This Is Me Maria

Maybe just one little thing will help you get through each day.

1) Lay your head on the shoulder of an unquestioning, unassuming, friend that you trust. Just close your eyes and lay there for awhile.

2) Listen to a song that you really like. Music is like medicine for the soul. Listen to songs that calm and caress your soul.

3) Take a walk. Everyone knows exercise helps with depression but no one explains how to climb out from the depression cloud to start exercising. Just try a comfortable walk for now.

4) Seek out a flavor tea that you love. Collect a personal sized tea set that you use just for your own private tea time.

5) Create something very small. Buy a tiny kit of some kind that allows to express your creativity but is a small project that won’t overwhelm you. Like a tiny herb garden, or a tiny ornament decorator.

When you are strong, you look around at the weak and say “Get up!”. When they do not move you cannot understand why.

When you are weak you wonder if you can ever be strong again.

When you are weak you gasp for breath from the unsurmountable weight that is on top of you.

When you are weak you can hear the voices of those standing close by calling for you to get up. You know that you should be able to move, but you cannot.

When you are weak it is easier to simply close your eyes and go to sleep.

When you are strong again, you now know why the weak must be gently and slowly lifted to their feet.

I have probably mentioned in the past that we are remodeling our 50+ year old house. It is a suburban style home.

Background: the house was a rental home for 25 years before we acquired it. During those 25 years more than one owner attempted to fix or remodel the home in some way. The work was very poor and nearly everything that is not original to the house has to be removed.

This is our first single family home. Even though we owned a condo before living here, we did not come into this home with a lot of money. We can’t afford costly materials for this remodel. Unfortunately nothing we have purchased other than compact fluorescent light bulbs are things that one might consider eco-friendly (even those are made with mercury and I have issue that).

We are just about finished with the daylight basement and ready to start on the upstairs which includes the kitchen and 1 full bath. I am trying to redeem us and (purge some guilt) by looking for some kind of eco friendly cabinet option.

So far I haven’t found anything that is not expensive. Even reclaimed wood some how fetches a fantastic price. Don’t even get me started on those eco friendly counter tops that look like resin but have like recycled glass embedded. They to are far too expensive for our very modest budget. We certainly do not have the time to try and build cabinets ourselves out of reclaimed wood. We are remodeling our entire home and yard so think like Ikea cheap for the kitchen.

What is a green gal who is stretched for time and money, to do?

Well if we are lucky enough to be able to keep our house as long as we would like to then we will go with the cheap kitchen option for now to make living here less dreadful and hopefully be able to upgrade to a really awesome kitchen one day in the future. If nothing else, potential future buyers hopefully won’t throw up when they walk in.