Hang Ten

As most of you know, I have been working on remodelling the house on Nichol Avenue since January of this year. I wanted to give you a little update on my progress. I think I have repaired all the walls that need repairing. I did the interior encasement framing on about 14 windows and now I am in the taping and spackling phase. The pictures I've included here are of the living room. .. "before" and "currently". The walls in here were covered with spackle that was put on in what I call cake icing style and topped with gold glitter. Maybe it was quite beautiful when it was first created but over time, dust had settled on the different surfaces. It was quite a mess. I knocked off all the edges and washed down the walls to create a somewhat smooth surface. I then spackled over all the walls to make a smoother finish yet.

Last week I was standing on a ladder, 3 feet off the floor, reaching to the top of the 9 foot walls to smooth spackle on the walls and dipple it into the ceiling. I had some music playing. It was a cd that my friend - Julie - gave me years ago after she and Jack and Phil and I had gone to Chicago to see Circe de Soliel (sp?). It was Varekai(sp?). As I was reaching and spackling, I thought of those performers on the stage in one particular skit. There were about a dozen performers up on a moving contraption and as they were moving and spinning, many of them would flip around and land on this shed type structure. They got to moving so fast and furious that it looked like some kind of human molecular structure in action. The whole thing was so amazing that as I watched, I felt like I was holding my breath so as not to in any way throw off their balance and momentum. And I think everyone else in the audience felt the same way because when the performance ended, we all exhaled in relief and jubilation that no one had gotten themselves killed! It was thrilling.

I bring that memory up because as I was standing there on the third rung of the ladder, my feet clutching the step and my left hand holding the wall as I smeared the spackle, I started thinking about courage. Where do the people who do the toughest things get the courage? I don't know if you would have to have the greatest faith or have to abandon faith altogether to flip from a moving structure to land on the shoulders of someone standing on an 8 foot high structure 10 feet away. I felt a little better standing on that rickety, old ladder after that.

Speaking of courage, check this out....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Pw7vKtqpo

Red Moon Rising

The moon rose red over the soybean field. It seemed to quiver in the blue of the night sky. I was sitting at my dining table witnessing this ancient happening. I grabbed my camera and went out by the mailbox to take a picture.... a red moon on the horizon. Later I went back to take a video of this scene as the clouds had started to do a peek a boo.
After downloading the videos to my computer, I thought that I might just delete the videos as it is hard to get a good movie of far away objects. Then I noticed the sounds in this video. And maybe I'm just weird but I love the sounds even if it is hard to make out the moon.



I was looking at the Prairie Home Companion website this week and came across a good piece of advice from Garrison Keillor. A young writer wrote in to him and asked "Do you have any advice for an aspiring young writer?"
Keillor wrote back ... " The first obligation of a young writer is to describe your parents, a major project. I also think you should start a novel right away. I put mine off for years, thinking I wasn't ready, but it's invaluable experience---- to set out to write a sustained work of prose fiction of a hundred-thousand words or so. The main character is you yourself, it's set in Bristol, and your parents are definitely in it. Your main character has to get in trouble and then get out. And maybe that's the problem here. You've been too good, too obliging, helpful, kind, considerate, thoughtful, generous, responsible, etc, etc. It's hard to be interesting writing about pure goodness. Find some vein of evil within yourself and work from that. You don't need to enact these things in real life, by the way. Unless, of course, you want to. The way to write a novel is to write a few hundred words a day, every day, no fail. So try it. Maybe it'll be a big failure, but big failures can build the foundation for great success."

Mama and me

I was laying in bed this morning, recovering from a nightmare. I dreamed that I was in my house and I heard a noise over by the front door. I went to the door to investigate and a strange woman was standing there by the coat rack. Immediately, I told her that she would have to go. "You have to go!" I kept yelling. Though Phil said it came out more like "Aaaugh, aaaugh, aaaugh" real loud. Anyway, I woke up and had a horrible headache. I've been waking with a lot of headaches lately. It is allergy season so I am not surprised. This will keep happening until the end of September. One morning this week, I actually pondered the question - Could a skull actually split open like a watermelon in the garden? It really felt like my head was getting ready to do that.

So back to this morning - I woke up with a headache and didn't want to move, didn't want to see any form of light, didn't want to hear any loud sounds, didn't want to smell any strong scents. I just wanted to move through this world in slow quiet motion. Phil made some coffee and I closed my eyes and ventured into the kitchen to pour a cup for myself. Immediately, I noticed that it looked like coffee soup....dark and thick.... and I almost started something. I even asked him if he ever measures the coffee. He said no at which point I just gave him a dirty look. So I decided to just pour a cup and get back to my dark, cold bedroom, get back in bed and get over this headache.

I set the coffee cup on the table beside my bed and got under the covers. I was laying there, covers up to my chin, cold, darkness all around me and the smell of that thick coffee started calling to me. I took a sip. It was bitter. Yuck. I set the cup down and pulled the covers close. I lay there for about 5 minutes. Then I took another sip of coffee. I gathered the covers close again and lay back on my pillows. This is the point where an insight came to me.... I want to be kooky and quirky! I almost laughed but it hurt too much. Me, kooky and quirky. Yet somehow the idea interested me. I'll have to think it over and report back.

As you may have noticed, I have two pictures on this post. The one on the right is me - in pink.

My little sister took this picture or maybe I did. And this picture of me really resonates with me. You know how we all have that little voice in our heads that steer us through life? ( Ok, if I am the only one having this experience, please let me know - I may need help). Anyway, there is an inner voice that tells us what we need to know. I think this picture is that inner voice. She is the one who, when I was a young child and I heard the dogs scratching flees on the porch outside and thought it was someone knocking on the door, she told me "It's just the dogs scratching flees". And when the house would settle in the dark night, making cracks or pops and I thought it was someone creeping through the house, the inner voice would say "That's just the house settling." That good old inner voice has clued me in to a lot of stuff along the way. Once, after I was grown and times were really stressful. I thought I was having a nervous breakdown because I looked in the mirror and 'thought' my skull was swollen up like some kind of Martian being. My inner voice said "Girl, you need to get some rest". And as I went to climb into bed and felt like I wouldn't be able to sleep, that inner voice said "Sit down right here in the floor and give all your worries, stresses and deepest woe to God." And I did just that. I followed just what my inner voice told me. I told God that I couldn't make anyone outside of myself do anything that they didn't want to do. I told God that I had solutions to a lot of people's problems but they weren't interested. I cannot solve any of this. I told God that I have 4 children that do need my help and to help them I will need to sleep and cheer up. So I am putting all this 'stuff' into God's hands to hold. And that night I slept like a baby. I slept for almost 12 hours and when I woke up, Phil left for an appointment and it was just me and my 4 darling children at the house. I left the television off as Wall Street was having a meltdown and the news media were in a feeding frenzy. I just listened to my children go about the business of being kids. At one point I turned on the radio for some music and came across a station where they were speaking in tongues and my inner voice said "Turn that off." I turned it off and just listened to my world. So this picture of me reminds me of who I am at the core. I wanted to balance this picture next to another picture of me in work clothes and tell you about the kind hearted me who would do almost anything to help a friend but I will have to do that later due to technical difficulties. Instead I have a picture of my mother. She and I are roughly about the same age in these two pictures. She was a kind hearted person who would do almost anything to help her family or her friends. Mama loved to shop. She didn't have a lot of money so that made it a bit difficult. I love this picture of her. She was shopping. She went by one of her favorite stores and the clerk was showing her this instamatic camera. He took her picture (this picture) with that camera and she bought it. I love this picture! And it has a million cracks in it. I took a picture of the picture since one of my sisters owns the original. I thought I might photoshop it since time has cracked the film. Now I look at it as if it were a stained glass window, picturing a holy, sacred image....Mama mother or Sarah.

geezer in the geyser

My sister Grace and I were leaving the Andrews Geyser in Old Fort, NC. last week when we saw this guy climb into the geyser and get soaked. It happened right after Grace's granddaughter Cadence's birthday party.

Garden Highlights

Here's a few pictures of my garden at present from different vantage points. It has been a labor of love.

Progress Update

Hello world! My garden is moving right along. There is a spot right in the center of things which is not cooperating and it seems like the Bachelor Buttons are taking forever to show their colors but other things are falling right into place.

My son's wedding went off with only one hitch and everything was beautiful. Brittany was gorgeous in her dress and her hair looked like spun gold. I had such a good time but am feeling a little sheepish now. Why? Well as I was looking back through the pictures of the people dancing, I noticed that at the end of the evening, I was about the only person in my age group still dancing. Everyone else was less than 40 and looked cool dancing. But I love music and I hate to sit around. So what could I do but DANCE!?!

A Work in Progress

Hello Blog fans! It has been a while since I wrote. I haven't dropped off the end of the Earth. I am trapped on a vicious treadmill and can't get off! Yes, I am still working on the Nichol house. I have been working on repairing 13 windows and am down to my last 3. The truth is I am not a trained carpenter. My Dad was a carpenter and two of my brothers are as well. I have seen carpentry in action. I know that things should be on the level when it comes to building. It helps when they are square too. The Nichol House windows are neither. So it has been a bit trying. I will soon post a few pictures of my work.

I have also started a wedding garden as my son is getting married in July. The above picture is the general layout. You can see that I like trails to walk on and explore the plants. I believe it is known as a stroll garden in the gardening world.

I have also been on the look out for funny things. That is my latest project. First off, I have to tell you that I saw a kid with droopy drawers the other day as I was driving through Anderson. I burst out laughing. He must have been 13 or 14 years old and was walking down the street holding onto the front of "his" shorts as tight as he could. It looked like he was wearing his fat uncle's gym shorts as they about drug the street behind him. I couldn't help it, I laughed and I think he saw me laugh and I am not sure but I may have pointed at him like ..."kiddo, you are so funny!" I drove on down the street and looked in my rear view mirror and noticed that he was looking over his shoulder at me. It was a weird interchange. Now, I am thinking that I need to start taking pictures of this lunacy because future generations will find it hard to believe that we actually did this.

Finally, my sister Marlene came for a visit a week ago. We went by to see Harrison's house then went on to Knightstown as Harrison wanted his aunt to see the gym where the movie "Hoosiers" was filmed. We walked around looking at the old gym and shot some baskets. The guy working there offered to take the 4 of us to the locker rooms. He was a talkative sort so I kind of dreaded going down stairs to listen to him expound on the biggest moment of his life. Anyway, as we were going downstairs, my husband -Philip- says "I like your court (they had just refinished the floor) and I like your balls too." I hear a snort from behind me and there at the top of the stairs stood my sister doubled over - holding back the laughs. She was snickering and then I was too. The men just went on ahead of us oblivious of this comic moment!