Doing pretty well, considering.

My family is not rich. None of us has much education, and that's got a lot to do with it. Even with that deficit, though, we are doing pretty well for ourselves. We have extended family who by comparison are far more educated than we are, but unemployed. The suggestion has been made more than once that it's a matter of feeling 'too good' for a job.

Luckily, we learned our personal finance skills from our mother. Growing up we worked paper routes, kept exchange students to the point that our home was busting at the seams, and we seldom if ever ate out. Everyone contributed in some way or another for as long as I can remember. Our strength has been in our numbers.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I had this idea a few months back. My brothers and I, while employed and supporting our families, aren't doing as well as we probably could be. All of us are mentally capable, we're a lot smarter than the McPrides give us credit for., but haven't made education a priority in our lives. The idea is that it would be really cool if we all pooled our resources to take care of one family, while the dad knocked out his education really quickly. Then, on down the line. Nothing crazy. Maybe $500/mo per brother, and live very meanly. Maybe at mom's house. And just go to Mesa College and do the maximum of classes to get degrees in the shortest amount of time. Then on to SDSU since it's close and easy to get into. I don't think any of us would take more than 2 years doing the fast track classes and going Summers.

Re-Learning Piano

We got an old beat up piano from my brother David. A lot of the keys stuck and it desperately needs to be tuned, but I figured those could be taken care of and a home needs a piano. It also has writing and scratching on the the coats of paint that are on it. I'm sure I've posted about the piano before so maybe I'll just link to the old post to give you that background description.

Last night I got out the "Step by Step" books because I wanted to start teaching myself again, and they're what I'm used to. I started at about 7:30 amidst the boys needing to get their pajamas on, Andrew vying for my attention and Emmett fussing. After about 15 min I stopped and just went back to the bedtime daddy stuff. As I stood up I thought to myself in facebook third person format "Jared really needs to get a nice electric keyboard."

When I get home, there are only about 2 hours before the kids go to bed. That is spent on some or all of the following parts of the dinner ritual. Preparing, setting the table, gathering the children, eating, clearing the table, cleaning the messes the children have made.... Then after dinner getting the older boys into bed. Believe it or not that pretty much takes up the whole time I'm home before the house needs to be quiet. I have some private time to practice then, but I don't want to keep the big boys up, or wake the nursing baby.

Any good story would have an arc at this point and then somewhere a resolution toward the end....

Ha Ha, just going to stay not a good story I guess.

Messy and Stinky

I promised that I would write a little about our two exchange students.  Let me preface this post by saying that despite the drawbacks to having them in our home, the benefits make up for them.  Not only that, but I actually like both of them.  They are both very sweet girls with whom we genuinely enjoy sharing our home and our dinners.

First is Messy.  She's our little Saudi Arabian.  Messy is Muslim which is no big shocker, but the common sect of Islam in Saudi Arabia is Sunni and she is Shia.  We learned this while her father was staying with us.  One of the benefits to her of living at our house instead of somewhere else was it's proximity to the mosque.  Turns out, it's the wrong denomination.  Oops.  There are some differences stemming from both her culture and religion that we've had to adapt to.  First is the meat.  We can't just go to a regular supermarket anymore for meat.  She only eats 'halal' meats.  Basically it means that the animal has to bleed to death and someone has to invoke the name of Allah while it's dying.  If there's a complete lack of 'halal' meat, kosher is a good alternative.  This turns out to be a benefit, because we end up having a lot more vegetables at dinner.  There are just some nights where meat is too hard to come by and cook.

Now the reason I call her Messy stems from both a cultural and a religious reason.  She's required to wash five times a day, so her personal hygiene is impeccable, but when she uses the bathroom, she must stand in the middle of the floor and dump water over her head because the floor is soaked when she's finished.  Her room is a constant mess with clothes strewn all around and on the floor there are always papers and wrappers and boxes.  Also, back to the bathroom, she doesn't seem to try and put trash into the trash can.  Meg has found trash in the drawers of the sink, in the toilet ... oh and she tries to flush her 'feminine products' which has stopped up the toilet twice.  It doesn't matter much because the water on the floor is already, from what my friend Jeremy says, pooh water.  She has a gardening water pick thing that apparently isn't for her hair.  The water has been so bad in fact, that it's seeped under the door and soaked the carpet so that a water stain has formed in the hall.  Messy messy Messy.

OK now for Stinky.  This is a lot shorter and easier.  While she doesn't keep her room any cleaner, she does do fine with the share bathroom.  Or maybe she just doesn't use it.  She kind of smells.  Whereas Messy has a pleasant scent, Stinky does not.  She must not own deodorant or jut not like the feel of it, but she also showers less often than I do which is saying something.  It's not uncommon for me to go 2 days sans-shower.  And at home, it's even less than that.  I shower at work once or twice a week to save a little $$ on the water bill.  Stinky it seems, might shower twice a week total.  Maybe it's just that she can't get in with Messy hogging it all the time.  Who knows.

Let me reiterate here, that I do actually like both of them.  Stinky is a very caring friend and has been very open to our family right from the beginning.  Messy is very generous and has filled my gas tank at least 3 times, and paid for my parking ticket when I dropped her at the train station.  They both are great with the kids and very willing to play our dinner games with us (Telephone, I'm going to the moon, etc.) and we have shared many laughs with them both.

Services vs. Service

This isn't a fully congealed concept so I apologize ahead of time if the thoughts are kind of random.

Let's go!

We have an exchange student. Two actually. Messy and Stinky are their names. I'll maybe write another post later about why they've been dubbed as such.

Messy, has been with us since the end of February I think. And we took on Stinky the middle of April. Messy we thought, would be leaving us on Sat. and Stinky is scheduled to stay until Sep. Here is the conflict.

Our little French Girl that stayed with us last year, had asked around Jan. if she could come stay with us in July for a month and bring her friend. Meg and I adore her and were happy to agree to it. They'll be sharing a room since we only have 2 bedrooms available for students and only one will be available, so we thought. It turns out that Messy, will not be leaving on Sat. and that she is in fact staying until Aug. 20. So we have 0 rooms available for our French Daughter.

With all that set in place as background, here's the thought that I had. I was thinking about how our sense of community in a capitalist system are based on services rather than on service. See I really like all three of these girls. They're all very sweet, and each has their little quirks, but I wouldn't want to hurt any of their feelings ever. Sharing a home and meals together makes it feel like they are close to family. Really though, they are tenants. Our relationship wouldn't have existed if not for the service that we provide of room and board.

Mulling on this idea while driving Messy to school this morning, it sparked the idea that whole communities are built on this idea of being able to sell goods or services to each other. Even in old agrarian societies (somtimes current ones) the way that people would initially meet was "I have corn you have potatoes, I'll give you some of mine if I can have some of yours". Barter became fruit stands, became farmer's markets, became the town, spawned a need for government, and the next thing you know there's town hall meetings.

By comparison, if all things were equal and everyone has ownership of everything, and personal property is non-existant, the sense of community wouldn't depend on reciprocation at all. Service would be the norm instead of services. One of the great things about churches and to a lesser degree local community organizations, is that money is taken out of the equation. At church, no one get's paid for what they do. All service is provided out of caring for individuals and maybe sometimes from a sense of obligation, and in fact the best of them will pay money for the priviledge of being about to serve the of the group. A peculiar people indeed.

Do I? I really don't... Do I?

It occurs to me that most of the blogs that I follow are families documenting fun experiences they're having. I have spent woefully little time posting pictures of myself, or my wife and kids or even making commentary on their lives. Mostly I do that on my Facebook though, so I feel kind of justified.

Sadly this excludes a lot of folk from getting updates on how my family is doing.

The reason I think I do this is that my favorite blog is more along the same lines as this one. That person is quite a bit smarter than I am (don't get a big head Evan), and has some great thoughts on politics and life and I really enjoy his posts.

Everyone that's not Evan (I think there are four of you haha) please don't feel slighted. I do enjoy your posts too. I'm just trying to explain why it is that I post the types of things that I do.

In an effort to see how many people actually read this though, I'd like comments on a specific topic.

"What should I do when I grow up?" And by I, I actually mean me. The person writing currently. If you know where this blog is and follow it at all, then you know me personally and have some sense of the things that I'm good at. Please think about what I currently do and throw that out the window. I'd really like suggestions about what you've observed I'm good at and things that you've seen me doing when I've been happy, actually smiling.

I will not take offense to any suggestion, so feel free to write anything. The only suggestion that I will be displeased with is some form of "Only you can know what you should do for a living!" That type of answer is not what I'm looking for here.

Where's the Real story.

Arthur Dent once said, "I knew it. I always felt there was something sinister going on beneath my nose but I just couldn't place it." Only to be replied to by Slartibartfast "No that's just regular paranoia. Everyone has that."

I didn't get the quote right, but I'm betting that I'll go back and find the actual quote and insert it later if I remember it.

I, like Arthur, have a healthy sense of paranoia. Too much seems to not make sense to not have some deeper story that what's on the surface. If I was more ambitious this could definitely make me a really good (or dead) investigative journalist. But, since I'm not, coming up with conspiracy theories seems like a better use of my time.

The latest theory is that there's a certain non-story 'going around' that every journalist is 'catching' hold of. It's 'spreading' faster than a wild fire, and personally I 'wash my hands' of the whole thing. Ok that last attempt at a pun was a little weak. But while you 'rub your eyes' (no don't) and shake your head, think about it.

How many people are there in the world. A billion, give or take a few hundred million. How many people have become infected, in the last week. Less than a thousand. How many have died? About 150 I think the count is. If the statistics are to be believed, about 10,000 have died from cancer in the same time period, in the US alone. But because of the hype that is being put on this, Egyptians have started killing all their 'swine'. When the outbreak is over, they're just not going to have any bacon for a while, and have to import some more. Probably from Mexico.

I can't help but wonder what's really going on, that our attention should be on. Now that everyone knows that we should be washing our hands regularly, and not coughing in other people's faces, I say it's time that reporters go back to covering things that matter.

Oh and here's the real quote.

Arthur: All my life I've had this strange feeling that there's something big and sinister going on in the world.
Slartibartfast: No, that's perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the universe gets that.

In this economy

Goodness me. Has it really been nearly a month? Well I'll just get to it.

This is another 'rant' post so if you have tender souls or of a weak constitution, be forewarned. I'll try to keep it tame though.

I'm getting tired of the phrase "in this economy". It gets used in advertising for anything a la, "In this economy it's important to pay close attention to your finances. That's why we want you to buy this frivolous crap that we're hawking." I've heard it for cars mostly, but also for health care/insurance, various food items, phone service, television service, Internet service ... just about anything that you can pay money for, the term is being used.

My two big beefs are these. That you have to advertise that you have them for sale indicates already that it's a non-essential item. Essential items don't advertise. You never see an advertisement for tap-water, that usually just ends up on the news if it's contaminated. And while you see foods advertised, it's always the sugar-cereal, prepackaged, ready to eat or severely overpriced stuff. When was the last time you saw lettuce take center stage in an ad. Heck it's been awhile since I saw a Got Milk ad now that I think of it. The point is these are the things we need.

The other beef is this. If we didn't need them the DJIA was up over 13,000 and money flowed like potatoes over a conveyor belt, why when the line is heading toward the bottom of the chart, and money is tight do we suddenly decide that it's fiscally irresponsible not to buy a new car. Makes perfect sense right. You have no money, buy a car. In this economy you need a car payment.