As I've been nesting (ha! get it?) in the new house, I've been brainstorming for decor ideas. Hours on Etsy proved to me that I clearly do not appreciate art enough as I'm not willing to drop hundreds of dollars on an original piece. And multiple runs to the various Ross, TJ Max, and other discount stores proved fruitless because I don't want our living room to look like a generic hotel room. So, I took matters into my own hands, found some fabric I liked, and stapled it to a large canvas. The finished project did not quite match my vision, and it was slightly reminiscent of a previous craft, but...it'll do for now. I've commissioned a friend to paint something for us as soon as she comes up for air from her many commitments. I just hope her work turns out better than Jake's. He promised me a painting for my birthday. SEVEN YEARS AGO. So, don't worry, Tamara. The bar's not very high.
However, what I AM willing to spend money on these days is air conditioning. We ran the air so infrequently at the apartment that Alley doesn't even know what to do with such strange sensations.
There was one point last summer that it was over 90 degrees. In our living room. But, dang it, I'm a homeowner now! We've earned the right to keep the house at a breezy 85. I typically take a lot of pride in my thriftiness and was even starting to think I may have some Dutch blood in me, until some friends shared a story about their friends' frugality: they wouldn't turn on a certain light in their house because it had three light bulbs in it. Oh, the extravagance!
Friday night I realized that two fabulousduos were going to take the stage at the Hollywood Bowl and I scrambled around to find someone to go with me. Okay, maybe I didn't start scrambling until Sunday morning, a mere 8 hours before the concert. Shocker, but everyone 1) already had plans, 2) didn't want to spend the money, or 3) was too tired to venture into Hollywood. So, after about ten failed attempts to convince my friends to Be Spontaneous! Forget your Budget! I started looking for a single ticket because this show was too good to miss, even if I went solo. At which point, my loving husband cursed under his breath that he was such a pushover and said, "Fine, I'll go with you."
It's not that he didn't like the musicians. Apparently Zooey is even on his exception list. But the concert came at the end of a long birthday weekend of exhausting fun and he had to be up early for work the next morning. Plus, his birthday wish was for a bicycle too extravagant for a birthday gift, so instead of unwrapping something this year, he had to make due with the thought of money being saved in our bank account. So, I'm sure the thought of spending $40 on a ticket to a concert he wasn't exactly thrilled about wasn't exactly....thrilling.
YET. We ended up squeezed like sardines on a bench at the Bowl anyway. The seats weren't terrible, considering we bought them off Craigslist about 50 minutes earlier. And I probably would have been content with them, had we not spotted one of Ben's work buddies, Johnny, being escorted down to a box seat TWO ROWS FROM THE STAGE. Apparently some rich dude's friends flaked on him, so he walked up, up, up to some of the worst seats and invited two lucky dogs (Johnny and his girlfriend) to come sit with him. I remind God all the time that I would be this kind of steward of such gifts. It's the same reasoning that caused me to think tonight, "You know, in this economy, it's really a ministry to hire yard and housework help." I'm altruistic like that.
But I digress ... once I swallowed the bitter pill of envy and after I uninvited Johnny to dinner for texting us a picture of his view, I was able to actually enjoy the concert, as snug and far away as I was. Because sounds like these make you close your eyes, snuggle up to your love, and sway anyway.
A blog? I have a blog? That's right. I must have forgotten about it in the midst of all these transitions of late. There was the anniversary trip to the Big Island; the whole buying-a-house, remodeling(ish)-a-house, and moving; the trip to Missouri; ending my Pre-internship one day and beginning my Internship the next; and I'm still trying to become a Conscientious Carnivore. I've been experiencing this weird sensation when reading a favorite blogger'sEat Well posts and planning meals. Some might even call it excitement. And then I visit my favorite local produce shop and am practically giddy surrounded by all the cheap vegetables and fruits, fresh spices and beans by the buckets. It isn't until I get home and look in the fridge that I think, "Wait. Do I even like eggplant?" Sigh. I'm a work in progress.
By far the most time-consuming project has been trying to change a house from this:
{Technical difficulties. Apparently I didn't back my data up very well before taking my computer to the doctor and am now having problems hunting down some pictures. Picture Pier-1-flavored decor with dark paint, dark wood, and dark bedding. I guess just picture darkness.}
To this:
In addition to totally revamping my decorating style, we had to rearrange our sleeping style, too. There is much more natural light in this house; ergo things are much more visible. Like dog hair on a comforter. Gross. True, we were sleeping with it before, but we couldn't see it. Ignorance really is bliss. And the fact that we can no longer shut our bedroom door if the room is messy really does make us keep things a little neater. And hair free-er.
I would love to also show you the transformation from garage to family room that took place one weekend, but I need to find those photos, too. Stay tuned. And in the meanwhile, if anyone has a MyBook Essential Hard Drive, and has ever experienced phantom photos (e.g. the album is there, labeled, dated, and showing how many pictures you took, but no pictures are present), please advise. Also, if anyone wants to give me lots of giftcards to Anthropology, I'm currently accepting them.
...we bought a house. Or a couple of bedrooms by Midwest standards. A "charming little bungalow" is what we call it in Southern California. It's been both a long and a short process, as well as a knee jerk and well-thought out reaction to the insanity of this last year. To make a long story short, Ben and I realized that we didn't have to leave L.A. in order for real life to begin and just decided to finally admit that we kind of like it here. I came across this article a few months ago that sums up my thoughts well. Forgive the light posting over the next few weeks (Who am I kidding? It's been light posting for the last few months!) - I've got some renovations to attend to. (That's homeowner talk for "I'll never have another weekend free again.").
Sometimes I feel I experience my life as a pendulum of extremes, and never more so than when I think about my heritage.
When we first moved to California, I was struck by the feeling that I did not have a culture, particularly as I compared myself to my Mexican-American, African-American, and Chinese-American friends. Shoot - even many of my Caucasian friends had a rich Dutch tradition running through their family tree. But what did I have? I thought of myself as coming from a small Everytown in Middle America with no distinguishing qualities. No cool traditions, no fascinating legacies, not even a church doctrine steeped in history. But in the five years that I've been exposed to lectures on diversity, small group discussions surrounding diversity, and heated arguments regarding diversity, I've come to realize that, my oh my, do I come from a very specific kind of culture. A few of them, in fact.
Starting with my parents' experiences of Appalachian culture nestled in and around the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and moving on to the region of the Ozarks where I grew up (with a sprinkle of Kentucky Blue Grass exposure in between), I've come to realize how different my background is from many of my friends. And I've become more aware of the love/hate relationship I have with those distinct factors that have made me who I am. And therein lies the tension between romanticizing my history and feeling ashamed of it.
My parents come from an area of the country that is readily associated with the Beverly Hillbillies and Deliverance, with poverty-struck, barefoot mountain folk that the world forgot and let be, secluded in the mountains with their ignorance, bigotry, and mishmash of Irish, Scottish, German, and Native American influences and folklore. But this is also the world of the Walton's, of honest, hardworking people who are fiercely independent and proud. (M. Gladwell has a fascinating chapter in Outliers about cultural legacy that you can read about here, and David Hackett Fischer's book Albion's Seed provides insight into social inheritance via accents; i.e. the original settlers in Appalachia said hard for hired, critter for creature, sartin for certain, he-it for hit, far for fire, nekkid for naked, winder for window, poosh for push, and many others).
I was raised outside of a town with a population of 2,000 people. I went to school with kids whose parents had the same teachers that we did. We never locked our doors and were patrons of the Gas, Guns, and Groceries store about a mile from our house. The cool thing to do on the weekend when you were in high school was drink beer and drive out to the Spook Light. I got married when I was 21 and people commented about how long we had waited. This area, in my opinion, is one of the most beautiful parts of our country. It is also often referred to as the Meth capital of the country. Even now, I have to read this through others' eyes to see how different my "normal" is from how many people grew up.
Last week a film review caught my eye about a recent Sundance Best Picture and Best Screenplay winner. The story takes place in Missouri and the plot evolves around "an unflinching Ozark Mountain girl [who] hacks through dangerous social terrain as she hunts down her drug-dealing father while trying to keep her family intact." I looked up the trailer to see how much would resonate with me and within the first 15 seconds saw a shot of a log cabin with kids jumping on a trampoline in the yard. Hmmm....check....check. Even if that's where the similarities between this story and my story might end, now I'm really curious to see the movie.
When I was seven years old I moved from Kentucky to Missouri. I quickly learned that I spoke very differently from my new friends, and I was embarrassed by my accent. Over twenty years later I now mourn the loss of that piece of me. I hope I continue wrestling with both sides of the coin of my heritage - the positive and the negative. I don't want to take for granted something that I might some day lose. But why is it so hard to hold both the good and bad of things? Not to mention the good and bad of people...but that's another blog for another day.
For now, I'll leave you with the words of Alan Jackson:
