Homestead Goddess

Here are my top 3 go-to resources that satisfy my desire to be an earth-loving, frugal homestead goddess.

Please note: I do not work for nor am I not paid by any of the organizations below. I rely on and am confident in the validity of the information they provide, which is why I want to share them with you.

Environmental Working Group - I use nearly all the EWG Consumer Guides to make more informed decisions about what I buy. They've researched everything from sunscreen to fruit, meat to cleaning products, and water to cosmetics.

• SkinDeep(R) Cosmetics Database is the most user-friendly in my opinion because you can just search for the products you use or would like to use by name and the products is ranked on a scale of 0-10, zero being the least hazardous to your health and 10 being the most hazardous. 
• The pesticide in produce guide and the sunscreen guide are also offered as apps, so they're pretty user-friendly, too.

Freecycle - What's cooler than finding a treasure for dirt cheap at a garage sale? Getting it for FREE! There are tons of Freecycle groups across the nation. You can join the one in your area to help reuse/repurpose items that other people no longer need or want. I've been a member of the Austin Freecycle Network for several years now, and I've seen offers for everything from fabric scraps to patio furniture, mattresses to maternity clothes, and doors to dryers. You can ask for stuff, too. I've seen requests from teen moms, nursing home caregivers, college students, teachers, and more.

The Library - Yes, I said it. I LOVE the library. Maya loves to read. She especially loves to read books over and over and over again. She consumes books like you consume air. And mommy eventually tires of reading these books. I appreciate having a due date, and Maya's happy because she gets to choose new books. We've also attended a puppet show at the Library, we use the educational computers every time we visit, and we've picked up free resources and materials to take home for arts and crafts projects.

I have plenty more resources, but these are by far my favorite. I hope you get some use out of them, too.

With love,
dawn marie

How NOT to Achieve Work-Life Balance

Let's talk about work-life balance. I am the person who knows the dictionary definition of work-life balance, who has taken professional development classes about it, read books about it, and tried to incorporate all the tricks into her daily life to achieve a perfectly harmonious existence.

When I worked for pay, I took my work home with me. I didn't know how not to.

• As an English teacher, I took home papers and journals to grade while I sat in front of the TV.
• When I worked as a marketing assistant, I went in to the office on Saturday mornings to complete reports. Reports! 
• As a public speaker, I spent hours in bed thinking about what I was going to say the next day. I couldn't even escape these thoughts in sleep because I dreamt about how it would all play out.

Now, I'm a stay-at-home mom. My life is my work. My work is my life. Right?

Work-Life Balance? Unfortunately, I cannot offer you a solution to this problem, but I can tell you what not to do.

DO NOT take coffee breaks, smoke breaks, potty breaks, or lunch breaks. If you do take a "break," be sure to take your work with you so you can continue to research whatever topic you were working on when you got up from your desk, table, chair, exercise ball, or whatever.

Sitting on the toilet? Use your phone or tablet to research new activities, discussion topics, breaking news, etc. Send emails from your laptop or mobile device.

Drinking coffee? It only takes one hand! Use the other to run a report, type an email, read an article, build something useful, etc.

Eating? Eat at your desk! Eat in your car! Eat while walking, talking, running, driving, etc. If you're sitting at a table, schedule a working meeting and order sandwiches! For crying out loud, DO NOT waste precious seconds when you could be doing something!


DO NOT take sick days. If you are ill and can still stand up, go to work. Your coworkers will not mind if you're spreading germs as long as you use tissues, signal that you don't want to talk with a cough, and spray your area with Lysol periodically.

If you are too sick to stand, but can sit upright, carpool. If necessary, stay home, but continue to work remotely. If you are too sick to stand or sit, continue to answer emails while lying in bed for as long as you are conscious.

DO NOT send your coworkers or employees emails during business hours. If a response is needed immediately, and, if they are in yelling distance, then yell. Otherwise, wait as late as you can in the evening (bonus points if it's after midnight) to send your email, and be sure to cc your boss. This will ensure that everyone knows how dedicated you are and may also improve your chances of being promoted, so you can do more work.


DO NOT succumb to chit chat unless the conversation pertains to your work in some way. Relevant discussion topics include: Your boss, your coworkers, your working conditions, news stories that relate to your work, stuff you have in common that might be beneficial to your work, the person you met at a networking event that might help you do your work better, the idea you had while laying in bed trying to sleep last night, etc.

DO NOT waste time on recreation. If you like social media, join groups that support and/or discuss your line of work. Pin pictures, links, ideas, etc. that relate to your job. Friend people on Facebook that you met at work. Add your coworkers and colleagues to your circle. Most importantly, always, always, ALWAYS, link back to your company's website and provide your email contact information.

If you get an hour of alone time in the evening, read a book/article/story/blog that can potentially increase your knowledge of your field. Better yet, blog about your work and get your friends to read it. Be sure your blog links back to your company's website.

If you are mingling at a party, be sure to say, "So, what do you do?" Immediately follow this with a discussion of how your jobs relate. If they do not relate, hand them your business card and MOVE ON!

I hope that these tips help you as much as they have helped me in my career(s). For further terrible career advice, email me, friend me on Facebook, follow me on Pinterest, connect with me on LinkedIn, etc.

Staying Home

What is it like to be a stay-at-home mom? A SAHM with an expensive degree who could be working and making a substantial financial contribution to the household?

It's a luxury. An exercise of the mind, body, and spirit. A daily challenge. A guilt complex. A joy. Fulfillment. Real, unadulterated happiness.

Being there when she discovers butterflies, fine art, and recycling. Being there when she shoves a friend and lies about it. Being there when she writes her own name at the age of three and tells me she wants to learn to write mommy's and daddy's names, too. Being there when she teaches the other girls in her dance class how to bunny hop.

Being there when she picks her boogers and eats them. (Blech!)

Being THERE.

It is also frightening and worrisome. I worry that she'll miss out on opportunities I can't provide. I worry that I'm being selfish; that I'm putting my desires ahead of the economic stability of my family and home.

I am proud to be a part of a movement that really doesn't have a name, yet. A movement of educated women who choose to stay at home with their children when they could be working and bringing home a paycheck. I'm confident that I made the right decision for my family.

The purpose of the women's rights movement, as I see it, was to gain equality. To be allowed the freedom to choose. To be free.

Just as I do not believe that women are inferior to men by nature, nor do I believe that they are their natural superiors either. Simone de Beauvoir, 1976
When one enslaves a woman, one also enslaves a man. I cannot recall who said this or to whom this quote is attributed to, I have made it my own. I believe it in my core.

True equality means that my daughter will have the chance to be or do anything she puts her mind to.

Being a SAHM means that I have the opportunity to show her all the possibilities of her life and allow her to explore them. I can encourage her, support her, guide and love her through her triumphs and her failures, big and small.

I can do the same myself. Perhaps, one day, I can do the same for a son should he ever choose to be mine.

I can be THERE.

My Greatest Fear

What does it mean to be bipolar?

 You look so normal.

 I never would have known.

 To be bipolar is to be in constant battle
Torn between two foes
Who rage a war and
Never lift a finger.
No one wins.
No one gains the upper hand.

 The enemy is not Someone or Something.
It is invisible.
It touches everything you see,
Taints all your memories,
Actions,
Interactions.

 Everything you think you know is
Called into question, thus
You question everything.

 To endlessly question.
Incapable of making a satisfactory decision.
 You are not so much caught in the middle as
Broken
 With bits and pieces of yourself on either side
Of the trenches.

 A tactical error merely means
 One or the other faction is more
Convincing At any given time.
Your mind will change and
Change again, and
You are powerless to stop it.

 The war is never over.
It only changes forms.
Weapons evolve, and
When you reach out to grasp hold
Of something solid and permanent
It either dissolves between your fingers or
Explodes and tears them off.

 At times you keep going and
Others, you sit still.

Either way, you are not moving.

You are utterly alone with all your questions.
 To look back at the years of your life,
It all seems a dream
Someone else's life.

 Bipolar is a break inside you
A crevasse you cannot fill
With earth, air, water, or fire.
Nobody else can see it.
 It's as if it did not exist.
Only the tragedy you leave behind;
The devastation of your life.

 It's an inconstant feeling of remorse,
Embarrassment,
Apologies,
Making every, "I'll never do that again" a lie.

Only you never believe it
Even when you want to.
 No one sees it till it blindsides them, so
They wash their hands and leave.

Only you can't leave
Because bipolar is you, and
You are bipolar.

You are broken
Whether or not you want to be.
Others have a choice whether or not
To allow your disease to break them.
 You do not have that luxury.

Then someone comes along and loves you, and
Someone else with a degree knows you better
Than you know yourself.
Together you make a tactical decision
To stop fighting and
Build a truce
To wave the white flag and
Take the white pills.
A few blue ones, too.
Pills that bridge the gap, and
You can finally stand up and
 Feel a little less embarrassed.
A little less apologetic.

My greatest fear is that the little
Nuggets of modern medicine
Will one day be denied to me,
My bridge will collapse, and
I will find that, in all that time,
The rift grew deeper, and
It will swallow me
Along with everyone I love.

Separate Sleep, or Insomnia

I wrap my right hand around my left thumb
Curled under the pillow.
My right foot seeks the cooler spot
On the opposite side of the bed.

I count from 1 to 100, then back again.
Then again.
And again.
As many times as it takes.

My earplugs squish and mute the noise
Beyond the midnight shelter of my bed.

My child sleeps sprawled
Next to my curled up cat.
One is only 3
The other, 13.
Neither is aware of the efforts I am making
To join them.

Sleep is the refuge of a war-torn mind and
The birthright a calm mind naturally claims.

I struggle to end the skirmish of thoughts that
Skitter around the landscape
Of my psyche.

Even in sleep, I am unconsciously conscious.
My brain continues to process
Information in slow snippets.
Images burst and fade,
Feelings contend with facts
Bombards me with potential solutions, and
Races to the start
Of a new day.

This prostrate activity is called dreaming.

My father once studied the scientific 
Nature of the sleeping, dreaming brain.
I have the sleepy, dreamy blanket as proof.
It attempts a subliminal message
With the repetition of a single word:
"Sleep,"
But I can't read with my eyes shut.
 
I remember every night of sleep
Tainted by the percussive rhythms of this 
Sequence of imaginative thoughts. 
I do not recall a time before 
My dreams.

This child, this feline -
Do they dream?
My cat snores.
My daughter kicks and starts.
Their muffled speech
Slips into
My ever-conscious mind.

Their murmuring eyes do not imitate peace;
They beckon, compel me to join
In this communal slumber.
Bodies colliding with that gentle,
Rhythmic breathing
That barely flutters the covers.

On this side of the bed, I count
Hope to miss a beat
Eager to press my head into 
This tete-a-tete
Of joyous silence.

I try not to study my surroundings
In the sunlight of my mind, but
My eyes strain in darkness, 

I know the battle is won when
I falter in my count;
My slack-jawed, jerk-and-start body
Finally folds into silence;
Slips separately upon A long and understated breath.

The images burst and fade behind closed doors -

I dream and thus
I sleep.

Breasts

There's me, and there's this other me
Who likes to think she's me, but
Isn't.

She sifts through drawers looking for a
Workout bra, but
Finds a corset instead.

A glitter blue and
Black leather thing she bought when she was thin.
It no longer fits.
The sports bra does, but
She can't find it.

She moves on to another drawer where
Lingerie lies side by side with
Nipple guards and nursing bras.

What folly.
A waste of time.
She looks for what she cannot find.
Her life.
Herself.
She is not me, but am I?

Who I think I am, that is?

As a babe, my daughter was not me, but
As she grows, she becomes
An approximation.

She bites her nails and touches her...
Well, you understand.


Does that make her me?
She's more like me or the

Person I wish to be.
Potentially.


She's heaven.
A heavenly body.
Innocent. Untouched. Tender.
Where I am tame.
Tamed by time and tragedy -
Or at least an approximation of it.

From freedom to girdles to garments

To bindings
To bending
To supplication
At the foot of Life's great door.
My cleaving
An opening to The world.

And what am I to do with her?
With myself?
Am I to be held responsible for
What I did not expect
But brought forth anyway?

My open drawer of folly.
Do I open it and keep looking?
Looking for what I cannot find?
Or, do I give up and move on?
Sift through bygone days of twenty-something stupidity?
Attempt to clothe myself in the bridal garb betrothed to me
Before I was gelded,
Slammed shut,
Sorted like
So many sets of white underpants?

I forgo the seeking -
Contain myself;
Restrain my breasts and breath.
Conserve my strength for
The next time I might use it;
Use THEM?

Why not wear
All of the above
At once?

Bind me up,
Consume, or
Set me free.

It makes little
Difference.

The weight of thoughts

What I love to do best is to think. To think and think. To lie in bed in the darkness with the fan blowing gently cool air on my face, buried beneath the covers, contemplating my purpose in this life, asking all my questions.

My questions are the same as all great thinkers and others who don't think as much but ask the same questions as all humans do.

'What is my purpose? Why am I here?'

In all my years of thinking, I still don't have an answer, but I don't really need one anymore.

My daughter is part of my answer. Though she's not all of it. She's enough. For now.

'Who am I? Why am I here?'

I am a mother. A daughter. A wife. A woman. A human being. A being. A body. A soul. Or perhaps a mind.

I think.

'Is that something only we can do?'

Humans, I mean. Think. That's what I mean.

'What is my purpose? To work?'

I worked, but it was not my purpose. My purpose in all my work was to think and speak to other humans, and, somehow, I touched their lives, and they remembered, and some of it meant something to them whether or not I knew it. And sometimes, they came back to tell me. Others did not, but that doesn't mean that it didn't mean anything to them, only, they didn't say so.

I remember things that others said to me, though I never told them. I'm telling you right now. You human that is reading this.

I remember a girl who said "never say 'I'm sorry.'" Say, "I apologize." They mean different things. Saying "I apologize" indicates that you have internalized the wrong you commited against another person, acknowledged that you were wrong, and decided to act differently in the future. Saying "I'm sorry" indicates that there is something wrong with you and that you are inherently wrong.

That's the difference between action and adjectives.

I work as a teacher, a counselor, a friend. I am not those things. They are my actions. They are what I have to offer.

I am a human being. That is what I am.

I think. That is what I do.

I write, but that is not what I am. I write for me. And also for you.

I create, but my creations are not me. Once you see them, they will mean something different to you. They become a part of the human race and will live as long as humans do. My body will die. My thoughts will not.

A man once wrote that thoughts have mass, that they exist. They are a scientific reality. They are a cause and their effect affects us all, but especially the speaker.

The girl who explained the difference between I'm sorry and I apologize probably doesn't realize the effect her words had on me. She may not even remember saying them. But they have become a part of me. Because they have mass. Because they exist, and because I do, and I will share them with my daughter that she will know she is not sorry and must apologize when she is wrong. Those thoughts will continue to exist long after I do and her, as well.