We finally got a decent amount of rain here, and the heat wave is over. Tom is baking bread again and even experimenting with bagels. They were more like soft pretzels shaped like bagels, but they were good! I'm not sure what a real bagel tastes like anyway, being accustomed to the grocery store variety.
We're starting to get lots of fresh veggies. We got tomatillos and cilantro from our CSA this week, and I made my first-ever salsa verde, which was very easy and very tasty. My tomatoes are looking good, and we're going to have a whole lot of them soon! In another corner of the garden, it's a race to see how many more zucchini I can salvage before the plants give up the ghost. They've been attacked by powdery mildew. I learned the other day, from a bit I noticed when leafing through the Jamestown Gazette (while waiting for my sub at Jumbroni's), that you can protect squash plants from mildew diseases by spraying them with a homemade mixture of baking soda, liquid soap, and water, when the weather is hot and humid. However, it doesn't do much good once the plants are already infected. Oh well--I'll tuck that info away for next year.
The recent rainy weather provided an opportunity to get some more work done inside the house--now that we have this mountain of stuff from our other house in the garage, and we have to figure out what to do with it.
This is hard. It's like...culture shock. Nothing in my experience has prepared me for condensing my life into such a small space. The ever-pervasive media (magazines, TV shows and ads) bombard us with messages that we need MORE square footage to adorn with the latest, most fashionable paint colors, flooring and counter-top materials, appliances, cabinets, furniture, art, ACCESSORIES, you name it. These things improve your lifestyle and make your real estate more valuable! Stainless steel appliances, outdoor kitchens, water features, master suites, king size beds, BONUS ROOMS--all MUST HAVE! So our homes have become "investments," and our "success" is measured not by the content of our character, but by the amount of really cool stuff we can accumulate.
Which is nuts. Why do we buy this crap?
But, giving up those lemming-like ways is like learning how to live all over again, in such a way that functionality has more value than status, fashion, cachet, prestige, however you want to characterize what is basically "keeping up with the Joneses." We don't even do it consciously, we're just running with the pack, going with the flow, until we reach the dawning awareness that life is finite, precious, and we waste so much of it in pursuit of what is JUST STUFF. Stuff that we nonetheless manage to get emotionally invested in.
There's nothing wrong with creating living spaces that are comfortable and aesthetically pleasing. When I had too much space, I didn't have to think very much about how to arrange things and where to store things. There was always room. Now I am really challenging myself and often getting frustrated because old habits have become irrelevant in my new reality, and I can't fall back on them. I'm uncomfortable because everything feels so transitory and unfinished, but I haven't yet figured out what "finished" is going to look like.
I just know that when it finally "gets there," it's going to make a lot more sense than the lifestyle I've been accustomed to for so long.
No comments:
Post a Comment