santa, please send me some "z"s I am socially crippled by the fact that I did not watch much TV as a kid, nor see many movies. I have not seen one episode of Eight is Enough or Beverly Hills 90210. I have never seen any of the Indiana Jones movies, and I didn't see Goonies or any of the Star Wars films until recently. In fact, I only remember seeing a handful of movies as a kid: The Elephant Man, which my aunt made me watch while she was babysitting me when I was around 3 1/2. We watched that back-to-back with, I think it was Creep Show or something, with the zombies covered in seaweed "you can't kill us, we're already dead" sort of thing. Also, my parents took me to see Purple Rain and The Meaning of Life in the theatre. Another aunt took me to see Splash, which made me wish I was a mermaid for about a year. And I saw Gremlins (the first one- there were two, right?) with some friends of mine. But that's about it. However, there has not been one time since I was around 7 that I have not been reading a book. I read a lot as a kid. If it has elves or galloping knights, you can be sure I read it. And a couple of years later, anything with Jondalar and his throbbing manhood. I read Jack London when I was 8, and I attempted to read Tolstoy's War and Peace when I was 9, which traumatized me and put me off of Russian authors for life, at least so far. I rummaged through my parents' bookshelves and read all my dad's science fiction that I could stomach, and later I read my now-ex-husband's library, mostly the history of the labor movement, anarchist stuff, including the autobiographies of Alexander Berkman (really good!) and Emma Goldman (...eh). But this has left me unable to carry on a normal conversation with anyone my age- I don't watch American Idol, and I don't get your obscure Three's Company references. But if you want to debate whether orcs represent the Russian army or something, I'm there, and I'm solidly on the con side of that argument. So. I've spent a number of hours, sleepless ones lately, researching manufactured homes on the internet. Just saying the words "manufactured home" makes me feel like someone has taken a cheese grater to my soul. But it looks more and more like we might buy one of these- a new one. Because we can't find a used trailer that isn't on a lot, we can't comfortably afford a house, and hubby is tired, tired, tired of giving our hard-earned money to the landlord man. So this has set off a major crisis of conscience and emotion for me. Do I really want to be part of the prefab, pave-it-over-and-paint-it-eggshell-white society? I have always been the one standing in front of the herd of bulldozers, trying to scare them off with my bitching, and yet now I am ready to bulldoze my own plot of innocent earth and slap up a crappy hulk of wasted resources, when there are plenty of wonderful older homes on the market. And do I really want to settle down yet? I guess I do have a kid now, I can't really just pack up and hitchhike to Michuacan any time I want anymore. But it is hard to think about being stuck in one place for the rest of my life, especially in my home town, especially in a manufactured home. Looking at some of the pictures of those places on the internet is really depressing- some of the kitchen cabnetry alone makes me want to crawl into bed and stay there for a week. Granted, the model homes they show are always decorated with flowing dusty rose curtains and nosegays of dried baby's breath tied with teal ribbons, so it is hard to be objective. Yet, paying off a 15-year mortgage at $450 a month sounds awesome, comparatively. |