We're back

We're back and everything is wonderful... except the state of the apartment but I'm sort of working on that.

By the way, isn't Scarlet the cutest? Looks like she got a new outfit.

Tom's been home most of the day, well-rested and happy. Wha?!
Suzanne is coming tomorrow for one night.
I think it's too darn hot around here but I think I'm in the minority (as usual).
There are some pictures from Seattle, but very few. I was just not in the mood for photography.
I'm so happy to be home: watching our shows, sleeping in our bed and drinking our tea (at all hours). I'm such an oldster already; but it's the simple things in life, my friend.

I'm getting back to my good-looking, funny, sweet and currently cooking husband. Yes.

Getting Tom back

A little bit of everything, all at once

There is so much changing around here, so fast. It's amazing. Tom and I could feel a change coming. We said we could just feel God moving, we could feel something about to happen, about to change. And now it has. Multiple things have changed and are changing, just like we thought.

I don't want to jump the gun, because not everything is nailed down. So for now I am praying; I am reading through Matthew, slowly and deliberately; I am making cookie brittle to try to express a sliver of the gratitude I feel for the men that kill themselves for my husband every day (really, every day); I am enjoying my husband, so much;

and I am looking forward to seeing this angel and her first first birthday gift: Cheeto. Scarlet turns one on Sunday and I cannot believe it. But despite only having seen her a handful of times in her rapidly lengthening life her face already looks so familiar to me, like I've known her for 23 years. And this is my new favorite picture.

Aaah... life is so good, so sweet. I am so well taken care of it's ridiculous. Which makes me wonder what all I should be doing. With all of these provisions I'm surely not meant to be holed up in my apartment watching the clock. Life beckons.

"Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." (Matt. 11:29)
"Freely you have received, freely give." (Matt. 10:8)

Your Own Disaster

Today everything must find it's place. The above is an old photo and thankfully most everything in it has found it's place (an thankfully most of their places were outside of this apartment) but, nevertheless, this place (and this marriage) is a never-ending lesson in organization on a limited budget and limited space.

Today is the day. Everything must have a spot after today. I'm going crazy. Plus I feel like I'm coming off an unproductive streak and I could use a win.

So, pinch yourself, Apartment, this is really happening.

I think some Taking Back Sunday, some Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and a little Bat For Lashes (for book shelving and that sort of thing) are in order.
Today is nice and cool and rainy, Lane's out of town, and Tom is working and I'm going to make the most of all of it. It may not be my dream apartment when I'm finished, but I do love this place, and it deserves a little more.

Too cute for words...

so here's some pictures.

Thank you, Davina and Kyle, for sharing the wealth.

My own treasure is headed home any minute.

What a wonderful day.

Yesterday

Yesterday I checked my mail (and fed my fish) for the first time in 3 days.

I had a card and gift from my Grandmother in California; this shirt:

and a letter letting me know that I do indeed get my diploma! I've done it!

Sunday was a day of tired and hormonal ups and downs. We were in the nursery at church and entertained Kate, John Spencer, Jacey and Callen with seemingly endless Thomas the Tank Engine tales and Raffi songs. It was childhood classic down there.

John Spencer sat on my lap and let me kiss him all over his neck in front of his mom. It's a big deal because John Spencer usually sobs and screams around me if his parents are anywhere in the vicinity and I'm not sure why. But if we are alone he is pretty much my best friend and lets me dole out the affection as much as I want (which is a lot). If he is at my house he's even better about this, if he's at church he's usually worse. So yesterday was a big win and I don't have much more time for those as he's moving to Canada in a matter of months.

But let's forget about that for the moment.

After church Tom and I decided to spoil ourselves with lunch by the river. We were all kisses and happiness in the car but by the time we were parked a mood swing had brought me low and we were considerably less chipper.

I can't decide if it was bad timing or good. Maybe my mood would have been worse had it not been for the spicy beer and cheese soup, the light on the river and the puppy we spotted prancing by on the waterfront. Either way, we ate our burgers with a little undue grumpiness and headed off to pick up a movie, both knowing we should be sensitive to the other's situation but both feeling very sensitive about our own.

The movie was True Grit, Tom was determined to see it again and I never had. It was great. Though as I remember it was punctuated with some kind of fight. May I recommend, if you know you are being unreasonable, but can't really help it, just admit it and give whoever it is a chance to be really wonderful to you, as Tom was for the rest of the night despite me not deserving it.

I was also struggling through a headache most of the afternoon and Tom offered to wait on me about a thousand times. By the end of the movie we were lovingly crying in each others arms and shortly thereafter Tom took a much-needed nap.

I woke him up a little after six by putting on Die Hard and sitting next to him with my icecream cone. We watched most of the movie over a spaghetti dinner in bed and, let me remind you, it is a great movie. That was the heyday of action movies. It's hard to beat young Bruce Willis rocking that New York accent, or Alan Rickman that German one.

We took a break to take a shower and Tom ran to the store for the ingredients for some of his famous (between the two of us) onion dip.

After the movie we gratefully went to bed. I cried some more about who-remembers-what. But as I fell asleep all cried out and finally rid of my headache, with Tom rubbing my back, I was peaceful and content.

All things considered it was a good day and I can't imagine how great it would be to have Tom home more often.

Today I am getting back into the swing of things here in the penthouse. I may go looking for a chest to put Tom's massive t-shirt collection in as the drawers are overflowing. As much as I want him to get rid of some, I really love all of them. They all remind me of him and he wears them so well.

I also emailed some phone pictures to myself and have been updating Facebook albums. I will share more pictures from this weekend here soon.

1 Camille at the park

2 Paia at Cafe Zenon my last day of school

3 A ladybug on Basil

And I was remembering and singing this this morning. I used to listen to The Be Good Tanyas constantly and when I started working at The Humble Bagel somehow everyone loved them and our CDs were destroyed from overuse.

Good Monday to you. May it be as nice as Sunday but with more work in it.

This and that

My peonies have expanded.

I bought a couple of new vases and dream of filling them all summer long. This one is very heavy and had a old, tiny, gold "made in Japan" sticker on the bottom, still.

I got rid of my silly old glass one that I couldn't fit my hand into to clean and got a big-mouth glass one that it will take twice as many flower to fill. Oh well!

I was extra happy with my decision to buy letter magnets when I woke up to this the next day:

And they've come in handy since.

Though we could use some more E's.

Frosted window panes...

It's June which around here means new candy cane stripped pajamas and cute, holly berry-festooned mugs for steaming hot drinks. Ah, thrift store shopping; there are no rules!

The pajamas came just in time, it was pouring rain all day long and I got a stomachache from eating too much tuna... or juice... I couldn't figure out what had done it.

It was straight into my new stripes as soon as they were out of the dryer, and they are comfortable! They're from a brand that makes baby clothes.

I want to be a baby.

Merry Christmas, one and all!

More on my day

A few more photos from today...

This has been on the screen since shortly after I left the room to write that last post.

I was happy to find Tom like this. He needs sleep so badly. I don't know what I'm going to feed him when he wakes up, oh wait! I just thought of something. Whoa, it's not very exciting.

The sunshine has diminished.

And all I have accomplished is reading blogs (not the ones I gave up for Lent! But I guess I should think about giving these one's up too after today) and playing Pet Society. That is such a time suck, but it's so visually appealing and such a project if you decide to make your pet's house and your husband's pet's house into the castle from Harry Potter. I love it, but I need to stop.

This is a knife Tom inherited from his Grandpa recently. It's hanging behind me in the office now, I like it.

Someday we'll pick up the inherited gun from Grandpa Mattson and the arrows he was given as a kid and cover the whole gamut of hunter decor (sans taxidermy).

I found the photo of my closet. It was on my camera. Do you see how inefficiently the space is being used? Boxes, baby. Boxes.

Day twenty four

Less than a week left in my challenge but life is really picking up and keeping up is getting difficult.

I actually had a picture of our one closet, but apparently erased it, and I plugged in my battery to charge and it is taking eight hundred years. I'm sick of cellphone pictures so you'll just have to take my word for it that my closet and my bathroom - my best hopes for mass storage - are in need of major organization. You'll remember my office the room in which everything accumulates so I can get some sleep at night (by closing the door and forgetting it exists).

Instead of focusing on my place I thought I would do what I do so often and look at some pictures of places that inspire me in practical ways.

I'm not hoping for too much, just functionality and enough clean lines to keep me calm in the midst of a living space I share with a large, collect-o-holic, manual-laborer. (That reminds me, I have to clean the dirt stains from the carpet in front of the door before they become permanent.)

I mentioned this apartment before, I'm not sure where, but you can find it here.

Clean, calm colors (though we cannot do white!), functional lighting, and a healthy amount of storage. This would be perfect for our main room. But my search for a good trunk continues and we're in serious need of drawers!

This dresser actually looks a lot like one of ours. We have two since we picked up the small and simple number Tom's grandpa made for them so long ago. Tom is in the process of stripping it of its many coats of paint and primer. On top: dark, glossy blue, perfect for a little 80's Tom, terrible for our place. Tom bought me some vintage knobs for Christmas, almost enough. In the end it will have miss-matching knobs and no paint. It will be very artistic, trust me! It will be perfect for our eclectic, hard-wearing entry which I love, though sometimes I would give anything to have it look more like this:

Simple, elegant, beautiful. We'll see if that ever happens...

Much less elegant but equally desirable is the idea I have for my bathroom and the closet in the office, inspired by this:

Go here and look at the whole thing, including the video - it's very inspiring for the minimalist, the organization-junky, and the utilitarian. There is nothing fancy about what I want to do with my bathroom, with a little help from the made in USA section of The Container Store website I've come up with a rough plan that involves waterproof, stacking boxes that will line the extra wall space of our bathroom. There would labels like Dinah's shoes, temporary storage, seasonal clothes, and holidays. "Temporary storage" is what I look forward to most. So much of what is lying around the office are frames without pictures yet, fabric I'm going to do something with, such-and-such to take to some place, or thing I'm sick of looking at at the moment. My shoes are always falling off the short shelves (designed for books originally) that now reside in on the bathroom wall. Oh! There are so many ways this plan would fix my problems.

I could do with these kitchen shelves while we're at it, though I don't really have the wall space in there.

So, the only problems now - now that I have the plan - are funds and Tom's time, or lack there of. But all this wishing and hoping and planning and dreaming will just make the consummation of my plan that much more wonderful. And until then... I'll keep plugging away, I guess. There is always something more to want, so it's good to keep my dreams small and stretch them out as long as possible.

Though my patience on this one definitely has an expiration date.

Outside.

Through my random internet surfing I was reminded to look out my kitchen window.

And I love my view.

Especially on rainy days like today when they sky is grey.

And it was the terrible sound of that machine blowing leaves into the street that inspired me to lay in the yard by myself that night and watch the rest of them fall from the branches four stories up.

It was thrilling.

They each take a different course, each fall at their own time, each twirl, and zig and zag in a different way, taking their time reaching their soft landing. It was as if each one was maturing to the point when they would take that one leap, the only one they'll ever have. And none of them fell fast. They danced.

I was inspired.

HOME for the holidays

This apartment is finally shaping up thanks to a new desk from Dad (Merry Christmas) and a new dining table Tom and I bought ourselves ($40). It's looking much more homey. I'll have some pictures soon, I hope, though I ruined our... little... uh, square... picture holding thing, that goes in the camera - you know!

I still have some clearing out and rearranging to do but it's so exciting! I feel like Christmas has already come and it's still a week away!

Plus, with part of Tom's Christmas bonus we're getting a new vacuum cleaner! (!!!!) I am so excited. Our little dinky-stinker has been non-functional for months. I couldn't stomach throwing it out but I borrowed Lane's vacuum whenever I could, which wasn't nearly often enough.

Oh, thank you Lord for all these blessings!

My freedom is dawning on me

My goodness! I'm just realizing that I have all the time I want to make a blog entry! No class to run off to half way through, no chore that needs doing before such-and-such or in between this and that. I am on vacation!

I really do need to savor this, as I savored the 2 1/2 bites of bacon Tom placed in front of me while I worked on my crossword this morning - the last 2 1/2 bites of bacon, presumably. My, how we fly through that stuff when we have it! So to do these vacations seem to go when I'm at home and my world is my oyster. They seem to go a lot more slowly if I'm staying with family but secretly wishing I could be organizing my closets, caulking the bathtub and getting ready for another term of half-hearted housework.

I confess, what I really want to do with my "vacation" is organize my apartment while watching French Kiss or some Woody Allen movie and occasionally sneaking out to a thrift store. I absolutely love the comfort and ease of staying with one of our parents and getting pampered and not dealing with the dust, mold, dirty dishes, dingy bathrooms and millions and millions of books without homes that comprise our little, old apartment. But I do wish I could take my projects with me. What good is relaxing if you can't sort through old photos while you're doing it? What good are movies on-demand if you must sit with your hands at your sides looking straight ahead?

I kid of course but I do so love to be sorting something. Yesterday it was books, of course; I keep them constantly on the move to make sure they're not suffering from excessive dust or any amount of moisture. When you have them lining the walls in stacks and shoved in any available crevice you need to do silly things like this to make sure they aren't being ruined, especially when your place was ill-built before you were born and you can't keep the rain out.

Yesterday it was also papers of mine, mostly sentimental things that I sort through just the same - I can't keep everything; I don't want to. There are always new things.

This isn't at all what I intended for this blog entry. I was going to tell you about Thanksgiving or at least post some pictures. But I've gotten too far off track now. I will tell you that I read Organize Your Life by Amy Vanderbilt. It is one of the books Suzanne gave me for Christmas, and I believe she gave it to me mainly for the sweet 1966 pencil-drawing cover. But actually, this lady knows what she's talking about. Or, at least, she did for the first half of the book. She actually went off the deep end pretty dramatically in the second half, exposing all of her obsessive compulsions and acting as though every women should carry a box stickers with their name and address with them wherever they go. She's also a snob. But who isn't? OK, lots of people, but I'm a snob, and it's quite ridiculous.

In case you're confused about how I could be a snob I'll say that God always has a plan to humble me and I try to go along with it. Thus, I don't seem to have much to be snobby about, nor would I anyway, probably. But Amy V. has plenty to feel superior about and it is clearly a weakness of her's as well. I had a section or two I wanted to share but I'll find them later. I'm much too jazzed-up on my 2 ounces of coffee right now to do that kind of work. I'm off to find something to organize - though, the dark, walk-in closets are a bit intimidating... and so full.

(The photo is by Henri Cartier Bresson - a "french kiss" it would seem. It was a picture saved from my studying, though we never studied that photograph, just Bresson, *sigh* amour... I had to study it all on my own, it was too perfectly sweet.)