smudgie earns his wings

Smudge Schickling 2/18/97-4/25/12 The time has come the Walrus said to talk of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing wax and whether cats have wings. This little angel cat got his wings today.

dilemma solved

I settled on gold. I decided the aqua would scream at me. And in the end although I thought dark red would be a good choice, I thought it might scream at me too if I didn't select just the right shade. I like soft colors and I think I can live with the gold for a long time.

If I decide to use the dark red quilt I won't have to worry about the reds clashing.

This is the view into the room from hall. We have an clay-colored accent wall in the hallway and I think the dark red would not have looked pleasing when viewed from the hallway.

This is the hallway outside of the guest bedroom. Maybe it's not too adventurous, but I'm happy with my choice.

my dilemma

I have been thinking for a long time about adding a little accent color in the guest bedroom. The walls are off-white, bisque, bone, whatever. I have a gold bedspread and a dark red, cranberry, burgundy, whatever bedspread. A Tiffany glass lamp with a lot of colors in it including a lot of shades of red. I inherited the Chinese rug from Bill's office when he got a new one. It has a lot of red and oddly enough a purplish pink in it. My desk chair is upholstered in a greenish-gold and clay-colored flower print. There are a lot of shades of red in this room and oddly enough they go well together. There are a number of shades of gold also. I, however, wanted to choose a perfect shade in the red family that somehow brought all these colors together and complimented one another. I also considered a shade of gold instead of red but in the end decided on a red shade for the punch of color and because I was afraid the gold would match too closely to the wood and not have the contrast that I wanted. I considered for a long time painting the arched wall with the window in the alcove but then changed my mind to paint around the twin bookcases on either side.



So here is the color and although I like it on it's own, it's a big failure in the room. It does match my new purse but nothing else. So now I'm choosing another red. But I can't seem to decide on anything and I'm thinking about going back to the gold.



Smudge has no opinion.



So do I go real dark and match the cranberry, confederate red, burnt peanut or do I go for that second or third to last shade of gold? I'm so wishy washy. Or was it all a mistake and I should have left well enough alone? Or mybe even that aqua? Any opinions?

wwf

Not the World Wildlife Fund although I am a fan of them too. I have a soft spot for little rodents and I think chipmunks are one of the cutest creatures ever. Ev Ver! In fact I recently read an article in their magazine about the effects of global warming on the hibernation habits of chipmunks that has me very worried about the future welfare of these little creatures. I was so happy to see one sneak inside our garage through a little opening in the foundation this spring. B....not so much.

But I'm talking about Words with Friends and my addiction to it. It's the first thing I do in the morning, the last thing I do before I go to sleep. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and play. I fall asleep seeing letters and the words they make and I'm not kidding when I say that there have been times when I fall asleep seeing a particular set of letters in my head and all the words I could make with them and then when I awake I actually have the opportunity to play that very word. It's spooky. (15 pts) It amazes me how many words there are in the English language ( and words the game will accept that aren't in the English language). I played acorn the other day and thought....I've never played acorn before.

I have always liked letters and words way better than numbers. Sometimes I play a little game and make a little story out of the words that have been played in a game. One game yielded quite a naughty (15 pts) little story. LOL!!

In a game I'm playing now, these are the words. Create, sweat, toil, feel, gaze and tokes. Are you seeing a theme here? I am. Only tokes doesn't quite fit but we will make it fit. I'm working on a project. I love to create. It takes a lot of sweat to toil like this. But when my project is complete I can sit back and take a few tokes and gaze upon it and feel pride.

Here's another one with a lot more words. This game is a little further along.

On a whim (whim) I accepted a job at a tony (tony) manor (manor) in a gated (gated)community. They asked to see my bio (bio) and set me up as a payee (payee) on their checking account. I ironed (ironed)for a dojo (dojo) but when he saw the char (char) mark on his shirt he put an end to that. Next he had me take his cute (cute) little shaver (shaver) to the zoo (zoo). We were looking at the dinos (dinos) when the rains (rains) came. The slugs (slugs) came out and we had to bolt (bolt). It caused quite a stir (stir). This was the fix (fix). He lauded (lauded) me on the great (great) job I did and we shared a glass of rum (rum). It feels (feels) so good going down, eh (eh)?

easter dinner

Our baby came home for Easter dinner

acts of kindness

I was sitting down this morning to post in my blog but before I did I had to take a look at Facebook to see what I may have missed in the 10 hours since I last looked. I was intending to write about a couple very small acts of kindness that I have performed recently. Very, very small acts but still they made me feel very, very good to have performed them.

One of the first things I saw on Facebook was this post...

"3 things in human life are important. The 1st is to be kind. The 2nd is to be kind. And the 3rd is to be kind". (Henry James)

Every year I make a New Year's resolution to be kinder to people. It's not that I'm unkind. Just feel that I could be kinder.

Both my little acts of kindness involved older people. Both were somewhat humorous and both were somewhat sad.

My first little act happened several weeks ago. I was out for a long, long walk with a planned stop at the grocery store near the end of the walk to pick up an item or two. I visited the bathroom and when I came out of the stall there was a little old lady standing in front of the sinks but facing the door. I maneuvered around her, washed and dried my hands as she continued to stand there unmoving facing the door. I started to walk around her to leave but then asked her if she needed some help. She pointed to the magnetic sign on the door that said "Maintenance. Do not enter." and said " I think they are doing some work on the other side and don't want us to go out yet." I assured her it was alright to leave the bathroom.

My next little act happened on Tuesday as I was walking home from Panera down Main Street after having Coffee with Julia. I walked past an older woman pushing her hubby in a wheelchair. She was trying to push him up a sidewalk that ran alongside a building. As I was approaching I saw her push the chair forward only to be stopped by the front wheel wedging into a hole in the sidewalk where a chunk of concrete had fallen away. She backed up and tried again with the same result. I was just passing her when I saw that she was going to make a third attempt. Why didn't she just wheel the chair up the smooth paved road next to the sidewalk and then back onto the sidewalk I thought? So I stopped, asked if I could help and offered my advice. She looked up at me and replied "I only have one eye and I can't see what I'm doing." I explained that she was getting stuck in a hole. She took my advice and wheeled her hubby smoothly up the walk to his doctor appointment, I presume.

Continuing on, it made me chuckle a little to myself but mostly it made me feel good that my tiny little offer of help must have seemed like a much bigger offer of help to her.

mediocre musings

I woke up this morning with my mind racing. Thoughts flowing freely. I am loving my time at home but something is laying heavily on my shoulders. A heavy weight pressing down on me. I throw it off but it comes back. Yes, I should be earning money. And I would like to be a productive member of society and I would like to earn money. But I also want to be happy. I want to be happy when I earn money. So I have been giving myself time to think about what I really , really want to do.

This led me to thinking about how people are viewed. I remember when I first met B. His mother prided intelligence above all. So and so's father was a doctor, a lawyer, an Indian chief (a successful bakery shop owner like Betsy's father). To her a person's worth was measured by intelligence and wealth. When someone dies you always hear people say...what a shame. He owned a chain of stores, he had a doctorate in this or that, she had a high-paying job with such and such. They contributed so much to the world. But what about joe schmo. Maybe joe had a factory job and drank two or three beers every evening. But isn't it a shame that joe died too? Is joe's life worth less because he accomplished less? My dad had a factory job, he provided for and loved his family. He would have liked to drink two or three beers every night but my mom wouldn't allow it. But then everyone thought it such a shame when my dad died because he was such a great guy so this analogy isn't really working here. But my point is not everyone can accomplish great things and everyone's life is worthwhile. And this would not be such a wonderful world to live in, I think, if everyone accomplished great things. The world needs people like me and joe to keep it balanced.

I saw a news story recently about a young man who is so intelligent and had such brilliant ideas that his parents let him build a nuclear reactor in the garage. He is foregoing college because what could it teach him? He was teaching quantum physics class for a college when he was fourteen. I'm in awe of these young proteges. Also fearful of them. How is it that a brain like that happens in a chosen few?

So I'm thinking about what I would really like to do. What do successful people have that I don't have? Courage said the Cowardly Lion. But also ambition, drive, dedication, a dream. But maybe I have these things if I had passion. So what am I passionate about? Well, cookie baking. So okay what would it take to make a successful cookie baking business? Well, capital, but let's set that aside for a moment. You would need to advertise and sell your product....not fun, bake cookies every day instead of when you wanted to.....not fun, hire and fire people....not fun. If the business grew and you started to make money then you would have to stop baking yourself to manage the business. Even though your rose cookies are beautiful, the best seller would probably still be chocolate chip so you would have to bake those instead of the beautiful ones. Where is the joy in that? Kind of like Words with Friends where you have this big, wonderful word to play but Qi is the word that will get you the most points.

So I also enjoyed making those paper birdhouses. Maybe I could sell things at a craft fair. I don't think I would make my fortune in this arena, not even a living, probably not even enough to cover the cost of the supplies. Moving on, I love food. Maybe I could work in a restaurant. But then I would have to cook or serve what was on the restaurant menu instead of thinking up delightful menus myself.

I thought that I would like to maybe work in a daycare. Even that requires a two year degree in child care. Does raising a child count I wonder? Or a degree in Accounting with two or those years spent pursuing a degree in Special Education? I feel so inadequate to take of a baby or serve people food. I don't seem to have the experience required. Never mind that a high school kid could perform these duties quite well.

Although I don't have the confidence to outright say it (but here I am saying it) I am somewhat of an expert in Quickbooks, I suppose. I mean, I was sent out to clients to teach them to use it, clients called me to talk them through working with it, people came to me with QB questions. So maybe I'm a bit of an expert. I love to see a clean perfect general ledger with not an entry out of place. So herein, I think, lies what I should do. Because I know how to do this and this is where I could make the most money I guess. Any hobby I have would become joyless if I had to repeat it over and over everyday. People tell me that I'm talented and that I have so many interests, but I am a Jack of all Trades and Master of None. One of the great mediocrities of the world.