Summer Vacation Long Long Time Ago!

Apparently, if you don't log into your blog for a while they consider that to be suspicious activity?

What if that translated into REAL LIFE? That means I should be expecting the "Clean Your House Dammit" Police to show up at my door and arrest me for breaking the inactivity laws at any moment now.

Because this apartment? Has not seen the right side of a broom, mop, dust rag, swifter, vacuum, or feather duster since the New Year.

Anyway, I was alerted that my blog was gone, and now I think I've fixed it. I had my spam filters all wrong and Lo! and Behold! I had lots of Viagra and Sex for Kittens and Lawdy Lawdy who knows what all in my comments that I had to go through and delete as Spam.

Since Father's Day is coming up in the next month, I thought I'd post a pic of me and my dad, poking around the tide pools in Maine on one of those gloriously long, lazy summer vacations that we would take.

Miss him! Miss those bygone days, too. Not that they were perfect--far from it--but that the spirits ran high and I was so connected with the Quest!

The Quest for Whatever!

A Post About Pink And Blue

I love that the "I" is missing in Philco!

Recently my younger brother has been scanning all the old family slides.

Do you know what slides are, boys and girls? Well long ago before digital imaging, people had cameras that contained FILM. And they had a choice of what kind of film to buy: black and white prints, color prints, or slides.

Slides, for some reason, were the choice of my father, so boxes of slides that have been rarely seen are piled in the various bottom drawers of bureaus and dressers back home.

The reason they have been rarely seen is that you had to set up a viewing screen and a slide projector and darken the room and gather a BUNCH of people around (for some reason nobody ever just set up a slide projector for themselves) and then you had to go through the slide show at the perfect speed: too slow and people got bored, too fast and people complained that they didn't get a good look.

Nobody, at least around my house, wanted to linger long and lovingly over slides of the kids. They wanted to see the ice boats, the motorcycles, the views of Baby Mountain or Bixler Lake or the Pigeon River.

Consequently, there are entire eras of my life that I have NEVER seen depicted in pictures!

Need I say what a joyous wonderland it is to see some of these old memories made new? He's sending them to me a few at a time via email and I am savoring each one and the flush of sound, smell, color, and temperature they invoke! It's heavenly!

Which brings me now to the point of this post! It's all about the pink and the blue!

I've always loved that particular color combination. I wear it a lot, myself. And I love to see it on others and in decor. It gives me a sense of giddy happiness and a little feeling of wanting to hoard whatever it is that is sporting that color combination. But Why?

I never knew until now! When I saw this picture of me in my favorite, favorite Halloween costume! And suddenly all the Pavlovian Layers of my personality quirks and programing came crystal clear to me!

I love pink and blue and it stems from wearing this Cinderella costume night after night roaming the streets of my hometown collecting BAGS and BAGS and BAGS of free candy!

Back then, nobody knew what a sugar coma was! Nobody knew it was that bad for you! Well, they kind of knew it rotted your teeth but that was more of a warning to keep you in line, as in: "All that sugar is going to rot your teeth!" That dire warning was filed in the same category as "you will put your eye out!" and thus deemed highly improbable and therefore utterly ignored!

Oh, another one I just thought of was, "that will stunt your growth!" which was used as a warning label for smoking and drinking, neither of which I had any intention of indulging in at the tender age of 7 or 8.

But the Pink and the Blue! I loved this costume! I loved the feel of the pseudo-satin! (probably plastic combined with plant matter extruded through tubes to make it shiny) I loved the Princess mask and the gold blond hair! Years after that costume was no longer in use (and we wore our costumes year after year, believe me! We didn't get a new costume every year like they do now! You wore it until it no longer fit or couldn't be found!) I would spot it in a pile of rubbish in the upstairs and feel happy when I glimpsed it.

I wanted it and the yummy goodness that went with it!

Now I understand why pink and blue hold such happy delight for me! I associate it with childhood and holidays and lets not forget the bliss of a sugar buzz!

Prize Winner!

Lookee! Lookee!!! This is what I won from Manuela over at The Pleasures of Homemaking! (thepleasuresofhomemaking.blogspot.net)

Of course it felt like it was taking forever for it to arrive when actually it arrived a little ahead of schedule!

And of course she wrapped it in TOILE tissue paper with a TOILE note card! Ooohhh this makes me so happy!

So far the book has given me several new things to think about. Making a mission statement or purpose of life statement is one of them. What really is my 'point' to it all? That's a good question to ask myself!

So far my 'new years resolutions' have confined themselves to the simple little thought of just trying to keep my nails painted. (guffaw!)

And then I had a conversation with a dear one about how she has moved so often that she only has in her apartment things that she TRULY LOVES.

This made me think. I have things I really really LIKE. And I have things that are useful but that I am not that wild about. And then I have duplicates of things (like more than 5 glass pie plates. But I bake a lot of pies. But I don't bake 5 at a time so....)

So I guess I will be embarking on that journey of asking the musical question....'is this STUFF essential for my joy, my well being, my ability to function seamlessly and with ease?' And of course those are all different categories, aren't they? Can they be blended into a cohesive whole?

So, thank you Manuela for drawing my name as the winner! Here we go...

Secret Projects

I've been working on a secret project. I've had a lot of help, as usual!

I've never seen a cat as helpful as mine.

Even at the cutting table you can see the telltale sign of his tail...helping.

MOM! I'm HELPING!

A Winter's Tale

Time, energy, dexterity, patience...all these factors go into making a quilt. And lately I've been short on those qualities!

But I've still wanted to do a little sewing and quilting...so decided to use up some of my stash making 'Big Block Quilts' that just showcase the fabrics I have and love.

Not too labour intensive and yet still visually pleasing when they are finished.

Here is one I made for a birthday gift! I was so pleased to see she put it on the wall!

I used my antebellum fabric stash as well as some from my Civil War collection. Fabrics were so visually appealing back in the day!

Now I'm ready to whip up a few more of these quilts because it was fun to make and only took a weekend to finish!

Flower Power!

Well, the photo glitch isn't fixed--it's a known issue and they are working on it--but they do offer a simple solution to sneak around it by merely switching over to the Old Editor, uploading your photos, and then switching back to the New Editor in order to do the writing. Works for me!

TODAY!

 There was sunshine and blue skies and it was no longer a cold and broken Hallelujah but rather the full-tilt, full-lilt major lift kind of Hallelujah!

I took off to enjoy the day, that is for sure.

And what better place to enjoy the day than a trip to Trader Joes?

 

I took flower pictures and a picture of this darling girl's PINK BOOTS !! PINK BOOTS!!!

Pink Boots with Polka Dots! If that's not a harbinger of spring I have no idea what is!

I hope your day is full of polka dots, too!

Do Less and Accomplish More: Words of Wisdom and Sloth for 2011

My cousin sent me a note about summoning her inner Drill Sergeant in order to get out of bed on a cold day. It is along the lines of the thoughts I’ve been thinking about how I have to really coerce myself with brutal force to walk down some of the thorny paths I’ve had to walk down this past year.

I know I SHOULD be a better person, and I SHOULD ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ and I ‘should’ PUSH THROUGH IT to get to what’s better on the other side…except that it’s been so long since I actually did make it through to the other side, I have no actual memory of things having gotten better from all that agony, sweat, and endeavor.


Frankly, it occurs to me that nothing changes at ALL no matter HOW hard I push myself to be better, do better, live wider, etc;. I got to pondering what the hell difference it really makes anyway? My poor inner symbiote of a soul is just a tortured entity anyway. I don’t do much to nurture it or ‘feed’ it as they say. And forcing myself to be a better person all the time doesn’t seem to make my soul any happier, either!

This is what I wrote on a little scrap of paper a couple days ago. I’ve been thinking it’s a new way to live:




Explore NOT pushing through fears. Explore how that could be okay,and not have repercussions. Explore this as an anxiety treatment.


By Jove I think I’m onto something! Because the way I’ve been living: constantly having these elevated expectations of what I should be doing with my life and yet always living in a state of failure, well, that can’t be good, right? How can that be all that healthy? We seem to think we are here to grow and change and all, and I think I did plenty of it when I was younger. But now I don’t really have the will and I don’t really have a way. I have to think about how this new way of processing could be okay for me, and that it doesn’t have to turn me into a Giant Pig Sloth who is a lazy good for nothing and a non-producer! Right? Right!

Because frankly? I’m so sick of my own inner rat race! I have no problem getting the dishes done, the work day completed, etc; It's just all those inner chores of being a better person, staying on a diet, trying to embrace some new activity, pushing myself to be more social when I’m wracked with weird social anxieties: all those kinds of things are the things that I have come to realized might not make a damn bit of difference if I do them or if I don’t. It’s practically a paradigm in my thinking! What the hell difference does it make if I never conquer my fear of trolley cars? Seriously. I feel like a failure all the time anyway, so why keep pressuring myself to conquer, conquer, conquer especially when I never really do anything about any of it?

I think it’s like I live under the mistaken belief that if I push on a bruise it will heal it faster! Right! NO!!! All it does it make it hurt more often than necessary.

I think that may be the closest I get to a New Year’s Resolution this year! Explore NOT pushing through fears! Let it be Okay to DO NOTHING and not suffer huge pangs of spiritual remorse like I’m failing at my life’s plan or something. Put that on a while and wear it around and see how it feels. Better than the hair shirt I’ve been wearing for decades, that’s what I think!

That is it for me for today! Hope you have a lazy, non-productive, and non-feeling guilty about it New Year or at the very least one in which your Inner Drill Sergeant takes a long coffee break!

And here's a sneak peek at my new slacker quilt: All paisleys and made from BIG BLOCKS! Whipped it up in no time flat and just love it!

OMG I actually won something!

Turns out I actually won something from a blog I read and adore:

http://www.thepleasuresofhomemaking.blogspot.com/

Too bad I can't post any picture about it. The picture uploading on this blog seems to be permanently broken. I've tried everything: it just wont let me upload pictures for the time being. It used to do this one in a while and I'd use Firefox for a time or two and then it would all work again but this time it didn't make a difference! So it's going to be boring and dry around here for a while I guess!

happy new Year everyone!