christmas 2006

Here's my house, Christmas day 2006. I have now become a Real Adult. No more kiddie table and trying not to laugh through the prayer while my sister makes faces at me, no more sneaking into Grandma's kitchen to the third drawer down where she kept her Fudge Stripe cookies, and no more dressing up in a static-y flannel nightgown that matches my sisters' and standing on the steps for a "cute picture." Nope. I have had my first Big Family Gathering at my house, and it went quite well for a first go. I even cooked a ham for the first time. We had a blast, I held my baby cousin till I was covered in sweet drool, A was positively busting out of his skin with excitement and overloaded with toys from Nana and Pop-Pop, and I think we got enough sweets from people to keep my dentist busy for years (and to continue my gym membership for the indefinite future).

We finished painting the room just in time, and I spent several days ripping plastic off, vacuuming paint bits, polishing neglected furniture and wondering if the colours would tone themselves down a bit as they cured. After the first coat of paint, I was panicky. It was like, ORANGE!!!! BLUE!!!! PAINTY!!!! but after the third coat and some touch-ups, I sighed with relief. It's still drying, and I need to prepare my smurf collection shelves for display and clean the smurf paintings I had up on the walls, but I really like it. It's pretty bright, and the blue is a bit more saturated than the color I chose, but I don't care anymore. It goes so well with the living room carpet, and the first floor of the house finally looks like it's mine, and not some old lady with a taste for powder-pink-country-cupboards. Now for the kitchen...and bathroom...and stairwell...sigh.doesn't it look positively civilized? Wait till the smurfs go up...heh heh. Some classy digs!
you'll never see the floor this clean again. I guar-on-tee.

two lies in song

D just got a song stuck in my head, and as most awful songs do, it's stuck for the duration: Bette Midler's From a Distance. Thought I'd get it in your head too. Aren't I nice? Every time I hear the word, Distance, I immediately shudder and think of this piece of trash. I. Despise. This. Hideous. Song. Why, you ask? (Do you have to ask?) It's theological drivel, a piece of sappy heresy gussied up with a pop orchestra.

God is watching us--from a distance.

Much like God would watch a ticking time-bomb, I suppose? What bloody good would it do for God to just watch us--from a distance? He may as well not bother. Utter tosh.

The other song is better musically, but was changed by music producers who wanted to make a hit, and Truth does not produce hits. The Greatest Love of All, sung by Whitney Houston, was written by a wonderful man who also wrote Awesome God back in the Eighties. He was a first-grade teacher who had a profound stutter, but when he sang, he could pronounce words perfectly. Naturally, he did a lot of singing with his kids, and wrote many songs that became famous and probably supplemented his meagre teaching income. He came to speak once at my high school, and it was a really memorable experience. Most chapels were spent listening to endless droning, numbing my butt on rock-hard bleachers in the gym. Or performances that were so bad that I would cry with embarrassment for the people singing their poor hearts out. One strange guy--an alum from the previous year--came back even stranger, singing along to a crappy tape, doing air guitar on this little 6-foot square platform.

...*Cricket, cricket*...

Anyway The Greatest Love of All is unchanged in every part except the main point: Whitney sings, "Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all." No again. The original words were, "Learning to love the Lord is the greatest love of all." Just a teensy eensy change, that's all. Making my blood boil just a little bit.

Once again, mk proving that she is every bit as neurotic as the next nail-biting perfectionista. Enjoy singing From a Distance for the next few days, will ya?

setbacks and great strides

The dining room is coming along nicely, and may (Lord willing) be ready for Christmas Eve festivities. yippeee!!

We had a Problem, Houston, a week ago though. After applying a coat of primer to every surface, D found that I had bought NON-PAINTABLE-CAULK for the seams. ARRRRRRRGHAREUGH! Much banging of head against wall and self-flagellation ensued as D had to scrape alllll of it off. Grr. I had no idea there was such an animal as non-paintable frakkin caulk. Wherefore wouldst thou make non-paintable-caulk? I ask you. Don't tell me, really.

After a 3-day setback, we have finished priming, painting the ceiling, and one coat of trim color as well. The challenge will be cutting in and painting the orange and blue, but it will cover so nicely and set the room off so well. Here are some pics:
the colors are ready for their debut!

knowing is half the battle?

Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain. Ecc. 1: 18

This verse was in my daily bible study email today. It was written by King Solomon thousands of years ago. Arguably, he was the wisest man ever to have lived, and he goes through the book of Ecclesiastes recounting how life under the Sun is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Later on he talks about life in a different format--that life under the Sun is not all there is, and there is hope only in knowing that Life. I enjoy Ecclesiastes so much because it reminds me of my favorite music by The Cure and the Smiths--depressing, poigniant sometimes, well aware that "putting on a happy face" is a denial of reality.

Not that people really are putting on a happy face. There have been lots of studies lately about how unhappy, lonely, and isolated people are in the Western world. One study found that people have half as many close, intimate friends as they did ten and twenty years ago. I'm sure there are thousands of factors, including sitting at computers and having conversations with people around the world and ignoring the very real people who are, say, playing with a Playmobil manger scene as they write...not that I am ignoring certain people... But even out in the "world" I could go maybe the whole day, do all my shopping, and not talk to anyone (those self-checkout lines, for example which annoy the crap out of me). If I didn't have a three-year-old chattering the whole time, that is. One is never able to ignore others when a toddler is present. Usually they soften the most disgruntled faces. Usually.

I think the verse above applies so well to our contemporary situation. We have information at our fingertips, about all of the worst tragedies, upheavals, wars, injustices (very real or very imagined), and anyone with the will to vent their spleen has a forum for it here. I stopped watching TV news ages ago, because I was so frustrated with the limited amount of time and thought given to the context around a story, around a three-word quote, even. The text of an entire newscast would only fill the front page of a newspaper. But here, on "the internets," I have encyclopedias of misery to consult, if only it were fact-checked.

I used to watch G.I. Joe every day after school, and each episode ended with some moral lesson on safety or honesty or some such feeble attempt to justify the laser-shooting-carnage from the past twenty minutes. The average kid who learned his lesson would say, "Thanks, Gung-Ho! Now I know!" and he'd say "Great, Johnny! And Knowing is half the battle!" *G.I. JOOOOOE! A real Amerrrrican Heroooooo!*

I don't think Knowing is half the battle, really. Ignorance is bliss. I'd rather not know about genocide in Darfur, worldwide sex slave trade, millions starving to death in North Korea. The events of history are equally disturbing. But they had the advantage of no telegraph, no fiber optic cables, no satellites interrupting their butter-churning to alert them of Breaking News. Average people, not in the halls of power, rarely had their peace (or war) disturbed by news of others' plight around the globe. It was hard enough surviving as it was.

They didn't have the advantage of help from people around the world, though. More and more, people can no longer keep their misdeeds, acts of cruelty and injustice, in the dark. Someone with a camera or a website is increasingly present to catch them in the act. This is by no means universal, but it's a start. I'm not talking about putting surveillance cameras on every streetcorner and creating an atmosphere of paranoia--just as oppressive as the high crime which put them there, but where there is oppression, disaster, or upheaval that warrants outside help from average Joes, it is great to have technology.

Just this week, I listened to a talk by Juan Williams, an NPR correspondent and author of several books about race and civil rights issues in America. He was talking about the civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties, and how it wasn't the case of Martin Luther King Jr. being The Leader, the mover of all the events of that time, but it was thousands of people who had their conscience awakened and decided to do their little part to achieve justice. Most people in charge of the movement, including King, were under 30 years old and had no political clout. But the thing that really struck me was how adept they all were at using television to reach all Americans. There was a televised confrontation of a black pastor with a white sherriff, who was trying to make the black people who were trying to register to vote, go home. Instead of personally attacking that sherriff, the pastor talked about their status as human beings, and what was he afraid of? People watching this argument, and the terrible beatings and fire hoses and police dogs to attack marchers, saw the absurdity and cruelty of it. It led most to believe that yes, this is wrong, and we will not tolerate it anymore. Without the media there, no one would have seen it and it would have continued.

"increasing knowledge results in increasing pain." I believe this wholeheartedly, but I also know that without pain, one would not know one was hurt, and therefore be unable and unwilling to heal. Being exposed to worldwide pain forces me out of the comfortable suburban utopia in which I live, and compels me to pray for these people, give money to groups who ethically address the ills of our world, and look forward to the day that we can study them only as historical blights on the past.

I'm posting my butt off

wow, wouldn't that be a trick?

Dining room update: it looks like all the spackling has been done well, and only needs sanding before we use some caulk to take care of seams--moulding, baseboard, etc. Then, on to primer and PAINT!! D is an expert on plaster now, after his meticulous sculpturing of our bedroom walls, and put the first coat on in 2 hours. BAM! I bow at your feet, oh sensei.above picture is before-spackling scrape job. I've gone through about twenty single-edged razor blades getting the bloody stuff off. there's still a running deer of paint up there.
d in the middle of spackling there. the windows are a BUGGER!

I realize now that doing one room will make all the other rooms look like crap. I have a list in my mind of everything I want to change in the first floor of the house, down to the knobs on the kitchen cabinets. I'm INSANE! I will explode from materialistic pursuits. Must. donate. some. money. Must. not. buy. more. yarn. this. year.

I am proud of the work I have accomplished so far, though, and I think I taped down protective coverings like a champ. It looks like ET's house in there. "ehhhhleeeeuuuht..."

AND (note my excessive use of CAPS!), D's cousin (a contractor) came by this week and we chose new windows and doors, and mouldings for the outside of our front door. May as well git er done in one go, right? Of course, the new front door doesn't have a mail slot, so there's a new mailbox to find, the shutters will look like ultrapoop next to shiny new windows, but they're a minor thing. Pant, pant. And the door will be yellow. Sigh. With shiny brass hardware.

Feeling a little panicky at the mo, because in a week and a half we're supposed to have a party for our small group from Alpha. Our small group was not small, and they have kids too. Well, one can only accomplish so much in 10 days. Godspeed, right?

winter CrochetMe is heeeere!

One of my distractions lately was writing my first pattern for publication in Crochetme, which is now up for your enjoyment! It's for a little handbag made with BIG yarn. Also, I wrote a tutorial on crocheting on shoes, which sounds bloody terrible but is actually quite cool. There's a great photo for the front page, of a sculpture of a baby screaming with a huge scarf on. Brilliant!