A Day Off

My Husband asked me to do the impossible. He asked me to schedule a babysitter for a whole day so we could go out together and be spontaneous. After calling several people and despairing of finding someone available for longer than 3 hours I managed to do what he asked.

It was definitely worth the effort.

His first idea was to drive down to Sea Port village because he remembered how much fun we had on our first wedding anniversary there. I remembered it was near the airport so I gave him directions and tried to find it in my 12 year old Thomas Brothers guide. When we arrived at Harbor Drive we turned the wrong way and after we got ourselves going the correct direction we noticed the Maritime Museum. Wow, real ships just like the ones I have seen in movies and I go inside and look at them up close? Score! So we find a spot, pay the meter and go look. There are 4 ships and 2 submarines. I loved it. We went back to add more time to the meter. If you want to see the Submarine be prepared to crawl.

His next ambition was to go to the Cheesecake factory. I was confused because we had picked up lunch at Submarina (not to be confused with Subway :P) on the way down, and I thought he might want a meal there, but no, he wanted to get back to Escondido before traffic was heavy so we chose 2 slices to go and got some water because I was thirsty. NOTE: Water bottles at the Maritime Museum were $2 versus $4 at Cheesecake factory. Fortunately, they were out of water bottles and gave us cups and a refund. I did not mind one iota.

Also NOTE: Remember to think about the location of your goal before you plan your route. I did remember where the Cheesecake Factory was...eventually. As we headed towards Mission Valley Mall I remembered it was at Fashion Valley and then I had to figure out where we were on the map and pay attention to two pages at once. I told Lucas then that he really should be the Navigator. I am not a very reliable navigator!

Nevermind that we were laughing and having a grand adventure regardless. We wandered around the mall with our desserts and decided to eat the lemoncello cream torte on a bench in front of the Apple computer store. YUMMY.

We headed to the theater to see what movies were there and then to the Williams and Sonoma kitchen heaven store where I had purchased our hanging pot rack shortly after we bought our house. We drooled over expensive items like a cake dish that turns so you can decorate it more easily and asked the price of extra hangers for our pot rack. The staff is really nice and friendly even when you don't have spending money. Neither item would be frivolous in our house, but still, not necessary.

We headed north to Escondido to the movie theater. We had no idea what was playing and asked the lady at the ticket window what she would recommend and made a new discovery. Signature Theaters keeps a book with a synopsis of each movie playing in the lobby! How convenient for wanderers without special internet cell phones like us. We chose to watch Hana and had and hour free before it began. I suggested the Music Room. It is a wonderful little shop just down the street that has a lot music to browse through. Easily, we enjoyed an hour there and found 4 pieces and a book worthy to add to our collection. The owner does not take credit but we were prepared anyway. We had enough time to finish our dessert before the movie began.

The movie was rather violent, but what you can expect from a plot that is kill or be killed. I liked how they told the story and I thought the young actress did wonderful job with her character. Would I buy or rent it? Not likely, but I do not feel it was a wasted hour of time. Especially since I got to with my husband.

We returned home after the movie and I was very grateful for and satisfied with my day off. I like spontaneity.

Childish

Sometimes I feel like a grown up in disguise.

I thought when I grew up that I would be wise

It seems like I wear an “Adult” mask

I thought being older made me equal to the task

When I was young I thought I knew what growing up meant

I would be taller and smarter and do what I want

I would know what to do and have a solution

I would be wise and prepared for each situation

I try to not to worry but I feel I pretend

Like I am still playing house just like I was then

But now it is different; it is worse, in fact

I know I am faking, and it is all just an act

But the people around me are real and true

I can make mistakes and not know what to do

They will see I am not the adult I should be

The consequences will hurt not only me

I want my mother and father to say

That they are in charge and all is okay

At this time in my life when I feel most like a child

When I am meek and humble and mild

I am most prepared for advice and submission

And ready to listen to another’s decision

Is the time I have learned to turn to God

To seek His counsel and lean on His rod

In His presence I realize

I have no need of an grown up disguise

I am His child and He is my Father

To Him my problems are not a bother

He can protect and give me His care

And teach me to love and teach me to share

I learn from His example and compassion

I make myself in His kind of fashion

A true kind of grown up who knows what to say:

“When the going gets tough, the tough go to pray”

by Michelle Steimle

My New Baby

The world is beginning once again as I hold you in my arms

Your skin is soft, your eyes are blue

Your hunger cues a soft alarm

The world becomes much larger as I see it through your eyes

Your wonder, your confusion

Become my elation and surprise

The world grows more beautiful as I watch your lovely face

Your smile is fresh, your heart is pure

The world, I'm sure, is a better place

January is a great time for new beginnings. I just had my third baby in October of 2010 and in a couple of days we will celebrate the second birthday of my first daughter. I am hoping to post more often this year. I have to learn how to use this blog more effectively. I am still trying to get the basics down. The poem I wrote above could be used for a greeting card or you could just email it to a friend to congratulate them. It expresses my feelings as a new mother with each new child and I am sure that many new mothers feel this way.

I do enjoy writing poetry. I resolve this year to write more poetry and share it with you.

Edited:  10/23/13 to add photos

Breaking Out of Food Jail by Jean Antonello (book review)

Now I realize that I seem to be a little obsessed with food in my last 2 posts and here I am posting about a book that I recently read about food. Oh well. It definitely merits reading and I just happened to pick it up off my mother's kitchen table when I was visiting and it didn't even belong to her! Her friend was loaning it to her and I am eager to let her read it and hear her thoughts about it.

So far my pregnancy is progressing fine. I have gained weight of course, and it is more than I would like to gain (of course). I have been trying really hard to be good and eat healthy and not too much, but it is really hard to avoid the sugar and fat as I stated previously. So I was surprised when this book promised that you can eat to your satisfaction and live naturally thin. A lot of the principles made sense.

It focuses a lot on dispelling the notion that eating less will help you lose weight. The reason that makes sense is that our bodies are adapted to survive and if the body does not get its predetermined quota of nutrients it will (on its own--without your permission) begin survival techniques which involve storing fat. If it does not receive enough calories to store fat with it will canabalize your muscle tissue and slow down your metabolism in order to burn less calories. Then it will send messages to your brain to stock up on high calorie foods. You may ignore these messages for as long as you can, but eventually your will to starve will lose or you will die. So you give in and eat brownies, cookies, cakes, ice cream, bacon, cream cheese, and other high fat, high sugar (high calorie) foods like your stomach is a bottomless pit. The book calls it a famine/feast cycle. Some bodies are not very good at sending the signal for more food and are better at starving to death than others. Those people tend to be anorexic. Other bodies have a much stronger hunger sensation and refusal to starve and those people tend to be bulimic. I would have to be the in-between, because I don't starve myself intentionally, but I do occasionally binge on sweets or fatty foods without throwing up (except when I have morning sickness). So I end up storing most of it as fat.

This made a lot of sense to me. The cure makes a lot of sense too. If you are not eating enough nutrients then your body will tell you by sending cravings for sweets. So you should respond by eating more healthy food. How do you know that you are feeding your body the right amount? This is the most simplistic part: When you are hungry eat a healthy well-balanced meal until you are satisfied. Your body tells you when to eat and when to stop eating and that is pretty much it. It has more details than that and the book includes a list of "Real Foods" which is pretty much any normal healthy food that is high in nutrients and low in fat. But that means you can still have bread and pasta, along with your vegetables and fruits and lean meats. It still includes bacon and sausage, but recommends that they be used sparingly (more like once a month as opposed to every day) and keep the butter, mayonaise and salad dressings on the teaspoon level.

The best part about it for me is that I can do this while pregnant or not. My body is the one in charge of telling me when more nutrients are required. I don't have to calculate anything. It really makes sense when you think about the beginning of a pregnancy. You feel so sick all the time that you don't want to eat, but your body still needs food so it insists you better get some high calorie contents in there or you and your baby will starve. So my curiousity is piqued. If I had been listening better to my hunger signals before the nausea started, would I have avoided it completely? Would I have avoided eating the extra sweets and fats at the beginning if I had been eating as often as my body asked for it? Well I can't be sure for this pregnancy, but I will be better prepared for the next one! If you are someone who has tried dieting and ended up gaining back more weight when you went off your diet, I recommend this book. It just makes sense.

Post Script:  Since writing this post I have had two more pregnancies and gathered more information that supports what Jean Antonello wrote and put it into practice in my life.  I am so glad I read this book.  I have written follow-up posts about my experience so no need to re-hash it here.

The Fight against Fat Revisited

I apologize for not checking in a month later. I found out why I was suddenly craving so much fattening food and sugar in January though. I am PREGNANT! I usually don't get sick right away, instead my body decides it needs to gain 10 pounds right at the beginning. I assume it is all for the baby's benefit though. I did get more exercise before I found out I was pregnant though so it wasn't a total bust. I even found out that my back had regained a lot of strength so I guess my body was ready for a new baby even if I didn't personally think so. I found out mid February after a ear infection. Suddenly, I was getting nauseated all day. Two days later I bought a test to make sure. So I have spent this last month resting a lot more and feeling sick. I am hoping to get back into a good exercise routine once I have more strength. For now, I am just taking short walks and pulling weeds in the backyard.

Two other thoughts to add. Weaning my little girl was much harder than weaning my little boy six years ago. I finally found a substitute for me that she was willing to take. I tried a few things and finally I got the organic chocolate milk boxes from Costco and she likes it. I figured if she didn't that I would drink it, but I am glad she likes it because I now have an alternative to me. Today was the first day that she slept through the 5 am feeding and when she got up at 6:30 I took her to the table for breakfast. I am very excited.

The second thought was about morning sickness. I get really sick in the afternoon evening. With my first it wasn't so bad, my second was pretty bad, and I guessed that I had miscarried when it eased up. My third was pretty debilitating. I spent most of my days lying down because that was the only comfortable position for my body. So when my first visit with the midwife came up and she asked about my nausea, I was astonished that she recommended a medication for it. I didn't think it would do much good because half the problem was my sinus acting up, but she told me that I could take medication for that too. I tried a few different things and so far her recommendations have worked the best. So for you suffering moms to be out there, if your doctor doesn't recommend something for the morning sickness, get someone else! I still have to lie down in the evening, but my mornings and afternoons are much better now.

The Fight against Fat

I am all for being healthy. I know that the right way to eat is to have plenty of fresh fruits, vegetables, some whole grains, and go sparingly on the meats. Of course I want to get in my cute smaller clothes after pregnancy, but here it is a whole year later, and I am still stuck in my "fat" clothes. The problem I find, is that I still love sugar, flour, oil and I don't just love it a little, I love it a lot. Give me an inch and I take the yard. So what can be done. I have looked at some of the websites that tout their special secrets to get rid of the "belly fat." If it isn't the acai berry scam then it is just another book that promises the perfect way for you to eat and exercise to lose weight. That is just it, I ALREADY KNOW how to eat and exercise to lose weight! I just have to DO IT! I have to stop making lemon bars, and cheesecake brownies, but even if I stop, my husband makes them. So how do I get rid of the mentality of eating sweets? Well before when I lost weight, I was so focused on my goal and the success was so fast that it was effortless to pass up the ice cream and eat a peach instead. It was easy to eat just the right amount of carbs and meat and load up on the veggies.

I get really frustrated when I see the other moms around me and they all started their pregnancies at size 4 or 6 and ended up in size 12, and my goal is to get to size 12. I know some of them have already lost their pregnancy weight too. Usually on Sunday I have more time to think, (probably because my husband is home to help with the kids) and I usually resolve in the shower that I will make time to exercise and say no to the extra sweets. Then Monday comes, and I get started. Then Tuesday comes and I am tired, but it is my rest day so it is okay right? Then Wednesday comes, and I get too busy, so I tell my self that Friday I can make up for Wednesday. But something always comes up and Saturday just won't work, here a week has past I have one day of exercise to show for it. Forget about what I ate anyway!

This time I have made a change in my mindset. The problem I found before was that I didn't make the time for exercise equal to the gym. I would say that I wanted to exercise on a given day, but I didn't set aside time for it. If something came up, I would say that I would exercise later, and never get around to it. When I had a gym membership, someone was taking care of my child while I was working out. I had 2 hours to do cardio, weight training and get a shower. I didn't have to deal with a phone usually, so my exercise time was planned and uninterrupted. But at home, I have no set schedule. I don't have a set plan for my days, excepting drop off and pick up for school and the baby's nap time. Even her nap times are adjustable. So my goal now is to plan my exercise time like I would plan a work schedule. I will plan other things around it and only miss it for emergencies or sick days.

I will report back in a month to let you know if it is working for me.

Multi-Level-Marketing: Scam or Legitimate Business?

I have done research on Multi-Level-Marketing Businesses (MLM) also known as Direct Sales Businesses. On the one hand, it sounds like a great opportunity, a company needs to sell a product and they are willing to trust you to represent them and sell it to friends, family and neighbors and pay you a moderate fee. For a reuseble product, one that gets used up like cleaning supplies or make-up it makes sense that the people you sell to would come back for more and you could build a clientele base and earn a regular income. A simalar business model is a hairdresser or manicurest. The drawback that I have found with MLM's, and they all seem to have this in common, the focus is on selling the job instead of the product. What I mean is that you decide you like the product enough that you think you could sell it. You decide to sign up for the business and then you are told that for every person you sign up to become, not a client, but a business owner like yourself, you will recieve more money and incentives. So you think, okay I will sign up my friends, but then your friends sign up their friends, and they aren't buying the product for themselves, but to sell it to the market, except that they want to sign up more workers, and not clients. It won't take very long for all the would-be clients to become would-be sellers with no one left to buy the product for the retail price. That is called Market Saturation. Also Pyramid Scheme. So, when you get invited to your next party that is going to sell a product to you and they switch from selling the product to selling you a job, you have been warned.

Here is an example of what a real business model should look like. I started a Lemonade Stand in my front yard with my son. The goal was to keep the school kids walking by my house to stop leaving their trash in my yard and give my son an opportunity to earn some spending money. I had no idea how much money we would make until I did the math. First I created a product. I made my favorite chocolate chip cookies. We took those outside and offered the big ones for 50 cents, the medium size for 25 cents and the small for 15 cents. We got seven dollars the first day and couple requests for lemonade. The second day we made 12 dollars and got more requests for lemonade. Thus far I did not know how much I was spending to make the cookies, but I decided to find out. My tree was not in season so I got a mix from Costco for 5 dollars and the smallest cups for about 10 dollars. We sold the lemonade for 25 cents a cup and changed the price of the cookies to 25 cents (I was getting the sizes more uniform). Also I cut a few of the cookies into quarter sized pieces and my son handed out free samples. We doubled our sales and made about 10 to 20 dollars a day. Of course we were getting generous people but we also had plenty of kids walking by our stand.

Now I will tell you how I knew what our profits were. I checked the prices of all the items we were buying and figured out how much each ingredient cost individually. For a large batch of cookies I was spending about 10 dollars. I made the cookies fairly large and with the free samples, we were earning about 7 cents per a cookie sold. The lemonade on the other hand cost so much less because I was adding a mix to cold water. I was going through about 4 gallons per a day so I would freeze them overnight and let them start melting a couple hours before we set up shop. It cost about 3 cents per cup to make the lemonade so I was getting a 22 cent profit. At the end of each selling day (we would sell to the kids walking home from school and were outside for about an hour or two) I would count up the money and pay for the cookie batch and the lemonade and then we would pull out 10 percent of the profit to pay our tithing money and I gave an equal amount to my son to keep in his bank for spending on anything he wanted. The 80 percent leftover was put into a saving fund. First for a bicycle, then for spending on birthday presents and Christmas presents. In a two month period we had made 200 dollars. All told, we had a great operation.

Why couldn't I just do this every day, why not now? Well for one thing my son is in school for the full day now so I can't get him home early enough to catch the rush. Part of my plan was that we set up while the parents were walking to the elementary school so they saw us on the way, could try a free sample and decide if they wanted to spend some quarters after they picked up their children. Secondly, the set up is a box, the cookies and lemonade, two chairs, (I do not leave my child unattended!) and an umbrella in a bucket full of rocks to give us shade. It is a lot of back and forth and that bucket is very heavy. At the time I was also in my third trimester of pregnancy. Now that I have a baby it is a lot harder to find time to bake a few dozen cookies. Also, we can't have the same consistency as before. I found that selling on day one was not as lucrative as the second consecutive day. Ususally, I had many people (especially the high school kids) say that they would bring money the next day to buy, and if we were there, they kept their promise.

So in my micro-cosmic business model, we had a real product, we had a real market, with real costumers that turned into clientele. (I literally had the same people come and spend 5 dollars on cookies each day.) The profits were real. The business paid for the supplies. The labor got ten percent of the profits. Ten percent was donated to a good cause (God) and the remaining 80 percent was held back to support the laborers for big bonuses (the bike, various other presents). This is how a real home based business should work. The next summer I had other moms asking around for work for their sons. I offered to hire them to help work our business. I thought, it would be worth it to share half the profits so I could just sit in the house and make the cookies and someone else could heft that bucket of rocks for me. Unfortunately, those other moms thought they would be not earning enough or that it would take business/money away from my son. Hey 5 dollars is still better than zero, I said, I couldn't do it everyday because I was getting tired, and it was really hard to take care of the baby when she was awake and help my son sell cookies. One mom said she asked her son if he would do it and he flat out said no. Even though we were really earning money (up to 50 dollars a week) he didn't want to do it.

So my question is how, can these Multi-level Marketing businesses sell their business to other people and still make profits, when they have no clientele, just business owners? It is because the business owners are paying the company more to be a part of the company than to be customers! This is why the MLM wants their employees to sell the job and not the product. They get paid more by their employees than their consumers. If you pay attention to the success stories you hear that they make a ton of money and support their family and have a lot of incentives from the company. What they don't tell you is how to succeed to their level until after they have sold the job to you. Why? Because to succeed in an MLM you sell the job and not the product!

So far, I have noticed the same lies about any con. You can be super rich...right now...without doing anything (hardly any work). The truth is "You can be super rich, right now, by changing your perspective." Look at anyone who is suffering and in absolute poverty, no food, no clothes, no warm place to sleep, and you will feel enormously rich. You can be even wealthier, in years to come, by spending less than you earn, working hard and saving your money and staying out of debt. That is the truth. But the beginning of any sale is dissatisfaction. You need greed to make a sell. Especially a sale where the consumer gets nothing for their money.

The typical MLM begins with the same sort of lie. You can become rich selling a product for us and it doesn't take very much work because we already have a simple technique for you to sell it. Then they show you success stories which are people who got really good at selling the job to people like you and me. As skeptical as I am I really thought there were good MLM's out there. I still haven't found one. If you google scam with any popular MLM company name you will find out from the honest people like me, who tried to sell the product and not the job, that you can't make money in the business unless you sell the job. Unfortunately, it is not obvious to everyone why they shouldn't sell the job, so I will use my business model to demonstrate why this should not work.

So here is my lemonade stand. A customer approaches to buy lemonade for 25 cents. I tell them, you can buy a gallon from me and sell it to other customers from your house. I will sell you a gallon and the cups for 5 dollars and you can sell it for 25 cents just like me. He says okay and I hand him the supplies. He goes to his house next door to mine. Later he comes back with 2 friends who want to sell lemonade just like me. I sell them each another gallon and cups and they go back to their houses all on the same street. Now remember before, I said that I typically sold 4 gallons in a day. Now I have one left. Those other guys paid me 15 dollars, and I just have to sell my one gallon and direct other customers to them. Instead they each bring me 2 more people who want to set up shop on the same street. Do you see the problem yet? If we are all selling lemonade on the same street and each person just wants to buy a gallon from me, I will make a ton of money and they will make none because all the customers are becoming salespeople.

I hope this simple model has opened your eyes to the con market. I have had many arguments with these sales people. They are really persistent so don't give in. You just tell them no, you are not interested in their business. Remember the truth. Earning money is hard work. It takes time and effort. If getting a million dollars was easy everyone would have a million dollars. Also, when someone tries to sell you dissatisfaction, remember your blessings.