A sigh of relief.

Today was my last day of working at the LSS. I've been holding my breath for three weeks until I could slip away, and I think I've finally done it.

The job was not a bad job. It was the easiest job I've ever had. The owner is a sweet person and easy to get along with, and she really relied on me. Which was a bit of the problem...

The store is failing. It's been failing since I started over a year ago. At first I tried to come up with ideas...kits to promote and sell, classes and make-and-takes to offer, cleaning things up, rearranging and organizing....but none of that will work if the person who makes the decisions isn't backing you up. I had responsibility for maintaining day to day, but no power to make the decisions and changes that could have helped. And I felt, and still feel, I knew the things that would have helped.

One thing I learned from my 13 months at the LSS was that I know more than I thought I did: both about the SB industry in general, and about running a store in particular. I hadn't realized how valuable the past eight years of being steeped in the scrapbooking world has been for my knowledge and experience. And I found that my common sense is real and deep and that I need to rely on it more. I pinpointed problems with that store, then came across business articles and trade journals, weeks or months later, that completely affirmed my instincts. I know more than I gave myself credit for.

It was a mostly good and valuable experience. But I felt myself getting more and more unhappy, especially after I decided to stick it out after we bought our house. Business had picked up after Christmas, which helped, but soon I was back to sitting in an empty store for hours at a time, bagging die cuts in the back room. More of a punishment than a job!

I felt so guilty, being so unhappy at an easy and mindless job that could bring in extra money for the house. What did I have to complain about? Meanwhile, the house was filthy, we ate out way too much, and I couldn't keep up with anything at home--because I was coming home every night exhausted from my empty day. It was like I was absorbing failure through my pores, working in that failing store and powerless to do anything about it.

So one day, I took an old Somerset Studio magazine to work for something to leaf through while eating lunch, and I got all weepy while I was looking at it. The magazine is total eye candy, lots of paper art pieces from artists big and small, and although I don't aspire to that level of artistry, I got teary-eyed about halfway through it, overwhelmed at the nice things other people were creating while I slid die cuts into plastic bags 8 hours a day.

That was when I finally, finally realized it was time to let it go.

Todd said tonight, "So are you going to pick up your blog again, now that you have some free time?" Isn't that DARLING of him, to miss reading what I write??? He's so precious.

And indeed I was and am planning to start writing again. I felt like I couldn' write, talk, or think until I had that job out of my life and was safely away. And now I am, and now I am going to enjoy having my life back in my own hands again. Hooray!

Catch-up.

I've been trying for over a week to post some pics of the bushes we planted around our house last weekend, but Blogger simply refuses to cooperate. Is anyone else having Blooger issues lately?

I guess you get what you pay for, with Blogger. Pppppbt.

I came to a breaking point last week and decided I couldn't deal with my part-time LSS job anymore, for a variety of reasons that I can't get into on a public blog, but might, after I've quit once and for all. I gave my notice today and hope to be out by Easter at the very latest.

When that happens, I'll be overhauling my blog, my home, and my life. That's the plan, anyway!

This week, however, it's work, work, work. I'll keep trying to post those pics, I know everyone is breathless with the desire to see our shrubberies!

Trees.

Oh, what a change a week makes! Here are our flowering backyard trees now. So gorgeous.

If anyone can tell me what these trees are, I'd be most grateful. They're taller than almost any flowering tree I've ever seen, except for the sour cherry we used to have in the front yard when I was growing up.

Isn't our yard heavenly? I can't wait till the trees at the back leaf out, because then it will just be stunning. I have so many things I want to try in this yard...landscaping, and little pretty spots scattered about, flower beds and tchotchkes...it'll take years to get to it all.

The yard is full of birds right now, fluttering around, building nests and screeching at each other. I think some mourning doves are nesting in the magnolia beside my deck. This yard is my favorite thing about the house...I hope we can make it live up to all its potential!

A few layouts.

I had the most fabulous weekend...I scrapped all day Saturday and most of Sundayafternoon. It was heavenly. I can't remember the last time I made a page just for myself.

Anyway, here's the highlights of what I did. I started with my most recent photos and worked backwards towards the beginning of this year:

Todd's birthday:

My viola/pansy pictures that I posted here last week:

Todd's striper fishing pictures from early February:

And pages about Natalie and Marissa from our January visit there:

Off to work now. It's over 80 degrees here today--amazing!

Blog challenge.

I already wrote my post for today, but there's a blog challenge at Two Peas today, and I wanted to do it, for once.

1. List the people from your past who you would like to reconnect with through Email.( if only you could find them...)

I can only think of one, and that's Brent Shrum from college. Well, there are a few people from high school I'm curious about, but...eh. I know I could track Brent down if I really wanted to...he's a reporter for a paper in Montana. I guess I need to make the effort!

2. List the companies you wish you owned.

I wish I owned Land's End because my first Owner's Decree would be to supply me with a hundred pairs of petite yoga pants in every color of the rainbow. Then I'd put them to work on petite jeans. Not "petite" as in five inches too long for my short legs.

(Can you tell I had a bad jeans-buying experience this week?)

3. List the things you do to defy aging.

I act as immature as possible. *smirk*
I sing along with the radio a lot...make up words for the fun of it...don't mess around with my face too much, as far as my skin goes...drink lots of water...color my gray hair when I remember...play with kids...
I guess there's a difference between aging mentally and aging physically--I don't want to do either one, but the mental part is the only thing I can do anything about.
(Things I should do to defy aging: learn a foreign language, walk, lift weights, eat more veggies, get good at crossword puzzles...)

4. List what you do to snap out of a bad mood.

Play music loudly and do some cleaning and/or organizing.

Welcome, spring?

If I had any doubt spring was here, today would definitely prove it to my satisfaction. It's sunny and in the seventies and just beautiful.

Here's the trees outside my upstairs deck, blooming their little hearts out. I have to find out what all these trees in the yard are--I hate feeling so ignorant about my surroundings!

Another sign of spring--I delved into my box o' flip-flops today for the first time. Last summer I bought so many pairs of flip-flops that I had to also buy a big Sterilite tote to store them all when cold weather came. Can't wait to get more flip-flops this year! I even took a picture of some of them last summer, planning to do a layout about my newfound love. I never did, but maybe I need to!

So when I took out the flip-flops and stuck my pitiful winter-pale feet into them, I realized that the next thing that needed to happen was a pedicure. So I went and got me one this afternoon.

Here's my toes--still pale, but at least colorful:

Now I guess I need to break out the spring clothes. I hate that part of spring. All those clothes that you were almost too fat to wear at the end of summer, and told yourself you'd lose enough weight over the winter so that they'd look good next year...yeah, right. Who loses weight in the wintertime?

And spring reveals your figure flaws that you'd semi-hidden under jeans and sweaters all winter long and pretended weren't there. Ugh.

And spring also means new clothes shopping--for me, anyway. All that too-tight stuff has to go, and you're shopping for roomier capris, like maybe circus-fat-lady style. Do they make 'em that big?

Hm. I definitely have mixed feelings about spring.

In other news, I got a call from Borders that a CD I ordered came in, so I dropped by and picked that up. This was a weird thing...I found out about Pandora Radio a couple weeks ago, which is a free site where you type in an artist or song name, and the site generates a "radio station" with artists that share traits with that original artist.

So one of the first artists I entered was the Beatles, of course, and I was puttering around listening to the various songs that popped up, and this amazing-sounding song came on. I rushed over to see what it was, and it was called "The Weakest Shade of Blue" by the Pernice Brothers. Never heard of them in my life, but I checked out their albums and made a mental note to try and get the one with that song on it.

A couple nights later, we were watching yet another Gilmore Girls DVD, and this snippet of a song played over the beginning of a scene. It was that song! And it sounded just as amazing. So I went and got the CD--had to special order it and everything.

The album is Yours, Mine and Ours by the Pernice Brothers...I'm listening to it right now and really enjoying it. Great for a spring day.

Saturday night catch-up.

I wanted to post a few pics of some of the stuff I got last weekend, but I can't find the camera battery. So here are some pictures already on the memory card...I plan to make a layout with these and call it "The Power of Sun."

This is a mixed pot I bought from my favorite nursery, the Flower Pot, last October. The owner was very proud of these pots, because he'd mixed two violas and a pansy with some sage and thyme--all plants that would make it well through our mild winter. The combination was really different.




I had the pot on our north-facing, shaded porch all winter, and it did okay...then we moved to this house and the pot went onto the south-facing porch in full sunshine almost every day--and it just exploded with flowers. What a pleasure to have flowers growing at the front door in January and February!






I know this will post funky with all the different pictures, but I can cross my fingers anyway.

In other news, we've had a couple scary health events in my family lately. My grandma fell and broke her hip a week ago while vacuuming. She'll be 86 in May, so it's a serious thing. However, the doctors were very optimistic, got her right into surgery, and she's already up walking with a walker and doing physical therapy. Because she's stayed active, her chances of healing were greatly improved.(note to self: get off butt and start exercising!)

She'll be in a skilled nursing facility for another week or two, but so far so good. She and Grandpa have had a hard couple years, but they are so determined to live on their own for as long as they can. It's hard, but I can't really blame them.

And Todd's sister Lisa called today to say that our niece Anna had also been in the hospital for a couple nights this week. Seems that she's had an allergic reaction to something--they're not sure what, but she erupted in a horrible rash after getting an antibiotic shot for a lingering ear infection. She came home today, but they're still waiting for the rash to subside. And it looks like she'll be getting some pinpricks with an allergy panel in a few weeks. Poor baby--she's only 20 months old!

I am recovering this weekend from my second D&C in eight months...I was actually looking forward to it this time, because I knew it would involve a nice nap, a day on the couch, and those great heated blankies the nurses put on you. I was really looking forward to the heated blankies! I felt great yesterday after a day of sleep, and I felt okay today, too, but tonight my tummy hurts a little. Nothing too bad, though.

I stupidly agreed to do another last-minute project for the Fiskars insert, knowing full well I was having surgery this weekend, but I think I got it mostly done today, so that's a relief. Tomorrow I want to get it approved if the Fiskars girls are checking their e-mail this weekend, and type up all my instructions and supply lists so everything can go in the mail Monday so as to arrive Wednesday.

Every week I think, this will be the week when life goes back to normal and I can relax a little, but I think normal may be gone...at least the normal I used to have. We're still working on the house in dribs and drabs--Todd moved the living room around for me last week after a prolonged whine on my part, and it looks much better. The huge TV is in a corner now, where it doesn't dominate the room as much. The couch is now angled across the living room to face the TV. It fills the long narrow room a little better, I think, and now maybe I am ready to start hanging all these pictures and shelves that are clogging the floors!

That's all for now.

Ambushed at the quilt show.

Why didn't anyone ever warn me that the danger of quilt shows isn't in the sewing supplies???

My friend Cheryl and I went to the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in Hampton today, and I was expecting to be buying lots of ribbons and fibers and buttons and maybe even fabric although I don't sew--well, there were bigger temptations lurking.

Who knew that they sell jewelry at these things? Vintage jewelry made from old china and antique buttons!

I bought the most beautiful bracelet made from circa-1870s celluloid buttons. Each button has a tiny image on it, birds and butterflies and a tiny castle. I could have bought every bracelet and watch at this booth...they were all stunning, like little bits of wearable history. Cheryl got a bracelet at another booth that was made from old pearl buttons. Oh, and I got a small necklace charm made from a bit of floral china.

We also found a booth chock-full of ribbons and buttons and buckles and trims, most of which were vintage. Although the booth owner had the people skills you'd expect of a New Englander, she did know how to merchandise. The buttons were grouped by colors in vintage jars. The ribbons were wrapped around old spools and piled in baskets. The whole thing was formulated precisely to appeal to crafty ladies who love old stuff. Needless to say, Cheryl and I spent a lot of time there. I picked out a handful of old green, teal and orange buttons to go on the tabtops of my future scraproom curtains.

I also got Mother's Day/birthday presents for my mom and MIL, but I can't elaborate because I know they read this! Neener, neener!

Oh yeah, there were some pretty quilts, too. Heh, they faded into the background after we started discovering the vintage doodads booths, but we really did enjoy seeing them. The colors and textures were a feast for the eyes. I hadn't realized now many people are doing 3-D quilting, with lily pads and bird's tails that spring out from the quilt. Lots of hand-dyed, variegated and batik fabrics in the quilts, too, which were so, so lovely.

I just never dreamed I'd buy so much non-craft stuff at a quilt show. Dangerous, very dangerous.

Birthday boy.

Thirty-six years ago today, this precious little baby boy was born...and he grew up into a lovely man and I married him! Happy birthday, sweetie! I love you so much, and remember: you're not getting older, you're getting better. Or some crap like that. Also wanted to remind you: no matter how old you get, you'll still be older than me.

Anything else I can do to rub in the fact of your advancing age, just let me know. I'm here for you, babe.

Of course, I know you'll be here for me in eight months when my turn comes, too, so maybe I'd better just leave it at "Happy Birthday, Sweetie!" and a cheesy grin.

Pretties.

I bought these tulips a couple weeks ago, and I just uploaded the pics off the memory card. They were so gorgeous against my apple-green wall.

Where I left off.

Well, it took a couple days but the freaking headache finally went away. Sheesh!

Anyway, this writing class...it's been really interesting. It was a six-week workshop in Becky's wonderful scraproom above her garage. We all sat at a gorgeous wood table and wrote. I snagged the chair on the side of the table where I could look out the window at her view of Back Creek...oh, I'm so pea-green with envy about her room with a view!

Becky lost her daughter to MS three years ago, and began her writing workshops as a way to talk with others about writing your story, writing through grief, telling the things that need to be told. I have come to admire this lady so much...she is such a giving, creative person with such a deep wound. I admire the way she's surrounded herself with people to teach and to learn from.

This workshop was more emotional than I had anticipated. And I wasn't completely comfortable with that. But it was a chance to get back into writing, and I explored a couple of memories that I hadn't totally understood before. Foremost was my memory of going to Washington D.C. to protest the first Iraq war 15 years ago. It was funny how it popped into my head one morning and demanded to be re-examined. Maybe I'll post the bit I wrote about it here sometime soon.

Speaking of writers, Sarah Vowell was on The Daily Show last night, and I missed it because I got caught up in some Olympic moment, so I made sure to catch her tonight on the repeat. I just read her book Assassination Vacation last week, and really enjoyed it. I like her essay books better, but how can you not love someone who makes pilgrimages to presidential assassination sites? And I mean, sites that are really, really peripherally linked. But she makes the links all come together.

The main thing I always remember from Sarah's writings is her description of going to the first GWB inauguration in 2001 and bursting into tears when he finished his oath of office. I can totally relate, although in 2001 I was still too much in a state of shock for tears. The tears came for me on Election Day 2004. Ugh.

Sarah is a year older than I am, and grew up fundamentalist Christian, which makes me feel sort of a peer connection with her, but she's about a million times more sophisticated and educated than I am, so I know I'd be completely intimidated by her. I can forgive her that, but she's friends with Jon Stewart and gets to sit and crack wise with him on The Daily Show, and that is hard to get past. I'm turning pea-green again.

Speaking of Jon Stewart, although I still profess my undying love for him, he may have to share that love from now on with Stephen Colbert. Man, I love that guy! I always loved him on The Daily Show...I loved how he would say the most appalling things with this really wicked look in his eyes. Wicked isn't even the word for it...it's this amused devilish gleam that is amazingly attractive. Mm.

And now he's got his own show where he absolutely skewers the Bill O-Reilly/Joe Scarborough pompous blowhard stereotype, and I love it. LOVE it. Jon at 11 pm and Stephen at 11:30...I'm sorry, but Letterman and Leno could never in their wildest dreams be so cool, funny and subversive.

I had other things swirling around that I wanted to write about, but my feet are soooo coooold from sitting here...I need to break out my electric blanket. I've been freezing all night!

Headache.

My alarm clock woke me up this morning, which is really unusual--I always wake up at least a few minutes before it goes off, and turn on NPR and doze for a few more minutes before getting up. But today it interrupted my dream starring Jon Stewart (yum) and yanked me into morning-time before I was quite ready.

And I woke up with a headache. A mega-headache. I had writing class first thing this morning, and I grabbed a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee on the way there, thinking the caffeine would ease it out. But although it tasted heavenly, it didn't help. The headache kept creeping up and creeping up, worse and worse as I sat there, and when I left Becky's house and walked out to my car, it had made it into the "top ten worst headaches of my life" list, quite a feat.

I came home and had lunch and popped three Tylenol, but my head is still throbbing. However, I have the day off and am fresh from my last writing class, and I want to take a little time to write about it.

Becky is a retired middle-school English teacher who has started holding six-week writing workshops in her home. I found out about the class last fall from one of the owners of the scrapbook store across the street from our former neighborhood. Becky scrapbooks, so she's a customer at that store as well as ours. I knew her only slightly, but a writing class sounded like a good thing at this stage. I took a couple creative writing classes when we lived in Idaho, but that was a long time ago, and since then the only writing I've done is journaling for scrapbook pages and instruction lists for my published work.

I'll finish this later...headache too bad now! Ugh.

Dramatic clouds.

This was the view out my study window late this afternoon. We went from 70 degrees yesterday to 32 today. We had some really wet snow flurries, but nothing that stuck. These clouds show that something was moving through, for sure.

I've spent the day working on Fiskars projects for a Paper Crafts supplement for this fall. Weird to be thinking about back-to-school projects! You'd think I'd be used to working six months ahead by now. Anyway, the first two have gone way smoother than I feared they would. I have two more small ideas in the works. Then I think I'll start planning for the October Paper Crafts call. I am anxious to jump back into the regular submittal routine, since I've been out of it for quite a while. Every now and then I think about branching out and trying for some design team work, but the magazine stuff is so nice. Good pay and exposure, and I can pretty much create whatever I want. It works well for me.

Last night I heard a sound I haven't heard in ages: a "plink, plink, plink" coming from Todd's study up the hall. That means he was playing online poker (the plinks are the sound of cards flipping), and that means that life is slowly returning to normal after our big move! For almost two months, he's been busy with projects, but this week we hit a point where leisure time is coming back. Oh, there are still boxes around and millions of things to attend to, but Todd is finding time to fish and play poker now. It's a good sign.

Lazy Sunday.

Well, it's a lazy Sunday for me, anyway. Todd and his dad are working on our closet re-modeling job, so they haven't had a relaxing weekend, but it's going well, and they get a charge out of building and hammering and planning. Todd's mom and I may run out and hit a few thrift stores today, but there's nothing that really has to be done except buy a gallon of milk. I can't express how wonderful it is to have a day where I don't have to get up and go somewhere all day long.

Todd got my countertop and wall shelves put up Friday night, so yesterday I was able to unpack a couple more boxes and free up a little more floor space in my scraproom. Now I need to really sort through everything, and I may start that this evening, but it's not something that has to be tackled right this minute.

So I'm just sitting here, listening to the hammers pound, watching a few miniscule snowflakes drift past the window, and looking forward to a pleasant day before I plunge into Monday activities. It's great.

Fish story.

Todd had a very happy afternoon today...he got to go striper fishing on his co-worker Dave's boat. A few weeks ago, some of the office guys played hooky on a Wednesday afternoon, and had a super day. Alas, Todd decided to be responsible that day, stayed at work, and had to listen to phone call after phone call detailing the massive stripers the guys were hauling in. He was quite woebegone by the time he got home that night!

So the next time Dave took his boat out for an afternoon trip, Todd had to go along. Alas, the stripers were all off shopping and having their nails done that day...not a bite to be had.

Today was just right. The guys hauled in huge fish all afternoon and evening. How huge? Take a look!

That's Todd in the middle with the big smile on his face, Dave on the left, Aaron on the right. Usually when Todd goes striper fishing, he never gets good photos for one reason or another, but this time he got me some fun ones to scrap!

It looks like such a warm heavenly day out on the ocean, but somehow I don't think it was. January and February are prime time for striped bass as they meet and greet each other in the bay and out in the ocean. Unfortunately, those also happen to be the coldest months here in Virginia. But it looks like the guys stayed warm lifting fish!

Stuff.

So this three-year-old kid comes into the store today with his mom. I came out of the back where I was bagging die cuts and said "Hi" to the little boy. He puts his hands on his hips and says, "Aren't you forgetting something?" like a mini diva. I was so amazed to get such an attitude from a three-year-old stranger...I said, "What am I forgetting?" His mom smiles and says, "He's wanting to play with the toys." (We keep a box of toys behind the counter for the rugrat-type of visitors.)

I couldn't decide whether to be amused or annoyed! I went with a little of each. It was all in the way he said it, like a 15-year-old girl on her period. Glad I'm not your mama, kid.

I indulged in a flurry of scrapbooking activity last week, making my first album for Shimelle's DoneNDusted class. You can look at it here if you're interested. We're just finishing up week two in the class, and although I was inspired by the topic, no album is forthcoming.

The week two album is a small album where you use three words to decribe your passion. Well, the only passion I could come up with was driving in my car and singing along to the radio. Hey, I never claimed to be deep. So I decided to do an album of road trip songs, which morphed into a collage-with-lyrics album idea, which doesn't at all fit the class album's theme and structure. So I started on my own idea, and have played around with it a little, but I have this sinking feeling it will end up yet another of my unfinished projects. All the creating mojo I was feeling last week has drizzled away.

The problem is my scraproom, and the boxes in it, and the lack of workspace, and the dilemma of where to put everything so I can live in here. I did sort of a mental "la la la I'm not listening" in here last week and was able to plow through the mess, but now it's bogging me down.

You'd think I could just move my old scraproom furniture into my new scraproom, bim bam boom, but not only is this room smaller, it's configured differently. I'm really at a loss as to how to get everything in the way I need it. However, the teal paint on the walls is indeed bitchin'. I guess the rest will fall into place, but I need it to happen soon...I have deadlines again. Fiskars and Paper Crafts.

I picked up the spring Stamp It today, and my Mother's Day stationery set was there, page 32. I'm always, always blown away by how well they photograph my stuff so it looks way better than I ever dreamed it could. It actually looks professional, and not like I threw it together in a fit of anxiety, heh heh.

So seeing my work in print always fires me up to submit more...really, to plunge back into it since my submissions have totally dried up between work and the holidays and moving...I just gotta get this room in shape and then figure out how to overcome the tiredness and carve out some time to indulge in creating. Hm. Seems like a lot to ask.

Our humble abode.

I was talking to my friend Bev last night and she mentioned that she hadn't seen any pics of our house yet. Which reminded me that I had tried once to post pics here weeks and weeks ago, but failed. So I'll try again!

Here it is: 213 Stony Ridge Court:



We really are on a ridge...we look out over all the neighborhood from our perch. On this flat, swampy peninsula, a ridge is like a mountain! When the Great Atlantic Tsunami comes, we'll be sitting high and dry. Hopefully.

A view of the backyard from the upstairs deck:

And a view of the back side of the house:

The upstairs deck opens off my study/scraproom, and the downstairs deck opens off the dining room.

This weekend I finally got a pile of small things done that had been gathering necessity over the past couple weeks. I re-painted the last tiny bit of kitchen, which has been waiting for a month or so. There's a tiny alcove at the end of the kitchen with two closets, a half-bath and the door to the garage branching off it. While originally painting it, I brushed up against either wall while crouching and contorting myself to get every crevice. So I finally got around to giving it a nice neat second coat--now I can take the tape off and feel like it's done.

I also got four loads of laundry done, a couple more boxes unpacked, and moved everything from the guest bath which we've been using to the master bath which has been sitting empty. We made a mega-run to Target and got shelving for the bath...and I found the cutest shower curtain on clearance. I still want to completely overhaul all the bathrooms--they all need paint, new floors and new sinks/counters, but it looks nice now and useable, so that's a step in the right direction. I'm starting to be able to visualize the end result, rather than chaos unending!

It was so great to have a couple days to putz around here and take care of some of the stuff that's been piling up.

Good for the soul.

I'm in love with another man. I've never met him, but he fulfills my needs in a way I've never experienced before. His name? Trader Joe.

I wrote about my wonderful Farm Fresh grocery store a couple months ago, but we've moved now, and it's too far away for the drop-in visit now. I miss it so!

But Trader Joe's which opened here in December, just happens to be placed right in the middle of the 20 minute-trip from my new house to work, if I don't take the highway, which I do some days.

It's a small store, but it's chock-full of organic fruits and veggies, exotic frozen dinners, frozen organic veggies, cereals, crackers, delicious chocolates, rices and pastas and hormone-free milk.

Right now I'm snacking on Chocolate Raspberry Sticks, which are two bites of sheer heaven. I stopped by this afternoon to pick up some Emergen-C fruit drink, which my realtor told me helps stave off colds, which I feel like I am getting merely a month after my last cold from hell. But chocolate is good for cold prevention, too, right?

The rest of this afternoon, I'm going to work on my first album for a three-week, three-album online class by Shimelle Laine. I was thinking about taking a class at Big Picture Scrapbooking, after Beth showed me her adorable mini-album she made in a class there, but then I got to poking around on Shimelle's site, and I decided to try that one first. It's a class called DoneNDusted. I am so much in need of some small, completed projects that will allow me to do whatever I want, in a new vein. My creativity has been at a low ebb, and unfortunately, now that I feel it slowly stirring back to life, my time is also at a low ebb. I am dying for just one day, a single day, with nowhere to go and no one to talk to. Is it even possible??? I used to have those luxuries all the time, and too much of a luxury is definitely a bad thing, but now I'm too far at the other end of the spectrum.

Off to play for a precious little bit...

Abigail.

The other night I defiantly sat down to watch TV among the boxes. Todd passed through the living room and said, "Why aren't you working?" By that time, I'd flipped to the very beginning of American Experience on PBS, and I watched as I unpacked a few token boxes, just to pacify the man.

Well. This particular episode was about John and Abigail Adams, beautifully played by Simon Russell Beale (Charles Musgrove in one of my favorite movies, Persuasion) and Linda Emond. The characters only spoke words directly from the letters the Adamses wrote to each other during their long marriage, and they came to life so vividly. David McCullough narrated the show...I imagine much of it was drawn from his book on Adams.

That Abigail. What a woman. What a thinker! "We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them." I'd like to have this engraved on a rock and toss it through the Oval Office window. Oops, hope some NSA guy isn't reading this.

"These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great challenges are formed. . . . Great necessities call out great virtues." This quote is a challenge to me. I love the still calm of life, I crave it. Do I really need great virtues? Can't I just be middling good?

And of course, "Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could." Take that, husband who wants me to unpack boxes.

The stuff about John was good, but it was Abigail who really shone out of that story. Raising kids, running a farm, and keeping an ear to the ground along the way for war news and political news to pass along to her husband, and finding the time to throw her own cogent opinions and thoughts into those long letters...she needs to be in the pantheon of patriots right up there with Jefferson and Washington. Her picture should be on classroom walls for all us American girls to look up to and aspire to, because she was an American girl to the bone: strong, savvy, saucy and smart.

My laundry woes.

Life in a new house is always a series of adjustments, but the worst adjustments of all are the unexpected ones.

This house came with a washer and dryer, hooked up in the garage. We knew from the first day we considered the house that this would have to change, because Todd needs lots and lots of garage real-estate for his tools...and because I don't want to do laundry next to a table saw covered an inch deep in sawdust and grease. Also, the garage smells like a dog's toilet, which I think isn't too far from the truth. Not pleasant.

The house has a downstairs storage closet located on the same wall as the washer/dryer hook-ups, just on the other side of the wall from the garage. So we planned to expand the closet so it could accomodate a stackable washer and dryer, and thus spare us both from a garage/laundry conflict.

Last week, Todd hooked up our new stackables, in the garage for now, until he and his dad can do the closet re-model, hopefully next month. I had six loads of laundry waiting...more than usual, because things got backed up during the last frantic days of moving. I hauled the first load down to the garage, and holding my breath against the dog pee smell, programmed the washer.

As I pushed the buttons, I noticed that the green number in the LCD window said 55. I honestly, fleetingly, thought for a moment that this was the washer's speed limit. (I may have hummed a snatch of "I Can't Drive 55.") Then it dawned on me, to my horror, that this was the load time. From the first push of the button to the last revolution of the tub...fifty-five minutes.

Worse news followed when I crammed that first load into the dryer and again, programmed it. The LCD window read 1:36. As in one hour and thirty-six minutes to dry the load that I'd been waiting for an hour to finish washing.

This saga began at 4:15. By the time I went to bed at 10:30, I had completed and folded three loads of laundry. A fourth was still drying, a fifth sat in the washer waiting for the dryer, and a sixth was still dirty in the basket.

I've never really minded doing laundry. As household chores go, it's way above cleaning toilets...it's really probably the only chore I don't hate. Until now. I've always been a get-it-done-at-once laundrywoman, which is possible since there's only two of us dirtying clothes in this family. I take an afternoon and do three or four loads while I'm scrapbooking or reading or putzing around the house. In our condo, the laundry room was steps away from the bedroom, which made laundry day a total breeze.

On Friday night, I sensed that this era was coming to an end, and that laundry may shoot to the top of my hated household chores list. I understood, when we looked at the stackables, that the loads would have to be smaller and probably more frequent, simply because the tubs were smaller. But I never dreamed the time limit would be so much longer. The only way to cope with this 155-minute-per-load problem is to do a load a day...maybe throw it in the washer as I leave for work, throw it in the dryer when I come home from work, and fold it and put it away before bed. I can't tell you how much this depresses me. I used to think about laundry exactly once every 5-to-8 days, freeing my mind for infinitely more important matters. Now I have to think about it every day. Goodbye, Nobel Prize, I guess.