Limited Abundance II

   Please feel free to read the original Limited Abundance post that has part of a story I wrote two years ago, but the story takes place in the Los Angeles area in 2013.
   Although Michael and I did live in North Hollywood for most of 2013, in my story I was still dating someone else, a character I made up back in high school or maybe the year after (around 2005-2006?) named Jeremy Chomsky. In the story I have a best friend/ roommate named Kirsten DeLuca. I loved how God was reading my stories, probably before I even started writing them, because I feel like He gave me both "Jeremy" and "Kirsten" in Michael and one of my best friends, Alana. They both have a lot of the qualities that I wrote about. But the way Kirsten has been formed over time and is currently being written, she seems more like my conscious now and tells me everything I should be thinking or doing, if I'm not thinking or doing it already. She is my best self, convincing me to do what is best. That doesn't make me sound schizophrenic, does it? *nervous laugh* 
   I do not have a timeline for this story, but should make one. I'm publishing the pages in order as much as possible. Sometimes I mention a timeframe in the writings..

^^ recent "minimalist-ish" photos that I took towards the end of April 2020.

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    Kirsten’s small two-door car was full of freshly packed garbage bags and four kitchen chairs that were only gently used. She even had to borrow a neighbor’s bungee cords to keep the trunk closed as much as possible. We had a lot of reusable bags filled with clothes and books mostly. Other random donations included picture frames, fake plants, a matching set of dark colored large plates, small plates, and bowls, as well as old DVDs that we considered to be our favorites but we had seen them enough times already that we hadn’t watched any of them in at least two years. She let me keep a few TV shows like The Office, Glee, and Rookie Blue, since we no longer were going to pay for Netflix and Hulu. It was not essential. In total we had no more than 10 different DVDs. Kirsten only cared to keep her copies of The Pursuit of Happyness and The Time Traveler’s Wife.
    She refused to get out of the car so I could be the one to hand off everything to the Salvation Army worker. She knew that I needed the physical feeling of letting go. And somehow my body began to feel lighter and lighter with each huge bag I handed over. It was great seeing the car so empty and clean after that. There were some things we had to throw away, which seemed so wasteful, but Salvation Army doesn’t take everything.
   Kirsten did not immediately drive way, but instead kept looking into the store window as the employees started through the bags. I turned and watched too.
   Suddenly she spoke softly, “Look around.. All that clutter used to be people’s money.” My jaw dropped. She sounded so wise. She could tell I was shocked by that unexpected slap of realism. She shrugged and then smirked as she put the car into Drive. “I may have read it on Pinterest.”

   Back at the apartment all of our few things suddenly still looked like too much. As if living in an empty space with a thin blowup mattress and a laptop would be enough.. Could it be though? Why did I need bowls when I could eat beans straight out of the can? Why did I feel the need to have pictures hung up on the walls when I could spend hours looking at millions of pretty pictures on the Internet? How long would it even take me to use up all of my current scrapbook materials after I tossed half of them? A year? Five years.. TEN?! It wasn’t even a hobby that I was into as much as the more recent love of hiking and blogging.
    Kirsten walked in and gave me a weird look. She said it was because I was giving her a weird look.
    “What’s wrong?” she inquired. I told her my thoughts. “Oh gosh, I broke you.”
    I sat on the couch for a little bit longer, just looking around, but Kirsten kicked an empty box towards me and reminded me that we had to start packing. The whole point of this is because we were moving soon. Downsizing, into a one bedroom house when we had been used to living in an 11,000 square foot apartment with three bedrooms and two bathrooms.
    “It will look like we have more stuff in a smaller place. Trust me, it will be fine.” Kirsten looked up and corrected herself, “It will be great!”
    I was quiet the rest of the day. It was hard not to spend the rest of the day trying to answer my own question: What is the smallest amount of stuff could I be happy with, and not feel the need to buy anything back. How long does it take for the greedy part of our minds and bodies to die down? I felt heated. My heart seemed to be beating differently. It wasn’t necessarily a good or bad feeling, just different. “Different isn’t bad,” I whispered as I taped up my second box.
   I was out of my funk by the next day, and back to being excited again for our new, rich, minimalist life. Maybe I just needed that hot bubble bath with my favorite coconut candle and some food and a good night of sleep. Sometimes the simplest things, like brushing our teeth and washing our hair, can turn our whole day around!

    The next week we walked in with our six boxes and two blow up mattresses. It was the easiest move of my life. None of this “renting a truck” business. I didn’t even want to unpack. I love the look of an empty room. Although this house only had four: living room, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. The walls of the bedroom were the lightest shade of pastel pink named Diminutive Rose.
    I debated seeing how long I could go without unpacking anything besides bed sheets and my toothbrush, but after 20 minutes of watching Kirsten decorate her side of the room with her favorite wood stump side table and mini cactus, I ripped open my “Other” box. All the stuff I really didn’t need, but made me feel creative. We gave ourselves a max of three boxes, and we agreed upon the size; 18” x 18” x 16”. I began making a new handmade garland piece with colorful scrapbook paper cut into cross shapes in between each of my favorite 7 mini Polaroid pictures. (I had star garland before and hearts when Kirsten and I lived in Orlando.) I hung fairy lights above that using thumb tacks, made the bed, got my basic bathroom necessities out – toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, facewash, bar soap, and toilet paper -, then closed the box again. 

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Kirsten and I took turns coming up with the silliest ways to live on less and be healthy. She was almost obsessed with us “being blind”, and by that I mean she didn’t want us using lights. Power overall was okay, like we definitely weren’t going to unplug the fridge, and we had to turn the AC on during the day for a few hours or the house would get moldy. But I specifically started taking my showers before work when it was light out. Although, one evening I used a soy coconut candle during sunset to light the shower walls, and I felt extreme calm afterwards. I loved that there was a window in the bathroom, even if there was not a lot of daylight left to brighten up our bathroom. I had lived in apartments before where there was not a window in the bathroom. We used candles often during this “blind” phase, but would tend to slowly carry our candle from room to room. Too many candles made us nervous for fires, but also heated up the house too much and we liked keeping it cool, wearing our super comfy, baggy sweaters at night.

Mine was a faded red color with sleeves two inches longer than my arms and had an outline of a beet on the chest. Above and below the beet, it said “Schrute Farms - Bed & Breakfast, est. 1812”, which was a reference to the TV show The Office. Kirsten’s was a black hoodie with white wording and pink and blue stars; something she got from her high school gymnastic days. She had won a few medals over the years, including one gold medal, which she had kept to hang on the bedroom wall when we moved to this little house, but she never cared to get near the Olympic training stages. It required too much time, she said, and she cared more to be social with her friends in church.

My healthy idea came from the socks I had recently purchased with a gift card from Old Navy. They were health themed and said things like “Gym & Juice” or “Kale Yeah!” and another pair had figures doing different yoga poses. It was easy to guess what each pair of socks would create for the day ahead, but I had to pick the socks with my eyes closed. “No cheating,” she told me when she thought I might be peeking through the hand over my face. I ended up grabbing the light purple pair with the phrase “Let’s Go Bananas!” There were also bunches of bananas sewn into the design of the socks.

We both walked to the kitchen and grabbed three bananas from the counter. I loved that Kirsten preferred the riper ones with brown spots. My favorite still have light green stems. This would be the majority of our meals, with healthy snacks in between because we still needed to keep up a decent calorie consumption. At the end of the Banana Sock Days we would make what Pinterest calls Nicecream; a thick, creamy banana and peanut butter smoothie. If we had ingredients available for it, we would add a sprinkle of mini cacao nibs and chopped nuts. It made us feel so fancy after a day of, what I refer to, as bitty sacrifices.

When I talked to people at work or my younger brother about our time not using electricity or taking cold showers, they tend to look like it’s the most insane thing they have ever heard of. But I love our bitty sacrifices. They don’t actually make that much of a difference, but I have noticed that I say at least twice as many prayers for the availability of the things I am giving up: Thank you, Jesus, for the eight thousand clean, hot showers that I have taken over the years, especially when I was less conscious and would let the water run directly down the drain while I did something else in the home, waiting for the water to warm up to my liking, pouring thick steam through the door.

Thank you for the ability to see clearly (even though I do use glasses full time) and to be so used to seeing everything that simply thinking about having to describe it to someone who is actually blind, is extremely perplexing. How do you describe a color to someone who has never seen color? Thank you for the times that I had so much food that I would eat until I felt sick; expanding my stomach more than that size it should be. And for all of the times I threw away food or let it expire because I didn’t need it. So many poor and homeless people could not even image throwing away the last two bites. Even with these few thoughts, I tear up thinking about so much we have taken for granted.

***

During this day we also went to Mattress Firm. The blow up mattresses were not cutting it and somehow Kirsten’s got a tiny hole in it last week and by the morning her mattress would always be mostly deflating, causing her back to be sore. Although we were trying to be minimalists, we knew that we definitely still needed to take care of ourselves or none of this would be worth it. We were both saving money so we could meet the children we sponsor in Guatemala through Unbound. I had been sponsoring Jose since September 20, right before his eighth birthday, and Kirsten began sponsoring Merida, who is now 10 years old, shortly after that. We figured our sleeping conditions would be less than ideal, but expected, so we wanted our backs to be in great ship before our trip, even though it was over a year away.

I picked the twin Rest Firm Innerspring mattress for $199 and Kirsten got the twin Tulo Liv for $249. They came with free delivery! My boyfriend, Jeremy and his roommate, Eli, helped us build bedframes out of some used, but sturdy wood that a neighbor was getting rid of. Kirsten was really into all the hammering, which I was fine with as well, but I had no interest in using the power saw. Her laugh with each cut was very mischievous.  The feet on the corners were about one foot high with 14 planks across to support the mattress and ourselves at night. Eli measured out three more stakes for extra support near where our knees and shoulders would rest. This cost us 1/3 of the price as what was for sale on line, and we loved the homemade craftsmanship that was put into it. We thought about making side tables as well, but didn’t want to spoil ourselves. Placing our items on the floor would work just fine.

Things between me and Jeremy were friendly, but quiet while he was over. Since he moved out of our previous apartment, we hadn’t talked or hung out as much. Even the texts between us were weird, like the distance was slowly breaking us up instead of making our hearts grow fonder, as the saying goes. And it made me feel sad that I didn’t feel sad about it. I honestly thought we would have been engaged by now or married. We started dating a couple years after I was out of high school, back in 2007 when I met him randomly at a party at my best friend’s house; at Mia’s house. He was a friend of a friend. That was before I met Kirsten through another church and our friendship blossomed almost accidentally, but that’s getting off topic. Jeremy and I had been together for six years, including keeping things good between us while I was in film school in Orlando between 2009 and 2011.

I was waiting for an official break up almost, but didn’t want to be the one to bring it up.
              A few months later, and I’m not even sure why I let it drag on for that long, we did break up. It was mutual. I wasn’t even sure we were still dating when we had The Talk. We were ready to let go, but before the thought of it had felt so lonely, instead of giving me feelings of potential freedom. I blame society for always making it seem like a bad thing if a girl didn’t have a boyfriend, as if to say, “What’s so wrong with you that nobody wants you?” Like we were dirty puppies left behind a dumpster, compared to being seen as strong, independent women. I never felt trapped with Jeremy, but it was like, in that moment, that the whole world was opening up again. I’m not sure why that was.

He knew that Kirsten and I were saving up to go to Guatemala, and found such an excitingly good idea that he also looked into a mission trip through our church, or any other church he had friends through. Eventually he found one that was going to serve in Madagascar… for seven years! He immediately signed up before even talking to me about it. Was he running away?

He invited me to come with him, but I was not ready for that type of commitment. And it sounded more like he felt bad not inviting me, more than him actually wanting me there with him, holding hands, and praying side by side for the next 84 months. We were already slipping away from each other. I definitely wanted to do outreach in an impoverished country, hence planning our upcoming trip to Guatemala, but only for a week or two, knowing I would be comfortable in Los Angeles again after that. I believe sacrifices are an amazing way to give back to God for everything good we have been given, but I was nowhere near that level. I didn’t know Jeremy was either, but maybe that shows how little we actually knew about the newer versions of each other; the adults we had become, not noticing how the other person had been changing and growing over the years, still seeing each other as we were when we first met. 

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   Kirsten’s 26^th birthday in September last week was one of my favorite days. It was basically an orphan/ poverty theme, and it is completely terrible for me to describe it that way because it’s not like orphans can have rich American themed birthday parties. Kirsten asked everyone to donate money to their favorite charity and that she was “absolutely refusing any gifts”. She specifically wrote that on each invite. I helped her make her birthday invitations and we mailed them out like the good ole days instead of sending e-vites. 

   I knew most of the girls, but not as well as Kirsten did, since I always have to work every other weekend, so I can only make it to church twice each month. At times I feel completely lazy and full of excuses, knowing I could push myself so much more to be a better person in many aspects of my life. I suppose I could work on the church part of it more as there is another church on my drive home that has a service every Thursday that I could get to on time, but I am usually pretty beat after the 12 hour shifts, and logging overtime to save up for the Guatemala mission trip at the beginning of next year.

Joyce Meyer’s words rang in my ears, “An excuse is a reason wrapped in a lie.”

   I felt guilty and thought about how I do have more “Me-time” now that Jeremy and I are no longer together. I have more time to attend church every week. I have more time to exercise, and more time to help many of the 160,000 citizens of Antelope Valley (Lancaster, CA) over the phone. I thought of my cousin, Lizzy, and how she is constantly on the go; taking vacations, dressing up to go to the movies like I used to, always doing something fun with her many friends. I thought it would be really fun to be her roommate for a while, but it’s hard to get more than a week off at my job. I had to specifically write a Memo that gets passed up to my supervisor’s boss’s boss in order to request to get the three weeks off I need for Guatemala. I was very pleased when it got approved.

   Kirsten’s party was incredible, which was a tad surprising considering we didn’t really do much. I guess I enjoy sitting around and talking more than I thought I did, especially when it is good conversation with fun people and there is an abundance of laughter involved.

Now that I am reflecting back, saying “we didn’t do much” is a preposterous remark. There were eight of us, including one of Kirsten’s friends, Cassie, who lives in Michigan. She flew in and got a taxi to our house just as everyone else was arriving. I will admit I was a little jealous of how happy Kirsten was to see Cassie, but I know I would have the exact same look of glee on my face if Mia unexpectedly showed up for me.

   Events of the party included each of us carrying a gallon of water one mile to Cuban Express (and back) where we were eating for lunch. This symbolized the women who have to carry the handmade pots to and from the nearest water source, which can easily be a mile or more away from their home. I had never been to this small restaurant before, but Kirsten wanted us to go somewhere that cooked rice and beans as the meal. Originally I suggested making them at home, but she wanted to support a small family-owned business, which was an even better idea! They had other really delicious looking food, including a ham and roast beef sandwich on thick buttered Cuban bread, guava pastries, hush puppies with powdered sugar, and empanadas with the option of beef or shredded chicken. However, when the waitress came over, Kirsten immediately circled her finger around the table and stated, “Rice and beans all around please!”

   Kirsten called it a Gratitude themed birthday party; she always knows the right things to say. Without it becoming an actual prayer, we all took turns talking about our favorite things and coming up with the most specific and detailed things to be thankful for.

Writer’s Notes: Cuban Express – 628 W Lancaster Blvd
Our house: 45318 Genoa Ave, Lancaster, CA 93534 (feel free to look that up on Google Maps)

^^ that is not the house where Michael and I actually lived in California. This is: