{"id":15152,"date":"2013-10-01T17:01:31","date_gmt":"2013-10-02T00:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=15152"},"modified":"2013-10-01T17:01:31","modified_gmt":"2013-10-02T00:01:31","slug":"life-is-just-one-more-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/01\/life-is-just-one-more-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"Life is just one more thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, that was a pleasant little sanity break. Followed by the mini-Apocalypse. Followed by a deadlining break. Followed by a car-problems break. Which is why I should need no excuse for not popping back in earlier.<\/p>\n

I have been thinkin’ aboutcha, though, and have pages of incoherent notes to run past you. Starting with this one:<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

The difference between us … I mean some of us … well, I really mean me … and the devil-may-care types is that for us, life is always “just one more thing.”<\/p>\n

For example, I find myself the possessor of a woodstove for the first time in 20 years. I didn’t particularly want one; I wanted propane as my alternative heat source. But here it is. The story of how it got here is fabulous, riveting, classically cool. I could take days to recount it and I’d tell it so vividly as to have you rolling on the floor laughing or holding your nose. If I told you the very basic simple truth, you’d applaud me wildly — while seriously doubting my sanity. And possibly coming to rest on that side of the divide. But I am never going to tell that tale. Sorry. Some things I don’t even tell the NSA.<\/p>\n

Nevertless, here is this woodstove. It’s an old beater,but it has a newly checked chimney and a big glass door. Fire roaring behind a glass door! What could be more relaxing? And I’ve earned it! So here goes …<\/p>\n

Yeah. Tonight I crouch down in front of the stove after a good, but long and chaotic day, see paragraph one. I open the door and the woven seal that was already loose and sagging catches on something and tears farther off. I must fix.<\/p>\n

Sigh. “Just one more thing.”<\/p>\n

Then as I went through all those many steps you go through (well, we who never learned how to rub two toads together to produce sparks or whatever) to get a fire going, I remembered that I have almost no firestarters and will need to cook up another batch. (I just threw in that bit about cooking up a batch in case the DEA is lurking out there behind the NSA and needs some entertainment.)<\/p>\n

“Just one more thing.”<\/p>\n

Where are the candles to melt for wax? Which wick materials worked best and where do I find them?<\/p>\n

“Just one more thing.”<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

This doesn’t drive me to go do<\/i> anything, mind you. I can procrastinate as well as a Jimmy Buffett fan with a snootful and a parrot on his shoulder. Still it drives me. <\/p>\n

And very likely you.<\/p>\n

By the time we actually start to relax<\/i> in front of that fire, we can barely keep our eyes open.<\/p>\n

Early this morning (up at 2:30 a.m. and driven<\/i>, though only to surf the ‘Net), I read an interesting article about how the rich and the poor were very much alike in their values, while the middle class was entirely different, and always became prey for the other classes, no matter how much anybody blathers about democracy land of the free etc.<\/p>\n

Well, of course, this drivenness (including the kind that drives more ambitious and accomplished people than I) is the epitome of middle class values.<\/p>\n

Right along with honesty, giving the other guy a fair shake, trusting our leaders, paying our taxes, and submitting to our Stasi.<\/p>\n

Yup. We’re suckers.<\/p>\n

I must go back and look for that article. I’ll add the URL if I locate it. (ADDED: Clarence found it<\/a>. And while I think the author was painting with a pretty broad brush, I also think he’s right.<\/p>\n

Now you probably know that I, myself, am not from the middle class and am not part of it now. My dad wore a blue collar, or actually a old-fashioned tee shirt with straps and holes in it (and a tan shirt with his name machine-embroidered over the pocket on bowling night). Our neighborhood was “No down to vets” post-WWII housing. Mom thought she was real lucky to have graduated from high school. We’d have once been looked down on as “lace-curtain Irish” on Dad’s side and “stubborn German peasants” or “Scots-Irish hillbillies” on Mom’s.<\/p>\n

But down the the core, we had middle-class values. That was fairly common back in the day. Less so now.<\/p>\n

We tend to look back at those times and pat ourselves on the back for having the foresight to select such industrious, upright ancestors. But now I wonder: how did so many of us get played for suckers? The rich played the middle. The middle played us. The poor were played by one and all while also playing the rich. Who then played …<\/p>\n

And generations went by before our generation noticed it. (Though of course too many generations of the world have observed the same thing on their own.)<\/p>\n

Several of those generations had it pretty good. They had no reason to think they were being used. No reason to disbelieve the American mythology they’d been so carefully taught in government schools. They had it great … well, despite being worried about a Commie under every bed and annihilation imminent because of the nuclear arms race. Yeah. They had it good. Especially after the hell the Depression generation and the World War II generation endured. They were prosperous<\/i> — thanks in part to a little thing called the Federal Reserve.<\/p>\n

Now we’ve still got towelhead terrorists wanting to sap our precious bodily fluids<\/del> slaughter our children. Somehow, things like that are always with us.<\/p>\n

But we don’t have it so good any more.<\/p>\n

Now here I am poor, but in a type of poverty where I could afford some leisure time, some mental breaks, some time in the literal or virtual hammock with an umbrella drink in hand. And here I am still stuck with freaking middle-class values. Busy, busy. Protestant ethic.<\/p>\n

And how many of you … how many of you … despite all your freeing of yourself, no matter how far out of the mainstream you live … think like a middle classer is supposed to think?<\/p>\n

Even when we’re the freakin’ grasshopper we think like the ant!<\/p>\n

Ahem. So to broad brush it again: rich and (a certain type of) poor can enjoy being devil-may-care because they both have these handy cows whose milk they can sell at market, these busy bees producing them honey (even if the distribution is a tad uneven), these servants “yas’m” and “no’m”ing (even if the servants are starting to misbehave a bit).<\/p>\n

Whether it’s aboard a yacht or on a street corner, rich (I should hasten to add a certain type of rich<\/i>; i.e. crony rich or sociopath rich or sometimes just the lucky-born rich who have no clue how the rest of us live) and that certain type of poor can just relax. Chill. Hang loose. Hang out. Toss care to the winds. And annoy the hell out of me tonight<\/del> the rest of us.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

Yet I know the mantra is “We can create ourselves” and “we are free when we declare ourselves to be.” I’ve said it. Still say it. I agree that neither the rich nor the poor can “make” me feel or be anything I don’t choose to be.<\/p>\n

But recent evidence is that 50% of our temperament is determined by genetics, and heaven forbid that middle-class values actually got programmed into our genes by selective breeding.<\/p>\n

And by that I do not mean lizard-brained aliens holding us in cages as part of a gruesome genetics experiment. <\/p>\n

I mean what if, through all the centuries, the most “useful” (in terms of docile character and willingness to work like a steam donkey) survived and bred and the “troublemakers” got themselves burned at the stake or sent off to war or shipped to the colonies to survive if they could in a world without women before they had enough chance to win the breeding competition?<\/p>\n

Which, come to think of it, was pretty much the way it happened. <\/p>\n

So even rebels today are usually bedrock middle class by both upbringing and genetics. Centuries of double whammy. Which keeps them<\/del> us<\/del> me behaving their<\/del> our<\/del> (oh, just forget it!) damn selves even as they grumble and perform small acts of sabotage.<\/p>\n

What if being forever middle class, wherever we actually fall, is our doooooooooooom<\/i>?<\/p>\n

——<\/p>\n

The above is “The End,” actually. But before you think I’m going away mad and feeling helpless, let me assure you: not so. My scattered notes contain optimism. <\/p>\n

Somewhere.<\/p>\n

I think the one with the optimism is under that copy of last month’s S.W.A.T.<\/i>, the water bill, a jar of assorted nails, and that bag of MamaLiberty’s RoadKill dog cookies.<\/p>\n

When I find it, I’ll be back with more upbeat blogitude. And some links unless some Commentariat detective wants to ferret our the source of that rich-poor story and post it before I do.<\/p>\n

Right now, though, I have a fire going with the very last of my supply of wood. And I am going to go enjoy it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, that was a pleasant little sanity break. Followed by the mini-Apocalypse. Followed by a deadlining break. Followed by a car-problems break. Which is why I should need no excuse for not popping back in earlier. I have been thinkin’ aboutcha, though, and have pages of incoherent notes to run past you. Starting with this one: —– The difference between us … I mean some of us … well, I really mean me … and the devil-may-care types is that for us, life is always “just one more thing.” For example, I find myself the possessor of a woodstove for…<\/p>\n

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