Star Wars

Once,
I sat in a theater
Waiting for the lights to dim
With my little blonde-haired brother – the one
Who always called me “Pardner.”

“Jango Fett,” he corrected,
his little eyes rolling,
when I said “Boba” by mistake.

Mom instructed me to take off his glasses
During the scary parts.
I covered his eyes­, but years later
He confessed that he peeked through.

Now,
I sit on my couch
With a little blonde-haired boy
Watching the same film.
He always calls me “Mom.”

I skip through the scary parts for him,
Without being asked.

This story is familiar and different
Each time around.
The roles of the characters change
With each episode.

My little boy
And his now-grown uncle,
Duel with their new and once-new light sabers.

This is not just my cycle to continue,
But theirs.

Unplugging from Facebook

I disabled my Facebook account last night, and I immediately felt this overwhelming sense of relief. I feel like Christian in A Pilgrim's Progress who was able to get rid of his large burden. No more do I have to check for notifications! No more will I pull up Facebook if I feel even a hint of boredom! Instead, I'm going to try and embrace the bored moments to give my brain some time to relax.

I have struggled with maintaining my Facebook account for several months, largely because I felt like I was wasting too much time on there. Earlier this year, I went through and limited my number of friends to my closest friends from high school, closest friends from college, local friends, and my family members. In other words, I limited Facebook to the people with whom I regularly communicate. I wanted to do this so that I could limit the amount of content in my news feed, too. If I had less friends, then I would have less content to see. Although this helped me limit some time that I spent on Facebook, I still felt like it wasn't enough. I deleted the Facebook app from my phone about two months ago, but I still found myself often checking Facebook via my phone's internet browser.

So, I'm just going to be done. There are a lot of other things that I want to do with my time, and I'm increasingly disenchanted with the experiences that I have had on Facebook. Although I enjoy having brief updates from friends and seeing photos of my friends and family, I feel like those rewarding posts usually are about one in twenty or thirty of the posts and links that come into my feed. So, if I check Facebook multiple times a day and only have a few friends, then I rarely have something worthwhile to see or read. Instead, I feel like a good portion of my time has gone down the drain.

One of the things that helped me to push my decision to get off of Facebook was reading the book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. Carr discusses how our brains physically adapt to the fast paced, snippety bits of information that is provided by the web, social media, and search engines. The neurons literally change our brains, which affects our different types of memory and our brain functions. As a result of using the internet, over time our brains can lose the ability to concentrate for long periods of time and deeply think.

I have noticed that my attention span has changed in the past several years due to my internet usage, and I don't like it. If I ever am involved in something difficult or boring when on my computer, I often jump over to Facebook or another website for a quick distraction. But these distractions add up in terms of time, and I feel like I'm less productive overall. Although I realize that the internet will continue to have an important role in my life (after all, I am writing on a blog right now!), I do think that I need to take more control over the time that I spend online. I want to be more of a deep, meditative thinker, not a wired and distracted person.

Hopefully this change will help me to enjoy life a bit more. I'd rather live my life, then spend time observing the lives of others without genuinely and meaningfully interacting with them. I'd rather write more letters, write more emails, and make more phone calls to those people. Although I may get on Facebook again in the future, I think this is a welcome break.

Recent Art by Sam

Left to right: a carrot chew toy, a giraffe, a dachsund (love the body and ears!), a train, and a rocket ship

 

Left to right: Gram, Bop, me, a icy snowflake, Sam with a heart, J, the pond at RB

Sam doesn't like to draw or write very much, but we are trying to gently encourage him to develop these two skill a little bit more. Last week, Sam's kindergarten teacher gave the parents of her students a few recommendations to help children work on refining their motor skills. We bought some bath crayons the other night, and Sam had a lot of fun drawing in the bathtub. I think these special crayons will be helpful in getting him excited to draw. And, unsurprisingly, Sam does like to draw on the children's menus when they are provided at certain restaurants (first image). If baths and restaurants make drawing more fun, then I suppose we will need to have more of them!

Deluge of House and Garden Projects

I have been swimming in a deluge of house projects over the past few weeks. This sudden push to complete house projects largely was due to two things: 1) the kinda-sorta finding of chairs to complete our dining set (see below) and 2) more free time since Sam started kindergarten. I wanted to get all of these projects done before school started, too.

We haven't bought any furniture for our house for over a year, even though we would have liked a few things. J said that he didn't want to get anything else for the house until we solved the dining room chair issue. So, we have been saving money for other furniture projects while I hunted for chairs online, insisting that we could find readymade chairs at a reasonable price somewhere (so we wouldn't have to pay through-the-nose to get the last chairs custom made). And, after searching for a year, I miraculously found a fourth chair at a consignment store in New York state that was willing to ship the chair to me. That completed our set (with two local chairs, one received through a store in North Carolina, and the fourth from New York state). We wanted to get two more chairs for the ends of the table, and I found some similar chairs (made by Blosser) on Craiglist in North Carolina. I had the chairs shipped, only to realize that I had bought pub-style chairs instead of regular chairs. Argh! So, the saga still continues a bit, but things are finished enough for J to feel okay about working on other furniture and house projects. We may have the legs of these high chairs cut, to help accommodate someone sitting at our table. But if you look at the set of chairs at the table, the set looks pretty good:

The Blosser chairs will need to be refinished with a darker color, too. You can see the difference between the chairs when they are side by side:

The other really big project was spreading gravel on our driveway. (I wrote a little bit about the early stages of this project HERE.) We got a little too much gravel, but luckily our next door neighbor was able to use most of the extra gravel. We also were able to spread some of the gravel on our walkway, which was pretty much nonexistent before. I'm so thrilled too walk out of the house and see gravel instead of dirt and weeds.

BEFORE

You can see where I had started to pull out grass and weeds in the foreground of the image, along the fence

AFTER 

IN PROGRESS

You can see how much grass we had to pull out, based on the unfinished portion in the background

I've also had the chance to paint, find furniture, find lamps, and work in the garden lately. Here's a smattering of images:

I painted the interior of our front entryway closet. This was the last area of unpainted drywall in our entire house. No more major painting projects!

We found a small bathroom cabinet for downstairs. J had to saw off the towel rod underneath, so that it would fit. I painted it a cream color to match the beadboard.

A curtain for the upstairs hallway! It's nice to have a little color there and more privacy.

His-and-hers lamps for the sides of our bed. When we moved in, some faux-antique white lamps were installed in the walls. My lamp didn't work, so we had it removed and there was a gaping hole on my side of the bed for about a yaer. I searched diligently for new lamps for a long time. J finally told me that I didn't need to be passionate about every single lamp and piece of furniture that we buy, so I settled on these practical ones.

We also rearranged some furniture and brought this chair upstairs to create a little reading area in our room. I got a little Ikea table and small Ikea lamp. I'm not passionate about them either, but they fill the space just fine.

I do really like this hall tree that we put in our entryway. The storage bench holds all of our boots and unseemly dirty shoes.  It's also nice to have a place to hang coats when guests come over.

 This lamp helps to really make our entryway seem more complete, I think. I really love this lamp. It has some nice purple and raspberry colors that go well with both the interior walls and the exterior color of our front door. I'm glad that I'm passionate about the first and last thing that I see when I go in and out of the house.

We created a little reading area in the downstairs living room with this accent chair and ottoman.

I've also been working in the garden. The flowers on the side of the house are coming along nicely. I also pulled out all of the old California Poppies, and put a few Black Eyed Susans in the gaps that were created. These Black Eyed Susans are perennials, so I hope to enjoy them each year.

I feel like the house has really come together over the past few months (although there are more projects I could name - don't look too closely at that shed in the background of the last two pictures!). Now I feel like I can move on into the fall season and upcoming school year, since I have been able to make visible improvements in the house during my summer break. I really love this house and enjoy making it a beautiful space that fits J's distinct taste and my distinct taste. It's really fulfilling and rewarding for me to work toward something that I hope to enjoy for many years to come.

Kindergarten Questionnaire

Sam brought home his "Friday Folder" for me this afternoon. He's thrilled that sometimes I get "homework" from his teacher to complete over the weekend. The folder contained student profile page and a list of questions about Sam. I really enjoyed thinking about each question in relation to my little boy, so I thought I'd post my short responses here:

Has previous schooling been a positive experience for your child? Why or why not?
Yes. Sam loves structure and routine. He is very particular about order and structure, so the routine of preschool has been good for him. He also loves to learn.

What are your child's special strengths?
Sam is very observant and curious. He has a very active imagination and is very creative when he pretends. He already loves to read and has great comprehension and retention of complex stories.

What, if any, limitations will he/she have to overcome?
Sam doesn't have specific limitations, but he does tend to give up on activities or projects that prove difficult. At present he tends to shy away from activities that require refined motor skills (like writing and drawing).

Share with me what makes your son/daughter special.
Sam is very loving and likes to wholeheartedly attach himself to people/objects that he cares about. Although he is a cautious person by nature, he easily can love and embrace such people and things after he has had time to be properly introduced.

What does your child enjoy doing at home?
Sam likes to read, play with figurines and pretend play. He likes to dress up in superhero costumes. He also likes looking at cities and landmarks on Google Earth with the help of his dad!

Singin' in the Rain: Fun Facts

Since I read Unsinkable: A Memoir by Debbie Reynolds earlier this year, I have wanted to rewatch "Singin' in the Rain." I waited several months to get a copy from the library, but I finally had the chance to see the movie again a few night ago. It was a good movie to watch, because it has been raining a lot this week. My friend Rachael came over to watch it with me. She pulled up the trivia section about the film on IMDB, and I pulled out my copy of Unsinkable to reference during the movie. We chatted and spouted random facts during the whole show, which was fun. Here are some interesting things about this film:

• Debbie Reynolds was nineteen when she was cast for this role. Gene Kelly had just turned forty. Kelly was upset that Reynolds, a "nobody," was given this part to play against himself, a famous actor.
• Reynolds was not a formal dancer when she was given this role. She wrote that she "had three months to learn what Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor had been doing for years" (Unsinkable, p. 205). She was dancing for eight hours a day and suffered from exhaustion. Once, in a moment of frustration, Debbie crumpled under a rehearsal piano and cried. Fred Astaire saw her crying and gave her encouragement. He told her, "You're not going to die. That's what it's like to learn to dance. If you're not sweating, you're not doing it right" (Unsinkable, p. 206).
• Reynolds remarked that making this movie and childbirth are the two hardest things that she's had to do in life.
• I think it is really ironic that Debbie Reynolds' voice was dubbed over for two songs: "Would You" and "You Are My Lucky Star." Betty Noyes is the singer for these songs. This is ironic, because Reynolds character is supposed to be dubbing the voice for Lena Lamont's character. Reynolds did sing her character's other songs in the show. She wrote in Unsinkable that she "hates [her] voice in the movie," but doesn't mention anything about Noyes (p. 208).
• The famous scene with Gene Kelly was done in one take. Kelly was very ill (some report that he had a fever of 101) and the director was ready to send him home. Kelly insisted on doing the number (which had been set up with rudimentary blocking). He ad-libbed and improvised during the scene, but it was accepted and included as the famous scene in the film. This information is most impressive to me - what a clear example of Kelly's talent and acting abilities!

House paint: MASTER LIST

After painting the wrong color of paint on a cabinet this morning, I decided that it is a good idea to have a master list of the colors of paint in our house. This is the second time that I have mixed up paint samples when touching up something in the downstairs bathroom. Hopefully, with this list, I won't make this mistake again.

Interior:

• Basement: Valspar, Blanched Thyme, Signature, Interior Semigloss, Base B (Lowe's) 
• Laundry room: Valspar, Kitchen & Bath, Ultra Int, BsA-391672109-5, 111-1Y27.5, 203-2.5 (Lowe's)
• White trim throughout house: Glidden, Swan White, Interior Satin (Home Depot)
• Main level: Restoration Hardware, Silver Sage, Subtle Velvet finish (Restoration Hardware). Update: Silver Sage is discontinued, but I found a custom color match:

• Downstairs bathroom: Behr, Martha Stewart Living?, Bone, Ultra Flat, Matte (Home Depot) 
• Upstairs hallway and stairwell: Valspar, Salisbury, Interior Eggshell (Lowe's)
• Sam's Room: I seem to remember that there was a leftover Disney paint can when we moved here.
• Office: I think it is Valspar, Martinique Dawn, Interior Flat Enamel (half of a gallon left in basement by previous owners).
• Upstairs bathroom: Restoration Hardware, Silver Sage, Subtle Velvet finish (Restoration Hardware)
• Master bedroom: Restoration Hardware, Sea Green, Subtle Velvet finish (Restoration Hardware)
• Master bedroom closet: Glidden, Egg shell, Low L____ (missing), Martha Stewart Living 122, Milk Pail
• Studio (updated 2024): 6222 Riverway, Eggshell finish, (Sherwin Williams)

Outside:

• Front Door: Olympic, Apple-a-Day, Premium Exterior Latex, Semi-Gloss (Lowe's)
• Porch floor: Behr, Porch & Patio, Lus__Door (word obscured), DP-358, Coffee (Home Depot)
• Side porch railing and floor: Behr, solid color wood stain, SC-103, Coffee (Home Depot)
• Fence: Behr, Weather Proofing Wood Stain, solid color, DP-358, Coffee

Mystery/unwanted/unknown paints in basement:

• Behr, Interior flat enamel, W-F 700, Moon Rise (Home Depot) Left over from previous owners. Could this be the white paint used for the office closet?
• Valspar, Snow Cap, Signature Sample (Lowe's). I don't know why we originally got this, but J did use this color for the Rouen Cathedral print frames.
• Auditions, Willow Wind, Satin (Lowe's). Was this a sample intended for the upstairs office?
• Olympic, C36-4, Horizon Glow (Lowe's). Left over from determining good basement color.
• Unknown what pink paint was used in office closet