The above greens are from my garden. The photo is from last week, but I picked more today, and planted some beets. It’s been in the 70s all day. Although I wouldn’t say I am growing to like it here, I am feeling good about certain aspects of rural living that I thought I could never capture in a 250 sq. foot apartment on the fourth floor of a tenement in the East Village. (I loved it so, notwithstanding.)
My better-life-please quest continues with the following five books, which arrived from Amazon earlier this week:
You Grow Girl by Gayla Trail
McGee & Stuckey’s Bountiful Container by Rose Marie Nichols McGee and Maggie Stuckey
Voluntary Simplicity by Duane Elgin
Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin
Learned Optimism by Martin E. Seligman
It seems a little counterintuitive to spend money on books that tell you how to live simply and be financially (I typed finally, ha ha) frugal, but one must start with something other than hours of Googling, though I did that too.
Also, I applied for a part-time job at the local library. The job description said I would be required to lift loads of up to 100 lbs., but that can’t really be true, can it? Growing up, I always wanted to be the girl who worked at the local library, but mine was never hiring. I worked at the local photomat instead. I have a wealth of 5×7 prints of early Sleater-Kinney shows as a result.
If you get that job at the library - or even of you don’t - and you don’t want to spend money on any more books about simple living, just borrow them from the library. And if they don’t have the book you want, ask them to get it for you on inter-library loan. Most libraries charge a fee for that, but it is cheaper than buying books.
Another way to look at it is that books, like blood, are meant to circulate. So when you have finished with a book, pass it on to someone else or ‘release it into the wild’ - see http://www.bookcrossing.com.
I am a huge advocate of simple living (in fact I’ve written a book on it, as you’ll see if you look at my website) and I live very simply myself. But I still buy books occasionally.
Good luck. I hope you get the job.