Tag: memories

Simple

Hi Everyone,

This is going to have to be short today.  There is a long list of To Do’s waiting on me.  The whole week has been that way.  Every single day has been full of different appointments to rush to and fro from.  We are worn out and still not done.  Monday is our last scheduled appointment…I think.  Somewhere soon I have a bone density test, but can’t find it on my calendar at the moment.  Not good.

I finally got a beginning sketch for the commissioned drawing done.  It will be after Christmas before I can show you the final piece because it is a present and I bet that someone will recognize the little guy, so I have to keep it under wraps.  I am very much looking forward to putting a pencil to paper again.  I now have two logos that need to get done as well and my usual work is pretty busy.  I was up at 4 am working Wednesday morning.  If you can’t sleep, work.

What is weighing on my mind this week is how to get back to simple.  I have been downsizing and cleaning out stuff for 5 years now.  Every time I think I am close to getting where I want to be someone else’s stuff moves in on me.  Yes, I still have some of my own to part with, but most of it has been in storage for a kid or two.  Now, I have 4 generations of stuff to work through.  We have formulated a plan.  Wish us luck.

For those of you who have not heard, my son is moving to Hawaii in December.  Yes, it is a real paying job he is going over there for.  People keep asking me if he is going to get a real job. Yes, it involves an ocean, kayak, whales and probably a surf board, but he is actually getting paid to do such things and even gets real work benefits.  Are you green with envy yet??

What I admire about my son is his ability to walk very lightly on this earth.  He will be moving to the other side of the country with only what he can carry in his camping backpack and his school backpack.  That’s it. Even as a small child he rarely had more than one item on his Christmas list.  He is not a collector of STUFF.  He collects experiences.

My daughter and son-in-law have been working to minimize their STUFF as well.  I think their generation has seen the error of our ways and do not want to burden themselves with the cost of STUFF in real money and in environmental impact.  Do some research on just how much clothing alone goes into our landfills here in the U.S.

D. and I are both people who crave a very simple lifestyle.  We admire the Shakers and Amish in their simplicity and the beauty of that simplicity.  Clean lines in furniture and have only what you need.  We are far from that right now, but as we go through this experience of distributing a bazillion things we are more sure than ever that we do not want our legacy to be STUFF.  We do not want to leave such a burden on our children.

I can tell you that I am now analyzing every single item that I own and will be letting go of things that I have held onto only because it is connected to a memory.  Things DO NOT hold memories.  PEOPLE hold memories.  I can look around me and see THINGS that I do not truly love for what they are but just because they are a connection to my past.  THINGS that if I were to see them in a store, I would walk right by them.  No more.  They have to go.  They are taking up valuable real estate in our home that could either be open, airy, peaceful space of its own or hold something that I truly do love for its beauty and/or usefulness.

I hope that in some way I have influenced my kids in their simplicity.  I don’t think their lives were filled with an overabundance of stuff growing up and I showed them how to regularly clear out their belongings.  Now I have a young lady that needs, more than most, to have this example and instruction given to her.  What happens in her future I have no way of knowing, but I do know that D. and I are committed to showing her a simpler, more peaceful and more financially sane way to live.  Sometimes life provides you with an unforeseen way to accomplish your goals!

Have a great week and keep it simple!

Photo credit

 

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by Categories: art, creativity, Earth, life, simplify, travel, valuesTags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Salt water and memories 

Hi Everyone!

I will just start by saying that I WAS NOT READY to come home from the beach! A long weekend was not long enough. It was a few glorious days of much needed R&R though. Miss L. spent the weekend with her Aunt Netty and Uncle Steve. I think she decided the Old Farts wasted a good beach trip when we told her our weekend consisted of eating, sleeping and sitting on the beach. Did I mention that it was glorious? I slept for 11, yes, ELEVEN straight hours!


And now back to the grind. 

Nothing creative. Nothing fun. 

We are now on a time crunch to finish up at my late SIL’s house. Every spare minute will be spent there moving stuff out. Tomorrow we are having a POD dropped in our front yard to stuff everything into until I get time to sort it all out. Yeah. You hear the excitement in my voice don’t you?

Next week we are once again calling in all available family members to do some heavy moving. It has been hard enough watching D. and his sister remembering their Mom, Grandparents and sister as we sort through all the generations of stuff. Now the nieces and nephews will have to come to grips with the fact that the house they have happy memories of their Grandma Judy in (it was her house before it was my SIL’s) will have to be sold. 

Our annual chicken stew is this weekend. I have several boxes of family items that I am either delivering to a family member or taking for the family to sort through and take with them. Hopefully there will be good family stories told over these. It is kind of weird being the outsider without emotional attachment to all these family mementos. I am often able to appreciate the old items for their workmanship, artistry or history without a memory of where it sat in Grandmomma’s kitchen or remembering someone working on needlework at a Sunday dinner.


Today I unpacked several drinking glasses from the 50’s and they were so bright and cheerful that I decided I would replace the ones we normally use that no one seems to like. While I am noticing how much better the thickness and quality of glass is than current ones, D. is telling me how he always noticed that his Granddad’s cornbread and milk (it’s a Southern thing if you aren’t from around here) matched the design colors on the glass he is using. This change of glasses not only gave Miss L. some family history but general history as well as we explained how some of the glasses were once jelly jars. 

Most of the cleaning out and sorting is just hard labor, but when some of the old pieces of pottery or needlework or old 40’s clothes turn up it becomes a little treasure to appreciate.  I’m afraid that future generations will not get as much enjoyment from our mass produced plastic and cold technology. Hopefully we will find our way back to quality and beauty before the skills are lost. 

So, maybe next week I will share a photo of our beautiful POD. Yuck. I hope it won’t have to hang around too long. I guess an eyesore in your front yard is motivation enough to get a daunting job done. B.J.C. thank you for the sweet note. That helped me keep my chin up and carry on! 

Have a great week and go make something beautiful! 

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Memory Lane

Hi Everyone!

Wow! Check it out!  I made my post on time this week.  Progress!

This week has involved Miss L. heading off to school.  So far, so good.  She likes her homeroom teacher, is making friends and is complaining about having to get up so early in the morning.  Typical first week of school in my experience.

I am up to my eyeballs in estate stuff.  As in, there is STUFF in our barn, under the tobacco barn overhang, in the bedrooms and in the vehicles waiting for it all to be sorted and sent to wherever it needs to go.  I am not a STUFF person and this is making me crazy.  I keep telling myself “this too shall pass”.

Other than the few minutes I take here and there to knit a few rows on my second pair of socks and the beginning stages of a logo design I am doing for my daughter’s blog, there isn’t a creative thing going on right now and it is depressing.  I get cranky when I don’t have a drawing or painting or SOMETHING going.  I’m not seeing much hope of starting anything soon either.

In all the cleaning out of storage units recently, my sister-in-law handed me this.

 

I had not thought about this book in decades, but it brought on a flood of memories and the realization that it influenced my artwork in ways that I did not know.  Jericho was published in 1974 and I was twelve years old.  The artwork is by Hubert Shuptrine and poetry by James Dickey.  To be honest, I never read the poetry until now, but I remember being absolutely mesmerized by the paintings and drawings.  The funny thing is, I had no idea in my memory where I saw this book to begin with.  Now I know that it resided on display in the foyer of my husband’s grandparents lovely old house.  Evidently, I saw it there because I can’t imagine where else I would have seen it at that point in life.  Strange how life circles back sometimes.


Hubert Shuptrine’s paintings and drawings amazed me with their detail, emotion and moody atmosphere in the same way that Andrew Wyeth’s work would a few years later.  I am still drawn into both artist’s work now just as I was then and find myself all these years later starting to do drawings and paintings in the same vein after decades of avoiding rural settings.  Strange how life circles back time and time again.


Wishing you a peaceful week and lovely memories.  Send prayers, supplies and donations to our friends in Texas.  They need them all.

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