Hard Times Call for Inventive Measures-Including Black Friday

I've been some what preoccupied recently with school and other situations occurring in my household. I had a few big assignments due for class that consumed most of my free time, and that meant having to put other parts of my life aside, including my blog. I have also been without work now for a couple of months, which has been cause for worry in my household since half of the income is no longer coming in. With the upcoming holidays, lack of income has dampened our holiday plans. Needless to say, I have had to figure out ways to cut costs, yet not cut out the fun and happiness of the holidays.

One way that I saved a lot of money this year is on holiday decorations. Last year I took advantage of the after holiday sales and purchased decorating items at up to 90% off. The only Halloween items we purchased this year were costumes for both of our children. I also stored Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations purchased after the holidays. I purchased a 50 piece golden ornament set last year for $3 at Target, and also purchased golden ribbon from the 99 cents store at 25 cents per roll. I put that together with blue and clear lights and white snow flakes I have saved from previous years, and the tree looks beautiful. I also purchased a nativity set from Target at 50% off last year (in all it came out to be $30 compared to $60 regular price), and it is displayed beautifully along with our tree.

I also take advantage of baking items that go on sale after a holiday has passed. I purchased cake mixes meant for Halloween at 50 cents per box and 75 cents per frosting. I can then use them for Thanksgiving, Christmas or birthdays, (there are three of them in my household during December), and just change the color of the frosting or decorations. In total, I have saved about $50-100, which is what I figured I would have spent in decorations and baking items.

Another small change I have made is to stop using paper towels to clean and instead switched to cloth towels. A package of 10 paper towel rolls would last me about one month and cost about $13. I purchase a package of small napkins from the 99 cents store and use those for meals and small messes, but resort to cloth towels for big messes and general daily cleaning. So far I have saved about $24 dollars in the past 2 months, and if kept up for the next year I will end up saving $144.

Now in regards to Christmas presents, we usually enjoy getting presents for friends and family, but will only be getting presents for our children this year. I just had to take advantage of the Black Friday Deals at Toys R Us. I got a Dream Town Sweet Lily Castle for my daughter that retails for $99.98 at 70%. We also got her a new baby toy since the old baby has gotten very dirty. Toys R US also gave away a free Crayola 64ct box of crayons, so that was a plus stocking stuffer for the kids. I will be getting them coloring books to go along with that. My son loves Thomas the Tank Engine, and although not advertised, K-Mart had the motorized trains priced at $10.99, which usually cost $14.99. Although not a huge savings, it's a small savings nonetheless and we purchased only one train since he already has other trains and tracks. The missing piece to complete my son's Thomas collection is a train table. We bought him a used train table at $70 (original price $150), and will be repainting it. With the table being the most expensive piece, we ended up spending about $150. Although still high, it is nothing compared to what we have spent in the past (one year we spent about $700).

These are small steps I have decided to take to survive our current situation. I've figured that I don't have control over certain factors, such as the recession and job availability in the Education field (which is the field I would like to work in); but I do have control over the way I respond to my current situations. Stay tuned as I continue to figure out ways to save.

In Memory Of...

In honor of the upcoming Day of the Dead, I have written a poem that reflects upon the history of those who have made it possible for me to be here today.

This is in remembrance of those who came before us

The ones who paved the way

The ones who sacrificed

They were a hardworking people

Dedicated to their land

Loyal to their God

Devoted to their families

Our ancestors are products of Ometéotl

He formed them and brought them upon this earth

Tlaloc, Chicomecoatl, Tonatiuh, Huitzilopochtli

These were the gods that received their prayers, their hearts, their souls

This is in remembrance of those who came before us

The Spanish man who took the Indian woman in the field

And began a lineage that has lasted for more than 500 years

Had it not been for that forbidden moment

I would not exist

To those who endured a broken treaty

And were forced off their land

To a language that has been threatened for more than a century

A culture that has withstood humiliation and ridicule

Their offspring will bring them justice

Many have fled the land of Santa Anna

Escaping the corruption brought upon by greed

They have found refuge in the homeland of their ancestors

Aztlán has been summoning her children

Slowly they have answered her call

This is in remembrance of those who came before us

To the ones who gave life to our parents

To those who loved us even though blood did not unite us

Their imprint lives on in our hearts

Thus they live on!

A Child Becoming Aware of God

The following is based on my own spiritual journey. Not a complete replication of the events, but a representation of the sentiments and thoughts.


Who are you? Do you really exist? I see you everywhere. People call out your name. They claim that you love them. They call you Father. How can it be? Are you really everyone’s father? They claim that you created all things, the trees, the sky, and the universe. Wow, that’s amazing.

Where are you? Whenever people refer to you they point upwards, are you up in the clouds? Maybe further up, like the moon? NASA has not made any claims of such a sight, so my guess is that it has to be far further up than just the blackness of the universe.

Apparently your book is the best selling book of all time, are you rich? Please don’t tell me you are saving it all? Investment seems the best way to go these days. I have tried reading it, but it is very complicated, I gave up. I read the part about where you created woman from man. Couldn’t you have reworded that so as not to make women seem inferior to men? Why? Let’s just say women have suffered due to it ever since.

Why don’t you respond? People claim to speak with you all of the time, I assumed you must be quite the conversationalist. However, I am getting bored from talking to myself, so I must be off, but you have a nice day.

Hello up there. I’m sorry to bother you with this, but my mother said to ask you. I really need to pass this test, so if you could help me out a little I’d really appreciate it. Help me remember all the answers or maybe make the test super easy, or just anything else you can think of. I would be indebted to you always. Thanks a lot!

You’ll be glad to know that people walk around talking about you all of the time. However, different people have varying things to say about you. My confusion regarding you has grown. Why is it that there are so many different interpretations of you? My neighbor claims that your mother has just as much power as you do. She actually speaks to your mother, and has pictures and statues of her everywhere. Does that bother you? My other neighbor claims that it does because you are jealous and expect people to worship only you. That seems pretty selfish and arrogant don’t you think? Honestly, I don’t know who to believe, and I don’t have time to figure it out.

I don’t know if you exist, but if you do, and if you really are in control of everything, this is a very mean trick you are playing on me. Have I offended you in some way? And if you did create me, what was the intention, to bring me upon this earth to suffer? I mean, really, if this what I was brought here for, then I do not want to be here anymore. Why don’t you just do away with me? I cannot take this anymore. The claims about you are that you are good, but I have pure misery in my life. Look, I know that I have not put in much effort in getting to know you. But if you really do exist, show yourself to me? It’s obvious by now that you don’t work that way, but I demand that you present yourself to me. You have to give me something, a sign of some sort or a message that will give me an inkling of hope or faith because not only am I confused about my purpose on earth, I am also in a lot of pain, and these two sentiments do not mesh well together. I implore you, please.

Victim Mentality Gets You Nowhere

I admit that for a long time I allowed myself to feel like a victim; as if something unjust had been cast upon me. Maybe I was being punished or doomed to live a life filled with unhappiness? After the departure of my father, my mother, with her new found freedom, decided she needed to taste it to its fullest, and left me alone many a times. Now I was not completely abandoned. She always made sure to prepare a meal for me and I had more than enough clothes, and my health was always of top concern for her. The alone part refers to the emotional side of me. I desired to be loved, but in other ways. My brother had always fulfilled that part. He always took the time to talk to me about serious issues. He was the person I wanted to emulate in my life. If there was ever an opposite to the victim mentality type of person, he was it. He watched the domestic abuse in our family for six years before I came along. He endured the beatings and rejection firsthand. And yet, it seemed to have had a different affect on him than it did on me. He used to tell me "What won't kill you can only make you stronger." I did not understand at the time where he gathered such strength from. It was only until I became a mother that I understood. He had become a father at a young age, and wanted to give his child the opportunity for a better childhood than the one he had. He left to the Army about a year after our father left home, and although we wrote letters back and forth constantly, I greatly missed his company. My mother's company would have sufficed, but she did not make herself available to me. Holidays were the worst because I longed for family gatherings. A Thanksgiving Dinner or a family Christmas Present opening session where things that I used to dream about. I hated having to go back to school after winter break because the questions never failed, "How was your Holiday? What did your family do for Christmas? What did you get for Christmas?" My answer was always the same, "Nothing." I refused to accept that those instances would never occur in my household, and I remained steadfast in my longing for a family that ate dinner together and went on special outings together. However, when reality hit, and Christmas came around, I usually ended up spending it a friend's house, watching them all open their presents to each other, wishing that I had a family such as theirs.

These instances provided the opportunity for me to feel sorry about my life. Depression, was easy for me. Sleeping the majority of the day seemed like the best way to deal with my internal sadness. I was not willing to try drugs. I did not have it in me to disappoint my brother in that way, so I stayed away. However, I eventually found a way to medicate my pain, and it has turned out to be one of the most difficult battles I have had to deal with.

Not My Fault, But My Choice

I realized, throughout the years, that other people's choices were not my fault. My father's choice to worry only about himself and not his family had nothing to do with me. The one thing I had control over was my attitude. If things were bad, and i was able to keep a positive outlook on life, that would be able to get me through. the problem was, I didn't figure that out for a very long time.

My mother eventually found the courage to separate herself from my father. It was not easy for her. He used to threaten her a lot, to make her afraid of ever leaving him. My brother and I were teenagers, and unwilling to live under our father's reign of terror anymore. We continually tried to convince her to leave him.

As I grew older, I began to think of ways to distract my father away from my mother. I know that he had some sort of love for me because he would not hit me the way he would hit them. I suffered from asthma as a child, and whenever my father began arguments with my mother, I would pretend to have an asthma attack, and it seemed to cool him off. This only worked for a while. I began to act violently, taking a fork and threatening to rip up his good suits. After a while that did not work either. I remember how desperate I felt to find a solution. And one day, I took a knife, and told him that if he didn't stop, I would slash my wrist. He stopped. But the final straw for him was the day he got into a physical confrontation with my brother. My brother was now older and stronger, and I remember very vividly seeing my brother slam him down into the floor. Now that I look back, I realize that my father was a sort of bully. In the playground, a bully picks on other people because he feels he's stronger than them, until a kid finally musters up the courage to fight back, and the bully's strong facade fades. My father had been so horrible to us because no one had ever stopped him. He did as he pleased because no one ever challenged him, until that very moment when my brother said no more. After that day, my father left on his own. He moved out of our apartment, without any hesitation. It seemed like we were finally going to be happy, my mother, brother, and I. I actually looked forward to life now. However, my plans were not the same as my mother's and brother's plans.

Trying to Figure it Out

For a very long time now, I have felt like I am in a rut. I had plans, goal and dreams that I put aside to fulfill another part of my life; a family. The yearning to be a mother was very strong within me. When I finally had my first child, it was like an internal light switch had been turned on inside of me. He was the most beautiful being I had ever cast my eyes upon, and he needed me to be strong. He was born a few weeks premature, and although not life threatening, he had a lung infection when he was born, and was in the NICU (Natal Intensive Care Unit), for a week. As much as my scar from the C-section hurt, I got myself out of bed each morning to visit him at the hospital. I also didn't have any form of transportation, and did not have a lot of money, so I walked about half a mile to the hospital each morning to visit with him and also got to visit him again with my husband at night.

Although these circumstances do not seem out of the ordinary, the thing about me is that I am naturally prone to depression. It is something that I have never truly seeked professional help for, mostly due to the lack of money, but I have had enough will to discover it and try to battle it on my own. I grew up in an abusive household. My father was violent towards my mother and brother. He was absent from our home most of the time, and never really worried about making sure we had food on the table or the proper shoes and clothing for school. We were fortunate enough that our mother made sure we never went without the most basic needs. However, I always yearned for the love and protection that a father could offer a family, and having received mostly rejection and what seemed like hate at time from my father, damaged me for a very long time.

It is no surprise that I grew up a very quiet and shy girl with a very low self-esteem. If it had not been for my brother's support, I might have turned out far worse, but he tried to help me in whatever way he could. He would take me outside and play sports with me, and even though I had no desire to play any kind of sport, I did it because I wanted to spend time with him.

My mother was a very traditional. Born in Zacatecas Mexico, she had been raised to remain next to the man you marry, no matter how he treated you. She was very young when she married my father, at the innocent age of 16, she met him at a town carnival. Since he had been to the U.S. and back, she thought that he must must have been a great man. He promised her the world, and she believed him. So, after having only known him for a week, she ran away with him. It was custom for a man to ask a father for his daughter's hand in marriage, but he had convinced her not to, and she left with him. Her father was heartbroken. He offered her to come back home as if nothing had happened, but to please not get married, but she refused, and so they were married. During the celebration, rather than spend his time next to his new bride, he spent it talking with another woman. A lover of his perhaps? My guess is that it probably was. Yet, my mother, so innocent and naive, did not think anything of it.

That was the type of man that I grew up with as my father. Many times he came home with bites on his neck, the type that have to be sucked on; and I knew they were not from my mother. Some nights he came home drunk and insisted that she get up and serve him food. He never asked nicely, he always did it violently, and she always got up to warm him a meal.

I watched my father beat my mother to the point where she was bleeding; I watched him beat my brother with a bat; I watched him drive off with another woman. These are the memories I have of him, and the consequences have haunted me throughout my life.