The one with a garbage disposal and two free toilets

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy the Universe and its tricky ways?  I think humans reach full mental adulthood when appliances become exciting.  I guess it’s good to be excited by the little things in life no matter your age but I remember feeling less than excited when completing my yearly obligation to open all my Christmas clothes when I really just wanted to unwrap all the Christmas toys.  Well, our latest set of “Christmas toys” consists of a new garbage disposal and two new toilets.

I’m learning many new things with each passing day related to the creation of a new and simple life.  Never has my heart felt the need to journey back into the days of yore, to a time when paper and metal money did not exist, to barter.  At least I never felt the need to barter before our commitment to Section 2.  I understand completely why our ancestors created currency.  Determining how much your Wii is worth in comparison to my home gym would be even more difficult than it already is if an underlying monetary system were not in place.  Sure, you can look up the going rate for each of these items now but imagine this process way back when.  How many bags of flour could you get for a bushel of corn?

During my attempts to offload some of our belongings onto other San Antonians, I’ve become quite fond of the barter page on Craigslist.  Especially in this day and age, I think people welcome other non-traditional methods for obtaining “new” goodies and the barter page on Craigslist proves to be quite fun … and informative.   We recently encountered a gentleman willing to do some of our home remodeling in trade for our gym.  While surveying the work we need done, he mentioned that SAWS might give us two new toilets if we applied.  Attempting to encourage water conservation here in San Antonio, our water company donates up to 2 toilets for every house in San Antonio that qualifies.  I believe, qualification depends on your build date … maybe some other parameters, I’m not sure.  Anyway, John filled out the paperwork and a couple days later a voucher arrived in our mailbox, entitling us to new toilets!  They have 2 buttons.  One for number 1 and one for number 2.  At every turn the Universe provides us with new ideas for accomplishing our goal of moving into Section 2 in a manageable way.  This time, we saved a bit of money!

Also, this last weekend our garbage disposal went out.  Actually, a juice box straw got stuck in it and when I pulled it out, the bottom of the grinding part of the disposal crumbled to pieces.  I guess a 16 year old garbage disposal gets worn out too.  So, even though we planned to replace the disposal later, the Universe encouraged us to begin our kitchen remodeling early.  We had actually come to the conclusion that this month’s remodeling would slow a bit due to John and I both working overtime but I guess the Universe figured we could take on a small task to keep our momentum going.  :)  I can’t believe how exciting it is to have 2 new toilets and a new garbage disposal but I suppose part of the excitement is simply knowing that we’ve taken 3 small steps closer to freedom.

This entry was posted on Tue, Feb 03 2009 at 18:01 and is filed under Vanessa's Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.