First off -- Some Demographics; We are a 'barely 40's' (I am just a couple years past 40, and my wife has yet to step over that mark)couple with 2 kids; single income with a median income of considerably less than the 60% of median income for the state we live in (Virginia)
We live in a central VA suburb with what would probably be considered pretty middle class/median income types. I am sure we couldn't really afford to live here unless we scrimped and saved like crazy.
Some things we do to save, not a full list, but to give an idea:
1 We take our own garbage to the dump (and recycle everything possible) which ends up costing us about as much for a year as we would pay for a single week of curbside pickup
2 We collect 'hot water that isn't hot yet' from Our bathtubs in a pail to use to flush our toilet with(using the yellow/mellow - brown/flush it down policy), and collect it from the kitchen sink when washing dishes to water our plants
3 We try and run our heat pump in the winter when the sun is shining down on it, and run the A/C aspect of it only when we HAVE to, and try do it only at night when it is more efficient, throw in CFL, plugging air leaks with bits of insulation where we can, shutting off unused rooms, never leaving on lights or appliances 'out of convenience, etc etc etc
4 I would guess that better than 75% of our groceries are purchased on sale
5 A special treat for us is to eat out at Subway when we get a 2 for 1 coupon in the mail
6 We buy our clothes and as much as possible at the goodwill store and garage/yard sales, we even do a modified dumpster diving -- people just simply throw out the most amazing stuff!
Simply, we pinch pennies like crazy. Some might call us cheap, I prefer the term "thrifty" -- but I guess it is just a matter of terminology I guess.
And, So, we come to our story. Last night at dinner, one of Our 11 year old daughters (my step-daughters) was telling us about a visit this past weekend with her dad and his new girlfriend:
Dad's girlfriend says that the people that attacked as on September 11th did it because of their religion
Absolutely, I think it is very likely that they could NOT carried out that action of killing themselves while killing thousands of innocent people without some level of religious conviction and zealotry (admittedly, I had to further explain some of this language)
Well, she also said that they attacked us because of our freedoms and the way we live
No -- No no no no no ... that isn't true at all. They attacked us because of the thousands of troops that we had stationed over in the middle east. It wasn't "our freedom" - they didn't attack Canada, they didn't attack Sweden. Noooo ... they didn't attack us for our freedoms.
She seemed a little confuse here, but I have to admit that it is a bit difficult to completely explain the causes behind the Sept 11th attacks to an 11 year old.
Well, she says that if we stop fighting them over there, then they are going come over here and attack us.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO .... it isn't true ... with a slight tremble of frustration in my voice
My wife and I went out for a smoke after dinner (we smoke outside of course, and I buy roll your own tobacco and tubes that works out to about 60 cents a pack). This is an example of what is so wrong with George Bush. It is one thing to have Your own set of opinions and solutions, but how can You even have a conversation when You don't even have a set of common facts to work with.
We knew that there are people that accept and incorporate this line of propaganda from the Bush Administration, but until today, it really didn't have the kind of impact on us that this did. For obvious reasons, when this propaganda starts invading our kids' minds, we really REALLY worry.
So, last night we heard also about the Clintons loaning themselves $5 Million. Later, as my wife was showering I logged on here and found about the amazing fund raising that was happenning for Obama
Reflecting back to what happenned at the dinner table, and so many other reasons that many of us have shared here, my wife said: What do You think of us donating something? OMG! Absolutely. Neither of us has ever donated money to a political campaign ever before. And we have never had a candidate that we wanted so much to win. How much? Well, I don't think we can afford the $2300, but how about we start out with $100 As an aside, this is a lot of money for us.
We decided that while it might be a little difficult for us to donate the $100, but for us, and our daughters, our country, we couldn't afford to not donate.
So with tears of hope -- we got out our Credit/Debit card and gladly made our $100 donation
As a note (nope, we didn't include the $0.01, basically I didn't know about this convention, but more importantly for me, it wasn't motivated as much by the 'netroots' as it was by our daughters)
This is our Donation Story.
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