Monday, March 30, 2015

Why I Wish I Was (Selfishly) Wealthy Sometimes

Okay, I admit it. Sometimes I wish I was wealthy. I've never taken one of those busses that bands use, or the huge RV's where you can pass the wheel to the next person and go take a leak and make a carrot juice. I would love to do that before I did. Just five days. Park where we want, watch the sunrise, sunset, have a couple of mopeds on the back and a canoe or two up top for getting around in the back country, and a larder full of good food.
   Can you imagine that this hippie, after 64 years, 50,000 miles hitchhiking, years in Peru's Amazon and India wants that? I don't want to own one. I just want the $2 grand it would cost to rent one for a week and stock it, plus gas.
   And another reason I feel like I wish I was wealthy sometimes is the yard. I love my yard. I love the acre and a quarter or acre and a half or whatever it is they left me after the eminent domain two years ago. But it's a lot of mowing. And the riding mower doesn't work, so I have to mow it with a regular mower. But it's electric and if you pull the bottom handle, it pushes itself. It's the raking that's a real pain.
   But now it's spring. I tried the mower yesterday, to no avail. Fresh oil and gasoline and a good talking-to and it started right up today. But the "drive" component wasn't working. So I started to tear that down to see why not. The problem is, the mowers with the "drive" function have much larger rear wheels than front wheels, so the weight is in the rear. Which means when the "drive" function isn't happening, you are simply not going to push it: The rear wheels, with the weight, just dig into the wet Spring earth and you're not going anywhere.
   So I was thinking: Imagine if I was wealthy, say, making $60 grand a year to support the five of us, I could call someone to get that fixed, instead of having to stop trying to mow and go and look for tools and start tearing the darned thing down.
   My idea of wealthy isn't really wealthy. I am just thinking of an extra $20 grand a year before taxes. To me, $60 grand is wealthy. To someone else, maybe $600,000 or $6,000,000 is wealthy. I'm just talking $60 grand. So that sometimes I could just call someone to fix shit instead of either living with it or figuring it out myself.
   Selfish, right? Yeah, probably. Sorry, Universe. If I get the extra $20 grand I'll try to remember to open a soup kitchen or put five beds in the big garage to house homeless/helpless, rather than getting the mower fixed. Shit, I'm a disgrace, given my tiny problems when other people have real ones. Sorry everyone.

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