my happy little world

Reflections on a clean slate

I’ve long been a fan of starting fresh with a new year and a new calendar. Despite various attempts to go digital with my schedule and to-do lists, I always return to the good old fashioned paper variety. I would say pen and paper, but with me, it’s actually pencil and paper. I just can’t bring myself to use pen in my planner. Things change too often - meetings get cancelled or rescheduled, priorities shift, etc. Pencil allows for change; pen does not. Pen is harsh and glaring when forced to strike through an item. Pencil, on the other hand, erases nicely and allows the new plan to be written in place of the former instead of scribbled in tiny script above or below or beside. Last year I found an awesome soft white eraser, rectangular in shape, with Delete printed on the front. My trusty Delete key sits on my desk awaiting the changes that inevitably arise in any given day.

But I digress from the real purpose of this entry. In the past few years, I switched to a new style of planner that offers quarterly calendars so you’re not forced to wait until January to buy the planner. Since I switched mid-year, I have the version that starts in April. Thus, no turning of the page to a crisp new planner to begin a new year. This year, the absence of the sparkly new planner to begin 2009 has bothered me more than in the turn from 2007 to 2008.

Frankly, I’m ready to leave 2008 behind and embrace the possibilities that beckon in 2009. The past year wasn’t horrible by any means, but it wasn’t my favorite of recent years either. It’s perhaps best labeled as a year of turmoil. Ups and downs and uncertainty beyond my control. A year of change that couldn’t come fast enough, and yet a year that past far too quickly and left many things unresolved.

Some friendships blossomed while others faded and my overall health took an attitude of kicking me while I was already down. Much of the year was a cycle of serious fatigue that resulted in cutting back the majority of my prior commitments, which undoubtedly led to some of the fading friendships. Then the fall kicked even harder with a fractured foot and seemingly never-ending series of sinus infections, respiratory infections, and head colds. Could it have been worse? Sure, but I still vote for better than it was.

On the plus side, I did manage to expand my front garden to about four times its original size, thanks to some serious help from my parents and some great friends. Expanding the garden is one of many home improvement projects I had planned in my head when I first bought my house. Now it’s just a waiting game to see the colorful collection of bulbs that will make an appearance in the spring. And, provided I get my overall health to cooperate, I plan to put in a small vegetable garden off the back of the patio when spring arrives. I also got a long-awaited promotion at work, although there’s less definition to my role than ever before, I think.

As for 2009, I’m working on embracing some of the uncertainty, taking things as they come, reconnecting with friends I saw too little of in 2008, and reuniting with my favorite hobbies of cooking, quilting, and reading. I did far too little of those in 2008 as well. Perhaps I shall theme 2009 as a year of renewal. Shiny new calendar or not, I’m ready for 2009 and the possibilities it holds. 

posted by Linda on 01/06 at 10:53 AM
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New year, same plans

Since last New Year’s eve at the Kennedy Center was so much fun, I decided to repeat the experience. The official blurb for the National Symphony Orchestra performance says

“Join conductor Murry Sidlin as he celebrates his fourteenth anniversary leading members of the National Symphony Orchestra in this fun-filled annual Kennedy Center tradition! In the Concert Hall, usher in the New Year with a concert of popular favorites by some of the world’s most celebrated composers, including Rodgers & Hammerstein, Strauss, Dvorák, Rossini, Rimsky-Korsakov, Copland, and more. Guest soloists include NSO Associate Concertmaster Elisabeth Adkins, baritone Thomas Meglioranza, and a special appearance by the Honorable Anthony A. Williams narrating Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait.”

For anyone curious about the complete program list that I won’t remember, you can see all the details here

The crazy part of the repeat New Year’s eve plan? We’re sitting in the exact same seats as last year. Same seats, same date, different dress. (Trust me, wearing the same dress was somewhat tempting just for the fun of a true repeat, but it’s also nice to have an excuse to buy a new dress.) Seriously? The same seats? It’s almost too weird to believe.

More reflections to come on 2008 and the wacky year it’s been. For now, bring on 2009! . 

posted by Linda on 12/30 at 09:30 PM
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Chaos and clutter, part two

I work best under pressure, in typical Type A personality style, I think. Without deadlines, things life reverts to chaos. Deadlines are good. Procrastination, however, is not. And that’s what often before the deadline is looming just ahead and the pressure sparks me into action.

Take this weekend, for example. I spent most of Sunday cleaning like a crazy woman. The plus side? I banished some serious amounts of clutter. The down side? I’m exhausted, and I was also a little sore, because it amounted to a serious workout for some muscles that haven’t seen much use lately.

Did I intend to wait until the last day possible to get all that cleaning done? Of course not, but being sick for the past several weeks hindered my ability to get a head start on the cleaning.

Why exactly did I feel the need to obsessively clean yesterday? Two words: house guests. And house guests while I’m not there. Typically I would feel compelled to clean just because I was going out of town, because coming home to a sparkling clean house brings comfort after I’ve been away. This time though, my desire to come home to a clean house probably wouldn’t have been enough.

Enter the house guests. It’s a family from my church who moved away a couple years ago. Last year they sent an e-mail out to a church group list looking for a home for the holidays - someone who needed a housesitter or who had a place to share. I knew them before they moved, so I quickly volunteered my house last year, and thus tradition was born.

This year, I sent the first e-mail volunteering my house for the week of Christmas. It’s really a nice arrangement. I don’t have to beg my already swamped friends to check my house every few days to alleviate any concerns about my house being empty for a week. They don’t have to pay for a hotel room or spend the holidays with four extra people crammed in with friends or family. 

I did finally talk myself out of mopping the kitchen floor, but other than that, my house looks pretty. So very pretty. Clean and shiny and neat and organized. Now the trick will be if I can keep it that way. Stay tuned. 

posted by Linda on 12/24 at 07:04 AM
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Chaos and clutter

Anyone who knows me well - or perhaps just anyone who knows me - knows that clutter seems to follow wherever I go. It stems from being both a packrat and someone who’s constantly on the go. I land long enough to put things down, add things to piles, or shift things out of the way, but somehow never land quite long enough to keep things where they belong and purge the things I no longer need.

All the non-clutter prone people out there are saying that it really doesn’t take any longer to put something away than it does to put it down somewhere it doesn’t belong. But really, if the place it belongs is upstairs, that takes longer than putting it down somewhere downstairs. See? I can rationalize my behavior.

Recently though, my tendency to create clutter has started to feel like a tendency to create chaos. The clutter and chaos are rapidly leading me to another C word - crazy!

It’s not the first time in my life I said I was going to be less cluttered. I’ve tried it before, and I’ve failed. My most recent issue of Better Homes & Gardens proclaims in a nice green and blue letters “Get Organized! 45 Smart Ways to Cure Clutter Forever.” When it arrived in the mail, I laughed. I said to the magazine cover, “You clearly haven’t met me, have you? I mean, really, cure clutter forever? I’d be okay with curing clutter for just a month.” (Side note - it’s a rather spring-ish cover for a January issue, in my opinion. Since when does January warrant spring colors?)

Anyone want to place bets on whether I can actually conquer the clutter and keep it that way? Anyone?

posted by Linda on 12/13 at 06:41 PM
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Fun with social media

Social media and social networking fascinates me. Others may find it boring, terrifying, or useless, but I find it intriguing and just plain cool. What’s this crazy social media thing you speak of, you ask? It’s stuff like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, and countless other sites that create communities never thought possible before. Smart marketing and communications people tap into these new communities as one of many methods for reaching their target audience.

One of many current uses of social media that I find interesting is the use of social media in Barack Obama’s campaign for president. Regardless of political affiliation, I doubt any marketing/communications professional could argue against the effectiveness of the approach in his overall campaign strategy. What’s particularly interesting now is the ongoing analysis of the potential uses of social media in government and the debate over whether or not the soon-to-be-president gets to keep his BlackBerry.

If you’re crazy like me and find this stuff interesting, check out these two interesting pieces.

1. From Brian Solis’s Web 2.0 Blog - Barack Obama, The Social Web, and the Future of User-Generated Governance

2. From The New York Times - Say Goodby to BlackBerry? If Obama Has To, Yes He Can

posted by Linda on 11/17 at 07:53 PM
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No NaBloPoMo

As evidenced by being five days into November with no blog entries, I opted to sit out of NaBloPoMo this year. (National Blog Posting Month, for those unaware. Otherwise known as the wimpy version of NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month.) While I’m still trying to embrace more frequent blogging, I knew I didn’t have an entry a day in me this year. So once or twice a week it shall be instead.

I’m officially one month into my fractured foot saga. Next stop is a follow-up appointment with the orthopedic specialist on Monday. Considering that I can’t put full weight on both feet without pain in my left foot still, I don’t imagine he’s going to tell me that my journey on crutches is complete. Sad. So very sad. Perhaps I’ll be pleasantly surprised, but I’m not counting on it at this point. But oh how I long for the day I can walk on both feet again and carry things for myself again! 

posted by Linda on 11/05 at 05:04 PM
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Concert, anyone?

The holidays aren’t far away, and while I’m entirely against the radio stations that start the Christmas music before Thanksgiving, some advance planning is required at times. Amy Grant and Vince Gill are bringing their Christmas tour to St. Louis on December 19. Anyone want to go with me? If I don’t get any takers, I might just go by myself. Out of character for me, but it’s Amy Grant.

Those who’ve known me very long know that I’m a long-time fan who owns every album. My 12th birthday party included attending an Amy Grant concert with a couple of friends, and in fourth grade, those same friends and I choreographed a roller skating routine to an Amy Grant song for our grade school talent show. Oh yeah, we were cool.

I just discovered today that Amy Grant recently released her first Christmas album in nine years. It’s a collection of hit songs from previous albums plus a few new songs. I may have to buy it and stare at it longingly until after Thanksgiving. Or I might break the rules just this once to hear the new songs she released. 

posted by Linda on 10/29 at 07:32 AM
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Is it over yet?

In the past several weeks, I’ve tried to remind myself that many people have far worse situations than a simple injured foot that should heal in a relatively short period of time. And then there are those days where I don’t really care and just complain about it anyway.

The orthopedic specialist is fairly certain my foot is fractured, although they can’t get an x-ray to officially confirm it. He suspects it’s a fracture in the second metatarsal cuneiform, otherwise known as somewhere in the giant mess of bones that all come together in the middle of your foot. Translation: difficult to get a good x-ray, so consider it a fracture and treat it as such. The process of determining the location of the suspected fracture was oh-so-fun: the specialist used his thumbs to trace each of my tendons, ligaments, and bones in my foot until I reacted to the severe pain. Fun, really.

I’ve been on crutches for three weeks at this point. I was at the two-week mark when I saw the specialist, and he said it could be another four to six weeks in the big giant black boot and on crutches. Not my idea of fun. If I’m lucky, it’ll be healed before my follow-up appointment in another two weeks, but I’m not counting on it.

The crutches are annoying in terms of requiring twice as much effort to walk and causing discomfort in my arms and hands. But the biggest annoyance for me is the inability to do things for myself. My coworkers have been helpful with everything from bringing me coffee to fetching copies off the printer, and my friends have been beyond incredible as they’ve helped take my trash cans and recycle bin down to the curb every week, gone grocery shopping with me, and so much more. But I miss the ability to just walk around and do whatever I want, whenever I want. Stubbornly independent people should not be stuck on crutches.

posted by Linda on 10/28 at 06:06 PM
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Things that inspire me to share recipes…

This website makes me want to spread the recipes around in all their hand-written glory. I share recipes frequently, or at least when I remember that people have asked for one, but it’s usually via e-mail or a printed copy from my computer. Here and there, it’s a hastily scribbled index card, especially when it’s one of the few recipes actually cemented in my overpacked brain.

But while reading my favorite food blogs tonight, I stumbled upon PosePrints, where you can personalize your recipe cards. I’m sure it’s not the only site where you can personalize your recipe cards, but it’s the first I’ve seen. And not like I can’t design my own recipe cards, seeing as I am a graphic designer, but this site is just FUN! Their caricature options don’t look quite as much like me as their sample photo and caricature combos, but oh well.  Mostly because they have so many options for hair color, style, and length except for actually long hair. But regardless, what do you think?

posted by Linda on 10/21 at 08:14 PM
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Crossing the line

One of my first quilting projects was a queen-size t-shirt quilt made from just a small selection of my fastpitch softball t-shirts. Six shirts across and six shirts down, and I still left at least 15 shirts unused. And that doesn’t count the ones that were so dirt-stained I didn’t want to use them for the quilt.

Do we sense a slight obsession with fastpitch softball? Absolutely. I played from the age of 5 until almost 18. For most of high school, the vast majority of my summer weekends were spent at softball tournaments, many of them out of state. I played softball in 117 degree weather in Oklahoma. I went to pitching lessons at an indoor facility when it was below freezing outside in the winter months. Between summer team and school team, I took one month (October) off each year. Other than that, it was team practice, games, individual pitching practice, batting cages, or running and weight lifting almost every day. I was serious about the sport and seriously competitive every time I stepped on the field.

That’s why it took nine years of repeated requests from friends to weaken my resolve against slowpitch. Slowpitch isn’t a sport, I used to say. The whole idea of slowpitch always seemed like a betrayal of my first love of fastpitch softball. For years I held out hope of finding a recreational fastpitch league, and I felt that once I crossed the line to slowpitch world I could never go back. 

For someone with a fastpitch swing ingrained in years of muscle memory, slowpitch is hard. I can’t hit worth anything. While many of my teammates would strongly argue that statement, the competitive, be-the-best-you-can-be side of me still cringes at the thought of my sad little hits where I only make contact with the top side of the ball. Sure, I manage to beat most of the throws to first, but it’s still not a good hit in my mind.

Fielding? Not a problem. I can still stretch so far at first base that I basically do the splits, although my hamstring didn’t exactly like that concept in the first game I played. I don’t get quite as much air on a jump to snag a wild throw as I used to, but I still get some. And I can still throw plenty hard and plenty far.

Even with the less-than-ideal batting performance, I’ve surprised myself by having a lot of fun. The friends who talked me into playing admitted it was a team comprised of mostly first-timers, thus it was unlikely we would win a single game. And somehow that was okay with me. I still have to check the inner competitiveness every now and then when the thought of being run ruled, again, starts to get to me, but all in all, the games have been fun.

Two weeks ago, we won our first game of the season. We play double headers, and our opponents also had not won a game. We split the double header, leaving each of us with one win and still tied for worst team in the league. And then they invited us over to the bar that sponsors them for a post-game celebration. Yes, yes, many people say softball plus beer is the best part of rec leagues, but I just can’t bring myself to drink while playing a sport. I just can’t do it. Post-game drinking works though. So we celebrated our shared title with a few pitchers of beer.

The downside to that game? I had an unfortunate run-in with second base and have now been on crutches for almost two weeks. Fun times, I tell you. (And yes, you would think that with two weeks of being much more limited in my activity, I would have managed to post this blog entry sooner.) I get to see the orthopedic specialist on Monday morning to look again and see if any fractures have appeared, since the pain won’t go away. The worst part of the whole ordeal? I had to miss the last two games of the season. I guess that means I got over my strong aversion to slowpitch. 

posted by Linda on 10/18 at 06:54 AM
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Quieting the inner perfectionist

The fact that I enjoy quilting astonishes me. Quilting is a perfectionist’s worst nightmare. Endless color choices and combinations. Exact measurements of sometimes uncooperative fabrics. Precise seam allowances piece after piece after piece. Yet somehow when I quilt, the perfectionist fades and the artist emerges.

Simple love for the craft doesn’t explain it. When I bake, I obsess over the details of appearance and texture and taste. Case in point: the pumpkin truffles I made this week for a potluck at work. They didn’t cooperate. Dark chocolate ganache centers dipped in white chocolate means white chocolate coating streaked with brown. Few of the truffles came out in actual circle form due to the oozing ganache. I spent several days complaining that they didn’t look pretty. Until my coworkers harassed me about it so much I decided to finally get over it. Well, I at least decided to stop talking about it.

Despite my love for baking, I find something not-quite-perfect about nearly everything I make. Amish bread that sinks in the middle. Oddly shaped truffles. Chocolate chip cookies that come out too dark for my liking.

But let’s return to quilting, the one activity that quiets my inner perfectionist. Seams from one block to the next that don’t quite align? Oh well. A middle seam that comes undone after I’ve finished piecing the top together? Eh, I’ll just fix it when I get to the actual quilting step.

Even a major mistake of cutting a section of completed quilt top 10 inches too short didn’t faze me. Okay, so I muttered a few things under my breath at first. Then with the next breath I grabbed some extra blocks from the end of another piece, ripped out a few seams, and made it work. Problem solved. A problem that in many other ventures might have derailed my focus and left the project untouched for weeks.

Quilting is a journey. A chance to take a few simple pieces of cloth and turn them into a glorious cascade of color. And in the midst of that journey, I forget about striving for perfection and focus on the beauty that appears.

posted by Linda on 09/28 at 07:36 PM
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Leaves of gold

Welcome to the first day of autumn. I have somewhat of a love/hate relationship with the season, I must admit. Today it’s much more hate than love, but perhaps the love shall return soon. At the moment, the incessant sneezing, itchy eyes, and pounding headache resulting from the onset of fall allergies (plus some residual mold from the wet summer) has me irrationally longing for the first hard freeze. C’mon, let’s just skip fall and get to the serious cold so the allergens will die, die, die.

But really, if that happened, I would be sad. Despite the allergy chaos, fall is my favorite season. I long for the bright colors of changing leaves, the subtle crispness in the air, and the softness of my favorite sweaters. Although the 80-degree weather certainly doesn’t feel like fall, my weekend was a testament to the season just around the corner. I baked bread for the first time in quite a while and worked on a new quilt project with warm earth tones, including a few fall-themed fabrics. Soon there will be leaves of gold fluttering in the wind to match the leaves of gold in the quilt. 

posted by Linda on 09/22 at 04:26 PM
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Color!

Entry composed in late August somewhere between St. Louis and Oklahoma City.

At the moment I’m writing (although certainly not posting) this blog entry, I’m gazing out the window of an airplane at an incredibly layered sunset. The horizon off in the distance a deep brownish black with dark burgundy amber melding to brown-tinged orange then dusty yellow followed by a sliver of emerald-hued gray topped by an expanse of indigo to navy sky.

It’s an incredible array of color that brings to mind those lingering thoughts about long-deserted colorblogging adventures. While I’m not the only who dropped the colorblogging ball, perhaps it’s time to rally the troops and continue the journey. Open Seas is leading the pack with her lavender post. Who else wants to recommit? Notebook of Memory? Kommentary by Kritter? Anyone else?

I’m re-posting the original list as a public service to all those interested. Didn’t join the colorblogging wagon the first time? Pick a color and go. Forget the backlog; start with the color that calls you. From Sonic straws to mangled computers, there’s no end to the possibilities. No blog? Just comment on any colorblog entry with your own inspired thoughts brought to you by the color o’ the day (or week or month).

1. Red
2. Orange
3. Yellow
4. Green
5. Blue
6. Purple
7. Black
8. Brown
9. Silver
10. Gold
11. Magenta
12. Turquoise
13. Gray
14. Maroon
15. White
16. Beige
17. Peach
18. Pink
19. Navy Blue
20. Lavender
21. Forest Green
22. Cornflower
23. Goldenrod
24. Puce

posted by Linda on 09/20 at 07:27 AM
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Drivin’ in style

I’m officially one week into new car nirvana. After much internal (and some external) debate, several test drives, and lots of online research, I bought a 2009 Mazda 3 and said farewell to my 2001 Pontiac Grand Am with 116,000 miles. Ideally, I wanted that Grand Am to last me a couple more years, but it had been pretty cantankerous since the 28,500-mile mark when it first became my car. With a couple recent breakdowns and some ongoing odd clunks and other noises, the Grand Am had to go before I worried myself to death wondering what would happen next to that car.

Was I sad to see it go? Not really, which surprised me. It was my first car, purchased in the spring of my sophomore year of college, but the pretty shiny new one wooed me away with only a single glance behind me. And the pretty shiny new one with the extended warranty means no more worries about what unknown car expense will happen next.

Driving a car with single-digit mileage is a weird feeling, at least for me, even it was only single-digit mileage the night I drove it home.  But the new car smell? It’s pretty nice. 

posted by Linda on 09/18 at 06:33 PM
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Glitter overload

I’m not a glitter girl. Shocking, isn’t it? Sure, sparkly things are fun, but I never got into the glitter craze. Sparkles, good. Contained glitter, survivable when necessary. Excessive glitter, bad.

Why is it that gift bags, particularly those of the wedding variety, are covered in glitter? Not just a little glitter, but a LOT of glitter. Glitter that goes everywhere. On your hands, on the other things in your cart, on your car (despite best attempts to cover the glittery mess with a plastic shopping bag), in your house, on the gift, on the car again, and then ultimately on someone else’s hands and in someone else’s car. The absence of a decent-sized wedding-themed glitter-free gift bag today at the store annoyed me. Now I get to inflict the glitter insanity on a bride-to-be, which I like to avoid when given the option.

The lesson here? Shop earlier so I can walk away from the glitter bags and go to a different store in search of glitter-free. Or don’t buy a large and oddly shaped item from the registry that works better with the bag approach versus the box approach. 

posted by Linda on 09/03 at 06:18 PM
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