Stress, on many levels

I think that now, more than ever, we are killing ourselves with stress. How much easier it would be to only have to worry about whether or not it would rain at the right time. What I want, and I mean really really want, is to have a few acres far enough into the sticks where I can't see a neighbor, no one turns around in my driveway, I can grow a garden and a few chickens, maybe a milk cow, with my husband who works from home, and our children.

Although the kids will be leaving for college in a few years, they will always have a place they can call home. I know that I will miss them terribly. But I don't want to hold them back from their dreams cause I know that my dreams and theirs are radically different. I cannot see my daughter plucking a chicken or my son tilling manure into the garden.

We talked with some friends of ours about buying 20-30 acres, building a couple of houses with a big communal kitchen, and making a commune of it. I can see it now, it would be total chaos. But many hands make light work, you say. That is definitely true, to a point. But the chaos factor, coupled with the destruction of the peace, would negate the goodness of the concept. I still like the idea, at least for a little while.

We have too much stress. Work, kids, money, cars, TVs, bills, taxes...we try to put too much on our plates. That is why so many people have IBS, migraines, high blood pressure, heart disease, road rage, strokes. And we are teaching our children to be this way too. Soccer, Dance classes, karate, scouts, youth groups, play dates, ad nauseum.

Our kids don't understand the concept of relaxing anymore. Or playing. Only the stresses of modern living. Is it any wonder at all that kids are making bad choices as they grow up? Drug abuse, sex, handguns at school, all of these are a mixture of absent or uninterested parenting, mental pressures at home and school, and lack of structure from society. No one wants to do anything to prevent it from happening, but they analyze it to death after the fact and then flood the rule books with really stupid "laws" that everyone has to follow. For crying out loud, it is in my kid's school handbook that they cannot take a doorknob to school. Well, DUH!

OK, enough ranting.