Budding artist

This beautiful picture came in the mail yesterday--it was created by my seven-year-old nephew Tanner.

Last month, I sent home a big box of cardstock, stickers, markers, and other doo-dads culled from my own supplies and also from goodie boxes I've gotten from manufacturers. I thought that Tanner and his little sister Kylie might enjoy having a box of craft supplies to while away the summer with.

Well, from all reports, the box was a big hit. I sent along a letter that said, among other things, that they needed to be sure to clean up after they were done creating, and that all the craft supplies needed to go back into the box when they were done. Because I could just see my sister after the umpteenth time of cleaning up paper scraps and leftover stickers--"Thanks so much for sending me more crap to pick up!" LOL.

But my sister reported that the day after the box came, Tanner's little friend came over and was immediately escorted to the goodie box. "Dude, wait till you see what I got!" They sat and made paper airplanes for an hour, and then my sister heard Tanner getting out the broom and dustpan. She told him it was fine, he didn't need to sweep up, but he replied very seriously, "No, Aunt Janelle said we had to clean up when we were done."

Hee hee. Nice to know somebody listens to my directives!

So Tanner made me a few pictures and my sister sent them along with a videotape of T and K and their spring and summer doings. I just love this picture. Doesn't it look Picasso-esque?

Living in a powderkeg, giving off sparks

Yep, I'm still traveling to the past via radio. Today was 1983. An excellent year, it turns out...except for Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney singing "The Girl is Mine." Bleah.

"Total Eclipse of the Heart" was in the top ten, and I had to crank the radio up and belt it out when it came on. It's one of those super-dramatic songs that is just so appealing when you're thirteen years old and dreaming about all the crazy dramatic heart-rending passion that you're sure is in store for you. Then you grow up and find out those nights of wailing along with Bonnie Tyler were about as exciting as you're ever gonna see.

Oh, I am in a life slump right now, can you tell? Being thirty-four is hard. Is this all there is? I need a kind pat on the back, somebody.

I've been trying to work on a Paper Crafts idea, but kept ending up staring at it and doing the twirl--you know, that twirl you do in your swivel chair when you have no brain activity of any kind and twirling is all you can do to keep from sinking into a creative coma.

But today Card Creations 3 showed up at my door, and I looked through it and found my four cards (extra exciting, as I only thought there'd be three) and it made me feel much more motivated! I finished the creative coma project, and though I still don't think it's all that, at least I was able to move on in my mind. Then I made another project that I am actually happy with. It's amazing how stimulating it is to see your work in print--it makes you want to see MORE of your work in print. It makes you quite greedy, as a matter of fact!

Now I just need to sustain it...!

Changes come along real soon, make us women and men

One of our local "oldies" radio stations is doing a "20 Years in 20 Days" thing this month--each day they play the top 100 songs from a year. Started with 1965, will finish up with 1985 this week. I've caught a few songs here and there, and was subjected to a couple hours of 1976 at my hairdresser's last week (think Peter Frampton), but that's about it.

Well, today was 1982, and I was in the car for a large part of the day, and my oh my, talk about your trips into the past. I was switching back and forth between my presets and hit the oldies station and they were playing "Trouble," by Lindsey Buckingham, a song I haven't heard since...oh...1982? So I kept listening.

I turned 12 in 1982, and I had developed a mania for pop music the year before...right about the time puberty hit. I had a little notebook I used to keep track of songs I heard on my clunky garage sale radio, which had a plastic "wood" finish and extremely sharp corners. The station of choice was Hot-FM 101, WHOT in Youngstown, Ohio.

Lots of the songs I heard today were listed in that notebook, I just know it. "Private Eyes" and "Physical." "Eye of the Tiger" and "Shake It Up." There were some I had totally forgotten about, and yet could somehow sing along with, like this Olivia Newton-John song called "Make a Move on Me." Lovely.

And UGH--"You Were Always on My Mind"--UGH. I hated that song then and it hasn't gotten any better with time. Even at the age of eleven, I knew it was total BS: "Hey honey, I know I ran around on you and ignored you, but I was really thinking about you the whole time. And hey, let's get back together, okay?" Bite me, Willie.

You know whose music has aged the best, though? The Go-Gos. 1982 was their big year, and I'm telling you, "We Got the Beat" still sounds fresh, especially when you've been listening to some of the other crap that passed as music that year. Neil Diamond's "Saying I Love You," for instance. Barf.

Oh, and Air Supply. Oh, oh, oh. When I came out of Kroger today and turned the radio back on, "Even the Nights are Better" was playing, and I just had to laugh. They were so...bad...and yet so fun to listen to. "Sweet Dreams" came on a little later in the countdown--I guess '82 was a big year for Air Supply as well. I had an "Air Supply's Greatest Hits" LP that I would listen to and belt out the power ballads. (That's it on the left...dreamy, huh?) I think those guys created the power ballad, don't you? All those hair bands that came along a little later owe a debt of gratitude to Air Supply, in my opinion.


Well, it was fun to think back to what a little geek I was then and still am to this day. But I was a geek with taste, darn it--I hated Barbra Streisand then and I still do. And I knew there was something not right about Michael Jackson even way back then.

In other news, I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince tonight. It was quite good. The ending didn't shake me up nearly as badly as the ending of the last nook...killing off Sirius was just plain mean, I thought. What I loved about this installment was seeing Harry really stepping into adulthood. The little boy is growing up, sniff sniff!

TV, DVD, HP and me

I had a hamburger yesterday. God, it was good. Forbidden, but good. We've got this diner down the street called Pop's, and it's the best artery-clogging food ever. Todd was having withdrawals, so we went and indulged just a little: burger for me, burger and hot dog for him. I resisted the fries and the chocolate cake that were calling to me ever so longingly. I figure a burger now and then is good for the soul. It's when you move from "now and then" to "every day" that the problems start.

Todd says our diet-and-exercise program is based on mutual annoyance: I nag him to eat right, and he nags me to get exercise, and we drive each other nuts. We can take all the money we're saving on eating out and put it toward marriage counseling. Kidding!

But exercise definitely is the difficult part for me, especially when it's 95 degrees outside. I like to walk, play tennis, ride bikes...those are my preferred exercise methods (as opposed to the gym), and I just want to cower inside with a fan about two inches from my face when it's this hot out. Hard to overcome the inertia and get moving and get sweaty.

Todd picked up Harry Potter 6.0 for me today and I cracked it open as soon as I got home. I'm about 75 pages in and pretty well hooked. I'm not, like, a rabid fan of HP, but I do wholeheartedly enjoy the books. I read so much great British children's lit when I was a kid, and HP has all the whimsy and wit of those books I loved. Joan Aiken's style reminds me a bit of J. K. Rowling. The Borrowers series makes me think of HP, too. And C. S. Lewis has that same dry wit that I think adds so much to the HP books as well.

Don't know why I have been so...bookish...lately. Todd's been buying DVDs and trying to get me to sit down and watch, but I can't seem to pay attention to the screen for that long. It feels so long since I really immersed myself in books, and I am lovin' it!

However, we have watched a couple of TV series on DVD (via Netflix) in the past few weeks: Seasons One of Newsradio and Scrubs. Newsradio is a show that I liked but never made time to watch. I adore Dave Foley--he's my favorite Kid in the Hall, so I was very interested in watching his show, but that was around the time I got disenchanted with network TV, so I caught a few episodes here and there but that was it.

Watching series on DVD is totally the way to go: no commercials, "pause" and "rewind" buttons--and you can follow the story arc through several days of watching, rather than eight or nine months of watching. Season One of Newsradio was fun. That was a great ensemble cast, and you can see them feeling their way around and settling in with each other amazingly fast. They settled into a flow that it took the Seinfeld cast several seasons to get right. It was a little sad to watch Phil Hartman, though. And there was one episode where John Ritter guested--when he came strolling onto the set and I actually gasped out loud because it was so unexpected and sad. Very odd to watch those two guys being funny together...they just should never have had to die so young.

Scrubs is a show that Todd watched devotedly when it was on Thursday nights and fit into his Thursday night line-up. Then they moved it to Tuesdays and it fell off his radar. I had just seen bits and pieces walking through the living room here and there. We completely enjoyed watching the first season, and I was amazed at how unique and freaking funny it is. And lo and behold, there came John Ritter into another episode--the guy got around, for sure. I always loved him--was never allowed to watch Three's Company, and when I got old enough to watch it, it was too stupid for my taste--but there was just something so special about John Ritter. A gentleness to his humor that was really appealing.

Anyway, Scrubs was terrific. Now I'm hooked on these TV series and wondering what I should rent next. We tried Season One of 24, and it was...okay, but I'm just not a drama fan. And the end of that first season was so ridiculous. All that nail-biting just to get suckered with a totally implausible plot twist at the end.

It's getting late, I'm going to squeeze in a few more Harry Potter chapters before bed.

Make-up post

I've been blog-pouting ever since Thursday afternoon, when I spent twenty minutes writing a post, hit "publish" and it vanished into thin cyberspace. But I guess I'm over it now. I guess. Sorta.

I was trying to post these pictures of my scraproom, which was not struck by a tornado, even though it looks like it.

It looks much better at the moment, after I got fed up and started throwing clutter into boxes and baskets. It's a surface solution, but hey, I'm okay with that.

I can't look at pictures of perfect scraprooms on Two Peas or wherever...the ones with the gorgeous paint jobs, the coordinating office furniture, the tasteful art on the walls. My walls are filled up with shelves and bulletin boards, although I do have a Georgia O'Keefe flower poster that looks like the top half of a vulva. (However, if one's vulva was indeed blue and purple, one would have some serious gynecological issues to look into.)

Anyway, I can't paint the walls, we live in a rental. The furniture is a mishmash, and so are all my storage systems and containers. But I consider myself pretty lucky to have a room of my own, even if it's bursting at the seams and way too hot in the summer.

I have been reading like a maniac. On my day off Thursday, I stopped by a used bookstore in Newport News that I've been meaning to check out for two years, and I walked out with a big bagful of books. It was a heavenly feeling--I was really scrounging for reading material in the spring, and I'm putting some effort into finding something new instead of re-reading all my oldies over and over.

I picked up three historical mysteries by P.B. Ryan that are some of the best mysteries I've read in a long time, almost as good as Barbara Hambly's Ben January mysteries. For some reason, the mystery writers I actually care to read have dwindled down to a tiny group. Mysteries were the only fiction I was willing to read for years, and I read just about everybody, but so many of the authors took their characters in weird directions, or just kind of petered out and got boring, so it's been really hard to keep myself supplied.

Anyway, the first book is called Still Life with Murder. I plowed through all three books in less than two days, which was dumb, but I couldn't help myself. The main character is an Irishwoman who becomes a governess for an upper-crust Boston family in the late 1860's. I was afraid these would be "cozy" mysteries, with a prudish governess-type character, but they are much more hard-bitten than I expected, and the character of Nell is quite complex.

Our air conditioner is on the fritz, which makes sense since we are in the hottest, wettest week of the year right now. Fortunately, our bedroom is equipped with a separate AC unit, because the previous owner was a computer tech for the county and had all his computers in there. (I'm having deja view, I think I explained that before.) Anyway, we can blow cold air out of our bedroom to the rest of the upstairs with fans, and downstairs isn't too bad if you sit in the living room right under the ceiling fan. The AC guy will be able to get the necessary part on Monday, so hopefully we can be cool soon.

Tomorrow, I think I'm going to drop by Barnes and Noble on my way to work and see if I can score the new Harry Potter book, and maybe squeeze in a visit to Target and look at all the cool new school stuff I hear is now in the dollar spot. LOVE the dollar spot!

Off to read in my nice cool bed.

This and that

The "eat right" program is going pretty well so far. I'm not sure how much weight I've lost, because my personal scale is showing me way lower than my doctor's scale. I should have taken a base weight on my own scale at the beginning, but I failed to. I think I might invest in a better scale anyway. But so far so good.

One nice thing about eating right in the summertime is that there is so much more decent-tasting produce in the stores. I got some delicious cherries yesterday, and I also cooked some snap peas that were delish. I think you can get snap peas year-round, but they taste summery to me. I got the recipe from Everyday Food:

Bring 1/4 cup water and 1 Tbsp. butter to a boil in a 12" skillet. Add 16 oz. snap peas; cover and cook at high heat for 2 minutes. Take lid off and continue to cook for 4-6 minutes or until the water has evaporated. Stir in 1/2 cup chopped fresh mint and season with coarse salt and pepper. Serves 4.

Honestly, these taste like candy, they are so good. (And 4 oz. is 1 point.) I used mint from my plant out front.

In other news, I had a couple of hoorahs last week that I forgot to mention: I had a card accepted by Paper Crafts and two cards accepted by CorrespondenceArt. That was gratifying! I still want to break more of my scrapbook pages into print, though. But for tomorrow, I have a few more Paper Crafts projects in mind.

Speaking of scrapbook pages, here are a few of my recent ones from when Todd was out of town and I had time to scrap. (har har)

I've been meaning to do something with these pics for over a year...I printed the large one on gray textured cardstock, so it looks really neat in real life. This scan looks crooked to me, but I think it's from the stitching job. I am so anal about things being crooked, I'd hate to think the real one looks this tippy.
Journaling reads:
After our visit to the World War II memorial, we walked up to the Mall in the pouring rain to visit Mr. Lincoln. This particular weekend marked exactly twenty years since my first visit to Washington D.C. for the National Spelling Bee when I was 13. We had stopped at the Lincoln Memorial on that trip, and although I've been back to D.C. several times since then, I've never made it back to this particular spot that I can recall. I was so happy to come back, because Abraham Lincoln is one of my heroes, and this shrine, with his words carved into the walls, is one of those places that makes you want to be a better American and a better person.



This is another picture I've had sitting here for months. The page came out completely different than I ever envisioned...I was thinking of something very green, but I think there's enough green in the photo. This is my nephew and my grandmother last summer, and the journaling reads:

Grandma, I want to be like you. Eighty-four years old and you're riding a bike back to the gazebo at Mom and Dad's house. I hope I am blessed with the generally good health and the self-sufficiency you've had all these years...but more than that, I hope I can face life as gracefully and calmly as you do.
And Tanner, I want to be like you, too. Six years old and you're riding along with Grandma to make sure she's okay. And when she was too tired to ride back, you pushed her along the path so carefully and caringly. I hope I can rediscover the openness and eagerness that you have at this age...and more than that, I hope I can pour that energy into taking care of those I love.

And one more...these are also pictures from last summer:

This little niece of mine has the sweetest face ever! Boy, did I slave over that title...way more than was worth it, LOL.

10 Desert Island Discs

This is a 2Peas meme that Neeka posted today, and I liked the topic. So, in no particular order, here are the ten CDs I'd want with me if I were stranded on a desert island:

1. The Wildlife Concert, John Denver. I was so sad when John Denver was killed back in 1997. His voice and face are part of my childhood, but I never owned any of his albums; in fact, I only knew a few of his songs. A couple of months after he died, I picked up this one, thinking it would be a good overview, but it's so much more than that. It is a fantastic concert album, recorded in 1995, and John is in the best voice of his life--so much fuller and more complex than his high-pitched 1970s voice. The musicians playing with him are also wonderful, and the whole album has a joyful feeling that really picks me up.

2. This Side, Nickel Creek. I've never gotten so much pleasure from an album as I have from this one. I used to go to Barnes and Noble every few months and have little listening sprees at the kiosks in their music section. This album was in their feature section a few years ago, and I grabbed it after just a few seconds of music. These three kids, one on mandolin, one on guitar, and one on violin, play some of the most melodious and gorgeous bluegrass music I've ever heard. This is their second album, and in it they move away from their bluegrass roots and branch out into other sounds. Fantastic.

3. Nickel Creek. After I fell in love with their second album, I picked up Nickel Creek's first album...another gem. More traditional, more bluegrassy, but just as wonderful--some people argue it's better than the second album, but I disagree. We saw them in concert at Norfolk's Harborfest two years ago, in a blinding rain, and they played their hearts out for all of us drenched fans. That's a memory that goes along to the desert island with me.

4. Graceland, Paul Simon. I bought this album on an LP in 1986, then upgraded to a CD a few years later. What can you say about it that hasn't been said a hundred times? There were several artists who experimented with African instruments and sounds in the mid-80s, but I think Paul Simon did it the best. I was in the grocery store the other day and "Graceland" came on the Musak, and it just pulled me out of my grocery-stupor and made me feel happy. "The Mississippi Delta was shining like a National guitar..." What a great opening line!

5. Endless Summer, the Beach Boys. I was appalled to discover, on a long road trip with my brother last summer, that he does not like the Beach Boys. This is especially upsetting because I thought I had completely shaped his music tastes in my big sisterly fashion, but nope, I messed up and failed to pass along my Beach Boys adoration. You push play on this CD and it's like adding water to powdered Kool-Aid--instant summer and sunshine. And you gotta sing along. That's essential.

6. Gordon, Barenaked Ladies. I love the Ladies and all they do, but this first album from 13 years ago is still their best. Clever, wistful, snarky, and fun. And exuberant!

7. Revolver, the Beatles. The Beatles pose a problem, because I could fill up my top ten slots just with their work. But that doesn't seem right. And I could put in a compilation album so as to have an overview of their music with me, but I don't really like Beatles compilation albums. It feels wrong to listen to tracks all mixed up from the way they should be. So I'll just pick this one. It's from the perfect moment in their careers, when it was still fun for them, when the drugs made them creative instead of just stupid, when George Martin began to help them see what kind of magic you could make in a studio.

8. The Man and His Music, Sam Cooke. This is another album I bought in an LP version; it was one of those great old double record albums that folded in the middle with a pocket on either side. I replaced it with a CD almost as soon as it was possible, and I'm so glad I did, because it's out of print and harder to find now. Sam Cooke's voice is angelic, there's no other word for it--pure, heartfelt, perfect.

9. Full Moon Fever, Tom Petty. This was the toughest spot to fill, because I knew what I wanted to put in slot #10, but what to put here? Patsy Cline? Fleetwood Mac? Foo Fighters? Emmylou Harris? Bonnie Raitt? Then Todd brought up Tom Petty as we were taking a walk and discussing this topic, and I knew he was right. This is Tom's best: quirky, humorous, laid-back. And some awesome guitar licks.

10. Sibling Rivalry: the Best of the Smothers Brothers. It's not too much of a stretch to say that Todd and I fell in love over the Smothers Brothers. Hey, I never claimed to be cool. I had picked up one of their record albums at a garage sale or somewhere, and we listened to it and laughed and laughed and laughed during the summer after we graduated from hgh school. It was then that I saw how appealing it is when a guy has the same sense of humor you do. It's a good basis for a marriage, too. Anyway, we tracked down a few more of their records at flea markets over the next few years, but since we've been without a record player for more than ten years, this is our only source of Smothers Brothers humor--none of their LPs have been released on CD, which is a travesty!

Looking at this list, I realize that I have one foot, and maybe part of the other, in the past, but these are some of the albums that have stood the test of time for me. If I had to listen to them for 20 years on a desert island, they'd still satisfy.

Weekend ramblings

I'm a moron--I keep checking my blog like I think someone may have updated it it for me while I sit here without a thought in my head.

It's just been a busy week. Lots of work, lots of COOKING--I've spent more time in the kitchen in the past five days than in the past five months, I swear. Stupid diet, making me cook. And Todd came home from Ohio on Tuesday night and he wants to spend all this TIME with me. I guess he missed me or something.

We went to see War of the Worlds last night, and I enjoyed it. I am a big fan of 1950s sci-fi movies, the good ones as well as the cheesy ones, and I love the 1953 WOTW--awesome effects for a movie of that era, check it out if you've never seen it. This one was also good...I have never really liked most Spielberg movies; the way he tells a story usually leaves me feeling cold and manipulated, but I liked this one.

The parts I thought were the most effective were the beginning scenes of the lightning, the people of the neighborhood pouring out into the streets, and then the alien walker-thingies coming up out of the street. Very intense...the awe turning to panic felt very real.

I also thought Tom Cruise did an excellent job. He's an actor that I just have never felt interested in, and I've seen very few of his movies, but he was really good, and, I thought, believable. The confusion his character feels as he tries to comprehend what's happening and also tries to do the right thing by these kids that he's found himself responsible for--really well-played. It was like he suddenly realized he had to be the grown-up and he wasn't quite sure how to do that.

From the point where the family gets split up and Tom and Dakota end up in the cellar with nutty Tim Robbins--that was where I started to feel my belief slipping away. Seemed more confused and contrived from that point on to the very unbelievable ending.

I was also disturbed by the really overt September 11 references throughout the movie...I'm just not sure how I feel about Spielberg using that shorthand (the human ashes and dust on Tom's face, the clothing drifting down, the posters of missing loved ones, to name a few) to create a mood in a movie.

Todd's home and we need to get lunch--back to the kitchen for me. Oy.

Farewell to all that

Well, tomorrow (today actually, it's 12:30 am) is the first day of my new diet/exercise program. Todd comes back from Ohio today and he and I are going to be living a new life, although I need it worse than he does.

July always seems to be the time when I attempt this. Maybe because wearing shorts and t-shirts really shows off the fat, I dunno. Four years ago I started on Weight Watchers right after Fourth of July weekend. Between July and November, I lost 30 pounds. Then in November, some very stressful and sad things started happening, and over the next two years I put it all back on. I tried again last July, but only made it through two or three weeks. I think a month of travel was what disrupted me that time.

In the past six months or so, my eating habits, which are never great, have really deteriorated. We eat out a TON, especially since I started working in March. And fuggedabout exercise--I have become a lump. So I have added another ten pounds to my all-time high of four years ago.

It is time to get things in hand NOW. I keep worrying about diabetes since my dad was diagnosed with it last year. None of my clothes fit...I am really reluctant to have my picture taken, and that never used to bother me, even though it's been a lot of years since I was svelte. And I do not feel even remotely sexy any more, which is depressing. I'm still young but I don't feel young.

I'm not going to post how much I weigh, because people who know me in real life read this blog, and I don't need anybody having that information about me! And I am going to try not to obsess here about the process. The less I think about it, the better, honestly...I can adapt to changes so much better when I just perform the necessary tasks without thinking about them.

This past weekend I've been eating the things I'll have to forego...my last pizza. My last Twinkie. My last Coke. LOL! And you know, I don't feel too sad about it. I am looking forward to having the energy and the happiness I had when I did this and stuck to it before.

Here we go.

In a Tizzy

Tizzy
Originally uploaded by JScrappy.

This double-page spread commemorates the last day of business at the stamp store where I used to teach. I loved the ladies there, and wanted to remember the fun we had. I tried to go real girly with this--at least, it's real girly by my standards.

Books, books, books

I've been doing a lot of reading in the past month or so, and I thought I'd list some of what I've read. My reading lately has been a lot like surfing the net: you read one thing, which leads you to something related, which leads you to something else that's a little related, and on and on.

It all started with this time-travel trilogy by R. Garcia y Robertson about a woman from the 21st century traveling back to the 15th century, in the middle of the Wars of the Roses. The first book is Knight Errant which I picked up on a desperate dash through B&N looking for airplane reading material. I ultimately read all three books (and there are apparently more coming) but I was disappointed in the story, most of the characterizations, and the author's writing style. However, when I went to the British Royal Family website and discovered that the male protagonist/romantic lead of the book ends up becoming king, it made me very interested to see how Garcia y Robertson would resolve that in the books. So far he hasn't.

So although it was a disappointing experience, I ended up getting a little taste for things royal, and I picked up a book that's been sitting on my shelf for a year or so. It's The Children of Henry VIII by Alison Weir and I got it at the Lost Colony gift shop in Roanoke. I hadn't read any of Weir's history books before, and I was amazed at what a riveting read this was. It read like fiction...and it helped that I wasn't completely up-to-date on my knowledge of events. I knew Edward VI would die young, and I knew Elizabeth would ultimately triumph and become queen, but the details of how it all played out are something I've forgotten in the 16 or 17 years since European History 101 in college. The action takes place about 100 years after the Wars of the Roses in Garcia y Robertson's books, and it's a different ruling family by now, the Tudors instead of the Plantagenets, but it was interesting to get in on the story down the road.

I went to the library the other day and found Weir's The Wars of the Roses, so I'm looking forward to cracking into that one and getting thoroughly lost, LOL.

Next, I hopped to a different royal family...the Romanovs of Russia in a piece of historical fiction called The Romanov Prophecy, by Steve Berry. Again, not the best-written thing I've ever read, but fun. The premise involves an American who stumbles across evidence that some of the royal family survived the massacre in 1918, and who ends up chasing across the globe looking for the heir to the throne. Kind of like North by Northwest but with Russians. And lots of interesting historical tidbits, although much of it was stuff I knew already. And it led me to finding a book called Five Empresses about five women who ruled Russia in the eighteenth century, starting with Catherine the Great. Again, it's a hop through time, this time backwards, but it's still a piece of the puzzle. And with my local library, you have to take what you can find...let's just say it leaves a lot to be desired.

After this, I picked up Berry's first novel, The Amber Room, about Nazi war loot, but it was a lot less deftly plotted and characterized. Still, worth a quick read if the war and art interest you, as they do me.

Finally, I went and picked up a book I've been wanting to read for several weeks, and could not find at the library: The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova. I hear that this book is being hyped to death as a summer read, and I did find out about it through a well-placed feature story/review in USA Today, but I think it is worth the hype. The whole book is an homage to lovers of history, old books, and libraries. Oh, and vampires. The author overlaps three narrators, one in the 1930s, one in the 1950s, and one in the 1970s, as they each seek the story behind a book that has been bestowed upon them--a book with no words, just one woodcut picture at the center with a dragon holding a banner with the word "Drakulya." Some people have complained that the historical detail in the books is too dry, but I loved most of it--there was only one place where I felt bogged down. And the travel that takes place in the book--all over Eastern Europe, with descriptions of the towns, cities, and countrysides--I loved that as well.

Most of all, the book is about what a person will do for the people he or she loves, and the searching that each character does is really heart-wrenching. And I really appreciated the view of Eastern European history, which was not high on my list of topics to study in high school and college. Loved the book, loved it!

Next on my list is the aforementioned Wars of the Roses book, and then I think I might track down this one: Born to Rule, about the granddaughters of Queen Victoria. I'm still looking for some more good historical fiction, though, if anyone has any recommendations.

Baby sister

I am so glad I have a sister. Today was one of those days where I was just cranky and tired and I had an "upset hangover" where I was still feeling upset about something I'd gotten upset about last night and didn't get enough validation from my husband to satisfy me.

My sister and I had been playing phone tag all weekend, after she called me on Friday to say thanks for her birthday gift, so I called her up this afternoon at work and we had a nice long chat, with the sound of my niece and nephew playing outside in the background.

I am not a phone talker; I just don't gravitate toward the phone like most people do, and I think it's detrimental to my relationships. Especially with my sister, because I just don't think to call her as often as I should. And then once every three or four months, we'll have this good conversation, and I think, why don't I call her more often? Duh.

My sister Jenita is almost six years younger than I am, and she just celebrated her 29th birthday on Saturday. We have never had much in common...different interests, different lifestyles, and the age difference is combined with a personality difference, so for much of our growing up years, it was hard for us to relate to each other.

But the thing about a sibling, at least in my experience, is that somehow you always talk the same language, no matter how far apart you are. I hear my mother in my sister's voice, and I'm sure she hears that in my voice, too. And Jenita was just the person I needed to talk to about my upset hangover, because she could understand what I was saying and make the comforting noises back that moms and sisters and good female friends are so talented at making, and that husbands are so often lousy at, LOL. Most of the time when I'm upset, all I'm looking for is for someone to say, "Yes, I understand...that does really suck."

I love my sister.

Time travel in the garage

I took a little stroll down Todd's memory lane tonight. Sometime in the early 90's Todd's mom packed up a bunch of his childhood stuff. In 1995, when Todd's folks sold their house and bought a much, much smaller house, the boxes of Todd's things went to live in the room attached to my parents' garage, where they lived for ten years.

When we were home last Christmas, my mom ever so subtly hinted that it was time for the boxes to find a new home, as she was attempting to clear out some of the clutter from their lives. So home the boxes came, to sit in our garage for a few more months.

Todd emptied a few boxes several weeks ago, setting aside some things to keep and some things to try to sell on Ebay. But he wanted my help with the last couple of boxes.

Now, I am the last person you want helping you sort through sentimental stuff. I am fairly good at purging our belongings once or twice a year, but the sentimental stuff always triumphs over me. So tonight I took the camera to the garage with me, to get pictures of the things that will not stay with us, and also of the things that will go into spiffy new Sterilite boxes, seldom to see the light of day again. It's easier to let stuff go if you know you have a picture of it!

Here are just a few of the things we uncovered:

What boy's childhood would be complete without creepy-crawlies?

Notes, drawings, and high school senior year term paper, entitled "Comparing Grippers for Use in Multi-Purpose Robot Arms." Riveting, eh? (I was in the same class, my term paper was on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band." You can tell ours is a marriage of minds.)

Todd's baby plate, brush and comb, resting on his baby afghan. All together now: "Awwwwwww!"

A little homemade shirt that Todd's mom sewed for him. One more time: "Awwwww!" (You should see the print on this thing--large-headed Seventies kids doing wholesome Seventies activities. Very ummm...Seventies.) A vintage box of Legos: High school graduation cap and graduation party sign, complete with streamers: Ah yes, the Star Wars model that was never built. Don't worry, he completed plenty of others. Note the Star Wars jigsaw puzzle visible in the background.This was the stuff that made us a little sad. One is a birthday card from Todd's granddad, probably from just before he died...another is a card from Todd's other grandpa, from just before he passed away--the signature is so shaky. And a note to the family from Todd's great-grandma Fairbanks...speaking from 1979, about how lonely she is in the nursing home. Very sad. Todd's grandfathers would be so proud to see the man he is now, I just know it.

We'll end this on a happy note...here's me with a little graduation doggy that Todd says I bought him for our high school graduation. I have no memory of that, and if I'd known him better then, I'd have known a stuffed animal was no way to win his heart. So we took a picture and Todd was finally able to throw it away, just like he probably wanted to do back in 1988!

The bumper sticker

We live in a condo complex, on the very last street in the development. Every day on my way home, I pass this white pickup truck parked on the corner, and every day it annoys me. On the rear bumper is a sticker that says "Marriage =" and then a little figure of a man and a woman with a plus sign between. One day I was walking past the owner's condo, and they had their second vehicle parked in their driveway, sporting the same sticker.

Every time I see it, I feel this flare of irritation. The "Bush/Cheney" sticker right above it probably does contribute to that feeling a little bit, but mostly it's the marriage sticker that does it.

So I’ve been trying to analyze why it irritates me. First of all, I'm curious why the owners of those vehicles picked that particular topic as the topic they want to share their opinion about with the world. Out of a hundred current topics, why gay marriage?

Well, first of all, I imagine that the truck owners believe homosexuality is a sin. That’s the foundation of the issue for most people who share their convictions.

I grew up in a fairly evangelical church, and I went to school at an extremely evangelical private school. And I honestly don't remember homosexuality being discussed. I vividly remember being told in Bible class that it was a sin to masturbate, but homosexuality...nah. Maybe it never crossed anyone's mind that a Christian kid would even have such thoughts and yearnings, I don't know.

As a result, I never had a strong opinion about homosexuality one way or another. Until I had a friend in my early adult years who was finally addressing the feelings he’d had all his life. His fear and self-hatred were incredibly painful. Accepting who he really was deep down came very hard for him. Watching him go through this process, it became clear to me that sin is a choice…and homosexuality is not a choice. I can’t accept that it’s a sin to be gay.

The next conclusion I see the truck owners making is that allowing gay people to marry somehow cheapens or demeans marriage as an institution. Or, from a Christian standpoint, if being gay is a sin, then a relationship based in sin can’t be part of the sacrament and covenant of marriage. But if love comes from God, as Christians also believe, then isn’t a love commitment holy?

When gay marriage was a hot topic on the news last fall, the stories would always feature footage of two men, or two women, finishing their vows and smiling and kissing each other. It never failed to make me teary-eyed. How often do you get to see two people of any sort experiencing a moment of pure joy? Especially on CNN? It always made me think of my own wedding and how happy I was at the end of that ceremony, and how happy I have been for 13 years with my husband. Seeing someone else—anyone else—make that commitment and experience that joy and hope…that could never diminish the legitimacy of my marriage. On the contrary, it actually reinforces my own memories of my vows and the way I try to live up to them. That, to me, is a beautiful thing.

The final thought I attribute to the truck owners is that gay marriage not only diminishes the institution of marriage, but is also a threat to society at large. It goes against the natural order of things, they might say. This, to me, is the most disturbing argument. I am a fairly conservative person, and I don’t like change. I don’t like the idea of our society losing its way. But of all the things that I think could bring us down, gay marriage isn’t one of them. War, poverty, casual theft, deception at all levels of government and finance, dishonesty, child abuse, bad parenting—yes. Gay marriage, no.

When people invoke the “endangered society” argument, the very first thing that springs to my mind is the uproar that took place years ago (and still takes place here and there, let’s be honest) at the idea of a black person and a white person getting married. People, plenty of them Christians, had lots of good reasons why that should never happen, why it was sinful and went against the proper order. Now we look back and see how wrong that was. I believe that our society should still be striving for all its citizens to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

So the bumper sticker bothers me. It feels ugly to me, like it would if a neighbor had a racist bumper sticker or an anti-feminist bumper sticker. It’s an ugly thing to have to look at every day. And again, I just keep wondering what is it that has made this particular issue so important to the truck owners. If I spot them outside someday, maybe I’ll ask them. Or better yet, maybe they’ll move.

Birdies

birdies
Originally uploaded by JScrappy.

Todd got some excellent photos Sunday night of our mama bird feeding her babies. We checked the birdhouse Tuesday night, and the babies had all flown away. I think they're still hanging around in our holly bush and eating from the birdfeeder.

Grateful

I've been feeling grateful the past couple of days...I had to go in for a D&C ("dusting and cleaning" as my dr. calls it--har har, Doc) on Monday morning and I was a little bit nervous about it. It's been ten years since I've had surgery of any kind, and I wasn't at all sure what to expect. Since I had to take three days off work for the surgery and the recuperation, I was concerned that I would be feeling not-so-great for a while.

But the surgery was just like taking a nice little nap! I came home and slept for a few hours and then got up and tidied the kitchen, did a little laundry...feeling quite good. Yesterday I went shopping in Williamsburg and cleaned my scraproom. Haven't had a pain pill since right after the surgery, and I'm not bleeding like they warned me I would.

Today I got up early and felt awfully tired so I took a snooze on the couch, remembering that I am supposed to be taking it easy, after all, and this is my last day at home to do that! Maybe I overdid it a little bit yesterday.

Anyway, I am just really happy that I am feeling so good! Now, if the surgery will just help with my problems, then life will be spiffy.

In other news, I am trying to scrap, but it's like pulling teeth, LOL. Now THAT'S painful! My inspiration done dried up--for now, anyway.

Albums, albums, albums

I think I'm a tiny bit OCD about my scrapbook albums. I have fourteen 8.5x11 albums stuffed in 3-ring binders that I bought early on in my scrapping life. None of them match. And they're all extra-large, so the page slide around in them.

Tonight I went to Target and bought five new 3-ring binders, very plain, three red and two pale green, and transferred five albums over. I think they're looking okay on the shelf.However, now I have to go up to Williamsburg tomorrow and try to find nine more, since our local Target didn't have enough.

What I really need to do with these albums is to continue the process I started three years ago of consolidating layouts, editing out photos, and re-doing layouts so that there are fewer layouts, more concisely arranged. I did way too many five, six, seven page layouts early on, because I thought I needed to include every mediocre picture.

But I just don't want to muck around with re-doing stuff right now, because...I also have five 12x12 albums that need some attention. I had a small stack of layouts that were published, sent back to me, and then just sat in a pile, so today I replaced them all in their respective albums, and I have a few albums that are just too, too, too full. I try to do one album per year in my 12x12s, and 2002 is ready to pop. I guess we did a lot of interesting stuff that year, LOL. 2003 isn't much better, and 2004 isn't done yet but promises to be pretty full as well.

Added to that--I'm not totally happy with the albums I'm using for the 12x12s. The books themselves are great, but the covers are all different colors and patterns and I hate the way they look on the shelf. They're too expensive to replace, but I'm just not sure how to extend the 2002 book and what kind of book to order for 2004.

Ugh, I'm boring myself with this. And I suspect I am obsessing over albums because I don't feel like doing any scrapping even though I'm really getting far behind. I made a list of everything I wanted to work on the other day and got myself all twitterpated. I've never been one for goal-setting in my scrapbooking...I've never really kept track of how many pages I do or how many I need to do, but it might be a good idea to do that...put my head down and power through (Arrested Development quote).

Only a manaical scrapper would understand why I do this to myself. I mean, this is a hobby, for crying out loud. Being an insane perfectionist is not helping matters, either. I just need to think positive!

Father's Day

In honor of Father's Day, here are a few random things I learned from my dad:

--Family is important, and you can learn about yourself when you know their stories.
--History is living and breathing all around us if we just tune into it.
--Fresh-grown produce tastes better than store-bought.
--Taking care of the people you love should be your number-one priority.

And a few random things I've learned from my father-in-law:

--Work is what you do to pay for your hobbies.
--Don't take life too seriously.
--Simply enjoy the people you love.

Thanks, Dad and John! Love you both!

Our bird haven

Our bird haven
Originally uploaded by JScrappy.

We have baby birds living in the birdhouse--the second family this spring. Todd bought me the birdbath for our anniversary in May, and then he stuck our old birdfeeder out there for a total bird pampering experience. Too bad birds creep me out. Our crepe myrtle is finally starting to leaf out after we chopped it back in April, and we have shade once again.

Mint and coleus

Mint and coleus
Originally uploaded by JScrappy.

My pretty spearmint plant is doing so much better this year. I don't know if the change of locale helped, or the constant picking, or what. This is the mint that always grew around the well at my grandma's house, and we would pick a huge bowlful and make iced tea. Another evocative childhood smell and taste.