another state. The manager of the office was a young middle aged woman who dressed in brightly colored clothing, with shoes to match and sported plenty of costume jewelry. I admired her courage in wearing these ensembles and wished for the same courage to wear like outfits, when reaching her age.
There was a woman who worked in this office who had recently given birth and had returned to work shortly thereafter. She brought a device into the office that I had never seen before. It was a breast pump. The woman excused herself to the ladies room several times during the day to pump milk from her breasts to supply the daycare provider with milk for the employee’s baby. I believed this media promoted phenomena, to be animalistic and dehumanizing, the equivalent of treating a woman like a cow or goat. From time to time, models were hired to help promote the sales of apparel. I noticed that one model had white powder on her face. Informing her of what I thought to be talc under her nose, resulted in plenty of office laughter. I was later informed that this was not talc, but cocaine.
To partially divert ourselves from the plight of other people, spouse and I decided to buy a house and move from our apartment that we rented after our marriage, near the city. After reviewing real estate newspaper advertisements we decided to investigate a house in a small city area of New Jersey. This house was an older colonial on a small lot of property. It contained seven bedrooms, a nice living area, a full finished basement, on a maintenance manageable lot of property for an inexpensive price. Both spouse and I wanted to purchase this first house viewed. A family member however inspected the house and stated that the house posed a hazard due to old electrical wiring. In the autumn we investigated an old cottage, near to parent’s home that was dilapidated and in dire need of repairs. Father was optimistic that these repairs and an addition could be completed at a reasonable cost. Based on this advice and the parental offering of repair and construction assistance and an interim loan, spouse and I decided to purchase this home. It was believed by family members that the house would not pass a bank inspection without major repairs and renovations. Mother and father loaned spouse and I some money until a mortgage could be secured with a bank, when at that time, spouse and I would repay the loan.
A new supermarket was constructed in the vicinity of our apartment of residence. One decided to visit this new store during the time of its “grand opening”. After grocery shopping at this new supermarket and proceeding to the register to pay for these items I saw for the first time a checkout system that was based on inventory bar codes. Each item was scanned through a computer system where a computerized and electronic voice would state to the customer the price of each item scanned. I did not like the system due to its impersonal nature, the hypnotic electronic voice stating each price of an item (implemented perhaps as a way of brainwashing customers among other reasons), and the possibility that customers could be overcharged for items because the grocery items were not individually price labeled. Therefore, I returned to shop at an older supermarket in the area that ticketed each item with its price and where I could view the price of each item displayed on the register at the time of checkout.
Beginning in October of this year, our weekends were spent demolishing and discarding old and rotten materials from the small house. As it turned out, more of the house needed to be demolished than was