Small and Simple

 

The hubby and I leave for Colorado in a couple of weeks, for the summer season. The cabin there that we always referred to as "small" will seem like a rambling mansion.  It has been a couple of weeks since we walked away forever from our comfy and pleasant Texas house. It was sold and we moved into a brand new travel trailer.  To say that this has been a big change would be drastically understating the endeavor.

We are settled in to a pleasant campground, with nice folks around, tall trees and generous spaces for parking your portable "home" and vehicles. Always the optimist, my belief in the ease of transition might have been a bit over enthusiastic. Not to mention my guess-timation of the amount of stuff  that trailer dwellers can stow away and still have room to live...actually room to breathe.  From re-learning how to walk sideways nearly everywhere you move to the spending hours looking for things that you did tuck away (not always in the most logical place), the change from house living to small and simple is a huge one. I admit, I've had some very doubtful days...what the hell have I done?!

Amazingly, it's getting better, we're feeling more at home. After all, life is so much about our patterns and routines. No matter where you are, you begin to form new routines. Logical or not, you get familiar with where things are. You get things arranged like it works for you.  As we are getting our final utility bills paid, the ones we'll not have to pay anymore...as we sit in our lawn chairs and watch the campground staff mowing the grass...as we remember maintenance and upkeep that will no longer be our job, we're beginning to enjoy the idea of this simpler life style. 

The truth is, for most of us, our lives of today are basically big and complicated. The giving up of some of that isn't the easiest surrender.  It can however, be extremely rewarding and freeing.  I'm already spotting things that I thought I just had to keep, hold on to and asking myself, "why in the heck did I think I needed that?"  More things will go to the Goodwill, before we store the trailer for the summer. The clutter and excess of our lives is slowly shrinking and we are feeling lighter and excited to be paring down. With our comforts and basics, life may not be totally simple but it is definitely smaller.  More to come, JO

Where Are Your Manners?

Do you find this figure in the photo to be attractive?  Perhaps you do, because we've been brainwashed into thinking that ultra thin is in.  I find the images of skeletal like celebrities and models, walking around, smiling and preening with a thin layer of skin stretched over their bones to be frightening.  What used to be photos of famine and illness are now famous people pictures.

Here's the truth, folks.  I understand that rich and successful people have money for nutritionists and trainers and all the tools to make themselves fit and attractive. I'm pretty gullible sometimes, but I don't for one second believe that all of these new emaciated persons dieted and exercised to these extreme forms.  Just like the super athletes, it will someday be exposed what kind of drugs they've used to reach negative mass. Most likely, not super but souped up.

If this distorted and sick example of perfection is not damaging enough to our children and our society, the shaming of those that still look like humans has become the acceptable behavior. In the last few weeks the crude and vicious remarks made about Kelly Clarkson, the beautiful and very talented singer have been highly reported. The most recent quote came from a news commentator that I respected.  It just burns my cookies...you know those cookies that I'm stuffing in my mouth and is obviously why my ribs haven't been visible to the naked eye for years.  Is that the reason that I'm not
slim and trim? Neither you or anyone else know my personal problems or struggles.  Does a public figure, who knows full well that everything they say will be repeated, will be heard by millions literally, have the right to comment about the appearance of another public figure?  Where are the manners, where is the respect, where is the tolerance?

Those things seem to be absent from our society today. Oh, we strut around, all puffed up about our tolerance and compassion.  We are tolerant of the deadbeat entitled...they can't help it, their education was poor, their great-great-great grandparents suffered great injustice, there's no high paying jobs in America.  We are tolerant of the crazy and evil...they can't help it, they had a bad childhood.  While we're so busy being understanding and empathetic of the huge crappiness in our world, we've become critical and arrogant concerning the everyday shortcomings of our fellow human beings. 

Moma said, "Don't worry, honey. When people say hateful things, they are just jealous of you." Well, I don't know about jealous. I do know there is just is no excuse for unwarranted and unkind criticism of people you don't even know. Some of the media personalities, the celebrities, the commentators have talked so much for so long that they have lost the ability to shut off their mouths. I don't care who you are, anyone that thinks the ugly remarks directed at M. Clarkson are acceptable, is so full of themselves that their eyeballs are bulging out. Who are THEY to criticize? Every single one of these commenters have the equal ability to shut their mouths and staunch the nasty flow from it.   I'm an intolerant person myself these days. I'm sickened and disappointed with persons that have no manners, no accountability and responsibility for their words or actions.