Daily
Last Thursday at Free Choir (Freak Wire?), we opened with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and one of my friends in the group cried and cried as she sang. It reminds her, she said, of her old religion. It has such a beautiful message about the “later”, but the message about the “now” didn’t hold for her (she grew up a Jehovah’s Witness and is now a hippie-freak-mama with unknown religious affiliations).
I think it must have been the moon or something, because right after that a new song was introduced—“Everything’s All Right” from Jesus Christ Superstar. It’s a beautiful song, but like my friend above, no matter how far I may move away from the religion of my upbringing, it is my history and still informs a lot of my responses.
For those of you who are not (or have never been) Catholic and might not know it, we are in the last days of Lent right now. Last Thursday, we were creeping up on what I have always considered the beginning of the most holy week in the calendar—the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. The nutshell version of everything that makes us uniquely Catholic happened during THAT week. This is the meat of the religion.
So when I heard the words of Mary Magdalene singing, “Try not to get worried, try not to turn on to problems that upset you, oh, don’t you know everything’s all right, yes everything’s fine. And we want you to sleep well tonight, let the world turn without you tonight. If we try, we’ll get by, so forget all about us tonight” and I know that she’s singing those words on the night before her friend was beaten nearly to death then nailed to a cross to die, and I just can’t really keep myself together very well.
Here’s the stupid part: I cried second. After Annalise, but using the same excuse (“It reminds me of my old religion and there’s a part of me that still mourns that lost community”). No one would judge me. No one did judge me. But I still feel like I stepped on her moment.
Anyway… It’s a lovely song done in 5/8 time, which makes for some weird rhythms.
The next day, the school hosted a fund raising event at a local theater. The McMenamin brothers here in Oregon own a number of properties (http://www.mcmenamins.com)
(old school houses, old hotels, etc.) which they have turned into funky, eclectic, creative Hotels, Restaurants, and movie Theaters (for example, the Kennedy School was an elementary school in NE Portland a gazillion years ago—now it houses a spa, 2 restaurants, and a HUGE theater where instead of regular theater seats they have sofas and love seats. Oh yeah, and they serve food in the theater. Very cool).
Ok, so I digressed. Sorry. The fund raising thing was at a McMenamin Theater & Pub called the Bagdad. They donated the space to us and we hosted a handful of bands, some fabulous bubble blowing, a whole lot of face painting and playing, and a bunch of raffles. I won $10.00 to a local pizza place. Yay! (Of course, Kate, my mom and I each also donated a bunch of stuff to the raffle.) Um, what was my point there?
Oh , right. An excuse to show you a picture of my beautiful butterfly.
Saturday Emily went to a friend’s house and I spent the day baking cakes for Robin’s birthday (which was Monday, but he had a party on Sunday). At his request, we made him a black birthday cake. I failed to get photos. Sorry.
The fun part of the cake was the secret St. Patrick’s Day surprise the next day—the black frosting turned everyone’s poo green. Eeeeewwww. And also HAHAHAHAHAHA!
The kids who were at the party didn’t comment on it, but everyone at home did. I suspect they’re too embarrassed at their age to say anything. Still—we know, and that’s all that matters.
My blood glucose has been ridiculously weird lately. I’m tracking it very closely the next few days (as in taking a reading every 2 hours and charting ALL my food), then I’m going to see my doctor on Friday. I suspect that my morning-time medication is too much and I need to reduce it by some amount. That would be ok! We’ll see. But rest assured, friends, I’m not ignoring the problem. I know how important it is and I’m staying right on top of it.
Ummm… Last weekend while the party for Robin was raging on, I dropped my mom off at the local bookseller for a quick pick-up. I don’t want to know how much money she spent. She bought the last 8 books we were missing from a long series. It’s all Julie’s fault and I’m not sure I can ever forgive her. On the plus side, we now own the ENTIRE series to date. Yay!
Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I nearly forgot to show you the new dining room! Here’s the color when we moved in:
And here’s what it looks like now:
Just in case you need to see that better, here’s a different wall where you can see more of the gorgeous creamy color on the ceiling (thanks Jeff!), as well as the beautiful blue in the archway (that’s the same blue as in our kitchen).
Changing subject without a transition sentence isn’t so hard to do. I don’t know what they were going on about in High school…
I miss my dad a lot. More than I ever did before he almost died. I hope Emily and I are able to join him on a camping trip Father’s Day weekend. We’re working out the details of that plan. We’ll see.
And speaking of working out Plans, Julz and I are trying to figure out a trip to see Sloth sometime before July. It’ll probably happen, but we just started planning, so nothing firm on that yet.
I finished a dog sweater for my uncle’s wife’s dog. They live in Arkansas, so I’ve never met her or the dog. I only have measurements on a piece of paper. I’m very much hoping this fits the dog properly. When/if I get more pictures, I’ll share. Unless they suck, and then I won’t.
For now, this is all you get.
I’m also working on a bunny from this very cool book of knitted toys which I bought for my mom for Christmas but forgot about and misplaced and just found last weekend. Here’s the side view of the body, before stuffing:
(Pay no attention to what Regan says. She’s crazy.)
Other than that, I have only one more bit of knitting news… I’ve been hired to design a sweater for Knit Picks. Yay! When it’s published, you can be SURE I’ll brag all about it.
Two more thoughts, then I’ll let your eyes rest.
The school has been “spinning” a lot lately. Some people call it growing pains, some people feel that we’re working on defining ourselves. Whatever it is, all I know is that a lot of people aren’t wholly satisfied with the culture we have developed. Scott, the director of the school, has even talked about pulling his own son out next year. It feels a little like, “Well, it’s good enough for your kids, but not good enough for mine”, and I don’t like that.
Fortunately, my sister is there at the school all day long almost every day of the week. They’ve been able to talk about Scott’s real reasons for considering removing his son, and his real thoughts about the school culture. I really like Scott and I like that he’s sensitive to people’s emotional needs, but sometimes he just needs to step back and say NO. If the parents aren’t at the school and the kids are acting like monsters, I think the teachers should be empowered to (indeed, RESPONSIBLE to) say STOP IT! And I think Scott should do the same.
Last bit. I’m going to email my URL to my aunt Susan. After the car accident last August, I was sending her long letters full of pictures every few days, but since my dad got sick I haven’t done that. It occurred to me last night that she’d get essentially the same if she read my blog. I will ask her not to pass the URL on to any other family members, and I hope she will guard it, but there are already so many people reading here who weren’t invited that I find myself being more guarded that I intended to originally anyway. So I guess the point is what do you think? You, my readers and my friends. Do you mind sharing your space here with my family?
I'm rushing through my final thoughts because I have to go pick Emily up from a play date. I hope they're clear. I’ll try to write again soon.
I think it must have been the moon or something, because right after that a new song was introduced—“Everything’s All Right” from Jesus Christ Superstar. It’s a beautiful song, but like my friend above, no matter how far I may move away from the religion of my upbringing, it is my history and still informs a lot of my responses.
For those of you who are not (or have never been) Catholic and might not know it, we are in the last days of Lent right now. Last Thursday, we were creeping up on what I have always considered the beginning of the most holy week in the calendar—the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. The nutshell version of everything that makes us uniquely Catholic happened during THAT week. This is the meat of the religion.
So when I heard the words of Mary Magdalene singing, “Try not to get worried, try not to turn on to problems that upset you, oh, don’t you know everything’s all right, yes everything’s fine. And we want you to sleep well tonight, let the world turn without you tonight. If we try, we’ll get by, so forget all about us tonight” and I know that she’s singing those words on the night before her friend was beaten nearly to death then nailed to a cross to die, and I just can’t really keep myself together very well.
Here’s the stupid part: I cried second. After Annalise, but using the same excuse (“It reminds me of my old religion and there’s a part of me that still mourns that lost community”). No one would judge me. No one did judge me. But I still feel like I stepped on her moment.
Anyway… It’s a lovely song done in 5/8 time, which makes for some weird rhythms.
The next day, the school hosted a fund raising event at a local theater. The McMenamin brothers here in Oregon own a number of properties (http://www.mcmenamins.com)
(old school houses, old hotels, etc.) which they have turned into funky, eclectic, creative Hotels, Restaurants, and movie Theaters (for example, the Kennedy School was an elementary school in NE Portland a gazillion years ago—now it houses a spa, 2 restaurants, and a HUGE theater where instead of regular theater seats they have sofas and love seats. Oh yeah, and they serve food in the theater. Very cool).
Ok, so I digressed. Sorry. The fund raising thing was at a McMenamin Theater & Pub called the Bagdad. They donated the space to us and we hosted a handful of bands, some fabulous bubble blowing, a whole lot of face painting and playing, and a bunch of raffles. I won $10.00 to a local pizza place. Yay! (Of course, Kate, my mom and I each also donated a bunch of stuff to the raffle.) Um, what was my point there?
Oh , right. An excuse to show you a picture of my beautiful butterfly.
Saturday Emily went to a friend’s house and I spent the day baking cakes for Robin’s birthday (which was Monday, but he had a party on Sunday). At his request, we made him a black birthday cake. I failed to get photos. Sorry.
The fun part of the cake was the secret St. Patrick’s Day surprise the next day—the black frosting turned everyone’s poo green. Eeeeewwww. And also HAHAHAHAHAHA!
The kids who were at the party didn’t comment on it, but everyone at home did. I suspect they’re too embarrassed at their age to say anything. Still—we know, and that’s all that matters.
My blood glucose has been ridiculously weird lately. I’m tracking it very closely the next few days (as in taking a reading every 2 hours and charting ALL my food), then I’m going to see my doctor on Friday. I suspect that my morning-time medication is too much and I need to reduce it by some amount. That would be ok! We’ll see. But rest assured, friends, I’m not ignoring the problem. I know how important it is and I’m staying right on top of it.
Ummm… Last weekend while the party for Robin was raging on, I dropped my mom off at the local bookseller for a quick pick-up. I don’t want to know how much money she spent. She bought the last 8 books we were missing from a long series. It’s all Julie’s fault and I’m not sure I can ever forgive her. On the plus side, we now own the ENTIRE series to date. Yay!
Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I nearly forgot to show you the new dining room! Here’s the color when we moved in:
And here’s what it looks like now:
Just in case you need to see that better, here’s a different wall where you can see more of the gorgeous creamy color on the ceiling (thanks Jeff!), as well as the beautiful blue in the archway (that’s the same blue as in our kitchen).
Changing subject without a transition sentence isn’t so hard to do. I don’t know what they were going on about in High school…
I miss my dad a lot. More than I ever did before he almost died. I hope Emily and I are able to join him on a camping trip Father’s Day weekend. We’re working out the details of that plan. We’ll see.
And speaking of working out Plans, Julz and I are trying to figure out a trip to see Sloth sometime before July. It’ll probably happen, but we just started planning, so nothing firm on that yet.
I finished a dog sweater for my uncle’s wife’s dog. They live in Arkansas, so I’ve never met her or the dog. I only have measurements on a piece of paper. I’m very much hoping this fits the dog properly. When/if I get more pictures, I’ll share. Unless they suck, and then I won’t.
For now, this is all you get.
I’m also working on a bunny from this very cool book of knitted toys which I bought for my mom for Christmas but forgot about and misplaced and just found last weekend. Here’s the side view of the body, before stuffing:
(Pay no attention to what Regan says. She’s crazy.)
Other than that, I have only one more bit of knitting news… I’ve been hired to design a sweater for Knit Picks. Yay! When it’s published, you can be SURE I’ll brag all about it.
Two more thoughts, then I’ll let your eyes rest.
The school has been “spinning” a lot lately. Some people call it growing pains, some people feel that we’re working on defining ourselves. Whatever it is, all I know is that a lot of people aren’t wholly satisfied with the culture we have developed. Scott, the director of the school, has even talked about pulling his own son out next year. It feels a little like, “Well, it’s good enough for your kids, but not good enough for mine”, and I don’t like that.
Fortunately, my sister is there at the school all day long almost every day of the week. They’ve been able to talk about Scott’s real reasons for considering removing his son, and his real thoughts about the school culture. I really like Scott and I like that he’s sensitive to people’s emotional needs, but sometimes he just needs to step back and say NO. If the parents aren’t at the school and the kids are acting like monsters, I think the teachers should be empowered to (indeed, RESPONSIBLE to) say STOP IT! And I think Scott should do the same.
Last bit. I’m going to email my URL to my aunt Susan. After the car accident last August, I was sending her long letters full of pictures every few days, but since my dad got sick I haven’t done that. It occurred to me last night that she’d get essentially the same if she read my blog. I will ask her not to pass the URL on to any other family members, and I hope she will guard it, but there are already so many people reading here who weren’t invited that I find myself being more guarded that I intended to originally anyway. So I guess the point is what do you think? You, my readers and my friends. Do you mind sharing your space here with my family?
I'm rushing through my final thoughts because I have to go pick Emily up from a play date. I hope they're clear. I’ll try to write again soon.
posted by Aimee at
5:15 PM
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