I am not sure if I got this story right, it's been a while since I heard it. But it is true. There once was a little boy, maybe eight or nine, who wanted to be a gymnast. He spent hours on his jungle gym and monkey bars, building his strength and training himself to do things. That was his only goal, to be a famous gymnast like Olga- she was his hero. (I forget her last name. She won a gold medal in the olympics, I think.) However, he contracted a disease that weakened and eventually killed him before he turned eleven.His parents, naturally were heartbroken to watch him suffer, but even more so in understanding that his one dream would never come true. One year after he died, they happened to look at the mokey bars, now sadly empty. But underneath the bars, where the earth was packed as hard as iron, were two blood-red lilies. It was as if he was saying, "It's okay, mom and dad, I am fine. I can do things here that I could never do at home." The lilies never bloomed again.

You'll never get the mileage from ethanol that you get from gasoline, but a 25% reduction seems to be extreme. My vehicle manual states specifically "Do not use fuels containing ethanol." I believe they found ethanol was causing rusting of fuel tanks and lines. I remember about 15 years ago when I was still working at an oil refinery and operating the gasoline blenders, the big industrial farmers such as ADM were talking up the benefits of corn-based ethanol. It would be cheaper they said. Now a gallon of ethanol is just about the same price as a gallon of gasoline and it has to be blended in with petroleum components to be burned in engines. We've been told that one of the reasons for recent high gasoline prices is a shortage of ethanol. Tetraethyl lead was found to be harmful to health, so we replaced it in the gasoline blend with MMT, which was some sort of formulation using manganese. Turned out it was almost as harmful as lead, so it was dropped too. Reformate was then used in greater percentages in the blends to get the octane up. Turned out that reformate was causing certain plastic parts in Chrysler carburetors to dissolve and the cars were stalling out in traffic and causing beaucoup problems. Butane is used to cause gasoline to vaporize more readily, especially in cold weather. Environmentalists complained that butane escaping into the atmosphere was causing problems, so butane percentages were reduced in blends. Pretty soon drivers were complaining of hard-starting engines. In the late 1980s and early 1990s oxygenates were the big thing. These were supposed to result in cleaner burning fuels. One of the oxygenates was MTBE, which mixes freely with water. It was soon found that MTBE was contaminating ground water and MTBE has finally been eliminated from blends. Will we ever find an environmentally acceptable fuel at a reasonable price? Stay tuned.

I agree on having our kids appreciate what they have. They really don't know how good we've had it! We have 1 incredibly small bathroom we are sharing (that right there has been a growing experience for me - not loving that nor the lack of water pressure - ack). It's an old home - as in no outlets or switches in one of the bedrooms upstairs. They were sharing a room but they've already rearranged. The room without any outlets also doesn't have a heat vent so I don't see my oldest staying in there come winter - but it is also the largest of the 2 rooms. :) We also have no dishwasher and no a/c. Those are basically the comforts that we had that we are now getting used to being without. I keep reminding myself that there is no perfect home and surely there will be things after living with it that we might think are too large, too small or a little off one way or another. Our pantry is pretty sizable - fits our chest freezer which I'm excited about but the doorway is off the kitchen, not IN the kitchen proper. That bugged me for a while but I think it's going to be okay. I was off a bit on my $250k number - dh informed me that it's more like $280k. :( Besides the roofing the other number that came in considerably higher than we thought was lumber. It recently took a jump so that was a bit disappointing. We are hoping to get all of our quotes by the end of the month so we can lock in our I/R before it also takes another jump. We will be doing all priming, painting, laying wood floor, tile, setting cabinets, some trim work, putting stone on fireplace (we have done that before and it's actually a very rewarding project but took way longer than we thought), hardware on doors and cabinets, lighting, ceiling fans. We too will be doing some of those very things you mentioned after the fact. Definitely closets and even the small office we have will be done after we are in. With work schedules and keeping timing on track it may come down to having to hire things out that we originally planned on DIY. We are not moving communities or school districts and are paying rent so time is money to a certain degree. For now though that is what we hope to do in sweat equity. I think you are wise to start working through house plans now. There are certainly many details to ponder. We were hoping to be about 2000 sq feet total for the main and upstairs but ended up at 2400. We don't feel the rooms are excessively large or that we have rarely used rooms so we went ahead with it. I had a few things that I really wanted configured a certain way and made sure they were laid out accordingly. After those boxes were checked I really didn't feel so picky about the rest. Hopefully they will live how I feel they will in my mind! :)

In my immediate community....I count several surrounding counties....we are very pro active on curing hunger. I feel I do all I can for my community through church and various organizations. We have Meals on Wheels, Food Pantry and Donation Centers. The government has given Food Stamps and Allowances for those in poverty. We have Organizations that find Homes for the Homeless. Habitat for Humanity build new homes. We have Medicaid. Most of all we have our Freedom and a Choice to help the less fortunate. I have worked in non-profit organizations for most of my Adult life. There are all kinds of organizations to Volunteer to help the indigent. I once had a Volunteer who was 95 years old who came to help my organization. She said "I just wanna do what ever I can to help". What an Angel, I gave her a sit down job and I almost cried watching her struggle with her little arthritic shaking hands shuffling papers. If you feel strongly about Hunger in the United States, then we all need to step up and do our part. I've had volunteers that could only give me an hour of their time a week. But, it counted. I can't say enough about volunteering...it is the most rewarding thing you can ever do. Many of our volunteers where young people whose church had sent them to do Community Service before earning their confirmation. There are children in Africa, who are Orphaned because of Aids. If they don't have relatives they are on their own. Some walk 10 miles to get food for their younger siblings. Yes, we have children that are hungry in the US and shame on us, if we aren't doing everything, we ourselves, can do to end this battle against Hunger. OK! Whew.... Love ya! Gayle