For the Price of an Airline Ticket

I recently read some more ridiculous stories about the unholy escapades of the TSA.  So many of the people who comment on these stories says that they would never allow that to happen to them, but statistics, and more to the point, results, say differently.  We do what “must be done” in the airports of our nation because we are not willing to compromise our comfortable lifestyles one iota in order to stop these hirelings, who follow unconstitutional laws, from invading our persons.  It might make us late.  It might even get us detained.  We’d better just “go along.”

When this started we were outraged!  I'll never do that!  I'll never let that happen to my wife, child, grandma, etc...!  But they instituted it over a busy holiday season after everyone had already purchased their tickets home, and so, they caved in, sold their rights for the price of an airline ticket.  

We said, “How long before it is trains or buses?” and now it is trains and buses.  How long now before it is freeways?   It has begun:  The land of intrusive checkpoints.  The 4th amendment is no more.  We gave it up when we decided to subject ourselves and our children to unlawful search and seizure.   We allowed it, and they encroached a little more and a little more, until they got it all.  They know that when you will sell your personal space, your modesty, the privacy of your very body, AND THAT OF YOUR CHILD, you have nothing left that is beyond their reach.

But we allow it.  We don't want to waste the purchase price of the ticket.  We don’t want to be inconvenienced.   We don't want to be late for work or some event.  We don't want to lose an extra day's pay for the time it would take to drive.  We don't want to endure the day long trip in a car with a fussy toddler or an incontinent old person.  We don't want to cut into our vacation time.  So we sell our freedom and we sell our countrymen out in the process, all for the price of an airline ticket.

As I mentioned, they instituted this infringement on us during the busiest travel holiday of the year.  They KNEW that once people had set a vacation plan and bought a ticket that they would do whatever was told them on the day of the trip, telling themselves in their minds, “Well, it’s wrong, and I’ll oppose it later, when I have time and not so much at stake.”  They knew.  And they knew once the people allowed this violation that all their prior resolve would be gone.  They knew they could continue and advance to greater levels.  They knew that they could aggressively invade a few here and a few more there, but that the vast majority would not be “overly inconvenienced” and would therefore remain silent. 

Soon it will be all of us.  ALL will be subject to the government’s search and seizure, whenever and wherever they choose.

We have to be willing to sacrifice some of our conveniences.  I just don't fly.  They will do what they will, and I don’t want to participate in any of it.  I'll sacrifice time, a few hours on the paycheck and a little comfort, and allow extra time to take a different means of transportation.  I am by no means a frequent flyer, so that is the best solution for me.   If I choose to fly at some point, I have to be willing to stand for my rights as a free citizen and face the consequences. 

Sadly, my little piece of the pie being absent from the pie isn’t hurting the whole pie much.  It’s the frequent fliers who need to be forcing their hand.   Unfortunately, they are also the most impacted, the ones most likely to suffer consequences, and the least likely to rebel against it.  They are empowering the TSA and the powers that be to successfully violate the public at will. 

So what do we do? I don’t have a great and final answer.  My best answer is, don’t be worn down.  They are counting on Americans either getting used to it or being worn down to the point that we don’t fight it.  I'm sad to say, I think we may be to a point where it could take some heinous action on the part of TSA or some affiliate agency to cause civil unrest on a scale big enough to affect change.  It could come in a less than pleasant way.  Our culture has grown so fat and lazy that to actually have to sacrifice or fight for a cause that's not for our own personal gain has become distasteful to us.  We'll have to have something happen that will override the selfishness and laziness enough to jolt us into action.  I hate to think of what it could be,  I really do.

Just do not be worn down.   "Let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not."  Galatians 6:9  Above all, pray.  Only God can sort this out and bring leaders to the forefront.  We need Him.

(photo credit)

How can you not see it?

Brainwashing.  Look what our tax dollar funded, public indoctrination centers are doing to our precious children.

Projects Underway

I'm going to be more irregular than usual in here for a little while.  I'm starting work on a book, and I am probably going to be spending my writing time on it instead of my blog until I get used to the new pace of things.  I'll be in and out.   :)  I have an update on the lighting thing I'm going to want to do soon, and I'm chatty enough that I'm sure I'll be poking my nose in just to say howdy, but if I'm a bit farther between entries for a while, that's why.  See ya soon.

Beautiful Weather to Be Outside

We took a spontaneous little trip to our local park yesterday.  No real reason... just to blow the cobwebs out of my head, I guess.  It turned out to be such a nice time!

Spring is definitely springing here.  I didn't check the weather,  but I'd guess it was 75-ish and blue skies, light breeze.  Perfect weather!  It looked like the park folk had just recently planted the pansies.  They were pretty, and in boom, but they were still small:  6-pack sized.  :)  The daffodils and whatnot were up all over the place.  

This little marker was at the beginning of a hiking trail. We intended to follow the trail all the way around, but we decided to check out the creek, and that's as far as we made it.

I could go to a place like this and spend all day.  One day I will live in a place like this.  It was so quiet and the trees arched overhead so that we felt like we had gone into our own private little area.  I looked around later and saw that, unfortunately, there was a lot of trash laying around, so I doubt that we had discovered any wonderful place for quiet time, but at least for today it was ours.  :)

I suppose the trash could have washed in from other places.  We had a couple of heavy rains recently, and you could tell by the way things looked that it had washed through the creek bottom in big gushes and then just recently subsided.  I think this creek all but dries up in the heat of the summer, but I'm still too new here to know the habits of things.  Anyway, it was beautiful.  I was so excited to be there I didn't notice the trash, really, until we were getting ready to leave.  I  swear, I'd have cleaned some of it up if it hadn't gotten so late already.  My husband always cleans up his camp spot better than when he got to it.  I guess it's rubbed off on me so much I can't even visit a park without trying to straighten things up.  (If he were here he wouldn't let me get away with saying it's his idea.  I can't leave ANYTHING without  tidying it up.  LONG story, different blog.)

 My buddy.  He like places like this as much as I do.

Yeah, that would be me, goofing off.  I almost goofed right off the ledge!











Oop!  I got my finger in the corner of this one.  :p  I just thought it was a beautiful tree.   Things are starting to leaf out on lots of the indigenous trees, but this one was just standing stark, stretching it's old bones before the onset of summer, I guess.

I think next time I get a wild hair to take off on a trip I'll just pack a lunch and make everybody go.  They'd all say they are busy and don't want to, but they would have enjoyed it.

I'm new here, and this is a BIG state.  There are so many places around here to go!  I'm going to start hitting them on weekends, I think.

One final picture:  We went to the shooting range in Weatherford Monday.  My youngest LOVES shooting, so I am throwing in a picture of his target.  He's a good shot!

Finding room for your stuff: Part 4 - The Kitchen

I've seen it worse.

I considered long and hard about what is the hardest thing to adjust to when scaling our lives and space back as drastically as we have. It wasn't too hard of a decision, really, to narrow it down to two things.  It was a little bit harder to choose between the two finalists, but not much.  I determined the number one most difficult adjustments, as I wrote in an earlier blog, was laundry, because, really, after all this time, I haven't adjusted, and it seems it will take extra measures at some point to make it possible to live with.

The runner up, and actually not a real close second, is the kitchen.  The reason it didn't really come in first is because so much of what I do in the kitchen can be done in different ways, or can be done outdoors without constructing any additional structures or anything. It can be tricky, even difficult, but I'm not opposed to doing things just because they are tricky or difficult.  It is doable, so I'll do it.  I may make better arrangements one day, adapting and shuffling as I go, but life can go on and be enjoyable and pleasant with things the way they are.

The main problem with my kitchen is that there's very, very little counter top space.  With just my husband and myself this might be less of an issue, but with four of us, all the cooking, and cleaning of the dirty dishes and whatnot, it's a constant job to find space to do everyday things.  For example, I needed to cut up some potatoes, and I couldn't find a flat place to big enough lay the cutting board, so I let it slightly overlap the sink's edge.  Naturally it rocked back and forth.  No huge deal, but then I needed to roll dough.  Again, no sweat.  I'll just do it on the kitchen table after I move all the stuff off.  None of this sounds like a lot of trouble until you remember it's a dance I do at every meal, every day, all the time.

If I need to bake, I have to take all of my iron ware out of the oven first, because it's the storage place for my skillets and my waffle iron and one of my smaller dutch ovens.  I can stack them in the floor near the pantry and continue on about my baking business.  If I have an extra dish to prepare for a meal I'll have to cook part of it outside.  I love cooking outside,  really, but the accommodations here are such that I have to set up and take down all of my equipment every time I use it, so it's pretty inconvenient.  Like I said, inconvenience isn't a deal breaker, I'm just pointing out the issues I face living in a tiny house.  Do with it what you will.

I can't stow my loaf of bread in the pantry because it would probably get smooshed, so I typically leave it on the counter top.  The butter stays near the stove top.   The dish drying rack is behind the sink, a couple of frequently used canisters sit in available space near the drain rack, and there's a spot on the side where I keep my bills and receipts and the like.  If I move the bread, butter, two of the small canisters and the ever present cups of coffee and glasses of water, I can muster about a square foot of open space.  For reference, that's enough for a small crock pot, not enough for a standard cutting board or decent electric skillet.

The refrigerator is a real issue.  It's an R.V. model that runs on LP gas or electricity.  It's not necessarily small for an RV, but it's small compared to what I was used to. There's no space for anything extra. What I mean by extra is, let's say I get a smokin' deal on milk at the grocery store.  I  can't buy an extra because two won't fit in there unless I get rid of something else first.  I keep almond milk and  juice in there, but NOT if I plan to keep kombucha or iced tea.

Also, at least for me and my refrigerator, I can't seem to find the happy medium on temperature.  Either things are thawing in the freezer or freezing in the refrigerator.  Most things in the fridge part I can shuffle around, because it doesn't matter to me if the butter or a package of meat is partially frozen.  It is more difficult to store any fresh produce like lettuce or spinach, though, because it seems like it freezes no matter where I put it unless I can stuff it into a place on the door.

Then there's the freezer.  Frozen juice is generally not frozen solid.  We don't eat much ice cream, but if I buy it, we have to eat it all quickly because it won't stay frozen long.  The whole freezer compartment, except for the door, ices up so I have to defrost it periodically.  That's not a bad job and it insured that I use up food that may have gotten stuffed back into the back and forgotten.

Forget about freezer space.  I don't want to talk about it.  ;)

Over time I have learned that if I don't have the space I just don't keep the stuff.  That's the truth for everything in our house.  We are adjusting to that.  When I go awhile without the stuff, I realize that, really, I don't need it anyway.  It's really very liberating physically and mentally.  There's just so much less maintenance and responsibility when you have less stuff.  It frees up my time for better things.  I could do with less than I have, but I've either decided I don't want to or else I haven't decided what I want to do with it if I don't keep it here.

Not here?  Yes, I have an off-site stash.  Some of you know that we are planning on settling into our own acreage soon, and when I do I'll no doubt make accommodations for some of our things when we get there.  I have a small cargo trailer that we are using kind of like a storage.  We have some of our things in it that we can't use here, certainly can't store here, and I'm not willing to part with, knowing that we will indeed be using them later.  For instance, we have a lot of tools. books, extra bedding, lawn and garden stuff, lots of things we collected and stowed with our new property in mind, but can not possible keep with us here.  I'm sure I'll be thinning those things out once I open it back up and go through it.  I packed all of that when  I first moved into our small house, and my idea of what needed to stay and what needed to go has changed a lot since than.

If I come across any other issues that are space related I'll add a part five, but I think that these last four posts sort of cover it, at least for me.  I'm sure different people with different priorities would take issue with the small closet space or lack of any wall space for pictures or even a calendar, but you will figure out your own issues.  I'm just hoping to give people who want to get away from the "rat race" by living smaller,  a little heads up on some of the areas I found to be the most challenging.

So there you have it!  I hope it didn't sound like I was complaining.  I certainly didn't mean for it to, because I love it!  It's just different and takes some time and an open mind to adjust and settle into a new normal.  In all honesty there are times when I miss a nightstand or a place to lay my glasses.

Now THIS One's Really Crazy!

Well, here we go again...
More anti-gun hysteria leads to school lock down.

Let's make sure our children are accustomed to being locked down by authorities and used to frequent, strong police presence.  The author of this article quite correctly points out, "The more incidents like that that happen, the greater the chance that a real threat will be missed."  I still think it's the authorities that are the biggest threat.

Sharing a Wonderful Blog

If you aren't already familiar with it, I would like to introduce you to a wonderful blog.  It's called Rural Revolution.  It's the blog site of freelance writer Patrice Lewis, who has written some wonderful books including her self-sufficiency series, which I love, and The Simplicity Primer.  I haven't gotten The Simplicity Primer yet, but it was a big seller and everyone I talked to said it was her best, and sure to become the standard for books in it's genre.  If you are thinking her name seems familiar, it may be because she is also a regular contributor at WND.

I took this from her blog; it is what she says of herself:

"We do what I jokingly call the Three H’s: Homesteading, Homeschooling, and Home Business-ing.  What this means is that we are striving to grow or raise our own food on our forty-acre farm in north Idaho; we are educating our own children; and we have a home craft business that has provided our income for the past fifteen years.
Our unique lifestyle has given me the interest and capacity to write on the above subjects with some degree of confidence."

Go on over and check out her blog site.  She has the most practical way of looking at things and is truly a breath of fresh air.  Poke around a little.  Subscribe to her feed.  I'm telling you, I subscribe to so many blogs it's ridiculous, so many I can almost never read them all, but I seldom fail to read hers.  She's so warm and friendly that she feels like family.

I recommend all of her writing, but since I've been on a bit of a tear lately about the public school system, I wanted to share this particular blog post: One-Hundred Reasons.  Please, go over and read it, and feel free to pass this around to all your friends who have kids in school.  As you know, I consider the indoctrinating of our children to be the key issue, the one the media is constantly steering us away from by diverting our attention towards things that are ever so pressing, pressing, pressing!  Please, head on over.  Link to her, Facebook it, whatever you can do.  I believe time is running out.

Pop Tart Free Zone

I sure wish I had wider readership when I come across something like this.  It NEEDS to be seen.  Have I not been saying that all the news stories about the catastrophes du jour are trying to divert our attention from what's going on in the public schools?  I believe in standing up for our rights and making our voices heard, but shouldn't we be putting the ax to the root instead of constantly cutting the suckers?  Throw all the fits you want about the current push for bad legislation, but when the next generation is in a position to make changes, we are not going to like the changes they make.  We HAVE TO stop public education (read: government indoctrination) before it's too late. 

What is it this time?  Guns again.  Real guns?  Of course not.  Toy guns?  Not even.  Playing bang-bang with a stick?  Water pistols?  Bubble guns?  Pictures of guns?  Nope.  A pop tart.
http://www.examiner.com/article/7-year-old-boy-josh-welch-suspended-for-shaping-his-food-into-a-gun

Fox Baltimore released the following statement:

7-Year-Old Joshua was suspended this morning from Park Elementary School in Brooklyn Park. Joshua says he was eating a pastry during snack time and trying to shape it into a mountain, the teacher said it looked like a gun and took him to the principal's office. Joshua's parents were called, he has been suspended for two days. Joshua's father says it's ridiculous since no one was threatened or harmed by the pastry. A letter will be going home to all students of Park Elementary School this afternoon. School officials declined to comment due to privacy issues.

Puh-leeze!!  So you still don't think there's an agenda in the public school system to make our children hate and fear firearms? Can you think of any other reason that this and literally COUNTLESS other ridiculous incidents like this are occurring every day in public (government) schools?

Do you ever wonder what other subversive things they could possibly be teaching them?

(Photo Credit)