Power Windows
Sometimes your humble Snarkatron hears people complaining about how hard they have it, and just has to wonder. If you aren't being shot at, have a roof over your head and enough to eat (even if it isn't FairTrade/Organic/Free Range/Cruelty Free/Martian Friendly) an awful lot of people would like to trade places with you. Some people, it seems, can't be happy no matter what they have. Other people can be happy with very little. I've lived *officially* below the poverty line, in an apartment with cinderblock walls and linoleum floors. Most garages were nicer than that place (and sometimes the sink drain burbled up ... things ... I had never put down it) but it was clean, cheap, and the heat worked. I even had a cat who thought hunting the cockroaches was great fun. Since we both liked liver (he preferred his share raw) we could afford meat now and then too, when the Ramen noodles began to pall.
I live in a house that I own, now. Like the Obama's house that has been in the news of late, it has mahogany paneling--but there the resemblance ends. The guy who built my house back in 1935 *made* the paneling his own self. The only wine I have is Three Buck Chuck, and I sure don't have a thousand bottles of the damn stuff. I don't have, or want, cable, or air conditioning, or a host of other things I have been assured are "necessities". When I bought the house I didn't need to resort to dodgy financial arrangements, because (as a friend once described it) it "looked one step up from a crack house". Yeah, it needed a lot of TLC, but that was why I could afford it. What is all this whining about not having the time to get fresh fruit for the kids, or the hassle of picking them up from all their expensive lessons and how tired you get? I filled an entire construction dumpster (by hand) with siding I and my trusty crowbar pried off (by hand). THAT was work. I'm not a glutton for punishment, either. I couldn't AFFORD to hire anyone to do it for me. Ergo, I did it myself. See a pattern here?
And yet, I am happy. I like my life, and I look forward to puttering around my house and garden, seeing my friends, writing my books. I doubt I will ever earn as much as Michelle Obama does, and I don't mind. So why is she the bitter one?
Power Windows, the video.
I live in a house that I own, now. Like the Obama's house that has been in the news of late, it has mahogany paneling--but there the resemblance ends. The guy who built my house back in 1935 *made* the paneling his own self. The only wine I have is Three Buck Chuck, and I sure don't have a thousand bottles of the damn stuff. I don't have, or want, cable, or air conditioning, or a host of other things I have been assured are "necessities". When I bought the house I didn't need to resort to dodgy financial arrangements, because (as a friend once described it) it "looked one step up from a crack house". Yeah, it needed a lot of TLC, but that was why I could afford it. What is all this whining about not having the time to get fresh fruit for the kids, or the hassle of picking them up from all their expensive lessons and how tired you get? I filled an entire construction dumpster (by hand) with siding I and my trusty crowbar pried off (by hand). THAT was work. I'm not a glutton for punishment, either. I couldn't AFFORD to hire anyone to do it for me. Ergo, I did it myself. See a pattern here?
And yet, I am happy. I like my life, and I look forward to puttering around my house and garden, seeing my friends, writing my books. I doubt I will ever earn as much as Michelle Obama does, and I don't mind. So why is she the bitter one?
Power Windows, the video.
posted by Snarkatron at 6:34 PM
1 Comments:
And folks - they don't call it the "Cutest House in ********" fer nuthin'.
I've been there, and the Snarkatron has done right well by that place.
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