Dealing with change

It will surprise no one who knows me that I seldom like change. It scares me. I feel so much more comfortable when things stay the same (not to be mistaken for “staying the course.”)

It finally dawned on me that this is why I don’t like to haul decorations out of the gloomy attic. I don’t want my house to look Christmas-y; I want it to look like it does right now. Well, maybe a bit neater.

I don’t even rearrange furniture. I simply can’t imagine how else we could place the couch and loveseat and table and chairs. The house is so small, it would be very difficult to fit furniture in any other position anyhow.

There really is only one way everything “goes.” Can’t move the gas-log stove, after all, or the queen-size bed or the bathroom furnishing.

I have pictures from the first trips we made to Europe, some of them at least 20 years old, framed and hanging in the curved stairwell. They’re from Stuttgart, London, Dingle, the North Sea, the Tyrolean Alps, Lucerne and elsewhere. I keep thinking I should take them down or swap them out with more contemporary shots. Can’t do it.

I seldom buy clothes, so I wear the same-old most of the time. We need real winter clothes so seldom that the front hall closet is packed with coats for years. I just don’t want to take a chance consigning them to the thrift shop, and then have nothing with which to greet global cooling.

And I’m sufficiently familiar with my computers and their programs to do what I need them to do. The slightest glitch, and my guru-in-law sends me lists of programs that will cure it. Or kill it.

Sometimes he pronounces my laptop incurable. That means buying a new computer and learning how to use its newer versions of Windows or Firefox—my idea of purgatory.

We go to the Waffle House every Wednesday morning before going to Kroger. I’ve ordered the same plate for so many years that I don’t even bother telling Terri: “Single over medium, hash browns scattered and smothered, raisin toast.” Truthfully, I’m getting tired of it, but I just can’t imagine what would happen to our wait staff if I changed. Not sure how I’d bear up either.

Good grief, even good change makes me tremble. Bought a fabulous new refrigerator last spring, mainly because I read that new models cost only $20-some a year to run. Yes, a year. The old one ran noisily anyhow, and didn’t have the nifty deep doors on which most of those cluttery bottles of salad dressing and breakfast necessities ride. Not to mention the freezer drawer at the bottom.

Trouble is, the new one isn’t much bigger than the old one, if at all, and I’m not settled on how to arrange it. I stand there looking and looking for the sour cream, until finally an impertinent beeping sound tells me the doors have been open too long.

Two really serious changes: A new roof and a widened highway.

Dave had been wanting to reroof the house for several years and decided this year was the time. Our 24-year-old roof had a few leaks, but that wasn’t Dave’s most compelling reason to replace it. I admit I was surprised at his vanity: The old roof was stained with mold and he wanted it to look good. Modern roofing materials contain granules of zinc to prevent mildew stain.

And the other huge change that I’ll simply have to learn to live with is the deforestation alongside of Ga. Highway 74 south of Ga. Highway 54. We need the added traffic capacity, I won’t argue that, but six lanes? I don’t know what wounds my heart worse: the destruction of so many trees or the loss of privacy the residents enjoyed there.

A small consolation: The vegetation was cut after nesting season, and so damage to the bird population was probably minimal.

One more thing: The shrubs surrounding our house are looking puny. A couple have died altogether, and our pretty blue hydrangeas snuggling up to our big screened porch bloomed green this year. Honest, green. We’ve had them at least 20 years and they’ve never done this before.

We don’t have gutters around the roofline except where we need to divert water from above each doorway. Rainwater runs off into the bushes and gravel that surround the foundation.

Oh. You don’t suppose the zinc on the new roof is poisoning our hydrangeas, do you? Do you?

“How many Lutherans does it take to change a lightbulb?”

“Change? Change?!”