yes! it's not just me!

Not Quite What I Had Planned: CUL8TR! ROFLMAO! SDOISJNFODAVFBIDHNFOE!!!

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i am so totally not the only one. thank God. i thought i was one of a dying breed.

when did our (read:American) culture become so entrenched in entitlement? why so much of the "keeping up with the Joneses"? the "he's got one & now i NEED one" outlook on life? where did the live within your means & be happy with what you have rather than unhappy with what you don't have mentality disappear off to?

last year while frantically trying to pack up my house (that never did get finished, by the way, until the temps moved in & finished it for us. thanks bunches!) amidst my first year of homeschool & a always fussy baby, i discovered that we had way.too.much.crap. i mean really. so much stuff got thrown/given away last september/october. and i doubt i will ever miss any of it. who needs all that junk? i had like 17 vases. um. and they all looked pretty much the same. um again. i think i kept 2. why on earth would i need more than that? there was just too much junk to mention. and judging by the amount of junk, we just kept buying more on top of more. why? what is the point?

i guess i should fit this in with the cell phone post. i did not own a cell phone until i was 23. or 24. one of those numbers. i had a pager at the age of 18 that i paid for with my own money from my own job. i had nothing before that. there were payphones to be used or my friend's houses all had telephones. in my preteen-early teen years, my mom had a pretty good idea of where i was most times. late teen-not so much but we won't talk about that right now. i feel like i need to have that hold over my children now. there is so much worse stuff out there now compared to 20 years ago (what! that long?) that i don't think my children need to be out roaming amidst it unleashed. so i want to know where they are, who they are with and what they are doing all the time. some may argue that with a cell phone, they are instantly accessible at all times. um. no. speaking from experience here-that damn thing has an off button & it isn't beyond the stretch of most anyone's imagination to use it. and "oops, i didn't realize" would probably be the most common excuse. hell, i turn my ringer off sometimes & forget about it which renders me unreachable and that's accidental (not that many people call me over here, but you get the drift). i'd much prefer my kids have a specific place to be at a specific time & be required to contact me should things change rather than myself have to track their little tails down if i need them.

not to mention the whole texting thing. um, point? like the OP said, why not just pick up the goshdarn phone & call someone? oh, that's right, perhaps a phone ringing at midnight when the telephone cut-off is 9 would give away the game. why put sneakiness into the hands of children? they are predisposed to test any and all limits imposed on them. i, for one, don't feel we need to tempt them further.

cell phones in my house? mom & dad have one. that's it. temptation does break through on occasion such as when the oldest's friends call 17 times in one day. (he's a BOY. why is he spending so much time on the phone?) and i get tired of answering it. but then i recall all the arguments i just made (they make sense to me, jumbled as they are) against teen+phone & the temptation subsides. there's plenty of time for technology to catch up to us. now is not that time.