All posts by Savvy Spoonie

I am an artist, writer, jeweler, and a Spoonie. Before becoming a Spoonie I was a very busy high achieving attorney and advocate bent on saving the world. Now I'm struggle to redefine my life to fit within my reduced energy level. Some days are better than others. I have fibromyalgia, trigeminal neuralgia, and chronic daily migraine.

Use what you have…

An attempt to withdraw from knee jerk capitalist self-soothing.

They work us long, hard hours at less than generous wages so when we have free time we spend our money on things that feel like luxuries to reduce our stress, anxiety, and depression.

What we need is time together, time in nature, time creating things, and so much less stuff.

Not a popular opinion.

As a woman whose Mother has had to hire two dumpsters and two junk removal teams to dig out of my Father’s lifetime of consumerism I’m taking the lesson to heart.

This is the year I begin to use what I have in earnest. Repurposing what I can, trading what I can’t, and donating what I don’t need and what I don’t love.

I can sew a little bit by hand so instead of new things this year I’m refreshing my old things with needle, thread, and things I won’t wear anymore. YouTube and Google have all the free teachers I require .

Cardboard boxes make great storage and fabric and glue make them as pretty as any you can buy at IKEA, it’s not like the Drona boxes are made of anything else.

Handmade food wraps and wax wraps replace store bought plastic wrap and reduce waste. If you don’t want the hassle of pine resin in your wax wrap recipe rubber bands or nylon hair ties will hold these reusable items closed just as well.

I’m tired of living in a world that tells me I have to spend all my time working to afford the next brightest toy. I want to spend my time with my family, my friends, my dog, and the natural world.

For as long as we still have one.

In the heart of the “new” America

I’m at some remove, being in Colorado where the full force of Trump’s attack on our freedoms hasn’t truly begun but we’re just waiting. As the untrained, uneducated, and at times unhinged thugs he hired as his gestapo grow increasingly willing to murder American citizens in public and on camera there is a tightness in the air around us.

Don’t read the comments could be a prayer as well. If you want your soul to die read a story about a fellow citizen being murdered by a federal agent and then see the long line of mental gymnastics people will do to make it ok.

Nothing here is ok.

We are watching the death of the country we were born into and even worse, the dream of the future. Everything is being sold to the highest bidder as fast as he can get his greedy little hands on it. A wealth of environmental beauty torn apart to feed the endless hunger of a man who will never have enough.

Some of the people are fighting but others are embracing this madness. Then there are the ones who love to tell those of us who are fighting that there is no point because we reinforce the machine. What are we supposed to do? Nothing?

No, I am not doing nothing. I am not capable of doing much but when it comes time for me to be dragged to a concentration camp I will have spent the time until then fighting.

I just don’t see how people can’t see it. Then I remember, they probably can.

The fact is, if someone is still bending over backwards to make this administrations action ok then they are the bad guys. They are complicit. They want this.

The number of sirens I hear through my window every night seems to be increasing. I don’t know if that’s just a city responding to an ever increasing tension or if there’s more going on than I can see but it certainly adds to the tightly wound sensation that things are not ok here.

Thank god my Dad is no longer here to see this.

32.

I’ve made 32 sock cats and one chicken.

Seven went to Off The Bottle for sale. The rest went to neighbors who couldn’t afford gifts for their children because of the ill advised choices of 47.

The Golden Whisker Society
The Golden Whisker Society

Mom is writing a backstory for the website. I’ve created adoption certificates.

I can’t fix the government. I can’t stop the atrocities being committed by this government every day.

I can make soft, squishy cats. I can make Christmas happen for a handful of children who otherwise wouldn’t get anything.

I’m doing what I can.