Ottoman Hunting

So I have this chair.  It belonged to my grandmother, and in West Virginia it became Vista's favoured perch.  However, it now lives in the same room as her bed, so she doesn't use it much (also, I tend to pile clothes on it).  However, I would like to use it.  Specifically, I would like to read in it.  It can be tricky to find places in this house to settle in with a book, and I'm a needs-silence sort of reader.  I usually end up in bed, but lately that's been giving my back fits.  So, I would like to use my red velvet chair.  This, naturally, has led to a mad search for an ottoman.  How's a girl supposed to read with her feet on the ground?

Here are some options I've dug up.  I'm leaning towards the CB2 knit pouf, but man, that yellow Moroccan fellow is pretty great, too.  What do you think?

Sources:

Mustard Moroccan Leather Pouf - Furbish
knitted pool pouf  | CB2
Lind Ottomans - Room & Board
Handmade Kilim Puff Ottoman  | Overstock.com
Uzbeki Suzani Ottoman - Found Object

A Holy War

Last weekend, while I was raking leaves and leaping into them, the dogs were at loose ends.  Everyone was in the yard, but nobody wanted to play!  What kind of world were we living in, anyway?  Who do I talk to about this?  IF I HAD TWO THUMBS AND THE RIGHT TO VOTE I WOULD WRITE MY SENATOR ABOUT THIS.

And then they found the Holy Grail of Sticks.

The Battle of Stick raged for years, dragging on as bleak days became endless, cold nights.

Pax was called just twice, once when they dropped it in some leaves and briefly could not find it, and a second time because, well, even in wartime, butts need to be scratched.

Finally, at long last, a victor emerged:

And so began the process of reconstruction for this poor, war-torn land.

In Which I Rake Some Leaves

Fill ten bags, I was told.  That was my mission.  "Ha!" I thought to myself, "If you think I'm not going to attempt to make the largest pile of leaves I can, then I don't know what sort of child you think you raised."

I was scolded, as I attempted this.  "You're just creating more work for yourself!"  "This is a chore, Kelly, it isn't meant to be fun."  But this was nothing compared to the reaction to my decision to jump into one of the piles.  I was told that adults don't jump into leaf piles because we're heavier, and I was going to hit the ground and hit it HARD.

Did I?  Yes.  Did it hurt?  Hell yes.  Did it stop me from doing it a second time?  OF COURSE NOT.

Did the dogs attack me as soon as I hit the ground?  Duh.


In conclusion:

Duvet Devotions

There are two things I love, and love devotedly: stripes and bedlinen.  I searched long and hard for my current duvet, and it has served me well, but it's also gotten a bit beaten up.  This is a laughable statement if you've ever watched a movie on my couch while I cocooned under one of my raggedy comforters (one bought at age 2, one at age 18--somehow in equal states of comfiness and disrepair), and to you I say: Shut up, I want some more stripes, okay?  I love this West Elm duvet, in grey or blue (and where was the yellow two years ago while I was madly searching for one just like it?).  I'd probably have to paint my walls something warm and ochre-y to avoid making my window-filled bedroom feel arctic, but that's alright.  I love stripes more than I hate painting.

I'd pair it with some pretty, soft Toast sheets and snuggle in to hibernate the winter away.  Be quiet, you naysayer.  In my fantasy, none of my black-furred animals shed at all.

Door (Archway) of the Day

I LOVE this archway, in interior designer Robert Kristiansen's summer home outside of Oslo.  There's something about it that simultaneously welcoming and dramatic.

Bonus from the same home: this little alcove bed is in a hallway.  What a clever use of space!  Apparently beds like this are fairly common in Norwegian homes.  Ten points to Norway.

Aweigh!

MNKR was featured on Fab.com today, and I had 20 free dollars! from joining Fab that I'd completely forgotten about.  So, naturally, I bought the first nautical thing I spotted.  That is one bitchin' anchor necklace, y'all, and I am going to wear it like the sea-loving hippie I am.

I'm liking Fab, so far.  It's like a Gilt Groupe for people who shudder just looking at the word "gilt."

Further Shore

People, I just really like the ocean.

Words by Edward Sandford Martin, drawings by Henry McCarter.  From Century Magazine, August 1898.  Found at Golden Age!

Mo' Pets, Mo' Problems

One of the reasons I've been playing absentee from the internet lately is because every single one of our dogs has had health problems.  All of them.  All three.  Thing 1 injured her leg and had to be carried up and down stairs (Thing 1 weighs 45 lbs and has long, gangly legs).  Thing 2 required a million billion expensive vaccinations for things we never had to deal with in the mountains (no heart worm!  no parasites!  only fleas and ticks in July and August!), and the series of shots left her tired, achy, and nauseous.  Thing 3 had ear infections in BOTH ears which resulted in nerve damage and partial paralysis to the right side of her face (she can no long close that eye and has a perpetual head tilt), and during the treatment we stumbled across a heart murmur which, one very expensive trip to the pet cardiologist later, we learned would require agressive treatment.

His Highness the Cat just has hairballs.

But everyone is up and about again these days, though Summer remains a little tilted.  We spent all day raking leaves and playing with sticks in the yard, and I actually remembered to grab my camera!  Those will go up soon.

Comic by clever Canadian Ryan Pequin.

Anyplace

There's something about the repetitive motions of sweeping and wiping down countertops that makes me want to sing.  It's like I've created my own metronome, and my mouth automatically responds accordingly.  For whatever reason, this is the song that most often pops into my head while I'm at work.  It's one of my all-time favourites, even though it expresses a very un-Kelly sentiment.  I am more an "Anyplace With Four Walls, a Roof, My Dog, and 600 Books Is Home" sort of person.  But Audra sells it.

At the library, which I think of as my other job, I don't get music stuck in my head.  I do, however, converse with the books I'm interacting with.  In fact, I speak almost constantly while I'm there, murmuring book titles, names of authors, dewey decimal locations, and the like.  Today I had a long, under-the-breath argument with a stack of books which refused to stay where I put them.  I'm sure the library patrons love me.

I know the librarian loves me.  I can tell because she calls me Julia, which is far more beautiful than my given name.

Dream Car

Dream car update: this is still it.  (Source)

Let It Serve to Trample On

I don't know what it says about my mood that all I want to do lately is take walks and read poetry.  Autumn always tends to put me in a poetry mood.  Today's choice was Songs from the Portuguese.  Here, have some Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

What can I give back thee, O liberal
And princely giver, who hast brought the gold
And purple of their heart, unstained, untold,
And laid them on the outside of the wall
For such as I to take or leave withal,
In unexpected largesse? am I cold,
Ungrateful, that for these most manifold
High gifts, I render nothing back at all?
Not so; not cold, --but very poor instead.
Ask God who knows. For frequent tears have run
The colors from my life, and left so dead
And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done
To give the same as pillow to thy head.
Go farther! Let it serve to trample on.

The photo, by Zanthia, is unrelated except that I want to go to there.  Do you have a favourite poet you turn to when your heart feels sad?

Fessing Up

Hey, folks.  I decided that the way to really get back into blogging was to participate in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) and then discovered that I was frozen, completely stuck on thinking of things to post.  After chewing on it for a while, I've come to the conclusion that since everything happening in my life right now stems from a single event, I'm going to need to tell that story before I can move forward and think about anything else.  I hope you don't mind.

My plan, when I moved back home after my year in Americorps, was to find a job that paid enough to cover the cost of rent on an apartment in the district and day care for my crazy-ass dog.  That was it.  That was the plan.  If it also meant I could afford to finally upgrade from my 4-year-old brick of a phone and maybe get that Playstation 3 I've lusted over for years, then, well, I wasn't going to argue.  It took some months, but I found a job.  It wasn't necessarily what I saw myself doing when I was but a Kelly sapling, but it was with an exciting company and the benefits, oh, the benefits!!  Besides, it was very similar to a job I'd previously held.  Piece of cake.

By the second week, I'd developed anxiety attacks so bad that I required a trip to the ER and sedation.  Even taking anti-anxiety meds, just thinking about going in to work gave me the shakes so bad I had to quit.  And there I was, back to square one, broke, jobless, shaken to the core, and pissed.  Man, was I pissed.  It was a simple plan.  Get job--> make money --> move out--> find doggie day care--> live happily ever after.  Was that really so hard?  Apparently it was, for my feeble, feeble brain.

I've wrestled with depression my entire life (I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder at age 9), but anxiety on this level is something new.  I'm not used to my body turning against me in this way, and my reaction was to be incredibly angry with myself.  It kept me from being sad all the time, which was productive in a way, but it also kept me from actually going back to square one and trying to restart my simple plan.  Instead, I angrily spun my wheels and railed at the universe, frustrated with my own innate lack of motivation and with my doctor's repeated heavy hints that I should think about going back to school.

Hell with that.  I'm 26, which feels unutterably old these days, and no further in my life than I was at 21 (albeit with the addition of the aforementioned crazy-ass dog).  I want to move forward, not back.  And the last attempt at school, that didn't end so well, did it?  So instead of doing what everyone around me was urging me to do, I took a job at a family friend's deli working the lunch counter and started volunteering at my local library.  I highly recommend the library for battling anxiety.  There's something very soothing about sorting and scanning books.

And so, here I am.  Admittedly, there's nothing physically easy about working at job where you're on your feet for hours on end, everyday.  Most days I feel like someone has beaten me with a baseball bat (hauling books around isn't easy on the old knees and back, either, plus I've got this injured 50 lb dog who isn't supposed to use the stairs).  Yet, oddly, the cafe and library combination has done what I thought was impossible at times, and calmed the roiling sea in my head.  And, actually, helped me to start thinking about moving forward.  I'm even considering (gasp!) school.

This isn't a "happily ever after" by any stretch of the imagination.  It isn't even a "once upon a time."  Honestly, I'm not even sure we've cracked open the freaking book.  But there is a story to be lived and told, and I'm a small step closer to figuring that out.

And that's that.  I solemnly swear that the rest of my posts this month with be neither so long nor so self-involved.  Thank God.

Love,

Me

ps: Unlike some who find inspiration in sadness and hardship, it turns me into an uncreative lump.  I haven't touched my camera in months.  Thanks to my brother for letting me use this lovely, lovely photo he took on a recent trip to Deep Creek, Maryland.