Here’s the deal: Shanna — a Kansas City liberty activist — needs $400 for emergency car repairs. If she can’t get the car repaired, she can’t get to her job at Walmart (10 mile drive). If she can’t get to work, she loses her job. If she loses her job, she and her child are out on the streets. Simple ‘nuff explanation here.
Look, I don’t know Shanna. I haven’t vetted her and I don’t know her backstory (aside from what has been posted here). I have a few Facebook contacts who know her, but that’s about it. What I do know is that I also have a crappy, low paying wage slave job and if I had a costly emergency, I don’t know how I would pay for it on my own.
If you can spare anything — even a few bucks — consider making a donation to her chipin fund. I make staggeringly low wages and will be making a small donation. If I can pull some cash out of my ass, then you most likely can as well. Everyone has a few daily luxury items they can do without, and here’s someone who legit needs that money a lot more.
Posting mutual aid requests is — admittedly — a little passive-aggressive on my part because I’m relying on shaming the same libertarians who claim that “the market” and “private charity” will solve all social ills but are total tightwads when it comes to participating in private charity for someone in need. And yeah, I know that not everyone can afford to donate to every single mutual aid request. I’ve had to turn down many because of my (above mentioned) crappy, low paying wage slave job. But truthfully? I’d like to think that if it were me, people would help me out, and I guess my (sometimes misguided) optimism wins out from time to time.
Wherein I agree and add my own perspectives to George Donnelly’s “Statists are not the Enemy.” I’ve seen a ton of unnecessary libertarian wankery directed at him re: the post and the thing is that he’s right. Attacking statists (instead of attacking statISM) is ridiculous and ain’t gettin’ us anywhere. Not only does it turn people off, but it becomes too easy to make the jump from “this system sucks” to “these people suck.”
No, they don’t suck, they just have opinions that are different from ours. There’s a lot of common ground to be discovered between statists and anarchists. I’ve seen Facebook articles linked by some of my biggest bleeding heart commie Facebook friends AND some of my most hard-L libertarian Facebook friends.
Funny thing is this: they often make the same damn commentaries on the pieces. If liberals and libertarians are coming together without even knowing, think of how strong of an alliance could be built if we actually TRIED TO BUILD ONE WITH THEM.
You might be familiar with “extreme couponing,” otherwise known as the “sport” of strategic shopping and coupon use. Judging from TLC’s Extreme Couponing, it does seem to get a little hoarder-esque. The above embedded clip features a woman who bought 75 bottles of French’s mustard because the sale and coupons brought the price per bottle down to dirt cheap. Other episodes featured a family who wiped their grocery store out of Excedrin because they were getting it for around or under $1 a bottle and the couple who had dog biscuits on their list but TLC never showed a dog and the couple never mentioned stocking up for friends or family. Yeah, some of these folks take “extreme” very seriously.
Thus far, every episode features a couple or a family who creates large stockpiles of non-perishable items and frozen foods; they usually have a mini-grocery store set up in their homes. Thanks to the show, every time I dig out my coupons, my boyfriend innocently asks if we should make a stop at Depot to get me a shelving unit. (Fuckin’ smartass.)
Then I remind him that due to my coupon skills, we’ve basically gotten our last two Target trips for free. (In his face!) I don’t take it to the extreme that the folks featured on the show or on multiple blogs do, but even so, my couponing has allowed us to keep an excellent standard of living (given our finances). We don’t make out as well as most coupon users do because we try to limit our purchases of processed foods and we have a nearby Trader Joe’s where we can snag most of the traditionally higher priced items. Even so, we do still make out pretty well.
Like most avid couponers, I have a system in place. It took me a few hours to get completely organized with it and I don’t think I spend more than 2 hours per week to get everything in order. I bring my coupon organizer with me every time I go out shopping. I rely on a list and try my hardest to limit impulse buys. Every week, I clip my Sunday coupons, print off internet coupons, and log them into my coupon spreadsheet. Every shopping trip or two, I pull the receipt out of the bag and then log the receipt into that same spreadsheet; on the shopping trip tabs, I log the original price (when possible), the amount I saved with a coupon and the amount I saved from sales/special promotions (like Target’s “buy 2 or 3, get a gift card” promos).
You might think the last portion is excessive, but I can access my Google docs through my phone. (Thank Science for Android!) When I was last at BJ’s with Anarchist Boyfriend, we began to turn down the soda aisle. I told him that I would be a minute because I had to check something on my phone. I was then able to use my spreadsheet to comparison shop between Target and BJ’s. (For the record, BJ’s is only negligibly cheaper than Target for 24 oz. bottles of Diet Pepsi. IIRC, BJ’s was $16.99 for 24 24 oz. bottles compared to Target’s $4.39 for 6 24 oz. bottles; the last few times, I scored 6 packs for $3/ea and $2.75/ea.)
See? You really can use a smartphone for more than just hours of Angry Birds!
Financially, it helps us out a lot. I switched over to John Frieda foam hair color (which, for the record, is so worth the money). I had wanted to try it for awhile, but balked at the $11.99 price tag. One week, while at Target, we walked past the display and I noticed that Target was running a buy 2, get a $5 gift card promo. I also knew I had a stack of John Frieda coupons. Between Target coupons/promos and manufacturer’s coupons, I walked out with two boxes for $8.98 and a free $5 gift card. The first time I tried it, I learned that I only need one box of the John Frieda as opposed to the two boxes I needed of liquid dyes. Even though I was buying Colorsilk in the past, I still made out like a bandit! ($7 for Colorsilk vs. $4.50 for John Frieda)
This week, my newspaper ran coupons for $3 off John Frieda hairdye and $2 off any John Frieda product. I ran out on Sunday and picked up 5 more newspapers (in addition to my Sunday only delivery) in order to get more coupons. You might think that sounds insane, but I spent $8.75 and got a minimum of $25 in coupons that I will definitely use. (There’s a bunch of other awesome coupons in there that either my mom or I can use, so I will probably wind up getting closer to $100 or so back for that additional $9 investment.) Additionally, Target is running another gift card promo on John Frieda products (hopefully on the dye, but I’m not totally certain). If my hair dye is included, I’ll potentially get $18 off plus $10 in gift cards, thus basically knocking my cost from $72 down to $44 for 6 boxes of hair dye….which puts my price per box at slightly more than what I’d spend to color my hair with Colorsilk. (And if I went excessive and used all of those coupons on hair dye, I’d be knocking my price per box down to slightly above $6/ea.)
It does take discipline. If you’re still reading along, you might be thinking that the amount of work is overwhelming and I can definitely understand that. And I get that a couple coupons probably won’t rescue you from the brink of financial disaster. But you know what? I just tallied it up, and in May, we spent $505.59 at Target. Between sales, coupons, and the 5% discount for using the Target card, we saved $198.56.
Doesn’t seem like that big of a time investment now, does it?
As I mentioned a few days ago, my herb garden is back into full swing. My lavender, oregano, thyme, onion chives, tarragon, pineapple, orange, spear & chocolate mints all survived the winter and look fuckin’ awesome. (The chives and tarragon were the first ones to come back; I began seeing signs of new growth on them during a freak heatwave in February. The chocolate mint is the best surprise I got; we received it last year as a gift from Anarchist Boyfriend’s mom, but it didn’t seem to survive very well. I was planning on ditching it this year, but luckily, I completely slacked on that and the plant is now thriving.) I had to replace my basil (duh) and my rosemary (bawwww!); I also added sage and am attempting to grow dill from seed this year.
My first batch of basil wound up getting blight and the planter became infested with fungus gnats. Ick. Yesterday, I finally got the chance to scrub down the planter and replant my new basil. (I carefully threw out all the old basil plants and the soil, hosed the planter down and scrubbed it out with vinegar, so I hope I killed off any blight spores that may have been remaining.) I also swapped out the Miracle Gro moisture control soil for organic soil with better drainage and some worm castings (both purchased at my local co-op). Last year, I was loving the Miracle Gro soil; this year, after seeing that “moisture control” is code for “THIS SHIT WILL BE WATER LOGGED INTO NEXT YEAR,” I will never purchase that crap again.
Knowing what I know now, I would have lined all of my planters with gravel before filling them with soil when I set everything up last year, but I think the rosemary is the only thing that was really impacted by poor soil drainage. My quick fix was to put the rosemary in its own devoted planter and keep an eye on it this year, which seems to be working so far.
We have a Topsy Turvey that we never set up. I think we’ve missed the boat on doing that this year. I’m thinking about adding two more hanging planters to compensate for it. If I do, one of them is definitely getting some Thai chiles in it and the other will get… Who the hell knows? I know that giving in to impulse buys is not the most responsible thing in the world, but it’s how I tend to do my gardening. I have a rough plan and then keep my eyes open for seeds or plants that I’m interested in growing.
I’m way more confident and less in over my head than this time last year, which is good, because I want to have a vegetable/fruit garden once we have a big person house. I don’t want that plan to end with me sobbing on a patch of dirt and dead plant matter. heh.
Whenever I hear people saying things like “Unschooling obviously wouldn’t work for everyone, but parents should have a right to choose what’s best for their kids,” or one of the hundred other variants on that same sentiment,…
Same deal as before: Each DVD is linked directly to my listing on Amazon (everything is under “buymycollegebooks”). If you don’t see a listing or our account, then it’s already been sold. I will attempt to update this list as often as possible, but since these sales are going through Amazon, I may not keep up on it as much as I’d intended.
Conditions are listed on each Amazon listing. Most of the DVDs are either new/sealed or in excellent condition with some case wear, but please read the descriptions just to be certain.
I got a job. I’m not disclosing where it is or what it is (for privacy reasons), but I will say that it’s sort of food service, sort of retail, and not Wawa. It’s not too bad thus far. The pay sucks, but is better than what I got at my last job. Most of my coworkers are decent — and one of the most annoying ones has already washed out. It’s close to my home; it’s no more than a 30 minute public transit commute, but Anarchist Boyfriend can often give me a ride and a coworker has offered to carpool with me because he lives close by! WIN! I’m on my feet all day, but it doesn’t seem that bad because we’ve usually got a lot of stuff to do all day.
The best part is that I — once again — have a cell phone! Score! I got an LG Optimus. It wasn’t my first pick, but Sprint was only charging $19.99 with a new contract. As much as I’d love an EVO, I didn’t exactly have $200 to drop on a phone. I like it a lot already and I’m starting to get fairly quick with the whole touchpad thing.
Anarchist Boyfriend feels the need to constantly reference the WacArnolds sketch every time I come home from work. Once I get the time to add ringers to my phone, I’m going to make my coworker ringer “WACARNOLDS IS TEARING THIS FAMILY APART!”
Appropriate? Maybe not, but you ought to know by now that amusing myself is always my top priority. So there.
