Poetry Thursday: My memory has left the building
The idea for Poetry Thursday this week was to carry a copy of a poem - my own or someone else's - around with me and pull it out and read it whenever I'd think of it and to share the experience later and how the experience of carrying poetry with me made me feel.
Well, here's the scoop - it made me feel forgetful. Heh. I kept forgetting the poem was in my purse until I'd be digging in there for something else and I'd think, "oh yeah, I should get that out and read it....later" and then I'd continue on with what I was doing and later just sort of never came. I found this exercise, like the eavesdropping one from a while back, to be cool in theory but not too compatible with the way my brain works. I'm looking forward to hearing about the experiences of others who tried it, though. I bet some of you did better with it than I did.
Since I feel like saying "I carried a poem in my purse for a couple of days but kept forgetting to get it out and read it" isn't exactly a scintillating post, I'll veer off from the prompt for this week and share with you a poem I like by Mary Oliver.
We've been getting lots of rain over the past couple of days (no doubt partly from the effects of being on the northern edge of the front brought in by Ernesto) and seeing the swollen creeks all around us made me think of this poem. I thought I might even be able to get a photo of the creek that runs along the edge of our property when it was still turbulent, to really match with the words of the poem, but by the time I thought to take the camera over the hill, the creek was calm. Ah well, I took a photo anyway. Calm is good.
The Dog Has Run Off Again
and I should start shouting his name
and clapping my hands,
but it has been raining all night
and the narrow creek has risen
is a tawny turbulence is rushing along
over the mossy stones
is surging forward
with a sweet loopy music
and therefore I don't want to entangle it
with my own voice
calling summoning
my little dog to hurry back
look the sunlight and shadows are chasing each other
listen how the wind swirls and leaps and dives up and down
who am I to summon his hard and happy body
his four white feet that love to wheel and pedal
through the dark leaves
to come back to walk by my side, obedient.
~~~Mary Oliver
"Late Summer on Gobbler Creek"
You can find out what sort of poetry other bloggers carried in their pocket this week if you click here.
"Late Summer on Gobbler Creek"
You can find out what sort of poetry other bloggers carried in their pocket this week if you click here.
posted by Deb R at 8/31/2006 12:29:00 AM
"Linked"
Oh, one more thing I wanted to mention about links! A lot of my favorite bloggers separate their blog links into categories, which can be kind of cool. I've chosen not to categorize my links though, and I want to tell you why.
I think many bloggers (like people everywhere!) tend to cluster into cliques. They may not mean to, but it happens. They get comfortable within a certain group and end up only visiting blogs that fit into a narrow range of topics. That's fine, of course. We all have a finite amount of time to spend on blog reading or anything else and we all make choices about how to spend that time. But I like the idea of someone following a link from my sidebar and maybe ending up someplace they wouldn't have otherwise gone and maybe they'll find they like it!
My links include blogs written by quilters, photographers, painters, collage artists, knitters, writers of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, book reviewers, fashion snarkers (is that a word? heh), and people who defy fitting neatly into a category - they just blog about life in general in a way I find funny or touching or all-around interesting. They all inspire me in their own way and sometimes that way has nothing to do with what they blog about. Like a story might inspire a quilt idea or a photograph might inspire an idea for a poem. Or someone might just make me smile and feel a little better about my day.
So rather than making it easy on visitors to RSR to find blogs about a particular topic, I hope some of you will, at least now and then, take a chance - scroll down and find a blog name you think is interesting and click on it just to see where it takes you, and take a few minutes to read what they have to say, even if it's a blog outside your usual sphere of interest. You might discover a new point of view that inspires you to be that much more creative in what DOES interest you or you might even meet a new friend.
(all together now, "aaawwwww" - I know it's small, sorry!..but still...cute!)
And I found one of my favorite pics of my favorite-ever dog Rebel when he was itty-bitty:
("aaawwwwwww!!")
He looked like a baby 
"If Rebel Was a Painting"
Welcome to a future where emotion is a crime and powers of the mind clash brutally against those of the heart.
Sascha Duncan is one of the Psy, a psychic race that has cut off its emotions in an effort to prevent murderous insanity. Those who feel are punished by having their brains wiped clean, their personalities and memories destroyed.
Lucas Hunter is a Changeling, a shapeshifter who craves sensation, lives for touch. When their separate worlds collide in the serial murders of Changeling women, Lucas and Sascha must remain bound to their identities…or sacrifice everything for a taste of darkest temptation.
Read an 
"Enclosed in a Caffeine Fantasy"
As far as the house, you can tell by the photo above that it's small and plain, but you can't see how truly horrendous it was until you see some close-ups. This is the front of the house on the day we bought it:
Note the peeling paint and rusting roof, the rag-stuffed broken window right next to the window that's boarded over entirely, the knee-high weed-choked front yard, and the front door hanging about three feet in mid-air because someone tore off the front porch at some point and never replaced it. When we looked at it, our choices for how to get in and out were to either use the ladder that you see leaning against the house or to step over a 2 ft. tall pile of chicken shit on a side porch where the tenants had been using the porch as a chicken coop. We used the ladder.
This is the back, where you can see the roof a little better and see that the last time the house was painted, long, loooog ago, they evidently ran out of paint just before they finished and just didn't ever bother to buy more:
Here's the inside, showing the front door (the one with no steps leading to it!), the smoky little wood stove that was the only source of heat, and the door next to the stove, which was the only closet in the entire house. Plus on the right of the photo you can get a glimpse of the horror they referred to as a "kitchen." Oh yeah, and look at the floor. They'd painted all around the edges with porch paint, but ONLY the edges. Underneath that filthy who-knows-what-color-it's-supposed-to-be area rug, the floor was aged, unpainted pine:
Below is a better look at the so-called kitchen. There was no stove, the refrigerator was broken, and the sink had a trickle of cold, muddy, unfiltered spring water, but no hot water because there was no hot water heater in the house. Also there was no bathroom, only an outhouse on the hill behind the house. Seriously.
The photo below was taken standing in the living room, looking toward a couple of the bedrooms. I don't know how clear it is in the pic, but the ceiling and walls of the living room were all covered in cheap paneling, the only difference being that the ceiling was unpainted dark brown and the walls had been painted white - badly. You can just barely see through the door to the left that the walls of the bedrooms were tongue-in-groove boards that had been sort of whitewashed but otherwise unfinished.
Well, all that is except this room (which ultimately became J's and my bedroom), where they'd evidently run out of the boards and two of the walls were covered in flattened cardboard boxes held up with masking tape:
That's what we started with, folks - proof that someone, somewhere, will buy ANYTHING.
As I said, our plan when we bought the place was to tear it down and start over, BUT...
We discovered it had been a one-room schoolhouse built in the very early 1900's and only divided up and converted to house about mid-century and we thought that was pretty cool. We discovered that the floors were old wide-plank pine that had been treated with so many coats of linseed oil back in the day that they were incredibly tough. We discovered that the basic structure of the house was, amazingly, quite sound underneath all that ugliness. And we took a deep breath and made the decision to remodel instead of tear down.
J and I did 90% of the work ourselves, with only a little help from his brothers. I did things to that house I'd never done before and wouldn't have figured I ever WOULD do!
I tore down walls and helped build others. (BTW, I highly recommend tearing down walls as a stress-relieving exercise!) I put up siding. I helped tear off the old roof and put up the new one. I wired electrical outlets and phone jacks. I sanded and refinished floors. I taped, mudded, sanded, primed, and painted drywall. I designed the new kitchen, while J built all the cabinets from scratch out of recycled redwood lumber that used to be someone's privacy fence.
The photo below is at about the halfway point of the remodel. At that point we'd slapped a coat of paint on both the old siding and old roof just so we could stand looking at them until we replaced them, and we'd replaced all the doors and windows and added a huge porch to the front:
This is an inside shot of the halfway point of the kitchen remodel. The place where the bar and bar stools sit is where that wall with the wood stove used to be in the before photo. You can see we weren't done yet - notice the only partly mudded and sanded drywall and the bare wood of the trim around the door and window. In this photo you can also get a good view of the floors after we'd refinished them:
Here's another view of the kitchen after it was pretty well done. This is looking from the living room side of what ultimately was the great room (that took up the whole front half of the house). You can see from the front door, which is open on the far left of the photo, that this is taken from only a slightly different angle than the before photo with the wood stove:
And this next photo is taken from nearly the same angle as the living room shot above that shows the two doors. You can see a glimpse of our bedroom through the right-hand door. That's the room that used to have cardboard inner walls. We shifted the left-hand door slightly to the left to make space for a walk-in closet in our bedroom and the built-in bookshelf is what we put in the place of the old door:
This is what the property looked like a year after we bought it. By that time we'd not only completely remodeled the interior, including such little amenities as a bathroom, hot water, and central heat/air, but we'd also replaced the siding and roof and added a large screened porch to the left of the original house:
We lived there for five years. If we'd stayed, we'd have eventually built another addition - something the present owners did a couple of years ago.
So there's my looooooong answer to your question, Corky. I'm proud of having taken a place that looked like it was good for nothing but a wrecking ball and had a hand in bringing it back to life. I even decided to make it the topic of today's Daily Art Thang.
"Somerset Cottage"
It was at the edge of a car lot. Is that thing supposed to make me want to buy a car from that place? Because it really didn't y'know. It pretty much made me want to drive another route home so I wouldn't see the big pink naked ApeManThing again. It's just so very, very wrong.
2. I had some blood drawn this week to check my cholesterol (especially my triglyceride levels) to see if some meds I've been taking have helped. They HAVE helped, they really HAVE! My numbers are down! Yay!
2b. Also the woman who jabbed me this time around got a vein on the first try and didn't even leave a bruise, in STARK contrast to the two women who double-teamed me last time and managed to blow three veins (one in one arm, two in the other) before getting enough blood for the test, making me cry like a little girl and leave the office with massive bruising on both arms. (SO not joking!)
3. J told me this evening that while I was gone to the grocery store this afternoon he almost brought home a kitten. Who is this man and what did he do with my husband the dog person??
I kind of wish he'd given in to the impulse, as a part of me would love to have another cat that might turn out to be NICE or something. But another part of me thinks it's just as well he didn't give in to the impulse because EvilDemonKittySky might be nuts enough to turn a perfectly nice kitten into a minion to his evil ways. I don't think I could stand more than one psychotic cat at a time.
4. "Reality" check: I haven't been talking much about the summer TV schedule, but I've been watching "So You Think You Can Dance", "RockStar SuperNova", "Project Runway", and (oh, damn, I HATE to admit this last one, but...gulp....) "Big Brother All-Stars." Yes, that's right, I"m a sad and pathetic "Reality" TV junkie. Deal with it.
Admitting to BB is embarrassing, but I don't mind so much admitting to the rest. If you're a TiVo addict and haven't seen the latest episodes of any of the above, go away now and come back later!
S
P
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4b. I'm thrilled that Benji won SYTYCD! I would have been pretty happy to see Travis get it too, but I had a soft spot in my heart for Benji right from the very first cattle call audition, so Yaaaaay, Benji!! I hope it turns out to be a Good Thing for you!
4c. I'm sooooooo glad SuperNova finally got rid of Zayra! My only complaint is that I wish they'd done another double-elimination and sent Patrice home too. In fact, really, I'm ready for them to send home pretty much everyone except Dilana. Is there really any reason to continue?
4d. I'm disappointed that Alison left Project Runway. Although this last outfit was a horror, I think she has way more talent than WackoVincent, the guy who gets my vote for Most Likely To Make Me Use The Mute Button. Please, oh please, pretty judges, send him home sooooooon! And my Question of the Day is this: How can Laura design outfits that look classic and wearable, even when she's working with trash instead of fabric, yet she can't dress herself in an outfit that will adequately cover her boobs on national television? Anyone?
5. Today's D.A.T. is the result of being bored in the parking lot of a farm supply store. Please don't envy my glamorous life. Heh.
"Line-up"
"Caffeine Crazy"
"Energize"
"Beverly's Poppy" by Denise Starck
She did lots of wonderful beadwork toward the center. It doesn't show up much in the overall shot, but here's a close-up with the contrast exaggerated so you can see some of the bling:
Pretty! Now that the exhibit is over the quilt is going to hang on a yellow wall beside Bev's breakfast table. Lucky Bev!
It was fun seeing some quilts by artists I wasn't previously familiar with too. I really loved three quilts by Cincinnati artist Maria Rubingh. This one, in particular, was my favorite:
"American Nymph" by Maria Rubingh
Her artist's statement talks about how half the women in the US now wear a size 14 or larger, yet many of us are caught up in the idea that beauty and self-worth are tied to a number on the scale or a number on a clothing tag - the smaller the better - instead of celebrating finding beauty in all sizes and shapes. Shouldn't beauty be about being healthy and strong and comfortable in our own skin instead of striving for some airbrushed ideal that isn't even possible for some body types? I loved both the quilt itself and the sentiment behind it.
You can see more of Ms. Rubingh's work 
Hellooooo! Bookmark! Softly pettable red hair! It says Celebrate! It would have been a crime if I hadn't bought it, yes? This is my new VeryMostFavorite-est bookmark.
Of course besides the show it was great to get a chance to visit with Bev. We had Mexican food for lunch and Vietnamese food for supper. We went for a nice long walk after the air cooled off Friday evening and then came back and watched What Not To Wear while adding our own snarky commentary. It was a lovely day.
Speaking of walks, when J and I have been walking we've been noticing how loaded the oak trees are with acorns this year. So far the acorns are still very small, but there are massive amounts of them! According to hillbilly folk wisdom that's supposed to be a sign of a bad winter to come. We'll see... Whether it turns out to be true or not, those baby acorns inspired today's DAT.
"Abundance"
"Look Through the Lines"
"Between the Worlds: Lingering Spirit"
Not bad. Not the most spectacular in the world, but not bad. That photo was taken the first afternoon. Here's one taken early one morning that shows the Smokies living up to their name.
The house itself was new-ish and really nice. Because J and I NEED another remodeling project now that we've finished the kitchen (HAR!) this porch gave us Ideas. You see, we have a porch about this size. Well, ours is a deck really. It's on one end of our house and it is open rather than roofed, and even though it's quite large - around 12' x 36' - we never use it because there's no shade on that end of the house and it's brutally hot out there.
But sitting on this cabin's porch made us think that it might not be a super-big deal to roof ours. We could add some posts, buy some trusses and roofing, maybe a couple of ceiling fans that are rated to use on porches to stir the air on still days. We might even divide it in half and screen in one end. We both think we'd use it a lot if we just had a way to get some shade and better air circulation. Hhhmmm...Yep, we are Thinking. That's always dangerous around here. Stay tuned...
We used the hot tub every night and are kind of lusting after one of those too, but we both want the porch covered more, so we aren't holding our breath on that one.
(But man-oh-man did that puppy ever feel good on my back! We got in right before bed every night and slept soooooooo good.)
We also kind of fell in love with this pool table down in the basement.
One night J and I played Jimmy and Diane so many games I lost track. We each won a few but I lost track of who won how many. It didn't matter! We had fun.
Sadly, we didn't get to do any hiking or anything. This visit was just way too short and the weather was pretty iffy every day - fairly nice in the mornings but we had some rather violet thunderstorms in the afternoons. So instead we shopped. Have I mentioned I'm not much of a shopper? Well, I'm not. Unless it's books, shoes, or OPJ (Other People's Junk - antique shops, flea markets, etc) - then I enjoy it.
So did I buy anything? Yep, I bought books
and shoes
but no OPJ this time. I never said it was a complete loss! {grin}
We also went to a Christmas shop that had a ceiling that made me go "Oooooooh".
I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but those aren't painted-on stars, those are lights. I have no idea where I'd put such a ceiling, but I really like it!
When we get together with this group of friends, we try to take a group photo every year and this year was no exception, but I wish we'd done it earlier. We snapped this one right before we were all ready to run out the door for home and I think we all look a little tired and grumpy. Oh well, maybe we can do better next year.
Front: Johnny, Jimmy, Gerald
Back: Me, Emma, Diane, Amy, Marge
It was at the rental office and I thought it was really pretty. In fact, I thought it was so pretty, I used a photo of it to make today's Daily Art Thang:
"Pretty in Pink"
