Hallelujah

It's not over yet, but we've been granted a reprieve.

And after reading part of the information after the voting section, I'm about to get rid of nearly ALL plastic toys.  (Legos must stay--there would be mutiny here if I tried to get rid of them.)

So, it's looking like I'll be sewing, knitting, and crocheting a LOT of toys in the near future. lol

Then again, Almanzo Wilder didn't have any toys at age 9.  He was too busy learning how to live a real life.  Hmmmm.

Simplicity's Power

Artistry's test lies not in the materials, but in the artist.

My Handspun

Many thanks to sgeddes, whose reporting example is so easy to follow. I just wish my last name was as easy to turn into a great brand name. ;o)

From The Passionate Mind

This was my first attempt at Navajo plying, and there are a few flaws. Overall, though, it's decently balanced and doesn't have too many open loops where the three strands of the chain weren't the same length. ;o)

From The Passionate Mind

I was too excited to wait to take pictures during the day, so you've got to suffer through with ambient living room light for this post. Never fear, though . . . a light box is in the works.

From The Passionate Mind

EastSide* Handspun

Fiber Content: 100% Merino
Fiber Source: Sheepish Creations
Colorway: Unknown.
Yardage: ??? yards
Weight: 28 grams/1 oz
WPI: ???
Notes: 3-ply, Navajo plied, spun from the fold.

(*It's a play on one of my names.)

Wednesday Short List

One load of laundry.
Have kids put away their own.
Put crib & changing table on Craigslist.

Enough.

I believe I'm beginning to really understand that I have "enough".

I excitedly ordered The Power of Less, excited to see what secrets Leo had for the rest of us . . . what incredible breakthrough he found that allowed him to apply the principles of minimalism and common-sense which so transformed his life. What epiphany so empowered him. I was rather surprised to find my excitement was unnecessary.

There is no secret.

Leo took much of the same information I already know, and transformed his life. Doh. I already know everything in that book.

That means it's time to knuckle down and just do it. Here goes.

P.S.) The Short Lists are working great--when I remember to do them, and write them down. I think I need to start blogging them daily.

The Way to Live this Week

Some thoughts to ponder, from an old email foward:

92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud man, who is
fully dressed each morning by eight o'clock, with his
hair fashionably coifed and shaved perfectly applied,
even though he is legally blind, moved to a nursing
home today. His wife of 70 years recently passed away,
making the move necessary. After many hours of waiting
patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, he smiled
sweetly when told his room was ready.

As he maneuvered his walker to the elevator, I
provided a visual description of his tiny room,
including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on his
window.

"I love it," he stated with the enthusiasm of an
eight-year-old having just been presented with a new
puppy.

"Mr. Jones, you haven't seen the room; just wait."

"That doesn't have anything to do with it," he
replied.

"Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time.
Whether I like my room or not doesn't depend on how
the furniture is arranged .. it's how I arrange my
mind. I already decided to love it "It's a decision I
make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I
can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I
have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or
get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do.

Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open I'll
focus on the new day and all the happy memories I've
stored away. Just for this time in my life.

Old age is like a bank account. You withdraw from what
you've put in.

So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of
happiness in the bank account of memories. Thank you
for your part in filling my Memory bank. I am still
depositing."

Remember the five simple
rules to be happy:

1. Free your heart from hatred.

2. Free your mind from worries.

3. Live simply.

4. Give more.

5. Expect less.


Today's short list:

Do laundry with the kids.
Mark spots on wall to hang family pictures.
Make good food.

Total Rant: On good error-handling in shipped code.

Could someone, somewhere, PUHLEASE make it easy on me when I hit a bug, for heaven's sake?

Is it my responsibility, as a user, to Google the error code, sleuth through overburdened help & FAQ forums, post a question, wait for an answer, and otherwise spend minutes or hours of my precious and scarce time on a problem that's not mine to fix?

Ravelry has it right. When there's a problem, a friendly little page appears containing Bob, the official Rav mascot, that says (paraphrased, as I can't find an error right now to quote it):

Doh! We've been notified, and we'll fix this as fast as we can. Thanks!

Casey (the well-loved code monkey behind the wonder that is Ravelry) is automatically emailed each and every time there's a problem. Knowing something of Casey's coding practices and design ethics, I rest assured that those automatic emails contain all of the info necessary for him to fix the problem.

I'm so terribly tired of bug handling being left to the end user. It's time for the code guys (I'm talking to you, Blogger) to take responsibility and automate the process so the rest of us aren't left without what we need from the service/product, and a burden to go figure it out ourselves.

The Great Laundry Clean-Up

Last Saturday, after the kids were in bed, Vern and I were doing something a lot of fairly well-established married couples do on a Saturday night. He was paying bills, I was cleaning the house. . . although, like most cleaning, I can't remember what it was now that it's over. (It all has this mystical aura to me. Somehow, because I can't remember each and every step, it seems impossible both before and after the fact, while as I'm in the midst of it, it's all a blur. ;o)

Then my eyes fell upon something I had picked up earlier that day at Home Despots: a bag containing two 4" 90-degree vent elbows for the dryer.

Earlier this week, the children and I went to Ikea. We had a ton o' fun, and sadly have no photo record. I took quite a number of shots with my nifty new-to-me Palm Treo, but as it is very new to me, instead of saving each one, I managed to discard them right after I took them. Sigh. We have our memories.

Oh, but back to Ikea. While there, I bought a changing table on sale. (Hooray for Winter Madness!) On Friday I assembled it (straightforward and enjoyable as far as RTA furniture goes), and tried to install it in the laundry room where the old changing table had been. Being within 1/4" of the same size as the old one, I figured I only needed to move the dryer a teensy, tiny bit in order to squeeze the changing table in past the door molding. Well, I guess I moved it a little more than a teensy, tiny bit, because I managed to put enough stress on the flexible 90 between the dryer and the floor that it popped all three of it's seams.

In case you're wondering, this is what a flexible 90 looks like:



The one I destroyed was very close to that.

So, on Saturday I bopped on down to Home Depot with MissE, picked up a couple of replacements (if you've ever worked with rigid vent pipe, you understand why), and then had to set them aside to jump back into the fray of everyday living.

Fast-forward a few hours to post-bedtime peace, and we've surfaced from the flash-back. I'm looking at the bag with the 90's in it, and thinking to myself: "If I don't want to be buried alive in laundry, I need to get this thing fixed."

About 30 minutes later, Vern comes downstairs and is thwarted in his efforts to gain the kitchen:



Upon closer inspection, this is what he sees:



Except I've just popped my head up from behind the washer, where I'm hunkered down, gently coaxing various pieces of venting together in such a way to allow me to switch the relative position of the washer and dryer.

You see, we have a rather disturbing pattern when we move. The truck arrives at the new place (after much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth for the preceeding week or six), it's unloaded in as careful a manner as possible, and no matter how hard I try (I've had eight shots at it now), most everything is almost, but not quite, entirely in the wrong spot. (My apologies to Douglas Adams.) The dresser is on the wrong wall. The washer and dryer are backward (we didn't have the vent pieces to put them where they should have been, and for some unknown reason, having the dryer hooked up Right. Now. seemed more important than calling up one of the multitudinous helpful familiy members who helped us unload the truck and say: "Hey, you know how you offered to help if we needed anything? Well, would you mind picking up a couple of pieces of vent pipe at the Home Despots and dropping them by sometime soon?" Add to that the fact that I didn't realize I could switch the darn things without taking one of them out of the room entirely, and I was stuck.

(This is turning into quite the rambling essay, isn't it? I hope you're all feeling patient, because I'm not done yet . . . feel free to just skip this one, if you're getting bored.)

Where was I? Oh yes, Vern was peering into the laundry.

I smiled, waved some greasy fingertips at him, and tried to offer an explanation that would ease the slightly-worried-that-my-wife-might-be-up-in-the-night look off of his face. It sort of worked. At least he didn't make me stop. (He does like the hallways to be rather un-blockaded, so I can see why my explanation might not have had anything to do with it.) He helped me ease the dryer back into position, carefully and breathlessly attaching the vent to the exhaust on the back of the machine. (No slip-ups, and no bent edges. Hooray!!!)

I walked the washer back into position, and felt much as I would imagine Atlas himself does as he turns the world on its axis. Rotating a several-hundred-pound washer on one of it's feet is something every housewife should do once in her life. Nearly as empowering as childbirth.

I snuggled the changing table back between the washer and wall, and nearly dissolved in ecstatic relief. Not only did I not have my appliances fighting with each other (now the washer door opens away from the dryer!), but I have actual drawers (did you see em'? did you see 'em? real, live drawers!) for the baby's clothes. It's so much nicer than them living in a pile on top of the dryer. I've found that drawers lend themselves to cleanly-clad munchkins.

And so, when I venture into the hallway that offers itself as a laundry room (I'm grateful to have it, btw), I'm no longer greeted by teetering mounds of clean laundry on the dryer, piles of miscellany on the washer, full hampers of dirty laundry threatening to take over the narrow space in front of the door to the garage, and mounds of other household laundry waiting its turn on the floor.

I'm greeted by this:



A clean slate. :o)

Next time, tune in for the Great Laundry Spiff-Up, where this intrepid housewife decorates where no one has decorated before . . . (suggestions welcome!)

The Zen Initiative

So, as some of you may have seen on facebook (I'm there, btw, if any of you are, too), I've just begun reading The Power of Less by Leo Babauta. I've just finished chapter one, and there are some questions I'm supposed to ask myself. In the interest in really getting some good out of this book, I thought I'd actually take the time to write down my answers (hoping I'll remember them ;o).

And here they are:

1. Which areas of my life are overwhelming?

Jokes about having five children, living in a post-consumer age overflowing with material excess, and my pack-rattiness aside . . . it's my environment. The housekeeping, meal-making & clean up, everything. (Although the laundry has been humming along since I re-did the laundry room.)

2. What would I like to simplify?

Everything about the housekeeping.

3. In addition to the tasks I need to accomplish in different areas, do I want to limit the number of possessions I have, what information I receive, or what responsibilities I have?

Overlooking the fact that the first part of this question is ambiguous to the point of complete obfuscation (too many subjective terms), this is a yes. I want to limit the number of possessions I have (which is way to many), the information I receive (I read too much on the internet), and what responsibilities I have (the kids could do a LOT more around here).

So, there's that. I'm really curious to see if the first part of question three is elucidated later in the book . . .

(Oh. I just got it. The first part of question three should have the word "limiting" right after "In addition to . . .", meaning that limiting tasks is a given. I was understanding it as "In addition to working on/completing the tasks I need to accomplish in different areas . . . " Oh intricacy, English is thy name . . . .)

Muddy Gem

From my dear friend Birrd:

"That was in October. Life was going like a mudslide, sucking me along in a torrent of squelchy goo-filled days, accelerating as the Holidays approached. Now, I like mud and all, but come January I decided that I was going to harmonize my debris flow and tell it where to go instead of letting it push me along."

She's one of my favorite writers, you know. Just too much fun.  :o)