January 2021

 

This household is in that vague, sleepy, weird, in-between time that happens post-holiday, made even weirder by the fact that nobody has had on a real pair of pants or gone to a proper office or classroom in months (I exaggerate only slightly), due to the pandemic's grinding on. Still, we've taken full advantage, with bowls of chili and casseroles of hot spinach dip, and naps, and movies (It's a Wonderful Life, Die Hard, Lord of the Rings marathons).

While everyone I knew seemed to embrace the holidays even more fully and earlier this year, as a way to forget the utter garbage that happened in 2020, I found myself with my old familiar reluctance to, as they say, get the party started. I have long known that a large part of my holiday scrooge-y-ness has to do with my introvert side: I find holiday stores, gatherings, music, and stuff all tend to put me in sensory overload without good coping mechanisms in place. 

Didn't need the coping mechanisms much this year. "Family Christmas" involved driving to St. Paul, Eau Claire, and Cedar Rapids to deliver Christmas presents to the kids, giving them quick (masked) hugs, and driving back home, the most we were willing to risk to see our kids, even for a few minutes. Our Christmas dinner was the four people in the household around the kitchen table. Like so many other events in 2020, it felt incomplete and constrained, even for an introvert like me. I miss my people. 

While I did put the tree away on New Year's Day, I'm leaving a few things as they are this year, at least for awhile. Some of my favorite Christmas decorations are not actually overtly Christmas, but more generally "winter," and I want them to hang around in January. Probably because the holidays did feel incomplete. Probably because winter is my hibernation time and I want to feel cozy. Probably because I'm a little lazy. Probably. 

The mantel is garland, pine cones, and LED candles. For a person who really values authenticity, I'm mad for the fakery that is LED candles. You can get them with a remote switch to turn them all on at once, they add that soft golden glow one wants for long winter nights, and you can place them any old place and wander off from them like the menopause addled brain that you are and don't risk burning the house down. 

I got a new wreath for the new front door this year, and it too has a Christmas-into-January vibe. 

The last thing that's sticking around is actually overtly Christmas, but because it's chalkboard art I put a lot of work into, it stays for a few more weeks before I scrub it out for something new. It's out on the screen porch, cheering up an otherwise plain corner. 

Other stuff I'm doing right now: 

Watching this: The Trial of The Chicago 7

Reading this: My 10-Point Plan for Feral Eldership

On the way from that link, I also found this: Please Don't Call Yourself an Empath

Amused by this: New Yorker cartoon

Return to April

I'm going to take liberties with the timeline, and toss the blog back to April. You can do that in blogger world. I wish you could do that in real life, too. Just a little, now and then.

I've had a lot of emotional adjustments to make this summer. Some were very good, and some were bad, and some were in between. But while I'm trying to make sense of them enough to write about them (and I need to write about them), I felt like April was a good, safe place on the calendar to visit.

In April, Tom and I went to Missouri to see my Dad. My sister Dyan came up from Atlanta, and we made a long weekend of it in the Ozarks.

This is the view from my Dad's place, which we call "The Hill." I wish this was a painting.

The Ozark hills in April are made up of tree bark and green mists and blue sky, mostly. But it also has dozens of tiny wonders you'll miss if you fail to pay attention. You need to get up close and personal with an Ozark spring to really know it like you should.

New oak leaves are as rosy and beautiful as any spring flower.

And mayflower is hidden under its own great green silk umbrella:

Blue-eyed grass. It should be the name of an Emmylou Harris album, shouldn't it? 

We visited Wilson's Creek National Battlefield. Ancestors fought in this battle (you can learn more here). We keep returning, partly because my Dad's a military history buff, partly because we ran a race as a family here (read about it here), and partly because it's just one of the most indescribably pretty pieces of land in southern Missouri--rolling hills and winding creek, oak savannah and tallgrass prairie. Below is the Ray farmstead. It is sobering to realize so many men sacrificed their lives in a place so beautiful, on a hot day in August 1861. 

Dad and Tom are in the photo, two of the men I love the most in this world. They met for the first time that weekend. They got on well. (Whew.) Then again, I sensed they would. Some things fall into place like they were meant to happen all along. 

I have a fascination for stone fireplaces. I'm not sure why, but I always come home with photos of them. 

The furnishings in the Ray farmstead museum are so simple it feels serene. 

Local volunteers and museum docents are dedicated to bringing history to life here. This gentleman told us about life on the battlefield for a Union soldier. 

I was fascinated by the design, angles, light and shadow of this split rail fence.

And the bark of this chestnut tree:

And sunlight filtered through sassafras leaves.

Sassafras light. Those are two words I've been playing with since I took that picture, bouncing around in my head. What do they mean? I don't know. Still, I like the sound of them, paired with the memory of that April weekend. It's a good alternative title for spring in the Ozarks. 

Wrapping Up More Home Organization

I think of myself as an artistic sort of person. Most of the time when I say that, I mean writing; but I dabble in other things. I sew, cook, enjoy garden design, and other things people would consider to be artistic in one sense or another. Or at least crafty.

Which is why this truth about me makes me cranky:

I cannot wrap gifts.

There, I said it. I'm pretty clumsy at it, and packages from me look like they may have been scotch-taped together by a drunk raccoon. All my crafty efforts in other areas seem to make no difference when I'm confronted by a roll of paper and a gift box. It makes me highly, childishly irritable.

Over time, it's dawned on me that part of my problem with gift-wrapping is that it was such a big production in this house. I had two places where I stored some of the supplies. Tissue paper was scattered in multiple places too. And then I had to run down the tape and scissors from wherever the kids had squirreled it away.

By the time I got to the actual wrapping, I was already annoyed. Not a good way to go into anything crafty, or what's supposed to be an act of generosity. So it made sense to have a dedicated place to do this: a gift-wrapping center.

I actually resisted that idea for a long time. Because gift-wrapping centers smack of all the things I dislike about the Land of Lifestyle Magazine Make-believe-- that everyone's got loads of space in a blank slate of a suburban house and all the money in the world to customize it for a single-purpose use. And all the stuff on the shelves is color-coordinated with everything else and the room itself.

I am not saying that I wasn't attracted to the idea of that. This layout from Country Living is relatively simple and sweet and entirely doable:

Photo Source: County Living

But even doing something like that added a lot of time, effort, and costs to a household that already has several projects ahead of it in priority.

I did decide that finding a dedicated space for gift-wrapping was worthwhile. It just wasn't going to be beautiful.

This was a few hours of effort, with mostly existing stuff, in the corner of the furnace room in the basement. The table is a surplused metal lab/study table from the local university that I moved from another area. The shelves and pegboard were already hanging there. The boxes and basket I already owned, and they hold bows and gift tags.

I purchased the dish organizer on the shelf to hold folded gift bags, and I bought the small metal trash cans to hold the giftwrap. Um, about that. I have an embarrassing amount of giftwrap, I know. I am of the opinion that about 5 rolls at a time are plenty. But my mom gave me her stash, and I got carried away at a sale, and here I am with two buckets of gift wrap. On the upside I should be good for giftwrap for the next 5 years, and I hope to empty out one of those cans for another use down the road.

The window a/c units under the table, which I use in the upstairs bedroom windows during the summer, were already there and I didn't have the gumption to move them just for this picture. They'll be stored elsewhere next season, and I might hang some curtains under the table to store extra shipping boxes out of sight. I also haven't really done anything with the pegboard, but that can also come at a later time.

One other small expenditure: this tape dispenser.

It's a double dispenser, with a small reel for adhesive tape and a larger one for box tape. It has a cubby for scissors and pens. It's also hard to walk off with.

I need to stock up on tape and fill the dispenser, and I'll be ready to go the for the next round of birthdays, or Christmas. I cannot promise that my gifts won't still be looking drunk-raccoon-esque, but at least getting the job done will be less of an ordeal.

As a bonus, the area is not completely dedicated to gift wrapping alone; it will be multi-tasking, and soon. But that is another blog post.

What organizing projects are you up to in your home? What's working for you?

Merry Christmas, 2013!

Hearty Christmas Greetings! 

We'll see you soon, 

and in a brand New Year. 

Last Minute Gifts, Blog Edition (With Cream on the Side)

I should make this a new holiday tradition. I also need a New Year's Resolution:
Stop fooling around on PicMonkey so much. 

I know. I'm one to talk about going out and braving the last-minute retail craziness for a gift. The one who's discussed her ambivalence with the entire Christmas holiday commercialization crap-fest.

But that's not the kind of last-minute I mean. Though I'll admit to sometimes having a stress-induced urge to go snag more cartons of whipping cream off the shelf of the grocery store (the thing it is, in my mind, a DISASTER of epic proportions to run short of during the holidays), I'm not doing that other kind of last-minute gift shopping, or giving.

All of my blog readers, all 3.5 of you, are awesome people, and I even have an idea where some of you live, and I mean that in a totally non-creepy way. But there's no way I can ship you cartons of whipping cream. If you were in the neighborhood I'd shove the stack of magazines off the end of the sofa for you, bring you a cup of coffee (with that aforementioned cream) and we could talk and eat inappropriate amounts of holiday food right off my dusty coffee table. Because I'm classy like that.

Since I can't do that either, I thought I'd give my blog readers a list of new blogs to read. It's calorie-free (unlike the cream) and I can afford several for all of you!

In keeping with the calorie-free joke, these are all lightweight, fun reading, for those days when you just want a little brain candy.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE 90210
Slaughterhouse 90210 is a quirky free-association of images from television series and quotes pulled from literature. Like this pairing here:

From Slaughterhouse 90210

"Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only-- if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn't it? And isn't the whole point of things-- beautiful things-- that they connect you to some larger beauty?"   --- Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch.

If you're an avid watcher of a variety of television series and a bookworm too, this is your Tumblr blog for low-brow/high-brow mashups. It's almost always good for a laugh, sometimes a poignant thought, and the frequent realization that there is just as much universal truth in a well-wrought television series as in the pages of a book.

CHICKENS IN LITERATURE
Chickens in Literature is right up in my hen house. I love chickens (ceramic ones mostly, but chickens no less), and I love books.  The concept is most fowl: connect art and photography images of chickens with quotes about them from literature. What's not to love here?

From Chickens in Literature

"When I was six I had a chicken that walked backwards and was in the Pathe News. I was in it too with the chicken. I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point in my life. Everything since has been anticlimax." --Flannery O'Connor

SUPER SEVENTIES
The seventies were pretty super, but I was only aged toddler through tween, so I can't say it was very groovy or swinging for me.

From Super Seventies

And according to this picture, I also missed the opportunity to wear my mother's potholders as a brassiere. Or halter top. Something----oh, that's right--- a breastplate. Super Seventies is full of the musicians, actors, advertising, interiors and food that made the decade. I stop by this blog often for a smile.

I hope these are just your size, and that there aren't any just like them under the tree, because duplicate gifts are a bummer. And when you get a chance to read this, will you let me know what things you've been reading lately? I'd love to have new blogs to read in the new year!

How We Do Christmas On the Doorstep

It's difficult for me to write Christmas decor blog posts, and not because I dislike Christmas. I like Christmas quite a lot. But I like it in small, controlled doses, and you might have noticed that Christmas doesn't generally come in that size any more.

Those small controlled doses don't translate well into Holiday Super-Blogger-Ama of craft projects, decor ideas, and food, and so I always feel a bit......well, inadequate to producing seasonal magic.

But that's comparing myself to how others choose to celebrate, and that way lies dissatisfaction. And overall grumpiness. Also, I have no Scrooge-y wish to rain on somebody else's holiday parade. If anyone enjoys hauling 35 storage containers of garland out of the garage attic every November, more jingle to them. I mean that. Really. Just don't ask me to understand it.

So what do we do around here? I thought about this a lot as the boys and I were doing our annual festive foofing last weekend. I realized we have five basic guiding principles for holiday decor.

1. We concentrate on a few spots instead of the whole house

Last year's post-holiday vintage score. It's already shedding, but I love it!

From the standpoint of personal taste, having every available surface covered in holiday knick-knackery makes me feel anxious, and like I need to dust. From a practical standpoint, because I'm a working single mom I don't have a ton of time to decorate, and I don't have a ton of time to put it all away in January. We put up a tree in the front window of our living room. We decorate the living room credenza, the fireplace mantel, and maybe one other horizontal surface (this year, it was the dining room buffet). Aside from a few small touches elsewhere, like holiday kitchen linens, this is it. It's doable in an afternoon, or broken up into smaller segments if the schedule demands. And in a house my size, it's plenty.

2. We build our collections one or two pieces at a time

I'd rather have quality than quantity, and so I tend not to go to discount stores and buy gobs of cheap tinselly stuff, even if it's a "bargain." Every time I have I've tended to regret it. So I buy one or two things--usually vintage--that I love each year. Limiting it tends to make me wait until I know I really love it before I buy, like the green and gold garland, above, that I purchased this year, and the embroidered runner underneath (it's called Hardanger work) that I found years ago. Going slowly also means I know when to stop. I have a collection of vintage bottlebrush trees that I love. But when they filled the fireplace mantel, I knew I had enough of them.

3. We use what we have

We aren't the type of people who shift entire rooms of furniture and clear entire horizontal surfaces of all the everyday decor items. Our holiday decoration collections are small because I multitask our everyday stuff. I love the color green and lucky me, it's a Christmas color. Adding some holiday silk greenery to the Royal Copley vases that always live on the mantel is quick and simple. The gilt sunburst clock already looks holiday-worthy (The red ball ornament is just me feeling silly). There's plenty of vintage stuff in the house--milk glass, green pressed glass, chippy old china-- which will work as Christmas decor, isn't plastic, and is flexible enough to use in different ways during the season and throughout the rest of the year too.

4. We don't do themes

While I do try to keep a few things consistent across holiday decor items, like lots of green and gold, we don't like themed trees. They seem department-store sterile to us, and we'd rather have our tree crammed with all the ornaments collected over the years, from the lumpy purple glitter pine cone Noah made in preschool to the fragile blown glass memento from the Henry Ford Museum. All of them-- elegant, homely, homemade or purchased with someone's personality in mind-- are meaningful and sentimental. That means a lot more to me than carrying through a color scheme of the year. The ones in the photo above I made from antique postcards and trims from the children's great-grandmother's sewing box. While holiday crafting doesn't happen every year, we love that those homemade ornaments add a very personal family signature to our tree.

5. We start when we want to, and pack it up when we want to

My favorite holiday, the one I throw my soul and effort into, is Thanksgiving. I can really get behind a holiday that is about gratitude and over-consumption of carbohydrates and butter. I like the colors of the harvest time of year. I want to linger in that late autumn stage as long as possible. It's not complicated by the angst and pressure of gift giving, or by elaborate decorating schemes. People are happy with a few pumpkins and drawings of hand turkeys.

The only way retail has managed to make any inroads to commercializing Thanksgiving is by trying to shoulder it out of the way with the holiday they already have a firm stranglehold upon: Christmas. It's the one thing I get sour about.

I generally don't get my Christmas things out until the weekend after Thanksgiving. It seems a little late compared to the annual retail jump-the-gun, but it gives me a little space between the two, a little breather before I jump into the next thing. I need that.

I always wrap things up by Twelfth Night, or the Feast of Epiphany, which is Jan. 6. In some cultures it's bad luck to have the tree up past that day. For me it's not so much about superstition, but about it being enough. Four to five weeks of Christmas is enough for me. Enough to feel satisfied, but not so much it overwhelms, or loses it's specialness.

Do you have any holiday decorating philosophy? What makes you happiest?

_________________________

I've been pretty spotty on posts for the last few months, but I'll be around more in the next few weeks. I have a small project to share and I'm looking forward to getting back into my blog writing more regularly. Thanks for waiting around for me and checking back! 

Summer On the Doorstep

I have put down the tools and paintbrushes for the time being. The house is now hosting, rather than remodeling.

My sister and my two nephews are visiting for two weeks. We've added the extra leaves to the kitchen table and fired up the grill:

We've pestered unwilling offspring for the obligatory family snapshots (I am adoring all the saggy white gym socks in this one): 

We've gone on long walks and rediscovered what we love about our own hometown, like this little bit of rehabilitated prairie:

And I tried something new. I ran my first 5K on the 4th of July, together with my sister (not her first, but she's a novice runner as well).

I finished the race (32:50) and didn't fall down or die. I'm as surprised as anyone who knows me. 

I'm also loving long talks with my sister, lemonade with ice, blueberries, lilies in the garden, and my nephews' freckles. 

How's your summer vacation? 

Memorial Day Weekend: Knowing Where Time Goes

I don't know where the time goes. That's pretty much the theme of this post, both in the small details and the larger message. Pay attention.

A month or so ago, I claimed that I'd be starting the grand scraping and painting project on Memorial Day weekend. The kick-off of the paint-off, as it were.

Only, my internal calendar was critically screwed up. Really screwed up.

At the same time I was making that grand pronouncement, I also knew that my oldest son's high school commencement ceremony was Sunday, May 26.

I didn't see the problem. I thought there was another week/weekend in May afterwards, and that mythical weekend was Memorial Day. No problem.

See what I did there?

Yeah. I stretched one weekend into two. Thankfully I figured it out in time. Yes, it's pretty crazy. No, I don't get enough sleep. Yes, I do actually have a planning calendar. No, it didn't seem to actually help.

I don't know where the time goes.

Instead of scraping paint, I took a long 15-year look backward, to the first day of preschool:

To this, a high school senior:

He's been a joy to raise:

And now he's a young adult:

Original image by Amy Vinchattle Photography

He seems to appreciate the wonders of this world and realize the injustices. He's also dependable and kind. I'm proud of him. But the four-year-old boy with grubby paws, dirty seat of the pants, and cheerful smile disappeared around a corner; he was only with me a short time. I sometimes fabricate that baby boy out of desire, memory, and wishful thinking, sort of like that mythical extra week, but I know it's just me, wondering where all the time goes, and wishing for more.

Since my time expansion trick didn't work (except in my mind) it was still also Memorial Day weekend. I got to spend it with my favorite veteran, my Dad. I hope he doesn't mind me sharing on the blog, but as long as I'm bragging about the men in my life:

Dad served as military police at Bien Hoa AFB during the Vietnam War.

Monday morning Dad and I sat at my kitchen table and drank coffee and ate apple pie for breakfast (shhh, don't tell anyone). It seemed like there was all the time in the world. That was a good thing, because the day before my boy had just crossed a stage and picked up his diploma, and all those days and years seemed telescoped into one short minute. 

I don't know where the time goes, but I'm glad for the joys contained in it. I like to think that's why I invented an extra week in my mind. Not because I'm disorganized....okay, yes. Yes it's because I'm disorganized. But also because my life is full of good things right now. I was just mentally giving myself a little more of them, and the time in which to enjoy them. If only it actually worked that way. 

Another Aimless Weekend, Done Right

Last weekend, I couldn't settle into anything. I did a lot of.....stuff, I guess, but didn't finish a single thing I started. It all felt unsuccessful, disjointed, and unproductive. I think two migraines in one week, besides being karmically unfair, had cooked so many brain cells I just couldn't muster a plan. And it showed. I felt dissatisfied about last weekend.

This weekend, I had made a list of the things I wanted to do. It went a little like this:

• Clean the garage
• Dismantle old storage unit in basement
• Sort boys' outgrown clothing and organize dressers
• Paint bathroom ceiling
• Mulch front yard perennial garden

If you see the problem with this list, well, so did I by Thursday night. I have only 48 hours for one weekend, and I don't have multiple avatars or access to amphetamines. Clearly, I'm insane. Or unrealistic. Both.

It's at this point in planning anything that I start spinning my wheels mentally. I get overwhelmed with the bigness of my lists. If I'm not really careful, the list hits the trash can, my ass hits the sofa, and another weekend goes by in half-hearted attempts at not much of anything.

I am my own worst enemy.

By Friday night I'd abandoned the list and simply chose the one thing I wanted to do. I wanted to be outside. I wanted to garden. Did all those other things on the list need doing? Yes. Were they going to get done this weekend? No way. Even if I tried. So, Saturday morning the boys and I were at the garden center:

I spent the weekend in the garden, mulching. Eight bags total. But the weekend was made up of other little moments too. I was not always slave to the mulch.

Many of the other things were garden related. I weeded, which is a form of meditation for me. I moved plants around. I start out with gloves and a trowel but always end up with bare paws, hands in the dirt. Thank goodness for the existence of nail brushes and moisturizers.

I conquered a little more real estate from the weedy and forsaken area across the front of the house:

It doesn't look fabulous, yet. I ran out of mulch on this side of the yard. But the area was cleared of overgrowth and a place created for access to the tap and hose. The hose rack is new, but I'm not sure how I feel about it holding up kinked and filthy old garden hose for everyone to see, even if it makes everything more organized and easy to use. I'll have to make sure something bushy and pretty gets planted in front of it.  Those two clumps of green on the left are starts of sedum. It's a great ground cover and I like the way it fills in around pavers.

The daylilies my sister sent me two seasons ago are filling in thick and healthy this spring. It's going to be a beautiful show by July. ( I still need to weed the grass out from between them before mulching in this photo. The pointy plants in the far background are lily of the valley, one of my favorites.)

These petunias, called Picasso in Pink, are amazingly edged in chartreuse green. These things just seem to leap into my cart at the garden center and ride home with me. 

They went into a hanging basket with some other trailing plants:

Right now the bird feeder on the left is just for looks, so I could take the picture. I got it second-hand, and the bottom three inches inside is a hardened brick of old, stale bird seed. I need to get it down and clean it out properly before I can start serving up dinner to the birdie friends.

The basket and feeder are hanging on this garden stake:

Two-dimensional rabbits are the only ones I care to have in the garden. The real ones eat the lilies. You can see the hydrangea we moved in a previous post leafing out well in the background far right. It lived! Oh, and see? Proof of mulching. It wasn't all puttering.

My other big diversions?

It was Mother's Day on Sunday, and we had Grandma (my mother) over for afternoon coffee. The cake is courtesy of me, and the centerpiece can of grass is courtesy of Ben's third grade soil science unit. Do I not know how to Martha Stewart it up in here?

I celebrated by wearing my funky chicken apron:

Joe and Ben made me garden stepping stones for my Mother's Day present. I can think of no better way to dress up that new mulch:

Ben and Joe also began their adventure in container tomato and pepper gardening. Here are my proud farmers: 

We bought edgers, but didn't get them installed. Yes, it would be better to install edging first, then mulch. I don't always do things in the right order all the time. I'm a little difficult that way. 

I did a few other containers too:

In the end, this weekend was aimless too, but in a fundamentally different way than last weekend. Instead of being a disjointed pile of half-started, never-finished items and resulting guilt, it was more like a two-day riff with a common theme. Granted, I'm going to enjoy a two-day riff themed "Garden, Kids, and Cake" a lot more than I'm going to like, say, "Sanding, Spackling and Priming," but I think there's something to be learned from this weekend.

And that's this: choose one.

I think I should still make lists. It's a way of telling myself what my current priorities are out of the approximately 852 things that need to be done to this house. But I shouldn't expect the list to be all action items. I should learn to consider them more like a multiple choice set. But the only correct answer is my inclination.

I think choosing one is more realistic. I think it's more likely I retain a grasp on my sanity. Choosing one also leaves space for grace to fall into my day-- the kind of grace that includes soup cans of grass, cake, new flowers and deciding to move a clump of perennials from here to there. By choosing one, I ended up getting that one chosen thing done, and a jumble of other good things too. That's the kind of "aimless" that feels like a happy accomplishment by Sunday night.