Being trailer

Yesterday we drove past a place I lived for almost 8 years, and had the numbing realization that had I not made certain life choices, I would almost assuredly still be living in a 1970's single wide trailer.

Sobering thought.

I don't have anything against people who live in mobile homes. Spent most of my adult life in a series of them. Tell you what, upgrading from a 10x50 to a 14x70 that's 20 years newer really makes you feel like you're moving up in the world. That monumental leap from fast food service to office assistant. The difference between driving an old beater that is 15 years old and upgrading to one that is only 10 years old.

Even if one could ignore the negative stigma attached to the run-down trailer park, or even a nicer newer mobile home on private acreage, they will probably always be a reminder to me of a life left behind, of poverty and depression, of frozen pipes and tempermental furnaces, of cold winter drafts and scorching summer heat.

How I found the courage to walk away from all of that, I'll never know. </sarcasm>

Few people aspire to live out their days in a single wide, with an expando if you were lucky, but for some the wheels of fate are slow in turning toward brighter days. I never got the expando, or the deck, or the dream too good to wish for of pipes that didn't freeze. But what I did have was 'home' for many years, nonetheless.

Life had a lot of changes in store for me. I shudder to think that I've moved five times in the past seven years, but revel in walking into this house every time I come home, no matter how long I've been gone. Home has a floor plan that I found and redrew and modified. Home has walls that the wind does not whistle through. Home has heat that does not fail to come on when it is cold, and even cool air in the summer. Home does not have skirting that blows away in the gusts of early spring winds. Home has a room for each child, and a full basement, and toilets that flush in the winter. (If you've never been without flush toilets, you can't imagine. Honestly.)

But most of all, home has Love. Love is a strange thing. You can think that you know what 'love' is, and learn you were mistaken when you find out what Love truly is. I never understood that I was only loving with half a heart, until it was made whole again. I have been truly blessed. Aaarr.

animals are not people

This is bound to tick some folks off, but it's my opinion. Maybe you can say something to change my mind, but I doubt it.

I think that the stickers that people put on their doors to tell firefighters how many pets are in their home are possibly the most selfish thing I've ever heard of.

Do I want a firefighter to risk his life to save a dog, a cat, a gerbil? Where does it end? What about my aquarium fish, don't they have the right to be rescued too, rather than be boiled alive?

How am I going to feel if a spouse and children lose a father or mother because that person was trying to rescue a shy black cat in a far corner of a dark basement and was killed?

We love our household pets, and we spend a lot of money to keep them well fed, happy and healthy, and spend time with them every day ... but there is no way I want a rescuer going into a burning building unless there is a human life in there to save.

I know there are people that say they treat their cherished pets like they were their own children. Perhaps they should be sending them to doggy day care instead of leaving them alone in the house, if they are that concerned. I'm just saying ...

I've got my flame retardant panties on, fire away. (Pun not intended.)