- We continue to have the intestinal yuckies.
- I poured boiling water on my feet yesterday when draining the pasta for lunch.
- Didn't get much done because I felt so yuck yesterday. At this rate, I'll never get the carpet torn up in the living room.
- My hubby called to make sure I was ok (yay), then hung up after about 30 seconds of reassurance from me that I would be fine or I'd call someone here to help out. No birthday wishes.
I was hanging out the laundry this morning and thinking about some dichotomies in my life. Here is one of them: While I admire the lovely things that other people do with their homes, I am utterly lacking in the ability to decorate myself. Well, to decorate like other people do. I would have been a great Victorian decorator. I love having pictures of my lovies around, things I've made (or handed down from other people) and, always, lots of books.
Along with that is my desire to have everything be nice and new and my stronger desire to not waste stuff. To wit: This morning I was hanging up a dishtowel that had split up the middle a bit. It's a little old (maybe 10 years?) but still quite serviceable and my thought was, "Well, I need to mend that." Then I realized that most of my friends would just toss it or give it to someone to use for a rag. It made me wonder which is the right thing to do: have everything be nice and new or mend and make do?
Generally speaking, especially this time of year when the pleasure of Friend Husband's company more often equals a lack of money in the bank because he's not working, I try to mend and make do. We wear a lot of hand-me-downs, and I guess that we appear to be a bit odd most of the time. I have an extremely hard time throwing something out unless it's seriously good for nothing. And I can think of things to do with a lot of seemingly worn-out other stuff. I have men in our congregation giving me their gently worn 100% cotton shirts for quilting. (Yes, I do admire their shirts for quilting purposes.) I mend things. Keziah is wearing clothes that her sister Sarah wore 13 years ago.
But even when Friend Husband is working, I tend to have trouble with just striking out and buying stuff. Going to the mall is a painful experience for me, not only because most of the clothes either don't fit or are too immodest or gross for words (whose idea was it to bring back polyester, I ask you?) but because I see things and think, "I could make that for half the price." And I leave without purchasing anything. Why even bother going?
I think I've wandered off-point a little here. My main point is that, while I admire how my friends decorate and dress, I think I would just not be able to do it. Even if I had the ability and the money, the specter of my Mamaw, raised in the Depression era, would be haunting me repeating these words:
Use it up
Wear it out
Make it do
Or do without.
Wear it out
Make it do
Or do without.
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