Grown-up furniture...

I'm so excited!! I have a new couch and chair!

For the first time in my life, my furniture feels...mature, I guess. Maybe it's just because my tastes have changed a lot since the last time I bought furniture, which was about 15 years ago, I think...maybe longer. I've hated my old couch for a long time, but it was still in pretty decent shape until recently when the springs started NOT springing--sitting on it has been like sinking into a pit from which you can't extract yourself without a crane. Well...almost. ;-)

I LOVE my new couch. The color doesn't really look "olive" in the picture, but that's what it is. And the chair--oh, my gosh, it's BEAUTIFUL. And totally me. And it's nice to have something that wasn't a hand-me-down from someone else or what I settled for because it was the one with the "clearance" tag on it.

And someone just picked up my old couch from the curb...she was glad to have it, un-springy springs and all, so I'm glad I could do a little paying forward.

The sounds of silence...

It's quiet in my house tonight. Too quiet. The only sounds I hear right now are the clicking of my fingers on the keyboard and the cat giving herself a bath in the chair beside me.

It's lovely having company. It's lonely when company goes home. Back to the mundane laundry/dishes/housecleaning chores of "normal" life. Back to the business of sorting out my thoughts...although, it's not a bad business to be about (and pretty necessary).

Maybe silence is good for something. I have much to ponder. :-)

Thoughts and tears and tv shows...

It's been a long time since a tv show (well, except for "The Big Give" which doesn't count) made me cry. Probably partially due to the fact that I don't watch much tv...and what I DO watch, I watch online, since I don't have cable.

So, I watch October Road. Faithfully. And I've become emotionally attached to the small-town atmosphere, the characters, the relationships...I want to go find that town and buy a house next door to Eddie and Phil and Nick and Pizza Girl. :-) Actually, I want to BE Pizza Girl, complete with pink and yellow and green and purple stripes in my hair--she called herself an "oddling" on one episode and I knew we were soul-sisters. ;-)

Tonight's episode was a little different--quite a bit of male/female relationship misunderstanding/conflict, interspersed with flashbacks to the boys at 10 years old, all of them in love with a girl who moved away...and was forgotten for 18 years until they learned she had just been killed in a car wreck.

Maybe it's partly because 2 horrible accidents here have left 3 people dead in the past week...and I have a heightened sense of the importance of making every moment count with the ones you love. Maybe it's partly because it's so refreshing to watch a show where the guys are portrayed, at least sometimes, as stopping to consider their actions AND share their thoughts/fears with the women they love. Whatever the reason, the final scenes of all the men leaving the funeral and going back to the women they love and making things right brought on the tears. I mean, I actually sat here and cried.

And it's not just about the tv show, of course. It's all tied in with community and relationship and love and respect and being transparent with one another, even when you're afraid. Another encouragement that I'm on the right track. Another challenge to keep running that race.

Fried Chicken...I KNOW him!!!

OMG.

I may have to post the actual "news article" that was posted on our agency website today. After 18 years, I'm still in shock when I encounter people who are so stupid, they can't even manage to use correct grammar/spelling/punctuation/capitalization when they're writing something that will be sent to every employee in the agency and/or posted on the website.

I find it difficult to believe that so many people lack basic intelligence and simple grammatical skills--especially people who work in an agency in which most positions require a college degree. Maybe their degrees are in basketweaving...? Obviously nothing that required an English class. Or nothing that required staying away during an English class. (And I still haven't recovered from our agency director's interest being "peeked" awhile back.)

Until I have the actual article in front of me, here are the basics:

A Lady came to a local office for services. The Lady got sick while she was waiting for her son to pick her up, because she has Diabetes. The office administrator gave the Lady some Fried Chicken from a Potluck the staff was having that day.

PRINCESS BRIDE meets ELF:

"Hey, Lady, Fried Chicken is going to be here today."

"Fried Chicken?!! I KNOW him!!!"

Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen.

I feel like...

...I'm hanging by the thinnest of threads tonight. Like one small gust of wind could detach me from my perch and fling me off into the night sky. It's not truth. The thread is strong and I know it. But I feel it and it scares me. My foundation just doesn't feel very firm right now.

I'm tired. I got my butt kicked by my dear friend John's sermon this morning. I love him. I hate him. No, I DO love him. And he loves me, which is why he speaks truth to me without sugarcoating it. He was preaching to me today (he mentioned me BY NAME twice--can't get much more direct than that!) His question was "what would you do for Jesus if you knew you couldn't fail?" If I really KNEW I couldn't fail, I might not feel like I'm swinging on a thread over a deep abyss. But maybe the answer to the question is "cut the thread". And maybe I don't want to think about that possibility right now.

Me...redefined

Spring cleaning has come early this year. I feel suffocated, small, squashed by STUFF. Like the things around me are clamoring so loudly, they're telling me who I am...and I'm not sure that "who" fits me anymore.

I have to laugh sometimes--I'm surrounded by signs, big and small, that say "simplify". And how is surrounding myself with a bunch of signs simplifying anything? Umm. More to organize. More to dust. More to READ. And how, pray tell, is reading "simplify" every time I turn around benefitting me? I don't feel benefitted at all...

So I'm purging.

When I moved into this house, I already had a lot of things that I loved--things that expressed my personality in beautiful/weird ways (pretty fitting!)--and I continued to collect treasures here and there that reflected facets of who I am. Of course, family and friends have also gifted me with additional pieces over the years...and my "little collections" are all grown up now and breathing down my neck at every turn.

And I've been left wondering where things changed. I'm not my stuff. I am ME. I'm not the mixing bowls/coasters/cookbooks/baskets with which I've been gifted. I'm not even the hayhooks/cobalt glass/milk bottles/"simplify" signs I've bought myself. I'm not a house full of clutter. And I'm no longer going to let any of that control me and attempt to tell me who I am.

I need to breathe. I need to not have my senses bombarded at every turn by something to read/see/smell. I need space. I need to reclaim my home for myself. I need to reclaim ME.

I gutted my kitchen this evening. Tossed about half of my cookbooks in the rummage sale pile. Cleared everything but the toaster, coffeemaker and food processor off the countertop. Decluttered the top of the fridge and microwave. Truly simplified. It looks almost like it did when I first moved in, before I started adding things. I like it. I can breathe.

I already had about half the living room done and I'm finding I really like the clean lines and empty spaces. Not every tabletop/inch of shelf space has to be covered. Empty spaces leave room for possibility.