Speaking of Tomb Stones

My dad emailed this to me this morning. It's my grandparents tombstone (obviously:P) and oddly enough, it made me smile. Now, this might be a normal, run-of-the-mill tombstone, I have no idea, but it suits my grandparents perfectly.

You'd have to be totally unaware of Christianity and its symbols not to figure out that they were Christian, their tombstone, like their house, is covered in it. I love the crosses in stain glass on the sides with the ivy branches covering them, You are the Vine, we are the branches. Their names and dates, my grandfathers not yet completed, are both written in the Book of Life, something I know my grandparents don't have to wonder about.

What made me smile the most was the heart pierced by a cross in the center. My grandfather is a carpenter and he has made his children and grandchildren chairs, and I'm sure a half the people he knows, shelves, cradles, puzzles, you name it, if it's wood, he's made it, on the back or bottom of each and every one in black sharpie marker is the year it was made and and a heart pierced by a cross. I'd call it a family coat of arms but it isn't. Grandpa taught my brother, Phillip how to make pool ball holder once. He wouldn't let Phillip use the heart pierced by the cross, he said that Phillip needed to make his own mark, something that showed what he was. I'm pleased to say that Phillips is an Icthus next to a cross, and I don't think he picked a Christian symbol just because of my grandfather, that is truly Phillip.

And at the bottom, 'Parents of Wesley, Wilson, Walter, Warren.' No question, they poured themselves in to my father and uncles. No one could even begin to assert that they weren't completely devoted to their family, both their children and each other.

Yes, in the assessment of their granddaughter, this tombstone is a perfect representation of my grandparents and I am proud of them and proud to be their grandchild.

Starting Over

I just threw out my journal with a large chunk of started stories. I decided it was time. Some of those stories are six years old, some of them are only six months old, but it was time. I've spent so long jotting down bits and pieces that there was really no hope of going back through them all and resurrecting long dead plots and characters. I finally admitted that they were all false starts and what I really needed was to let them die and move on. I've almost thrown it out several times but never did because of that nagging feeling of 'maybe one day'.

It reminds me of the day we helped clean up Paul's basement after it flooded. I have a dim memory of him standing in his garage looking around as we brought in one soaked and ruined possession after another. I felt sorry for him because the water damage was pretty substantial. I forget exactly what he said but it was something to the extent of, "it's amazing all the things we keep and store because we think we need them but really, when they're ruined, we find out we don't. I keep looking at this stuff and being amazed that nothing really important was ruined."

So I've voluntarily thrown out my half stories. They're not important, I just keep them and move them around with me because I think I need them, they make me feel like I'm productive even though they don't really prove that.

Fire in the Rain

Dustin and I were out buying some chocolate and he got the sudden craving for S'mores. So we brought them home and were planning on toasting them over the stove when I suggested that we go to the local park and make a camp fire. Now, for those of you who don't know, it's been raining the past few days, not good for a camp fire, which my husband kindly pointed out. Also for those of you who don't know, Dustin is in a Wilderness Survival class this quarter and has spent the last few weeks creating a survival kit. This would be perfect, I replied, to test out all those petroleum covered cotton balls in survival conditions. He agreed. We spent probably half an hour to an hour tromping out in the woods trying to find the driest stuff we could as the rain sprinkled down. The good news is, the cotton balls do indeed burn for a really long time, the bad news is, my husband can't light strike-anywhere matches or start a fire in the rain.

We'll go practicing again sometime :P

The microwave is good for making S'mores.

Moving

People keep asking me if I'm ready to move and if I'll miss this place when I'm gone. Yes and, probably, no. I keep telling people that I've moved all my life and I suppose a friend of mine said it best when he responded, "So you're used to missing places." Yeah, I'm used to missing places. Some times I feel like Mary Poppins when the little boy asks her if she loves them and she responded, "And what would happen to me, may I ask, if I loved every child I cared for?"

Other people cry when they move, I might a little, some are emotionally distraught, not me. Every move brings a new town, new people, new plants and new reasons for why people get up in the morning. It's not that I don't like the people I've shared life with for the last four years, it's not that I won't wish for them to be with me in the future. Four years is about how long I've lived in any place and moving has rung all the emotion it can out of me, I simply accept it. Besides, all the people I'm leaving this time are Christian. It's much harder for me to leave non-Christian friends because I truly don't know if I'll ever see them again. My Christian friends I know will share life with me again so I don't worry.

I feel sorry sometimes because I know I come off as callus and not caring. But that's not true. If I really didn't care I would lie and tell them that I would miss it here, that I was afraid of moving to a new place, that I didn't think I could ever be as happy somewhere else (which would be an obvious lie to the people who were privy to my college experience). But how can I lie to the people I love? I've moved, I know none of that's true.

New Apartment

We signed for our new apartment on Tuesday. It was really exciting, I think it triggered the realization that we're actually moving in five weeks. We drove up and got there by 3 PM. Sarah, our new apartment manager, showed us the apartment we'll actually be living in. The floor plan was flipped from the two bedroom she showed us before, which threw me off a bit, and the girls who live there now had all their blinds closed so it was rather dark (I thrive in sunlight) but I was pleased. Dustin was, too, but he's not too picky :P We meandered around the grounds for a while and were really pleased with them. They have a stream running along one side of the grounds with lots of plants and ducks. We saw three male mallard ducks, one female duck, and lots of little baby ducks :) So adorable. They also have a 3 1/2 foot deep pool that looks really nice. It should be up and running by the time we move in.

When we returned home, I drew a to size diagram of our floor plan and made to size cut outs of our furniture so I could start arranging the furniture :X It was so much fun! My original plan didn't work out but it's a lot easier to change your furniture layout when they're made of construction paper, not the real thing. It is a testament to my husband that he didn't even roll his eyes.

Story Time

I've had my story floating around in my head for a while now, mostly from the perspective of one of my most... cynical characters who is also a control freak, it's more amusing that way. The problem is, well, one of them anyway, that I don't want to write the entire story from her point of view, it's rather undynamic, if that's a word. I know who I want to use but I'm having trouble transferring the point of view without loosing the sauciness that I so love to read and write and making the whole thing terribly dull and historical. I've been doing what ever the equivalent to doodling is in writing lately, I expect it'll pay of in, oh, say, six years. :X :P

The hardest part of writing, I believe, is not so much getting your thoughts on paper but getting them on paper in such a way that makes the people who read them enter into your thoughts and, subsequently, care. These are my characters in my own world (well, sorta, you could argue that every piece of high fantasy is nothing but highly extrapolated plagiarism, dungeons, dragons, castles, ladies in distress... you get it). Their emotions run as high as my own but how can I make others feel that? How to help them smell the grass of the battle field, how to feel the cold of the mountains, how to see the crystal clear water or feel the sweet soft breeze. How to make each nuance impeccably clear. I suppose it isn't truly possible, not through a medium, but still I try.

Skirt

I took in a skirt today.

My husband took me shopping last weekend and he found this skirt on clearance. It was a beautiful skirt: dark brown; nice, swirly embroidery with flowers; lined, good quality. Great skirt, size 12. I'm between a 2 and 4 usually so, naturally, I wrote it off and continued looking. Then he asked if I could take it in (curse learning to sew and a super supportive husband). I did not want to take it in. I had no good reason, I just didn't want to. But I flipped it inside out and took a look at how the seams came together and decided that, yes, I could take it in, that it would be the most complicated thing I've done to date, and there was no way I knew of to take it in and have it look like it hadn't been taken in. But it was only $7, he said, so it wouldn't matter if I messed it up totally. I still didn't want to do it but he was trying very hard to be helpful. I bought it.

So this morning I started looking at it again and pulled out the first seam to get a better look at what needed to be done so it would look reasonably well done. I was right, in my experience, it was really complicated. I tried my very best to be objective about it all, my perfectionist nature would have loved to make a basket case out of me. I made decisions and stuck to them. I pinned the seams and checked them all at least twice before I sewed them in. I finished it all in one sitting (so to speak since I had to keep getting up to make sure the skirt would actually fit when I was done) and my husband tolerated my very focused, please don't speak to me attitude, for which I am very grateful. It turned out well. All my mistakes are on the inside and fairly undetectable on the outside. I'm not entirely pleased with how the waistband turned out but I have no idea how to make it any better without pulling the whole skirt apart, which I am not willing to do, so I am content.

The first picture is a front view of the finished skirt, the second picture is a side view of the side that I took in.