Proof that I Spent My Early Years Wearing Leotards... Exclusively.

I am going to treat cyberspace to some old photos I found whilst putting stuff away last week.

Wake up, it's 1984

First: Halloween party pictures. My mom loved to throw parties. I always had a birthday party, but the big deal party for me was the Halloween slumber party. Mom would seriously go all out, making crafty decorations and snacks and fabulous costumes for me. She wasn't a subdued domestic goddess by any means, she was more about having fun and flexing her creative, free-spirited muscle. We didn't have much money, so she'd go out into vacant fields and pick dried thistles and spray paint them black to make spiders which got hung from the ceiling... stuff like that. She worked it.

Here we are in fourth grade, late 1983. Can you spot me? Trivia: All the pottery on the mantle was created by my dad.



And, the following year: late 1984. Hellcats start young, oh yes.



Now let's ROCKIT into 1984/85. To boost my low self-esteem, mom enrolled me in a local drill team. We were a parade-marching drill team. I remember marching to the theme song from Simon and Simon quite often. We also did holiday performances.

Anyway. The 1984 summer Olympics had gone on in Los Angeles earlier that year. Maybe it was because I was just a kid, but it seems to me they were a really big deal that go-round. I remember desperately wanting to be Mary Lou Retton, but was too tall to be a gymnast. So, I got dance lessons instead. Being that my only other aspiration was to be a Solid Gold Dancer (Darcel was my favorite), I was cool with that.

The Supreme Team was the name of my drill team and we had a standby routine that we'd do in competitions. We also had a Christmas routine, and a backup routine to Yaz's Situation. I still love that song. The standby routine was to a song called Junku by Herbie Hancock. Yes, a bunch of little white girls from suburban SLC were groovin' to Herbie. The song was used as a theme for certain events in the Olympics earlier that year, and is along the same lines of the more commonly-known Rockit (for which the video STILL gives me the creeps). But yeah, Herbie was and still is the man... it just wasn't until much later in life that I realized just HOW COOL he is after getting into Headhunters-era stuff.

But I digress. The photos below are from a Christmas show. Here is some more trivia: The mall we are performing in is the same mall my uncle was shot in last February. I'd never have imagined that 22 years later, someone I loved dearly would be shot, left for dead and paralyzed a mere few yards from where I was trying to concentrate on not screwing up in front of a crowd of Christmas shopping Salt Lakers. It's very heavy to think about how randomly and unexpectedly life can change.

Here, we are dancing to Jingle Bell Rock. I hated that song then, and I hate it to this day. But I did not let that affect my unwavering commitment to fierce jazz hands. I mean, really. Look at all those other lackadaisical, limp-wristed jazz hands. Mine were TIGHT.



And these are from the Herbie Hancock routine, complete with props (a coat hanger bent into a circle and wrapped in tinsel) and buck teeth that could put anyone else's to shame:





Man, I tell you, I lived in those costumes. Like, I would play in the front yard in them. And people would probably drive by and see the skinny, buck-toothed child spinning around on the grass in sequins and ballet slippers and just shake their heads. But I was oblivious... I had a weekly Solid Gold top 10 countdown to pretend to star in!

This glimpse into my past brought to you by an old shoebox and a mind-numbing case of procrastination. Good night.

K-Von, you will be missed.

I never met Kurt Vonnegut; I would have liked to. When someone's words strike a chord in a person the way his did in me, it's almost like knowing that person. I was so sad when I heard the news.



There are so many passages and aphorisms from Mr. Vonnegut's writings and speeches that I could list as being favorites of mine. He was a man with a gift for saying, in so few words, volumes of insight that society could have only been improved by. He had a talent for summing up heartbreak, desperation, anger, disappointment and joy in both a profound and a humorous fashion. I can't think of any other writer aside from Wallace Stegner (another great loss) who had a gift for words the way Vonnegut did.

If I could, I would thank him for leaving his words behind for the rest of us.

The Painted Desert

In honor of Easter weekend, I decided to resurrect my living room. Therefore, I spent two days turning said living room into the colors of a high desert paradise. I am so happy to have my earth tones back.

My entire house has been painted this nasty-assed, dingy shade of yellow. Every room except the kitchen, which I refer to as "Great White". The bathroom is stark white, too. This shade of yellow isn't even a color, as far as I am concerned. It's a special effect. The effect being someone chain-smoking in a white room (with black curtains) for thirty years sans ventilation. It's like a nicotine-stained veneer. Even the name of the shade is offensive: Deep Cowslip. I don't even know what that means. I think cowslip is some sort of weed. Regardless, it sounds gross.

Saturday I went to Lowe's and got a gallon of each of my two trusted colors (I used these same colors at the Fitzgerald house as well): Earth Elements Canyon and Burnished Copper. Hot diggity... now my entire living room is painted. And I have pictures to prove that I didn't loaf around feeling sorry for my sorry self all weekend...

Befores:





Durings:

I painted the window seat/bay window place (the Bay Area, as it is now referred to) and the wall surrounding my fireplace the lighter (Canyon) shade:





The remaining walls get the Burnished Copper treatment:



AFTERS (WOOHOO!):

One room down, four more to go.





Finally, I would like to thank my project manager (who perched on the arm of my sofa, barking out all my mistakes).



Now all I gotta do is put everything in its right place and I'll have Santa Fe southeast dialed in.

Not From Here

I've been feeling homesick for the west lately.

I made a little design to cheer me up. Maybe I'll put it on a t-shirt or something...



On a related note, I found this quotation from Wallace Stegner the other day. He is one of my favorite novelists of all time; I love the man. What he says here definitely strikes a chord in my heart:

"The Utah deserts and plateaus and canyons are not a country of big returns, but a country of spiritual healing, incomparable for contemplation, meditation, solitude, quiet, awe, peace of mind and body. We were born of wilderness, and we respond to it more than we sometimes realize. We depend upon it increasingly for relief from the termite life we have created. Factories, power plants, resorts, we can make anywhere. Wilderness, once we have given it up, is beyond our reconstruction."

- Wallace Stegner, Wilderness at the Edge , 1990

Simple Joys

It's been so incredibly beautiful in Alabama these past few weeks. When I left for New Orleans a couple weekends ago, my trees had barely any leaves on them. As I approached my driveway that Sunday evening, everything had exploded into a shimmering mass of green. Blossoms are beginning to open, and the air is heavy with the scent of honeysuckle and jasmine. Trees once stark and draped with Spanish moss in a Gothic fashion have now been dotted in with bright green shiny leaves... it's such a breathtaking time of year here. The air is still relatively cool, and there is a hint of dampness that makes everything feel new.

Because of this, I have been working outside a lot. The house is coming along very slowly on the inside; I've wanted to dedicate all my time to getting the landscaping just how I want it before it gets too Hellishly hot to do anything outside (other than drink cold beer and sweet tea on the deck). I'm just about finished with the outside. Wanna see?

I've made a leaf pile that is most impressive:

(It's no Springfield Tire Fire, but it's getting there.)

One day I will replace the hippie chairs with real outdoor furniture, but right now they are perfect.


Mister Boy loves the deck almost as much as I do:


Aside from some pansies out front, I haven't planted anything in the ground yet. But I have thrown together some flower pots:





(I picked up the blue bottles at a yard sale last weekend; I plan on making a bottle tree sometime this summer)

The front yard is thrilling me as well... I love my little Dogwood tree!


Finally, one of my favorite things... my own sort of Terabithia right outside my front door. You can see my house in the background:


If only it could be like this all year... le sigh.

***

"In spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt."

- Margaret Atwood
Candadian writer (b. 1939)

Warming Up

*singing*
How much is that crawdad in the window
The one with the pinch-able tail (and suck-able head)
How much is that mudbug in the window
I love 'em all spicy and red...

Okay, that was pretty stooooopid. But still.

Welcome to, what will become, a blog focused on my progress of settling in to my tiny, beautiful, doll house of a cottage.

Aye!

Like Kenny Loggins said, "This is it."