Just To Update: I have achieved almost mindless walking in my shoes and am fully confident that I will be able to stay vertical the entire night. I might lose my baby toes in the process because they will become fully fused to the toe that is next to them, but that is the cost when you cram your feet into shoes that are too small.
Happy Monday All!
Now if you're thinking to yourself "that looks like a new home design in the Colonial Georgian style meant to re-create a historic plantation house that has been added on to over the past century and a half", then you are exactly right and you should be a critic, or maybe a professor.
Or if you thought "you went outside the lines in some places", you are correct there as well. What they don't teach you in kindergarten is it's good to get outside the lines sometimes, it's called artistic license.
All the digging is an effort to create a new path in the back and some new plantings. I'll show-and-tell when I'm through. See you guys at nap time!
I asked a very fashion conscious friend to go shopping with me and she was a lifesaver. I found something I liked at Anthropologie so that took some pressure off. Then, after finding the dress we found the most amazing shoes that were just what I needed for this dress. The only problem is that they were half a size too small and had 3 1/2 inch heels. I haven't worn heels anywhere near that tall in my life. I decided to suck it up and be a girl. Isn't that what girls are supposed to do, sacrifice comfort for "perfection?"
Well perfection means I'm re-learning to walk. Yesterday, I put on the shoes to cook dinner so that I had counter support all around if I fell. I also knew I would be required to stand the whole time so that was the accountability I needed. My ankles hurt and I have the start of a blister but now I can stand and walk without looking like Bambi. Joshua says I still look like I'm tippy toeing around so I'm going to work on the length of my strides this weekend.
I hope I don't fall at the event, but if I do, I'm going to look good on the way down.
This puppy will just upload the pictures to our computer as soon as it comes into range of our wireless router. I love it! However, I'm not on the cutting edge of technology so I need someone to talk me out of it if they know something I don't or if there is something better out there.
Thanks friends!
We have owned our new house for one year and to celebrate we decided it was time to get the neighbors together. The "party" went great. Our 95 year old neighbor came and I'm going to have to say that she was my favorite. We had a total of 8 neighbors attend and now we all know each other.
The mosquitoes were held at bay (mostly) for the evening and we had people here until almost nine which I think was pretty good since we were the youngest by at least 15 to 20 years.
At dusk, they started asking if they were going to get to see the house. I knew this was going to happen but Joshua didn't really believe it. Luckily, I'm a more forceful persuasive arguer and so we had cleaned the house the night before.
I don't think it was anyone's personal style but they were impressed with how different it looked. They kept saying "Ossie wouldn't recognize her house." I don't think they really meant it as a compliment but we took it that way.
It is that orange square you see just to the right of these words.
I have it there as an added element of interest. I think it is hilarious what it pulls up sometimes. It is supposed to "crawl" our site and pull relevant ads but it rarely hits that mark. Usually it is just a little east of ridiculous while still be just south of accurate.
The great thing is it changes constantly though so you never know what you are going to get. Last time I pulled up our page it was an ad for a "Fun, New Parenting Method." Then another time it was for "Heat Stress Kits." I am not asking you to click on it, rather I am asking you to enjoy the humor of it with every visit.
I can't wait to see what it thinks is relevant for this post.
Is this happening everywhere or are the oil companies just finally taking a stand against the partially offensive monument to the confederacy on I-65 and are refusing to deliver to Nashville?
I don't know, but I hope we get gas soon. Every time we notice another station running out we think, "hmmmmm should we get our gas tanks and fill them up just in case?" But then that feels a bit ridiculous. However, at what point do you say "yeah there is going to be a problem" and just be ridiculous with your eight gas cans at the one pump in town that still has gas?
I know most people would be bothered with children and parents trouncing through their yard at random times but not me. It just reminds me of my childhood when we would sit down to dinner with the family and wave to a Peska child who was walking shoeless through our backyard to get to a friends house. I mention the shoeless because my mother always thought it was so strange that they rarely wore shoes. Sometimes they would come over to play in socks, without shoes. They could afford shoes and had plenty but they weren't made to wear them out of their house.
Anyway, now that the windows are open we only have five hours of quiet in our house because the sound of children playing is constant (morning and evening). I am upstairs right now and Joshua has his music turned up so loud I can hear it clearly on the other side of the house. My guess is he is trying to cover up the "children at play" noises coming in the windows. At one point this afternoon he looked up at me and said "What is that? Is something wrong?"
No Joshua that is just the sound of a girl getting chased by a boy. If she was smart she wouldn't run - she would fill her purse with rocks and use it as a weapon. That worked for me every time.
This party is to foster a little neighborly spirit between everyone. It is also our way of dealing with the offhand comments we get all the time when we see someone getting mail.
"Now I can't imagine there was anything wrong with that house when you bought it. What are you people doing over there?"
"Well thank you so very much for asking, come over on Friday, eat our chicken and we'll give you a tour."
Not all clinical studies sound scary to me, just this one.
Hmmmm... interesting. I don't think taking strange untested pills is scary. Maybe that is crazier!
The mosquito candle is the newest addition, although honestly right now I don't think it is working very well.
It is so great to live in a place where you can sit outside in September. I'm sweating a little bit, but lets be honest I can sweat in a fully air conditioned space so that isn't a really big deal. I have so many memories of going to classes in Austin drenched with sweat and then before that there were band practices in Corpus in November where we were still dying in the heat.
There are quite a few reasons why I'd rather not live in Tennessee but the weather IS NOT one of them.
I want every child to have fresh water and food everyday. I want everyone to have the opportunity to go to school. I want people to be able to keep more of the money they work so hard to earn. I want people to give more of that money away to make the first two things possible. I want people who are sick to have access to the things that make them better. I want people to know the hope that I have and believe there is a better life.
Pretty lofty list and that is just the beginning. I don't think there is a candidate that can help with my list and that makes the choice hard for me. However, 3 things happened this weekend that showed me what I need to do.
#1 An idea "Be the change you want to see in the world." - That's a quote from Ghandi but I heard it on Grey's Anatomy
#2 An opportunity - We met with an organization in Nashville called Youth Encouragement Services that has worked for the last 50 years with kids in the projects of Nashville giving them an opportunity to change their destiny.
#3 An outcome - We watched Born Into Brothels about a photographer who gave years of her life to help children of prostitutes escape that world.
There is no easy solution to my list but that isn't my problem. I need to do what I can and trust that someone else will be working beside me to help with the other items. So this year, instead of teaching the ESL class we have done for 2 years we are going to tutor kids on Tuesday evening. I can't wait to get started and I don't think I'm going to change the world, I'm just going to do my part.
FYI - Don't go to the website, it will ruin the film for you (spoiler).
Right now we have 2 documentaries waiting for us to watch, "Born into Brothels" and "Wetback" but most recently we watched "Paper Clips" and "51 Birch Street."
Paper Clips should have been a touching story about children learning about the Holocaust. However, there was no conflict or story arch even though they kept acting like something was going to happen. So it ended up being something that was more interesting in the 2 sentence synopsis rather than the 1.5 hour movie.
51 Birch Street was quite the opposite. It was a very intriguing 2 hours that didn't sound as good on the back of the box. It was about a son's discovery of who his parents really were and what their relationship was really like. It was great because the movie didn't push the final outcome but let you discover with the filmmaker what he experienced. If you get a chance to get it, check it out. It makes you think about your own parents and how you would deal with some of the experiences he had in the making of the film.
Hope you guys are having a great weekend.
Joshua and I received a check from our insurance company for $700 for an error on something at the closing of our house one year ago but it wasn't discovered until this week. I can't wait to deposit it and write a check in that amount for my Peru mission trip. With that money and the garage sale I am only lacking a few hundred dollars for my trip which is crazy since I only just decided that I was even going on the trip.
I am always amazed at God's provision in the self employed life I was made for. When I was working for a company it was easy to think that I had something to do with my monthly income. Being freelance is different and I love it because there is no mistaking who is in control.
As the weather is getting cooler we are moving into phase 2 of the Salem house renovation. It is really appropriate that we start now because it was about one year ago today that we tore into the inside of our house.
Quick sidenote: I can't believe one year ago we had two houses. One year ago my life looked completely different and it is crazy to think of the things that I have lost and gained in just a years time. It has been a year of mourning and celebration and because I would have to trade the good with the bad I wouldn't change a thing.
Anyway, the hole he is digging will be used for drainage off the house. We are going to be building flower beds and planting plants. Then we'll move into painting shutters and doors and replacing storm doors. It is quite a task (we really hate yardwork) but we are excited about the front of our house not looking neglected and barren any longer.
I'm glad you were born! I'll go out on a limb and say that Sam is glad too (since she IS in the picture with us).
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