Sunday, April 03, 2005

A New Philosophy

For those of you who don't know, we live in a reather old house that needs a little bit of love. Ahem.

One of our problem areas is water, as you can see in the photo. This is a wall in our basement. Yes, that crucial area of the house that keeps it from falling down. When we get rain of any significant amount, a small...fountain, if you will... springs from a crack in the wall.

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I used to worry about this. But not any more. Not after I've discovered...

ZEN SHUI!

Yes, that's right. Zen Shui. It is my new philosophy. It combines ideas of Zen and Feng Shui. I would try to explain how you too can get to this point but it would be useless. You must go into your own wet basement and walk the path yourself.

At any rate, now that I have achieved calm balance with my home, you can see the improvements...

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No more fretting about the house falling down around me! Now I just sit and realax, rocking in my chair, maybe reading (for the Literary Curious among you, the two books on the table are The Poetry of Robert Frost and Microhydro: Clean Power From Water) or maybe just meditating to the sound of trickling water and the coal stoker crunching away a ton a day.

Ok, not really a ton a day. More like...um... a ton a month.

WHAT?! A TON A MONTH?!! ARE YOU SERIOUS?!! Do you realize how much that is? A freaking ton a month! For what? To keep this monstrosity of a refigerator that I call home just above freezing? Ugh!

Stop. Calm. Breath, breath, breath.

Ok...so I have to work on a few things in my new philosophy. But I'm on my way to enlightenment!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can feel ya. I too have a small reflection area in my basment. I like to put my small folding chair in the crux of the Y --right at the intersection of 2 streams.

E

josetteplank.com said...

Oh, I love what you've done with the place! Just spray a little tea tree oil there once in a while to keep down the mold spores, and you'll do fine. Of course, can mold even grow in running water? Pffft. I smell a conspiracy from those "Basement-B-Dry" guys!

And hey...can I post another link to your site from mine? Inquiring minds are asking.

Seestor

anne said...

Sis-

Tee tree oil - making notes here. I don't think the mold grows in the running water however we did have some...um...mushrooms? growing.
And I too have always been a little suspicious of the B-Dry guys.
Sure, you can post a link. I'm just figuring out these things myself. I just learned how to post photos within a post - obviously.

Cuz E-

I have a great Enya cd I'll burn for ya. And maybe a candle or two...

Anonymous said...

...lets just clear one thing up. There is no such thing as a good enya cd-Nan and I will be sloshing around this weekend. Do you have any good remedies for Wasps.

josetteplank.com said...

All I know about wasps is that you're supposed to kill 'em at night. I don't know why or to what extent that's old wives' tale (and I would be an old wife) or my mother's weird voodoo.

anne said...

I think you are supposed to kill them at night because it is usually colder and they are less acitve when it is cold.
Ok...no Enya...un...how about Sheila Chandra?