SOME SUNDAY STUFF

first off, i want to link to Old Hickory's entry on the subject of the use of torture and humiliation by American personnel in the Iraqi prison, about which i wrote in yesterday's entry.  he has some interesting further information about this situation that everyone needs to know.  if you read past that entry you'll also find good entries on Senator John McCain's protest of the Sinclair Syndicate's refusal to air the "controversial" Nightline.

in a totally different vein, the weekend assignment from Señor Scalzi, about advice, bad and good.  i ain't gonna do it.  i neither give nor receive advice very often.  in truth, i can't remember any outstanding examples of either good/bad advice given or taken.  so, i'm totally tabula rasa on this subject.  instead, i'm going to do an assignment from Robbie's journal:  "from what burden in your life would you most like to free yourself?" 

now, i take this as personal burden, not the global issues, right?  i've actually been giving this question a lot of consideration since i first read it yesterday. there are those burdens from which i really can't free myself, the first of which would be working, because i have to continue to eat, pay bills, feed the animals, go to movies, etc.  there are burdens, such as family responsibilities, from which i can't free myself without taking on an even larger burden - of guilt.  so, i have been thinking about those things burdening me which are of my own making. 

and from this list i have selected:  excess personal possessions as the main stone i'm rolling up the hill.  for a long time G and i owned properties in both Texas and Massachusetts, a house in Dallas and a guest house plus cottage/owners' quarters in Truro. that made three dwellings.  all fully furnished.  we sold all of those houses, put everything in storage and traveled in an RV for most of one disastrous year.  when we finally settled back on terra firma it was in this big old house, with a huge yard.  we got everything out of storage and moved it in here.  we've had several yard sales in the six years we've been here, gotten rid of what seems like a lot of stuff, but here we yet are with 14 rooms and an attic full of stuff. 

i come from a family of packrats, and i have inherited the gene.  amongst my burdening possessions is a fair amount of stuff that belonged to my mother and my aunt, stuff i salvaged when i settled their estates.  my mother was such a packrat that there was enough furniture, pictures, dishes, silver, clothing, pots/pans, antiques of all kinds, that all six of us took what we wanted AND we had a large estate sale as well.  i see myself well on my way to becoming my mother. 

at this point in our lives, even this big house and yard are becoming burdens.  it would be a fulltime job in itself to take the kind of care of this property that it needs.  we both work, G at two jobs, i at one very demanding job. we are getting too old to live like this.  so, since i won't be working this summer my plan is to start offloading Stuff from our lives.  i'm looking into ebay as a way to do some of this, yard sales for some, consignment sales for yet more.  we plan to move west in about a year, we are firm in our resolve to pare down to what will fit in a smaller house. 

anyone need some Stuff?