Real life frugal living!

"Use it up,

Wear it out,

Make it do,

or do without."

This gorgeous vintage Dodge is still good enough for Mr. Broome to haul leaves and
 branches every day of the year. Runs great.

     It's funny how disposable so many things were in our city life. Phoenix has a population pushing 7 million, and that population brings with it lots of amenities. We were a 20 minute drive from Broadway shows, major league baseball, science museums, zoos, world class golf, ice skating, indoor and outdoor water parks, tantalizing restaurants, and all the shopping we could ever want. I personally never thought twice about losing a shoe, or inadvertently breaking a dinner plate. It was no big deal to run to the skate shop for repairs to Mason's longboard, or the bike shop for new tires on the mountain bikes. School shopping was easy, sitting in the dressing room sipping my Jamba Juice while the Nordstrom sales ladies fetched sizes and colors and whisked the too long skinny jeans off for alterations. And with a Target on every corner, we never wanted for Burt's Bees lotions or furniture polish or batteries. Running out, wearing out, breaking down, getting lost were very inconsequential happenings.

     Not so in a small town. The rest of America cannot even imagine how hard it is to get little things like shoes or lawnmowers or (sorry to keep beating a dead chicken in every article) organic free range eggs. Our little town is hours away from Sam's Clubs and malls. What we do have is so limited that I recently ran into a friend who was wearing a dress that I had tried on from the clearance rack at the Stage store that afternoon. I knew exactly where it was from, and so did anyone else in town who wore my size and had a penchant for yellow. You know you're backwoods when the Duck Dynasty guys seem "big city" to you. Monroe has a mall and Five Guys burgers. Willie and those guys can buy new bandanas any day of the week without spending hours on Amazon.com.

     Replacing anything in our small town takes a lot more effort, and I've seen a wonderful shift in the attitudes of my family as a result. I used to nag at my kids for treating EVERYTHING like it was replaceable, like money grew on trees and nothing had real value. But I see now that it wasn't their fault. Everything WAS easily replaceable. Now I love to see how my little Mr. Brodes hoards his Trader Joe's snacks, knowing that he has to sit in the car for 6 hours to buy more in Dallas when those are gone. And how my girls find new ways to mix and match and accessorize the school outfits we bought so many months ago, knowing that Nordstrom and TJ Maxx and Tilly's  and Target are unreachable from here. We all reuse and recycle and upcycle everything now. 

    It makes me wonder if it's really healthy for anyone to be raised in a big city like that where there's no need anymore to squeeze that last little blob of organic toothpaste from the bottom of the tube. It doesn't seem like a perfect way to raise kids. It sort of numbs your natural instinct toward frugality and robs one of appreciation for what they have. I'm glad my girls rush home from school and head outside to find the neighbors for an afternoon on the trampoline instead of hunting for new shoes at the mall.  The simple life wins this battle for sure.

     

A treasured collection of toy planes.

Small town Camden survives a huge storm

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am NOT a local, nor am I from anywhere around here. I'm an outsider from the other side of America, staying for a couple years in this lovely little spot of the country. My family is new to the South, new to storms and small towns. This is my outsider perspective from my first-hand experience.

Camden, Arkansas is one of those towns that sometimes struggles to keep going. The proportion of middle-class incomes to poverty is sadly skewed and too many people are barely holding on. It's a little town full of the sweetest, most honest and humble people in the country, but too many of them have worry lines from the corners of their eyes to the tips of their toes. Holding on, raising kids, looking for work, struggling for good health and trusting Jesus to make all the ends meet.

    So Thursday night was a punch in the gut for our little town. I couldn't sleep at all, mostly because I had subscribed to FIVE, yes five separate storm alerts, and the iphone under my pillow kept buzz buzz buzz buzz buzzing to flash me FIVE individual tornado warnings and watches and thunderstorm upgrades. I've never heard nor do I have words to describe the air-sucking, mountain-shattering ungodly winds that pushed and bullied our helpless house and the miles of black forest outside. Around midnight the frenzy paused, then a pile of papers was catapulted from the headboard inside our air-tight room with all the windows closed. Paper flying across the room without a visible cause. I wrapped up in my husband's grandma's hand-stitched quilts while God commenced with His version of the Grand Finale at the Fourth of July fireworks show. Lightning crackled and sizzled across the whole horizon followed by thunder on the decibel level of a nuclear blast, inverted geisers of water drowning the ground, and above it all the tops of massive oaks and phone lines flipping through the neighborhood like terrible tumbleweeds. We don't have a shelter, and I'm trained in rattlesnake safety but unfamiliar with tornado warning protocol. In hindsight I should've stuffed the kids under mattresses in the hallway, but Jason assured me that everything was fine. 

     And so he thought until he went out for his Friday morning walk and found the world torn apart in our poor little town. Now the community who barely keeps up has been working to get back the power, and mend the windows and doors and roofs of our homes and schools. Camden was blessed to have very little injury considering the destruction. This was a tiny storm on the scale of storms, but a huge hole in the wall of a home you could barely afford is, well, HUGE to the family that had nothing extra to begin with. God bless our little town as they rebuild and help neighbors rebuild, all with smiles and faith and a humble can-do attitude.

Laci's shirt says "Got Hope?" She sure does after TWO big oak trees hit her house right over her bedroom after midnight. She walked out unscathed.

The house is under there somewhere

Laci's tree

Standing in a yard full of trees, his mind is really on Lockhead Martin and his young family who survived wi

Brynna in front of a giant root-ball

Where's the roof?

Oh, it blew across the highway

Camden Fairview HIgh School

Camden Fairview High School Principal Burton talks about optimistic plans to repair and rebuild

The backside of Cardinal Stadium

Every yard has at least 6 people working together, friends and neighbors helping each other

Hundreds of workers labor in dangerous and cold circumstances to give the town power and to
clean up all the debris.

Twisted boat

No power, no problem. Thank heaven for Chelle's catering truck
so we could have tummies full of catfish.

Still smiling after a long day of work. 

Dear hunting club husbands: the Wife Union has voted for a Strike!

We demand an attitude adjustment, boys!

We went to dinner  all week
with Jason looking like this.

Even Mr. Brodes has turned primal on me!

Jason killed 3 deer in the first two days this week.  

Dear Men of Arkansas,

It's been a long first week of gun hunting season. We've put up with the 4am alarm clock, unkempt facial hair, giant bottles of Scent Buster shampoo falling on our toes in the shower, bloody piles of towels in the hallway, antlers drying on the fence, muddy floor mats, nonstop episodes of "Bow Madness" clogging up the DVR, bullets, camo, smashed pop cans, and the odor of dirt and pheromones. While we love the freezers full of venison and all the jerky, we have one request: please clean up after yourselves. You may have gone all "Fred Flinstone and Barney Rubble" for the week, but we are not Wilma and Betty. We are more Jane Jetson and unless you plan on bringing in Rosie the robot maid to scrub the muck and pheromones out of the bathtub and load your dishes into the dishwasher, you might want to do it yourselves. If you chose to continue to be  cavemen INSIDE the house, we will have no choice but to devolve too. And trust us, nobody wants an Ice Age wife.

     

This is what you're used to. This is me with no dishes in the sink
thinking  about how much I love you, babe.

Me on strike. See that nutty look in my eyes? Don't make me go there.

Sometimes it's ok to quit.

Last summer our spunky 12-year-old almost lost her life to the desert heat. Worst experience our family has ever survived for obvious reasons, and in fact it's hard to think about even long enough to type this post. I'm sure I still need therapy. We were blessed with strangers who kept her cells alive with their skilled knowledge of CPR, paramedics who acted quickly, and the hand of God touching her little body with the breath of life. Jason and I spent a week in the ICU while sweet Brynna fought for life after being cooked in the hot sand under the scorching July sun, lost on a bike that she was supposedly riding up to the next cul-de-sac. 

   

 Here's the link to her story if you want to be depressed with me: 

http://www.azfamily.com/news/local/Girl-almost-dies-of-heat-stroke-on-hottest-day-of-the-year-162826986.html

    I was so overwhelmingly happy that she was alive! And that's how I got swindled into buying kittens. One day her tiny voice quiveringly asked from the hospital bed, "Mommy, if I'm ok and don't die, can I have two kittens when I get home?" She was so tiny, so frail, a sunburned jumble of skinny legs and arms sprinkled with golden freckles and topped with a messy blonde bun, a tangle of IV's and monitors cocooning her. 

    I know that lots of people love cats, and I love to visit their cats. But I had childhood asthma and can't breathe within a mile of a cat, and I was preparing for surgery too and had a long road ahead of me that Fall. But, oh the cute freckles, and the heart monitors! Who could say no?

"Princess Buttercup."

    Thus we bought two kittens from an animal adoption agency a few weeks later. They were so sweet, so fluffy, so huggable. Kittens really are delightful...when you aren't on narcotics recovering from a month of hospitalization while raising 4 kids in a new house with white carpet and a litter box that must have been doused in kitten repellant, a lot of it. My life came to be literally ruled by walking fluff balls full of pee (and poo). (and barf). I would wait for my painkillers to kick in in the mornings so I could drag myself into the living room and see how many piles of kitty compost there were. It was hard to bend over because of my fresh abdominal scars, so I would grab a bucket and my cleaning supplies, snap on rubber gloves, press my back against the wall and slide down to the floor. I would scrub and cry and sometimes even say borderline bad words in my head, and think to myself that those kitties were the straw that was breaking the camel's back. But Brynna loved them! She always wanted kitties! We had pledged to the animal adoption people that we would love and support their sweet kittens for life, and I believe in commitment, and we are a responsible family and it wouldn't be a good example of endurance or dedication if I drove them back to the shelter after a few short weeks. Have you ever read a book entitled "Just Quit"? No, of course not. Neither have I.

     But may I be the first to tell you that sometimes it's ok to quit. We take on so many extra responsibilities, and there's no reason to let them to negate our happiness. Those cute kitties were two things too many in my life, and I had to recognize that I had done my best and it was time to STOP. They sold on Craigslist the minute I posted these fluffy pictures. I did have a mini panic attack when my husband told me later that the couple who came to get them looked like COLLEGE KIDS driving a ratty sedan who said they didn't know what probiotics were or where to buy organic kitty food or raw goat milk, but they showed great excitement about the cuteness of Brynna's soon to be ex-kittens. I never regretted that bold decision to sell the kitties. Life looked better the next day. Be brave enough to know when to quit. 

Brynna got to keep the money and a month's worth of memories.

Person of the Week: Lieutenant Commander Warren W. Broome USN.

Mr. Broome taking a rare break under the trees.

This summer I became aware of an inspiration right in our own backyard as we drove out to Wal-Mart one morning. Back under the oaks and hickories a few houses down in our neighborhood sat a beautiful old Dodge, so perfectly aged and worn in all the right spots that it could've been in a retro poster. The back end was full to the brim with branches and debris, and off in the distance a tall sinewy man bent over a thorny row of Beauty Berry bushes with a long-handled axe, hacking forcibly at their thick wooden roots. The man looked to be at least 70 years old yet worked with the grace and strength of teenager. He himself was perfectly worn in all the right spots just like his Dodge, with neatly trimmed white hair peaking beneath his sun bleached Red Cross baseball cap, bright gleaming eyes set atop strong and surprisingly unwrinkled cheek bones, and an outfit that hasn't been seen in stores in maybe two decades comprised of denim overalls, a plaid shirt, and softly rugged work boots. I had to know who he was, so my next morning jog was down the road in his direction for an introduction. 

     And that is how I came to have the delight of spending a few hours a week leaning against a tree in the forest while Brody throws sticks and I learn the wisdom of the world from a 91 year old (yes I was off by 20 years!) Southern gentleman. Lieutenant Commander Warren W. Broome USN is a true inspiration and embodies the magnificent spirit of our great American Veterans.

     Mr. Broome was born in January of 1922 in Akin County, South Carolina. His father, James Manford Broome, was the local postmaster and ran the only grocery store for miles around, and at age 48 or so had decided he wanted a family. Word spread, and a lovely candidate named Nina Brinson of German descent came to town to be courted, and it all went well I presume because they wed and lived happily together for many years. At the time of his birth, Mr. Broome's home town of Brown's Hill was little more than a railroad stop for the  C & SC Railroad. The Charleston and South Carolina passenger train would start in Augusta, Georgia in the morning, run the route out to somewhere in South Carolina, then return. You could get out in front of the passenger train in Brown's Hill and flag the engineer, who would stop the train for you to hop on. Mr. Broome was really destined to be a railroad man, but the military took him in another direction. 

     His family home was eventually bought by a man named Mr. Starr whom nobody liked because he was just a "d*mned rich Yankee" from the North (I always giggle when Mr. Broome talks about Yankees because I am one). When Mr. Starr died he willed the whole enormous property to the Audubon Society. The year they married, somewhere around 1920,  James Broome built his wife a little chicken coop on their property so she could keep a small flock for eggs. It was built from such good lumber materials that "that sucker is still there today", according to Mr. Broome. It's in disrepair, but it's still recognizable. If you ever find yourself off of State Hwy 28 in South Carolina, stop at the Beach Island Historic Society Gift Shop which Mr. Broome generously funded and you can see the big Lieutenant Commander Warren W. Broome sign and ask if they can show you to a hundred year old henhouse. 

     Mr. Broome served in three wars: WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. He joined the Navy as an Apprentice Seaman, with only an eighth grade education, and retired 30 years later as a Lieutenant Commander. That's quite a jump! Every time he had shore duty, he enrolled in night classes, doing two years at the University of Hawaii among others. He attributes his diligent pursuit of education as the reason for his advancement to an officer, although I might add that his rock solid and unwavering disposition likely had a lot to do with it as well.  

     During one of the major battles of Guandalcanal during WWII, Mr. Broome was on a destroyer named the USS Fletcher DD445. They were engaged with the Japanese Fleet who had battleships, cruisers, and other vessels. Our small American fleet of 13 ships went down between two columns of Japanese ships on the night of Friday, November 13, 1942 for a truly awful fight. Five of our ships were sunk, the rest were hit, but the USS Fletcher, the 13th ship in the line-up, left unscathed. The ship directly in front of them literally disintigrated directly in their path under a Japanese blast, but Mr. Broome's lucky ship was the lone survivor. And that is why 13 is Mr. Broome's lucky number to this day, for good reason. 

    On another night, the fantail of the USS Northhampton was hit and the whole ship sank dramatically. Sailors were jumping overboard into the sea, and Mr. Broome had orders to take his ship and rescue as many as he could. They pulled 600 sailors from the sea that night. He says they lost a few, but rescued a lot. I wondered as he told me this story how many of us alive today have Lieutenant Commander Warren W. Broome to thank for saving our own grandfathers or uncles during those brutal long-ago battles. He certainly contributed, with all the brave veterans of WWII, to turning the tide for the Allies and winning an impossible war. The world would look much different today without the iron-willed likes of Mr. Broome.

    Mr. Broome finally retired from his several careers in 1976 and followed his second wife to my new little neighborhood under the oaks in Arkansas. He's the busiest man I know, keeping to his "ship's daily plan" with precision. I cannot believe how many times in a week he fills and empties the back of that Dodge, grooming the acres of woodland that he owns with tenderness and satisfaction. He aims to be the oldest living veteran of WWII. I'm not sure how long he'll have to live to accomplish that, but he's on the right track. My little Brody knows that rain or shine, whenever we see that old Dodge out under the trees, "Broome" as Brody calls him isn't very far away. "What the heck is Broome doing today?" Brody will ask, hoping I'll load him into the jogging stroller to investigate firsthand, really hoping that it's Bonfire Day when half the sticks and pine needles in the neighborhood go up in dancing flames on Mr. Broome's towering ash heap. I hope so too, so I can sit at a bonfire and hear stories of America's greatness from a stalwart hero. What a life!

Proof of his industriousness in the bed of an old Dodge.

Digging up those pesky Beauty Berry bushes by the dozen.