Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

Wanda's Diary Entries

Saturday, October 29, 2005

My 8-year-old son Henry invited his buddy from the after school program at Reeves to come spend the night last night. His pal, a good-looking, high-spirited 7-year-old boy named Seth, had begged and cajoled his mother—as Henry did to me—to let them have a sleepover. So last Wednesday, I called Seth’s mother, Michelle, and invited her son to spend the night with Henry. Frank, Henry and I attended the Elkin-Mount Airy football game in Elkin last night. It was old-fashioned fun for all of us. Football, popcorn, peanuts, hot chocolate and football in 50-degree blanket weather!

Seth’s mother grilled me about what “simple living” was. As soon as I explained the concept, Michelle said she wanted to sign up. She commutes two hours round trip to Kernersville, NC, every day from Mount Airy where she works in human resources at a cable company. Though she has a great job—she drops Seth off at school, then races to pick him up at the after school program—she feels that she’s missing out on many essentials of the good life. Too often when she runs into traffic on US 52 coming home, she’s running late. Once she gets home, it’s make dinner, do laundry and she fall in bed at 9 p.m. exhausted. The next morning, the entire cycle repeats itself. She doesn’t have time to lead the simple life.

“Mount Airy offers the simple life, but with my commute I’m not leading it.” We can’t solve all of her problems all at once, but perhaps we helped her last night get a little time to herself.