well, friends. I apologize for not giving you something to read yesterday. I am very happy that I have readers, even some readers I don’t know! How marvelous! I try to keep my end of the bargain by writing new content, but my creativity is a little low.

I think people have different settings, RPMs if you will, at which they operate best. I am a high-revving person. I have to have a lot of things to do to make me happy. In fact, if I have had a long day, and come home at the end of it, I often feel like I need to immediately leave and go see someone else. I’m just that way!

So. Not being in school and not being employed just leaves me feeling all weird. It’s hard to be creative. It’s hard to think of interesting things to write about.

I decided I needed more structure in my life. That will help!
I should do some volunteer work! That will give me a purpose in life. So I started looking around… I thought I should do something literary. But there aren’t as many volunteering opportunities for that sort of thing during summer vacation. Hmm…Food banks? Animal shelter?

Then it occurred to me…Charity begins at home.

My parents live with my oldest brother a few miles away. They recently bought a house in Sacramento, and are moving into it in August. This will require packing. And nearly everything they own is in the double garage, packed in boxes.

I think packed is an inaccurate term. Tossed? Thrown? Packed once, but rummaged through repeatedly? Sifted, sorted, piled…All these things would be estimations of the state of the garage.

It had to be packed. Those responsible for packing it were also the ones responsible for it’s state of extreme disorganization. That’s bad.

I was going to have to do it anyway, so I might as well do it in a peaceful methodical way. I called my mom and set up a schedule. I would go and work on organizing their stuff every morning for a few hours.

There is a certain irony here. It’s not like my house is not in need of organization. But it’s more fun to organize someone else’s mess.

I don’t know…Maybe everyone has one or two things that they have trouble throwing away. It is hard for me to give up books. Right now, I need to buy some more bookshelves. Clothes too. There is something about the sensuous feel of different fabrics. I have a fur coat that I’m never going to wear. But I can’t give it up! And all those lovely formal things…I hardly ever wear them…And funky costumey things…

What can you do?

I think we Americans have difficulty with “enough.” When is it enough? We all eat too much, most of us anyway, and the media likes to write about the problem of obesity.

We like to buy things. Isn’t our economy based on consuming? What’s up with that? We just have to buy all kinds of weird stuff. And then we have to buy the sequel!

I’m guilty. I love to shop. My wonderful boyfriend loves to shop, too. We have so much fun in the stores. We don’t feel compelled to buy things, though. Thank goodness. Most of the time our shopping is for amusement.

I love the 99-cent stores. One time, I was looking over the shelves there, and I happened upon some statues of pigs. 3-inch replicas of pigs, but they were dressed as a dentist and patient. Little piggy dentist with a girl piggy patient. Or little piggy girl dentist nurse and the boy piggy patient.

THIS WAS NOT ALL! These items would have been merely kitschy, except for the fact that boy piggy patient had his pants wide open, and his piggy hand pulling open the blouse of nurse piggy. Or when it was girl piggy patient, boy piggy dentist was leaning down into her piggy bosom as she pushed it out towards him, revealing the pink-blushed nipple areas for his lecherous dentist gaze.

Rows and rows of these statuettes lined the shelves. There were a few poses. I was aghast. I surveyed them, amazed. Then I noticed that there were similar pigs, undoubtedly from the same manufacturer, but they were naked and natural. Two happy pigs, running and playing around a hollow log. Except, in light of the soft-core pigs of the first statues, I began to look at their cavortings in a different light. What was occurring in the darkness of that log? Why was one pig chasing the other? And WHAT WERE THEY SMILING ABOUT?

Then, I realized, someone had designed and manufactured these pigs because they thought they would sell.

We really will buy almost any piece of crap with a FOR SALE sign on it.

I admit, I almost bought a pig myself, just to prove that an awful thing could exist. But I didn’t. I couldn’t perpetuate such a thing.