So We Fixed the Stove.

So we fixed the stove. And by fixed I mean switched it out with the stove from the other mobile home. In the rain. Because rain is good for ovens.

We made a valiant effort to fix the old one. We looked online. We kept calling Mr. Repair guy even though he never did pick up his phone. We pulled the stove out and looked at the back of it. Have you ever had the experience where you are staring at the guts of something and you have no idea what you are looking at? Yeah, me too. I knew enough to identify the gas lines, but I had no idea what anything else was. There was a rectangle with wires coming out of it, and there was another rectangle, and the some panels. That was about it.

I still feel vaguely like I should have done something more. Like I let the stove down somehow. Like I should have fixed it because we are such a throw away culture and when something breaks we just go get a new one and now I am perpetuating the problem. I mean, just because the burners didn't work unless you lit them with a match, and you could never put them on low because they would just go out and then fill the kitchen with gas, and the knobs were too big so that if even thought about bumping one it would turn the gas on full bore, and just because it was so old you couldn't obtain parts for it, didn't mean that it was time to replace it, right? Right? RIGHT!?

Okay.

You know the problem is I read too much homesteading shit. If you are not sure what homesteading is, it's a group of people who think the great depression was a good idea. They reuse everything. If their water heater breaks they use garbage bags to make a solar shower in the lawn using the garden hose. I shit you not I read an article about how to grow this particular plant in order to make your own kitchen sponges/pot scrubbers. Last time I checked a four pack of sponges was, oh what, a dollar? Dollar twenty five, maybe? These people are insane.

And somewhere deep down I want to be one of them.

Which leads to the guilt. I am not one of them. I will never be one of them. When a tool breaks, I just go buy another tool instead of building one in my garage with my solar powered welder like I should be doing. I do not hoard empty plastic containers in the theory I can reuse them someday. I do not rise before dawn everyday to bake my own bread so it can be ready to eat at breakfast time after I have also fed and watered all the animals, done the laundry and cleaned the house.

If a homesteaders oven had broken they would have built a clay brick solar oven in the lawn and used it everyday and tore the old one apart to make simple ergonomic farm tools they use on their no power mother earth loving farm. But, really though, there is one big difference between me and them.

I have a motherfucking job.