April 22, 2004

• It doesn’t take long….

  It doesn’t take me very long at all to get used to luxury.  My
  mama used to call that being “spoiled”.  I suppose it’s not too
  totally decadent, providing I’m equally fast at adjusting to
  hardships… but I’m not, not really.

  I got that thought this morning after I’d taken one of my muffins,
  baked with luxury ingredients such as almond meal, garbanzo bean flour
  and xanthan gum, out of the freezer and popped it into the microwave so
  it would be as soft and warm as when fresh from the electric oven.  A
  few years ago,  I was living off the grid, where when the oven
  quit working I was forced by economic necessity to make do with
  stovetop cooking on the old propane range.  I’ve blogged about
  what a chore and a hassle it was to haul the propane tanks to the lodge
  to be refilled and to light the propane lights, or even to find the
  damned things in the dark of winter without banging into something in
  that crowded, cluttered, squalid hovel. 

  Now I step into the door
  from outside and there’s usually a light on over the computer desk but
  if not, all I have to do is hit the switch by the door and I’ve got
  light to find my way to each lamp and soon the place is bright as day
  in here.  Those old propane lights were just barely bright enough to
  see to thread a needle, which is a step better than the (insert
  expletive here) homemade hand-dipped candles I was using before I got
  the propane lights.

  I snuggle down and settle right in to soft times, and I stomp and
  struggle my way through hard times.  The current time has a little
  of both in it for me, so when I’m home at leisure I snuggle down in Couch Potato
  Heaven and when duty calls I jump into my boots and superhero cape and
  rise to the challenge.  One of the tough things about the current
  time is pollen allergy.  Another one is a series of bothersome computer glitches.

  Since Xanga is not letting me leave
  comments today, I’m going to use this space to respond to some of what
  I’ve read around here.  MyKi_Whatzerface
  has similar struggles, and wow, can I sympathize!  MyKi, that,
  “reference points” line cracked me up, and for that I owe you a good
  laugh.  I hope someday some blog of mine will provide one when you
  need it most.  Your little pic in the upper left corner, of the
  pollen grains, gave me an involuntary shudder–I hate the stuff!

  To emerging: 
  “…panties…”  What panties?    The “drama” around
  Xanga is impossible to miss, but not very hard for me to
  disregard.  Like a staged drama, it either engages my attention or
  not.  Like a theater critic, I don’t comment on the humdrum, but
  only on the outstandingly good and the unbearably stinky.  My own
  performance is what absorbs most of my attention.  On one level,
  what everyone else does is their concern.  At another level, since
  it is being done publicly, I enjoy kibitzing and kvetching. 

  Regarding protected posts, I amused myself one day on the drive to town
  with trying to figure out a way in which that system could be made to
  work for me.  With just a single “protected” list, I can’t imagine
  how I’d use it since there is nothing I’m too secretive or squeamish to
  reveal to the world and the world’s reaction to what I write is of
  little concern to me.  If I could have an A list, a B list, a C
  list, etc., then I could write health stuff for one crowd, 12 step
  stuff for another, and so on.  Using separate sites for those
  topics would work, but that’s way too much trouble to maintain and so I
  just jump from topic to topic here, and either ignore or obsess on KaiOaty, depending on my state of mind at the time. 

  Which reminds me:   maggie_mcfrenzie,
  I have not forgotten you.  Neither Greyfox nor I currently has the
  correct focus to do your request justice, but we’ll swing around that
  way sometime–we always do.  To anyone else who might have left a
  reading request in comments at KaiOaty
  or emailed Ursula,  ditto.  I’ll get to it, but I don’t know
  when.  I have not even checked that email account or gone to see
  what was new in comments at the site for months. Which could be why
  I’ve gotten modestly famous with that
  work but don’t expect it ever to make me rich.  My mind does not
  work well at that work all the time and when it does not, I don’t even
  try.

  But before I got off on that tangent I was talking about how easily I
  can become accustomed to luxury.  That does not mean I take it for
  granted.  As I waited for the microwave to ding this morning, I
  was reflecting on how it used to be and how I got to this softer
  place.  I fully understand and appreciate that the luxury I have
  now is due as much to Greyfox’s choices and actions as to my own. 
  I would not have
  made the effort on my own, and I’m glad that he has.  I have not,
  however,
  been taking a free ride here.  I’ve worked as hard and paid as
  dearly for this coach class ride he has given me as I ever did for the
  rides I took in boxcars or on bicycles.  We work together to keep
  this boat afloat.  And that’s enough mixed metaphors for now.
  
  PS: Last_Enigma,
  imagine my amusement when I went to your site and was greeted by a pile
  of moose nuggets.  One winter when my now-grown son was small we
  made some much-needed extra bucks collecting and drying moose droppings
  to sell to someone who was making moose nugget leis, stringing them
  with silk forget-me-nots and plastic aurora borealis beads for
  tourists.  This week, that same kid and one of the cats took an
  early morning walk across the muskeg on the crusty snow cover. 
  Breakup isn’t all bad.  It has been months since we could cross
  the muskeg without snowshoes and unless it is a dry summer we may not
  be able to walk across the muskeg for about another year.

  • 4:29 pm
  • 3 Comments