Obama can throw a kajillion dollars at this economy and it won’t fix the problem.

As Suze Orman says, “What makes you think this is about money?”

 This is a problem in people’s hearts. This is a problem with how we think about money and things. This is a fundamental problem with our relationship to money, other people, our businesses, our government.

As soon as everyone takes responsibility for their part in this and changes their thinking – the economy will miraculously improve.

It won’t go back to what it was. Who wants an economy based on lies? No one. That’s what got us here in the first place.

We don’t want to  go back to being an economy based on debt. Circulating Credit is NOT the answer to America’s new economy. Circulating Credit is the bad mojo that created the current unemployment rate of over 8%. If companies are charging their employees salary and benefits they didn’t create a JOB. They created DEBT. There can be no stability in an economy based on debt. As long as we keep thinking like this – we’re in for bigger trouble.

I still have a glimmer of a hope that I’m going to turn on Larry King or CNN or my local news and hear someone – a banker, an automaker, a mortgage broker, a Republican, a George Bush, a kajillionaire businessman, an upside-down homeowner, a government official in charge of interest rates, a stock broker - talk some sense.

Here’s the Crib Notes for Talking Sense about this economy:

We screwed up. We believed we could ride the credit train forever. We thought profits were limitless. We didn’t think. We didn’t think about how our actions would effect the next generation. We didn’t care how our actions affected you. We didn’t think about the whole. Our extreme capitalism harmed our capitalist economy.  We’re sorry. Please forgive us. We take responsibility for our actions and vow to change the way we do business. We’re going to be socially responsible in our business practices from here on out.

You can not change what you do not acknowledge.

Post from: Blisstree

Obama, Why Haven’t You Fixed the Economy?

Having my Mac down is simultaneously like being lost and cut-off from part of myself and liberating – like being let off my leash.

I imagine it will be the same with my iPhone – which I don’t have yet, but. . .

I find my cell phone so stupidly lame that I don’t use most of its features. I know my experience with my future iPhone will be much more attached. I know I will love it like I love my Mac. I’m a little afraid to get it for fear I’ll be strapped to it and stop living a real tangible life. I think my husband and I are both willing to stop eating for two months to buy 2 iPhones.

Yesterday, I found myself watching Apple’s stock. I don’t own Mac’s stock, but if there’s a company I’m pulling for – it’s Apple.  When I heard Steve Jobs was sick, I had actual anxiety.

Why? Dude they’re inventing the next version of a book. It’s said to be like Kindle, but I know, know, know it’s going to be so much better. It will probably write books just for me based on my tastes and past book buying history. It will fit in my back pocket and last for a billion years. It will make me feel wonderful and excited and smart.

Be healthy Steve, keep the stock up.

Post from: Blisstree

Love Note to Apple

Today we’re going to stimulate the economy.

Car dealers are hurting, nearly bankrupt. If George Bush were still president he’d tell us to be Good Americans and go buy a car. It will help the banking, credit industry and the car industry.

Our van, our only car, died last week. DEAD. There’s no fixing it. It has 238,000 miles on it and needs a new engine, a new air conditioning system and a new electrical system.

I’ve written that having one car is not an emergency. I’ve been riding my bike around town for months. It’s fun. It’s good exercise. All that sunshine and exercise is good for the positive attitude.

Plus, seeing my kids and I on our bikes makes everyone smile. I feel like an ambassador for happiness, exercise and joy.

No car at all in rural America actually IS an emergency.

We have no money saved for a car. We were too busy bailing water out of the sinking ship that was our van and our other money suck car from the 1990s for the last 2 years. A lot of our savings – our master plan – tanked this year.

Can anyone think of better option than to buy my Dream Ride at 8-9% interest?

This 2005 Dodge Caravan is the Mac Daddy of all minivans. It’s a moving hotel as comfortable as my living room.

The leather seats heat your bootie.

The two side doors and the hatch back open and close electronically with a key clicker.

It beeps when you get too close to something behind you.

So, we’re going to do our part America. We’re going to do our part to stimulate the economy.

Post from: Blisstree

Saving the Car and Banking Industries or Being a Good American

Blog Fabulous is participating in Bloggy Giveaways by giving away the very popular Fit Girl T-shirt from The Girl Revolution.

We’re tackling this pesky childhood obesity epidemic by running a Fit Girl Series (Obese Teens on Oprah & Weight = Moral Failure) and our lifestyles and how it’s effecting our kids’ health. There will be many more aspects of the issue to explore.

I want to give you a Fit Girl shirt.

The Girl Revolution (that’s me, Tracee Sioux) has been nominated to win Best Mommy Blogger from Scholastic Parent and Child Magazine. Go to Scholastic entry page and type in your email address and www.thegirlrevolution.com website address. It would be very prestigious and exciting.

Leave a comment on this blog post saying you did so and you’re entered to win! Will ship to US Addresses.

Easy peasy!

Oh and visit other great Bloggy Giveaways, including winning a Red Goddess Box for your daughter’s first period.

Post from: Blisstree

Win Fit Girl T-Shirt

Whatever they are saying about the economy I’m not seeing the negatives.

Everywhere I look there is potential and opportunity.

There’s an Economic Women’s Revolution going on right now in the world and we’re going to see women explode onto the landscape. In large part because so much business can be done on the Internet. More and more of us are asking, Why not me? Why don’t I start that business I’ve always dreamed of?

This year, women will stop the futile wait for The Market to give us equal pay and we’ll create our own opportunity. We’ll create jobs , not apply for them.

We’ll have the backing of a pro-woman government to help assist us.

I’m a part of that. I’ve got my own business going and I expect it to really take off in 2009. I’ve laid the groundwork, crested the learning curve and I’m ready to push it into a new stratosphere.

My husband has a freelance design company that’s also really going to take off. Together our economy will be better than it’s ever been our entire married life. We’ve learned the hard lessons and sucked it up through the hard years and dedicatedly applied ourselves to become disciplined about money. We know what to do now and money is coming our way in 2009. Phew. Finally.

I’m redesigning and republishing my girl blog on Jan. 12 and I’m so excited about it.

I’m excited to be with b5media and Blog Fabulous and hope to take it and my relationship with my readers to a new level.

I’ve also found some local resources that I’m taking full advantage of. I’ve joined Toastmasters, an International public speaking club and I’m joining the Northeast Texas Writers Association. I’m getting a huge adrenaline rush from speaking in public.

This year I expect to make a real professional income consistent with my education and experience. In fact, I will accept nothing less.

My husband and I will help other couples be happily married.

We’ll be more happily married.

I will continue my organizational strategies, I’ll work 35 pounds off my body by putting in the effort and energy to care about what I eat and how much I move.

Is anyone else feeling this optimistic and enthusiastic about ‘09?

Post from: Blisstree

2009 Predictions

Last year I wrote about my resolution to get organized in a post titled Anal Retentive Compulsions in 2008.

In July I saw that people were still reading that post and took another look. Then I cleaned up and organized my office – which was still a mess – and posted the transformation in Resolutions Revisited.

If, 6 months later you realize that people are going to hold you accountable it’s a good motivation not to fail. To fail is hard on the soul – to fail in public is enough to make me clean my room and get organized like I said I wanted to in the first place.

I’m going to cultivate anal retentive organization to the point of compulsion. That way in 2009, 2010, 2011 . . . (you get the picture), I won’t ever have to think about it again.

I wrote.

Well, do I look anything like Kate Gosselin, mother of twins and sextuplets AND the most organized and sometimes anal and compulsive woman on reality television to you?

But, did I accomplish my goal?

Absolutely.

My house is pretty dang organized. It’s a little messy frequently because we have two kids. Hey I saw how the rest of America lives on Oprah’s Clean Up Your Messy House and I’ve got some relatives who have this hoarding gene going on. Compared to that I’m a dream housekeeper.

Every few months – around birthdays and Christmas and the change of seasons – I go through the toys and clothes and donate the ones we’ve outgrown.

Now that we’ve got a large enough house for the necessary storage our world is a billion times more organized. And I realize you have to keep working at it. You’re not going to be “organized” and then walk off and leave it for 10 years and have it stay that way.

Between Christmas and New Year’s is a great time to look at the messes and clutter piles and clean them up. By New Year’s Eve I’m going to sort through the 2008 photos and put them on a disk for storage and buy a photo book of the ones I enjoy best. Organized. It seems like the perfect time because no one is really going full throttle with other things during that week.

I’ve learned this great lesson this year. If I don’t take the time to organize my life – my things, my time, my email, my day, my work load, my schedule, my priorities – it will cost me unnecessary grief.

It was always the time to do the tedious and meticulous work of organizing that held me back. No one has ever lied on their resume more than I did when I copied “detail oriented” on my resume. Laughing Out Loud. I am not naturally detail oriented. Details, until my 35th year have seemed like such a waste of good time and energy when there was a big picture to think about. But, as they say God is in the details. The meaning lies in taking the time, slowing down the process, not missing it by rushing through, making life easier by putting things in their proper places.

I’m a million times more organized in my house and I’m becoming a million times more organized in my work. I’ve made sure I take time for my exercise and meditation and friendships.

In truth it is not wanting to waste money on organizational tools that has held me back so many times before. In July I realized my office was unorganized because I didn’t want to waste money on a $7 file hanger. Stupid. But, I get it now. The tools save me so much time and energy it’s not a waste. I’m learning to invest in the tools. Enter new iphones that will revolutionize my inability to follow and keep a calendar. It will be a great organizational investment.

If you trace any bad habit back far enough there is always a wrong or incorrect thought behind it.

If you change the thought you can change the habit.

My thought was: It’s a waste of time and money to get organized.

I no longer believe that’s true.

I’ve changed the thought to: It’s a waste of time and money NOT to buy and learn to use the proper tools to be organized.

In 2009 I’m going to keep up the skills and lessons I learned in 2008. I’m going to put more of these lessons into my work and my work day.

I’ll be so productive in 2009 I’ll look like an overnight success.

Tell me, did anyone else make a similar goal last year and did you stick with it?

Post from: Blisstree

2008 Resolution Revisited – The Truth

A replica of our ancestors.

I saw them in a local antique shop and I had to buy them for my parents.

They are so real looking they are like those wax dolls at Madame Tussauds. Grandpa has a pair of dentures hanging from his belt. Grandma has spectacles. The cowboy boots and hats are real, as are the clothes, bandanas and belt buckles. They came with doll stands.

I can’t explain why, but they make me happy every time I look at them.

Merry Christmas b5media and E-World. Merry Christmas.

Photo Source: Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me

Post from: Blisstree

What Did I Get For Parents Who Have Everything?

Employers report they must send jobs overseas to find an educated workforce.

This is patently inaccurate.

The truth is we have all the talent we need. Women are this country’s most underused resource. We have insight, college degrees, years of experience and yet, employers would rather go to India than give us a family-friendly workplace and equal pay?

Invite the women back with tax incentives and initiatives that reward family-friendly work environments and you will see a profoundly positive shift in every sector of this nation’s personal, private and business life.

The last thing this country needs is to replace the fired and retired CEOs who created this disastrous, short-sighted, profit-is-our-only-motive economic crash with like-minded thinkers.

Women are the resource, ingenuity and fresh thought this country needs to forge a new economy. The feminine perspective is one every Board of Trustees and Government Program needs to mine for creativity.

Hire me.

Photo Source: Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me

Post from: Blisstree

Open Cover Letter

Last July when I went to San Francisco for Blogher’08 I stopped in a tourist shop and picked up some San Francisco Sour Dough Starter. I gave my mother a package and another to a friend.

I kept a package for myself and began following directions. It said to put the starter in a warm dark place for several hours. So, I figured the oven would be great.

My husband preheated the oven for some wings. Plastic bowl melted all in my Sour Dough Starter and my foray into fancy breadmaking was foiled.

Now, it’s probably not that complicated for Marye Audet who writes Baking Delights.

But, for me it’s proven to be quite a challenge.

My good friends made wonderful bread every single day like clockwork. They gave me another starter.

I decided to get creative and added garlic and parmesan cheese to my “sponge” and pretty much killed it. Don’t add that to starter – add that to dough.

I have ruined 3 sets of starters, mainly because I did not understand the steps that involve “the sponge” and “the starter.”

Maybe this has happened to you before – where you read the directions over and over and over and every time you draw a blank. Huh?

I logged onto

All Holiday Cafe to see if Katelyn Thomas could teach me how to use the starter to make more starter and a sponge, but no. She did have a lot to say about Making Gingerbread Houses, but the kids and I already did that.

They say the 4th Starter is the Charm.

No one says that, but, practice makes perfect, right?

When my friend gave me the last starter and announced there could be no more because he was moving to Alabama I Googled Sour Dough Bread and found these great instructions by S. John Ross.

And now I’ve been giving bread away all season. It’s so easy to make two snakes and braid them into a holiday wreath or a candy cane. This would, actually make my friend Jen from Jlogged.com very proud. I even took it as a white elephant gift for my Toastmaster’s party and my Vow counselors loved it.

Making dough has also been keeping my 2 year old Zack out of trouble. He likes to roll and pound and squish and smack it.

Post from: Blisstree

Sour Dough Bread

My friend Jen from Jlogged had this totally awesome and inspired idea.

“Let’s trade clothes!” her evite says.

If you’re keeping it, but it doesn’t fit you right – give it to someone who is likely to love it.

>

So I go through my closet and drawers with this running dialogue in my head.

Love these shoes – never wear ‘em.

This jacket is great – it’s too big now.

These slacks are one size too small. Every time I look at them they make me feel I’m making no progress. It’s been a year. I’ll buy new pants when I actually get there.

I never wear these shoes.

I wore these shorts all year, they never fit me right, they make me look like I’m carrying a load in my crotch and if I don’t ditch them now I’ll wear them for a whole other year, maybe 2.

These shirts are too short waisted for me.

I paid real money for these two Gap shirts, but I don’t like them anymore.

And thus, half my wardrobe – the half I don’t wear and don’t like – ended up in a black plastic bag.

Post from: Blisstree

Inspired Clothing Exchange