A Simplistic Life or Over Runned by Stuff?

I have been thinking a lot lately (yeah yeah I know scary huh?) about how much stuff Richard and I own and how much people own in general. I gotta say, Why do we have so much crap? Think about it, look around you at all the stuff that surrounds you. How much of this stuff do we actually need to survive? Do we really need T.V.'s, computers, cell phones, Ipods, video game systems, web cams, GPS and any other electronic devices we might have? Then on top of all that stuff there are the accessories to it all, if you have a game system, you have games, controllers, power cables, for the more challenging games you have a walk through.Heaven help you if you have more then one system like we do. You own a T.V. or two or three, you have DVD players, DVDs and that controller, and most likely a DVD play for each T.V. you own, I know we do, we have a DVD player in the bedroom and a Blue Ray player in the living room. With the computer you have all the stuff that goes with it, plus cables to plug in your ipod to it and any time you upgrade your Ipod you get yet another cable to connect to the computer with. Same with your digital camera, how many of those do you have? My mom has at least 4 that I can think of.  Then there are pictures and picture albums, decorations, cleaning supplies, Holiday decorations. On top of all this stuff you have to have a place to put it all, so now you have storage boxes and shelves. I wont even go into the things we all have that just sit around and collect dust cause we never use them but don't want to throw them away because we have some form of attachment to them or we are just lazy or better yet as I have caught myself saying on more then one occasion "I might need it one of these days".

I have an entire closet at my moms house full of stuff that I haven't used in 8 years, or longer and I can't seem to convince myself to go through it again and see what I truly need out of there and what is just there due to "I might need this one of these days". Now I know there are stuffed animals that I will hold on to cause they are from my child hood and from my father, but a lot of that stuff I could probably do with out. I mean I haven't used it in 8 years I obviously don't miss it. A couple of times a year I go through this phase of wanting to get rid of stuff I don't use, that's just taking up space. I don't want to have so much junk laying around.

I guess sometimes I yearn for a simplistic life, where I don't need a T.V. or computer, or any electronic device. I think about how nice it would be to just to be. I already hardly watch T.V., we haven't had cable or direct T.V. or satellite. It only gets turned on when Richard is home for the most part. But at the same time I realize if I didn't have all this stuff how bored I would be. On the bright side though I do find myself asking "do I really truly 100% need this item, or can I live with out it?" when I go shopping and see a nifty new device. So I guess in my own way I am leading a more simplistic life then I have in the past, but in reality I am just like everyone else and will always have the yearning to have the newest device depending on what it is I will give in sooner or later. Usually when the price goes down to a more reasonable one. I am after all only human.

Road Tripping

Mom and I might road trip down to Seward on Saturday, just for the day and to get out of town. It's not a bad little trip and takes about 2 hours to get there. If we go I will take my camera and snap some pictures. Mom and I have always been real good partners for road trips, we have always had a great time and get along amazingly well. No matter what my age was, you put her and I in a car together and let us travel the open road and we get along. It always amazed me cause I know I could be a MAJOR brat (still am some days) but something just clicked and we never fought, we would just talk, laugh and sing along to the radio or tapes or Cd's.

There is one such road trip that sticks out in my mind. I was 13 turning 14, mom, my brother and I went down to Washington to visit family, my brother went to stay with our aunt in a different part of the state while mom and I went to spend some time in Spokane with grandma and the rest of the family that lived there. We spent a couple days there hanging out I think maybe a week, then mom and I hit the road to go pick up my brother, head down to I want to say Yakima (don't hold me to that I could be wrong) to see more family and friends of moms, then we continued down into Oregon to see even more family. Once we picked my brother up any time it was just the 3 of us he would complain about wanting to go home, over and over and over again. Once we were done in Oregon and made it back to Seattle, mom had had enough of his Complaining and sent his butt back home, he was 17 turning 18 so don't get any ideas, he was old enough to be home alone. We stayed at the Double Tree Inn and with check in we got 2 free cookies, it just so happened that it was my birthday the next day so I got 2 cookies all to myself. Plus the added bonus of not having my brother around on my birthday cause he was flying home. So mom get's him off to the airport the next morning and we check out and go get breakfast.

Mom asks me what route we should take to go back to Spokane, we could go the short way and be back to the farm in 4 hours or take the North Cascade Highway which is an all day drive that she has always wanted to do. So we decide to do the all day route back to the farm. I have been the navigator for the whole trip so me and the map were close friends by this point in the trip and by the end of the trip we were even closer friends. Because of never traveling this route before mom wasn't sure if we had missed the turns I had mapped out so she kept having me open the map up to double check, I must have folded the map a thousand times just on this one part of the trip. Mom made a drastic mistake on this trip, we had stopped in some little town to get drinks and snakes and I ended up getting a bag of mini reeses cups and a 6 pack of 20oz Surge soda to help keep me awake. The mistake here was I was now hyped up on sugar and caffeine stuck in a car with no outlet for the energy I had, I was also slightly bored not a good combination. At one point we passed a bunch of cows in a field and I rolled down the window and proceeded to moo at them. Yes you read that right I MOOED at cows! We finally make it back to Spokane, pick up a birthday cake for me at the store and once on the road that lead to grandmas house mom decided to let me drive the rental car. I'm pretty sure I gave mom quite a few gray hairs that day, being as it was the first time I had ever driven and that I almost took out a fence as I turned into grandmas driveway. Which wouldn't have been good cause that fence was keeping horses from getting loose. All and all it was a great road trip when it was just the 2 of us.

It has been almost 10 years since we went down to the states and road tripped, I miss it, I want to go do it again so bad. I would love to do a cross country road trip. But would settle for doing a road trip like mom and I have done in the past with just doing a few states. Yes I know I said we were possibly doing a road trip to Seward but it's not the same, granted it's still fun but well there is only 2 roads out of Anchorage and we have traveled them many times before. Don't get me wrong I like going on road trips but I feel as these ones up here are just a big tease cause you really don't go all that far, And been there done that got the t-shirt, mug, hat, magnet, underwear and pants.

Walking Plans

This is a follow up post to my last one about walking. I have kept up walking, there was a week where I didn't walk at all due to being in pain in my shins from a new pair of shoes, which I no longer am wearing due to the fact that it started to hurt my heel and I didn't want that pain back again. So for now I am in my old shoes again but do need to get new ones soon.

Today will be the third time I have gone for my walk this week. Hopefully I do better today then I did on Wednesday, Wednesday I was a minute slower then I was on Monday but that's ok cause it only takes me about 47-48 min to walk the 1.8 miles now instead of an hour so that is a good improvement for as little walking that has been done before this week. I got an app for my phone that tracks not only the route I take, but how fast I walk, how many calories I burn and how long it takes for me to do it. Once I get my time a little better and I'm not so tired or winded while walking I'm going to increase how many days I walk and how far I walk. I figure Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I will do the route I'm doing now and Tuesdays and Thursdays I will do a slightly bigger route by walking up to Lore instead of 72nd which instead of being 1.8 miles will be roughly 2.2 miles that way I have some difference in my walks and easier days and harder days and then when that gets easy I might switch them around and do the bigger walks Monday, Wednesday and Friday and do the smaller walks on Tuesday and Thursday.

My walking also depends on the weather, if it's pouring down rain I wont go for a walk cause I don't want to get sick or I might go for a small one if I have an umbrella, not sure though on that part yet, so far the weather has been in my favor although Wednesday was freaking cold for half the walk which I am glad that I wore a light jacket, will prob do the same today, we shall see what it feels like when I walk out the door.