I Tell Myself to Shut Up

I’m a li’l behind on my blogging. The brain is on overload, lol, and as a result, I couldn’t really think of anything to write about. However, this morning, as I sat pondering the state of many things from my family life to what’s going on in the world, a post finally began to form. 

There are times I bitch a lot about where I live and how we, as a family, struggle here. For such an economically depressed region, the hubby actually makes good money. The problem is that the high price of everything from gasoline to food to daily necessities defeats the pay check every time. And when he makes an exceptionally good check, it bumps him into that weird tax level where he’s taxed extra and all that overtime comes out to the same as a typical pay day. Add his health insurance payment to it…you get the picture.

I’m always thinking about getting a part-time job, but we also discuss it to death and we always come to the same answer. Since it’s so far for me to drive to a town that’s more than a mom-and-pop store, I’d just turn around and put my pay check in the gas tank. Again, it defeats the purpose. And moving is not an option.

I don’t waste money on getting my nails done and I only go get my hair cut/styled maybe twice a year. Seldom do I buy things like makeup, perfume, or nail polish; I use something until I’m shaking it out of the bottle to get the last bit or I’m using a pin to scrape the residue out of the compact. We don’t have a car payment, a mortgage, nor any large bills unless you count my student loan. However, nearly every dime that comes into our home goes to bills, groceries, gasoline, odds and ends needed to run a household, and items the kids need—and don’t even get me started about the cost of sending a child back to school every fall.

Often I wonder what people would do if there was a magnetic pulse (or worse), rendering everything useless or inaccessible from cars to refrigerators to cells, computers, and even medical records. There’s so much hype about December 21^st and there are shows on television such as Doomsday Preppers that I have to wonder what people will do when there are no nail salons, no bars for that after-work drink, and no way to shop at Macy’s let alone finding anything that hasn’t been ransacked or rotting in a grocery store. City folk would be hit the hardest because they’re used to having everything at their fingertips or just a couple blocks over.

When I ponder how financially hard it was when I was growing up during the 70s Recession and I find myself bitching and moaning from time to time now when things turn to crap, I remind myself that we do have a lot more than third-world families have and more than many around the globe who work one day to the next not knowing if they’ll have a meal that night.

I grew up using a wringer washer, eating squirrel and rabbit, raising huge gardens and freezing/canning everything we could, and our water came from a rain-fed well. Probably 90% of my clothes came from yard sales, too. To this day I still use a wringer washer, hanging the clothes out during warm days and inside on a line when it’s raining or cold. I gather berries and use them for desserts and jellies. We fish and hunt. We know how to process meat, and I can skin a deer, if I have to (not one of my fave jobs). The only thing I don’t know is how to fillet fish (my dad always did that), but the hubby will remedy that this summer (uhm, yuck).

Over time I’ve learned natural remedies such as using the jewelweed plant to cure the sting of nettles and that both usually grow near one another. Flaxseed oil can cure mild to moderate hemorrhoids and give blessed relief to bad ones (hmm, wonder how many readers wrote that one down, LMAO!). Poke greens can be eaten when they’re very young and no more than 8 inches high (they taste like spinach), but they’re toxic if they’re any bigger. Cat tail roots are edible, all of a dandelion plant, including the bloom, is edible and has medicinal purposes such as boiling the roots to rid the body of toxins. If I have to, I can make lye soap, too. And often most manmade things are recyclable such as washing out a zippy bag and re-using it later.

However, how many people can get by without electric? How many people would haul water half a mile from a spring, and would they think to use the cold spring to store perishable food in a waterproof bag/container? How many would take a bath in a cow trough full of rain water?

Where there is a will, there is a way. As long as we’re all healthy and have a roof over our heads and food to eat, the other things are manageable in some manner or other.

So when I start bitching about this bill getting paid late or being stuck at home until the money to fix my Blazer is saved up, I think about how so many people have it so much harder than we do. That’s when I remind myself that things could certainly and unexpectedly get much, much worse for all of us. That’s when I tell myself to such the hell up and count my blessings.