Artsy shelf

I painted a shelf, and gave it to my sister for Christmas. My husband suggested i put pictures of it on the internet.
I didn't just paint, i let my creativity flow freely through a brush onto the facets of the shelf. The resulting shapes were surprising.

It felt so good to use this part of my brain recreationally for a while. Most of the time, the creative part of my brain is working full tilt at predicting ways my children are going to get themselves killed in their current surroundings.

Speaking of my kids, they helped paint. A did the side facing you in the picture above, except for the footprints. I used S for those. I was very impressed with D's work, the purpleness you see below:What magnificent shading. I painted most of what you see on the inside of the shelf. My sister seems to like it. I was going to give her a wallhanging, but it turned out badly so i gave it to my sister-in-law in Utah, so i wouldn't have to see it again for a long time. Should i post a picture of that, too?

Adventures in Crazy Homemaking

There was a time when I was a child when we couldn't afford a clothes dryer. When winter approached, my parents hung rope back and forth through the basement. I remember my brother and his friends playing Axis and Allies at a card table in between the dangling clothes. I'm not sure I'd want to hang clothes in my basement now. It's pretty small, and is inhabited by feral cats. My dryer works fine, but I can't afford much electricity.
An idea popped in my head one morning. Later that morning, my husband came home from an appointment to find a sign on the door that leads upstairs.
"Beware of low-flying laundry."

We keep the stairs door closed to keep the heat on the main floor. The furnace can't seem to pump much air to the top floor, so we don't use it much. What better place to put laundry to dry, than in the stairwell where warm air leaks upwards from the main floor? I can fit about a load and a half in this space. It takes about 36 hours to dry a load of jeans, but it's FREE!


The chicken wire is a different story. It was one of our first adventures in home ownership. The rails above the stairs are wide enough apart for even a large child to slip through, much less a chicken. I think it's going to become fashionable, as I've seen it in a friend's house as well, used in the same way.

New Favorites at the left

I added a new favorite podcast and comic. Radio Lab has intriguing and enlightening stories, undiminished by the mind-bending/ear-grating mixes and clips of 'sound'. Jad has a degree in modern music, and it shows. I love listening to the stories he finds, but sometimes I have to mute the interludes.
XKCD is written by a very smart guy, who seems to have a similar brain as me. Many of his comics find me yelling, 'I said that exact same thing in high school!' Unfortunately, some of his comics offend moral (or, at times, intestinal) fortitude.

It has come to my attention that there are a lot of 'Mom Blogs' out there. Blogs where young moms relate their child-rearing tales with whit and clever humor or ranting rage, sprinkled with tear-jerking expressions of adoration for those blessed little toes. It's really great literature, don't get me wrong.

But this isn't one of those blogs.

This is me escaping from all that mush to make sure that there really is a person in me, not just a dispenser of household needs. Yes, I'm tooting my own horn, curling up in a self-centered ball, but it's okay because I don't do this very often and this is the internet, so I can do whatever I want.

So, what is it I want?
A huge garden, some goats, a hypoallergenic dog, and lots of visitors. That's what I want this week, anyway. It's subject to change without notice.
I'm really having garden withdrawals. Being stuck inside the house is not healthy for me. There are a few things I could work on outside, but it's cold out there. Even if I bundle up and brace myself for the chill, my little S girly girl will only last minutes before her lips turn purple and she squeals like a piglet. I don't dare leave her inside alone for more than five minutes, for fear she'll find something to rip apart in retaliation. So I'm trapped inside, dreaming of planting amidst the piggy squeals.

Brain spillage

Driving through the fog.
Roadwater splashing onto tempered glass.
There truly is power in positive thinking.
Sure, it's possible to believe you will succeed, and then fail,
But if you succeed when you believed you would fail, you do not own your success.
Failing is not a happy thing.
Rising to try again is beautiful.
It has something to do with faith,
And rain.
Believe in God and you will see Him.
Disbelieve, and you will not own His glory.

There's some attraction I have to rainy climate people.
Either they blend with the wispy greys,
Or they shine their own light.

Prayer

Part of the point of prayer is to learn what to ask for. I have had received little help from screaming, "Fix this for me, God!" (Actually, i don't think i've said that very much. More accurate would be, "PLEASE LET ME SLEEP FOR MORE THAN 45 MINUTES JUST ONCE THIS WEEK!!!" It was a constant prayer for the first six months of A's life.) I've found it much more productive to be more specific, less flailing. Like praying for strength to get through a hard time, instead of asking for the hardship to be removed (in a pinch, post-partum zombies can be almost as strong as regular zombies). I have been experimenting with the way i pray for things i need. Experimentation requires looking at the problem from different angles, seeing it through the eyes of God, remembering that i have a very imperfect understanding of how God thinks, then imagining how He might be different from what i expect. Thus prayer becomes a whole new way to analyze a situation, and just by trying to pray about a problem i come to understand it better.
Then sometimes, i am at a complete loss. I am boggled by my predicament and buried under it. So an idea comes to me, to ask my Heavenly Father what i should pray for. If i am humble enough, a conduit to Heaven will open before me, and my spirit will know the questions to ask.

Sometimes, I wish I was famous

I just watched "I'm Reed Fish." I get bothered by these small-town-hero movies; they make me wonder if I should be disappointed in myself. Aren't there people back in White Salmon who expected me to do something?
I thought I was full of magic and visions when I stepped out of that school, with my honor chords and scholarships and a whopping seventy-six other students in my class. My transcripts looked great, my GPA was almost perfect (let me take this opportunity to tell the world that I scored a 30 on the ACT); all signs pointed to me being a success at something.
Perhaps I've reached that part of growing up when I see clearly where my foundation is made of confetti. I'm not really indebted to that long-haired people-pleaser with a rubber chicken in her backpack. I don't have to live her dreams any more than I have to live anyone else's.
What a concept. What a concept for someone who avoided her 10-year reunion because she'd gained 50 pounds since graduation. Guess I have some more growing up to do.
Now to figure out what I really want to do with myself.