talking 'bout my generation...and my grandmother's

Our latest big "life event" is the decision to sell our home and try to build a new one. I'm not exactly a crafty handyman, and I know that it is going to be difficult, but i also know that it isn't rocket science, and there are *tons* of useful resources available on the subject (not to mention the opportunity to do volunteer construction work for organizations like Habitat for Humanity, which may enhance some basic skills). So we're moving full steam ahead. Our current home is for sale, and we've already found a vacant lot that we like. Local contacts for survey, water and other utilities have been dragging their feet, but that's to be expected in any construction project - particularly in a small town.

The only real snag thus far has been the verbal backlash that we've been suffering from some of our relatives. My mother-in-law has been throwing every horror story at us that she can cook up. My parents seem to think that I won't be able to figure it out. That's irritating. Since I was a kid, I had been fed that line that "if you can dream it, you can do it" from our parents, but I guess the real impetus for their support was so that we did well in school. But who can blame us for taking it seriously?

My generation (somewhere between Generation X and Y) is a motley crew of vivid dreamers. Our parents don't get it, and neither do our younger siblings, but my grandmother seems to agree with us on most of our views. I guess that it skips a generation. Or it could have something to do with our upbringing - the boomer influence, the yuppie craze, the hair-do's, and those strange wooden diagonal panels that permeated most of the architecture. I could also try and blame it on the television shows that we grew up on. Rainbows were all the rage, and weren't a symbol for diversity just yet. We watched fictional creatures like the Smurfs and Fraggles. We had bizarre TV personalities like Mr. T, and that kooky "bodyman" with the airbrushed bodystockings made to look like human muscle and sinew. (The same effect was revived with slightly more gruesome details for the film Hellraisers.) It was all about ultra-creative post-hippie learning techniques, but with a duochromatic beige and mauve hue. And then there was Reaganomics, the Berlin Wall, the space shuttle explosion (and the jokes in bad taste that followed), and we had a strange fascination with the olympics and its stocky winning gymnasts.

As children, we weren't aware of most of the negative impacts of these times, such as the unbelievable mortgage interest rates. But with such a bizarre smattering of seemingly unrelated but equally lofty offerings, who can blame us for keeping our heads in the clouds - when we've got kids of our own?