When I stumbled across this statement it intrigued me. Look around you. You are living with dozens of “must have” items that did not exist 30, 50, 75 or 100 years ago. Think of all the modern conveniences you use on a daily basis. Which 10 things are most important, those items you can not live without?
There is so much we take for granted. Things that in my lifetime have gone from non-existent to everyday use. As I went through my day I thought about the things I was using. What would life be like without this convenience? That is how I came up with my list of 10 Things I Can’t Live Without.
- Hot Water Heater — I know, pretty basic. This occurred to me as I was climbing into my nice hot shower. Before they existed people had to haul water in and heat it on a stove, then pour it into a tub and take a bath. All that work just to get clean! That brings me to my second item.
- The Shower — before someone figured out how to force water up through a pipe and out above your head, everyone took baths. Some people still do. Some find it relaxing to climb into a tub and while away in a nice soak. Not me. I am a shower person hands-down. One of the great inventions, and you don’t have to haul or boil water to receive it.
- Furnace — convenient heat. No hauling wood, building a fire, having it die down overnight and waking up to a chilly home. My furnace that I set at a temperature I want it to be at and it conveniently kicks on and off throughout the day and night to maintain the temperature of my home. The convenience of warmth, or coolness if you also have air conditioning.
- Automobile — the ability to walk out, get into my vehicle and drive wherever I need to be. It has heat. It has air conditioning. I can listen to the radio or news. It protects me from the wind, rain, snow, cold, heat. It gets me where I need to go quickly. I can’t imagine life without the convenience of my vehicle.
- Internet — now I know there are people who live without being connected to the internet, or do they? People are connected through their phones so they are never really not connected, just maybe not through a computer at home. However I use the internet at work, at home, for staying in touch with family and friends, for gathering information, planning trips, mapping out routes, maintaining the website where I have my photographs, and writing this blog. So much of what I do involves around the internet I would be very limited in what I do without it. In fact when the power goes out, there is a tremendous amount of things I can’t do at home or work.
- Cell Phone — gone are the days of a phone attached to a wall with a 16-foot cord. We now carry our phones with us everywhere we go. It allows us to be in connection with others through phone calls, text messages, and social networks. We use it as a computer, for navigation, for information, as a clock, as an alarm, stopwatch, to get news updates and weather reports. The cell phone is a multi-use tool that we have all become dependent on to keep us in check as we go through the day. How did we ever manage to live and survive without it?
- My Camera — I know, a weird one to pop up in this list. A camera is the window to the world, past and present. The images you capture hold forever in time a moment that will never again be repeated. It is your memories held for generations to come. Walking and looking around you, taking photographs of whatever captures your eye is relaxing. I do the same thing driving, I see something, I stop and photograph it. It is relaxing. It is preservation of time. It is important to me.
- Paper and Pen — writing tools. I can write without a computer. I quite often write things by hand and later transcribe them into a typed format. Why? Because if traveling it is easier to pack paper and pen than my laptop. Writing by hand slows the brain down, it causes you to spend more time formulating your thoughts. It is not as easy to go back, erase and re-write if you are using paper and pen. This is another activity that is relaxing and preserves thoughts and ideas for future reference.
- Range/Refrigerator — those wonderful kitchen appliances. Gone are the days of purchasing a block of ice and having it put into your “ice box,” although I do have an antique one in my garage. Pull refrigerated or frozen food out of your refrigerator and cook it on your range, either on the burners or in the oven. No hauling wood and estimating the temperature. Push those buttons, wait for the “ding” to tell you it has reached the appropriate baking temperature and pop it in, then set the automatic timer to let you know when to remove it. Convenience.
- Washer/Dryer — laundry at its finest. No hauling water, timing the cleaning of your clothes in proper order, whites to darks because you are re-using the water, then running it through the ringer to get the water out before hauling the basket out to the washline to hang the items to dry. Although I will admit, I love the smell of clothes dried outside on a line. Now I throw the clothes in my washer, add the detergent and fabric softner, set which type of wash it is –colored, towels, handwash, etc. — and push the start button. I don’t even have to select how much water is needed, the machine weighs my laundry and makes that determination for me. Laundry is now an load here, load there, convenience instead of an all day job.
- Microwave — remember when these came out? Convenience. They were big, bulky, but fast. Was it safe? Who cared – it was a quick way to get things heated. I will admit that the majority of my cooking is done the old-fashioned way, on a range, oven, or crock-pot. However one cannot beat the microwave for warming up beverages, popping popcorn, reheating leftovers, or other quick-fix items. It has made day-to-day life very easy.
I know, I’m over the limit, not only do I have 11 items on my list, but on some I cheated and doubled up. Once the mind got rolling it was hard to narrow down the items, and even now I can think of more. What about crock pots/slow cookers, electricity, flashlights, gas grills, and more. As soon as I send this I’m going to think — why didn’t I put such-and-such in?
What are the items you can’t imagine life without? What are the ten items you can’t live with out?
Murphy’s Law #8: It has been a crazy couple of weeks at work. Friday was like a triple Monday. Throughout the week things had come up that took priority and pushed other things back. I ended the week feeling burned out and more buried then when the week began.
When you are born a lover of the written word it never goes away, it just transitions over time. Writing and literature go hand-in-hand. My high school classes were filled with literature…classes in modern short stories, mysteries, American literature, Advanced Grammar and Composition, and more. When I went back to college in 2010 one of my favorite classes was public speaking because I was writing whatever I chose to talk about. It was fun!
I write in many formats. I titled this blog Life is a Melting Pot because my life is a jumble of various activities and I like to write about whatever strikes me at the moment. This blog is not the only regular writing I do. For the past eight years I have held the position of newsletter editor of Bluewater Family Backgrounds, a publication of the St. Clair County Family History Group. As the editor I gather content and put together the entire newsletter, writing some articles that go into it. I have been writing a column called “Who AM I?” for the past five and one-half years for The Lakeshore Guardian, and local free publication. The column is on genealogy. I am in my fourth year as an opinion columnist for our local newspaper, The Times Herald. I select my topics and how often I write a column, frequently selecting topics that can be a bit controversial. Finally, my daytime job is that of Paralegal in which I spend my days doing legal writing. All of the areas in which I write are slightly different and I enjoy each one.
I belong to a Freelance Writer’s Group and at the meetings I see a variety of people with a wide range of interests. The group includes people who write children’s stories, adult novels, travel columns, science fiction, non-fiction, memoir, and more. We all have one thing in common…we love to write! Writers are like any other type of artist, they are imaginative, creative, passionate about their art, well-read, self-promoters and self-starters. Writing is something you do solo; you have to be motivated to write or you will never succeed. Writers love words, language, and people watching. Everything is a potential story or scene. If you spend much time with a writer you may find yourself popping up in their stories, blogs, or columns. You may not be there in name, but you will likely recognize a scene in which you have lived.
Your own personal attitude has a great impact on how you feel throughout the day and your overall outlook on life. If you feel that life has thrown you the scrungy bone and you must gnaw away at it, you will likely make very little progress and will feel depressed, over burdened and uninspired about life. Not only will your attitude leave you feeling low, but it will be portrayed in your dealings with others, and may leave them feeling oppressed by emotions as well.
struggling economically with consideration, kindness, and as an equal. This is a person of great integrity. They recognize that they have obtained wealth, but they do not fault those around them that have been unable to achieve that goal.
way you are right.” That is how strongly attitude affects your ability to succeed in whatever you set out to accomplish.
A couple years ago my husband and I were in a restaurant that was quite busy and we had to wait for our table. I was looking around the restaurant and I mentioned to him that he and I looked very out of place. The reason being we were the only two people in the entire restaurant, both the dining and bar areas, who were not on our phones. We were talking to each other instead! That is sad….people are losing the human connection.
If you research racial injustice for the 1940’s you will find that the treatment of “Bigger” portrayed in the novel is a very accurate representation of the mindset during that era. Lynchings were common for anything and everything considered inappropriate. NAACP members campaigning to get those of African American decent the vote where removed from their homes and lynched. A 26-year old man was lynched for failing to address a police officer as “Mr.” If a white woman was attacked it was assumed that a black man had committed the crime and the “suspect” would often be captured and lynched. Justice did not prevail.
We have come a long way in the acceptance of others since the 1940’s when 
Ahhh you say, isn’t that the same thing as a resolution? Well, sort of, but it is a mind game for motivation. Which do you want to do? Which makes you feel that success is possible? You can only pick one of the following:
If you have been a reader for a while you know that my husband, Ron, passed away December 7, 2015 and since that time I have been adjusting to living on my own. In reflecting on myself now, plans for the future and introspection of the past I have learned a few things.
Although I never paid attention to our finances and had no interest in knowing about them, I am perfectly capable of paying bills, applying for mortgage modifications, listing property for sale, and making decisions on financial assets. I’m not blindly doing what Ron told me to do as he was dying. I’m evaluating my own circumstances and making a decision that I feel comfortable with. My goal for the future is to learn how the stock market and investments work, to understand how to diversify and what everything means so I can make informed choices. Hopefully I will get a grasp on this within the next decade. I’m really walking in uncharted territory here.
What I have discovered is that it wasn’t the cooking I disliked, it was that Ron always had a criticism of some sort and tended to hover, questioning why I did things the way I did, telling me I should do things differently than I did. Nothing was ever quite good enough, there was always a “why didn’t you…” Basically, he thought I should cook just like him. After a while I tired of the negativity and simply walked away and left it to him. He cooked, I cleaned up, and it worked.
landing me in a trauma center for seventeen days, rehab for two months, and then a year of physical therapy and medical follow ups after that. Two of my granddaughters were taken by Child Protective Services and put into foster care. My husband and I applied to foster them and were denied, we later applied to adopt them and again CPS fought us and we lost. Both girls have been adopted by strangers.
I look at the list of things I have handled in the past few years and in my opinion have coped well with everything life has thrown at me. I have often felt that I have strong coping mechanisms but don’t really know why. I am baffled when people have one issue on their plate and are falling apart at the seams. I delved into the article hoping to discover what it is that makes one person successfully juggle a plethora of issues while another crumbles under the slightest amount of pressure.
downs of life and have difficulty coping you may want to read 
I was reading Michelle’s post on Facebook yesterday. Many notes of sympathy and prayers. They know her, they know her husband Charlie, they know what a great couple and wonderful marriage they had. I, on the other hand, have not seen Michelle personally in years. We were together as children, but not as adults. We are in contact only by Facebook now. However, I can truly feel her pain.
So, now that I am over the hill and rolling down it toward 60 I need to keep a positive focus and concentrate on fully utilizing the young gene. My hair can turn gray…there are people that purposely put grey in their hair for accent. I can gradually switch over to glasses if needed, after all young people wear fun and trendy glasses all the time. I will regain mobility after my ankle fusion and should be back to normal by late next spring. Most importantly, I refuse to grow old. Old is a state of mind, and my mind is not going there.
Have we really done those children a favor? I don’t believe so. If a child never learns that sometimes life isn’t fair, that sometimes you win and sometimes you loose and that is okay, how can they learn to cope with the realities of life when they become an adult. They don’t. I think that is why we have so much violence, so many underachievers. They never learned to push for the top. It has been handed to them every step of the way.
--- LIFE IS A MELTING POT --- Grace Grogan...Writer, Photographer 