Random and Simple? Raise Your Hand
The delightful Christianne of Lilies Have Dreams has tagged me with a meme. This one has two main features that are all me.
1) Simple.
2) Random.
Maybe I ought to just type my name six times.
Simple Random #1
I enjoy shopping at flea markets, antique shops, garage sales, thrift stores, and estate sales. Yeah I love a bargain, but more than that I love the human interest stories there. It's fascinating to imagine the people, places, circumstances, and lifestyles surrounding all the simple and random items spread out on the tables or hanging on the racks. I'd much rather have an eclectic house and wardrobe and know that someone else had a life in this chair, this skirt, with this pitcher. I'm a small part of a big story. (Watch The Red Violin, btw.)
Simple Random #2
An ideal day for me is sitting bare-headed in the sun in my lawn chair with my bare feet in a cushion of grass. Watching the birds build nests, listening to the bees buzz by and my children laugh and call to each other from the other side of the yard. I'd have a book with me, but I would not be reading it. I'd simply be soaking in the elements.
Simple Random #3
Hubby and I have our queen-size mattress on a king-size bed frame. (Free bed frame in awesome condition... human interest story... see Simple Random #1) The Engineer and Lover-of-All-Things-at-Right-Angles would really like to replace our queen mattress with a king so things fit in a neat and orderly fashion, but I LOVE it! The extra gap on either side of the mattress makes a great "extendo-bedside table" where I can keep all the books I'm reading that don't fit on the teetering stack inhabiting my real bedside table.
Also on the "extendo": an embroidery project, sketch pencils, a homeschool planner, my laptop and a doodling journal. Occasionally a plate of cheese and crackers.
Simple Random #4
I love asparagus.
Simple Random #5
In elementary school, I entertained the notion of becoming an Olympic platform diver. In an alternate reality, you might be rooting me on in Beijing this summer.
Simple Random #6
If given the choice, I would grow nothing but flowers in my garden.
For some reason, I feel slightly guilty that I don't care much about tending fruits and vegetables. Is it the pragmatist in me chastising that the world can't eat flowers and therefore I'm not contributing to the betterment of humanity? Did I have some kind of scarring experience in a veggie garden as a child? Am I worried I'm being anti-Proverbs 31 Woman and robbing my family of a nutritious meal in favor of "pretties"?
I don't know where this odd and minor guilt comes from. You don't care what I grow in my garden, but the guilt tinge is there nonetheless. It hovers around me at the garden center when I gleefully go straight to the hydrangeas, hibiscus and hollyhocks.
Eventually I heave a big sigh, get responsible, and go to peruse the things that grown-ups plant. Tomatoes and peppers. Green beans and potatoes.
sigh.
(I do have some veggies growing this year. So there.)
And in simple, random fashion... The End.
1) Simple.
2) Random.
Maybe I ought to just type my name six times.
Simple Random #1
I enjoy shopping at flea markets, antique shops, garage sales, thrift stores, and estate sales. Yeah I love a bargain, but more than that I love the human interest stories there. It's fascinating to imagine the people, places, circumstances, and lifestyles surrounding all the simple and random items spread out on the tables or hanging on the racks. I'd much rather have an eclectic house and wardrobe and know that someone else had a life in this chair, this skirt, with this pitcher. I'm a small part of a big story. (Watch The Red Violin, btw.)
Simple Random #2
An ideal day for me is sitting bare-headed in the sun in my lawn chair with my bare feet in a cushion of grass. Watching the birds build nests, listening to the bees buzz by and my children laugh and call to each other from the other side of the yard. I'd have a book with me, but I would not be reading it. I'd simply be soaking in the elements.
Simple Random #3
Hubby and I have our queen-size mattress on a king-size bed frame. (Free bed frame in awesome condition... human interest story... see Simple Random #1) The Engineer and Lover-of-All-Things-at-Right-Angles would really like to replace our queen mattress with a king so things fit in a neat and orderly fashion, but I LOVE it! The extra gap on either side of the mattress makes a great "extendo-bedside table" where I can keep all the books I'm reading that don't fit on the teetering stack inhabiting my real bedside table.
Also on the "extendo": an embroidery project, sketch pencils, a homeschool planner, my laptop and a doodling journal. Occasionally a plate of cheese and crackers.
Simple Random #4
I love asparagus.
Simple Random #5
In elementary school, I entertained the notion of becoming an Olympic platform diver. In an alternate reality, you might be rooting me on in Beijing this summer.
Simple Random #6
If given the choice, I would grow nothing but flowers in my garden.
For some reason, I feel slightly guilty that I don't care much about tending fruits and vegetables. Is it the pragmatist in me chastising that the world can't eat flowers and therefore I'm not contributing to the betterment of humanity? Did I have some kind of scarring experience in a veggie garden as a child? Am I worried I'm being anti-Proverbs 31 Woman and robbing my family of a nutritious meal in favor of "pretties"?
I don't know where this odd and minor guilt comes from. You don't care what I grow in my garden, but the guilt tinge is there nonetheless. It hovers around me at the garden center when I gleefully go straight to the hydrangeas, hibiscus and hollyhocks.
Eventually I heave a big sigh, get responsible, and go to peruse the things that grown-ups plant. Tomatoes and peppers. Green beans and potatoes.
sigh.
(I do have some veggies growing this year. So there.)
And in simple, random fashion... The End.
paper lantern of the day Monday, May 19, 2008
7 Comments:
awwww . . . i love that you prefer the flowers to the veggies. hibiscus and hydrangeas are more my style, too.
that extendo bed is really interesting! sounds like you get a lot of extra space that way, given how much you can cram on there, INCLUDING your laptop. wow.
i liked learning all the places you prefer to shop. great secondhand finds are so fun. the first time i lived on my own, i had a great time finding all kinds of shabby chic secondhand furniture at the consignment shops and antique shops around the corner from my little place. cute drop-leaf dining table with whitewashed paint for $25? i'll take it! :)
I love The Red Violin. Great flick.
Before I got married, my house was stocked with handy-me-downs from generations of my family, old chairs from my parents' friends. When I got married, I adopted my husband's furnished home. Everything matches. Sometimes I miss having a chair that you have to put a blanket over to keep the stuffing in.
Delightful.
Now, you know that you can eat flowers, right? Brilliant bee balm and pansies sprinkled in salad. Forsythia in your omelettes. And so on. (How about a book on edible flowers, for the extendo pile? : )
Christianne,
I sometimes even find a smallish child snoozing on that shelf of my extendo-bed frame. :) As much as I try to not have the family-bed scenario, we always seem to wake up in the morning with some little human hovering there in the gap.
I don't mind though, 'cause they're so dern snuggly.
Heather,
My entire living room is furnished with free furniture. Strangely enough, it all almost matches too. God even provides for a coordinated living room in the freewaves.
Your image of the blanketed chair oozing its stuffing is great.
L.L.,
As soon as I typed that, I thought to myself, "I sure hope Laura swings by to educate me on the edible flowers in my yard." Forsythia, check. Bee balm, check. Dandelions, check.
Whew! my family can eat tonight.
A couple of things -
I am jealous of your "extendo" and your vegetable garden
Daylilies are edible too.
Erin, this TAG was perfect for you because you, dear sister, epitomize the wonders of being simple and random. Not because you are the simplest or the most random, but because you have an ability to take random and simple and from it create (yeah, I said it) beauty.
As I understand it, isn't that the essence of poetry? Hmmmmm :-)
Perhaps you ARE the poet I always thought.
Erin, that's funny. I hope you enjoyed your flower salad. ;-)
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