Except for Max fur that blows like snow on a dry frozen tundra somewhere

the house stays pretty clean

Monday had been housework day (unless I was flying) for a long time now

I'm glad I took time to sit on the floor at that table and play with my kids

the glass top is pretty scuffed up  

but I can hear it giggle

when I close my eyes to hear.

I think, well, I know, I messed up my arm painting this house white.  And, I still have some painting to do.  The kitchen cabinets are still sporting ugly purplybrown paint.  I have started painting them.  I tried on two different shades of Annie Sloan chalk paint and have decided on the darker (color of that dark teal pillow on the couch). The flippers put tile backsplash up a wooden cabinet, also some sheetrock that abuts the cabinet.  It was one of the things here in the house that I thought looked just weird.  I started pulling that off but Larry is removing the thick mortar stuff that held the tile up.  I am supposed to be resting my arm entirely (on the advice of a doctor friend).  My hands got pretty used to working from either seat in the airplane making my non dominant arm a lot more coordinated than it might have been otherwise ... but it's really weird to have a weaker arm.

I remember how it was hurt several years ago.  I actually had put it from my mind until the friend insisted I remember saying this is pain from an old wound.

Old wounds.  I think it's good to forget them.  

I'm past that.  

But I wondered a bit today if there is some good reason for new pain from an old wound.  It made me start thinking about Paul, from the Bible, with his affliction.  I think it actually served him well ... that being the point of why we were even told about it.  

Thank goodness I can paint with my left hand.

I also have a girls three day weekend sneaking up on me and as a party favor we are all supposed to hand create a "mug rug".  Of course I had no clue what that is.  So far my mug hasn't even thought about needing a rug.  Turns out its a quilted thing and I'm looking forward to the design process.  Hoping to get my sewing machine out tomorrow.  My friends don't think I as "sewist" as they are and though I sure that's right, I do have a project or two in mind.  I want to make a pretty pj set with a long full robe.   Like this. 

I've seen some of those high priced pjs in snotty stores in Austin and they are crazy expensive and the details weren't tended to when they were sewn so they look sloppy.  I can remember my mother stressing how important it was to sew with the iron ready at hand so all the seams looked great.  Mom was a stickler for the details and taught me well.  I just don't like to sew ... unless it's something I want that I know I can do as well or better.  also looking for a shower curtain fabric that I'd like for our guest bathroom.  The rod is at 84" just like I asked for.  I have an eye on the exact right shower curtain unless I can make it for a lot less.

I'll post a pic of my mug rug when I get it done.

My friends have me doing the food for our retreat ... because I do love to cook for people.

dream

PINTEREST

I do have a new goal, and because I am a post-menopausal woman you might accurately guess it has something to do with physical fitness.  I'm on track.  Check in is every Monday morning at 8:30.  Good.

To dream a new dream ... probably Lewis didn't intend this literally, but I'm taking it that way anyway.

I have a dream stuck in my head from, geez, almost ten years ago.  The dream started and ended somewhere in the middle as dreams (and life) seem so often to do.  I am praying for closure on that dream.  It's just a dream you might think.  To me it is more, a metaphor.

I have an idiosyncratic need for closure.  Most of the time I'd say that's a good thing, it comes in the diligence basket, and I'm diligence personified.  On this, I have wished to "just let it go" but have been unable to comply with my better instincts.  So, there's that.  Dream closure would rock.

Dream closure?  Yeah, it counts.

I stopped remembering my dreams starting in 2015.  I don't know what makes someone, usually able to recall large parts of dreams routinely able to visualize and recount them, suddenly unable to do so.  I'm just guessing it's chronic fatigue or stress (which would be companions).  But, you know what?  Get news - I have arrived at a less stressful, I'd characterize it as idyllic, time in my life.

I know the world is a mess, but my finger doesn't fit the hole in the dam.
I'm actively trying to enjoy the good around me.
Why not?
That to note - now that I'm all chill, I expect to start dreaming and remembering those dreams again.

And, I did dream a little dream last night.

My niece was sitting behind me on otherwise empty bleachers and she leaned forward to whisper something funny (I don't remember what) in my ear.  It tickled my ear. I laughed because it was funny, I laughed louder and longer because it also tickled.  It was the sort of laugh that curls one up in mirth.

I'd like to complete "an old dream", short of that, a new dream might chase the old one away.  Closure either way I hope ... .


"Every beginning, after all, is nothing but a sequel, and the book of events is always open in the middle." -Szymborska

Our garage is about half full of perfectly stacked boxed of stuff. L's stuff. He is systematically disappearing for the entire morning into his study with one of those boxes.  He's scanning notes, pictures, articles, entire books for all I know.  Our oldest son recommended the scanning to digital storage idea and my husband has taken to it as only the truly compulsive can (no disrespect there, it is as the if the kettle is calling the skillet black).  I applaud the effort.  Our huge recycling container sits ready, straining lid cocked open, every pick up day.  We are burning already scanned stuff in our little fire pit. Someday we may be able to park a car in the garage.

This picture turned up.

He came out to find me saying, "Hey, look what I found."  This was taken in July of "81 at the airport in Buffalo.  The night before we had been in what seemed to me was getting ready to be a fatal car wreck.  A speeding car screamed through a red light broadsiding us and spinning the brand new station wagon L was driving round and round and round just like a toy flung during a temper tantrum.  The car was totaled. From my seat on the right I could see more clearly around the blind corner.  I saw it coming.  There's a word for "when time fragments in to tiny fractions of a second and those fraction move forward like box cars on a freight train" ... it's like slow motion ... even one's prayer is stretched like a cassette tape that will never sound right again. 

I've never told anyone this - after my dad died I started thinking, irrationally of course, that everyone I loved would die (because I loved them).  That's some sort of weird messed up.  The earlier death of my best friend/older brother had left a jagged scar, Daddy's death was too much loss to absorb. For a long time I kept my love small because of that ill conceived idea.  

During those splintered seconds before impact my breaking heart reminded God that He promised to never put more than we can bear.  That's what I'd been told.  That's what I believed.  (I now know that is not what the scripture says.)   Please, no, my heart whimpered. My husband and I walked away from the crash.  I miscarried a few days after we got back home.  And I dropped out of graduate school and went to work.  

It surprises me what comes out when I just sit down to write ... . 

I sat down today to talk about how much I am enjoying ALEXA.  Maybe I can tell that story tomorrow because I am out of time today.

Recent birthday pictures - plenty to be thankful for - 116/1000

and what the dog willingly endures when we are inside more than we like to be

the eye liner is all him, I just added the brows

Today I  decided to stop wearing eyeliner myself ... it just smudges so easily and looks bad (noticed as I searched for a pic of myself).

I also received the gift of outdoor heat for my birthday - Max likes that almost as much as I.

This little guy usually snuggles with me first thing in the morning as I sit here enjoying my coffee and life in general.

old electrical plug -

Pictured here because I think the plug is super cool.  There is suppose to be a piece of card stock covering the wiring (and protecting fingers from a little inadvertent buzz.  We bought this lamp in Atlanta several years ago, but I'm just now seeing the wiring. My dad taught me how to do most of what I can do "handyman-wise". This little plug reminds me of that.  I still miss my dad and with that is the lingering regret of not missing my mom.  I am working on being thankful for her.

115/1000

watching it open has been fun

114/1000

our home's entry today

our home's entry before the flippers worked in it

"THANKFUL" number 114 - We bought the house this summer and have been working in it ever since. I like that because it's something I enjoy (working around my house) and because it's just gratifying to see something look "better" in general.  The ceiling fixtures were a Christmas gift from one of my sons.  It's neat to think of him when the lights come to my attention.  All five were home for a few days during Christmas which made for a uniquely special time for me. Where do the years go?

Still to do in the foyer - doors.  We have a new front door leaning against the wall in the living room, it's still in the box it was shipped in.  Finding hardware has been interesting.  We wanted an interior "push (and maybe twist) to lock" like the front door on our former home.  Those aren't being manufactured now apparently.  Everything we found was a keyed lock - as in insert key from the outside to lock the door.  Now we have discovered KEVO and the "research is on as to ... how easily can it be hacked ... is it the best of the current crop of lock sets for our needs etc..  The mechanism on the inside is curved at the top  - the hardware I've favored is not curved.  I tend to like straight lines (and circles).  So, the front door is pretty high on the to do list. It's so pretty, I'm excited about seeing it installed (not my project/above my skill set/hubby's job). The flippers took all the arches out of this house. Neighbors who have been in comment on the arches being gone.  In my typical unfiltered style I have stated that I thought they looked absolutely hideous in the pictures I've seen of "before" ... they were all different sizes which would have been very unsettling for me.  A most recent visitor told me that the previous owners had the arches installed because she "loved" the arches in the home (they've been over and heard my arch distaste) across the street.

The local ReStore has a bunch (like several pallets) of solid core doors.  It is my plan to replace every door in the house with a solid core door and I'd like to start in the foyer where there are three pairs of double doors, all of which were hung with significant gaps.  The door knobs on the study doors are "off" by about an inch of each other and remind me of a raised eyebrow.  I want to finish the doors in a white wax but leave them natural otherwise.  Like this:

A couple of mine

Hello 2018! The year of "Alexa, bark at my dog."

I have concerned myself with many words here.  Protect. Trust.  Hope. Persevere. Love. Still.

I'm ready for a new word.  A good word.  I think stillness has seeped in to my soul.  I know still.

I feel like 2017 actually did finish something.  Most usually I shift my year end rumination session several days forward in January, more towards my birthday coming up.  That's why feeling an end, even when you don't know the end to what yet, is note worthy to me.  I do like endings for the very fact that they signal beginnings.

Five different guest beds, if indeed one's very own (adult) children might be considered guests, generates a lot of laundry!  Hard freeze warnings blanket the area so those sheets and light quilts went right outside to cover our new landscape plants.  Figuring out the skeleton plan for this house's landscape was one of the very fun things I got to do last year.  In the Spring I'll dive in to fleshing the beds out a bit.  Right now we are working on drainage issues in this yard which have compounded over the years.  I think the "fill" from the hole of the pool was heaped around the yard in a haphazard manner.  Totally guessing.  Water events invariably pool at the back corner of the house.  My husband, a CE, has it all figured out and well on the way to handled.  I love working on our home.  One of the kids gave us light fixtures for our foyer.  There is a sheet rock patch on the top of L's to do list and then we can put up the new lights.  It's a lot of fun to see the house taking shape.

Today the tree came down.  Tomorrow I'll renest the baubles in their own little boxes.  That other brass star says JOY.

These light strings are going to the backyard trees..  I am going to run them from the ground all the way up the truck and out the branches, not wrapped, linear, all thirteen lines of them will twinkle from the trees that shade the back patio.  Next summer that bed will be full of elephant ear, hostas, gardenias and multicolored begonias.  I can barely wait!