I have always lamented the fact that I don’t seem to draw "good luck". Even though the very idea of "luck" doesn’t settle well with me for various reasons, it still bothers me. I know it does not make sense, I can’t explain it. I guess you don’t have to believe in luck in order to be really annoyed that you aren’t receiving any.
Over my entire lifetime I can’t think of one time I have won anything. And when it comes to drawings, I tend to enter everything just to see if the sheer volume of tries will impact the mathematical probablility that one day, I will, win something.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not a gambler. Just a serial drawings-enterer. I mean, when you can get a Hummer…a Hummer, just by writing your name on a piece of paper, seems irresponsible not to participate. I am honestly not bitter about that Hummer. I’m not. Really.
All of this to say I had a rather prosperous weekend. And, no, I still didn’t win anything.
I did, however, stumble across a few seriously neat-o things. Things I never thought I would find for the price I found them. On the Heather’s Favorite Things Scale, they came in right up there with pomegranates, white stoneware, and legwarmers. Don’t look so aghast. The 80’s might not have been kind to me, but legwarmers were. I shall never, ever disrespect legwarmers. And neither should you. They served a serious purpose. They kept legs warm for a whole decade and never bothered anyone.
I am now stepping off my legwarmer soapbox.
Moving on. There is a little, very cute shop that popped up in our town last year. It moved into an empty building that had previously been a greenhouse. The owner has done an amazing job of getting it going and keeping it going and she always carries things that you wouldn’t find anywhere else. I love her shop.
One of her mainstays is soy candles, but she also carries scads of folk art, jewelry, furniture and home decor. Most from local artisans.
I was in there diggin around today when I saw this enormous, black armoir. It was gorgeous. Totally out of my price range, but I walked over, opened the doors…and immediately forgot about the armoir.
These were stacked inside…
I couldn’t believe my eyes. I am so a luggage girl and more than once I have cringed at how utilitarian and ugly most luggage as become. That moment in the film ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ where George goes to pick out the perfect piece of luggage, has always stuck out to me. I wanted luggage that said, "I’m not just goin’ somewhere, I’m goin’ somewhere!" Luggage that takes care of your things at the same time it’s brightening your day.
It was perfect. Three suitcases and a tote, all matching, all monogrammed with someone else’s initials: J.A.K.
Makes my mind swim with possibilities. Oh, the stories these suitcases could tell, if only they could talk. The interiors are in superb condition, white satin, with little red hangers still inside of one of them. And I got all of them…get this…for only twenty-five dollars. I didn’t even have to think. I just said, "I’ll take them."
After that find, I wandered through the rest of the store looking at all the new decor for the holiday season and stuffed under a table was this little gem:
A Royal 440, fully manual, and still types beautifully with that lovely, ‘clack, clack, clack, thunk, clack, clack, clack, thunk….zziiiiiiing!’
Yes. I love it. I love it in all it’s blue-ness and clicky-ness. I feel like a real-life writer when I type on it. As I type I can’t believe that my great-aunt Arlene won national awards for her typing. And that was back in the day before all this automatic, ergonomic consideration. She won her awards the ‘thunk, clack, zing’ way.
All I can say is my better-than 60 words per minute don’t look quite so great now. I have been humbled by this great machine. And I don’t mind. It is glorious and it deserves it’s place of honor in our home. A bit of a nod to a day when there was no ‘delete’, ‘backspace’, or ‘copy and paste’. And it used no electricity. Simple perfection.
Thus ends my day of gorgeousness, made all the better with the pristine weather and a little God-ordained hard work thrown in.
Now we’ve gone and done it.
We have worms.
Don’t be frettin’ yourself. They aren’t the *ahem* intestinal kind. (I can’t believe I just wrote intestinal. On_my_blog.) Anyway they are NOT that kind so we may move on.
They are, in fact, the kind that can turn your kitchen scraps into dirt. We actually acquired them in the middle of the summer, but I didn’t want to post about them just in case I ended up killing them. They have, indeed, survived. And they haven’t just survived, they have thrived. So much in fact, that we had to move them from their starter home, a plastic flat, into a high rise worm condo.
They are now living the posh life and are, at the same time, pulling their weight. They spend their days eating and doing their, well, thing, at the end of which is a testament to the genius of creation. How could I give my banana peels, egg shells, apple cores, and even some of my paper scraps to a lowly worm and get a perfectly balanced, fertilized dirt out of the deal?
Amazing. Simply amazing.
We are very happy with the new addition to our family. That makes us a family of 5 human beings, 1 beta fish, 1 black lab, and a condo full of red worms.
Makes me want to cry.
Needless to say, our Christmas card picture will be interesting this year.
When I began this journey I was full of the typical honeymoon-style optimism most humans have when faced with a new anything. Even though a total lifestyle change due to gluten-intolerance seemed daunting, it was also a challenge.
And I love a good challenge.
However, the rose-colored glasses came off rather swiftly after tasting a piece of gluten-free bread.
Unbelievably terrible. And I’m a girl who will eat anything. Almost anything, anyway. I draw the line at insects in any form, even if they’re covered in chocolate. And if you knew about me and chocolate, you would understand how momentous that is.
That one piece of disastrous bread made me mourn just a little as it hit me; My life from here on out would lack the quintessential loaf of fluffy, wholegrain bread with fresh jam.
Maybe I’l just start eating jam out of the jar just like my Grandpa Al did. We would make jam for him and as soon as the jar left our hands and landed in his, the spoon was out and adeptly scooping mounds of strawberry beauty onto an eager tongue. We never broke him of that habit despite our many childish outcries of disbelief.
Little did I know he was passing down a heritage of skilled jam-from-the-jar eating. Right at this moment, I feel like I owe him my life.
Now, I’m being melodramatic. I’ll quit.
But, really, ever since that untoward bread experience, I have been struggling with even wanting to try to bake something gluten-free. I didn’t want to spend the time researching, mixing, experimenting, and baking something only to end up with sawdust in my mouth yet again.
My hope has been renewed.
My lovely sister-in-law gave me a pre-packaged muffin mix from a store near her. I took it and definitely felt a little skeptical, but vowed to try it.
I mixed it up this morning, filled each muffin tin, placed it in the oven and waited for the outcome.
Boy, oh boy.
It. Was. Worth. It.
I never thought I wanted to get into product reviews, and this post is in no way endorsed by the company in question, but I just can’t keep this one under my hat. It’s too good.
The mix was by Gluten Free Pantry. It was their muffin/scone product and it was so great, I’m trying to figure out how to find some near me. It was easy to throw together and even the batter looked and tasted lovely. Yes, I licked the bowl. And the beaters. Don’t be judging me.
*And a note for vegetarians: You can substitute rice or soy milk in for the dairy, and a whole banana for the eggs. That’s exactly what I did and I can’t get over the texture. They are a bit more dense than typical muffins, but that is always to be expected with gluten-free baking.
Some sweet day in the future I will be posting baked goods recipes of my own. Until then, (probably a million years from now) I will post little nuggets of packaged baked goodness in the hopes it will help someone enjoy their gluten free existence a little more.
Now, to those who have never, and who will never, consider sawdust edible…this post is for you.
I went on a date last night.
Nope, not with my husband. Not with anyone else, either.
I just went out with my ownself.
Every once in a great while I need a period of time just to breathe, rejuvenate, rest, and pray without anything pulling on me.
I love people in general, and I love my family. But I have been aware from the beginning that being a mom was going to stretch me in ways I could never know. Added to that the decision we made to homeschool our kids and we had a possible recipe for early burn-out if we weren’t careful.
My loving man tried to get me to call a friend and go out with "the girls" even though at this very at-home time in my life it would have been more appropriate to encourage me to go out and have fun with "the girl". Or maybe "the imaginary pal". Or something like that.
But I went alone. I didn’t even want to pressure of trying to make talk. Utter and complete silence is what I needed.
Last time I went out I walked, walked and walked. Read for a bit and then decided to step into a theater to see what was playing. I was able to enjoy "The Pursuit of Happyness" all to myself. No, I mean ALL to myself. I was the only one in the entire theater. I got my popcorn and sat right in the middle, and watched that great story on that massive screen, cried my eyes out and didn’t even care that I was the only one laughing, really loud mind you, at some parts.
Obviously, that was awhile ago, but this type of date isn’t needed very often, just when I feel that tug to either give in to the invitation to go stark, raving mad, or to just take some time to feel the space I’m in for a few moments. To pray, get grounded, so I can step back into my beloved job, eyes wide open.
Last night, I ended up at a book shop. I sat there and prayed, thought, and devoured about four photography books. It was lovely.
As I got into the car, I heard the radio announcing a huge storm rumbling our way, so I skedaddled on home, trying to outrun it. I almost made it.
I came in the door, dripping wet, wondering what the evening had been like for my husband. He was quietly reading, the house silent, the children sleeping soundly.
Ahhhh. What a man. Thank you, my darling, darling man. It was a blessing.
The entire picture of their evening at home didn’t come into focus until this morning when I awakened to a gentle, happy 2 yr. old laying beside me saying someting I couldn’t, at first, understand.
"Feem, foam! (Then, there was some deep, gutteral, threatening sounding stuff I couldn’t decipher) make a SAMMICH!"
What??!! What is this boy saying? He kept repeating it until the rhythm of it reminded me of something I couldn’t put my finger on. It didn’t become clear until my husband joined in from the hallway with all the drama of an actor in character.
"Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive, or be he dead, I will grind his bones to make my bread!"
Only Bear was still substituting "sammich" for "bread". I guess it sounded more threatening.
I can easily guess what the bedtime story was.
Ah, the genuine, unreserved lessons our fathers teach us.
I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to eat a sandwich now without first peering inside. Better safe than sorry.
Ever since I can remember I have wanted to be a photographer. Way before piano lessons started at the age of 8, flute lessons at 10, and bassoon lessons at 12. I sang, danced, and tumbled my way through my childhood years without ever telling anyone of this obsession.
I mean, what parent in their right mind would let their child carry around a camera? Well, I let my son carry one around I suppose, but I have never claimed to be in my right mind.
I went through years of pretending I was looking through the eye of a camera lens to see if I could pick out frames and images that held a story. In 2005, while on vacation in the mountains of Colorado, my husband saw a photography textbook in the sale bin at a grocery store. It was huge and expensive, but he bought it for me and I devoured it. It helped me understand light, saturation, angles of the human body in relation to one another, and how to distill a scene into stories of imagery.
This last spring, he came home with a box.
In it was a Nikon SLR camera with two lenses. A few weeks later, he upgraded my photo editing software to include more professional options, and then a few week after that, he came home with a stylus program and pad.
My head is still swimming. But, I’m sooooo not complaining. Because of his generosity, I am finally at the point I can experiment with the tools of the trade. I can go out on shoots, experiment with light, learn how to see the world through a lens.
This last weekend I brought my Nikon along on a trip to a mini family reunion of sorts. I didn’t anticipate having the time to really use my camera much, but when I saw the passel of children under the age of 7 (no less than 12 in number), I knew I would come home with some good shots.
I suppose this post is just for the purpose of sharing the beginning of the journey, and hopefully there will be more and more evidence posted here over the next months. Evidence of growth and sensitivity and insight.
Here are several of the adorable faces I got to stare at on Sunday.
I soooo love my job. *grin*