Wordless definitions: Indomitable

They say a picture can say a thousand words; this one says twenty:

"Screw you, motor-obsessed culture! I will run my errands on my bike even if you don't provide bike racks!"

I'm not lazy, really...

... and I'm not ignoring the blog, either. I've just been so busy I've found it difficult to carve out the time to write something. Ideas have been sparse, too. I posted Word Nerd and quilting entries not too long ago, and my Remedial Lit Project has bogged down in the 800-plus pages of Anna Karenina. I've had to renew it three times (that's nine weeks, folks); not because I'm avoiding it—I'm actually enjoying it—but because I haven't had a lot of free time to read anything that's not a biography for a piece I'm writing. I've been spending lots of my time either working or chauffeuring, and those activities don't make good fodder for blogging. (Unless you want me to rant for two paragraphs about my nemesis the Tonda school traffic light, which invariably turns red on each of our six daily encounters.)

The only thing of any interest I've really done in the last couple of weeks is redo our front room. We're having a little (okay, not so little) litterbox issue, so I thought replacing the targeted sofas and carpet might help. I should have taken a "before" picture, but I didn't. You'll have to just extrapolate from this picture: blue carpet on the floor, and two light blue sofas (this one and a larger one) against the two walls. In addition to being a target for the cat, the sofas were over 10 years old and one had been broken by Boy when he was about six or seven, not being built to withstand a running jump onto its frame.

So we put the sofas out by the curb, at different times. One was scavenged, we think by the neighbor across the street despite our warning that it might have an odor issue (although we had removed the covers and washed the cushions with bleach); the other was consumed by the garbage truck (and wasn't that fun, watching it being broken in half in one big gollup). We moved all the furniture out, including my great-grandmother's antique (ie very HEAVY) piano, and ripped up the carpet and padding. Then TSU and I spent a day, plus any cartilege we might have left in our knees, putting in laminate flooring. It really was as easy to snap in as it looks in commercials, although getting the last row to click was a little tricky. The end result looked pretty good.

Next we headed out to Ikea, as it is close (ten minutes away) and their furniture is relatively inexpensive and in a style to our taste. They had a leather loveseat advertised for only $399, and on this visit it was actually in stock and looked like it might fit in my SUV if we left the lid ajar but tied down. (We took a tape measure and actually measured it, unlike the trio of coeds who spent five minutes in checkout before us trying to find the UPC on their mattress and then restack their cart, only to discover when they got out to their truck that it wasn't going to fit in the covered bed. I wonder if they finally figured out they could use the luggage rack on top; we didn't stick around to see.) We brought our prize home, followed the easiest Ikea assembly instructions ever (screw in four legs), and brought back in all the other furniture. And voila! We have a real room again, only now it looks light and open and organized. Now I just need to go remodel another room—the one where the evil cat will be confined until we figure out her problem. Sigh. It looks like it'll be a while before I find more free time for serious blogging.

Photo of the Week--9/8/09

Since I've caught up with the present day as far as vacation photos, I thought I'd go back to the beginning and find some of the better pictures with people in them. Expect many, many photos of Boy chasing pigeons; a turn that will not please him, but since he refuses to read this blog he won't know about it anyway. {Evil cackle.}

This photo is of the two of us climbing the Brimham Rocks in Yorkshire, England. It was our first vacation after moving across the pond, and the area was full of fun things to do (at least they were fun for a four-year-old), like visit the train museum and climb on rocks. And yes, that's me in the photo, too, bespectacled, in the middle of an unfortunate attempt to grow out my bangs, and wearing Mom jeans. Ah, the foolishness of youth! I've learned better in the ensuing eleven years, luckily.

The Word Nerd Sez: P is for ...

palimpsest

I thought a while about what "P" word to choose. I thought maybe palindrome, because I love playing with words, or maybe propinquity, because I can spell it but I'm not sure what it means*, but when I saw this one I had to choose it. And yes, it's another of those words that I know how to spell, and think I maybe know what it means, but when I look it up I discover I had the totally wrong idea.

For some reason, I was thinking a palimpsest was a specific poetic form, like a sonnet or a limerick or a sestina. It turns out that a palimpsest is actually a piece of paper or manuscript "which has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely erased and often legible." Now that's a word with some interest for a writer: who wouldn't like to feel like writing has some permanence, that it can travel through time and speak one mind to another, years later. Of course, in my house you usually find examples of palimpsest on old grocery lists, but still ... it's a pleasing idea, as is the secondary definition: "An object, place, or area that reflects its history."

The word origin is also interesting, from the Latin version of the Greek word palimpsestum, which means "scraped again." It's a fun reminder that writing used to involve a lot more manual labor than it does today, when a couple of keystrokes can put your ideas on a virtual page and then share them with millions thousands a couple of readers. Next time I feel like griping about the struggles of revising, I'll think of some scribe hundreds of years ago who had to scrape down a stinking animal skin just to write another copy of his master's accounts, and I'll keep quiet.

*propinquity=proximity or similarity. Sounds more interesting than it is, unfortunately.

Photo of the Week--8/31/09

We always like to make time during our vacations to just go exploring: that is, just drive around and see what we see. Sometimes we see something incredibly picturesque, like this dilapidated barn up in Leelanau County. I made TSU turn the car around and pull over on the curb, so I could snap a couple of shots. On the one hand, it's kind of sad to see so many barns in a state of disrepair, if not total collapse; it makes you wonder about how many farms will be left in another 25 years. On the other hand, though ... so picturesque!

The hamsters are loose again!

Remember that time when I talked about metaphors and the hamsters in my head? Well, this week the hamsters not only fell off the wheel that runs my brain, they started running around screaming, like they were on the Poseidon Adventure, looking for the exits in an upside-down cruise ship.

In one way, it's been a quiet week. TSU was out of town Monday through Wednesday, and Boy had marching band practice in the evenings, so I was home by myself for dinner, no arguing over the TV clicker. But today was also a crazy week: black belt workout on Tuesday, critique group on Wednesday, and a deadline for a piece quickly approaching. By Thursday, the hamsters had had enough. I was trying to figure out how to take Boy to pick up his sophomore schedule and get my weekly time volunteering at the shelter. I came home and realized I'd completely forgotten the vet appointment I set up for that morning ... and then I returned to my e-mail to discover that the deadline I thought was next Wednesday was actually this Wednesday, and my editor was politely asking when I thought I'd be finished with my assignment? I'd only just finished wading through the first 78 of 165 pages of electronic research on Wednesday, but I managed to work late yesterday and get most of the rest incorporated into the essay.

By now the hamsters wanted to collapse in a heap. But Boy informed me upon his return late last night that he was missing a class in his schedule, so he needed to return to the school and talk to the counselor, and TSU informed me I needed to get a cashier's check for our mortgage refinance that's happening tomorrow. At this point I think the hamsters started decomposing, judging from the nasty snarling that was all I could manage when Boy showed up late when I came to pick him up, but somehow I managed to get everything done. Now I can relax until Monday, when I start worrying about the next deadline.

So now I get to blow off steam on the blog, maybe revive the hamsters with a little mental sauna. My critique buddies were sharing some of the things they've heard at recent conferences, one of which was about an agent or editor who Googles anyone they're seriously thinking of working with; if she reads that person whining about the hard work of revision, she turns them down. If that should ever happen to me ... well, I can just hear the hamsters laughing about it right now.

The Quilt Files, Episode 13

... or, Theme and Variations in Primary Colors.

I think I've mentioned before how much I like to make baby quilts. They're small enough to assemble quickly, and machine quilting is a breeze (unlike the queen-sized quilt with which I'm currently wrestling). There are a couple of patterns I've used more than once, just because I like them so much. There is the "Stars and Moon" pattern, which I've used in both boy and girl versions, using cotton fabrics. And then there's this "Busy Baby" pattern for a play quilt, which I like to make using flannels. I've made this pattern at least five times; three with a maize 'n' blue theme (and each time I forgot to take a picture, so maybe that will be a future entry), and most recently with primary colors. It also features black and white fabrics, since high contrasts are supposed to be appealing to babies' undeveloped eyesight.

When I started the first of these two primary variations, I was running out of the blue and yellow fabrics I had bought for the Michigan variations. I had plenty of the black and white puppy dog print, which included blue, yellow, and red highlights, so I thought I would include some red flannels as well. After all, the original pattern called for black, white, yellow, and red. I had just switched out the red for a color I thought went more naturally with blue. It made for a balanced pattern: the center square had a black and white frame, and then I had two squares each with red, yellow, black, and white frames. I changed up a couple of the decorations, and put an "A" in the middle for baby Aaron.

When it came to the next quilt, you can see I swapped out the red frames for blue ones. It's a lot harder to find red flannels rather than blue ones, especially ones appropriate for babies. So this time I made the red a prominent accent color. I ran out of solid black flannel and didn't feel like running out to the fabric store in the middle of piecing, so I used a mix of small primaries for the border. I think this variation is a little brighter, a little more "Superman," which is great since it was intended for a family who are big movie fans. I added an "L" for Logan (I couldn't find the X-Men font, so I went with Blade Runner), which you might also see quilted in the center of the top left square. I picked up enough black flannel for the binding, and I had a quilt which was the same pattern, but looks a bit different.

I still have quite a few yellow, blue, black, and white scraps left, so I might make another variation on this pattern in the future. It's a fun mix of applique and patchwork, and I love hiding squeaky toys in the squishy square attachments. (Square 9 on the top quilt, square 6 on the bottom.) Hopefully it's just as fun for the babies as well.