Manifesting A Stress Free Home with Bob
I was standing in line at my grocery store the other day as a woman in front of me was checking out a big order. I watched for a few minutes as the clerk used roughly fifty plastic bags to make it easy for her to carry her groceries fifty feet from her car to her garage. The chicken breasts were already in a Styrofoam box with a plastic covering. She asked that the chicken be doubled bagged, so that if God forbid, the chicken leaked on the way home, her family would not be hospitalized with salmonella. I figure her order used more plastic than all the cosmetic surgeons in Southern California during the first quarter of the year. By the way, I always thought salmonella sounded like a guy who played second base for the Yankees during the early ’60s. “Stepping up to the plate now, second baseman Sal Monella”.
The Next Thing
I put my two cloth bags on the ground, (yes, I know, I think I’m saving the planet. I’m a snowflake, a cupcake, a cheesecake, a garden rake, whatever, I’m doing what I can,) and I settled in for a bit of a wait. I looked around and saw the ubiquitous magazine rack of various selections, mostly aimed I assume at women. A magazine called “STRESS-FREE HOME” by House and Garden caught my eye for some reason. I picked it up feeling a bit like I was stealing for looking at it for free. Then I caught the price. It was $16.95 for a magazine.
STRESSED FREE HOME STRESSED ME OUT!
Inside were wonderful pictures of homes and hotels with people relaxing in gardens, being massaged, finding their core, hydrating their pubic areas, and growing extra toes to run faster. You know, stuff people with no kids, older parents or a pain-in-the-ass partner do. And then at the end of the magazine was a spread by decluttering queen Marie Kondo. She is the genius who made a fortune telling women to throw out the trophies their husbands won coming in third place at his company’s Vegas golf outing.
Here is the only decluttering I did. $16.95 from my bank account.
So here is my take on handling stress at home. There is an effective tv spot running right now. It features a couple in their late 30’s. Second marriage for both. 12 kids are screaming and going crazy around them. They look miserable. They saved money by combining their cell phone costs. Cut to her sister, smiling, holding a glass of wine alone on a beautiful white couch, who says, “I got the same deal, as a single person.” Bottom line, unless you live alone, and that has its own issues, other folks gonna bring you a little stress.
We live in a period of awful stressful situations. There is a horrible North Carolina congressman who calls Zelensky a thug and throws a rose at our enemy. And there is the Murderous Madman from Moscow who feels nothing for killing children and elderly people. We all feel stressed. Cleaning out a cabinet probably won’t do the job. I’m going to have a drink. That’s probably not the answer either.
