THE SPACE PRICE FOR CONVENIENCE

Years ago I realized I live in a 'blivet'. (In traditional U.S. Army slang dating back to the Second World War, a blivet was defined as "ten pounds of manure in a five pound bag" (a proverbial description of anything egregiously ugly or unmanageable); it was applied to an unmanageable situation, a crucial but substandard or damaged tool, or a self-important person)  As time passed the blivet state continues and the rooms seemed to shrink.  I finally realized that it didn't matter that six children left and should have created a vacuum, I still walk through the house as an obstacle course.  Workmen tell me my basement is a fire hazard.  My new rule is:  If I haven't used it in thirty years, it should go (with the exception of the slate topped pool table which is under a lot of it and will come back to life when cleared).

In an epiphany today, I finally understood my problem.  No one else's house is as convenient as mine is for me.  There is are five TVs, 3 ovens and a microwave (should the unlikely urge to cook grip me), a box of tissues is within reach of any surface on which one may sit as well as a wastebasket or two (depending on how far one might have to make an accurate toss) in every room.,  That is only a beginning.  Having worked for most of my life I somehow thought I needed to store stuff because I wouldn't be free to leave to buy at will. So as soon as I finish something, I replace it with a backup and then immediately must replace the used back up. I have two iTouches (in case I lose one or it runs out of battery) and back the addresses up in a regular old fashioned (yes, the write-in kind. I practiced Palmer Method script through grade school), though I hardly take pictures any more I have two digital cameras so as not to get caught without one charged (this does not account for why I am usually caught with only one camera and a dead battery), I have three pairs of glasses and a backup for my electric toothbrush since I assumed it would fail years ago instead of acting like the energizer bunny.

There is enough stuff to start a stationery store, having bought everything I might need sometime.  I could stock a drug store, a library, a small restaurant, and the local bar.  My worst fantasy is that should my home be on a tornado path, I will put my neighbors in jeopardy with all the debris that will fly out of my house.  It is too late to make a New Year's resolution and too late to give up my life style for Lent (though I never felt that urge).  I think, rather than 'wear purple when I am old' I shall just have to leave my surplus behind as revenge to my children for always taking things and never putting them back, forcing me to create 'hidden backups' . (Once when I went on a treasure hunt through the house for a pair of scissors, I found 22 pairs of them, none of them put back where they had formerly lived.)

It is amazing that I have yet to kill these old habits.  Now that I think of it, I don't know anyone who left this life with a clean house and completely organized life.  Never having striven to be a first at anything, I think I'll go read a book and solve this later.

MY VERSION OF VACATION

There is little new in this world when you've been in it for several decades, only variations on a theme. Tourist sites are for the younger, especially those with small children whom they can push in strollers and let scream so that we elders may appreciate being too old to have them. Occasionally a few senior masochists are strong arming the little ones, while they appear to be aging before one's very eyes. These white haired wonders are ludicrously quick to tell you that the kiddies are their grandchildren (as if you hadn't filled with pity on sight).

I'm visiting a couple who are even older than I, with similar disregard for paying even the senior's slightly lowered, exorbitant fee for the pleasure of climbing to the top of a lighthouse (Sherpa not included). One of us has had a time share here for many years. Click here. We have the luxury of time to sit in a Hot Tub with the patience of a fishing enthusiast, or just to watch the grass grow (similar time expenditures). If we wish to chase a little white ball around green grass in the hot sun, only a cart requires payment. Most people get a lot of exercise this way; stooping to place the ball on the tee, swiping it with a golf club, then walking ALL the way to the cart!

My activity tastes seem not to vary from the things I like to do at home. I read a lot, observe, talk to any one who will respond, and soak up the foreign ambiance from the scenery and territory around. The area has the store, The Dollar Tree, in which everything is just a dollar! There are no ethnic restaurants (actually I think I did see one Chinese restaurant somewhere) but I've had to go cold turkey on Thai, Indian, Japanese, and all the others around home. Happily, there is broadband though it is like dial up without the transmission noise.

I'm quickly realizing the joy of reading without constant phone interruption. Old age makes me appreciate life's simpler pleasures as I look around at the frenetic actions of people looking for more of something they are unable to define. It occurs to me that I'd forgotten feeling a need to cram a lot of living in the few vacation weeks from work. Once again I watch others living life like a blivet (cramming three pounds of manure into a two pound bag). We old folk haven't slowed down; we just no longer have a need to speed up!

It is great to enjoy a change and I am fully appreciating these two weeks. The thought of being back home is, however, looking like a preview of a movie I'd like to see.

LIFE MY WAY

This blog was never intended to be a personal diary and I shall never make it such. Yet it is difficult for me not to share some of the important things I have learned, and am learning on the route to the ultimate conclusion of my life.

First, I learned that you can get your back clean without another person around to do it. It took only eight years of widowhood to finally figure that one out. I have had brushes, scratchers, and all kinds of other tools, but they have never equaled this simple tool. I bought a wonderful piece of thick, waffle like material with two loops on the end. Sticking my hands into the loops after soaping up the middle and throwing it over my head, I was able to feel a REALLY clean back for the first time in years. Since I have always been a 'latest gadget' explorer, I wonder how it was that I missed this one all these years. I figured it might be because I rarely stop in stores. Proof that often the simpler, is really better. It made me start to think of all the other things in my life I might simplify.

Trying to make my life less of a blivet, I think (as I open kitchen drawers) why have I not gotten rid of some of the clutter in them? I no longer cook as I used to when my husband and I were feeding the extended family every holiday. I am totally unable to throw away still-useful things. I know I will never go to the trouble of having a yard sale. There are charities and halfway houses that could probably use lots of the things I no longer need and I have been planning to find them for years.

I love books and have, to the amusement of many of my friends, too many of them. It is why I usually buy what I want to read rather than borrow from a library, because I rarely sit down and read a book through (unless it is an exciting novel, which I also rarely read). Finally, they are going into a database; first, to know what I have, and secondly, to make it unnecessary to hunt through the whole house only to realize that I probably gave it away or lent it to someone who failed to return it. If I have not read it, or have read it but want a refresher re-read , it stays around as do gift books, for the persons who gave them to me to read when they visit. While consumables are appropriate for seniors, I request that they not do that since I don't eat the munchy kind of stuff as much as in the past. Family has grasped that humor is always a good gift.

At the top of my priority list is to choose one tool to crush garlic, instead of the several that I have. Meanwhile, I more often whack the clove with the side of a flat, wide knife, throw the peel off, and dice it quickly. When I realize why I don't use any of the others, an enormous sense of shame overwhelms me (not actually, but it sounds better that way)and it is clear that I don't use them because they have been lost in the maze of unused tools in the drawer and i can do it quicker by my own hand. The conclusion makes me wander off shaking my head as I look at my priority list. Well, I guess I will just have to live longer than I had planned, to get to the bottom of the list.

TAX FREE DAYS

There are rare times when I do not attempt to question the wisdom of our State legislature. On August 16th and 17th this year we once again have tax free shopping days.I could see no way this could be helpful to me as I did not have the budget for, nor plan to buy, big ticket items. Nevertheless, I bought a sewing machine I had been wanting for many months, saving $16.45. Now that would buy me a nice lunch or even a dinner out.

Since I was expecting family to arrive, I needed some groceries. I went to the local Costco and roamed around doing my shopping. While there, I looked around for all the taxable items that I could use though storage becomes a problem since my house is a blivet (3 pounds manure in a 2 pound bag). I saved another $







23.49 and now have paper goods to last a while, some items that will probably outlive me, and even less room to walk through my basement.



I'm not certain just how the loss of income is justified but past years seem to point it out as worthwhile to the overall State economy, as it was to mine. Having been taught from childhood and the Great Depression that a penny saved is a penny earned, I still pick up any coin I see on the ground, whereas younger people would not bother to stoop for such a nothing. Maybe it is because I am so short and close to the ground that I see coins where taller people miss them. I have never spent one though I have no superstition about them, only pure greed at something for nothing. It is surprising that they turn up regularly in parking lots and places where people pull keys from their pockets.

On day two of tax free, I went to the grocery store down the street and saved more, though I only really needed a quart of milk. The joy of living in a house is that there is always room to cram in a little more! There are many more things I could have bought but the singular thing preventing me from doing that is that I will have to pay for them!

FIRST YESTERDAY; SECOND TO COME IN A DAY OR SO

Well, living in New England means having to be ready to find places for snow when it drops. Not only is my home a blivet (trying to get 2# doo doo into a 1# bag) but now Nature has decided to wish the same on us in the yard and driveway. Snow is beautiful on a greeting card or ski slope, but not as attractive when it has to be shoveled off cars and parking areas.

This isn't horrible, but imagine what it will look like in two days when the second storm strikes. Imagine also, that when you scrape it off your car, unless you move your car elsewhere (if you can) it will land on the ground and need a second shoveling.

People had to drive many extra hours to get home yesterday as the roads were gridlocked in many places. Cars were running out of gas, skidding, fender benders occured, and all the other things that can happen on the road to people who didn't believe a storm was coming, didn't fill their tanks with gas, and didn't have tires with enough tread to drive safely in the icy conditions helped with road congestion and bumper to bumper driving.

Nursery school teachers had to wait hours for parents to be able to come fetch their toddlers. Older kids were let out early from school and beat their parents home by many hours. I wonder how many Christmas gifts were unwrapped and re-wrapped like my kids used to do. Appointments were missed, loved ones worried, and almost everyone on the road had a cell phone to their ear.

Nature also has its problems. This squirrel had a house full of snow as he looked down from above at what had been a nice warm bed just a few hours ago. With the snow cap concealing it, he might even have been wondering where his home had gone!

I've decided living with someone may not be so bad, after all, when that someone spent hours moving snow so that I could stay indoors and be warm. I'm learning that getting old is not ALL bad!

It is still easy to recall that once I liked cross country skiing. Even much earlier than that, I liked tunneling in the snow and making snow houses! Now I just look forward to watching it while it is pretty for, maybe, five minutes before all the exhaust from cars and buses turns it black. When neighbors walk their pets, the black is intermingled with yellow. It too quickly loses that picture postcard simplicity and beauty... at least in the urban or suburban areas.

I gaze outside and try to forget that all the work that was done will have to be done again in a day or two when the second (and predicted to be worse) storm hits. Perhaps, since it will be a Sunday, people will be forewarned and stay off the roads. Kids will pray for it to be deep so that schools will be closed and parents will pray for the schools to be open so their darlings will be elsewhere than hanging off the chandeliers at home.

Whatever happens, we can welcome the livet puzzle once again as new spots to get rid of snow from the walk paths and driveway are figured out. All of this will shorten the remaining amount of time to prepare for Christmas which probably was not on the calendar for most people.

AN UNCLUTTERED MIND

Years ago I visited a friend whose living room had a few pieces of furniture on the floor, most of the rug showing, and a totally bare mantelpiece. I commented on how uncluttered her house was as compared to my own. I had more than a full time job and three small children at the time; their toys strategically dropped for me to trip over, baskets of little girl dresses lying about to be ironed, and everything else visible (in a place with too few closets and places to put things). My friend calmly said "an uncluttered house is a sign of an uncluttered mind." I began to suspect that I had the dreaded 'cluttered mind' for which there is no cure.

Many years later the children are grown up and in houses of their own. I live in a relatively large house, but I still don't have enough space for everything. Nature and I abhor a vacuum.That conversation with my friend came back to me (wherever it was stored amid the clutter of my mind) with the realization that I will never (in this life) have enough room for everything I accumulate. I have a CLUTTERED house as well as a cluttered mind!

Laurence Peter wrote: "If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?" Ah, someone else was on my same path of thought. An empty head never sounded great to me. I found a site that said: "The Cluttered Mind is Resting its mind in hopes of slightly uncluttering it a bit. It will be returning to the uncluttered state on 11/22/07. Please come and visit the site then." Other sites suggested hiring an organizer. I find that is helpful in acute situations but mine is definitely chronic. Within hours of organizing, I am back to clutter. I examined my own problem. I diagnosed myself. A cluttered mind may not have enough space in which to put everything. Since WWII my life has been a blivet: In traditional US Army slang, a blivet was defined as "ten pounds of manure in a five pound bag" (a proverbial description of anything egregiously ugly or unmanageable); it was applied to an unmanageable situation. (Wikipedia)

Meditation works for some people to empty their mind of unwanted thoughts and fill it with "Oo-hm" or something equaling calming. My mind is totally uncooperative. It never empties, nor does my living space. People who have stomach reductions are supposed to be cured from over-eating but many fail to realize the surgery is only step one. Eating habits must also be totally revised. There is a dilemma for me here. Do I want to completely revamp my life and get rid of the glass stored for when I return to making stained glass stuff (when I make space to work on it), the yarn and needles in bags (should I take up knitting again), the oil painting and water color supplies (for when I can get enough time free to return to being artistic), all my hobby and craft stuff, the books I plan to read someday (when I have free time), the CD music I plan to listen to (when we get snowed in as we will when we rid the world of global warming)? (note: only a partial list of my dilemma) This is the external dilemma. The internal one, to empty my mind and stay mentally healthy, is a far greater one. But then, to whom does it matter that I solve it? A dumpster, when I rock off, will solve it for those to whom I pass on the detritus my problem leaves behind.