But You Can Still Be Friends

Isn't it always the case that after you break up, the other party pulls it together and then you can't remember why you wanted to break up?  He gets off the couch, quits the fantasy football league, shuts off the TV, and finally starts the company that he kept talking about while you hung around offering encouragement...he loses ten pounds, he starts cooking, he goes dancing...basically he does all of the things that you had wished could happen while you were together, but he does them with someone else.

Houston is doing that to me a little bit right now.  I have been hanging around, waiting for Houston to come into its creative own, looking for signs of creative life.  Hints of it surfaced here and there, but still it has sometimes felt difficult to actually find people to do creative things with.

Last week, literally weeks before our departure, a new place opened for people to rent space and make things.  People close to me know that I have wanted to try this for sewing; every time I pack up my heavy machines that do not get daily use, I wonder why more us don't share these things.  I have even sketched out a rough idea for a business model.  But the constant moving has stopped me from actually going for it because I was terrified of having to leave it behind.  Anyway, I'm not bitter that someone else did it first; I'm happy it exists because it makes so much sense.  I'm just disappointed that it didn't happen two years ago, when I could be part of it.

Regardless, Houston, you are looking better already, and I'm sure it's not out of the question that I will be back.  Maybe we will make things together at some point in the future.  In the meantime, good luck to Houston Makerspace!

(I couldn't help but add the photo of this cool bus stop bench around the corner.)

Make Stuff and Carry On

Selling a house is a drag, and I can report that trying to sell a house while home alone for a month with a seven-month old is an extreme drag.  I felt pretty good for the first three weeks but this week my spirits are low, I can't lie.  While it may not be a long time in the life of a home sale, this month feels to me like it may never end.

Since my time is largely spent either alone or with a couple of sweet creatures who can't understand a word I'm saying, I have a lot of time to think.  As a result, I have wavered occasionally about our plan...too soon?  Too much?  Not the right time?  At other points, I have started to consider even more drastic options, like keeping the house and renting it out instead of selling it, or just getting an apartment in Minnesota but not really making a final decision about the house in Houston until next year.  We made the hard decision and now I just want to get started on the next phase.

In the meantime, I have stolen a few hours here and there for making things.  I can't get involved in anything too messy or complicated, in case of a sudden house-showing evacuation, so that eliminates a lot of what I was hoping to work on this year. But on the other hand, there are other projects; patterns and projects which can still provide both opportunities for learning and also just the pleasure of making.  I recently made this bag from a pattern in a cool book called Linen Wool Cotton.  It turned out that the pattern had some mistakes, but the book remains beautiful and inspiring.

2014

It is New Year's Eve, a holiday that I adore.  I'm a new-year super-geek.  Even home with only a sleeping five-month-old and a glass of champagne, missing my husband and feeling a smidge lonely, I still love the new year.  It is a holiday of closure but also possibilities, and I especially love possibilities. Everything is all fresh and tidy and optimistic again.  A new year feels like a free pass to try and do things better this time, even if it wasn't great last time.

Happy Birthday!

My husband left today to go back to work in Angola.  Today is also his birthday, and he was feeling a little old and slightly less than awesome when he left the house at 6:30 this morning, so I feel compelled to proclaim to the cyber-world some things that are awesome about him:

Another Festival of Quilts

I can't believe it's been a year since I went to the Quilt Festival here in Houston.  Suddenly it's that time again.  I heard on the radio this week that the festival draws over sixty-thousand attendees and that quilters spend more money on quilting than hunters spend on hunting and golfers spend on golf, which kind of boggles the mind.  Regardless of the hoopla, I just go to see the amazing display quilts from around the world.

It is bizarre how everything is different in my life than it was a year ago, and it all started just after the festival last year.  Last year I hung around the festival with my camera for hours, exploring and admiring the art.  This year, I raced around the festival with my camera in my diaper bag and my baby in the stroller.  I held my breath for most of the time and finally did a slower, more leisurely stroll only after I was certain that I had seen the highlights, lest I miss anything if the baby erupted.  But he hung in there, and I enjoyed a decent overview.

I was not as taken with this year's quilts as I was with those from last year, but they were beautiful and inspiring nonetheless.  The highlights for me this year were other details, like the fact that the friendly and enthusiastic ticket-taker at the door greeted me with "You must be from Wisconsin!", which was remarkable since I had never seen him in my life.  Even though I'm not from Wisconsin, from down here Minnesota and Wisconsin are essentially the same thing, so I was willing to consider that an accurate statement. Then I realized that he figured it out because I was wearing a sleeveless top and it was only 72 degrees outside.  For Houstonians, this constitutes a chill in the air.

Another aspect of the festival that amused me this year that I didn't notice last year was the husband's lounge.  It was a walled-off area in the back of the convention hall equipped with a big TV and a bunch of comfy armchairs and lounge chairs.  Pretty smart, and thoughtful, in my opinion.

There was something else I noticed this year that had nothing to do with quilts.  I noticed how many people in the world love babies.  As a person who has always feared them desperately, this fact never ceases to amaze me.  A sleeping baby in a stroller is a grandma magnet, and I was in a convention hall overflowing with grannies.  It's really fun walking past people who reflexively smile and get a little dreamy, giggly look on their faces when they look at your tiny companion.

Regardless, there were also beautiful quilts.  Here is a sampling of what I saw:

Start With an Onion

Resolve

We are three weeks into the new year.  Into our resolutions, goals, promises and lists.  Which means that many people, myself included, have likely reached the feeling of discomfort that occurs from venturing into unknown territory and not feeling great about the results.  Suddenly we wonder if the goal was silly, or if we are not good enough, or if we have wasted our time.  And very often, we slink away to lick our wounds, letting the new goal slide off the table, no harm done.  But why do we feel uncomfortable?  And how do we build that bridge between old familiar skills and new desired expertise?

I have so far been essentially meeting the weekly goals I have set for myself, with some minor deadline tweaking, and with hints of the aforementioned disappointment.  For example, since one of my goals is to learn to bake bread, I am working to accomplish it by baking one loaf per week.  The first loaf I made went mostly according to the recipe and I was tickled when the dough actually rose, just as the recipe suggested it would.  I did, however, forget to add salt.  So, it looked nice, but tasted less than fabulous.  Then last week, I made the dough on time, but it turned out that there was no time to finish the baking process until today.  Since I'm within one day, I will still count it for last week's loaf.  And I am still required to make one this week.  So...progress, but definitely no artisanal bread just yet.  Obviously.  What we forget is that in the beginning, everything feels hard.  We have adult, gourmet expectations, but our skills always begin as elementary.  Time and patience are required.  This is not surprising, but it is easier said than managed.

Dynamo

Two weeks!  Aaaaagh.  I went to see the Dynamo, Houston's professional soccer team, just over two weeks ago, and then I'm not sure what happened.

An art crawl, a neighborhood walking architecture tour, a Thanksgiving flu, Thanksgiving.  Now friends coming for visits and holidays sneaking up fast!

I'm thankful for so many things that I could burst.

I'm thankful for my husband, my friends, my family, my cat (I hope that doesn't sound dumb, but she really brings me piles of uncomplicated joy).  I'm grateful that I feel healthy right now and I'm super grateful for our new house and the fact that it is currently untouched by disasters which have befallen others.

I'm thankful for Minnesota, Texas, France, New Zealand, Madison, New Orleans...even Missouri and Calgary...all places that have shaped my life, some in ways I love and others in ways that just make me grateful to have moved on.

I'm grateful for the opportunity to improve every single day.

Festival of Quilts

Last week there was an enormous quilt festival practically in my backyard.  Normally, this is the kind of thing that I would think sounded nice and then I would be too lazy to do anything about.  I don't know how to make quilts, but I admire them enormously, and I imagined that the quilts at an event like this would be artful and inspiring.  They were.

Pursue Happiness

A program on the radio that I've listened to recently featured several TED presentations related to happiness.  One of the speakers, Barry Schwartz, concluded that "the secret to happiness is lowering expectations."  Not a romantic notion, but difficult to refute, as I happily snuggle further into a city that I thought I would hate.  Another speaker featured on that same program  concluded that too much choice increases dissatisfaction and also increases paralysis.  My husband and I can support this theory; while we have long appreciated options presented by his work, we have also suspected that the buffet of possibilities before us made our heads spin and sometimes threw up distraction barriers as we labored to make a more definitive life plan.

However, whatever the methodology, I am thrilled to report happiness.  Inside my gut, bubbling in my heart, leaking out onto my face regularly.  We have made lists, done comparisons, laughed and cried and imagined, and finally, decided not to move home to Minnesota.  Decided to remain here, in Houston, in order to prevent having to be separated while he is at work.  Making a hard decision like that was tricky enough, but the the truth is that my effervescent fountain of happy welled up from what followed, as we certified the first decision with a concrete second one: I fell in love with, and we are in the process of buying, my first house.

Quiet Across the Tropics

It's funny living in a place where each hourly weather forecast on my radio station features the phrase "and it's quiet across the tropics", or something similar.  I'm sure it's normal for people raised on a coast, but it's new for me.  I have also noticed that when there is something brewing, but the diagnosis remains uncertain, you might hear a phrase like "there are no immediate concerns in the Gulf".

Anyway, for the moment, it is quiet across the tropics.  Every day the high temperature hovers between the low 90s and 100-ish, and every afternoon, almost without fail, there is a 30 percent chance for a thunderstorm, but rarely does it organize itself into actual rain.  I often hear a rumble of thunder, and see big gray clouds for a little while, but just as commonly, the formation disperses before depositing any precipitation.

In the meantime, after days of home-alone quiet and a brewing pity party comprised of my own small matters, I decided it was time to get out of the house.  I went to check out a local business about which I have been curious, that specializes in southeast Texan food.

Montrose Weekend

April Progress Check: 2012 Goals

Field Trip: Houston Zoo

 

Barn + Moon

Those Who Can't...Need to Take Their Own Advice

After the Mardi Gras dress marathon, I lost my sewing mojo.  I felt pleased about having made a dress, and wearing it.  However, when I saw photos of the dress in action, I was disappointed.  All was fine when I was standing still, but any photo that captured motion showed gaps between the fabric of the dress and my body, reflecting deficiencies in my still-beginner sewing and design skills.

In Search of a Little Mexico

The first time I went to Mexico, as a teen-ager on a Spring Break trip, I thought I would be annoyed visiting somewhere so full of tourists.  I had just completed a year as a Rotary Exchange student, and we had been brainwashed to believe that the only way to experience a new place was to experience it's daily life; how locals conduct their day-to-day affairs.  If we were identified as American by locals during that year, we had failed the cultural test.

As it turned out, I was slightly annoyed by tourist trappings of  Cancun, but my curiosity about daily Mexico overruled my disdain for the standardized vacation chosen by my peers.  I was more interested in the taxi drivers than the goings-on at the nightclubs, and I was intrigued by the hair-braiding ladies in the market and the brands of food in the downtown grocery store.  I noticed women of all ages with tummies showing a little, or shorts that were quite short; they seemed so comfortable showing their skin, regardless of their shape.  To my body-obsessed eighteen-year-old brain, this was amazing.  Now, it is very logical to my thirty-five year-old brain: it's about comfort in the heat.

Limits & Boundaries

I've discovered over the course of recent years that I'm more creative when hemmed in by boundaries and limits.  If I can't have more, I have to make what I have feel like more.  Sadly, I wasn't as good at this when I was a broke first-year teacher, but I'm making up for lost time now.

What About You?

My dad and I have been engaged in a dialogue over email lately that I appreciate very much.  We have been reflecting on work, inspiration, motivation and attitude...topics we have never approached together.  In his most recent message to me, after sharing some things that "keep him going", he asked me what keeps me going.  That was a couple of weeks ago, and the question has been floating over my shoulder as I have gone on with my normal activities.

An Illustration