I began cleaning out a shed for storage on the property. I need to find a renter for the house. They need to move in in August and kick us out. If not, chances are I'll find an excuse to stay longer, and get weighed down longer.
Philadelphia will provide the recharge and momentum for the rest of the year - The kids' father lives 30 minutes from there, as well as grandparents and good friends of mine. The plan in Philly is to park the bus in New Jersey and take the train into the city and live there for a week or more. We need not begin official home-schooling until September, and so the kids can enjoy their summer with family they dont' see often.
There is so much to do here everyday, it's been paramount lately to me to eliminate and simplify, which looks increasingly intimidating every morning when I open my eyes to it. I'm living in my grandma's house, and most of her belongings are here - a couple dressers, nice kitchen appliances, clothes, photographs, bookshelves and lots and lots and lots of books. Although it's far from reality, I have grown close to a lot of the knick knacks and pictures, and some of the really great books, as if they are mine. It will be a good exercise in letting go to pack these little wonders up and lock them away neatly in the clean shed.
But first I had to pick out about 100-200 cocoons from the thousands of tent caterpillars that have 'nested' in the wild cherry tree next to the shed. Eww. Does it sometimes seem that you begin a project only to find yourself either back to the hardware store 5 times in a day, being distracted, someone getting sick at school, called into work, rain, snow, tornado, a phone call, or an infestation of caterpillars?? So the space to hold at least my grandma's belongings is pretty clean at this point, while I write this. I'm waiting now for that cherry tree to fall on the shed in the next tornado we get!! Actually, that's a terribly negative way to think. . .
Tonight as I continue this bland entry, I have some liquor store boxes I squeezed into the reservoirs between three car seats in the Civic, crying out to be filled. My plan of action is to eliminate my grandma's stuffs in the house so I can see what's left, and truthfully, that's scary, because I have WAY more then I'd like to admit - and no, I'm not a hoarder, I'm American. Let's look at the kitchen - I have the normal glass place settings we eat off everyday, then plastic picnic supplies, then paper supplies in case we are sick and lazy or have a bunch of people over, then 5 boxes of fine China for something I haven't yet figured out - displaying?? Then there is flatware - most of which is Bunny's, my grandma - the normal stuff, the higher end (middle class), then the 'silver'. I thought it was all 'silverware'. Then the appliances - which come in handy with biscuits and Christmas cookies, the bread machine, the juicer, the pots and cake molds, the COOKIE CUTTERS, everything. Then my fridge. . . My friend Anna, who is a single mother and a sonographer, said she hates (she doesn't really) people on food stamps - she's right - look how much freaking food I have at anytime of the month - sure I run low on staples, but I always have more then enough with a little of ingenuity.
The argument of the poor in the USA is a tough one. I grew up 'poor', and sure, my mom has stories, but none that I remember personally - the heat going out, the electric being turned off (or was that me - it was me!), having no Christmas gifts, and I always held the thrif store in the highest regard, until 8th grade. . .Even the homeless have cell phones and drugs, albeit housing prices are insane - they still have 'stuff' - and with that last word - stuff, my period key completely broke off my old (poor me) mac Well, the poor now don't have period keys Hmmm
I listen to the radio when I am done praying in the car, and today I caught a woman on NPR named Linda Grant, an author, who was asked what the single most negative impact her generation (she's 60) contributed to the world Here's the dialog -
REHM
11:50:26
You talk about what you feel is one of the greatest contributions of your generation, namely feminism. What do you think is the worst?
GRANT
11:50:41
(laugh) You caught me on the hop there. I mean, I think that something happened in the early '70s which I remember very well and it was -- there was a particular slogan which was -- and I'm wondering if people are going to remember it, which was, how can I change the world if I can't even change myself? So it became a sort of tremendous moment of sort of introspection and sort of, you know, of selfishness, I think, so that, you know, we really were the architects of the vast consumer boom of materialism. You know, we have never had so many consumer goods. Nobody has ever had so many. I mean, this is a really tiny thing, but I was looking at my bathmat yesterday morning and I was thinking, I should really get another one. I thought, you know, my parents had the same bathmat I think for the whole of their marriage.
REHM
11:51:42
Of course.
GRANT
11:51:42
They never thought that they needed to get rid of their bathmat.
REHM
11:51:45
Right.
GRANT
11:51:45
I was thinking, oh, no, I think I'll get a new -- you know, we, I think, created the disposable culture, I think. And the one thing that I think is a bit of a toxic legacy is because we are so convinced that we're young, right, we cannot bear the idea of aging. And I think we have created the whole business of cosmetic surgery of, you know, altering your appearance of facelifts, of all of that. It is unbearable to be old. I don't think my parents thought it was unbearable to look old. We, I think, think it's unbearable to look old and that, I think, is a product of our own narcissism.
REHM
11:52:24
And that plays out in the consumer goods.
GRANT
11:52:27
Yes, absolutely.
REHM
11:52:28
We have to keep replacing...
GRANT
11:52:29
Yeah.
REHM
11:52:30
...and upgrading...
GRANT
11:52:31
Yeah.
REHM
11:52:31
...and making sure it's bigger...
GRANT
11:52:33
Yeah.
REHM
11:52:33
...better, newer.
GRANT
11:52:35
If you like, because it turned out to be so much more difficult than we thought it was going to be to change the world, to make the better world, world a better place, we're making our own homes and our own bodies better places by continually buying new things. And, you know, I don't know that that's quite such a sort of -- you know, I don't think if you told us at the time that that was going to be our legacy, we would've been all that delighted.
I'll leave it there Without a period, a forever more without a period After all, periods kinda let us all down, you know?
11:5
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