There is now a light at the end of the tunnel. My taxes have yet to be paid but somehow they will. I have health insurance, a job, a car, a husband, two dogs, and my very own apartment for which we are able to pay up the mortgage. Things feel very adult and good.

I am busied by homekeeping, gardening, painting, and cooking. For fun I go to museums, walk alone, read books, paint my place, and make things. I am also to be found very frequently at local thrift shops and the Flea. Again, I have found at these places everything I need without breaking my budget.

If you want to save the planet that is where it's at. Stop buying new shit that's so readily available. Stop wasting food and cook at home. Learn kitchen economics and how to use everything. Memorize tenets of storing and freezing. Even if you trim off the fat of your meat, fry it and give it to animals.

With a newly installed garden patio, we have invited into our life the splendid reality of creatures. Spiders roam our home and hummingbirds greet us. It is so lovely to be surrounded by life.

I guess I'm pretty genuinely basic. Though there's nothing cut and dry about my hobbies in homemaking and painting, it's certainly clean and conservative.

I know I could have lived in New York, been a serial dater, and consumed vast amounts of alcohol. But instead I chose this life. I wonder sometimes what it might have been like. All I know is I am never bored--cannot even recall the last time I felt that way--and am easily amused and dazzled.

I ask that my life is beautiful and safe. I'm physically fit, emotionally exercised, and loved and taken care of. It makes learning life's lessons much easier.