Home Economics

I am having a wonderful time the past week or so as I frantically try to get ready to move out of my apartment by the end of the month when my lease expires, while also trying to get my new house fixed up enough to move into by then.

Sometime soon, I would like to learn how to do patient, painstaking, and beautiful work on my projects. As it is, I am probably too impatient and doing things too fast, and much of what I do is sloppier than I would like it to be. But it's getting done, and it's a thrill to discover that my house is being transformed into a home.

Most recently, I had a complicated adventure involving downloading the manual for my floor furnace from the Internet, crawling under my house, hiring plumbers, having help from a really nice installation guy from Oklahoma Natural Gas, and installing a new thermostat. But the good news is, the floor furnace seems to be working fine. I feel very fortunate and very pleased with myself.

Last night I also had another adventure correcting the installation of my outdoor faucet so it wouldn't freeze. The big difficulty was, I couldn't open up the little jar of plastic cement I needed to use.I had never learned the little trick where you bang all around the edges of a stuck lid to get it to open, so I had to swallow my pride, drive down to the Red Cup, and seek the assistance of a clever and muscular gentleman to open it. After that, the repair was pretty easy. Tomorrow when it warms up a little bit, I'm going to cut on my water and see if my plumbing's okay.

A friend of mine told me yesterday that I'm a brave woman. Which was very sweet of her. And that is how I'm feeling right now, brave and adventurous and clever. But let's face it. I am also very, very lucky. Through what is mostly dumb luck, I am getting house when lots of people are losing theirs due to little or no fault of their own.

In conservative circles, it is popular to blame the people who are losing their houses for their own troubles. But the truth has more to do with structural inequality in the US economy, where the most wealthy one percent of the population controls an increasing share of resources. Also, there has been massive mismanagement by government leaders and economic elites.

You can get the lowdown on how all of this came to pass by reading the Economic Meltdown Funnies, published as a joint venture by Jobs with Justice and the Institute for Policy Studies.