Windowsill rescue!

If you're expecting to read about a daring feat of heroism... then you can stop reading right now.

There's not even a fireman reference here.

I'm talking about literally rescuing a windowsill. You see, when our house was built the builder didn't want it to look like the other house built off the same plan one door down and one row over, so he bumped out our front window. Just bumped it out... a little... in like a... box.

 



 

Some people might have thought to make it a windowsill, or put some clever built in storage underneath. Not our builder. He just made a box. It's not like he has to live with it, or the horrible clear coat they finished the wood with that apparently washes off with water.

Water.

Sorry, I didn't intend this to be a bash the builder blog, and if I get started on that subject things could get out of hand real quick, so I will just move on as politely as I can.

This lovely window... box I was provided with has been serving me very well in collecting moisture and dust, the wood veneer bubbling and cracking over the years, but really did little else until I got small dogs.

Oh boy, what a treat it is to have a place for my dogs to bark at the neighbors, rip holes in the window screens and scratch at the paint I added when everything the builders applied washed away. Let me tell you, nothing made that window... box dearer to my heart than having a couple of dogs able to hop up and smear their sweet doggie nose slime all over the windows in welcoming patterns for our guests to see.

 

Every so often I scrub the glass clean and repaint the sill, just to give them a clear canvas to start their creative work again. And then, last week, as I pulled out my paint and organic glass cleaning mixture... I had an epiphany.

I have a lot of those, really, but rarely do I actually run out and act upon them.

This time I'm glad I did.

  My epiphany came in the form of vinyl wall paper. Lowe's had a beautiful grasscloth pattern by Allen and Roth that was just the right color tone and didn't scratch or dent when my daughter and I attacked the sample square on display with our nails. That reminds me... we owe Lowe's an apology for the less durable samples... Sorry, Lowe's, you might need to check your display on aisle six. Anyway, the Allen and Roth grasscloth stood up to the challenge, but we thought we would be even more clever and fill the window... box with plants that would deter the dogs from hopping up there at all.  

 

We filled my flea market find antique tool box with a variety of plants and flanked it with some baby alberta spruces that we thought were prickly enough to be added doggie deterrent...  

 

The plan worked perfectly... for about twelve hours.
  Ah well, at least it looks a lot better than before. And hopefully the nose slime will be contained to the less noticeable side areas.

The Hero Syndrome

No.

It's just two letters.

One syllable.

Two sounds.

Nnnnnnn-ooooooo

 

Can you tell I work in Kindergarten?

 

It's the most common word out of the mouth of babes.

As in infants, not hot girls.

So why do I find it so darn difficult to say?

No. No. No.

I can type it. I can say it repeatedly when I'm alone. I even have it in a rubber stamp...

but when someone from the world says "Hey, Christa, can you do this for me?"

Suddenly my tongue won't touch my teeth!

My lips won't make a circle, and those two sounds, nnnn-oooo are impossible to make.

Impossible.

I might think I'm saying no.

Inside I am screaming no.

But no matter how I fight the impulse, I compulsively say yes.

Why do we do that?

Is it guilt? My Catholic upbringing? Too many nitrates in processed food?

Or are some of us just bred to be heroes...

You need someone to bake four hundred cookies? Sure.

A chairman for the least desirable committee on the PTA? I'm your girl.

An essay written in six different languages and signed by the president of France?

No problem.

Now, that one is close. If you could just clap your hand over your mouth before the word problem comes out you'd have it. But I never think of it in time.

 

And so I spend all the weeks leading up to Halloween preparing for Fall Festival at my son's school, while planning my daughter's costume party birthday bash, shopping for home coming, creating three very specific and detailed costumes, decorating the house, making ten pounds of applesauce, three school conferences, four dentist appointments, and a partridge in a pear tree...  

There's more, but I won't go on.

You're welcome.

The problem is, this happens every year.

I know it's coming. I plan to say no. I practice my nnnnnn's and ooooooo's. I even put on chapstick.

It seems like that would help.

 

Then it happens. People in the world come to me and make their requests, and whap, there's a damn cape fluttering in the breeze behind my shoulders.

The cape is choking me a little, making me think I might never see the pale, grayish light of November. It's keeping me up at night and getting in the way of things like eating meals. But no matter how I tug and pull and plan and chapstick, it won't go away.

If anyone out there knows the secret to ditching the cape, let me know, because I sure would like to be one of those women I see on the sideline. You know, the ones watching the leaves change color and eating ten pounds of applesauce that someone else made.  

Sigh.

I bet that applesauce has cinnamon.

  

 

 



Goodbye Summer

I was born for summer.

I mean seriously made for warm and lazy days.

In summer I wake up at the first ray of sun, no clock necessary, get out of bed smiling and spend my whole day singing songs with little bluebirds dancing on my shoulders.

You may have seen me in a Disney movie once, or twice.

 

When I was eighteen, I left my home in Vermont and moved to Georgia, just to have more summer.

So it's always hard to say goodbye when those big yellow busses start to rove the neighborhood again, signaling the start of alarm clocks and schedules.

Oh, God, I shudder at schedules...

But this year I'm finding it especially hard to say goodbye summer, because this year I had this -

 

The southern coast of Maine.



It was only a short time, but it was enough to renew my spirit, recharge my batteries, and make me hate Kansas just a little bit more.

Sorry Kansas.

 

It was morning walks and laying in the sun. It was salt on my skin and waves kissing my feet. It was this...

It was beautiful seaside shops and happy children.

 

It was beach hair.

 

Need I say more? I think not.

And now? Now I'm back to dry fields and windy weather. A closed up house with less than ambient air conditioning and Netflix addicted children with nothing to go outside for. My eldest daughter summed it up when she said, "People move to Colorado when the like skiing and mountains. They move to Maine when they like outdoors and oceans. They move to Kansas when they like airplanes and nothing."

Sorry again, Kansas.

I don't mean to harsh on my home state. We really do have a lot of nice..... corn. And the sunflowers are not a myth. They do pop up in the strangest places. But then I just look at this...

 

and my heart hurts. I honestly ache for the feel of wet sand beneath my feet.

  And I wonder what in the world brought me to live in a place so far away from the sound of waves.

Oh yeah... airplanes.

Ah, well. I suppose that, just like summer, I wouldn't appreciate it so much if I had it all the time.

Maybe.

I only know that fall is here, the busses are roving, and everything I love about the summer and the shore will be there waiting,

until next time...  

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