crummy Michigan economy with a business that is auto related. With the down turn in the auto industry on top of the recession, our business isn't even recognizable from a few years ago. We have spent the year in some what of a sabbatical. Jason has done some work but mainly we have been living off of selling things around the house.

I have been really stressed out lately by the money issues. I can handle not making much money, but when I can't see the next time it is going to come in, I get un-nerved. So, after a big deposit from ebay, I went grocery shopping today. Mind you, I didn't get anything special, but we have the staples. I dropped a whopping $270 on bulk items from Sam's Club and Gordon Food Service. I know that I can make that last many weeks. That feels very good and will let me relax for a few weeks at least.

Jason found a cheap shop space in Mattawan and we are giving it another go. This time it will be more like a place to work than a full fledge business. He spent the summer working out of our garage but it wasn't very practical. We will be leaving this residence in March, so it was going to have to come at some point. If this doesn't work, we are going to be moving into our motor home. So, you would think that moving into the motor home means failure...but it doesn't. I kind of want to move into the motor home. It sounds so liberating. BUT, it would be much easier to have a successful enough business to where we could just travel more and always have a home base.

So, just in case, we are selling as much of our "stuff" as possible that we don't really need or want. Either way, it will be a lighter load when we move. Part of me just wishes I could sell it all, but that isn't feasible. I have a lot of family antiques that I just can't see parting with. But a lot of the other "stuff", it can go!

Where do I like to sell stuff? Craigslist! Ebay works for those specialty items that need a wider audience. It is just that they take such a large chunk of change. Craigslist is where the easy sales are really at. Like tonight, I sold Westin's old twin bedroom set. I listed it Sunday night and later that evening I got my first call. Craigslist is popular enough that there is plenty of traffic for some items to sell fast. Does everything sell that fast? NO! But it is free to list and it is fairly easy to relist it every month. (The listings last for 30 days unless you delete it-which I highly recommend when an item sells.)

In anticipation for the possibility of living in the 1984 motorhome that we picked up last month, I have started making some changes with the interior. When it is done, I will have to post pictures. First, the carpet is coming out. It was in good shape but it doesn't seem practical to keep clean. We ripped it out this weekend. Of course, when I say "we" I mean "Jason" ;) We will lay some laminate flooring in it's place.

I also have plans for some paint, new curtains, some extra storage, etc. The interior has great cabinets and a lot of brown. I plan to just throw in some ice blue or baby blue accents and it will modern it a bit. Kind of fun to have a "home" project...just happens to be a motor home project :)