Monday, March 1, 2010

Stuff, Stuff and More Stuff

Now that we have reasonably clear weather, have you noticed there's a full moon? I did so I decided to take some time exposure pictures of it to post on my web site. In order to do that, I need a tripod which I have but when I went to get it, I couldn't find it. I figured the cleaning ladies moved it because they're always driving me crazy moving things around. Every time I come home after they've been at the house, I have to locate a ton of stuff: glasses, remotes, books, magazines, etc. Anyway, I looked for a long time trying to locate that tripod. In the course of doing that I began to realize just how much stuff we have. I don't consider our house to be inordinately large given the McMansions that have been built around here in recent years. It's about 2500 square feet not counting a 400 square foot finished room in the basement. Every single corner, closet and room has stuff in it-and we don't even consider ourselves people who hold on to things. The house has 4 bedrooms. One of them is ours. Another is now serving as a sewing/quilting room. The third has a crib and a queen size bed in it so when ever our grandsons stay over, it's their room or it can be a guest room or it can be for one of us if we're sick and don't want to infect the other person. The fourth bedroom has two beds in it for the two grand children who aren't in cribs any longer. Then we have a family room, living room, kitchen and dining room. At one time or another, every room is used. The closets are jammed. The garage manages to hold two vehicles but there's plenty of stuff in that too and, were it not for a 8'X16' shed, both of our vehicles would be outside year round because in my shed I have assorted hand tools, a snow blower, garden tractor, chipper, tiller, lawn mower, chain saws, weed wacker, two leaf blowers, etc etc etc. I've become an expert on packing limited spaces. To return to the original topic, I was reminded of all this 'stuff' as I turned the place upside down looking for my tripod-which I finally found in the family room closet under a pile of....stuff. There are two times when I'm bothered by this situation. One is when I lose something-which happens more and more as I get older and older. The other is when we begin to contemplate that time when we have to move because I either don't want to or can't keep up with owning a house and property. Certainly we'd give most of the 'stuff' to our kids so they could worry about it but they're not going to want it all. Then what? But that time hasn't come yet so in the meantime I hope the weather stays clear. I have my tripod. I have my camera. I'll take some pictures and worry about the stuff later. Want some stuff?

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