Elizabeth Wilder's Blog

Stuff

Beautiful day here in PA.  I'm not use to so much green grass and flowers this early but I sure can get use to it.

I just passed the TV and there was a salesman hollering how he can solve your problem of a garage that is so full, it can't be used as a garage.  All you need to do is rent one of his storage units for a place to put all the things in the garage so you can empty it and start anew.  Now if the things were not needed to the degree that you can send them away, why don't you just plain send the away without the stop at the unit?

I always thought things were called stuff because you were always looking for a place to stuff them.  When I think of stuff I think of George Carlin and his dissertation about stuff and how we are always looking for a place to keep it safe.  I just brought up Carlin's act from the late 1980's on UTube and laughed just as hard as I did back then.

My husband had been a pack rat for years and I was almost  as bad.  When we cleaned out for this move, he was always bringing in some treasure that he did not even remember having.  His Dad's this or his grandfather's that.  It took us two years to sort out stuff that had seen its way through 3 generations.  I made myself a promise that with this new start, it would not happen again.  Actually, we didn't want our children to go through what we did with the generational stuff.  It is their turn to turn their things into stuff, not worry about ours.

Now I'm beginning to think that stuff appears spontaneously for there are little piles of things appearing that were not here before.  At least I can now say that I can now recognize stuff and am determined not to let it find a permanent home. 

An Internet friend sent me a wonderful slide show and one bit of  wisdom was, "Get rid of everything that isn't useful, beautiful, or joyful".  That is now my mantra.  Of course there are some that think "junque" is beautiful

 Has anyone thought of starting a Pack Rat Anonymous group?

A SHOUT OUT to my granddaughter in Maine.  She wrote a letter to the editor about trash on the road and it was published in the Portland Press Herald - see http://bit.ly/3At680 .  Also this week she won the yearly Literary Award for her age group sponsored by one of the banks in town.  She will be reading it at a ceremony end of the month.  Savanah is 7 years old.  You go girl!!!   

Read Twice - Click Once

A couple hours ago, I received an e-mail from a cousin in England inviting me to join her FACEBOOK friends so she could share pictures of the UK family.  Cool, I thought .  (Do people still say "cool"?)  So I went through all the hoops needed to become her friend.  Somewhere along the way I must have clicked on something that invited many folks from my address book.  Now I have 8 friends of my own and I think counting.  My daughter-in-law posted what a surprise to see me on Facebook.  And I thought - yes to me too.

This shows how fast our world wide web reacts.  My grandmother would be shocked at the speed I accomplished this.  One of the first things she said to my then boyfriend was - she is very slow but gets things done!  He married me anyway.

Now that I can see how this could be exciting, I in no way want to discourage my friends from becoming my friends.  Actually I had never looked at facebook before and now I guess for my age bracket, I'm pushing the envelop.  I had thought about joining TWITTER but wanted to take my time to learn the ins and outs and RT's, @'s, etc.  Guess I'll wait on that as I let my fingers make the decision for the time being.

I do hope our President never follows my example.  I would not want to be the cause of any buttons being pushed in the Oval Office by mistake. 

To think about - Why is there never time to do it right but always enough time to do it over. - James Garfield