Hooty-toot

Back in October, after I had sewn together that birthday buddy for my littlest nephew, my fingers were red and weeping, but I was overjoyed that Asa loved his stuffed friend.

It was the perfect end to an imperfect attempt, and I, happy and satisfied, swore to my sister that I would never EVER never sew again if I could help myself. I had done my best, but Big Mama, I am not ... not even close.

I swore (and I never do - it is not ladylike) to lay off the sewing for several reasons, the first of which is ... I can't sew a lick, and second, I am not crafty, and third, and possibly the biggest reason, I do not want to become that aunt. You know, the aunt who doesn't have children of her own, she's completely out of touch, and so she hand makes gifts for everyone. Itchy, kitschy, funky, weirdo gifts that no one really wants or needs.

But something happened.

 

Meet Hooty-toot.   

He's supposed to be an owl.

 Hooty-toot is the result of several factors. The perfect storm of life circumstances, you might say.

You see, my mama's birthday is smack-dab in the middle of December, and it's very difficult for a birthday to complete with the other big, special days in this month.

So, I wanted her birthday gift to be special - to be out of the ordinary - and this owl creature is what came to mind. Special gift = strange, blue, owl creature - of course! It's so obvious!

Handsome picked the materials.

Combine the fact that I wanted mama to have a special gift with all the nervous energy involved with the home buying or not buying, moving or not moving, packing or not packing, signing, dating, waiting, still not closing craziness, and working on Hooty-toot became a wonderful distraction.

We still have not closed on the house yet, by the way.

"Maybe Wednesday?" - says the bank.

"Maybe Wednesday?" - says the escrow company.

"Groan" - says me.

Regardless, here he is - hand stitched just for you, dearest mama.

Here is also the reason that I did Christmas shopping for everybody else at the "Gift Card Mall" at the local grocery store. No joke.

Sorry everybody else. 

An owl because mama is Owsley - and that is sorta the same.

She sent me these pics after opening her birthday gift.

Tee-hee.

Mama and Hooty-toot, together at last.

Asa and his buddy - see the resemblance?

It's too fun, and I can't help myself. I might have to be that auntie after all.

Weirdness

We didn't close on our home Tuesday. Instead, our paperwork got all tangled up, and for a couple of long, painfully long days, we weren't sure if the bank was going to approve us at all.

Sticklers.

After all the bailouts and headline news, I should have a more sophisticated approach to banking and bankers and banker's hours, but really, I can't help myself - all week I have imagined a bunch of old geezers, a la Mary Poppins, sitting around heavy, mahogany desks, complaining about shoes that pinch, and leaving our home-owning fate until just before lunch when everyone's grumpy, unfocused, and itchy to leave.

Don't worry though, today, Team-Poppins finally, once and for all, came around to seeing things our way - errr, their way - they decided to take lots and lots and lots and lots of money from us (swoon), and I'm not sure why that was not an easier decision on their part. Anyway, we close tomorrow! (Uhhh, we think)

And so today, I picked up the packing theme once again, and it's made me really stop to consider the weird things in my home. I thought that I'd go ahead and share some examples of the weird stuff I packed ... because weird is always interesting, don't you think so?

On the console table - Bobble-head Doll and Penguin Friend. 

On the coffee table - a bowl of coffee beans because they smell so yummy ... and because it's just plain fun to run fingers through them.

 

On the wall upstairs - this little Cuckoo bird is seriously off his nut and cannot be trusted to accurately coo the time - ever. But, I love him for that.

More often than not, slung onto some, out-of-the-way surface with battery ripped out, this is the fate of our really loud, super sensitive smoke detector. Proof that I try to cook.

I don't suppose that these two objects are really weird things exactly, but I purposefully keep my scale next to the toilet plunger as punishment.

Cary Grant and Myrna Loy are two of the greatest Hollywood stars ever (says us), but is it weird that we have them framed?

 

Neither Handsome nor I really like to eat walnuts, but I love to crack one open, stash it in one of the friendly, neighborhood, squirrel trees, and then search to find the empty shells the next day. I don't know why, but it's sooo very satisfying to find the shells stripped clean. Plus, an added boon (always, always be on the lookout for added boons) is that Bentley loves to chase squirrels, and I figure that if they are good and fat, he'll have a better chance of coming within five feet of one ... someday. But, I'm not holding my breath.

So, basically, I guess I'm saying that I decorate with squirrel food.

The weirdest thing we keep.

I suppose that I will fill our new home with the same stuff you see above -- eyes wide open and perfectly aware of the weirdness, but I want to fill this next home with even better stuff too. Stuff like hope and compassion and love and patience and contentment - I wonder in which corners or spots or walls these things will be seen or heard in our new home?

Will they be?

I hope so!

Yikes! I just splashed a little hope onto the carpet here. I'll have to be sure to pack that up tomorrow. 

Squeeze

Squeezies...

Some days we just need 'em more than others.

Big, happy hugs. The kind that make us smile.

Big, squishy, happy, squeezies from the people who love us the very most in the world.

I hope that your day is full of them.

Cardboard

Last week, the same day our heater got completely fixed, I did a happy, toasty, cozy jig and about five minutes later, the plumbing went south. And by south, I mean our bathwater leaked down down down into the apartment below ours. Eee-gads - our poor neighbors!

I am happy to report, that after a train of maintenance guys, trucks of plumbers, a few odd wall-repair men and a painter, we are now all de-clogged, walls are patched, and the neighbors are dry. (Poor neighbors)

Although, I am thrilled that we are buying our own home, honestly, there are few things I'll miss about apartment living. For example, the fact that we do NOT have to pay the plumber who was here from two until eight Friday night is a very lovely thing.

I will miss the handy, on-site, maintenance man too. This is me:
"Hello, Handyman? Our garbage disposal is on the blink. Would you please fix it?"
"Hello, Handyman? We have lost our mail key. Will you put a new lock on the box for us so we won't have to worry about finding it?"
"Hello, Handyman? This light fixture is really stinky. Will you please replace it?"

I'm truly embarrassed to say that we've called him for those very reasons. I wish I could say that I just made them up, but I didn't ... she said sheepishly. I wonder how relieved management will be to see us go?

If all goes well, we will be closing on our home tomorrow, pulling up stakes on Thursday, and paying for our own clogged tubs come Friday.

If things don't go so well, we'll be closing on some later date, hoping that moving men don't mind being pushed around on the calendar a bit, and begging the apartment management to let us stay a couple extra days. Shhh, please don't tell 'em what I said about not paying for the plumber and stuff.

So, until we know for sure, this is what's happening here today... I'm packing up boxes, listening to Christmas music, singing along, and squeezing in a quick note to you.

So, far, I have built more boxes than a box salesman on expo day. Yah, I don't really know if that exists either, but I have wrestled quite a bit of cardboard since the day began, and it somehow sounds right to me.

Boxes, boxes everywhere!

Boxes as decor.

These are the twelve book boxes I told you about last week. Done and done!

That dresser is totally empty! Yay!

Anyway, that's what is going on here.

But, I can't help what is going on there ... in your day. Handsome says that blogs are not really meant for responding, but I think that is pretty rotten. I mean, blogging is fine and all, but please feel free and welcome to blah blah blah right back to me any time. How are you filling this Monday? Is it stuffed and squeezed with Christmas planning? Are you baking? Are you running? Are you watching snow fall? Are you listening to Christmas music too? I wonder if we're listening to the same song. Here, let's try to harmonize ...

Stage Fright

Today, it's only 40 degrees outside, our heater is broken, and we are very very cold.

It would seem that the heater, when finally flipped on, did a sort of quick blast of dust and fire as if it had been waiting for decades for its opportunity to perform, then sort of lost all nerve, panicked, flipped out and blew a vital fuse or gasket or some other important gadget. Stage fright, I suppose. Understand, in Southern California, heaters have begun to think of themselves as mere showpieces, not really intended for hard labor, just a pretty piece of the illusion that winter ever happens here. Sigh. Nothing living this close to Hollywood goes unaffected.

Bentley has only left his covers once today to chatter his teeth at me.

Doesn't he look like a character right out of a Dickens story? 

 Please, sir, send coal and gloves to this address.

I'm off to crank up the oven and add a layer of socks.

Furniture Plopping

Over the weekend, Handsome and I got a chance to tour our soon-to-be-home again. We spent time in each room deciding where the furniture would go. We got to imagine ourselves actually living there, the whole thing finally started to feel like reality. It was wonderful!

 This is it, by the way.

It's just a condo, but I think it's a kind of a secret condo ... a sort of condo incognito. I think it has aspirations of being an uncondo-condo. Can you see what I mean?

And this is just a door, I know, but I'm hoping it will be the portal through which loads and loads of friends pass. Please imagine yourself knocking here.

I hope that it's okay with you that I have you portal-passing in my mind.

I'll feed you too. Isn't this kitchen just screaming to have cinnamon rolls made here? And I am just the girl to make 'em.

And, I'll serve 'em here ... in the dining room to-be. It's just missing a table and some chairs and things.

Speaking of tables and chairs and things, during our visit, we figured it was a good time to make a furniture-plop-plan rather than doing it the day of the move when the movers, straining under the weight of forty-two book boxes (twelve, really, I have already packed them) and a dresser, ask, "Where d'ya want 'em lady?"

 Now, I will be ready with a definite answer instead of hemming and hawing and changing my mind and then sweetly asking for a quick, little shift from upstairs to downstairs ... again.

Movers frown on that sort of thing from what I gather.

Anyway, we heard from the bank today, and everything seems to be moving forward. All a-go-go, you might say. The actual closing date keeps skipping all over the calendar, but we have officially passed the point of wiggling out of the whole deal - at least on our end.

So, although I am a little hesitant to post pictures of something that is not officially ours yet, I suppose my excitement just proved to be greater than my prudence. See the above for the proof.

But, there is something else I am excited to share with you ... remember how I told you that I have been a bit anxious over buying a home? It's true, even on Saturday in the midst of planning and imagining, I had a bit of an anxiety attack. Panic set in, I got dizzy, and I had to sit down and breath deeply. Note to self, move paper-bags in first. Totally lame, right? Handsome lifted an eyebrow toward his weird wife and then continued his merry jaunt of turning on and off every light-switch in the joint. Sheesh, no sympathy. But then, why be so fretful and fearful over something that should be joyful? Absolutely ridiculous. I knew it to be truely goofy then, but I realized the why when this jumped off the page yesterday:

^{Acts 17:24-28a
24}"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. ²⁵And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. ²⁶From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. ²⁷God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ²⁸'For in him we live and move and have our being.'" 

What?! I have been busy planning where to plop a couch, but God in His infinite love and wisdom has a divine plan for plopping me. It may be in the uncondo-condo above, or it may be somewhere else, but He has a plan for me and for you. Isn't that comforting? Isn't He good?!

I'll keep you posted on closing dates and the uncondo-condo and moving and plopping, but in the mean time, please find me here - X marks the spot - resting exactly where He planned for me to be today.

Hop, Skip and a Jump

Happy Friday!

I hope that the coming weekend will be full of fun and play and joy and those that you love the very most.

I know that this time of year gets busy and that most of us are running running running ... or in my case, hopping (but we won't go into that again). But, today, inspired by my sweet nephew, I have decided that I'm gonna try to be less ridiculously frenzied and anxious and more...

 

 

  

 


Wanna try it? I mean, if we're all hopping anyway, why not have some fun?

Just out of curiosity, can anyone out there click their heels together? I'm not sure that I can. I used to could, but maybe not so much anymore.

If you want to practice with me and the smiley-faced pumpkin above, you can find us in grocery-stores and post-offices and such-type places ... we plan to use the aisles as runways.

Come on! It'll be fun!

Hopping Chicken Indigestion

In all honesty, I cannot with any certainty tell you plainly what happened to the entire month of November. Anyone have any ideas? As it flew past us, did it leave a kind of whooshing sound in your ears too?

I have a sort of faint impression of precious family having come and gone much too quickly. To solidify that impression, there are upwards of five hundred or more pictures on my camera waiting to be downloaded, and I suppose that is proof positive that it all happened ... the turkey, the wii, the travel, the laughter, the fun, the Thanksgiving.

I can't wait to share some of those pictures with you in the coming days, but for today, I want to show you the other thing has had my attention, and let me tell you, in the last few weeks, this thing has kept me hopping like a mad chicken. I don't mean a mad chicken in the angry sense -- more like mad in the panicked, teensy bit neurotic, and totally out of her head sense. Understand? No, this chicken, she doesn't blog - she just runs in circles, fretting, feathers flying. And yes, I think that chickens do hop. If not a chicken, then what? A mad, hopping toad? But, then no, they can't run in circles.

Uhmmm, I wonder?

Aren't you glad that I haven't been writing much?

More to the point, can you guess what this is?

The white pages? Nope. And, while we're on the subject, does anybody use those any more? What's ever happened to the good ol' white pages?

The unedited and unrevised script of "Gone With The Wind"? Nope.

Oh, gracious me! It's real estate documents! Did you know that this is the kind of stuff banks hand to you lightly and tell you to memorize cover to cover? I'm sure that I heard them snicker as we left the building.

So, there you have it - we are in the throws of buying a house! Our first ever! And closing could be as early as next week. Gulp!

To those of you who know me well, know that up until now, I have made moving a sort of annual event. Some folks "Spring Clean" in order to clean out the cobwebs, whereas I prefer to shake the dust from my heels, pack it up, and high-tail it into a new and fresh abode.

Here's a frightening secret ... in my thirty-five years of life, I have moved thirty-nine times. Let that sink in for just a minute. This house, if the purchase goes through, will make my FORTIETH move, and to be very honest, the thought of owning a home, of being tied to it, is a bit frightening -- which may account for some of my anxiety. Seems silly, doesn't it? In a world where a girl hopes to find just a little security, I get freaked out at the thought of having some.

Well, here's the truest thing I've said all day ... the good Lord knows the plans He has for us AND this world is not my home, I'm just a passing through ...

Look at it like that and the possibility of owning home doesn't seem so scary now does it? Not that I mean to say that death is preferable to owning a home - I don't mean that at all. But, what do I mean? Oh, now I'm all confused.

Brows are knit, I'm scratching my head, and working it all out ...

What I mean to say is that I'm so very excited and anxious too over owning a home. If the Lord gives us this house, will you pray with me that He'll show Handsome and I how to use it for His glory? Yep, whew, now we're on the right track. See how running in circles can make you a little dizzy?

Anybody wanna help this little chicken pack? 

Walking in LA

Most mornings at our house usually start like this...

Handsome gets up, turns off the fan (anybody else a white-noise junkie?), opens the drapes to the new day, and announces whether the sky is blue or gray ... while I blindly feel around the nightstand for my glasses. He often hands them to me.

It's funny the habits old married couples fall into together.

And every morning, even while still in my half-sleeping state, I'm already hoping that he will announce that the sky is gray and overcast ... or that it's raining cats and dogs ... or that it's snowing ... or something - anything that would mean a slight break in the warm California sunshine. At the risk of sounding too much like Mortisha Adams, what I really wish, especially in NOVEMBER, is that it would stop being eighty degrees and sunny for two minutes put together.

I like sweaters and mittens.

When I was in the first grade, my teacher had us start every day by singing a little song. It went something like this:

This is the day,
(echo) This is the day,
That the Lord has made,
(echo) That the Lord has made.
I will rejoice,
(echo) I will rejoice,
and be glad in it
(echo) and be glad in it.
This is the day that the Lord has made,
I will rejoice and be glad in it.
This is the day,
this is the day
that the Lord has made!

Anybody else know that one?

I really wonder where that teacher is now. I wonder if that song encouraged her to get through days filled to the brim with seven-year-olds? I also wonder if she had any idea how God would use her song to impact a little girl's life? A little girl who daily has contentment issues. Issues so ridiculous as to complain about perfect weather.

And so, the sun shone again today - just exactly has God meant for it to do, and remembering that little tune, I reached for some sunscreen, my keys, the camera, and took a walk in what turned out to be a very lovely day.

I just have to share some of what I saw with you.

My gracious! Why was I so surprised at the beauty of it all?

 

I felt like I was walking through a tropical wonderland - could this be LA? Creation is so happy in all the sunshine.

 Walking in LA. Nobody walks in LA (hiccough/screech). Yah, for a while my sweet, first-grade song got muddled up with this one.

Walking in LA. Nobody walks in LA...

Well, they should. There are so many pretty things that need to be seen and appreciated. I wonder who drew this here? And were they barefoot?

 I tried to find flowers and things that were particularly orange and red for the season, and I was overwhelmed by the beauty of what I found.

This is called Bristle something or another. Bristle Brush? Maybe? I wish I could remember for sure, but it really seems to fit, don't you think?

And then there was this ... just sitting in the back of a pick-up in the middle of the city.

I was almost startled to see it - the pumpkin, I mean. I had forgotten that I was in a big pout over not getting what I thought was due out of a typical November - pumpkins and hay bails and wind chills and gray days included.

I still really like all those things, but today, I'm so thankful that the Lord gives us even beyond what we can imagine too.