I’ve joined The Stafford Challenge to write a poem every day starting tomorrow for the remainder of the year. It’s free, and it looks like a great way to connect and encourage other writers, according to their website. If you’re participating in the challenge, I hope to see you there! I’ll still be regularly participating in all the writing groups I have grown to love – and adding one more! I deeply appreciate all of the writing groups and those who share their ideas and slices of their lives with me.
Nightstand After
Heartfelt thanks to Two Writing Teachers for hosting the weekly Slice of Life , giving writers inspiration and space to share.
Fifteen years ago, after we’d just moved into the house we designed during dinnertimes on napkins while we dated, I scoured thrift shops for inexpensive furniture and was surprised to find a little end table in amazing condition for ten dollars. It had a lot of scratches on it, but I figured it would mostly be covered with books and other things, so I scooped it up for my reading room, to sit beside the chair with a lamp – to hold my To Be Read pile and my coffee.
As I looked at pieces of furniture needing a face lift at the beginning of 2024, this little table made the short list. I moved all of the things it was holding and dusted it off, getting it ready for a couple of coats of paint and a good polishing.
Table before the refinish, turned with the brass-handled drawer facing the bookshelves
I sanded the top to find a much lighter wood – pine, stained in a rich chestnut color originally. Since I sit in the reading room to watch birds and enjoy the southeasterly views of the farm, I decided on a Sparkling Sage (Valspar) chalk paint for the bottom of the table, keeping the color of grass and life close at hand. Once I discovered the wood was a lighter color, I resisted the urge to whitewash the top and instead keep the natural wood under a coat of clear satin water-based polyurethane. I also decided to do something I haven’t done before – I kept the original hardware and painted it, too.
Upcycled table iin the morning stream of sunlight
With a few touches of coordinating colors in decor accents, I’m pleased with the way it turned out. Now I’m ready for a new foot pouf to throw up my feet as I read and watch for birds to come to the feeders.
And I’ve already got my eye on the next project that I want to accomplish as I look to paint and re-create before the annual cycle of deep spring cleaning begins in March.
I’ve been cleaning out my sewing notions that I’ve collected over the years. When Mom died, I inherited many of her notions and her magical Bernina sewing machine. Mom sewed all the way through high school, making most of her formal gowns (and mine, later). She made us matching dresses when I was young enough to still think that was cool, on the before side of life for being able to appreciate those sweet memories. When I was nine or ten, I made my first pair of bright green Terry cloth shorts, crying in frustration at having to rip seams and all less than perfect stitches in between, and I’m certain that the thread spool that witnessed my fits is among these in the picture. I’m also fairly certain that my crying fits of sewing are the deciding factor that I’m a 1 on the enneagram and not a 3 or 5.
My goal today is to cut my supply of thread by at least half, keeping variations of the shades that I will use for rag quilting and mending and hemming clothes. As I look at this photo, one thing stands out to me that I may not have seen if I hadn’t organized by color. Mom wore bright pinks, reds, and bright blues – and to see this photo is to see her in all her handiwork right here on my kitchen counter. She’s urging me to take some lovely photos of the spools and then share the rest with others who sew so that others can squeeze more life out of items that would otherwise end up in a landfill.
On, now, to buttons, rick rack, and other notions. I’m thinking of converting our office into a sewing room……I much prefer being creative to paying bills and sorting paperwork that piles up and has nowhere to live.
As a Christmas present in 1985, my parents gave me an antique chest of drawers that has needed a facelift for at least two decades now. The date on the back is stamped 1926, and it is made of a dark hardwood. Some of the original knobs fell off, and one drawer needs to be repaired at the bottom. It’s a lovely piece, and the feet resemble the posts on my twin beds that I slept on as a child and that are now pushed together to form a King Size bed. Believe it or not, I still sleep in these beds today with my husband and our three schnoodles.
I couldn’t get rid of the beds. They came out of an old house on Sea Island Georgia, a smaller island off of St. Simons Island, where I lived as a child. The undersides are painted Haint Blue, a common practice on coastal islands in the southeastern United States, rooted in the belief that this color wards off evil spirits and ghosts. Sherwin Williams even has a paint color named Haint Blue. In addition to painting this color under beds, people also paint it onto porch ceilings as well.
Example of a Haint Blue porch ceiling (not mine)
I’ve had paint sample colors, paint stripping paste, and all sorts of brushes and tools ready to give some of our furniture a new life for six months now, and I’m finally getting around to the actual work. That Christmas gift from 1985 was at the top of my list, even though my grandmother’s kitchen table started the big avalanche of projects.
This week, I’ve watched about a half dozen YouTube videos and talked with my furniture flipping daughter on how to use chalk paint and all the variations and ideas for using it. I started simple – – with a can of Greige (a Behr paint color cross between grey and beige) and some new black knobs for the chest of drawers. I learned that a quick sanding is all that is needed, and that chalk paint dries in about 30 minutes, allowing a few coats and a complete project finish in an afternoon except for the wax wait time to cure. I used a small furniture roller and got to work.
Before:
Chest of drawers with trial replacement knobs attached
After:
Finished, waiting for wax to dry and cure (applied in a circular motion, which will show for a week or two) between buffings
I’m lining the drawers with contact paper to give it a fresher look, and moving on to my next project – – a small end table that I use in my reading room for my coffee by my reading chair.
I’ve chosen Sparkling Sage for the table and will finish the top with a white wash.
Here’s a great big Happy Birthday cheer for the love of my life. We share life, we share dreams, and we share challenges. I’m grateful that the good Lord sent him to be my husband. He’s a keeper, and I cherish him.
We recently visited my brother and father in South Georgia for Christmas, and when we arrived, Ken was outside blowing off the back porch. It looked like the leaves and debris were headed clear down to Florida, as powerful as this blower was.
My brother left shortly after we arrived for an appointment, and as soon as his car was out of the driveway, Briar picked up the blower and walked out along the path in the back yard to test it out.
Briar’s blower might be able to blow out one candle on a birthday cake on a full charge, but Ken’s blower could peel twelve layers of pine pollen off a porch screen. Both blowers are battery operated, giving full range of an area without a cord to trip over.
It was one of those moments when I paid attention when I needed to. Rarely do I get a gift as right as I felt this one would be. And I realized even more that I’d nailed it when I’d had to stop by Home Depot and Lowe’s the weekend before his birthday so I could get chalk paint and wood stain for our kitchen table. While I was looking for just the right color wood finish, he said, “I’m going to be in the tools for a minute. I want to see if they have that blower like your brother had.”
I did my best to give a quizzical look of confusion and vague memory.” Oh, yeah, that blue thing you were playing with out in the back yard?”
There was already one of those blue things in the back of my car under a blanket even as he looked around for it, so close that I’d had to jump ahead of him with the buggy to load our bags of paint and be sure he couldn’t see his birthday gift awaiting him.
Happy birthday to the man who likes everything clean and always helps make sure it stays that way!
My arms and legs don’t want to go to work today. The rest of me is dressed and ready, and my mindset is already thinking about the day ahead. My lower back will clock in at some point once I get moving, but my body is protesting Monday with tired, sore muscles after we refinished the kitchen table and a couple of chairs over the weekend. I can’t wait to share some before and after photos once the project is complete, but for today, I’m keeping my One Little Word front and center (pray) and my diopter word of the day is stand. I’m praying I can stand up and step out and struggle through the woes of an aging body trying to do what my younger body did without all the grief and agony the next day.
Why Old People Walk Bent
refinishing chairs
sanding, painting, staining slats
bending, straining backs
Photo by Mike Bird on Pexels.com – Photo for topic only – this is not my chair.
For Christmas, my grandchildren made me hand-stitched birds. The love that went into each stitch is precious and was a labor of love and patience for them and for their mother. They will adorn my new office space as soon as we get moved into our new building. These are far too lovely to hang only once a year on a tree. I need them where I am reminded daily of my blessings, for those times I get caught up in the work day and forget that there are so many reasons to smile and take things in stride. I love that their mother is already teaching them that the key to the fine art of gift giving is in the heart of the recipient – and that handmade gifts are the most special of all!
We have three schnoodles, all rescues, who came to us bruised and battered, scarred and scared.
We understood.
Going from abandonment, abuse, neglect, and betrayal to a shelter or foster home, to a forever home must be filled with all sorts of emotions and confusion – and I am a firm believer that dogs have emotions.
That’s why we forgave Boo for biting a couple of times at the start. Here was a dog who was shivering with fear in the back of a van in a wire kennel. He was matted and thin, dirty and smelly.
He almost wasn’t ours. We’d found dogs online twice that we’d come to adopt, and both times we’d completed paperwork only to find that when we arrived, our dog had “just been adopted” by someone else. Right out from under us.
Boo Radley a/k/a Einstein at the rescue - picture sent to us by the organization on his intake day
A dog they dubbed Einstein for his wild hair had just arrived in the parking lot on one such occasion, and was being held in a van until he could be processed. They could not put him out for adoption with the other dogs yet. I think the lady who’d promised us the cute female Maltipoo with some sweet little Hawaiian name truly felt bad that we’d driven an hour to adopt her only to find she had just left with another family, so she’d added, “But there is one other possibility. I can’t let him go today, but he’s just arrived. Want to take a look?”
We did.
We followed her to the parking lot, where she’d opened the van doors to reveal the most frightened dog we’d ever seen, visibly shaking and unsure of what was happening to him.
I stuck my head in and spoke softly to him, and he calmed down. I asked to hold him, and the woman reluctantly allowed it after explaining that the landlord of a nearby apartment complex had brought him by and begged her to take him. She told the woman that the dog’s owners had left two weeks earlier, that this dog had been abandoned in a duplex, and someone must have thought he would be found immediately. He wasn’t. They’d left food and water down, but it was all gone by the time the cleaning crew showed up to find a huge mess teeming with flies and one terrified dog.
Boo Radley the day we picked him up from the rescue
We adopted Einstein and named him Boo Radley. He had no reason to trust anyone anymore – if he ever had – and we had a lot of ground to gain with him. He snapped and bit at first, but with love and time, he has come to be a loving companion, despite his many lingering issues.
Boo Radley watching the driveway for his people to arrive home (he’s a full time inside dog who wants to wait outside for his family following his afternoon walk)
This is the dog who will cower to the laundry room and shake when anyone’s cell phone dings. Let it ring with music and he will howl at the moon.. He becomes agitated and obsessed with killing flies if he sees one buzzing around. If he smells the heat of a toaster, he will shake with fear and seek a lap. If the smoke alarm (or any timer or noise such as a clock) goes off, he goes into a tizzy. We think that somewhere along the way, he experienced a fire.
Boo Radley – ready to play keep away with his ball. Where other dogs fetch, Boo has trouble sharing his toys.
But this is the same dog who sits awake all night at our heads, guarding us as we sleep, then sleeps all day. This is the dog who sits at the head of the driveway and doesn’t want to come inside until both of us are home from work. He knows he has a family, and he knows his role is to protect and love us – as ours is to protect and love him. This is the same dog who knows he will never again be abandoned or abused or neglected. The same dog who now rests assured of his place in his forever family.
This is what rescue will do.
Boo Radley – sleeping like an owl in the early morning after guarding his people all night (don’t let him fool you: he’s a fierce working dog, not a mere lap dog).
Last week, I presented a family member with a box of verbs to encourage reflection, guidance, journaling, and meditation on positive words and the actions they inspire. She used these words written on miniature Jenga blocks to select her One Little Word for 2024, choosing the word trust because she says, “It’s something I truly want to be able to do.”
When I think of selecting a word of the year, it’s challenging to choose only one. As a lover of words and all their nuances, it makes it even more challenging to parse out synonyms and all their shades of meaning. It’s like having that big box of Crayola crayons and being asked to choose one favorite color – – – only harder.
I really have trouble with that. I love the bright yellow sunshine, the crystal blue water, the spring green grass, the scarlet red cardinals, and the orange embers burning in the fire pit, glimmering with the heat like embers do. I want all the colors, and I want all the words.
Most of all, I want the verbs.
Not just any verbs. I want verbs that inspire positive action in my life and lead me along healthy paths.
After considering a few hundred words for 2024, I’m staying with my 2023 word for another year.
Pray.
I can’t think of a better word fit for me for the coming year. To pray without ceasing is to carry this word each day, each hour. On my way in to work each morning, I turn off the radio and follow the ACTS model of prayer, first offering Admiration, then Confession, then Thanksgiving, and finally Supplication. Mostly, I give thanks for the miracles of blessings received. But I also give thanks for the miracles of things that didn’t happen that I may never realize I was spared.
My friend Glenda Funk is taking the word care as her word for 2024. An article in The Washington Post encouraged her to choose a nudge word – a word that nudges her to live the life she wants to live. She writes in her blog post, “Care is a word I expect to push me to live the life I want to live in the coming leap year.” Fellow Slice of Life writer Sally Donnelly has selected the word prioritize, because she wants to keep the mantra, “Should this be a priority?” in focus as she chooses her path and all of her options.
When I read about all the words my friends choose, it gives me such joy when they share the reasons they’re choosing them. What is your One Little Word for 2024, and how did you choose your word?
Common Threads 