$67.41

We paid $67.41 to fill up my van today. Gasoline was 3.55 per gallon! I keep staring at the receipt and thinking of the really nice date that my husband and I could have gone on, or the flats of seedling I could have planted in my veggie garden, or the several meals that could have been placed on my dinner table.

The sad fact is that in less than two weeks it will have to be filled up again. I am wondering when will the price of gas become prohibitive for the mobile lifestyle that we as Americans have become use to.

When will we begin to alter our way of doing things to accommodate the projected $4.00 a gallon this summer? I have been giving this a lot of thought and I am wonder what will be the turning p0int for me. What allowance will I make to be able to get in my car and run to the store for the gallon of milk or loaf of bread? Would I be willing to walk or possibly borrow my son’s bicycle? This thought pains me to no end.

I have often thought of the times of long ago when you family meal was grow on your own property, you were responsible for your own vegetable garden, providing for your own meat. I have wonderful memories of listening to my grandmother tell of her days growing up on the family farm and how she would go out to the garden to harvest what ever crop was in season. You did not pick and choose in those days. You ate what was growing and there were times when there was not meat on the table. We as Americans have become a spoiled people. I have often thought that if I was responsible of growing and providing for the need of my family then surely we would all starve to death.

I have begun to think of exactly what will be my cut off. When will I alter the way I live, or will I simply make the adjustments and give something else up in order to increase my gasoline budget?

So what am I willing to change about the way I live? I have already begun to consolidate my trips in the car. On the Sundays that I have meetings I just drop my daughter off at UMYF and then hang out for the 90 minutes until my prayer meeting. I get caught up on my bible study or journaling and I am not wasting any unnecessary gas. I possibly would have n the past made the trip back home, but not any more. Now that I live further away it is just too wasteful to travel the extra miles only to turn right around and retrace my steps.

What are you changing in you life to accommodate the rising price of gas?

Is there something you are doing that is making a difference?

What will I give up?

What will I do?

What are you doing?

What are you willing to give up?

When I am faced with these types of questions I always think about one of my all time favorite television shows. What would Caroline Ingles do? I am sure that she had an extensive vegetable garden, a milk cow, chicken coop, she walked into town every week to sell her eggs to snooty Mrs. Olsen and she sat after supper and churned her own butter. Her bread was rising under a towel in a bowl bedside of her wood burring stove and Charles was out plowing up the back forty planting the wheat crop that would put shoes on Half Pint for the coming winter.

$67.41, WOW! I will be considering what I will be changing in the way we live and possibly how I drive from now on, or I hope that I will begin to make some small changes.