When He Gets It Into His Head, Part I

My DH is usually an easygoing sort, to a fault sometimes. (But then my To Do lists are so long, I will never get it all done before I die. Not that I'm going to die soon, just that I have so many lists. I'm at the point that many items on my To Do list have their own To Do lists. I have Allie that thank for that.)

But this week, my typically laid-back DH has gotten it into his head that he must paint the molding along the floors, or, should I say, the tall molding along the stairs. Wherever it's not been scratched, dinged, scraped, scuffed or otherwise abraded by generations of Millers and friends, it's stained wood, almost a pecan color. And it must be painted. Forthwith! Post haste! Now! NOW.

There's just the teeniest problem. I work full time. Whaa...? Well, I am in charge of choosing the paint. You see, the walls in the main part of the house are three different shades of the same color, and there's not enough left of any one color to paint what needs painting. Nor is it semigloss, as it should be for trim paint. So he went to the paint store last week and brought home a handful of chip-strips. (Even though he had The Number of the original paint, I figured it would be discontinued by now, and I was right.) Taking his urgent lead, I set aside my finding-all-the-necessary-papers-to-file-our-tax-return project and began comparing the colors. But he stopped me, saying the taxes were more important and he wasn't going to paint until Friday (a snow day built in by the school district after our record-setting snowfall last year, only this year there's no snow, but there's still the snow day, lucky dog). Fine, taxes it would be. But I work full time. I leave the house by 7:30 and I'm home about 5:30 if I don't run any errands on the way home. At no time between now and Friday will I be home in the DAYLIGHT. DH isn't pleased, but I refuse to choose paint by lamplight, not when I'm going to have to live with it indefinitely.

And so I see a couple of refreshing opportunities here: Remove the #?@%* molding, since it really dates the house (laughing at myself, as if removing the molding will modernize a house that still has a pink bathtub), and just paint the wall behind it -- or -- repaint the whole area in something a little brighter and a little less butterscotch. But. Since he's already painted four rooms in the house since I moved in, I know option No. 2 is really not an option, and I doubt the wallboard behind the molding will be in good enough condition to paint (thus the molding in the first place), so I guess I will pick a color in the light of Saturday morning.

Thursday Blessings

I meant to do these everyday, so time to get back on track:
* Mom was lucid and remembered our names during our phone call today.
* The biofeedback breathing technique is helping already.
* Allie and I talked books and have some good ones picked out for the year.

A Real Simple Rant

I know I haven't posted in weeks, but I'll remedy that soon. In the meantime, I just have to rant.

As a would-be uber organizer, I subscribe to Real Simple magazine as well as several of their daily email messages on entertaining, recipes and, of course, organizing. I love their daily quote. I love their tips for creative uses for ordinary household (and office and workshop) items. Love.

What I don't love are the continual reminders to renew my subscription. I got one in the mail two weeks ago. I got one by email two minutes ago. Seriously? I clicked on the link and checked my account. I'm paid through December... 2012. I may expire before my subscription does, and the continual reminders just irritate me. If the editor believes the magazine's readers truly are learning from each issue, wouldn't they give us the credit for being organized enough to know when our subscription expires, give or take a year?!

Does this happen to you too? Just go to https://secure.customersvc.com/wes/servlet/Show and let them know you've had it, too. Let's flood their tidy little inbox, shall we?

Shadowbox Storytelling

I’m putting the finishing touches on my favorite shadowbox, one that is near and dear to my heart for the story it tells.

In 2002 my sister and her husband traveled with Chinese Children Adoption Inter-national (www. chinese children .org) to meet my oldest niece and bring her home. For them — for us — it was a long and arduous process of paperwork and patience and prayer. The long flight, the dozens of required documents, and the fear of SARS were concerns for the travel group, their families and friends (and for some unkind and ill-informed coworkers who shunned me for fear of infection). Of course effort and anxiety melted away once Sammie was home, and we watched in wonder as she grew and became her own person — a quiet and creative and compassionate beauty, my soul’s twin, the one who first taught my heart just how much love one person can have for another.

This shadowbox is the story of Sammie and my second niece, Lexi, and so many Chinese children who wait for adoption. Here are the materials I used to represent a few aspects of their journey home — the rigidity of government regulations, the chance involved in whether a child is chosen for adoption or for the “dying room,” the ladybugs the Chinese people believe bring good luck and, yet to be crafted, likely from felt, the Kanji symbol for home. Most prominent is The Red Thread, which illustrates the ancient Chinese saying that when babies are born, they are already connected by that thread to those who will be important in their lives. The thread may be stretched thin or twisted into knots, but it can never be broken. And most important is the child.

Auntie loves her girls more than she can ever say...

Note: I am looking for more figurines like this one. Please contact me if you have one or know where I might find others. I am always looking for vintage porcelain figurines, especially of children.

Monday Blessings

All too often, I find myself mired in the details of the day -- usually the details of things that went wrong. But not this year. This year I'm dwelling on the many blessings that come my way each day.

* an answer to a specific prayer
* a little wedge of silence
* a rare good night's sleep

The Perfect New Year's Celebration: Shelves

Preamble: My husband and I met, in person, two years ago today at the Portland International Airport. Anniversaries, even small ones, should be celebrated. They are turning points, and turning points, like it or not, got you where you are today. If that’s a good place, hooray! Celebration is in order. If it’s not such a good place, have you grown? have you learned? are you a step closer to where you want to be, or do you know better what that next step should be? Hooray! Celebrate that, too. (This really is related to my post. Really.) 

Like many of you, one of my resolutions for 2010 is to destress, and for me, to destress begins with deep breathing... and then takes an immediate left and heads to the task of cutting clutter and making order out of chaos. I wouldn’t say I’m a perfectionist (okay, that’s a lie), but organization brings me peace of mind. No mad scramble for pen and paper while on the phone. No midnight run to the inconvienence store for a 9 volt when the smoke detector goes on the blink. No worry about enough clean towels or extra pillows for unexpected guests.

For nearly two years — once I knew I was going to marry my husband and that I would be moving into his home — I have been asking, pleading, cajoling and otherwise nagging him to put more shelves in a couple of closets. At last, while he was on Christmas break from school for two weeks, on the very last day of that vacation, he gave me five new shelves. Oh, the storage. Oh, the opportunity to organize, the chance to purge!

You have to understand. Not only did I move into my husband’s home, I moved into his family home. (It is a very long story, and all I will say is that on fair-minded days, it provides cozy warmth and ample fodder for my quips and stories. On a foul-minded day, ample fodder for my rants and raves.) Though it was and always will be “Grandma's House” to the family, it is ours now — a mid-1950’ split level and all that goes with it, or should I say, all that doesn’t go with it. Apparently in 1956, the only good reason to put an electrical outlet in a bathroom was so a man could use his electric razor, and so there is only one outlet in our pink-fixtured bathroom, and it is wired w-a-y up into the light fixture. (I won’t even discuss the maneuvers to which I must resort to actually use my hairdryer and then later, once it has had time to heat, my curling iron, as long as no one gets thrifty and turns the light off, thus dousing power to The Outlet). Little use for outlets then and seemingly little use for shelves. What was their purpose 50-some years ago? To separate His towels from Hers? To segregate bath linens from bed linens? I wasn’t alive then, and I dare not ask my mother-in-law for fear of insulting her house. I will never be sure of the purpose of two shelves in a closet, but I am sure that more than two shelves is a very good thing.

So now there are three new shelves in the closet of the pink-fixtured bathroom and three more in the hall closet — and, to my husband’s complete bafflement, many of them are still bare. “Why do shelves make you so happy?” he asks. I wring my hands in anticipation, luxuriating in the thought of the so-many-things-that-need-a-place finding their place on one of those shelves. “Because, honey,” I say. “They help me relax.”