Freakishly Happy

I also don’t understand how people can be so cruel. Just last night John was reading me an article
about how there are many payday loan offices preying on elderly and disabled
people. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120277630957260703.html?mod=todays_us_page_one)

Now if you don't really feel like reading the article I'll gve you a hypothetical example of what's going on. An disabled lady falls on some hard times, and it's going to be a few weeks until she receives her disability check. She needs to feed her family, so she goes to a payday loan center and takes out $200. Not being fully literate, she signs up for a loan with exorbant interest rates. The loan center is then entitled to say $300 of her $600 monthly check. Soon, the woman and her family are evicted because they can't keep up with their living expenses, and the woman is jailed for defaulting on her loan. Seriously, it's that bad. Read the article if you don't believe me :)

Now first of all, I really can’t fathom how this can
possibly be legal, and secondly I don’t understand how people are so horrible.
Now perhaps it’s because I’ve been very privileged, and I’ve never known want
of anything, but I do not comprehend how so many people, individuals to entire
governments are ruled by greed. How is
it that so many people are corrupted by the pursuit of money that they can degrade
the lives of others?

Why do people struggle and compete to live in a bigger
house, have a bigger flat-screen tv and a bigger car? Why are we, especially we
as americans, never satisfied until we’ve not only kept up with the Jones’, but
kicked sand in their face and left the Jones’ in the dust?

Now I’m not trying to say that I’ve got everything figured
out, or even sound like I do. But I really feel that we have reached a new all
time low, when stealing from the poor has become status quo, especially when
the poor are disabled and elderly. It’s disgusting.

I have been doing a lot of reading and thinking lately about
people’s motivations, and although John and my sister have tried time and again
to explain them to me, I can’t seem to get a grasp on it. Although this may be a little self-righteous
and egotistical I feel like many of my beliefs about life are common sense. For instance, in my world, people in general
realize, or should realize that eating those little pies, that come prepackaged
on the shelf, which have no expiration date and will probably be what is
feeding cockroaches come the apocalypse, is a bad thing. Now, I’m
not claiming to be an expert on nutrition, but to me this is a no-brainer.
Now that is just a ridiculous example of what I’m talking about. On a grand scheme, I can’t seem to figure
people out. Why is it that so many people take the cheap, lazy and most
efficient route through life, even though it undermines their own lives, their
communities and even the planet? Why is
it that so many of the people in the country have an insatiable desire to
consume? We allow ourselves to be
sponges that soak up all of the advertising that our corrupt media has to
offer, so that we’ve become like cattle on feedlots, who just keep consuming,
not because we are hungry, but because we are told to do so. Why is it that more people aren’t asking themselves
difficult questions? How did we allow ourselves to become so stupid?

It makes me so sad to see so many people around me running on a treadmill of despair.
Now perhaps that is a little dramatic,
but it really saddens me to see so many people that I care living a cycle where
they go to a job they hate, come home and watch tv, which by making them feel
inadequate causes them to feel the need to buy something, which they have to go
to work to pay for, after which they watch tv and still feel inadequate and have
to go buy more stuff. Now I know that
many of my family and friends kind of smirk when they think of how John and I
choose to live. Many have even expressed concern about us, and wonder when we
are ever going to grow up. If growing up means joining that cycle, then never.
We lived that way for awhile, consuming heedlessly, and we were a little
miserable. Honestly, we loved playing together too much and work was seriously
cutting in on our play time. We both began to seriously ponder why it was that
we were working, and realized that a large part of the money that we were working
for was being spent on stuff- ergo the less stuff we had, the less we’d have to
work. The less work we do, the more time we have to do things that we enjoy,
like reading and thinking about rants like this one.

Now, I’m not saying that our life choices are perfect, nor are
they are for everyone. But if you take a
minute to consider your own lives, how much do you enjoy your job? What is it
that you are working to attain? Could you rely on less money if you were to
give up a few unnecessary things? Would you enjoy more free time to do the
things you love?

Okay this rant has gotten a little sidetracked. To sum up, I
really wish that people would stop and think more about why they do what they
do- and maybe if everyone did a little more of this the world would be a better
place.

I am happy to report that we were able to get out and work
on the bus today. We did a bit of poking
around behind the metal on the walls to see if there was any major water
damage, and found that everything looked to be in good shape. We stood around a bit and hemmed and hawed
about whether or not we should take up the metal paneling. On the on one hand
it would be easier and faster to just insulate and wall over the existing
paneling, which would allow us to get on the road and start enjoying our bus
earlier. On the other hand, if water leakage is a problem in the future, we’ll
have invested a lot more time, effort and money when we have to take everything
that we’ve built out because we didn’t do it right the first time. In the end we decided to do it right and we
began to remove the screws for the paneling.

We have also been kicking around the idea of doing a partial raise of our roof.
Many of the buses that we have fallen in
love with on housetrucks.org have lovely lofted areas, which really makes the
dwellings look more like homes and less like RVs (which is the look we’re going for :) Again, the negatives of this endeavor are the
time and expense it would take, not to mention the extra thought it’s going to
take to engineer it. The positives are
creating a unique and lovely living-space, and a having a little bit extra
space so that we don’t have to sweat our layout. Plus it seems a lot more
romantic and idealistic. We went back and forth with the same old
arguments that we’ve been using for weeks, before we decided that we both
really want it. Rationality and common
sense be damned! We removed the back two
panels of ceiling in order to sort of seal the decision.

We had a lot of fun today.
We both had a great time singing and being silly. Using power tools was good, too.

We’re still working on layout, and trying to figure out exactly what appliances
we want to put in the bus. Right now we’re
trying to decide on which toilet and woodstove we’d like. we’ve been looking at a Sun-Mar composting toilet http://www.sun-mar.com/index.html,
in the Excel model. I’ve done a lot of research, and although it’s
expensive, it seems to be the most eco-friendly and responsible way of dealing
with our waste. It’ll allow us to not
have a black-water tank, which would allow us independence from blackwater
sucking stations, as well as alleviate the worry of having to winterize a tank
full of poo. It also beats the
suggestion to just use a bucket and dump it in a trash can. I guess I’m willing to fork over some cash in
order that someone else is not responsible for my waste.
I think we may have also narrowed down our choice of wood stove. We really like the Swedish brand Jotul. We’ve been looking at their smaller stoves,
but secretly we both really like the idea of having a viewing screen. A closed iron black box just isn’t as
romantic. So again I think we'll throw caution to the wind, and buy a bigger stove. Although it may be more BTUs than we need, I think it's really what we want. Besides, we'll essentially be living in a tin can with windows, so we can probably use all the heat we can get :) This is the model that we're lookng at:  http://www.jotul.com/en-us/wwwjotulus/Main-menu/Products/Wood/Wood-stoves/Jotul-F-3-CB/

Our philosophy seems to be that even though some of the things we’re putting in
our bus may cost us some money up front, we’ll be able to take almost
everything with us in a few years when we settle down and buy a house. It makes
sense financially and environmentally to buy a quality item now, rather than
buy one sub-quality item now and then be forced to chuck it in the land fill
and replace it in the near future.

I’m also researching the best way to refurbish our claw-foot
tub. The one that we bought is in fairly good condition, but it does have a
spot where the porcelain has rubbed off, right where one’s bottom goes. Any suggestions?

As always, we’d love for anyone reading this to
comment or make suggestions! Thanks!