Simple living is what it's all about

When people come visit me, one of the things they comment on is how much they like the lifestyle and habits they pick up while they're here. Sometimes it takes a trip away from home to give you the courage to do something drastic with your life, like lose weight, or clean up your financial messes so that you can travel abroad more often. For me, moving to Trieste meant new beginnings as far as family (I met Sweetie, moved to Trieste and married him all in 8 months, 8 years ago) and finances. I was happy to downsize my everything, get out of debt (got rid of my car, paid off car loan and credit card with money I got for it, and paid off school loans as fast as I could once I moved here-- it took me about four years), and buy an apartment that we could afford (we have 8 years to go on a 15-year mortgage, and that's debt too, but different).

At some point Sweetie and I (also a Simple kind of guy) made frugal living a kind of game. It started out as Hey, let's see how low we can keep the thermostat in winter (I'm from Wisconsin, so Triestine winters seem like Florida to me). Answer: 15 degrees C, after which we let the furnace kick on. Then we said Hey, let's ONLY keep the lights on that we're using. All others OFF! Then, Hey, let's see how long we can go without eating out, and then Hey, let's see how many Family Fun for Free things we can do from now on, and finally,  Hey, let's see if we can live on just one salary (even when we had two decent ones).

And that was good timing, because about a year after we started, I lost my job, and, shortly after, so did my husband.

Well, that frugality gave immediate, and long-lasting results which made it possible for me to start my own little free-lance business (translating, teaching, language consulting) and allowed Sweetie to play full-time Dad for the first six months of Eva's life. Don't get me wrong, though. Living simply isn't for everyone, and we received enough criticism from friends who thought we were ridiculous for trying it that we eventually kept the project to ourselves. Our circle of friends changed somewhat, too, in that we started to hang around more with outdoorsy types and like-minded people as a result of our lifestyle change.

Now that we're both working again (as of exactly one week), we are keeping up the same lifestyle. We meet friends for hikes rather than dinner, and we still play our save money games. Now we have added washable diapers to the mix. As far as temperatures go, with the baby we put our limit at 18C. What awful parents we are, I thought, when I went to a friend's house with baby the same age and saw the thermostat was at 25C, but felt better when I had to take off Eva's sweater because she was dripping baby sweat.

Baby Parking a success, but we hate calling it that

I decided that I will just call the Baby Parking I chose by its correct name "Pika Poka" or Miss Samantha's. Pika Poka means Ladybug in Slovene, which is one of the reasons I chose it, because Miss Samantha, the owner, is from the Slovene minority and will speak it to your little ladybug if you ask her. And of course I did because I'm one of those kinds of moms, happy to force extra languages on the little one until she is old enough to completely rebell and speak only in pig-latin.

We put her there two days and it was great. There were only like 3 other kids and they were old enough to learn from, but not so old that it was weird. I'm so happy for the baby. All those cool toys (way cooler than at home) and other kids to play with. Good stuff.

More soon.

Baby Parking

This week I have to find a place to put the baby while Daddy goes back to work after a crisis-induced hiatus. If you want to put your kids in daycare, there a few choices. The cheapest and best-regarded is the public route. These are the daycare centers that are run by the city. To get into one you need to apply for a place in January. You rank them one to five and there is a week where you can go and visit them, check out the distance, cleanliness (something I don't worry much about, but others around here seem to find importantissimo), activities, etc. and make your choice. Hubby visited them (all about the same) and we ranked according to distance. One of them is less than a five-minute walk from my house, for example. Ever since I ranked that one as number one, I have passed several times with the dog and happened to see lunch ladies in hair nets, teachers (or "educators" as they call them here) and various staff members outside sneaking smokes (better than in the bathroom I suppose, unlike the HOSPITAL, which is REEK-A-LICIOUS in the WC!). They don't appear to be doing it at the same time, which I guess is the important thing. Those little taters need supervision, after all.

The public daycare centers provide free lunch, free diapers (most are not particularly interested in dealing with washables, which would mean putting the dirty one in a plastic bag that you provide and then snapping on another one that you provide, but whatever) and the price is based on how much you make.

You get word in May if you get in to a public daycare center for the next fall (September or October). If you don't, then you can either leave them with the baby's grandparents (lots of people do this here and grandparents often feel it is their "right" to have your kids full-time while you're at work) or leave them at any number of private daycare centers (cost about twice as much as public ones, don't provide lunch or diapers).

If you only need a few hours here or there for coverage, there are also "Baby Parking" centers. Yep, they say it in English, as in "Porto il mio figlio oggi in Baby Parking." These are what we are checking on for this week. They cost something like 7 euros an hour and you can drop off and pick up when you want.

I will let you know how my research goes.