Babbles.

I'm up late at night again, talking to myself. Todd conked out at 9:30 while we were watching "The New Adventures of Old Christine" on DVD. I love Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Anybody who can look that good at whatever her age is--without getting all plastic-surgery-freakish--is a hero to me. (Wikipedia says she's 48.) And she is so funny, and she loves being funny and doing whatever it takes to get the laugh. Love it!

We had fajitas tonight because I saw Tyler Florence make them on the Food Network last week and they looked delicious. I used his recipe, which calls for chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, which I'm sure are stacked in mountains on the grocery store shelves in L.A. and New York, but which are harder to come by here in what we fondly call the butt crack of Virginia.

I had to go to two different stores to find them, and in the second store, I had to keep muttering "chipotles in adobo, chipotles in adobo" to myself as I was shopping, so I wouldn't forget to go back to the Mexican aisle and pick them up, as I'd already passed that aisle once and forgotten.

It occurred to me that "chipotles in adobo" would be a good mantra if you were in one of the goofier meditative religions and needed a catchy mantra. It's just this side of nonsensical, especially if you mutter it 10 or 20 times.

I think weird thoughts in the grocery store. At my old grocery store, I would wheel my cart around and sing along with the oldies they played on the Muzak system, so chanting grocery items is a step up from that, I think. Maybe not. Anyway, the fajitas were good. It was hard to scrub the chipotle stink off my hands, though.

I was doing really well for a long time with planning meals, making grocery lists, and cooking, but somehow the double whammy of Christmas travel and being sick really threw me off my stride. We're still eating at home most of the time, but I'm scrounging around at the last moment every night for an idea, and I don't like that. I need to get back into my groove.

The couponing has just been dreadful lately, too, and that's also disheartening. There are so many of them I just can't or won't use because the products are too salty or too gross or whatever, and it seems like the ones I do use are getting worse. 50¢ off one item is much better (when your store doubles and triples coupons under 99¢) than $1.00 off two items is. And the sticker shock is such that I really feel motivated to get those coupons and USE them with the sales. It's just not happening.

I've been having to go to my happy place a lot the past few days because of my anxiety over this economic stimulus package and the cost of it and hearing every day about jobs lost, and homes lost, and the post office talking about cutting back mail days because it's so broke...it's all a little disturbing. I try not to fret about it because there's nothing I can do about any of it, but it's this nagging worry and you can't help but wonder how bad it's really going to get. And you have no idea who to believe about what we need to do to fix it all. It's not keeping me up nights, but I know there are lots and lots of people who are having sleepless nights wondering how they're going to survive, and I feel terrible for them. We are doing okay for now--Todd's company has more work than they have people to do it--but I don't want to get complacent. Things can change in an instant.

And on that cheerful note--night-night.

Thank you, thank you for the sweet comments below. When I started writing that last post, I certainly wasn't thinking it would turn into what the girls at Two Peas call a PVM (please validate me) post, but it kind of did! So thanks for the validation. Sometimes you just need a pat on the back, I guess.

We are having a big pile of lousy weather here--no snow, but lots of rain and wind, both of which are currently slamming against my study windows. It was about 60 degrees this morning, so I opened some of the downstairs windows to let the fresh air blow around a little. But the window screens smell funky, so the air that blew through them ended up smelling funky, too. Is there some homemaker rule about regularly scrubbing down window screens that I missed out on, along with all the other homemaker rules I missed out on? Is this a job for Febreze?

I saw on somebody's blog the other day where she wrapped a store-bought candle with fancy paper, so I grabbed a scrap of paper and an old sticker that were on top of a pile of supplies sitting on the floor, and covered a Glade candle.

You could really get fancy with such a project, but I was in a slap-it-on mood. It's a strawberries-and-cream scent, and it smells so good. On a gloomy day like today, you want a nice summery scent, something that reminds you of sunshine. But now I want some strawberry ice cream.

I'm feeling very scratchy and impatient with myself today. I don't seem to be able to get into the zone on anything I've attempted, all day long. Everything I touch seems to break or stop working. Urgh.

Hope the sun comes out tomorrow, that would be quite nice!

Blogs and bleah-gs.

I've been perusing a lot of different blogs the past month or so...first I was visiting a lot of blogs from participants in the Journal Your Christmas class, and lately I've been looking for some more good blogs about home decor and/or thrifting and vintage stuff.

All this blog-reading (bleading?) has cemented in my mind what I like and what I don't like in the world of blogs. I'm only going to link to examples of what I do like...examples of what I don't like should spring to mind readily enough for anybody who's blog-surfed even a little.

--I like a blog with nice big type on a light-colored background. Not too big, I don't need the large-print setting (yet) but not wee wee tiny, either. White words on a black background = your prose had better be right up there with Dickens and Twain to make me stick around and risk irreversible eye strain.

Here's a very nice example of a perfectly typeset blog, written by the perfectly wonderful Suzanne: Notes For My Kids' Therapist.

--While I'm talking type...I don't need you to change fonts and colors every couple of sentences or make various sentences or words real big while the rest of your typing is normal-size. It makes you look like a thirteen-year-old. I've noticed that the quality of writing on these types of blogs is usually at the thirteen-year-old level, too.

This is the neatest, tidiest, most grown-up-looking blog I know of: Simply Recipes. The side ads are an unfortunate development, but if it means success for Elise, I can deal.

--Here's a hint: if your blog header takes up my entire computer screen, I'm going to feel less and less compelled to scroll down past it every time I visit. Yes, I have blog header envy, since I still haven't found someone who will explain to me in baby talk how to make a fancy one for myself, but still. Bigger is not always better.

This is one of my favoritest blog headers ever...so clean, so simple, so freshvintage.

Another nice one: Gracious Hospitality.

--Funny is good. Sarcastic funny is even better. But your blog doesn't even have to be funny or clever, just well-written. A few bloggers whose writing style I admire:

Vintage Rescue Squad

I Am Not Left-Handed

Thrift Shop Romantic

Red Molly

--I like music. You like music, too. But we probably don't like the same kind of music. And when your nifty playlist player on the sidebar starts to blast out something very loud a few seconds or even minutes after I've come to your blog, usually over top of whatever I'm listening to at the moment, it scares the beejeebers out of me and makes me want to run away and never come back. 'Kay?

--I love seeing pictures of what you found at the flea market. Not so crazy about seeing pictures of what you spotted in some high-end catalog that you're currently dying for. Flea market finds are way more interesting than designer clocks.

--I don't know if blogging should be about writing about your exciting life, or about making your boring life sound exciting. I prefer hearing about boring lives, though. The exciting, fancy lives just make me feel old and, well...boring.

I would never say any of these people's lives are boring, but they're normal and they make me feel kinship, instead of horrible bitter jealousy:

Bigger Than a Breadbox

Oodles and Oodles

My Romantic Home

One Woman's Cottage Life

Mint Basil

I love getting peeps into other people's lives. I think, at its best, that's what blogging should be about: the words, the pictures, and getting to really know the people you visit regularly. I hope this blog is like that. All the extra stuff is distraction. I've been writing this blog for almost four years, and I think about yanking the plug at least once a month. It's a little of this and a little of that, and none of it feels terribly interesting. I don't get a lot of traffic, I don't have an Etsy shop, I'm not plugging a project, I don't run with any hip blogging crowd. It's just me here, typing words as they come to mind. I feel constrained sometimes by what I don't want people to know about me, especially the people who come here who do know me.

Mmm...introspection. Or in other words, "Like a doofus, I had caff-tea with supper and now I'm buzzed up late at night and thinking thoughts!"

Anyway, if you stop by here on occasion, I hope you like my blog. Chances are, I'm liking yours, too.

Paint chips.

Well, we've been doing some house project planning...I finally finished the last interior door (*fanfare*) and Saturday we picked up the big bi-fold doors for our bedroom closet. So, I guess technically, I haven't finished the last interior door, but it was the last regular door, and let me enjoy my feeling of accomplishment, okay?

Once again we're turning our attention to our two bathroom re-dos, but I think this time we may actually get one of them done in the foreseeable future. I'd love to do both bathrooms in one huge swoop of productivity, but Todd is dubious that such a feat is possible. Both bathrooms need new paint on baseboards and walls, new flooring, new vanities, new sinktops, and new medicine cabinet doors.

Over on the right are the latest of the many, many paint chips I've picked up for our master bath. I'd like it to be some shade of light blue or a light teal, to coordinate with our bedroom, which has light coffee-colored walls and blue and teal accents.

Blue is a tricky color. I've never dithered around with a paint color as much as I have with this one. You don't want it too icy, or too bright. Nothing's worse than electric blue walls. We painted our bedroom light blue in the last house we owned, and although it was soothing at night, it was just this side of screechy in the daytime.

This bathroom has a south-facing window, so it gets lots of light, which also really affects the way a particular shade of blue looks at a particular time of day. I'm stumped so far. I know I don't want a really, really pale blue, but neither do I want it to be too dark. I like the idea of a light teal, but again, it can't be too dark. One of the things we like about the bathroom is how full of light it is, and we don't want to detract from that too much with a dark wall color.

These kinds of things are fun to fuss over--until it's go-time and you have to make a decision. Fortunately, I still have some fussing time left. We'll tackle the guest bath first and who knows when the master bath will get its due. I suspect it will need a new sub-floor, which will elevate it to a whole new level of home improvement headache.

Anyway, Todd likes the second chip from the top, which is called Lisbon Blue. I like it, too, but when I picture it on four whole walls, I think it might be a little screechy. Which one do you like?

I think they all look nice with my old framed postcards, which are the main decoration in the limited wall space of that bathroom. I collected a bunch of them years ago that each had a body of water in the picture, and framed them in super-cheap IKEA frames that I white-washed. They used to hang in a dark green bathroom in our old house in Columbus, and looked nice there, but I think they might really pop against the right shade of blue. I have eight of them all lined up against the right side of the window.

This is always a nice time of year to look around and think about new ways to feather your nest. It's too cold to be out and about too much, and so you can rummage through closets and find treasures and hang and rearrange things. I've been going through kitchen cupboards and drawers and tossing things and organizing. The only danger is when you make a bigger mess than you had before, and then you have to figure out how to get it all put away. That's when it's tempting to just forget the big projects and cuddle up with a blanket and book and keep the house tidy!

Giveaway alert!

Jeune Girl Crafts is giving away a nice big custom-decorated Provo Craft wall letter on her blog--go over and leave a comment for a chance to win!

It's almost at the end, but Casii at Granny Panty Chic is also doing a great giveaway, so be sure to check that out before tomorrow, too!

See ya later!

President Obama.

I haven't written very much about Barack Obama in my blog. It's hard for a hopeful yet cynical person to know what to say about him.

I have never been a sloganeer or a follower or a breathless believer in much of anything. I haven't trusted a politician since Gary Hart broke my 14-year-old heart in 1984.

So I don't have much use for "Yes, we can!" or for the people who seem to think that the minute Obama places his hand on the Bible, America will spring into glorious Technicolor, just like when Dorothy stepped out of her house into Oz. Nobody, and certainly no politician, has that kind of power in this country. Obama is taking on the presidency at a scary and dangerous moment, and most of his plans will fall under the twists and turns of forces and people outside his control.

But I did vote for him, and I am excited about today and I do like him. The main thing that makes me root for him to succeed is that he's my kind of person. He's a reader. He likes to think and talk about big ideas. He likes to look at all the different sides of a thing. He seems to take his life's responsibilities seriously. I just hope someone like that can succeed in today's Presidency.

The former President was the exact opposite of my kind of person. He could not have been more opposite. The only thing I kind of liked about him was that he could be a bit of a smartass. But since he was usually being a smartass about things that are important to me like...oh...war...and you know, the Constitution and stuff, I didn't fully appreciate that side of him, either.

Anyway, I'm pretty neutral about what Obama will be able to do--not quite pessimistic, not quite optimistic. More of a wait-and-see setting. The disappointments of the Clinton era are still a little too fresh in my mind for me to think that Obama will be able to enact many, if any, of the major changes he has in mind. I just hope he stays safe and healthy, that his wife and daughters thrive in their new life, and that we see some real cooperation and agreement in our government on where to go from here.

Just kidding about that last part. That would be Oz!

Buh-bye.

The time has come to say good-bye. So, guys...

...For all that you did.
...For all that you didn't do.
...For all that you did and pretended you didn't do.
...For all that you didn't do but patted yourselves on the back for anyway.
...For all that one of you did while the other was oblivious.
...For all that one of you did while the other pulled the strings.
...For all that you ignored, neglected, manipulated, obstructed, hid, scoffed at, and just plain screwed up.
...For all the power grabs, bogus invasions, signing statements, late-night Justice department phone calls, facial shootings, malapropisms, record deficits, wiretappings, waterboardings, vacation days, and deleted e-mails.

For all these things and more, we'll never forget you guys.

Even though we wish we could.

Don't let the back door hit ya where the good Lord split ya.

A winner!

When you get up on Monday morning and your first task is to get that last closet door painted, the one you've been putting off for four or five months, and then you can't find a paintbrush anywhere...so you move on to the next task, which is to vacuum up the Christmas tree needles and glitter flakes from the tree and ornaments you took down three weeks ago, and the vacuum blows a circuit breaker ten seconds in...to me that's fate's way of saying, "Janelle, forget all this pesky housework and go do your blog giveaway."

So Brittney, my Canadian friend, congrats!!! You win the magazine, the notecards, and anything else I can find around here and shove into a big envelope. (Be afraid, be very afraid.) And thanks, everybody else, for stopping by and entering. I like having visitors here, even if my blog isn't quite the most fascinating or stimulating thing on the Internet! And now I have some new friends' blogs to visit, too, so thanks!

More later...I have to get back to my household tasks and see what else will go awry today. Maybe I can chop off a finger and get out of housework forever!

Away again, for reals.

Todd got home tonight from his week in Maryland, and tomorrow we're just making a quick run over to the middle part of the state, to have a birthday dinner with my brother's family (my brother turned 34 on the 13th; my niece turns 6 on the 20th) and then lunch the next day with my cousin.

I found some cute cards in the dollar section at Michael's and blinged them up with some Stickles, so they're going into the giveaway jackpot, too. I'd take a picture but I can't lay hands on my camera at the moment. Doh.

See ya later!

Giveaway.

In all my cleaning and sorting, I discovered that I have two copies of the 2008 issue of Somerset Home. I have no idea how that happened, I can't believe that I could have bought it twice, but I guess that's what happened.

So I'm going to give it away here, along with a few other goodies I'll scrounge up and add to it. Maybe a few vintage papers, maybe this, maybe that, you never know what I'll find in my scrounging!

If you think you'd like the mag (which is a terrific one) and the goodies, just leave a comment on this post between now and Sunday night at midnight. I'll draw someone at random to receive the prize. Please be sure to leave an e-mail in your comment if you don't have your e-mail linked to your Blogger profile, so I can reach you if you win.

And if you post a link to this giveaway on your own blog, let me know in your comment and I'll enter your name in the drawing TWICE. You can't beat them odds, right?

Still here.

Well, I ended up not going along to MD--I decided at literally the last minute that I'd rather just stay here and not walk around in the frigid cold up there looking for stuff to do. I felt bad, but it seems like the right decision--Todd is working till pretty late each evening, so it's not like I would have seen much of him anyway.

I spent most of Monday and part of Tuesday sleeping, and that seems to have helped with the cold and exhaustion. (Thanks for the get well wishes!) I felt much more peppy today, and went back to the horrific mess in my study and almost got it all tamed. Tomorrow I need to do some painting and cleaning elsewhere in the house. I also have a little Valentine's Day project I really want to take some time and work on. I hate it when I buy stuff for a project and then never get it done. That's the source of half the mess in my study!

While I'm sitting here taking a breather, let me share some long-overdue photos from October, when my mother-in-law came down to visit and helped me get some curtains up. There's a very nice blog called Nesting Place whose author has come up with an idea she calls "window mistreatments." This idea really intrigued me, because I've never been fond of traditional window treatments. They're expensive and intimidating, and just not me.

When we moved into this house, the only curtains I put up were some long cream tab-tops from Target in our bedroom, and a rod-pocket valance with cherries on it in the kitchen, which Todd and I had made for our last house (remember, he's the seamstress, not me. I'm just the presser of hems.) Then my mother-in-law made me some simple panels for my study a year or two later. (You can see 'em here, just scroll down almost to the bottom of the month.)

So anyway, window mistreatments. Basically the idea is to grab a long piece of fabric, fold it over so you don't have to hem it, and then use upholstery tacks to stab it into the wall at appropriate intervals.

Viv and I are both a little more precise than that, so we did cut the fabric to the appropriate width and then hem it, rather than having bulky folds. Here's how it came out on the living room window:

The valance looked a little naked, so I went and got some $10 sheers at Wal-Mart and tacked 'em up under the valance. Voila!

In the dining room, we have long vertical blinds on the sliding glass doors to the back deck. They run on a flat, covered rail about 3" wide. I was never able to figure out an easy way to cover that up, but Viv had a brainstorm and suggested clipping fabric directly to the rail with...drumroll...mini clothespins! And it worked great! This is a piece of fabric I'd originally intended for the living room--and we had hemmed it up back when we did the study curtains, but never got around to using it. It looks great in the dining room, I think.

Here's a close-up of how she did it:

Then I had Viv whip up two simple panels with ring-clips to cover the half-bath window off the kitchen, but I don't have a good picture of that.

Now I just need some simple valances for Todd's study and some kind of nice curtain for our bathroom window, and then the house will be fully curtained. And we've only lived here three years and counting...!

Don't I have an awesome mom-in-law? My windows would all be naked but for her!

Away again.

I am heading up to Aberdeen, MD with Todd tomorrow morning to keep him company while he does some work for his company this week. Well, not while he works, but in the evenings, and on the way to and from.

I've seriously debated going, because I have a lot to do here and I am STILL not feeling 100% good, but the suitcase is packed so I have to go now, right?

I have HAD IT with feeling sick, feeling exhausted, and coughing till I pee. HAD. IT. I know I should probably stay home and go to the doctor, but I'm one of those people who has zero faith in the ability of my doctor to be any help to me. If I ignore things long enough, they usually just go away. I know that's stupid, and Todd is even worse about it than I am!

Later!

January weather.

My my my, what a gloomy day! Rainy and cold and dark!

My father-in-law is driving home through all of that, and I hope he's having a safe trip. Come to think of it, he may be home by now, or close to it, if the weather cooperated. He was here for five days and he and Todd did a ton of kayak fishing and hanging out together. It was a really nice visit.

In cleaning out my study, I found an album of pictures from Todd's family that I must have borrowed from my mother-in-law years ago (at least three moves ago, I'm thinking) and inexplicably never returned. I never scanned and saved any of the photos, either--I don't know what I was thinking. So I did that last evening so my FIL could take it back home where it belongs today.

I have seen very few photos from my FIL's side of the family--I'm not sure where they've all scattered to, but there was a nice big 8x10 in the album that definitely caught my eye:

This is the Ferrante family in 1947. Todd's great-grandparents are in the middle, surrounded by their eight children and some of the children's spouses, and the grandchildren that had come along by that time. I'm sure there were more later on.

Todd's grandpap is the second man from the left, and Todd's dad is the baby sitting on Todd's grandma's lap way over on the right.

I'm amazed they got all those kids to stand and sit so nicely, knowing firsthand how those large family group photos usually proceed. Maybe kids were better behaved back then!

It looks like Todd's great-grandparents did pretty well for themselves and their family, for a couple of Italian immigrants who came here, I'm sure, with very little. I'm always fascinated with other people's dressed-up, stylish-looking ancestors, because most of mine were Mennonites who, even if they were dressed nicely for a photographed occasion, certainly weren't dressed in the fashion of the day.

In other news, my study remains a disaster as I sit and stare at piles of things to be sorted, and heave a sigh, and move into another, tidier room for a few hours. It's crazy to have so many uncompleted projects just sitting around. Mostly pages that need to go into albums, and albums that don't have room for any more pages. Funny how that works.

I think I'll get started on some supper so I don't have to sit here and look at them anymore!

On the move.

Ahhh, I'm finally coming out of my stupor of sickness, and it feels so good!

Today I decided to take advantage of having Todd's dad here and have him and Todd rearrange the furniture in my study. I had to take everything off my big bookshelves, clear off my desk, move it all across the hall into my bedroom, and then they came in and did the heavy lifting.

Then I started bringing everything back in, pausing for occasional coughing fits. All the dust didn't help with that!

I still don't have it all put away yet...that will take a while. I have to go through everything, toss stuff out, re-pack some of it, re-organize more of it, etc. etc. And hang stuff and all that. I got my comfy chair all nestled into the corner, though, and it looks nice.

Tomorrow I'm cracking the whip again and they'll be taking down the outdoor Christmas lights and putting the tree and ornaments in the attic. Hee hee! (*rubbing hands with glee*) Men are so darn useful!

I also listed a huge stack of cookbooks on PaperbackSwap. I realize that I turn to the Internet now whenever I'm looking for a cooking idea--Allrecipes is my stand-by site. And I need the space the books are taking up. I still have plenty left, don't worry!

Then I'm going to empty out all the cabinets and drawers in the kitchen and figure out where things need to go now. I have stuff busting out of everywhere, and I know I don't need some of it. And some of it might be able to go somewhere else, too. Although it feels like all I do in this house is move things from one storage spot to another, trying to find the perfect place.

Speaking of the Internet supplanting books...do you think I should get rid of my paperback thesaurus and my big hardback dictionary? I check the Merriam-Webster and Thesaurus.com sites automatically now, before it ever occurs to me to check the actual books.

I love January. I love starting out the New Year getting organized!

Bye bye, Christmas.

Here's the last week of my Christmas journal:

I had kind of a hard time getting the last pages of this thing done. And it wasn't just the cold medicine and lack of inspiration. This was just a *blah* Christmas this year in a lot of ways. Being sick was the worst part, and missing out on seeing a lot of people. My parents were exhausted and stressed. My sister's family lost their grandpa just a couple weeks before. It was sad to see my grandma who is really just not herself anymore.

One of the really sad moments was being at my church's Christmas Eve service...it's almost always a chorus concert, and I sang in the chorus all through junior high, high school, and into college. Whenever I sit through the Christmas Eve service I always think about those years and years of previous services and how much fun they were.

The music director at our church all through those years was a great guy--smart, funny, just very, very nice. I really admired him. He committed suicide this past spring...I think it shocked almost everyone who knew him to the core. So I was sitting there on Christmas Eve listening to all those familiar voices, and thinking about all those other Christmas Eves with John directing the chorus, and I just couldn't get him out of my mind.

I got up to go to the restroom during a part where the chorus was sitting down and they were having some instrumental music, and who should I run into at the drinking fountain but John's sister. She is a fellow alto, and we stood next to each other in the alto section in the chorus.

I debated for a second whether to say anything to her about him, but I had been having such a strong sense of him, so I told her I was thinking about John. Her eyes filled with tears and she said, "I can hardly get through this night." We both just stood there and wept for a couple of minutes. It broke my heart and I still can't figure if it was right to mention him to her or not, since she had to pull it together and go back in and sing after that. I hope it helped her to know that someone else was thinking about him, too.

Sooo...just some sadness this Christmas. And this feeling that as the years go by, there will be other people I'll be missing as well. Ugh.

Not that there weren't lots of little lovely moments, too, because there were! I called them "moments of grace" in my last entry. These tiny things that connect you to the people you love, conversations, smiles, shared jokes and laughter. Thank goodness for those! I enjoyed my nephew Tanner and niece Kylie SO much this year...they are growing up into delightful people and it's fun to relate to them in a new way now that they're not "littles" any more. (Not that I don't adore the "littles" in the family--I do!) And my sweetie pie Todd makes every Christmas happy for me in a myriad of ways.

So the tree came down today and the journal is done, and I'm more than ready to move on from the holiday season and get my hands onto and into 2009.

Word for the year.

The much-revered Ali E. has a question on her blog about what one word you would choose to sum up what you want to focus on in 2009.

The word I picked is "pursue." I spent way too much of 2008 sitting on my keister waiting for things to happen. This year I am going to pursue the things I want for myself. (Right now I want to pursue a good cough remedy and a lengthy neck massage!)

What's your word?

Happy New Year!

Here I sit all alone with my cough and my laptop. Todd and his dad (who's braving our house of plague for a visit) went to bed at eleven.

So I'm lifting my water glass in a toast to a really wonderful 2009 for everybody out there! Somehow I have a good feeling about this year, I don't know why. I have a lot I want to get done and a lot I want to experience this year.

Happy New Year!!!

Cough. Cough.

I don't know how Todd can keep his hands off me--I'm hacking up virulent plague germs, I reek of Vicks Vap-O-Rub, and I'm all bleary-eyed and snotty. Nothing like being sick to make you feel really sexy! I'm all gooey from the Vap-O-Rub, too...mmmmm baby!

Still not better, but as long as I'm not coughing I feel okay. It's the coughing that's killing me; I've pulled a muscle in my neck and shoulder and my ribs are sore.

I have so much stuff I want to do...organize my craft room and my kitchen, finish my Christmas journal, rip a bunch of CDs--I never got to make it to any post-holiday sales, pout. And I need to take down my tree and find some ornament storage boxes. And the baseboards need dusting and the carpets need vacuuming. And the laundry. And the clutter. And my suitcase needs unpacked. Urgh. It's frustrating. My big accomplishment today was making it to the grocery store so we'll have food for the long weekend.

Ah well. I'm warm and comfy and I have soup, cocoa, and medicine. I'm not so bad off, right?

Home. Sick.

Well, I was having a really nice Christmas vacation till I woke up with a sore throat on Christmas morning, which was a full-blown chest cold by Friday morning. Then I spent the next couple days all alone on the couch at my in-laws' house at the lake, coughing, and missing lunch with my cousins and aunt, and also missing my sister-in-law Julie's visit with my niece and nephew, whom I only get to see twice a year.

By Sunday morning, I just wanted to be at home. It's so much easier to be sick in your own house. So we left a day early, missing my extended family's get-together and my cousin Pam's announcement of her engagement and my cousin Janine's announcement of her pregnancy. I hate missing out on stuff--I already feel like I miss out on so much, living so far away, and then to be sick for half of my trip...I was feeling pretty sad and sorry on Friday and Saturday, I can tell you.

There were a couple of silver linings:

-Since my in-laws now own two homes, I had a place to sit and be sick in peace and quiet, which was such a blessing, since every other place I could have stayed was full of people and kids.
-When you're sick, everybody's so sweet and concerned about you. It made me feel very loved, which I knew I was anyway, but it's nice to be reminded.
-Leaving early meant we were driving across rural Maryland and rural Virginia in the dark and got to enjoy a beautiful sky full of stars, not something I see much in light-polluted Hampton Roads.

That's all the silver linings I can think of, though! Well, it was probably a good thing that we left Sunday afternoon...I have been coughing worse than ever today and that would have been hard in the car. I was able to keep the coughing mostly under control on the way home with Mucinex, but today the Mucinex only seems to help for a short while, and then it's back to coughing again. I am so over the coughing!

When I was a kid, June Allyson used to do these commercials for female incontinence pads, and I used to think how horrible it would be to get so old you couldn't hold your own pee. Now I know how horrible it is--when I cough, there ain't no holding it, and it's just run, run, run to the bathroom all night long, which is exhausting in and of itself, besides the coughing.

To get through the nine-hour drive back to Virginia, I broke down and bought some of those old-lady pads, and what a help they were. And still are, as I continue to cough-and-pee. So I learned a new cold coping skill, too. I guess that's a good thing...

I had a nice time before the cold, though--my mom and I did a little shopping and had lunch on Monday and I looked through a bunch of old family photos with my dad. Tuesday we took my nephew Tanner and niece Kylie to Pittsburgh and had an absolute blast with them. They are eleven and seven years old, and exactly the right age to really enjoy stuff with. And Christmas itself wasn't so bad--I was feeling under the weather at that point, but not flat-out sick, and we had fun opening presents and having dinner. Got to spend a couple really nice evenings with my in-laws, too. So it wasn't all bad.

I was feeling pretty good this evening; the Mucinex and Vicks Vap-o-Rub were working and Todd brought me home chicken in garlic sauce and hot-and-sour soup, and I was reviving...and now I'm back to the uncontrollable coughing again. Oh well. I feel like I might have passed the worst of it. I hope so.

Hope everybody else had a happy and HEALTHY Christmas!

Up, up and away.

Well, we are getting ready to pack up and hitch up the sleigh tomorrow morning and head for warm, balmy Ohio, where it's currently snowing and about 20 degrees. I'm actually excited at the thought of seeing some snow, although I know there are plenty of people across the country who would smack me for saying that! I know Todd and I are going to freeze--our blood gets thinner every year we spend in the southlands.

I'm just sitting here waiting for Todd to get out of the bathroom so I can go in and get prettied up for his office party. The house is all cleaned up except for the vacuuming, all the presents are wrapped, and my suitcase is packed with everything but the last-minute stuff. I have the past few days' Christmas journal entries about half done, so I'll have to finish and post them when I get back. I'm really going to try and get them done even though Christmas will be over, and not put them off till November like I did last/this year!

I hope everyone who stops in at this blog has a really wonderful Christmas, safe travels, good times, and at least a moment or two of peace and calm to think about the meaning of the season, whatever that meaning is for you.

I'll sign off with one last picture...is there anything happier than a Christmas tree with lots of presents underneath? Seems a shame to pack them all up and leave the poor guy all naked down below.

Have a merry Christmas!

My favorite rooms.

I was sitting at the kitchen table after eating my Crispix this morning, having a cup of tea and surfing the net while waiting for my dryer load to finish, and I just looked around and thought how much I like this part of my house.

On the ground floor, we have the living room and entryway and stairs on the front side of the house, and the kitchen/dining room and a small half-bath on the back side of the house. The kitchen and dining room are my favorite rooms in the house, or maybe I should just say "room" since it's just one big area.


On a gray day like today, it's especially warm-feeling, with the bright lights and the green walls. And I can sit and look out the back doors at the trees.


Or I can look the other way at my messy table and desk.

Nah.

It's not fancy, but it's comfortable and warm. And I like all my stuff.

I am actually enjoying a smidgen of down time today because I've gotten so much done this week. (Patting self on back here.) Today is laundry and cleaning out the fridge and getting the downstairs tidied up, and going out for a farewell bash for one of Todd's co-workers tonight. Tomorrow is packing, getting the upstairs tidied up, and vacuuming, and then going to Todd's office party. And then Sunday morning we're off to Ohio. So it's nice to have a little patch of time where I can just enjoy being at home.

Yesterday's and today's journal entries:

My favorite raincheck.

About ten years ago, this commercial was playing on TV a lot, probably around Christmastime.

And it never fails to make me laugh out loud every single time, even a lousy copy like this. I actually have a copy of it on one of my old videotapes of MST3K--I usually edited out the commercials when I taped them, but I HAD to leave that commercial in! That kid is adorable.

I thought of it tonight when we went off to Michael's to see if Santa could get me a Cuttlebug for Christmas at 50% off, but had to settle for a raincheck. Santa said he would wrap it up in a fancy envelope for me. Chuh. Maybe I should frolic about with it and snuggle it close like the kid in the commercial!

More pages.

Isn't it funny how you start December feeling sort of on top of things, and then get busier and crazier as the days go by? Or does that just happen to me?

It's not really all that crazy here, but we're both quite busy getting last-minute gifts made and that sort of thing. We're heading to Ohio on the 21st (we decided to stay for Todd's office party on the 20th after all) so everything has to be bought, created, wrapped, and packed by then--it's always a bit of a crunch at the end when you have four or five or six days lopped off of your Christmas prep time.

I sat down for a little while this morning and got the past three days' worth of Christmas journaling done, though.


We went up to Williamsburg on Sunday to get one last gift, and stopped off at Merchants Square downtown to see a performance of "A Christmas Carol" that I'd heard about. It was a one-man (well, one man plus a stage manager named Bob), 15-minute version, performed by an actor named Ed Whitacre on a tiny set built into what looked like a little moving trailer. First he came out and explained the show, sort of like a circus barker...

And then he became Scrooge and acted out the story with the help of some strategically placed props. See that little table he's about to fall asleep on?

With a little flip, the table top comes off and becomes the ghost of Jacob Marley!

The ghost of Christmas Past came out of Scrooge's bathrobe pocket...the ghost of Christmas Present was a puppet that emerged from the picture above the fireplace:

And the ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come was a long skeleton arm that emerged from the backstage door and then pushed out Scrooge's tombstone from within the fireplace.

It was all very clever, very broadly played, with some audience participation to keep the kids interested...I really enjoyed it. Of course, I love the story of "A Christmas Carol," and even though it was a condensed version, it hit all the important bits, especially the part about getting a second chance to start over, as Ed-the-actor runs out of time when the stage manager's stopwatch hits 15 minutes before the end of the show. Ed falls into despair, but Bob the stage manager perks him up with a chorus of "The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow" and Ed leaps back into the show just in time to show Scrooge's wonderful awakening on Christmas morning. Very entertaining!

Okay, I'm off to get a few more things crossed off my to do list. See ya!

Here is Day 13, and then Day 10's entry, too...I finally got enough presents wrapped to take a nice picture.


I want to say...in case anybody happens to look at this journal and think it looks too time-consuming to do at Christmastime, it's really not. Or it doesn't have to be. I have a big pile of the papers and embellishments I picked out for this, and I just grab a couple things, slap them down, maybe rub a little ink around the edges, and call it good. It took me less than fifteen minutes to do today's entry, and that included printing out the photo.

Doing a small book (mine is 5x7" this year) and minimal journaling helps keep it fast. Next year, though, I am planning to do a lot more writing, so that will take more time. But it really has helped to make the lead-up to Christmas more special and fun for me. I've never really bought into the rush-rush, drive-yourself-crazy part of Christmas anyway, but I do get my sad or anxious or overwhelmed moments, and this journal helps keep me focused and calm. It was wonderful of Shimelle to come up with this idea and to generously leave the class open every year to those who have taken it before. The camaraderie on the forums with other people from all over the world is an added bonus!

Here's Day 12--pretty stripped down compared to yesterday!

I really want to do some Christmas baking, but I don't know who would eat it. Maybe I'll bake some stuff and send some of it to work with Todd next week...I am dying for mince tarts and fruitcake, but I think I'm the only person who would eat either one. Plus fruits and nuts are SUPER expensive this year, like everything else. Ho hum, what to do?

Meanwhile, my Christmas shopping is almost done, just one more thing to pick up, and the cards are almost all done and sent, too. And it doesn't look like we'll be going to Todd's office party, so no need to dredge up something festive to wear to that. They finally sent out invitations yesterday for a party on the 20th--good planning, that. A lot of people aren't going to be able to make it...should be a dull party, especially since the caterer doesn't have a liquor license. Most of the fun of Todd's office parties stems from the quantities of alcohol imbibed!

Anyway, we'll be en route to Ohio that day, so we won't be going, either. Ah well! So what remains on my Christmas to-do list is making a few last gifts and getting it all wrapped. I'm feeling pretty much on top of things, at least for the moment. How about you?

I've got my page for today done, but yesterday's is still awaiting a picture. The page for today looks a little demented, I think--I was trying to get a lot of things on there that don't match each other, but, oh well!

I went out and did a little holiday shopping today and it's craaaazzzy out there! I'm so glad I did 90% of my shopping online! The mall was jammed at 1:00 in the middle of a weekday afternoon--don't people have jobs anymore? Or are they all lazy good-for-nothings like me?

It was about 70 degrees and rainy, too, so all the stores were very overheated and the floors were wet and slippery. I have had the worst head-, tooth-, and jaw-ache this week from the pressure of this weather system going over us. Hopefully, hopefully, tomorrow it will be gone and we'll go back to clear and cold and this 800-pound fat man crushing my face will go back where he came from. 'Cause I'm losing my mojo in a big way right now...I just want to sit and stare out the window!

Catch-up.

I got a little behind on my journal--we've been busy and I've been tired! Here are days 7, 8, and 9. Day 7 has a few things blurred out on the "to do" list for secrecy's sake!

Steamed and pressed.

I hate to iron. Lord, how I hate it!

Wouldn't it be nice if men's shirts came with a tag that said, "WARNING: Although this shirt looks perfectly wonderful hanging on this hangar, it has been constructed in such a way that the minute it is exposed to a washer and dryer, it will immediately curl into a tight, wrinkled ball of Rubik's Cube-ian impossibility. At that point, it will vanish into the depths of your closet, never to emerge until your semi-yearly clean-out at which point it will proceed directly to the nearest charity thrift shop. So don't waste your money!"

Because you can't tell. You just can't tell! We've bought 100% cotton, we've bought cotton/synthetic blends, we've bought cheap shirts, we've bought expensive shirts, and there is absolutely no way to determine which ones will be wonderfully wrinkle-free and which ones will, well, not.

My home economics training was sadly lacking on all counts, but never more than in the ironing department. I had a toy ironing board and a little iron, but somehow that early indoctrination failed to translate into real-world expertise.

I know my mom ironed, and I can remember ironing a few skirts and dresses in high school and college when I absolutely had to (in college, on the floor on a folded towel, as I recall), but I never learned how to iron a man's shirt. I guess that's because my dad's good shirts all originated in the Era of Polyester, also known as the 70's. They were made of the same indestructible substance as his sport jackets and dress pants, which not only never needed ironing, they could simply be hosed off when a stain occurred, as the plastic fibers were impermeable to liquids of all kinds.

Now I have a husband who works a white-collar job that sadly does not require white collars, which could just be sent out to the dry cleaners. His casual-dress job calls for Dockers and casual long-sleeve dress shirts in plaids and dark solids, hardly worth a dry cleaner trip and fee.

So after two weeks of dawdling, I finally ironed the shirts that have been draped across the chest at the end of our bed. And they honestly don't look any better. I try re-tumbling them in the dryer, sometimes with a damp washcloth, but as our dryer is responsible for much of the wrinkling because it's a small stackable, that doesn't really do any good. And it doesn't help those awful buttonhole strips on the front at all. Why do they always, always wrinkle up like the ruffles on a pirate shirt? Some of Todd's shirts don't wrinkle one little bit, except for the buttonhole part. Why???

I always burn myself at least once, too, which doesn't endear me to the job at all. And I can't figure out how to iron sleeves, or that flat part across the upper back.

We've managed to get our wardrobes to the point where they need virtually no ironing, but every now and then a wrinkly shirt sneaks through. I'm always hearing about people who iron sheets and underwear and I cannot fathom the depths of boredom a person would have to sink to to consider that a worthy pastime.

So now Todd's ironed shirts hang neatly in his closet. He's not allowed to wear them ever again.

JYC Dec. 6

I always have a hard time with this topic--journaling about a good Christmas memory and a bad Christmas memory. The fact is, most of my Christmases have been great, and the ones that haven't--well, I don't want to re-visit them in a happy book! Bad memories are a little too personal and complex to share in two square inches of space.

Here's the picture full-size...it seems a shame to print them out at 2x3" but I wouldn't be able to fit anything else on the page if I printed them bigger.

I took the picture at a local church the other day...I was driving past and saw that their lampposts looked very Dickensian. Very Tim Holtz-ian, too--he did this gorgeous tag on his blog with a lamppost stamp a few days ago.

I don't have a Tim Holtz fetish, I swear...I simply want every product he has designed and a huge craft room to house it all. Is that a fetish? I certainly seem to be mentioning him a lot lately.

Todd is out searching the rivers for stripers and I am home with my little cold. Not really a full-blown cold, just this sore throat and headache that won't go away. I like being home on chilly evenings--much better than shivering in a kayak on the freezing water. Although the way Todd dresses for the cold, I think he'll be okay. It's like watching a climber suit up for Everest, with all the clothes he lays out!

Hope everybody's having a peaceful weekend!

***I'm dropping back in here...I just found out my brother-in-law Ky's dad passed away this morning. It was not unexpected, he's been very, very sick for several weeks and was at home with hospice care. But it's very sad for Ky and his family, for my sister Jenita, and for my nephew Tanner and niece Kylie who loved their grandpa. This is a stressful time for them all (and my sister has her college final exams this week) and a sad time, too...I know they could all use prayers and good thoughts. Thanks. ***

Day 5.

Here's my journal page, about Advent:


And here's the picture I used, full-size, just because I liked how it came out:


And here's the quote, of which I only had room to use a bit on the page:

"The season of Advent means there is something on the horizon the likes of which we have never seen before…What is possible is to not see it, to miss it, to turn just as it brushes past you. And you begin to grasp what it was you missed, like Moses in the cleft of the rock, watching God's [back] fade in the distance. So stay. Sit. Linger. Tarry. Ponder. Wait. Behold. Wonder. There will be time enough for running. For rushing. For worrying. For pushing. For now, stay. Wait. Something is on the horizon." -Jan L. Richardson, Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas. (Zowie, that's expensive on Amazon!)

I really like that quote. It reminds me of this story in Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, by Connie Willis (which I recommend all the time to anyone who will listen) called "Epiphany," which is about Jesus' second coming and unlike anything I've ever read on the topic before. It's hard to describe, but it has the same shadowy, dark, expectant feeling as the quote.

One of the things I like about this time of year is the early dark and the lights shining through it. The dark seems to fit with that mood of waiting, wondering, expecting.

It's been a quiet week here (in Lake Wobegon...no, no, that's not right...)--I've been turning in early nights, with a book, and nursing a sore throat and headache that seem to come and go and not develop into anything. Also making out Christmas cards, wrapping presents, etc. Todd had jury duty on Monday and a very distasteful incest/rape case (as he said, "Why couldn't I get a nice, easy cocaine possession?") and other than that, he's been waiting for the chance to go night fishing when the tides and winds are right. He went last night and came home with a few more big striped bass, one of which we'll be having for dinner tonight, yum.

And it's coooold! (Yay!) That's it from here.

Day 4.

For each day's prompt in this "Journal Your Christmas" class, Shimelle creates a PDF file with pictures and lots of ideas. She's using various pages from people who've taken her class in previous years, and I was startled to find today that she used my December 4 page from last year as one of her idea samples! Made me smile!

Here's today's page. I used to have big ideas about what a perfect Christmas consisted of, and now I know that all I need to make it perfect is TIME. Which is always at a premium when we're home visiting.

Play it, Sam...

Your result for Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz ...

You Are an Ingrid!

You are an Ingrid -- "I am unique"

Ingrids have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive.

How to Get Along with Me

• * Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me.
• * Be a supportive friend or partner. Help me to learn to love and value myself.
• * Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision.
• * Though I don't always want to be cheered up when I'm feeling melancholy, I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little.
• * Don't tell me I'm too sensitive or that I'm overreacting!

What I Like About Being an Ingrid

• * my ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level
• * my ability to establish warm connections with people
• * admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life
• * my creativity, intuition, and sense of humor
• * being unique and being seen as unique by others
• * having aesthetic sensibilities
• * being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me

What's Hard About Being an Ingrid

• * experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair
• * feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don't deserve to be loved
• * feeling guilty when I disappoint people
• * feeling hurt or attacked when someone misundertands me
• * expecting too much from myself and life
• * fearing being abandoned
• * obsessing over resentments
• * longing for what I don't have

Ingrids as Children Often

• * have active imaginations: play creatively alone or organize playmates in original games
• * are very sensitive
• * feel that they don't fit in
• * believe they are missing something that other people have
• * attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists, etc.
• * become antiauthoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood
• * feel lonely or abandoned (perhaps as a result of a death or their parents' divorce)

Ingrids as Parents

• * help their children become who they really are
• * support their children's creativity and originality
• * are good at helping their children get in touch with their feelings
• * are sometimes overly critical or overly protective
• * are usually very good with children if not too self-absorbed

Here's day three's page:


And here's the cover:


See ya later!

One more thing.

Here's the December 2 journal page. I'm not feeling it yet, but maybe I'll get into the groove with it soon.


Look at the crappy writing on that sticker. I love Jenni Bowlin stuff, but her journaling stickers are the pits. You HAVE to use a Sharpie, and of course, I can never remember that until I'm already well into my writing and it's all beaded up and nasty-looking. One of those little annoyances!