To my brother, Paul, who turned out to be a great guy

Paul and Melanie and me. And the dog. If I am two years old here, Melanie is seven and Paul is eight.

When I was little my next two older siblings took it upon themselves to really torment me. Melanie had been the only girl in the family (after five boys) for five years. She may have gotten a fair amount of attention in our family. And then I had to come along and spoil everything—not just a new baby in the house, but a new girl baby! So maybe Melanie had some excuse. A little.

There was no excuse for Paul. Yet those two ganged up on me when it came to teasing, or to making sure all of the games always went in their favor (and, face it; they were five and six years older than me; they had to be really good at this), or just excluding me from their games altogether. And while I mostly felt sad about Melanie—well, sadness alternating with frustration—I don't remember fighting with her. (She might have a different story to tell.) But I do remember fighting back with Paul at least twice.

First, I have an example of the utter meanness of Paul...because I am petty like that. 😉

Aside from the every-day annoyances I listed before, there was one day when these two older siblings told me I had to clean my whole bedroom...by myself! (This in itself seemed like the height of cruelty to a little girl.) So I worked on it. Every now and then I'd call them in to see how clean the room was, but every time they pointed out something else that I had to do—which I did, although not happily and probably not without some murmuring. Finally the room was really, really clean. I called them back in for one last time, and Paul dumped the contents of the laundry hamper in the middle of the floor and told me I wasn't finished; the room was still messy. Oooh! I hated Paul!

(By the way, I really am over that now.)

Anyway, I "fought back" with Paul at least twice that I can remember.

Paul looked like this when these stories took place. So he was between...what? Ten to twelve? Maybe thirteen? Which made me four to seven years old.

The first time, he was holding me in his lap in my mom's rocking chair. I don't know why, but given my reaction, I wonder if he was restraining me for some reason. Anyway, I don't remember what I was mad about, but I tweaked his nose, he let go of me, and I ran out the front door. I just knew there would be terrible repercussions, but when he didn't chase after me I just had to go back into the house and see what was up. And there was Paul, in the rocking chair, with a bloody nose! He told me that I was going to be in big trouble, but I don't think anything more came of that incident.

I recollected my second "fight" with Paul a few nights ago...well, early one morning. I was laying there in my bed, trying to get warm enough to fall back asleep after being up and about the house in the wee, small hours of the night. And as I lay there this little memory popped into my head and struck me as particularly funny. I was trying not to giggle...to the point of almost holding my breath, when finally it just had to escape, and I burst out laughing! So then I ended up having to tell Bruce about my naughtiness, which was this:

I don't remember why, but once again I was really mad at Paul. So I drew a picture of a poop ( my five...maybe six-year-old's rendering of what I thought of my big brother...) and left it on his pillow. Ha! I sure showed him! 

Once again he told me how bad I was, and that I was going to get in a lot of trouble for that, and then nothing more came of it.

Well, we were pretty little then. When Paul and Melanie got to be teenagers they had a group of friends their age and didn't pay enough attention to me to torment me any more.

My cousin, Nolan, on the back left; Paul is next to him. Then me, Melanie, and our little sister, Denise, in front. I was eleven and had friends of my own, and Paul and Melanie were teenagers; peace reigned.

By the time I got to be a teenager Paul and Melanie and I were all friends. In fact, after Melanie got married, Paul and I were best friends—at least he was mine. When I went away to school at USU, he went there too. We hung out together so much that people thought we were boyfriend and girlfriend.

Paul and me, picnicking, on one of our many road-trips to and from USU. (Man! We were young and good-looking!)

We hung out together a lot; I wrote to him on his mission; we were pals. 

Melanie and Paul with our parents
about five years ago.

Now we're all married with families of our own. I live in Vernal, Utah; Paul lives in American Samoa. We don't see each other, or talk to each other much. But Paul really is a great guy!

This is the most recent picture I have of Paul,
with—most of—his family.
(I stole it from facebook. His daughter, Lita (center) was Miss American Samoa when this picture was taken. His oldest son, Paulo, is living in Utah with his wife Ashlee and their children.)

I love you, Paul!

Here Comes the Sun

 I have been having guilt over never writing on my blog. Why have a blog at all if I never write anything? The trouble was that I've spent the whole summer thinking that nothing was going on, and there was nothing to write about, and everything was blah. But then, a few weeks ago, I realized that actually a lot was going on all summer, and now I had too much to write about! Last week I decided that I should just start with what's going on now and work my way back, making a few posts rather than one, huge "What I did this summer" post.

But I have been soooo busy!

Well, today I finished a project that I started...right after I finished painting the dining room and hanging up my cross-stitch picture, actually. So I'm going to post about that because it makes me so happy every time I see it! :-)

See, I had made up my mind that I had to have live plants in my house...you know, because I am such a green-thumb. But my house gets very little sunlight; we are surrounded by big, beautiful trees that shade the entire yard and attract bugs and leave a giant mess everywhere. No. I like our trees. I would have chosen different trees, but these are mature, and nice-looking, and shade our yard.

Unfortunately, that means we don't get a lot of light in the house either. Which is kind of a problem for a natural-born, but unwitting, plant-killer like me. I decided that what I really needed was a set of shelves with grow-lights built into them, so I got busy designing.

That's the idea. 

And then I got busy building.

I used the think-system to figure out how to build these shelves (instead of looking for instructions on the internet or at the library) and I probably put them together the very hardest way possible. I didn't want to put any screws—any visible screws—in it, so I had to drill a million holes that all had to align with each other. When I put the pieces together they didn't align perfectly so then I had a ton of sanding to do. Who knew that 36-grit sandpaper would ever be my friend?

I started out by building the two end pieces (the narrow pieces). When they were done they looked like two ladders. Then I had to make the front and back cross pieces and the shelves. I cut everything to fit, but couldn't decide on the best way of putting them together. Somehow I had to connect the two end pieces, the cross-bars for the front and back pieces, and put the shelves in place all at the same time. Using wood glue and clamps. And they'd been difficult—although not impossible—to put together when I was dry-fitting them (glue-less).

This is the beginnings of one of the end pieces. I think I have ten clamps on it, holding everything together while the glue dries.

Well, on assemble-the shelves day, I'd apply glue to the...let's say the left end piece, which was lying on the floor...then stick a shelf in, put glue on the long edges of the shelf and on the bottom ends of the front and back cross pieces, and then clamp them all together at the bottom so the shelf wouldn't fall down. Then I hurried to the next shelf to repeat the process—for four shelves. Then I had to wrangle the other end piece onto the top of the whole mess, align the dowel-pins that were sticking out of the cross pieces into the holes on that end piece, pound the whole thing together, and clamp it up tight. Before all the glue got too hard to work with—about 15 minutes. (I don't know what I was thinking! Or why I didn't recruit some helpers...)

Fifteen minutes? That is not what happened.

I was literally running around that shelf, from one side to the other, applying glue, trying to tighten strap-clamps and furniture clamps, and pounding that last end piece down into place for about 40 minutes. Think about this: forty. straight. minutes of frantic, non-stop running, pushing, pulling, and pounding things. And every time I got one part into place, another would pop up, or the alignment would get off, no matter how much I pleaded with that contraption to work, or how much I yelled at it! I had to start over and over and over again, all while my glue was irrevocably setting up.

When I was too worn out to keep running, and had almost given up entirely, I got mad and started whacking it with a rubber mallet (pretty ferociously, actually). That seemed to subdue it. So then I had to run all around again, making sure the clamps were all in the right places and as tight as they needed to be. I was exhausted by the time I finished! 

This looks peaceful enough, but after the Olympic marathon I ran to get it to this point I needed a soak in a cool tub (this was during the heat of July) and maybe a piña colada (non-alcoholic, of course).

I took the clamps off the next day, and it had gone together slightly twisted, as I feared it would. It looked all right from a distance, and I thought it would stand straight enough in the corner I had reserved for it. But I also thought that if you were to look at it too closely, you might go, "Hmmm. Homemade." Ah, well.

After a bunch of wood-filler and lots more sanding (by hand! My electric sander pooped out in the middle of this job), I had to choose a color for the shelf. It goes in the dining room, but I didn't want to make it white or dark brown like the other furniture. Actually, I kept thinking of a sunflower yellow, but I thought I might get tired of it pretty quickly. I brought home a bunch of paint chips, didn't like any of them and finally decided to go with stain.

Surrounded by—and covered in—sawdust from hours and days of sanding. (I think I am actually applying wood-filler in this picture.)

Then I had this great idea to put some excerpts from Alma (Book of Mormon) onto fronts of the  shelves. 

Ha! My shirt and my shelves are about the same color. I am painting on some lettering here; it's not exactly freehand. I printed the lettering backward on my regular, old inkjet printer. Then I taped it to the shelves and soaked the paper with a damp cloth. Rub the lettering on, remove the paper, and most of it had transferred (faintly) to the wood. Then I did the hand-painting over the top of that.

Here is what I painstakingly painted on them:

top shelf (above where the seedlings and tiny plants will be)  

"If ye give place that a seed may be planted in your heart, it will begin to swell...and when you feel those swelling motions then ye must needs say that the seed is good, for behold it sprouteth and begtinneth to grow."

second shelf (above the medium-sized plants)

"And now, behold, if ye noursish it with great care it will get root, and grow up, and bring forth fruit.

third shelf (above the big plants) 

"If ye will nourish the tree as it beginneth to brow, by your faith, diligence, and patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root and behold it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life." 

Hopefully that can be true of my plants and my life.

After the stain was done, the lettering was painted on, and the finish was applied (which was also a pain; just sayin') I was... well, mostly pleased with the way it looked. Homemade, you know. ;-) 

Then it just sat in my dining room, naked and lonely, while I searched thrift stores for dishes. I thought that since it's going in the dining area, it would be super cute to put the plants in muffin-tins, cups, and dishes instead of regular pots. I found a lot of cute stuff.

Well, today, about a month after the construction was finished, we finally installed the plant lights (which, I confess, were just sitting in my house waiting for me to pay attention to them). That was pretty cool. Then I added the cute dishes to it. Also cool. Then I put Lindsey's succulent plants in some of the dishes. Utterly fabulous!  I am in love with my plant shelves! (So is Lindsey's little solar flower; she—the flower—has been doing the happy-dance all day.)

There it is, all decked out with dishes, succulent plants, and the lights on. The kitchen lights are on in this pic, too, believe it or not. It really is like having a little sun in my house. Those plant lights are supposed to be full-spectrum, white lights—and they do look more white inside the shelves. But they cast a pinkish glow into the space directly around them.

kitchen lights on; shelf lights off
Eventually I will have big plants (I hope) in the empty dishes and pots on the bottom shelf.

Now all that's left is for me to order some seeds. Imagine fresh basil, rosemary, oregano, thyme, and maybe even cherry tomatoes growing in my house throughout the year!

Well, that remains to be seen... Wish me luck!

p.s. Look at these pictures:

Bruce says that while the one picture looks nice on top of the shelves (see the last shelf pic), the three are a set and should all hang on the wall together. (They are not on the wall yet; that is the blue carpet in my great room.) I had intended all along to put one on top of the shelves, and hang the other two together on the blue wall to the left of my door.

What do you think? Keep them together as a set? Or break them up?

Maintenance

It has been a trial, for twenty-eight years—well, maybe for twenty-three or twenty-four years, to be fair...
...It has been a trial to keep the house clean pretty much since Michael was old enough to start messing the place up. Now that the kids are older, it doesn't get quite as messy as it used to, although we (even I) still leave things out of place. And the family is pretty good at putting things away when I ask them to. But "uncluttered" and "clean" are not the same thing. I've noticed that a room looks all right if there's not a bunch of stuff out of place, but it looks great if it's been dusted, and it looks AMAZING if the floors are clean (vacuumed, swept, mopped). That real cleaning makes all the difference.

A couple of weeks ago the family talked about at least doing an amazing cleaning job on Saturdays, so the house would be nice for Sundays. I think everyone was agreeable. But when Saturday rolled around they put off the housework until I was nearly driven to madness by the procrastination, and then they only did an "all right" job on it. (Kaylie did inform me that she dusted the shelves in the living room. There is that.)

So at the end of last week I decided to take the time myself, and really clean one room each day. I made it through the great room and the bathroom on Thursday and Friday afternoons.

Aahhh! I love the look and feel of a clean room!

Then on Saturday, the day before yesterday, I just got up and finished the amazing job myself. I admit, I felt pretty crabby about it. But the house did look AMAZING when I was finished four hours later. (And then I threatened everyone within an inch of their life if they should leave one single thing out of place. I told you I was crabby that morning.)

OK. Now my kids are tired of reading this. But here's what I wanted to say:

Maintaining a clean house daily

is much easier (and quicker) than

cleaning a dirty house all in one day.

While I spent four hours Saturday morning to get the house looking marvelous, it only took me one hour to get it up to snuff this morning. And that included washing dishes, spot-mopping the kitchen floor, and folding and putting away some laundry.

Before you close the page, rolling your eyes, kids, here's the next thought:

This is true of life, in general, too:

Doing the right things daily—doing little things to maintain or improve your health, taking small steps toward a big goal, reading scriptures daily to increase your faith, taking any small steps to achieve what you want, is much easier than trying to get those things done with one big, single effort.

And, even though a day, or a week, or a month of maintenance might be difficult, it's still easier than seeing a huge task that must be done now. (Yes, these are the words of a major procrastinator here, but that doesn't make them untrue.) And if you keep it up, you can be AMAZING! 

It reminds me of my favoritest quote that I found about a year ago:

"Righteous day-to-day consecrated effort

is better than occasional heroic actions."  ~Quentin L. Cook

And now there's time to relax. Ahh.

That's today's Wisdom from Mom.

p.s. You won't get off the hook so easily this Saturday, kids. ;-)

Framed!

...almost.

In 1984 my mom got me a subscription to Cross Stitch Magazine. (Or was it Cross Stitch and Needle Arts? Something like that.) And three issues had a set of gorgeous pictures that I knew had to be in my kitchen. Not my mom's kitchen, mine.

Of course I wasn't even close to getting married then.

Well, when we were working on closing our house in 2017 I decided it was time to stitch them up. So I did, working on them for a few months after we moved in. And then I set them aside for three more years. But, with the painting of the dining room, it is now time to put them on the wall. I washed my needlework, stretched it, and let it sit for another week or two until I could get a frame.

Now, when I say "get" a frame, I really mean "make" a frame, because it costs a boatload of money to get pictures framed! So I went to the hardware store and looked a decorative mouldings, and finally chose a nice, routed piece of oak. Then that sat around for a few days while I went to choose some mat-boards.

The nice man at the store helped me choose some really lovely colors—a charcoaly color, and one that's like the color of a cardboard gift box tinted slightly olive. He wanted to impress on me that it is difficult to cut mats the right way, without messing them up, and he did have me biting my nails a little bit. But when I weighed $34 for two full-size, 32x40-inch mats against the $96 he'd charge me to cut them to size for me...

I bought the boards and took them home.

Well, last week I built the frame. It was a little bit of a headache, but it turned out all right. And after that cutting the mats should be a piece of cake, right?

Well, it was. Measuring was the trickiest part. Once; twice; three times; four...  At last I was satisfied that I'd make my cut lines in the right places. I cut one mat last night and one this morning. (That is just the life of a mom; I didn't have the time to cut both of them in one sitting.)

This afternoon I mounted the embroidery on a board and set the whole thing into the frame to see how it looked. Lovely!

There it is, on my newly finished table.
(That is me, standing on the chair.)

But, the frame color...

It doesn't look bad—especially sitting on the table, and in a photo. But in real life, and on the blue wall, it looks a little washed out. So of course I had to put it into photoshop to try out frame colors. Here's what I came up with:

1. This is the original, unfinished wood color.

2. I darkened this one just a little
to simulate putting a clear varnish on it.

3. with a light, reddish stain
(or maybe a reddish-tinted varnish)

4. a slightly darker stain

5. whitewash
(or white stain?)

6. more whitewash (stain)
Can you do that? With two coats, maybe?

The differences from one color to its next-door neighbor are subtle, I know. But which color would you choose?

Who Cares?!

Awake at 2:30 a.m., and still unable to sleep at 4:37, I am cruising through facebook. Which is uninspiring. And then I see that someone's posted this "exciting" tidbit:

"Upcoming movies this year 2021!"

And I think, Really? Is this the best they can do?

Apparently so. Most of them are sequels, or sequels of sequels. (And there's one prequel. When did that become a big thing?  >cough, cough<  George Lucas). Most of them are comic book/action-type movies. So, basically, you can see the same plot-lines you've seen for the last ten or more years, with the same fighting and blowing things up that you've seen. Yay.

"Why bother to shoot this film? Why not release the old one
under a new title? You've seen one, you've seen them all."
~Cosmo Brown, Singing in the Rain

Wouldn't it be nice if Hollywood could come up with a movie that makes you think, or makes you feel? (Feel something besides a little adrenaline rush, that is.) Or even just something original?

But, no. It's like they took sixty-four old scripts, had their computers shuffle the lines of each one, and then reprinted them for reuse as new movies. In fact, judging by the looks of ...most of these movies, their computers will be providing most of the action and scenery, too. And we are supposed to be so excited about all of it.

Maybe the movie industry should continue to be on lock-down until they can come up with something better.

In the meantime, has anyone read any good books lately?