a quiet saturday evening at the hovel house. i'm officially through with vacation and am turning into a vegetable after a productive week with my parents in rural pa. we had good father-daughter time with my dad teaching me how to use a table saw and assemble a piece of furniture: my new bookshelf, which i did indeed carry home flatpacked on the train. even though i don't get down with new year's resolutions (arbitrary and doomed to failure), living with my folks again for a week was timely in terms of reabsorbing old lessons that i hope to incorporate into my adult life. now retired and with a chunk of their savings irretrievably lost in the market crash, they live more frugally than ever, but with class. my father works on building projects around the house and what he can't make they buy second-hand. he built a cold cellar under the porch where they store apples and potatoes, available dirt cheap and of high quality locally while in season. they throw away very little, composting kitchen scraps, mending clothes and turning the unsalvageable into rags for cleaning. i'm trying to plan out how to incorporate that lifestyle into my home here, much more difficult because there are several of us with different schedules and priorities.
my perpetual resolution: increase my organization. make schedules, make plans, keep a budget. so far this plan is not off to a great start in '09, but the year is young.