Shelter From all Storms

When we go on our day trips, one of the things we're most likely to do in an area is drive through neighborhoods looking at homes, new and old.  If I would have had my brain turned on yesterday, I'd have taken a photo of the stately old home that had two heart-shaped windows.  Talk about cool!

This got me thinking about homes in general.  My preferred style of home is an older one with individual charm and a few flaws.  Our home was built in 1945, is a story and a half, and is all we need to be a family.  It's the house we started out with as a couple, and it will remain so until we move on to perhaps a smaller place that won't require yard work and maintenance.  Something geared more toward geezers!

We Americans are spoiled in that many of us live in the lap of luxury, with amenities that surpass those our parents could not even have imagined.  Every generation gets used to a better standard, and so that standard has kept rising to where now that level of living can quite easily and quickly erode the middle-class wallet. 

Depending where we live on the planet, the resources available to us, the weather and climate, and the location, we have to design our homes accordingly.  The igloo has got to be the most fascinating form of shelter, as are the jungle huts built up in trees.  The tepees used to be portable dwellings that the Indians would dismantle and take with them to another site, and just think what life must've been like for the cliff dwellers way back when.  While thinking about the different sorts of structures, I googled Homes Around The World, and there's a cool website that tells about the world's different and unique housing strategies. 

Overnight we again had a thunderstorm, so I'm told.  I'm a great one for sleeping through, and never hearing, loud claps of thunder.  That in itself amazes me--where do I go that I'm so soundly asleep?  It's like a person shuts off or something.  Probably if I needed to be awake to keep myself safe, then I'd wake up, but I've gotten pretty dependent on the boyfriend to take care of me.  But, there's another side to that story, and that is that our home is built very structurally sound.  If we close the doors and windows, we're pretty much hidden from the elements.  The walls in our house are made out of plaster, and it's very difficult to drive a nail in them without gouging a chunk out just to hang a picture.  We always say it's built like a little brick 'out' house.

Sure, our home is modest, on the small side, and there are those who would turn up their noses at it, but it is our little container that we've filled with memories of countless parties, holiday celebrations, patio picnics, friendly gatherings, our alone times, and I know with absolute certainty that the day is fast approaching when we will have to leave it.  It'll be a tear-jerker for both of us.  But, we'll simply have to buck up and look forward to a new little space that we can make into our final nest.  And, that's exacty what we plan to do.  And, we definitely will take along with us the wooden carving that now hangs on our fireplace.  My hubby carved it, and it quite simply reads, "A Place Where Water Tastes Like Wine."