I long for dirt under my nails

Ah today is one of those down days. After a weekend of weeding and baking and holding baby goats going back into an environment where words like GP and Margin are all important was quite awful. Once again I am sat in an office with the heating on poring over letterheads and forms as if the world would stop without them. I want to have dirt under my nails and the urgency of getting my bread in the oven or making sure the animals have been cleaned out.

I've said it before and I'm sure I will say it again but I long for simplicity. A simple life is hard work. There is much more to do and the hours are long. You can't call in sick when you have animals to look after or when you have to plant the vegetables or they'll never grow. Come rain or shine (or snow or wind) the work never stops. On top of all this the house still needs tidying, the clothes still need ironing (and mending and indeed making), the food still needs cooking.

But oh how I long for those days. I want to go to bed tired and aching. Because in that exhaustion and in those aches I will have satisfaction of a job done. I will know that I am helping my animals to have a healthy life and by extension my family. My job will feel worthwhile because it has a real purpose.

I know that to the people who use the products I deal with they are important. But the kind of industries I deal with just don't hold any interest for me. When the most important thing in your job is how much money you can make without caring how it affects anyone else I just feel so sad. How anyone hopes that western society is not broken is beyond me.

Ok, that's quite enough doom and gloom from me. Let have a picture of the backwards Ladybug I saw this weekend.

Simple is hard work

Phew, no one ever said that the Simple Life was easy.

Sunday always seems to be our mad day. We get lazy during the week and things pile up. Suddenly it's Sunday and we have to get Spadgersdottier back home and there is a ton of stuff to do. So today Spadger took her home on his own and I stayed at home. The main reason for this was to get the bread done. However while he has been gone I have cooked the bread, vacuumed the whole house, dusted the living room, scrubbed the kitchen floor and cleaned the bathroom. It's amazing what you can do when you set your mind to it. The only this wrong with all this is I missed the dinger on the oven and the top of the bread is a little crisp. Oh well. I've also cleared all the ironing today.

I must get better organised if I'm going to live the Simple LIfe. There is so much to do and I refuse to go down the convenient but wasteful/chemical route anymore. Up until now all the housework got left until the weekend. That is just the way it has always been. I think I need to start doing more as I go. Sweep the kitchen after I make bread, wash the bath thoroughly after use, that kind of thing. There just isn't enough time on a weekend to do everything unless I dedicate my whole weekend to it. Once we get into planting season I will have to be organised as there will be as much to do outside as in so we will both be busy.

Living Simply does not mean easy or with less to do. I guess it means more deliberatly. I'm not going to quote Walden as so many people do however living deliberately is the first step in a Simple Life I think.

So now to go and deliberately get some cake as I think Spadger has just pulled up!

Me time

Phew, time for a break methinks. There is a tureen full of tomato soup on the kitchen side, 1 pan and 1 big bowl full of tomato sauce cooling down to go in the freezer and 2 batches of bread dough on the oven top proving. Definitely time for a sit down and a cuppa. I still have stuff to do but the kitchen is a bit tropical at the moment and I need to wash up (again) before I can do anything else. Plus I really should get the bread done before I try to much more. Our kitchen is rather small and although I am clearing as much side space as I can there is only so much I can do.

So a moment of reflection. I'm inside seeing to the culinary needs of my family and Spadger is out in the garden breaking apart pallets to make planters for the next season's crops. This morning we harvested the last of the produce that is in the ground. This added up to abut 3 and a half pounds of quite misshapen parsnips (gotta love ugly veg!) and around 11 pounds of jerusalem artichokes. We've never even tasted them before but thought we'd have a crack at growing them. There are 2 of their flowers in a glass on top of the piano at the moment which Spadger gave me in exchange for a cuppa. He'd have gotten the cuppa anyway but I'm not adverse to the flowers hehehehehe.

It's days like today that make me realise how much I love my "simple" life. It's hard work and definitely takes more effort than the conventional life but I feel so much more enriched for it. The amount of people who ask me how I get the time to make all our bread or shake their heads in wonder at the fact that I knit, sew and bake every week. I can tell you now that getting rid of the idiot box (television) is one of the reasons I have the time and the inclination to do these things. Not feeling the need to update my status on Facebook every 5 minutes helps as well. I'm not adverse to technology or being up-productive, I wouldn't be on here if I were, but these things do just eat time. Not having a TV means that when I normally would have sat down in front of something I didn't really want to watch but I couldn't be bothered to do anything else I now have to find something to do.

Having this extra time means I have finally learnt to knit properly. I have a beautiful, 100 year old sewing machine that I use to make beautiful things and I am learning to cook new things. What makes it even better is that on average I do all this and STILL have time to play on here, indulge my love of taking photos and read all the books I want. I can spend and evening every week at the knit and knatter night that the local wool shop runs. I can go to the market on a weekend and spend plenty of time actually connecting with my family.

When Spadgersdottier is visiting we watch films together occasionally but more often we can be found playing board games. Rather than having her comatose in front of whatever passes for children's programming she is in the kitchen or garden with us. All this time that has suddenly "appeared" to do all this in was there already. Time is totally relevant and there is a lot more of it than we think.

We have this belief that we have the right to "me" time. This time must be spent doing something we enjoy. However it cannot be spent doing something productive, that goes against the concept of me time. Well my me time is spent on the above mentioned things. Crafting, cooking, reading and taking pictures are things I love doing. I get a great amount of pleasure out of them and a feeling of satisfaction that shopping and vegging in front of the TV never gave me.

What do you do in your Me time?