Last week this year's Recovery Time ended with a bang--a friend came over for dinner on Thursday--and we had each saved up a "cheat" so we could serve white chocolate martinis, Saturday night we went to the Boise Philharmonic for their "The Passion of Joan of Arc" concert, and last night some friends had us over for dinner--which quite sportingly was made without processed foods :). Today I have some invitations to answer, a few to return, and we're back into high gear.
Choosing to take a year off after losing my job at the end of September has definitely meant we have less money, but in many ways we have never been happier. In October we had several celebratory dinner parties and in November we visited several friends in New York
and New Jersey
where we attempted a Baked Alaska. We were gone for 8 days, and had I still been working, I wouldn't have felt like I could take that much time off, and we would have missed a wonderful time. And what would we have done with the money I made in that time frame? Probably spent it on processed foods because we were both busy and didn't have time to cook. :)So, what have we actually had to give up?
* Eating out except on special occasions.
* Netflix. We now exclusively use the library, which we were already using anyway and that our tax dollars already support
* Buying food we "might" use that just ends up going to waste in the refrigerator
* buying lettuce in bags, which doesn't keep as long anyway
* it will probably take us an extra year or two to save up every time we want to buy a piece of furniture
What have we gained?
* Eating out less has already improved our health. We'll see what no processed foods does
* The library has lots of groups and activities that we pay more attention to now
* We're eating better and learning more because we're cooking more
* Time to spend together, to spend with friends, and to read or pursue hobbies
* The ability to entertain more often
* A slower, more relaxed life.
I was born during the era of the women's movement and the Equal Rights Amendment campaign, so I FIRMLY believe in a woman's right to pursue a career and do everything men do, and believe me, if I was doing this because there were no other options open to me, I wouldn't be at all happy to be cooking or anything else, but I don't think we can gain things without giving up other things. I don't really believe that women working has contributed to divorce rates--I think that overlooks too many other factors--but I do wonder if Americans were more apt to socialize when both spouses weren't working, or do we have television to thank for the tendency of most people to go home and spend the evening with the TV instead of friends. Were we healthier when one person was actually in charge of food and nutrition and had the time to cook, or would 64% of Americans be overweight by now regardless. I think it's too dangerous to wonder if people were happier, because we tend to rewrite history and ignore the problems, but were we more connected? I once had some friends from India who were living here in the US for a few years, and they though America must be one of the loneliest places in the world to live because we had big houses with few people in them and rarely saw others except during work. I have always found that interesting.
So, I am off to continue coordinating our social schedule. I'm booking March and April now......:)
1 comment:
One of the things that my mind keeps coming back to is that by encouraging women to pursue a career, we have broadcast the impression that what women traditionally did was somehow second best, unimportant, or demeaning. Not only do we not have the time now to do what we did, we resent it because it is percieved as un-modern drudgery.
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