Random Items from the Junk Drawer of my Mind #5

1. Thank you to everyone who commented on my SPT post yesterday! In response to a few comments - yes, I wish I could have known all my great-grandparents better, including Great-Grandma Kizzie. 5 out of 8 of them were alive when I was born, but only 3 out of 8 lived long enough for me to have even vague, hazy memories of them. None of them were the sort to have diaries or journals, and there aren't many photos, so most of what little I know is from hearing about them from older family members. I'm not sure how much, if at all, my personality is like G-G K. Our lives were so radically different! She was the wife of a farmer and part-time fire-and-brimstone Baptist preacher, and the mother of 9 kids (or was it 10? I'd have to find a pic and count!) so I doubt she had much time for writing, or artwork, or even dreaming. Did she wish she had time for those things? Are they things she would have done if her life had taken another path? I don't know and I wish I did. 2. Proof that I've been doing a little sewing: "Ray of Sunshine 1", 6" x 4" It's just a little fabric postcard (one of a small series I finished yesterday) but it's Fabric! It's STITCHED, dammit! I have a non-postcard fabric something put together that I'm planning to start quilting today. Depending on how far I get, I *may* have photos to share tomorrow or Friday. 3. Take a look at what I saw from the back deck yesterday morning: "Fairy Frost" It looks like snow, doesn't it? But no, just an extremely heavy frost. I thought it was pretty. Here's another view looking toward the barn: "Frosty Barn" The sunspot in the upper right is a lucky accident, not a filter. Cool, yes? 4. Back to the topic of Self-Portrait Tuesday for a moment, I have no idea what I'm doing next week to finish out January (ok, that's a lie...I have an idea, I just haven't done anything about it yet and if it turns out to be a Crap Idea, I have no OTHER idea), but yesterday Kath posted the theme for February. "all of me" embrace your mistakes, love the ugly bits. (whimper) Hold me. I'm scared. I'm very, very good at Select-a-vision, y'all. It's what allows me to walk past herds of dustbunnies and teetering stacks of books for weeks at a time without doing anything about them. They aren't important to me at that moment, so I mentally tune them out and simply don't see them! (That drives J nuts, by the way. I know he's convinced that I'm being deliberately annoying when I do that, but really I'm not. I'm being naturally and unconsciously annoying. There's a difference! Heh.) Select-a-vision is also what allows me to ignore bags under my eyes, a sagging jawline, fat rolls, and much, much more, and choose to still see myself as attractive. And it took me a long, LONG time to get there. I look back on photos of myself when I was younger and thinner and firmer - more attractive by current standards of physical beauty - and I hated the way I looked then. I didn't like myself much at all. It took a lot of years of living for me to understand - TRULY understand, deep inside - that no one is perfect and that the less-than-perfect bits of me - both the physical and non-physical bits - didn't make me worthless. But I admit I did that not by embracing them, but by choosing to no longer see them. I clicked the Select-a-vision button on my mental remote control box and filed them away under "unimportant". And now Kath wants me to not only consciously LOOK at those sorts of things, but to share them with the world and yet still choose to see myself as attractive...To not merely dismiss the imperfections as unimportant, but to take them in and name them and embrace them and love them?? AAAaaaacccckkkkk!!!! I am horrified. Seriously. I'm freaking out a little bit here in my corner of Kentucky. And of course I don't HAVE to do it. But if it isn't difficult sometimes, it isn't really a "challenge" right? So. Well. Damn. I still hate it. I'm still scared. But I'm going to try. (whimper) We'll see what happens.