Hard to believe it’s already August. Before you know it, we’ll be smack dab in the middle of the holidays. But before we get there we need to focus on this month. School starts on the 22nd which is the most pressing issue. Around here August 1st kicks off a new routine to get the kids in “school mode”. Each morning we will be doing some school work and each night (on weekdays) the boys will be going to bed at the time they will when school starts. Over the next few weeks we need to get some new school clothes, supplies and register at school. This week the misses is cleaning out the boys play room and we’re turning it into a room for the little guy. He’s excited to finally have a room of his own. Oh yeah, also no more sleeping with Mom and Dad starting last night. (he’s fine with this and I’m sure we’ll be past any issues here in a few days, I think Mom’s the one I need to convince to sleep without him more than him with her)
I’m in Seattle Thursday and Friday and we’ll have to juggle cars this week because we’re down to one. I took our Suburban in yesterday to the insurance adjuster and they found the whole right rear side had been smashed from the accident. I didn’t notice this as it’s hard to see unless you compare it to the other side but now that it was pointed out, it’s pretty dramatic even though subtle. The estimate is about $2000 and thankfully the other drivers insurance company has accepted fault. We don’t have rental car coverage because we dropped this portion of our policy to save some money.
Yesterday morning we headed up the hill to the saddle shop where the misses worked on some designs for pillows, coasters and other neat things made out of leather. She’s decided to intern with our friends and get some experience working with leather. She’s really excited about this as it’ll let her creative side come out. We were back in the city by 12:30 and the boys played down the street on a slip n slide (the piece of plastic you hook the hose up to and then slide on) to get some relief from the heat. Grandma came over for dinner and we sat around and read some stories Grandpa Bob wrote in 1946 about his memories of his first 16 years of life. They were great and sounded like something out of a Jimmy Stewart movie. We had a nice dinner and visit and then started to wind down for the day. Everyone was asleep by 9:30 or so, I don’t remember as I faded pretty quick.
Don’t really want to dive too far into politics today but it seems nothing is “Made in America” anymore. I recently watched a documentary about all the manufacturing jobs we’ve lost in the past decade or two. Take a look at the bottom of your coffee cup, I just did, guess where it’s made, you got it, China. The documentary is named the China Question if anyone’s interested. I’m too young to remember but I’m sure some of you (my Mom’s age and the rest of you from that generation) remember the day when factories here were humming and we made most of what we bought and consumed. We’ll never get back to being the country we once were until we start making things here instead of outsourcing everything to other countries. The problem we have here is we’ve created an environment that is not business friendly. We have too many regulations and all want so many days off, too high of pensions, etc. Why would a company want to pay for something to be made here when the price is 3 or 4 times as high? Too many regulations (some good, some terrible) restrict companies from being competitive. My company even buys wine racks from China. They custom make them to our specifications 80% less than the best price we could find in the U.S. What are we supposed to do? Pay 5 times as much and most of the time get a product that’s not as good? The government needs to loosen the regulations and lift the restrictions and costs on business and the American worker needs to take more pride in his or her work as well. I’m not saying all workers are lazy or have no pride in their job but these days it seems nobody cares about their job much, they’re just putting in time. We’re so tired of buying something only to have it break or be defective as soon as we get it home. We need to get back to the days of great innovation and production like in the 50’s and 60’s before we’ll ever dig ourselves out of this mess. I’m happy to pay a bit more for a product made in America, if it’s a good product. I’m not willing to pay more for an inferior product. Pass all the debt increases you want, this doesn’t solve the problem. All this fuss has been about just allowing the government to spend more money we don’t have, great!
Ok I’ll stop now as I’m sure you’re all tired of hearing about this as much as I am but I think it’s important to look at why we’re in debt and where all our money has gone. Most of it’s gone to China, enough said.
Anyhow let’s all have  great day and week and we’ll talk tomorrow, and when you can, buy American! God Bless,