You know you've been stuck inside a little too long when....

You may have been stuck in the house too long when...

  You walk outside, and the neighborhood wildlife surround you like you’re Snow White because you’ve been feeding them all sorts of treats. In fact, the deer come to your office window and want to know what’s for lunch.
   You get such a close shot of last summer’s fawn you can see her eyelashes, which I didn’t even know they had....You keep looking over your shoulder for little people with long white beards.

  You find yourself on the window seat with the cat watching the birds, but you’re not sure which one of you is having more fun. He growls and chirps, and you brag to him about how pretty they are and isn’t that big fat woodpecker something else?

  You’re wearing the same clothes you went to bed in and you won’t disclose how long you’ve had that Armor-all shirt on underneath.
   You find yourself a little bored, but then you open the door to let the cat out and you both shudder and shrink back. That’s when you thank God you don’t have to go anywhere.

  You make a mug of real cocoa with milk and everything. Who does that???

  Your photos, recipes, and mail piles are in pretty good order, and you actually sent real Valentines to people....You suddenly have time to pour over the vintage cookbooks you’ve hoarded.

  You’re calling people you haven’t heard from in ages. And boy, was it nice and you wonder why you don’t do it more often....You answer your land line, knowing it will be a robo-call, but maybe there’s a real person on the other end. If there is, you open your mouth and nothing comes out, because you haven’t talked to anyone all day. And then they hang up on YOU.

  You Facebook way too much, confirm people you don’t even know as friends and like all sorts of news and craft pages so you won’t be lonely.
   You start eating the gingerbread house until you force yourself to share it with the birds....You start cleaning out the freezer. So far I’ve made cranberry muffins, banana bread, rhubarb and blueberry jam, chili, and beef vegetable soup. You’re thinking of making homemade noodles, something you’ve done maybe twice in your life....You make Chex mix with all the leftover nuts and cereal from Christmas.    

  You start eyeing the bread machine which hasn’t been touched in, like, three years. Wonder if that jar of yeast dated March 2011 is any good? I guess the birds will eat it if it flops, although they clearly prefer expensive sunflower seeds....You send boxes to your kids and nieces filled with your goodies and little presents you scarfed up from the one post-holiday sale you were able to ski across the parking lot to get to, that no one else was shopping at, with the cashiers watching you with their arms crossed, because you interrupted their slow day.

  You watch the winter games at length and weep over the Russian figure skaters because you wonder what happens to the ones who lose.

  When the sun comes out, you run to the window like a toddler watching the school bus bring her big sister home....A trip to the store is an event....You pester your grown children with text messages that include pix of the cat and the birds and the deer and the cat on your head and the cake you baked and the snow on the tire swing.
   And you wonder how poor people pay for heat so your write a check to someplace out of the guilt you have over your own good fortune.

  You finally set up the watercolors and you find you have no interest in it. The tension of fitting it in your busy life is gone.

  You purchase some great fabric and actually FINISH something with it. My four kitchen windows now have stunning poultry-themed valances..
   The couch has two indentations in it, one big, round one from you and a little oval from the cat.

  You fix dinner, complete with an appetizer and dessert, and realize you’ve just spent four hours in the kitchen and there is still a mess to clean up. But he really did enjoy it. And you wonder how the generations of women before you did this.
   And you try to savor the quiet moments as your life passes you by and yet you catch up on your reading, and hope your soul is getting fed, and your body is getting better, as you watch for signs of spring, like the purple finches getting more purple and the cat shedding an orange hairpiece on the couch.

  And Bob just uses the difficulties of bad weather to find new methods of doing things. He brought a holey branch up from the woods, stuffed it with peanut butter, suet and sunflower seeds, and hung it out. All our feathered folks love it. He made one for some friends we know, and so I think the Bird-on-a-Stick feeders are catching on. 
   And you should have seen the joy on his face as he shoved a 50-pound bag of birdseed down the driveway instead of lugging it. It floated down over that ice like a lumpy magic carpet!  

  Well, that’s an odd silver lining in this winter from hell-froze-over, but I’ll take it.

The new math

   I'm just old enough that I still send Bob after a "5-pound sack" of sugar when we all know that sugar has been sold in 4-pound bags for at least the last 20 years.

  Also I recall when a "No. 2" can of green beans weighed 16 ounces. You know, one whole pound. The last one I bought weighs 14.5 ounces. Who are they kidding? Well, I admit they fool me for awhile most of the time.

  What gets me is how the 99 cent stores have managed to keep a brisk business by selling items that are now weak, sickly impostors of their former selves to "bargain" lovers like me. (It's a sort of minor addiction, on the order of gambling, I think). Sure, you can still get a package of 2 dozen chocolate chip cookies for 99 cents, each of which is now the size of a quarter, dotted with brown dye to resemble the chips. Wash cloths have become see-through patches measuring 5 inches square.
   Then there are those jumbo, 2-gallon zipper plastic bags. Not very long ago, you could get 7 in a box for a buck. Then it was 5 and now they must be too embarrassed to sell a box of just 2 or 3, so they don't sell them at all anymore, which is awful because I have lots of STUFF that needs to go in those things!

The sad decline of Cindy's clothespins.

   But the cheapskate-pipe-dreamer in me still thinks I can get away with something in those places, so I was a little smug when I left with a package of 36 spring clothespins the other day. (Yes, I still hang clothes out to save on the electric bill a little). Only a few years ago, the package would've had 50 in it. Still, I thought 36 for a dollar was a good deal. Until I tried to hang Bob's wet jeans with the things. I turned around and those pants flew off the line like a great blue heron in search of minnows. That's when I really looked at them, comparing my new ones with whatever else was in the tub. You can see the sad decline of this simple tool in the photo at right. No wonder they can't grip a pair of wet work pants.

   Honestly, I'd rather shop in the TWO-dollar store and get something worth using. I'd rather come home with 20 real clothespins than 36 pretend ones. And I won't even get started on the "fashion dolls" whose heads and extremities come off in your hand as you wrestle them from the packaging as a teary-eyed little girl looks on....

   And I think it's an apt metaphor for life in these United States in 2014: Everybody is always squeezing out more from less, cutting corners, substituting with inferior ingredients, searching for some new math that will inject another hour into every 24. Making sure our kids have every experience, even if the whole family is run ragged, so that our multi-talented offspring can show off on their college application. Because, of course, all properly-reared, smart children are multi-talented, right?
   Attaching ever more items to the list of accomplishments on our resume, things that would also look good in our obituary one day. So everyone will marvel, "How DOES (did) she do it??"
   Someone has said if you do too many things at once, you probably aren't doing anything particularly well. Plus you drive people at home crazy. And God is not fooled if you are laying up treasures for yourself instead of for whomever it is you claim to be serving. Trust me, I know.
   And regarding those obituaries many of us have already written and saved in the "ME" file on the desktop just so our survivors get it RIGHT, I'll be honest here: I pretty much skip over those long obituaries that go on and on. NOBODY is that important. In fact, the ones you tend to remember, that make you wish you had known this person, are the brief little stories that sum up a real life with something like, "She loved her family, tried to serve her Lord, and really hated junky clothespins."

16 A simple life in the Fear-of-God is better than a rich life with a ton of headaches. Prov. 15:16