The simple life

Just when I think I'm really getting my life geared down into a more contemplative and quiet place, something like this morning happens.

I sat down to follow Chuck's (our electronics super hero) e-mail instructions on downloading a driver so that my laptop could talk to my new printer without having a USB cable. Turns out the original set up with the printer couldn't talk (wirelessly) to a Mac. To make this tale shorter, the net result was two phone calls and lots of sighs before the

problem was resolved.

I have to always remind myself that my computer is here to make my life easier. Some days I seriously think that all that "man" has done to make our lives easier has just made things worse.

Last Saturday, we had a delicious lunch at my friend Konny's house. She is my shining example of living simply. She has this delightful little cabin in the forest and has bear and elk for neighbors. She has worked hard to keep her life simple. She has only those things she needs for her daily use, no frills. When I visit someone like that, I come home and look at the relative chaos of my many belongings and decide that for now, I just have to live her way in my imagination. It's clear I'm just a collector and feel comforted surrounded by my stuff.

And relative to nothing, while everything was busy upstairs this morning, I found this pastoral scene when I went downstairs. It's hard to see because of the light, but the scene was Meika, our elderly female Rottweiler, sleeping on her blanket while Larry the cat was sleeping on the blanket next to her. I found this rather amusing because when she's awake, she hates Larry more than she hates the hairbrush (we have an understood truce in our home, but she still likes to growl at him to remind him how much she'd like to make sashimi out of him).

Ah, the simple life. Maybe I'll go take a nap now, too.