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Thursday, July 21, 2016

Time to explain the blog title

There are so many blogs out there that feature beautiful, expensive houses, fabulous DIY projects that aren't Pinterest fails, and flawless organizational schemes, and that's great. This is not one of those blogs. You will never find this one featured in glossy magazines with titles not quite like "Truly (Expensively) Uncomplicated."

I am simply not in that class. Literally. My socio-economic status is "hanging on like a barnacle to the bottom of the fading lower middle class." I'm semi-abled at best, with chronic fatigue and chronic pain, and I don't always get much done in a day.

My camera is ten years old, has 5 megapixels and a fading battery, and no longer does timestamps. We can't afford a better one. I don't have Photoshop, though I occasionally resort to the free features on Picmonkey to correct exposures or to crop. Sometimes the pictures show chomped hollyhock leaves because I'm not into insecticides.

 My garden is lovely, and it's small. On one side of the house, it's up against is a barbed-wire fence and a horse pasture. On the other there's chain-link and a yard that doesn't get mowed or watered. That's my neighborhood. We all do what we can. I do close-ups not because I'm a follower of Georgia O'Keefe, but because that's how I deal with sightlines. Maybe I'll get braver now you know that.

Inside our manufactured, non-tiny home, decor is Early Poverty/High Clutter, despite a few nice pieces of furniture. I've got old sheets hung from panel nails over my windows because there's so much to do before I can make the curtains from the curtain fabric that's been sitting in the fabric stash for two years, and I have to barter with someone to get the holes drilled for the curtain rods because neither of us can be trusted with power tools.

I make beautiful things, and I make messes. Sometimes the messes take a while to clear up. In geological time.

There's a sign hanging on the living-room wall. It's slightly crooked no matter how carefully we straighten it, and it hangs just below the wall cracks that appeared when a neighbor drilled a well. It's a quotation from Annette Funicello: "Life does not have to be perfect to be beautiful."

My life is not simple, and I won't pretend it is. It's not glossy. It's not keeping up with the Joneses, or anyone else. It has moments of beauty, and I share them.

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