THIS MAKES ME HAPPY: HANGIN' WITH MY KIDDOS

Lots of chittin' and chattin'.  Trailer food, cards and cupcakes.  Life is good.

DON'T FORGET TO FLOSS

If you wondered why you didn't get a post this morning, you can blame it on my new dentist.  Boy, is she ever thorough!  I thought I could go to my appointment, go work out, and still be at Mima's by 11:15 or 11:30.  It was more like 12:15, and that was only by skipping my workout.  Sheesh!  Of course, it would have probably taken a lot less time had I not been a brand new patient...with a severe gag reflex...who needed a full set of x-rays...and, um, who wasted at least 1 1/2 or 2 years trying to find said new dentist.  It's amazing how much can go wrong when you skip a few of those bi-yearly check-ups!

BOREDOM: WINNING THE BATTLE, LOSING THE WAR

I make my living being creative and have always assumed that my potential was inherited from my parents. But for allowing my creativity to flourish, I have to credit the soul-crushing boredom of my childhood. ~ Scott Adams

Part of why my kids are both so creative is that:

• I was never big on buying toys and games, but I could never resist buying books and "supplies", such as tablets and notebooks, paints and clay, crayons and butcher paper.  
• We always had a big box of dress up stuff.
• Most importantly, they started school in Indonesia -- a place where there was very little on TV, and which had no team sports, no arcades or roller rinks, no movie theatres or malls, and no McDonalds or Chucky Cheese.  In other words, they had lots of time to get good and bored, which forced them to come up with their own ways of entertaining themselves.

Oh yeah, and one other thing.  Their mom was kinda lazy, and absolutely refused to spend every minute of every day chauffeuring them from one "enrichment" activity to another.  I have always believed that kids need time to just hang, and knowing how well they had done in Indonesia gave me the courage to stand up to the onslaught of pressure when we returned to the states.  I thought I must be the only one in the world who believed in the powers of boredom, until I stumbled across the blog of Scott Adams the other day, author of the ever-popular comic strip Dilbert.

In it he says we have won the war against boredom.  What with our i-phones, i-pods, kindles, laptops,  car TVs, and what have you, we need never waste another moment of downtime, where our minds have nothing to do but wander.  But wait!  Could there be a downside to this?  Well yes, there could.  It seems many experts feel that our brains need boredom in order to process thoughts and be creative.  I don't know about you, but all of my very best ideas have come to me on long, solitary road trips or walks, or just sittin' by my lonesome, when I was bored, bored, bored!

So, what would happen if everyone in the world were to stop being bored?  Here are a few of Mr. Adams' postulations:

People acting more dogmatic than usual? (If you don't have time to think for yourself, and think creatively, the easiest opinion to adopt is the default position of your political party, religion, or culture.) Check.

More movies that seem derivative or based on sequels? Check.

More reality shows and fewer scripted shows? Check.

Bestseller lists dominated by fiction "factories" where ghost writers churn out work under the brand of someone famous? Check.

The economy flatlines for lack of industry-changing innovation? Check.

News headlines start to repeat, like the movie Groundhog Day, with nothing but the names changed? Check.

Bloggers are spending most of their energy writing about other bloggers? Check.

People seem almost incapable of even understanding new ideas? Check.


Uh-oh.

MY CONVOLUTED PATH TO A GIVE-AWAY

Here's the way my brain works:

I finally finished one of these last two cozies I had to knit, and am more than halfway finished with the other.  It's hard to make yourself knit with fuzzy, wooly stuff when it's 100 gazillion degrees out, but I did it.  These are part of a facebook meme from more than a few months back, and the promise was to send all who signed up something handmade, before the end of 2011.  Looks like I just might make it!

This got me to thinkin' about give-aways in general, which led me to thinkin' about blog give-aways, and the fact that I hadn't done one in a really long time, maybe even since my last blog anniversary, or possibly even the one before that!  Which then made me realize I had another one coming up in just a couple of weeks.  Can you believe it?  Seasonality is going to turn four years old on September 14th!  I decided we really needed to do something to celebrate, but what kind of prize could I give away?

Which of course, got me to thinkin' about a prize I won just recently, over on My French Corner.  She sent me this wonderful container of fleur de sel, which she brought back from her summer stay in France.

Then I got to thinkin' about those beautiful French market baskets I posted about a week or two ago, and the French jacquard dish cloths I brought back from Provence, and it occurred to me that I might pull together a French Market gift set out of a few things like that -- sort of a thank you for putting up with my French obsession ever since we got back from our trip.  But to do that I'd have to order a basket, then wait for it to arrive, and...then my brain landed on a basket I saw down in the square recently -- a bright, colorful, hand-woven basket, and I remembered thinking when I saw it "that's really a better market basket for me than the plain beige French ones.  It's much more of a bohemian-hippie-gypsy-cowgirl kind of basket." 

Which caused my brain to leap straight back to where this blog post started -- to the girl I'm about to mail that finished tea cozy to.  We met through the blogosphere a couple of years back, and I had a feeling we were kindred spirits.  When I heard her refer to herself as a "hippie-cowgirl", I knew it for certain!  Which has me thinkin' I should mosey on back to the square today, to see if they still have any of those baskets.  Then I might wander around a bit, to see what else I might find to go in my Texas Hill Country-bohemian-hippie-gypsy-cowgirl-market-basket-anniversary-giveaway!  I'll keep you posted, (Tee-hee, keep you "posted!"  Get it?)

HAIKU RABBIT

I almost forgot to show you what my husbund won at the art chair auction!  This fellow here, who was hand made from porcelein, came sitting in this chair:

The artist even hand-knitted that little sweater and beret!

I love his attitude, and can almost here him uttering that gutteral "Arh-huh!", when a hot young thing struts by.  He's like a cross between Kevin Klein in French Kiss and Clive Owen in that movie where he plays an assassin who uses carrots as weapons.  There's just one problem...

The only way we can put this on display, is if we get rid of another piece of furniture.  I vote for John's recliner.

ONE THING I LOVE: LIFE IN THE TREETOPS

I was unlocking my front door the other day, and happened to glance through the door, across the living and dining rooms, and out the windows on the opposite side of the house.  Much to my surprise, I found myself gasping.  Almost seven years in, and the view from these windows still has the ability to take my breath away!

Not bad, huh?  Especially for someone who's spent most of her life staring out at brick walls and privacy fences!  Ever so often I just have to pinch myself.  I can't help but wonder, "Is this really where I live now, or am I just dreaming?"

This little window in the living room looks out into the big oak tree next to our staircase.  This is where we stood to watch those jays chase that big ol' snake out of the tree.

This is the eastern corner of our house, where the sun comes up to greet me each morning.

Here you see my journal-writing nest in the corner of the dining room, and the porch which acts as our outdoor dining area, hummingbird-watching post, and late-afternoon-rocking spot.  There's another big oak and a Texas persimmon right in front of where DH is standing, and there is always something going on in their branches.  That porch rail is the perfect spot for eating a drippy peach, or a piece of watermelon.  I think my hubby likes to test himself, see how far into the Cantina Garden he can spit those seeds.

 

This window above my desk is where I enjoy seeing the hawks circle past, and where I watched the guy from Tank Town make the Hail Mary sign of the cross on his chest before revving his truck engine, then gunning his way up that last incline and around a sharp bend, as he towed that giant rain tank into place.  I was white-knuckled the whole time, praying right along with him!  It's also the window where a bat decided to attach himself to the screen for several days, giving me the evil eye whenever I was at my computer.  So very disconcerting.

This is the view I get to enjoy whenever I'm working in the kitchen.  It's where I was standing that time I heard a strange roar, and suddenly realized that, in the blink of an eye, our little creek had been transformed into a raging river.  I was so very glad that I was safe and sound, up here in the treetops!

This all just goes to prove that dreams really can come true, for I've been dreaming of living in a treehouse since I was just a wee little girl, reading Swiss Family Robinson for the very first time!