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10.17.2021 by Chris Wilcox //

Just enough

When our last big refrigerator died, we replaced it with a 2.5 cubic foot mini-fridge. Judging from the tenor of online reviews for said mini-fridge, it would be a good candidate for installation in a crawl space under your house in case you ever get stuck down there and only need to refrigerate a thimble’s worth of fluid. We used that mini-fridge as our main fridge for three years.

Now we’ve graduated to an extravagant 10 cubic foot apartment-sized fridge, which most online reviewers agree is a reasonable size to install in an RV that you’ll only be using on weekend trips to visit relatives who live in an Applebee’s.

But my experience has been that neither fridge has too little space, even as a main fridge, no matter what online reviewers say, if you adjust your food purchases accordingly. However much space you have ends up being just enough. Most people could do with less.

Explain yourself

I’m not one to volunteer much information about myself to strangers as I go about my day, but that might just be because I have the outlet of writing. Without writing, I could be any of these folks, for whom I have recently served as the drop box of unprompted explanations:

  • Prim, middle-class looking woman walking past as I picked up litter: “I always forget to bring my bags and gloves.” (I am not here to guilt you, ma’am. No apology necessary.)
  • Man pushing shopping cart of belongings down sidewalk: “I’m taking this back to Safeway. I can’t stand a thing out of place.” (We were miles away from Safeway, so I’m a bit skeptical. But apparently it was important that I not think he was using the shopping cart, or that he had taken any part in moving it so far from the store.)
  • Man sitting on bench, who waved me over and tearfully started producing, from various pockets and pouches, every form of literature or documentation he had acquired in recent weeks: coupons, Jehovah’s Witnesses pamphlets, handwritten notes, receipts, Bible, a trespassing citation against him from a gas station, etc. I could offer little real help, but the simple fact of having someone to tell it all to seemed to alleviate some of his distress.

These encounters reminded me of the universality of the impulse to explain or make sense of ourselves, both to ourselves and to others.

Some days, stepping through the world as quietly as I can, I feel like I’m little more than a receptacle for the stories others tell about themselves. Or is that just part of the story I’m telling about myself?

Nature!

I learned this week, thanks to a wild-eyed, pants-falling-down gentleman walking ahead of me, that there’s a particular bush near the creek that you can yell “Scuzzy!” at… and the bush will answer. (There are those who conjecture that the reply comes from a man within the bush, not the bush itself, but I am unable to confirm those reports at this time.)

Kanopy

Anyone familiar with Kanopy? It’s a free video streaming service that you might be able to access using your public library account. The whole Ken Burns series on country music (all 16 hours of it) is on there, along with lots of other stuff. There’s plenty of documentary and educational content.

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