Your Lifestyle?

Gonna be 57 later this month. Thrice married, thrice divorced. Have always lived from paycheck to paycheck until recently, when my sister died and listed me as her life insurance policy beneficiary. Still work for a living but now there's still money left over at the end of the month. I have enough savings to do some "pay it forward" thingies and to relish knowing I haven't eaten Top Ramen with cut up hot-dogs in it for dinner even ONCE since MetLife delivered the check. I miss my sister terribly. I donated her 1996 Toyota RAV4 to my land-lady, who had been driving two beat up old POS cars (one for Summer, one for Winter) for the past 20 years. I also drive a fully-paid off 2001 Toyota RAV4. I pay for vanity plates, which I've had for .... over 20 years. Lordy... maybe 30 years!

I've worked with/for law enforcement agencies as a 9-1-1 dispatcher, a supervisor, a 9-1-1 Center Supervisor from 1977 until 2007. At that point, I promoted out of the Emergency Comm Center environment into HQ as a Telecommunications Systems Analyst II, with regular business hours. Weekends and holidays off (plus mandated furlough days for the past 18 months) which required a BIG change in my lifestyle from Midnight Shift Night Owl to ..... groggy danged night owl trying to be alert in the mornings.

I have seven tattoos of dragons, which I designed myself, but paid an artist to ink onto my body. Most of them are cute dragons, nothing scary, Asian, or fiery mean. One holds up an empty cup of coffee, begging a refill.

Still fighting that morning thing, but having chickens makes it much more enjoyable. I rent the house in which I live with two miniature dachshunds and two of the four cats I brought here to live with me in 2007. The other two cats went snarky when I adopted the second dachshund and live outside now. My landlady is one of my co-workers and she owns an acre of land on which her house is in the front at the street, and mine is about halfway "into" the acre behind a big ol' chain link fence. I hope to buy the property from her family someday if I out-live her.

I have satellite TV, cannot get DSL access at my residence so I have satellite 'Net access, and was a chunky, soft, couch potato all my life until I moved into this house. I built two goldfish ponds ALL by myself, put in a couple of funky raised garden beds, then decided I wanted to keep "a couple of chickens." I now own a cordless power drill, a circular saw, a jig-saw, four tape measuring thingies, a spirit level, several hammers, and know how to use all of 'em. (I also inherited every last item of my sister's household belongings, which have been stacked in the Great Room and guest bedroom of the house I'm renting. I tackle a bit of it every weekend. This past weekend I went through her jewelry box and cried for hours.)

I've been celibate for more than 12 years. Nothing on the horizon to alter that situation.

And my eyes ARE grey.
 
Graduate Student.... is that a lifestyle?
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I'm recently married, in a 2,100sqft house on a .23acre sized lot in the suburbs. Both of our cars are from 2002. My husband is an electrical engineer, and I run a petsitting business while I try to finally finish my undergrad. Besides chickens, we also have a mutt (Piglet). We don't grow any of our own food, but we shop at farmers markets and try to eat as natural as we can afford. Hopefully we'll have a garden going next year. We take an international trip every year, usually in the spring, and then a trip back to our hometown in Ohio every year as well. We also help one of my sisters through college. Things we like to do: go out to eat, artsy films, kayak, seeing our favorite comedians live, and we watch a lot of TV.
 
Little about us...We live on the lake actually a lot more like the swamp
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We moved to the "country" almost a year ago from Little Rock. My husband and I have 5 children..I have 3 (2 boys and a girl) from a previous marriage and we have twin boys together! I am a stay at home mom, wanna be photographer, wanna be childrens book author...
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Husband works in Oil Field Services.....I would love to have more land and be able to have more of a family farm. We have tried the past two years to have a garden but only got a handful of tomatoes! I would love to be self sufficient! We line dry clothes, never eat out, kids wear hand me downs from eachother, hubs and I only get new clothes when needed. We just choose to live this way. Guess we are sort of crunchy.... We love fishing, camping, going to real lakes (unlike the nonswimmable lake in my backyard!), yard sales,etc... My next project is learning to sew!!! That would be so awesome!!! We are very new to chickens but I have fallen in love!!!! We have 4 faverolles hens and a blue laced red Wyandotte chick...we had two but lost one yesterday! Saturday was the first time I had picked up a chicken
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In a nutshell.... Married with two kids... paycheck to paycheck.

Crack the nut and you'll see...

PineapplePapa works full time (for his dad) and goes to college full time, Philosophy major who eventually wants to teach. Wants to write in his field and in fiction. A WoW fan, computer geek, has about 10% body fat but not from sports as he has NO interest in them at all.

PineappleMama, stay at home mom, trying HSing, my family is all nutso... err... Sagitarrian... decent cook, started canning recently. Coached son's YMCA soccer team for five seasons... Room Mom for... oh sheesh, seven? PTA board. All that guff. Den leader when he was a tiger cub... sooooo cliche.

ThePineappleKid is 12, typical rowdy boy, WoW fan like dad, math/science geek, working on his blue belt.

PineapplePixie is 7, 8 on the 19th, an intriguing mix of tomboy and girly girl. Art and Music lover. Working on her orange belt.

Two vehicles... 93 Silverado (that pretty light blue they discontinued ALWAYS wanted one of these trucks) and a beat up Ford POS... okay officially the model is a Taurus, but anyone who's got one knows it's really code for POS (point of sale... as in you regret it from the point of sale... it breaks down from the point of sale... etc) right now it's the tranny giving me grief.

We have three dogs, four chickens and a beta. Riley, the gerbil, passed on Monday.
 
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I wanna try and be as self reliant as I can by raising chickens, bees, rabbits, fruit trees, and a garden. We are a very simple rural family. In the winter we work puzzles. We like it when the power is off so we can play rook. We love to set around the campfire telling stories. As for name brands we usually buy name brand 2/3 of the time. I actually canned 12 pints of corn monday, 9 quarts of veggie soup and 3 quarts of potatoes tuesday and 10 pints of corn today.
 
I guess I'm kind of somewhat alternative in the realistic "crunchy" kind of way. Sustainability and living a sustainable lifestyle, in my personal life and business endeavors, are important to me, but not beyond reason. For example, I garden, raise rabbits for meat and fur, chickens for meat and eggs, have a garden, live on 35 acres outside of a small agricultural town and could "live off the land" if I had to...but I still drive an old Ford pick-up truck to work and I have absolutely NO intention of converting to bio-fuel.
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I do, however, hope to start transitioning to working from home, living off of revenues from writing and small-scale sustainable farming.

Boyfriend and I are mid- to late-20's. No kids, and no particular plans to have any. We value having time to do things we enjoy (camping, animal related stuff, recreational gold panning, other outdoor pursuits,) over careers and work, and we work just enough to sustain those habits!
 
I am a country girl stuck in the city. I am 24 years old, grew up in Oakland running the streets until I was about 16 years old. Then we moved up to Grass Valley where I fell head over heels in love with horses. Owned many horses, trained some, showed some, even got taught by a wonderful QH and Paint Horse breeder up there. I managed breeding mares on a ranch, worked and schooled for ROP (Vocational School).

I live to rescue dogs, and in Grass Valley I fostered 30+ dogs from the county shelter who were on death row. Even bailed some out of the sucky stuffy city pound. They all got wonderful homes. I worked at an answering service up there for 3+ years, and lived on my own for about a year before moving here to Sacramento.

I live at home now, with my two mothers and my brother. I have a family of junkies/addicts who I love and who most of which are clean and sober. I am open minded to everything just about, and make a real point not to prejudge people. I am a picies (spelling?) and it's VERY clear. I am easy going and looove mucking stalls, working with animals, and camping!

I am working right now to get an AA in Buisness and an AS in Animal Science. I would like to have my own home on property where I can have all my animals and get some more. Would LOVE to raise pigs, cows, chickens.

I have one dog, and two cats. Along with five chickens. My flock right now are pets and layers but when I get my own property I would like to raise meat birds for personal consumption. I love the country and all it offers, plus I am a hardworker
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I don't mind breaking a sweat lol.

Edited to add:

I also drive a WONDERFUL 94 Chevy Silverado which is my baby and she is just great
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never got me in a bad spot!
 
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