I'm Back And How Not To Live Your Life

Hi! I'm back. I'll try to post the pictures tomorrow, in the meanwhile, I'd like to draw your attention to this interesting article by Daily Mail:

I left the love of my life because I thought I could do better...

This article supposedly criticises the careerist mentality of modern women and their desire to "trade up" where it concerns men and is meant as a cautionary tale. However, when you read it, you will see that things are not as simple as they appear.

Here are several highlights of the story:

Laughing and dancing with my fiance at our engagement party, I thought I might actually burst with happiness.
Surrounded by our family and friends, I looked at Matthew and felt certain I had met the man I was going to spend the rest of my life with.
Quite simply, he was my soulmate...

So why, 20 years later, do I find myself  single, childless and tormented by the fact that I have thrown away the only true chance of happiness I ever had?

Eight years after that wonderful engagement party in 1989, I walked away from dear, devoted, loyal Matthew, convinced that somewhere out there, a better, more exciting, more fulfilling life awaited me.
Only there wasn't.
Now I am 42 and have all the trappings of success - a high-flying career, financial security and a home in the heart of London's trendy Notting Hill. But I don't have the one thing I crave more than anything: a loving husband and family.

Sounds like a standard story of a b***-busting career woman who turned her back on having a family in her youth and now regrets it, doesn't it? But there is more to the story than that. Let's look at the details:

In the summer of 1989, while out for a romantic meal, Matthew proposed properly with a diamond solitaire ring. Two months later, we held our engagement party for 40 friends and family at the little house we were renting at the time.
The following year, we bought a tiny starter home in Grays, Essex, which we moved into...
(emphasis mine)

First, notice how there is no mentioning of a wedding taking place? The couple give an engagement party at the house where they cohabitate, which means that they moved together before they even officially announced their engagement. They later buy a house which they can barely afford and several years later 

the housing market crashed and we were plunged into negative equity.

It's getting worse than that as the lady advances in her chosen career while Matthew is perfectly content to sponge off her and to drift "from one dead-end job to another." It's a simple fact of life that hard-working, career-oriented young women often attract the type of men who can't hold down a job and are perfectly content living off their girlfriends' salary.

There is also a social class angle to the story: as Karen (that's the lady's name) moves more into the direction of middle class she starts resenting her fiance's working class background and lifestyle. However, the main thing that irritates her, is Matthew's inability to support a family:

I began to wish he was more sophisticated and earned more. I felt envious of friends with better-off partners, who were able to support them as they started their families. (emphasis mine)

  

Eight years after the engagement party, the couple are still not married and have no children which is probably for the best as Karen finally decides she's had enough and leaves,which her parents disapprove of. Her father tells her that she has little chance to find a man who would love her as much as Matthew did. It's a pity though that Matthew's love didn't motivate him to provide for the family and to finally marry his live-in girlfriend aka fiancee (in newspeak). 

Matthew then drifts into another relationship and so does Karen:

Shortly afterwards, I met Richard. It was a whirlwind romance, and within a year we were engaged and buying an idyllic farmhouse in the Norfolk countryside...

I see a pattern over here, don't you? Yet again, Karen moves in with a man she isn't married to, convinced that now it's a "real thing". However, she can't forget Matthew and Richard is unfaithful and finally leaves her for another woman. At this moment in her life, Karen tries to hook up with Matthew again who also split up with his girlfriend but allows her to live in his house. He later marries yet another woman and though he is presumably at least as old as Karen who is 42, "they don't have children yet."

Karen by this time wants children desperately and has another relationship which ends because her partner already has a son from previous relationship and doesn't want "to start over again." So now Karen is 42, alone and childless and regrets leaving Matthew as, in her opinion, it was her only chance to become a mother, yet judging by the fact that Matthew, who is presumably in his mid-forties, isn't that interested in havind kids, either, I rather doubt she is right.

The story of both of them is the train wreck from the beginning to end, which can be said about many modern relationships. Here we also see that Karen's parents apparently encouraged her to study and work hard and to make something out of herself, but didn't teach her about one most important thing for any woman: how to evaluate and choose a husband and father of your children

There are a couple of very simple rules a young girl can follow: first, don't live together before getting married, as you will get attached to someone and this attachment will blind you to his drawbacks. If you later split, you will have a diminished ability to bond with your new partner, as illustrated by the story above. Second, the feeling of romantic love you have for your boyfriend is a poor substitute for his inability to make a living. If you ever want to have children and a family, choose a provider type, not someone who drifts from job to job or is a starving artist/musician, unless you are a career woman looking for a stay-at-home husband (though this sort of guy would probably make a lousy SAHD, either).

If you don't want to suffer from heartbreak, it also makes sense to avoid men like Richard. And finally, this is Daily Mail, so we should take anything they write with a grain of salt:) However, the general principles stand.

September Links

I'm going away for a couple of days and will return on Friday. So here are some interesting links to the articles you can read in my absence:)

Vox Day on the myth of warrior women:
esr calls BS on tor.com

Thinking Housewife:
When Women Wore Clothes

Bruce Charlton on the evils of the  MSM:
Advocacy of sin is the worst evil

Patriactionary on women's wages:
No, Women Are Not Paid 77c for Every Dollar a Man Is Paid for the Same Work

What's Wrong With Equal Rights on the necessity of two incomes:
There Has Never Been an Easier Time For Women To Stay Home

The Retro Homemaker on feminist myths:
5 feminist myths

More from Theodore Dalrymple on the modern ugliness trend, this time in architecture:
The Free, the Just and the Ugly

Well, that's about all for today, see you next time!

Specially For My Male Readers

All two of them:) Seriously though, since Captain Capitalism linked to me (thanks, Aaron!) I'm probably getting more male readers than before so I thought I could write a post on a topic which probably interests men more than women: self-defence.

Not that I'm an expert at it, however yesterday I found a quite interesting series of YouTube videos discussing traditional Western techniques of fighting with short blades (daggers and such). I have decided not to embed them as the subject matter is probably too violent for a homemaker's blog, so here are the links to two of the videos which were the most popular:

Introduction, what is the historical Western method?

Fighting with the Reverse Grip

Now you are probably asking yourself a question, why should I as a woman be interested in such things as dagger fighting:) It's really very simple, first, I tend to like everything which has "traditionally Western" as its name, and what is more important, as an author trying to write adventure stories, I never lose a chance to learn something new. It may come in handy in my next novel:) Usually I'm only interested in embroidery and kittens, though...

Healthy Foods

Years ago Lady Lydia had a post about the importance of eating breakfast called Women at Home Save Men's Lives.  Whether or not you agree with her recommendations of eating a hearty breakfast, one point which she makes can't be disputed; the homemaker plays a crucial role in maintaining the health of her family by providing her husband and children (and herself, of course) with healthy, nutritious meals.

Unfortunately, like so many domestic arts, cooking tends to be neglected nowadays and some women are positively proud that they can't so much as boil an egg. As usual, this caused a somewhat extreme reaction, and as a result we got an abundance of magazines and TV programs which promote rather unrealistic standards as an average busy wife and mother in all probability, won't be able to cook at a 5 star restaurant level.

The truth is that meals don't have to be too complicated in order to be nutritious and taste well. An important thing is to know which ingredients to choose and to be aware of the basics of healthy eating. I thought it's interesting to compare the 1950s guidelines for proper meals with the modern ones.

According to one 1950s manual, an adequate breakfast should consist of fruit, cereal + milk and bread and butter.  A full breakfast will add egg or meat. An adequate lunch will feature a main dish, vegetables, bread and butter + fruit, while a full lunch will also have cake, cookies or pudding. As for dinner, an adequate dinner is one consisting of meat and potatoes, green or yellow vegetables, salad (raw vegetables), bread and butter and fruit. Now a full dinner adds to this an appetizer or soup and finishes the meal with pie or cake for dessert.

 It seems rather excessive to me, though I suppose they ate smaller portions. On the other hand, it's interesting to know that you were expected to eat warm at least twice a day, as opposed to the modern system of relying on sandwiches and snacks and having only one warm meal a day. I also noticed that you were supposed to eat a lot of bread. Nowadays there is a discussion going on about gluten-free products as some people have severe allergy to gluten.

Wheat which is commonly used for making commercial sorts of bread is high in gluten content and I have personally read articles which stated that even if you are not allergic to it, it's probably not all that good for you. While I'm not sure if I agree with this claims, I did some research into the alternative to commercial wheat sorts, called spelt.

Spelt or dinkel wheat is an ancient wheat species mentioned in the Bible which was widely cultivated from the Bronze Age to medieval times. It's still used in Germany to make Dinkelbrot. Spelt flour contains less gluten but has a higher overall protein content. It is quite expensive, but can be used in combination with "normal" wheat flour. Spelt bread has a dark colour and nutty flavour (read more about spelt over here). Here is an article on health benefits of spelt flour.

Another product I'd like to talk about today is molasses, a by-product of sugar-refining process, featured in the picture above. Molasses, or blackstrap molasses is a good substitute for refined sugar. It has a rather peculiar taste and is less sweet, but that is something you get accustomed to. On the positive side, molasses has proven health benefits and supposedly is a good remedy against many health problems, including cancer.

As homemakers, we should always strive to do the best for our families, which includes (but is not limited to) learning about the latest discoveries in the field of nutrition as our own health and that of our family depends on it!

Dressing To Impress Or To Offend?

I want to draw your attention to the article by Theodore Dalrymple called Slobbery as Snobbery. The article is quite old (it was originally posted by Taki Mag on June 15, 2014), but I only read it yesterday as some other blog I visit linked to it.

The article makes some very good points and coincidentally, it's about the author's trip to Amsterdam and how he was shocked by the horrible way people around him dressed. (My countrymen certainly won't win  the European Prize for their sense of fashion, though I'd say that what I've seen in England was not always much better). However, Mr Dalrymple also makes general observations about the state of things in the West concerning dress and manners (the comments were well worth reading, too, all 500+ of them:).

He starts by saying that there are very few well-dressed people around which he partly attributes to the mass production of clothes, but then Mr Dalrymple points out that there is also a deliberate act of will on the part of people in general to look like slobs:

Practically everyone now dresses not merely in a casual way, but with studied slovenliness for fear of being thought elegant, as elegance is a metonym for undemocratic sentiment or belief. You can dress as expensively as you like, indeed expensive scruffiness is a form of chic, but on no account must you dress with taste and discrimination. To do so might be to draw hostile attention to yourself.

I personally find it a very astute observation. It's true that the majority of people nowadays, both men and women look as if they are afraid of being accused of looking too well. Heaven forbid you put some thought into the way you dress, it's almost as if they desire to look as slovenly and unkempt as possible. Some sort of trashy chic, I guess. The objective seems to be to look as if you bought most of your clothes at Salvation Army charity shop (though I personally bought good quality stylish clothes at a Goodwill type of store).

Mr Dalrymple notes that even expensive shops (and those in Amsterdam can be very pricey indeed) offer clothes which hardly can be described as elegant. It's interesting that when a discussion like this begins, people will tell you that nice clothes are expensive, and they can't afford looking better than tramps, and yet, as the author of the original article points out, they do have money for tattoos and piercings:

Is it not odd that in an age when more people have a large discretionary income than ever before, and are prepared to pay thousands for such adornments as tattooing (some one in five American adults are now tattooed), almost everyone should look as if he or she had just rolled out of bed and picked up a pile of clothes from the night before that was lying crumpled on the floor?

People in the West aren't really that poor that they can't afford to own some decent-looking garments. Mr Dalrymple admits that when he was younger he thought that dressing well wasn't important at all, however, as he grew older, he changed his mind. That's actually a normal process called growing up, though a lot of adults nowadays seem to be stuck in the perpetual adolescence.

Mr Dalrymple is correct in pointing out that slovenliness in dress is nearly always the result of laziness. However, he is probaly right in stating that it's more than laziness which causes moderns to look as horrible as they do: the conscious desire to offend others, to express your contempt for their opinions of you:

The problem is not merely absence of self-respect, it is active hostility to self-respect, replaced entirely by self-esteem. The former says, “I will keep myself looking good in the eyes of others;” the latter says, “What is good enough for me is good enough for everyone else, and if they find me an eyesore they can jolly well put up with it.”

The author describes a fashion show he witnessed in one of the shops in Amsterdam where the female models paraded around with an expression of hatred for people around them on their faces. I quite often buy sewing and knitting magazines which feature pictures from catwalks and I noticed it, too. Instead of trying to look pleasant, female models have a look of universal contempt for those around them.

In short, as Mr Dalrymple sums it up: This is the first age in which people do not dress to please others, but dress to displease others...

I believe he is right, too. We went from teaching our children to dress well to please or impress others to letting them dress in deliberately offensive manner in order to express themselves or some such nonsense. Our whole society is oriented towards the worship of Self (think of the obsession with selfies). So here is the challenge: if you want to change things for the better and to save Western civilisation you can start by making a conscious effort to dress elegantly and to look well at all occasions and teach your children to do the same.

Let's all try in our daily life not to look like the people featured in those pictures:
People Of Walmart

New Links

I'd like to draw your attention to the two new links I have added this week. One is to the blog called Mias Landliv which I mentioned several times. Mia is a talented craftster who lives in Norway. She blogs about her life in the country and all the beautiful things she creates.

Another link is actually not a blog, but a site called Knitting Pattern Central which has a collection of free knitting patterns and is regularly updated. When you click on the link, you can go to Free Pattern Directory and browse by category. It features baby and children's clothing as well as vintage patterns. You can also submit a pattern of your own. If knitting is your hobby, that's the site for you!:)

A Short Personal Note

I'll be away from computer for a couple of days. Regular posting will be resumed as soon as possible

Tired Of Waiting For The World To End

Some time ago I was asked to write a post about how news can influence a homemaker for the worse, so here it comes:)

I've had it with the mass media. Not only the so-called MSM (mainstream media), but the alternative media as well. No, I'm not going to live like a hermit, but I'm planning to seriously restrict the amount of blogs and forums (fora?) which I follow. The reason is that I'm getting tired of all the doom and gloom.

We all know that MSM is liberal and sensationalist, that it often censors the dissenting opinions and spreads progressive propaganda and sometimes downright lies. Journalists often use scaremongering (global warming) to increase support for the liberal cause. The alternative right media, on the other hand, are often the mirror copy of MSM, heavily engage in "despair p0rn" and are busy with promoting their own end-of-the-world scenarios.

MSM predicts that Christianity will soon disappear and we will all live in a "brave new world." Christians often agree and in general, exhibit an attitude best described by the phrase "why polishing the brass on a sinking ship."

MSM talk about global warming, alternative internet sites discuss global cooling, the coming new Ice Age and how we'll all subsequently die from hunger after the next major volcano eruption. Sometimes I sincerely wonder how one manages to get through life with this attitude without hanging himself first thing in the morning.

MSM are full of feminist propaganda. Men bad, women good. Women are always victims. Patriarchy, bla bla. Anti-feminists talk about how men are always innocent victims of women and how everything bad what happens in the world is the fault of the weaker sex. Women apparently lurk at every corner planning how to screw another hapless male victim. They only marry so that later they can divorce a man and rob him of his savings. Women bad, men good. Gynocracy bla, bla. See the similarity?

 And so it goes. Now we are having a new global scare - Ebola. As of now, there are reportedly about 1200 people who died from Ebola in Africa. It is supposedly a crisis of world proportions. On the other hand, according to WHO, 3000 children in Africa die daily from malaria, and yet we hardly hear about it. in 2010, about 300 000 people world wide died from cholera, and there was nothing in the news about it. Add to this plague, typhoid fever (190 000 deaths in 2010), and the like and you start thinking what is all this hype about.

This world we live in is full of dangers. There is always something happening somewhere. If you are going to follow it all, you'll have no life. There is also little use in getting all upset about something we can't change. I noticed I'm feeling the happiest when I'm on vacation because I don't read, hear or watch the news. Then I can just concentrate on the little things that matter, instead of the latest outrage.

In short, I finally got tired of waiting for the world to end. I took a decision that since now on I'm going to simply enjoy life, day by day. It's always the little things in life which matter most, your child's first smile, a sunny day after the storm, a fresh-baked apple pie, an evening walk with your husband. A homemaker should try to create a peaceful atmosphere in her home, which is next to impossible if we spend all our time worrying about the news.

No-bake Danish Apple Cake

Or at least, my variant of it. I noticed that my recipes are much less popular than my rants, though I'm personally more proud of my cooking than of my ranting:)

Anyway, this makes for a great dessert.

You will need:

1kg apples, peeled, cored and cut into small pices
150g sugar
8g gelatin
100g butter
150g bread crumbs (I wasn't sure how much it was, so I used 6 slices of bread; 4 white and 2 wholewheat. It was enough for the size cake you see in the picture, however it wasn't enough to fill the round baking pan as the original recipe suggested. You will need to remove the crust and cut bread into small cubes)
100g jam ( I used red berries jam, and it was more than 100g, in fact, I used nearly the whole jar)
1c whipping cream

First, you need to make apple compote. For this, cook apples together with some water and 75g sugar until the pieces become very soft,  then mash them, add soaked gelatin. and let it dissolve. Let it cool completely

Whip the cream together with 2 tbsp sugar, very stiff. In a skillet over medium heat melt the butter, add the bread crumbs + 50g sugar, cook and stir until  brown.

Next, assemble the cake. First a layer of  crumbs, then apple compote, then jam, top with bread crumbs. Now spread whipped cream all over and refrigerate. You will have to eat it during the next 2-3 days, as the whipped cream tends to turn sour, even in the fridge.