"Deer in the Headlight"

            Defiantly, her eyes locked with mine. Not a ripple of concern in her stance or glance as she faced me while my heart shifted to a faster syncopation. My headlights mirrored from her pupils for a second before she dismissed me. Casually, she crossed the road with the confidence that no harm would befall her.

            My foot, stamped to the brake, eased off to crawl my car forward. The predawn shadows complicated my search of the path from which the doe had unexpectedly emerged. No fawns follower her, and I cruised up to 20 MPH.

            As I rounded the corner, our small neighborhood herd waited in edgy anticipation by its morning feeding spot. Daily, an elderly retired man dumped buckets of dried corn from the back of his pickup truck. In long ago conversation, he’d told me that he needed to know someone counted on him being somewhere each day. With his wife’s death, his retirement had turned to unexpected loneliness that he filled by caring for these deer. This morning five deer awaited his arrival.

            My thoughts drifted from the doe to an old man’s loneliness as I edged onward into my day.

Copyright 2019 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

"Wants VS Needs"

 

         I’ve read some pretty mean comments on social media recently. Insulting words lashing out, sometimes with no obvious reason for the inflammatory temper tantrums. Suddenly, a conversational steam turns ugly. I sit dumbfounded as I read through cruel, malicious responses from people I thought to be reasonable—and nice.

         Most of the time, I try to understand both sides of the issue. If I weigh in (many times I bite my tongue and keep away from my keyboard), I attempt to find factual support for the issue at hand. Sometimes I balance myself onto a middle ground. Occasionally, I respond with well thought out deliberation. Fortunately, I have a blog wherein I can pull together longer reflections.

         In my dream-state last night, I mulled through this-n-that in an effort to distill recent events into some kind of cohesive theory that applies to a bigger picture, and I tossed-n-turned myself into a dichotomy of wants versus needs.

         Many people state belief systems as though they are needs. They need to follow their religious doctrines.  They need to spank their children—and everyone else’s, too. They need to defund programs like education and welfare. They need to take care of their own—even if that means making decisions that harm others. They need to own guns. They need to stop abortion. They need to segregate themselves way from minorities. They need to prepare for Armageddon.

          Whenever these people speak out, they truly feel that these things are essential requirements for their safety and happiness—for their duty to family, or church, or country. Their insistence that things are needs lends a level of urgency and unreasonable panic to their daily lives. When they feel that these needs are threatened, they respond with illogical anger and boiling hostility. They view their world as always threatened by someone else encroaching upon or diminishing their basic needs and rights. It must be rough living with so much distress and disharmony.

         I wish I could wave a magic wand over these people and shift their mindset to the fact that all of these things are wants, and not needs, because the urgency and fear shifts dramatically with this worldview.

Copyright 2018 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

“Incredible Inflatables

            For older neighborhoods like ours, finding space for anything proves problematic. Our house, built in the mid-1960s, originally paced out as a 1,000 square foot three bed, one bath, and a one car garage home. Typical for the time period, the builder designed about seven different floorplans with some including one more bedroom, bathroom and a luxurious two car garage. To optimize our cottage, we converted our garage into half storage on the garage door end and a permanent wall that gave us another room originally used for an office. Nice bi-fold doors separated the laundry and pantry from the office. Many of our neighbors have done a similar change, and some have sacrificed their garage completely.

            Since our backyards stretch to comfortable sizes, outdoor storage sheds, ranging from utilitarian to She Sheds, grew throughout the area. We opted to go with an addition to the back and planted a hot tub and gardens instead of a shed. Eventually, we relied upon renting additional storage, especially once Mom moved into our home.

            Our purge through storage units, both attics, and our half-garage area ate up years of “Keep, Give Away, Toss” until last year found me tackling the garage once more time and replacing old containers with neat, matching, reinforced bins. Everything now has its own place, but there’s absolutely no room for more unless I enforce my rule “One thing in, a like thing out.”

I’ve turned away from adding outside, holiday decorations because they are often wooden or metal and always bulky.

            Until a last year when the cost of inflatable decorations dropped onto shelves in At Home, Home Depot, and Walmart! One sturdy, stackable bin can hold several Halloween decorations, a Thanksgiving turkey, and a Christmas snowman and Christmas cactus! Within the box we have two projectors and all of the necessary extension cords, too.  And there’s room for more! We hope to add to the collection with uniquely incredible holiday choices each year.

Copyright 2024 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman 

"Changing Leaves"

          Running around the past few days on Christmas shopping errands, awe stopped me in my tracks. Our Red Oak and our neighbor’s Arizona Ash decided to don bright, contrasting reds and yellows. My husband’s iPhone and my old trusty Canon captured this brilliant moment.

            Enjoy!

Copyright 2024 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman    

"My Debt Exchange Program"

         Opening an old spiral in search of blank paper, I stumbled upon budgetary goals from several years ago. Column after column of monthly earning and spending that optimistically dwindled my debt on multiple cards while it built a savings buffer for taxes and unforeseen catastrophes.

         I chuckled to realize that my current debts and assets reads almost exactly the same as where I stood two years ago.

         Have I remained still? When analyzing the red, I noted that my final BALANCE DUE hadn’t nudged at all!

         I’d get discouraged if I didn’t applaud the achievements of my budgeting. Although it appears I’m running in place, in reality I’ve used paid down debt to repair, renovate and replace.

         All of those tallied columns and hopeful projections remind me of the importance of planning. My two steps forward, one step back approach to life would probably frustrate most people, but I can appreciate my accounting accomplishments.

Copyright 2018 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman