The Importance of Meeting Moms

Being a military wife was relatively rough moving place to place and having to leave your life behind to basically start over in a new place and make new friends. That said, I feel I at least had a leg up when we moved to San Antonio. At least I was already used to the change. However what made this move especially difficult was having a two year old daughter. My daughter was born during our tour in Spain and we never got a chance to bring her back to the states, so our move was very traumatic on her: moving to a different country, different people, and leaving everything she knew behind. We had friends in Spain we consider family. This move was especially difficult on all of us.

In addition to the move, we had to deal with the fact that we were in a different place in our lives as well, we were now civilians. We no longer had the military community to help us pick up our lives and find our place in the community. It was no longer our community. We once again forged on to the civilian community we had not been a part of in almost a decade. And boy have things changed!

Being relatively "internet savvy" I had been a part of numerous "mom groups" on websites across the web such as AOL, Cafemom, and Yahoo. I found these to be a source of comfort and friendship during pregnancy and the infancy of my daughter. So once again, I turned to these familiar places to start my journey of starting over.

While going through Cafemom (cafemom.com), I found someone posting a site for local moms in the San Antonio area to meet up for playgroups. The website was Meetup.com. While being a skeptic person, mostly for the safety of my child, I was a little hesitant, but I thought why not join the site and see what it has to offer. After all, my daughter was going through a rough stage and we had no friends here, either of us.

I signed up for the site, and lo and behold I found a group of moms, both stay at home and working moms, who have children my daughter's age that simply have playgroups so that both kids and moms can socialize. I thought why not give it a try, so I joined a group and got the information for the meetup.

I want to make a note here: Please proceed with caution when using the internet to meet people. Make sure you do things safely and be cautious about when and where you meet people. There are as many ill intentioned people as there are nice, friendly people lurking about. If it doesn't seem or sound right it probably isn't. Use that parental instinct and stick to your guns about it.

I made sure that the meetup was in a public place (for the safety of my child) and that way if things weren't going well, I could make a quick exit without it being awkward.

I attended the meetup, found the other women and their children to be wonderful! Finally! A chance to make friends, for both me and my daughter!It was wonderful to be accepted by these women, and I have been going to playgroup with them for over a month now. It worked out really well for me and my daughter that I ended up dropping all applications to other groups because we found our niche. And I hope to develop lasting friendships with these women and their families because I haven't met a single one I didn't like!

Becoming a part of a group of people with similar interests and goals during a time of change can drastically help your perspective on life. It can make the hard times bearable, or just give you the break you need to refocus and recoup. Getting out and reinvigorating yourself can be quite liberating, even if it is something small like getting together for a stroller walk through the mall or taking the kids to the park, or meeting for a book club.

There are lots of sites out there to promote socialization of this kind, however, as I noted before, proceed with caution. There are sites for moms, dads, single parents, disabilities, support groups, local groups, and pretty much anything you can think of!

Get off the computer, get out there and make some friends!



Note about Meetup.com:
Meetup.com is a free to register site, however membership in groups is not always free, make note while searching for groups of any membership fees (annual fee, monthly fee, event fees). Some groups charge a small fee to cover small group costs, however I found some charge a rather substantial fee to take part in their activities. Decide how active you want to be when joining (and paying) but take note that most groups require at least once a month participation to remain a member of the group.

Other options for sites include but are not limited to:
AOL (message boards are fairly unreliable as they are taken down and replaced repeatedly)
Yahoo (I left them because of the insane amount of drama on those boards - but to each their own)
Cafemom (this is a site specifically for women with various groups and free of charge)

These are the groups that I have had experience with. If you have a favorite site, feel free to leave it in the comment section.

Is it Possible to be TOO Thrifty?

Ok most of my closest friends and of course my husband knows that I am the cheapest person alive. I tend to go beyond thrifty in to just plain ole cheap. I will go out of my way to find the most inexpensive item. However, as I am getting older, I am realizing the error of my ways.

Is CHEAPER always BETTER?
Sometimes you can get jeans at a thrift store that are name brand and save $40 dollars or more and I am not knocking that at all, however sometimes buying tennis shoes at Payless is not always better than buying shoes at a store like Lady Foot Locker. This is something my husband has been telling me for years. Here is my reasoning: I could price a pair of Adidas tennis shoes at Lady Foot Locker for lets say $65, then walk into Payless and buy three pairs of shoes for that amount of money. That to me seemed to be the better deal. However in my infinite wisdom of age, I am finding that those three pairs of shoes I just bought at Payless tend to wear out much quicker than that one pair of shoes at Lady Foot Locker. Ergo, cheaper is not always better. I find this doesn't necessarily apply to kids shoes since they grow out of them long before they are worn out anyway.

STORE BRANDS vs NAME BRANDS
You could make the same argument as above for this, however I have found in most cases store brands and name brands are pretty similar. If you buy DelMonte green beans and the store brand green beans, you are getting the exact same thing with a different label. In these cases, when you are trying to save money - store brand is definetly the way to go. I challenge you to take your normal grocery list and buy all items in name brand, then buy them all store brand and see your savings. It's pretty substantial.

THRIFT STORES
I LOVE THRIFT STORES! It kinda borders on obsession sometimes. I literally drove around town today hopping from one thrift store to another looking for actually a sofa table and some type of shelf unit for my living room but found all sorts of stuff to organize my kitchen and put some finishing touches on my daughter's room and bathroom. If you are looking for pretty much anything you can find them at a thrift store, but you must have lots of patience dashed with a little bit of luck. Plus its fun to find random stuff!

Driving around for the BIG DEAL
Here is where I tend to fall into the insanely Cheap side of things. If I know one place is having a sale on shoes but I need a new shirt too, I will drive from store to store purchasing one or two items at a time to get everything at the lowest price I can. This is not bad in theory if the stores are located close to each other, however when you are willing to drive across town to find the best deals continuously, you have to realize you are spending more in gas than you are saving by driving around. This is a hard concept for me to grasp when I am in Sale Mode.

If this is also your M.O. for sales shopping, try mapping out a route that will cost you the minimal travel time and costs

I am still a pretty cheap person, and in a recession I think we can all stand to be a little cheap to make getting by a little easier. But I need to learn where to draw the line on being cheap, being thrifty and making a purchase that makes sense.

It's Not WHAT you know, but WHO you know.

In a nation of uncertainity during this economic recession, jobs are becoming ever so scarce. We have been in the market for a new career since the military informed us my husband would not be allowed to re-enlist due to the mandatory reduction in forces the Navy was implementing.

With months of preparation and job hunting, we found ourselves in November with a DD214 in hand and still no prospect of a job. We thought things would get better once we returned stateside and were able to actually search for a job.

No such luck.

Was it possible that the news we received while being stationed abroad was all true and not a product of media hype? It appears to be so.

According to an article written in May 2009 by USAToday, the unemployment rate of Veterans was at 11.2% while the mainstream unemployment rates were coming in at 8%. So at the same time we were hard at work trying to find post military employment, we were already being put a step behind civilians.

By September the rate had skyrocketed to a ghastly 17.3% and by December it had reached 20.8% unemployment for Veterans. We are now a part of the statistic.

So I return to my father's words when I was in college, sometimes it's not about what you know, but who you know. This time of economic struggle has led the job market to hire on this philosophy. More often than not those few people that are getting hired are getting hired based on references from people they know inside the company. That is not to say that they are not well educated and qualified for the position. However the fact that they know someone in the company has given them a leg up.

I recently met a mom in my playgroup that happens to work for a prominent San Antonio company, and once we got to talking about work and such, she told me that her company has made a big deal to hire veterans to meet a quota as well as they base alot of their new hires on employee referrals. This just goes to solidify things that I had already suspected about the current job market.

So why are Veterans still so vastly unemployed?

When it comes to WHO you know, networking is a key factor. By being in the military, those that you network with tend to be in the same field as you - military. Going out into the civilian workforce after even four years of military service, you are walking into a completely different forum than it was four years prior. With technological advances of software and even hardware, you could find yourself out of place. Even the people that you knew four years prior are in different places and it is somewhat difficult to network with them.

One of the most common things I heard from being a sailor as well as an Ombudsman is once you join the military, sailors, soldiers and alike return home and find themselves different. They don't always feel like they fit back in with those friends they had prior to joining the military because their lives are so greatly changed by their service. This also leads to networking issues and gives the Veteran workforce a great disadvantage.

I see the bumper stickers, especially around Veteran's Day, Hug a Veteran or Have you thanked a Veteran today : the best way to thank or hug a Veteran today is to help them find a job so they can be as productive in the civilian society as they were when they served.

Perspective: A fitting beginning

Perspective
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French, probably modification of Old Italian prospettiva, from prospetto view, prospect, from Latin prospectus — more at prospect
Date: 1563
1 a : the technique or process of representing on a plane or curved surface the spatial relation of objects as they might appear to the eye; specifically : representation in a drawing or painting of parallel lines as converging in order to give the illusion of depth and distance b : a picture in perspective
2 a : the interrelation in which a subject or its parts are mentally viewed ; also : point of view b : the capacity to view things in their true relations or relative importance
3 a : a visible scene; especially : one giving a distinctive impression of distance : vista b : a mental view or prospect
4 : the appearance to the eye of objects in respect to their relative distance and positions

This topic fits quite comfortably with the title of my blog, right now I am viewing life from the bottom of the mountain. It wasn't always this way, which is what makes it more difficult now. I can't say I was ever on top of the mountain, per say. However I could look out and see the view and it was pretty darned nice! But now I stand, back at the beginning, feeling a little like Disney's Anastasia (the song from the movie running through my head). And I look up to the top of the mountain. I know one day we will be back there again, but today it starts with one step, one foot in front of the other - focused on the destination. But not too focused that I can't learn and enjoy the journey. That's an important lesson too.

I think perspective is an important part of any journey. Your perspective can become many things, one how you look at the situation, and another how people look at you. I think it's important in this time of economic upheaval that we all approach life with a perspective of hope and compassion to one another and most importantly ourselves. Sometimes we forget to be kind to ourselves, which can directly impact our perspective on things that are going on with us.

Most days this is a difficult concept, I don't know how many times I have talked with family members and when they ask me how I am doing the only words out of my mouth are simply "Trying not to freak out". Because in the end I realize that freaking out will only worsen the situation and cause unnecessary drama in a journey that I need to get things accomplished and not curl up into a ball and cry in a corner somewhere.

So I have chosen to focus more on my perspective of the situation. For my husband, for my daughter, and most importantly - for myself.





"perspective." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2010.
Merriam-Webster Online. 12 January 2010