Depending on other people

[cjsmith]

My shell account at my ISP is currently pretty much unusable because my homedir's disk is full. This happens every few months. They eventually get around to doing housecleaning, but until they do, I'm stuck. In particular: no personal mail. Grr! I hate depending on other people for stuff like this. It means that if someone else is slow or sloppy, I pay a price.

The only alternative to depending on others, though, eventually means mining some ore myself, purifying the copper and the silicon, creating a computer... you get the idea. Plus growing and weaving my own fibers for clothing... Somewhere, I have to find the right place to draw the line.

Speaking of where to draw that line, why is it far more common to create one's own food than to create one's own clothing? There's a huge support infrastructure for that: competing megagrocery chains, Williams-Sonoma, whole industries devoted to making special sauces for the "cook" to heat up and pour... the list goes on. The support infrastructure for sewing, while still biggish, is far smaller. The prevalence of that choice is pretty ingrained in some ways. But cooking for oneself every day takes more time than maintaining a home-sewn wardrobe would take. Food that isn't right is usually merely annoying, just like clothing that isn't right -- except clothing that isn't right annoys for a longer time. Why pick cooking over sewing? Did all that structure grow out of those infrequent cases where food that isn't right can cause serious illness? (All that and we haven't eliminated those cases, either!)

Speaking of sewing, I really need to get my sewing machine overhauled. Depending on other people again... and yes, the fact I have procrastinated this errand has a lot to do with the fact that I don't know whom to trust with the work! :-)

Hey. How come LJ has a mood selection for "exanimate" (WTF?) but not one for something so prosaic as "whiny"? (Or is what I need now the also-nonexistent "rambling"?)

Comments

[lkeele.livejournal.com]

If we move to Egypt, I want a flax farm in the Nile floodplain, so I can weave my own linen. :) :) :)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh, my! Can I come visit you? Pretty please?

I have been to Egypt exactly once. I don't know how I'd handle living there as an adult woman. I don't know how YOU handle the uncertainty of all this!!

Re:

[lkeele.livejournal.com]

I dunno either! :) But what are you going to do, give up? There's still dirty laundry to wash and dinner to cook, kids to care for, and my own stories to write. I try to focus on that. And since my mind keeps wandering to all the "what ifs", I've been TRYING to look at the positive, exciting parts of each future possibility, because that keeps me up late at night a lot LESS than when I start to worry about the difficult parts, the stressful parts, and the big NOT KNOWING part!! So I daydream, about things like having a flax farm on the Nile, and go wash the laundry!

(And then I come and rant to all y'all when I can't take the uncertainty any longer!!!!)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Daydream about someone teaching you how to make papyrus, too! (well, I'd daydream that!)

Re:

[lkeele.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah! That's a cool one!!