Homestead mailing list

["Lisa K.V. Perry" <lisakvperry AT gmail.com>]

On 9/25/06, SISU! <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net> wrote:
> I
> Does anyone else feel this way or am I just alone, isolated and really out
> of touch with the world?


My husband and I had to get a cell phone for our new jobs as Foster Care
Providers.  It's a requirement we dislike.  We can see where it could come
in handy, but we've made do perfectly fine without one forever.  And cell
phone towers are ugly--but that's another issue for my soapbox.  Anyway, we
got one that has a pre-paid card because we didn't want (or need) another
bill.  So I had an occasion recently to call hubby on the cell and it took
me almost four minutes to figure out how to use it because it had been over
a month since I used it the last time.  We were the last people we knew to
finally get a cd player, now my husband loves it.

The pace of changing technology is too fast and we have many endless
choices.  When you go grocery shopping and need a can of tomatoes because
you ran out of your own canned tomatoes (shame on me), the choice just
boggles the mind--or perhaps it's only my mind, but it is most definitely
boggled. It's not a good feeling. There must be 5 or 6 brands on the shelves
(in a non-deluxe grocery store) in addition to diced, petite diced, diced
with Italian spices and herbs, diced with Mexican spices and herbs, whole,
strained, pureed, etc. When Campbell's began making tomato soup that was
ready to go--you didn't have to add water or milk, I thought that was the
dumbest thing I'd ever seen.  People have become so blankety-blank lazy that
they can't add their own water?  Or perhaps your own water (or source of
your own water) is so crappy that you wouldn't want to add it and you think
the soup company's water from some treatment plant is better than your own?
Why don't people (generally speaking)

I'm far from a homesteader in the truest since of the meaning, but I think
we on this list all feel pretty much the way. We're a throwback to
yesteryear and tend to prefer things the old-fashioned way.  Modern
technology has it's pluses, but it ain't perfect.  It's good to know that
we're not alone, no matter how we deal with our current lives in 2006.

We met my husband's parents for a vacation near a rails-to-trails park last
summer--I figured out it had been at least 20+ years since I had last been
on a real bicycle (an exercycle does not count).  It took a couple days to
get my confidence to a normal level.
I, too, remember the glory days of my 10 speed, only I wasn't "all that," I
was "way cool."  Where did those days go?


> Bev, trying to put a little SISU back into my life.


Me, too.

Lisa