OK, Here's the Deal...

Because I have been out of work since the end of December, you might think that I would be a blogging fool, but alas, I have not been so inclined for some reason. I guess I have been somewhat busy with visits to Utah and visits from Utah. In any case, I guess I may still have a few more posts in me.

So, back to wallpaper... The wallpaper of my "raising family" years is also very colorful. There is actual wallpaper that I lovingly picked out and helped to hang in all four of our homes. Easter dresses, many of which I made, are part of the wallpaper. Dancing children and school busses are there. Four sets of baby blankets and wedding dresses are found along with piles of dirty dishes and laundry. Love notes scrawled in crayon and handmade macaroni and toothpick Christmas ornaments are included. Bugs in jars on the kitchen counter and tadpoles frolic. Many giggles and much singing in the car are sprinkled throughout. Trips to Disneyland and St. George are mixed in with fun at Grandma's house and playing with cousins. Skinned knees and broken hearts can be seen if you look closely. Four happy girls (three blonds and one brunette) who have occasional squabbles are featured prominently.

This wallpaper seems to be more of a watercolor where everything runs together to form a lovely picture when viewed from a distance. This wallpaper has many sounds and smells as well and I miss all of them with increasing intensity as the years pass. This wallpaper is as permanent and enduring as all the generations that will follow me.

Like the circles that you find In the wallpaper of your mind...

So my sister who is an artist and a writer had an interesting phrase in her blog that I am going to explore further in this post. She was talking about how there were many phrases that were part of the wallpaper of her life. I also have life wallpaper but it is divided into different rooms: the wallpaper of my childhood, the wallpaper of my children's childhood, my current wallpaper.

I used to love wallpaper and have had it in all of my houses except the one I live in now. One reason I don't have any now is that I have those stupid textured walls which don't really look good with wallpaper on them. In addition, my love of wallpaper seems to have waned. Maybe it is because I have had to strip too much of it in my life (see previous post). Or, maybe it is because it is out of fashion. No, that couldn't be it because I refuse to follow fashion trends. ("Karen, don't be a slave to fashion" --name that obscure reference!) Anyway, I don't need wallpaper in my house because I have it in my mind.

The wallpaper of my childhood is vivid and hasn't faded with age. It probably should have, but it hasn't. It includes such items as Cowboy, my rocking/bouncing horse. I spent many hours on Cowboy singing and rocking. "Pony Boy" and "Buffalo Girls" were two of my favorite songs to sing while Cowboy and I rode through the wild west. He went to live at Aunt Lillie's store when he lost his bounce (and his tail because I sat on it instead of in the saddle when I got bigger) and then, when she closed her store, he lived in my garage until he completely fell apart and I had to take him to the dump. No matter, he is as peppy and fun as ever on the wallpaper.

Another thing on my childhood wallpaper is the metal headboard on the bed in the "girl's room" at Grandma Dena/Aunt Lillie's house. If you sat against it, it would bend in and then when you got up, it popped back out, making a sound that I will never forget. Can sounds be on wallpaper? In my childhood room with wallpaper they can. There was the hobnail pin-up lamp above the bed with the frilly white shade that I turned on for looking at picture books before going to sleep. And the flannel blankets on the bed with the crisply ironed clean-smelling sheets. (I guess smells are included as well.) All of these are on my wallpaper.

Then there are 3 shady trees down a dirt road near a farmhouse on the wallpaper. There are lambs without mothers who need to be fed with warm milk from giant Coke bottles with big black nipples on them. There are "Whees" (bumps in the road) on the way to Grandma's house. There is the smell of bacon and eggs, bread and pies, alfalfa and manure. The wallpaper is colorful, filled with quilts, fabrics, and bottled fruits and vegetables. Gardens of beautiful flowers lovingly cared for by grandparents fill the background.

There are also adventures on my childhood wallpaper. Family trips and moving to "exotic" places like Brentwood, CA and Andover, MA. There is a mansion with a swimming pool, beautiful grounds, an apartment over the multi-car garage, a laundry building, a pugoo in the drape, 2 huge German shepherds, and an electric gate across the entrance. There are tree-lined streets with a beautiful old church and cemetery at the end of the block.

My childhood wallpaper has only begun to be described but I shall have to move on to my young adulthood wallpaper in my next post. Stay tuned...

Shredding...and I don't mean paper

So Gary and I have finally gotten serious about dieting and exercise. We have made it 1 whole week! I don't know what made us do it but the time was just right somehow. Anyway, we are doing the famous Susan Hinckley diet which is working out well for us because it is easy to track and Gary has lost 6 pounds! (I'm not going to tell you how much I lost because I might start crying again.) We aren't hungry even though we still want to eat all sorts of bad things. That is the hardest part because eating had become such a part of our evening routine. Of course weight loss is all about forming new habits and routines.

As for the exercise, we are doing the Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred video.Yes, it's true! Gary and I doing an exercise video! It is a good thing we can do it in the privacy of our own bedroom because it is pretty frightening to see. I have done 7 days and Gary has done 6. It is getting easier but I don't know that we will ever be ready to move to level 2. We are still grunting and groaning all the way through but we are doing it. I already have some arm muscles and Gary is feeling and sleeping better. I am not sleeping better but that's another story...anyway...I hope you will recognize us when you see us!

And now, a cheer...
We love shredding, yes we do!
We feel shredded, how about you?

Doing is Much Easier than Undoing

Last week I came to the conclusion that there are many things in life which are much easier to do than to undo. One such thing is wallpaper. I spent the week helping my best friend remove wallpaper from her kitchen and bathroom. When she put it up (17 years ago) it went on quite easily especially since she paid someone to do it and it hid the nail heads that were beginning to pop on the wallboard seams.

My Grandpa Clarence used to put up wallpaper as a young man. I remember him doing the paper in the music room at our home on Circle Way as a not-so-young man. It was fascinating to watch. It didn’t look too hard, maybe a little awkward maneuvering the long pieces and making sure they were straight but not particularly difficult.

Removing wallpaper is another thing altogether. While I do not share my sister’s view that wallpaper should be against the law or that people who put it up should be shot, I do agree that anyone who is considering putting up wallpaper should be required to spend a day removing it before they are allowed to put it up. It is a nightmare to remove.

We started in the bathroom. It was a vinyl coated paper and once started, the top layer came off quite neatly in complete sheets. The paper layer beneath it was fairly easy to remove with a diluted solution of DIF and a putty knife. For one thing, the paper layer was cream colored and the wall beneath was white so it was easy to see where the paper had not been removed. Once we finished the bathroom we were feeling pretty good about the prospects of completing most of the rest of the task. Then we moved to the kitchen…

The wallpaper in the kitchen was not vinyl coated and the paper layer under the top layer was white (the same color as the wall) and impossible to see. The top layer did not come off in nice sheets but was removed in pieces resembling carrots—some large carrots but a lot of baby carrots. There was great celebration when a piece the size of notebook paper came off but that was rare. It required a lot of scoring, steaming, soaking, and scraping much to the detriment of the wallboard beneath. She would probably have been better off just to put up new wallboard over the wallpaper since what is left will require so much repair work that is it hardly worth it. If you didn’t know better you would think that someone had committed a random act of vandalism in the kitchen. In fact, spray paint could only improve the look.

Fortunately she does not plan to do the repainting herself but will hire someone to repair our vandalism, paint it and make it look beautiful once again.

Here are a few other things that are much easier to do than to undo: marriages, childhood, bad habits (or any kind of habit for that matter), a dirty house, a cold or flu, and sewing. I guess the most obvious thing that belongs on the list is sin. That’s one that requires you to “hire” someone to repair it and make it look beautiful again.

Creative Jobs

In an effort to be more literate, I have been doing some reading. I just finished A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain. I had never read it and only seen the movie. There were several interesting things in it that made me think--the sure sign of good literature. Mark Twain, never one to be shy with his opinions, was vocal in his dislike of organized religion, the English feudal system, and monarchies to name a few things.

In talking about work he stated that those who do "creative" jobs (artists, musicians, architects, etc.) do not need to be paid because their payment is in the creating. Not that they shouldn't necessarily be paid but that they would do the job anyway without payment because of the enjoyment and need to create. I can see that in the lives of my siblings. Susan would create with or without payment and in fact, figuring out how to get paid is the worst part of the process and she would love to live without it if she could. Same goes for Steve. He could no more stop being involved in music than he could stop breathing, weather or not he was being paid. I guess that's the difference between true "artists" and those who like to dabble.

So, here's to the artists in my family and everywhere. Thanks for the beauty!

Attempted Social Interaction

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not really a social creature. I have a lot of Grandma Myrl in me. Dad always said that his mother loved her family fiercely and enjoyed spending time with them but as far as other people went, she could do with out them in general. That's pretty much how I behave. I don't know that I really feel that way but I certainly act that way. And it is not a good way to be. Not that I have anything against Grandma Myrl, but I have always longed to have friends and be just a little social. So, after attending Mom and Dad's family home evening group that they have with some empty-nesters in their ward once a month, I thought maybe we could try it in our ward.

Our ward is very young so there are not many empty-nesters. We sent out 10 invitations (that's all the active old people). Two of the couples that we hoped would come had conflicts and could not come. We heard back from two other couples and no one else. So, last night we had our first family home evening group with two couples in the ward. Both of these couples are significantly older than we are. One of the men graduated from East High in 1956, the year after I was born. The other couple was saying that their youngest child just turned 40. Neither of them like to come out after dark but fortunately it is summer so it was still light.

After about 10 minutes, one of the couples got a phone call and had to leave. Was that pre-arranged? (I'm only a little paranoid when it comes to social things.) So it was just the four of us. We had a short lesson that Gary and I each gave part of and some refreshments (of course, we made enough for 20 people). We chatted a bit and that was it.

I guess we will try again next month and see how it goes. If nothing else, it gives me a good reason to clean the house once a month!

It's All in the Genes

So my sister, Susan reminded me that my dad is very proficient at BH (previous post) but the difference with him is that he is so convincing that you absolutely believe what he is telling you is the truth. It has only been in my later adulthood that I began to suspect that it was really BH.

One certain way I knew that he was a great salesman (and pretty good at convincing people he knows about things that he in fact does not) was that he was made CFO of the company he worked for. I guess I can't say that he knows nothing about finances but he does more or less ignore finances and hope they go away. Fortunately, mom is very good at finances and enjoys doing it so it works out for them. While the CFO thing didn't last very long, it was quite impressive.

One of my favorite stories about dad and his BH happened when he was on a trip with my brother, Steve and his lifelong friend Kline. I should let Steve tell the story because he was there and is a much better story teller than I am and I don't really know the story all that well but... here goes. It was early in the morning and they were all laying in bed before getting up (or it could have been late at night before they went to sleep, I'm not sure) and dad started telling them about something unique and indigenous to the area and going on and on about it with all sorts of scientific names and after a few minutes Kline said "Meredith, you are so full of BH and someday I am going to be able to prove it"!

Someday maybe someone will prove it. That will be a sad day for all of us who have believed his BH for so many years.