Are You Buying This?

Gosh, it seems we spend an awful lot of money promoting products. I don't mean the ads companies pay for but we the consumers paying to further advertise products. An example which is terrorizing the niche of my brain that stores shopping information is the new "Singles" packages of chips. GOOD GRIEF! You can almost hear the bags yelling at you from the shelf, "Single!"; this is not a ski line. These are the same as the lunchbox sizes, just marketed to a more elite (ha) bunch. They are all 1 oz. servings of reflections of starch products, fried, dried, and salted or flavored and salted.

The product itself must be worth all of 1 cent but, ah, the status of the packaging that goes with it makes the bundle of 24 tiny bags worth about $8. If you aren't after the 1 oz. lunch size then you can get the 1 oz. single size in smaller groups. Here I go again though - what about Earth? If that 1 oz. of empty calories still draws you in spite of the surplus of calories and lack of nutritional value, what about all that packaging. You buy a 6-bag bundle, each individually wrapped, of course. Each advertising the product, all placed inside another larger wrapper, labeled. These all go into yet another bag at checkout. And, you get a string of coupons and a receipt. The darn paper you will toss away ways more than all the fried foodstuff inside.

I do like my snacks, mind you! But I work hard to control consumption, for what I hope are good reasons. I hate doing it; it'd be so much easier to snack away and hope God takes care of human health and all that is around us, patting us kindly with a "there, there, I'll make it better." Ain't gonna happen, folks. Gotta look out for ourselves and our surroundings.


That being said, gather all the catalogs you do not want and sit down at the PC, going to www.catalogchoice.org. Click on the post's title. Remove yourself from the mailing lists. It's going to take a couple of months. I tried calling a trash can's worth last year and got rid of a lot of them but as soon as something is bought and information is required we end up on new lists. And, then, when you figure it all out again, what you purchased leads to more packaging, catalogs, mailers, junk. It's an endless circle.

Don't deny yourself what you need but do something to de-clutter the world and your life will follow the same path.

Snow's Here!

We've been dumped on, big time. There's a minimum of 11 inches of snow outside and it is glorious - fluffy and pure. The pooches love it: play, leap, chase. And, I've shoveled while Ed plowed. Oddly, Cabin Fever is reduced when a good snow comes along and we can all get outside and appreciate it. Even if all we are doing is clearing the way to go elsewhere it is invigorating to get out and to breathe God's crisp, fresh air. Somehow the way sounds travel farther, the brightness of the day, the bundling up to head out, the tangling up of too many leashes at one time, the helping hand reaching out to be sure neighbors are ok - it's all reassuring; it's all upbeat! So, what we truly have had dumped on us is proof of God's love. And, amazingly it is what we've known all along: best exampled by the things that money cannot buy.