How To Have Christmas When There is Very Little Money

Image from The Graphics Fairy

I have been there, in years past, when money was very, very tight and there was no way to make things stretch to the big, wonderful Christmas I had planned.  My goals were reasonable - a few gifts per child, a nice festive meal, decorations, sending out Christmas cards...but they were well beyond my budget.  Of course I realize that Christmas is ultimately a Christian celebration, but you still want to make it a 'feast', for the eyes and the palate, in addition to experiencing and celebrating the birth of Christ.

Here is a great article with some ideas on just that.  And I'm going to add a few of my own (and repeat a few already mentioned) ideas to this!

First off, decorate, decorate, decorate.  Buy a bag of popcorn kernels and pop them on the stove and string them on strings, or hang up pine cones, put a few pine boughs in water and hang whatever decorations you have on them.  Make paper chains and paper snowflakes and pompoms!  Whatever you can manage, do it.  If the house looks festive, it will feel like Christmas.

Play Christmas music!  Sing carols at the sink doing the dishes!  Get as much Christmas music into the season as possible to build the mood.

Make Christmas outings and events an important part of the month.  Take an evening to walk or drive around and look at the lights and decorations.  Watch old Christmas movies on the sofa.  Have a 'decorating' day.  Buy an Advent calendar at the dollar store if you can, and open up a cheap chocolate every day of Advent.  If your local church has something special like a Christmas Eve candlelight service, consider going.

Consider your gifts carefully.  The most important people to get gifts are the children in your immediate family - your cousin's kids you see once a year don't HAVE to have a gift.  If you're in a position where you must buy for people outside your immediate family, either let everyone know that you are working in a budget this year or else just send something small and let the chips fall where they may.  Don't be embarrassed to say you have a budget, everyone should have a budget!  Simply say something like "With the children getting older (or whatever reason you would like to use) I think that this year we should keep the budget at X per child.  Would you like to send me some gift ideas for Sally and Jimmy or do you want me to surprise them!?"

Cut the Christmas cards to the bare minimum.  You don't need to send a card to everyone at church, just wish them a Merry Christmas.  You don't have to send Christmas cards to relatives you see all the time.  You don't have to send cards to people who have never sent you cards!  You can just choose to not send the cards!  In fact, if you take an evening to make a 15 minute 'Merry Christmas' phone call to your nearest and dearest, they would likely appreciate that much more anyway.

When you do buy, remember to wrap absolutely everything you possibly can.  Buy a roll of lifesavers and wrap it.  Buy a pair of socks - wrap it.  Wrap everything in the stockings and everything under the tree.  Wrap things in fun ways - newspaper funnies and sheets of old music and pillowcases with lots of ribbon.  Wrap something in string and elicit all the laughs.  Wrap something in box after box so the children have to unwrap layer after layer to get to the chocolate bar inside!  Wrap gifts and then tie strings to them and let the kids 'find' their presents.  Or use a treasure hunt with clues.  The gifts may be small in price and in number, but the wrapping will be utterly unique and memorable.

Think outside the box to find presents.  Wrap stuff you already own for younger children.  Seriously, take a bunch of trains from the train-obsessed 18 month old's stash, clean them up, and wrap them again.  Wrap hand-me-downs from other families that you had put aside, wrap toiletries you would need to buy anyway for a child or even beloved foods and beverages.  If your child loves a certain kind of cereal, for example, buy them a box 'all their own'.  Look through second hand stores for gently loved books, toys and clothing, of course, but also advertise on buy and sell sites.  Often people are getting rid of things before Christmas.  Try saying something like "Does anyone have Lego they are thinking of purging before the holidays?  Looking to spend no more than $5 but open to any and all pieces!"  Sometimes people have things they just don't even realize someone else would want, so they never bother advertising.

The Christmas meal can be made more special with a well-dressed table.  Fancy Christmas napkins from the Dollar store, or a pretty Goodwill tablecloth.  Candles go a long way to making a table beautiful, and dimmed lights.  Invite guests!  Every meal looks more festive if someone else is there.  Simmer a cinnamon stick and a few cloves in a pot on the stove to make the house smell 'Christmassy' while you cook.  No matter what you serve as a meal, offer a special drink and a dessert.  It can be anything - some shortbread cookies with a little piece of maraschino cherry on top, or red and green jello in a glass with a spiral of whipped cream, but dessert makes a regular meal festive and a sparkly drink (ginger ale mixed with cranberry juice is always a good bet) is unusual for supper, so it adds to the feeling of 'special'.

I love what the blog above mentions about Christmas Day - keep the nice holiday feeling going through the day so that it doesn't feel like when the gifts are done, everything is done.  It's a good time to go sledding, or arrange a visit with a neighbour, or go to church in your very best clothes, or serve at the soup kitchen, or walk around handing out dry socks and new toothbrushes to the homeless, or go see a matinee.  Whatever you do, make sure there is something 'next' on Christmas Day after the presents are done.

So there you go!  I know that for many people, Christmas is an entirely secular time of year, so I hope I've included lots of ideas for the non-church people who celebrate.

It's November which means IT'S ALMOST ADVENT!!!

Lalalalalala CHRISTMAS!!!

Don't hate me.

I know, I know, it's NOVEMBER and everything but I just love the START of Advent so much I drag it all out as much as I possibly can!

Okay, so have you seen the Jacquie Lawson Advent calendars!?  They are fantastic and so much FUN.  Every morning the children and I would log onto the Jacquie Lawson site and see what new Advent calendar thingy has popped up to explore.  For $5 you buy unlimited access to the Advent calendar and I'm not ashamed to say we still occasionally look at last year's and re-play the games over again.  It's Well Worth It, is what I'm saying.

Also I'm happily putting things into and out of my Amazon cart which is my very most favourite part of Christmas shopping.  Mostly because I cannot STAND going into stores around Christmas because there are so many people and some of them might bump into me or run their carts into my legs or have screaming children and...I'm just not a people person.  It's almost sad to eventually finish the Amazon order and sadly press 'order', because then it's all done for another year.

I've found myself a fun little project to work on when the children have gone to bed:

Image from Amazon

I've been patiently making my way through these paper cut ornaments for two Advents now, with no sign of stopping yet!

We're doing our shoeboxes again this year!  And we're hosting a packing party at the church, too!

Look at these wreaths!  It's almost time to make our annual front door wreath!

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I have a grapevine wreath that I made from vines I pulled off a downed tree in our backyard and every year I decorate it again with a new bunch of things.  Except right now, when I have actually hung up a bunch of multi-coloured corn on the door.  But soon it will be time for no more corn!!

Usually I buy a new Christmas tree ornament each year to add to the collection but THIS year I need a tree topper because our old one has finally bit the dust.  I THINK I want a star, and not an angel.  Mostly because I really prefer stars and also the angels tend to get a little over the top but also because angels tilt on treetops, I don't know if you've noticed this.  But the problem is what star to pick, because scrolling through stars has me realizing I don't actually love a lot of the stars EITHER.  There's this one, which I do like:

Image from Amazon

I don't know if I like it enough though.  It is very pointy.  But it's a far sight better than some of the tree toppers out there.  Or I could get one of these things:

Image from Amazon

I know it sort of skips the Christian imagery of the angel/star, but honestly that's fine with me because seriously, the top of my tree does not need to have a star on it in order for me to remember the, ahem, 'reason for the season', as they say.  But the problem is I don't really love any of those EITHER, but I still need something on the top of the tree!  What a nice, cozy sort of non-problem to mull over for a few weeks.

And speaking of mulling, one of my favourite things to do around the holidays is make everything smell nice.  And to that end I really want to buy this:

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I mean, I WON'T buy it, because it is $20 plus shipping, but I want to.  Vanilla, bourbon and white tea scent sounds lovely.

Am I alone?  Is anyone else getting all revved up??

Reading Notes - October

Here's what I read this month!

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The Language of Bees - This is the 9th book in the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series by Laurie R. King and the weakest in the series up to this point.  I have been a big fan of King's re-imagining of the classic dectective but frankly, this one was disappointing on many levels.  Firstly, Russell and Holmes already solved the 'crazed weirdo religious nut' type mystery in A Monstrous Regiment of Women, which was excellently done, tbh.  Secondly, for a good portion of the book the married detectives didn't even work together, and their interactions and joint skills are one of the highlights of the stories.  The reader was left to follow Russell's story instead of Holmes', and she definitely got the short end of the stick.  Also, Holmes has given every impression of treating her mind as equal to his in all 8 previous books, and here he shuffles her off to the side in favour of his relationship with an estranged, and actually pretty unpleasant, son from a long ago romance.  I didn't like it one bit.  And honestly on top of all of this the novel talks quite a bit about this 'mysterious hive' situation and then that ends up being a mystery completely unrelated to the main problems in the book.  I have come to expect a higher level from King but there are several more titles before the series finished so hopefully this is just a bump in the road.

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Secrets From The Vinyl Cafe is one of author Stuart McLean's funny collection of stories.  I adore the Vinyl Cafe and I think, with this, have probably either read or heard almost all of them.  I even went to see McLean once!  I can't remember what year, but he was performing at Dominion Chalmers United Church in Ottawa (not because his stories were at all religious, mind you, just that that church is nice and lends itself well to good acoustics and a big-but-manageable audience).  I remember I got two tickets and took my grandmother, who was living in Ottawa at the time.  Sometime after that I met Stuart McLean in a bookstore, actually.  He was a terribly tall man with a fantastic speaking voice.  Now, of course, both Stuart and my grandmother have passed away, but these stories are still so amazing and wonderful and everyone should read them.

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Full Dark House.  This is a new mystery series for me!  I find that when I'm in the library, scrolling through shelves, I am drawn to certain books because of how they look - and this is one of those sorts of picks.  Look at that cover; isn't it compelling?  Fowler writes in a darkly gothic comedic sort of style.  He doesn't shy away from gore or tough language, but when he uses them it's for a purpose and I didn't mind it.  The characters were compelling and fascinating - well planned and well sketched out. There was an undercurrent of deep melancholy to the story as well, which I don't usually find myself drawn to because I prefer my casual reading to be casual, but actually I liked it here and it made the story more human.  I wouldn't say it was funny, necessarily, but that being said I did actually laugh out loud several times.  If I could criticize anything it would be that the story does switch back and forth between two timelines about 50 or 60 years apart, and the characters get a bit jumbled up because of this.  There's a woman in the earlier timeline, and her granddaughter, with the same last name, in the same police dept., in the later timeline.  The forensic guy exists in both timelines, but young in one and over 80 in another.  I found it a little confusing but it only took an extra few seconds at the beginning of a chapter to figure out when they were again, and the occasional re-read of a paragraph.  I did read a review that said the audio book uses the same actors for both early and later voices of a character and that it was confusing - I imagine this book reads best on paper.

Lots of red herrings!  Lots of twists and turns!  Lots of characters to keep track of and personalities to figure out and lots and LOTS of history, all of which I love.  It sucked me right in and kept me interested all the way through.

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Speaking From Among The Bones.  Another mystery series I've really enjoyed are these, the Flavia de Luce books.  Flavia is a great sleuth but, again, this was not Bradley's best work.  It felt rather rushed, actually.  Flavia whizzes through the case without so much as a stumble, and the whole book ends on a bit of a cliff hanger which, to be honest, was kind of a let down.  I'd really like it if the author could try and develop the secondary characters as the series progresses because, well, it's getting a little formulaic at this point.  Hopefully the next one is better.

Dogs

I don't even know what to call this post.  I suppose something along the lines of Dog-Sitting:  Try Not To Actually Sit On The Dog?

So our friend, A, has dogs.  And one of the dogs has come to stay with us for a while.  It's a very nice dog, I will admit.  However I have exactly zero experience (or very, very close to zero experience) with dogs.  Once, when I was very young, my family had a dog.  I do not remember this at all.  Also when I was young my neighbour had a dog that she let me walk.  I do remember this, but not many details, just the idea of walking this dog.  And also when David and I were married a dog once spent one night at our house.  So there you have it - essentially all of my dog knowledge right there.

Here's what I knew about dogs.  Dogs shed, and also you should not put your face next to their face or stare them in the eyes or touch their food while they are eating.  Also they growl and bark and they smell very doggy especially when wet and also apparently cats sometimes hate them.

So.  With that in mind we are dog-sitting.  I have to admit it is NOTHING like what I thought it would be.  To begin with, the dog is pretty large and yet seems to have some fairly significant issues with spatial awareness in that it believes it is a lap dog.  I was not expecting this.  The dog likes to lie down on feet, to lie down on the sofa beside you, to lie down on the sofa beside you and also on your feet and also partly on your lap and then ooze its way towards engulfing your body and eventually disposing of you like an owl pellet.  This is what I imagine will happen, at least.

The dog does not shed but will lie very still while you backcomb all of its ear and face hair so that it looks like a mushroom.  I mean, it will give you a very disappointed look while you are doing this, but it will let you.

The dog will consume a substantial 'dental treat' shaped bone thing that you bought thinking 'oh, this dental treat bone thing will last several days' in, like, 15 minutes.

While it does this it will sound like it is crunching the bones of your ancestors.

Which is ridiculous because while you are walking the dog it will jump because a leaf stirred behind it, because there were waves that were touching the shore several feet away from it, because someone drove past in a car, and memorably, when it startled a very small grey mouse in the underbrush.  At the mouse startle incident you will roll your eyes and think how very far we have come from man's protector growling into the darkness beyond your prehistoric campfire.

The dog will simultaneously love everyone and also not love anyone at all and want them all to stay away except yes it does want to be touched on the head except also no it does not and why are you NOT rubbing my stomach?  If this makes sense to you, then you must have a dog.

The cat will actually be more than happy to put the dog in its place.  The dog's place being somewhere beneath the status of hairballs.  The cat will do this simply by maintaining a truly impressive level of eye contact until the dog gives up because heck, the cat is actually terrifying and there's no way the dog will win that battle.

The dog will not bark or growl at anyone but will groan arthritically when it lies down, much like you yourself groan arthritically when you lie down.  You will feel sympathy for the dog.  It will also twitch when it dreams, and jump into the air when the furnace turns on, and take to wiping its nose on your pants.  Actually the dog will start to remind you very much of your own children at 2 year olds.  You will formulate an elaborate theory of how dog sitting is, in fact, like taking care of an 80lb 2 year old.  Big, not that bright but very curious, non-verbal, requiring constant attention or else it will knock something off a shelf.

So there you have it.  I will keep you posted.

Learning Notes - Week 9 (Oct. 21-26)

SO.  Listen, it's been a week.  I didn't really keep track of our learning notes and everything sort of fell apart.  My husband's mother is here for a ten day visit and we've had two doctor's appointments plus one day (so far) or 11ish straight hours in the car picking up mother in law and bringing her here, plus another day of errands and lessons.  So, really, school has not been great.

But I really want to write down some of the stuff we've been doing, if I can remember any of it.  So here you go.

The kids have been in love with the Odyssey Audio stories, and with so much car time, we've gone through a lot of them.  Here's the one we've been listening to this week:

The collections aren't cheap, but there's over 9 hours of radio drama on the sets, so I think it is worth it.  And of course you listen to them again and again.

The 9yo tends to read like I do, which is to say in fanatical spurts.  He gets obsessed with a series, devours the whole thing, and then flounders for a bit before latching on to something else.  This week has been all about this series:

Image from Amazon

There are 8 books in the series and he has read several of them this week.  Which has also re-started his fascination with origami.  We've gone through a LOT of origami paper this week.

All three children had their swimming lessons and the 9yo had piano.  We (cough. I.) finally got around to buying the theory book that his teacher wanted him to use.  This is it:

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Let me just say that I had no idea piano books could be so divisive.  Man, people have opinions about piano books.  This is the theory book for level 1, and the 9 yo went through about 14 pages of it in one sitting, catching himself up in theory to where he is in the performance book.  He's also practiced several times.  The 7yo has also practiced several times.

We had one solid day of morning time this week where we went through all our memory work and also read history, geography, Bible, Christian biographies, and so forth.  We also did some seat work that day.  The 5yo especially has been very interested in math and has completed several lessons as well as a reading lesson.  And we had a second day where the children did seat work but no morning time.

We managed one trip to the library and switched up our books.  We're going to need another trip soon, though, because I've been told everyone has 'nothing to read'.

The 5yo helped me make a cake.  

The children played many games of Sushi Go and Skipbo with Grandma.

We watched a nature documentary, and also some less educational television that still sparks a lot of discussion such as The Great British Baking Show, Antiques Roadshow, and Grandma's favourite - Wheel of Fortune!  

We walked to the park and watched the ducks diving on the lake and talked about it.  We also checked out the map posted at the lakefront that shows our town.

So there you go.  That was our week.

Learning Notes - Week 8 (Oct. 14-19)

Yay! We're back!  I'm almost breathing normally and my husband's 5 day long migraine that resulted in an ER visit has been resolved!  As long as no one tries to run around we're all not coughing!  Time to do school!

Monday

Well...but not today.  Because today is Thanksgiving!  We had my parents over for supper and had a bonfire and a huge meal and then said goodbye to our guests and went to vote at the advanced poles, saw a lovely rainbow, came home and watched a movie and then went to bed.  No school, but a lovely day.

Tuesday

Morning Time

We did some of our morning time work at home, and then continued in the car.

Doxology, national anthem

Bible reading - Mark 1:35-38.  We discussed why Jesus would have craved solitude, why the people would have come to look for him, and why Jesus would want to leave the area and continue travelling.

Christian biography - the 7yo read extensively to us from the biography of Selina, Countess of Huntington.  We had hoped to finish the story today but didn't quite make it.

Memory Work - We reviewed days of the week, months of the year, provinces to New Brunswick, OT books up to Esther, and The Lord's Prayer.  All three children have the Lord's Prayer memorized now and we will continue to frequently review it.  We learned the first line of Psalm 23: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."

History - We finished SOTW 2 chapter 4.  We were introduced to the story of Saint Nicholas and also the Eastern Church Schism.  We added 1054 AD to our history wall.

Geography - We usually do either history or geography, but we're trying to stay on top of geography right now, so we're doing both today.  We reviewed our chapter one terms and definitions again.

The 9yo and 7yo both read aloud to the 5yo and on their own in the car.

Swimming lessons for all three children

Piano @ the Conservatory for the 9yo

Wednesday

Morning Time

Prayer, doxology, national anthem.  We listened to Be Thou My Vision and read a bit about the hymn.  This will be our next song when we're ready for it.

Bible Reading - Mark 1:39-42.  We discussed leprosy and the OT requirements for lepers.  We dipped in to some of the Levitical passages.

Christian biography - The 7yo and I had different memories of where we ended with our biography of Selina, Countess of Huntington.  So I read the last few paragraphs aloud and we looked up the college she founded in Wales.  It changed name, and then eventually closed in 2003, which was sad.  But we saw lots of old pictures of what it used to look like.

Geography - Another review day for the 9yo.  Then we continued with Chapter 2 reading about the Amazon river.  I assigned this book as independent reading:

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9yo
30 minutes silent reading
piano practice

7yo
piano practice
R&S Math 2 - Lesson 9
30 minutes reading

5yo
piano practice
R&S Math 1 - Lesson 20

Thursday

Today started with an early (er) rise than usual and a dr. appointment so I had one plan - for the 9yo to do math and english.

9yo
R&S English 2 - Lessons 13 and 14
Saxon 5/4 Math - Lessons 17 and 18

7yo
R&S Math 2 - Lesson 10

5yo
R&S Math 1 - Lessons 21 and 22
100 Easy Lessons - Lesson 28

We read a lot - the 9yo and 7yo got hooked on these books this week, now that Spiderwick is finished:

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So they spent hours yesterday and today folding origami and putting on puppet shows with the creatures and today we went to the library and they found the first book in the series and took that out.  The 9yo is also reading this:

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Friday

We spent the entire day running errands, grocery shopping, going to doctor's appointments and driving back and forth for these things.  No school today!

Saturday

Thoughts about public transportation and alternate timelines

I really enjoy reading this wonderful blog called Penniless Parenting.  She blogs from an undisclosed country and (I assume) under a false name, and her writing is on many topics but all under the umbrella of living, as her tag line says, "A rich life on a minimum wage".  Penniless Parenting often posts about extreme frugality - living on very little in the way of money or resources.  And kudos to her, really; certainly I wouldn't be able to do so with as much grace as she's managed.  Recently she published a post on living without a car.  Here it is.  And here is a quote from it, that I sort of disagree with by the way:

"In order to live without a car, you will have to give up things. You'll have to make compromises. Maybe you end up taking a job that is less ideal, pays less or is in a field you don't enjoy. Maybe you'll live in a neighborhood that you don't like as much. Maybe it means your kids won't be able to do extra curricular activities because you won't be able to drive them from place to place to get there in time. Maybe it means that you won't be able to go on certain trips that aren't accessible by public transportation. It means that you'll have to structure your day to be on time to catch the bus and have to come back before the last bus for the evening. It means that you are more limited in where you can grocery shop and clothes shop and how well you can bargain shop in general, because whatever you buy you need to bring back with you by bus, unless there is delivery."

It's strange to me how people see frugality as the time when you 'give things up', because I really do not think of it as fundementally about this.  All of life is sort of about making choices, really.  I went to university, but that means I didn't go to college and get started in my career quickly and make lots of money fast.  I had three children, but that means I didn't have any other number of children.  I didn't stop at one child and make my life pretty straightforward with just one child to think about.  I also didn't have a big, vibrant family and guarantee myself lots and lots of weddings and grandkids.  I'm happy I didn't NOT have my three children, but there are many other numbers of children I could have had that I did not have, and who knows how I would feel if any of those numbers of children were the amount I had.  I have forever 'given up', so to speak, the option of having zero children.  But that's life!  If I had never had children I would have 'given up' the option of having ten children!

Every meal I eat is also a choice to not be currently eating other food in my house.  Every time I go to bed or take a shower is also showing my preference for those activities over other things I could be doing during that time.  Did I read this book?  I sure did!  And also therefore did NOT read any number of other books!

So I suppose that quote bothers me a bit because the emphasis appears to be on the things you are not getting in choosing to not own a car.  But this kind of have/have not thinking pattern, while it could exist through all areas of our lives, seems to be greatly focused on the financial side of things.  Everything on that list of examples of things you may have to give up is an example, obviously, and I understand that, but all the same I think it puts the whole thing into a negative light.  Sort of like it implies 'well you'll save money, but make no mistake, you'll have to make sacrifices and they will be difficult but if you think you can do it, you'll be able to survive on less'.  

Here's the thing, maybe not owning a car would be a significant sacrifice for some people.  Certainly it would be for me, where I live.  And she's right when she says in her post that many people couldn't live without a car because they have structured their lives around a car.  That's very true!  I live somewhere where I must have a car, because this is where my husband works, and so this is our choice.  We could live somewhere else, but then he wouldn't have this job.  And I imagine this is what she is trying to get at.  But here's another way to think about it:

Right now, my husband has the job he has.  He's a minister in a church.  And he also doesn't have a vast number of all the other jobs at all the other places in our province, our country, or even the world.  He has this one job right here.  And the same goes with every other aspect of our lives.  We have the electrical company we have, and don't have the others.  We own the dining room table we own, and therefore do not own the other dining room tables available.  Etc.  And all of those decisions together form a snapshot of our life currently.  We have THESE children in THIS house with THIS cat and THESE hobbies and THIS brand of milk in the fridge.  We don't have another existance, or I suppose you could phrase it that this is our timeline and baring some kind of ability to move between timelines this is the only reality we will ever experience - the outcome of previous decisions.  Even our future decisions are influenced by our current reality.  I will never have to decide, for example, if I'm going to take that job in Paris because I already made the choice in grade 10 to stop taking French class.  That previous decision has removed all sorts of current and future decisions from my sphere.

Rather than experiencing frugality (or poverty, or wealth, or anything financial really) as opening or closing all of these doors in our lives, I think of it as one aspect of an already progressing timeline.  I have countless, endless, practically infinite decisions in my life, big and small.  And the same goes for everyone.  Decisions might be smaller in human scope and understanding but they are never less numerous.  Your timeline is as complex and varied as anyone's.  True, I might never make a decision that will affect the ruling of a monarchy, or the beginnings of a colony on the moon, or end a war, my decisions may be of a less dramatic cut, but make no mistake, they exist in remarkable variety and number all the same.

So here's the thing with quotes like that.  They make it all about the money.  They say 'you can live without a car, and here are things you may have to give up, without a car', but with that statement they reduce the idea of your timeline to a one trick pony.  If you have a car/money - you get all these things over here...and if you don't have a car/money, then you get to give those things up.

But human lives are so much more complex than that.  To give up a car is one decision in a huge web of interconnecting other decisions.  Take just the first compromise she mentions: 

"Maybe you end up taking a job that is less ideal, pays less or is in a field you don't enjoy."

Or, what if you make the decision to get up earlier and catch the bus?  What if you cut down your hours?  What if you telecommute?  What if you go back to school?  What if the zombie apocalypse happens and it doesn't matter?  What if you take early retirement?  What if you get a better job nearer to your house?  What if you carshare?  What if you rent a car instead of owning?  What if you bike to work?  What if it doesn't matter because everyone at your old job disliked you and it is just as well that you left?  What if you take unemployment and start a vegetable garden?  What if you become a professional gardening consultant?  What if you break your ankle planting a garden for the mayor and it doesn't heal properly and you decide to become a Buddhist and in five years you're living in Tibet?  And THEN the zombie apocalypse happens?

What I'm trying to say here is It. Doesn't. End. Here.  It never does!  Maybe you do decide to stop driving and get rid of your car and then you discover you cannot manage the bus commute and you end up quitting and get another job closer to your house and you really hate your new job.  Is this all traceable to getting rid of your car and taking the bus?  Did that one decision make everything in the future go the way it did?  It did not.  Your life was full, FULL of a million little decisions that brought you to the day when you looked up from your new job and said "I can't stand this job".  And then, is that the end?  It is not.  Because your full life full of infinite decisions has an infinite number of decisions left to go.  Until the day you breathe your last, the decisions, the choices, never end.  There is always a choice.  Even if the choice is attitude.