Butterfly Mind

Category: At home

Summer with Windows open

July 2nd, 2016

It’s Saturday morning, 7:30. Early for a weekend day. I’ve already been to the grocery store and started laundry. My husband and daughter are en route to a swim meet, our near-teenaged son is still sleeping, and the kitties are lying in sunbeams, shedding fur in clumps now that summer is here.

I’m sitting in the lounge chair by our front windows, green smoothie on the sill, my bare feet up on the chaise cushion. Birds trill, insects buzz, and Bob Marley croons softly from the record my husband left spinning for me.

The early summer air is cool and fresh. It smells like green leaves, hay, and sunshine. Sunlight stretches across the garden. The butterfly plants — red, orange, white, and purple coneflowers — are already in full sun; the herb garden is in the shade of our neighbor’s dogwood. The morning shadows are long, but they’ll soon shorten.

In the time it took me to type the previous paragraph, the sun rose enough to drench the basil in light. Happily, our basil is thriving. We’ve already made two batches of homemade pesto this summer, and I bought pine nuts today so we can make more. We started in with the basil gin smashes last night as well, and I use the basil in a basic chick pea salad that’s been my staple lunch this week (chicks peas, lemon juice, olive oil, basil, salt). We will still have basil to spare, though. If you have favorite basil uses, please send them my way.

Summer Saturday mornings are lovely. Especially when enjoyed sitting by an open window with a soundtrack of reggae and birdsong. The day stretches before me. It will probably be filled cutting grass, pulling weeds, work I need to catch up on, laundry, heat and strong sun. Maybe a trip to the nursery to find some annuals to fill gaps in the garden.

But for now, it’s soft and cool, nothing but leisure time for me to practice writing blog posts on my phone.*

*More to come.
Paint chips

April 11th, 2016

Image courtesy of HomeSpot HQ.

I lay in bed this morning looking at our bedroom’s freshly painted walls. I studied the color, trying to find accurate words to describe it in my mind.

Cream.

That’s not accurate. Cream — dairy cream in real life — is more white. This is closer to vanilla ice cream, but still darker. Richer. It’s the color of French vanilla ice cream. It’s a rich cream.

And then I realized that’s the name on the paint chip: Rich Cream.

I have great admiration for the vocabulary of whoever names paint colors. Think of the scope of words you’d need to know. Most colors are named for something concrete: an object, a noun. For example, my office color is Lime Mousse. Our son’s room, a terra cotta color, is Oxide. Like rust.

I often want to paint a room a certain color simply because I like the feeling the name evokes. Our original pick for our room was Kansas Grain, which I loved the thought of sleeping in. Warm, light, golden. But the color wasn’t right for the space. It was too peachy. Now we sleep in Rich Cream, a bowl of silky vanilla ice cream, which isn’t a bad evocation either.

I suppose that’s another element of naming colors, which makes me appreciate the skill even more: the names evoke pleasant feelings. Our daughter’s room is Jamaica Aqua; our front door is Florida Aqua. Two colors, two names, that take me to warm, islandy, happy places.

I’m not the best at home improvement projects. I scowl and snap when I paint or try to execute upgrades at home. But I do love browsing paint chips. Frosted Emerald; Waterfall; Roman column; Wood Violet.

I love the sensory experience of seeing all those colors and exploring temperatures, tastes, textures, and smells the names evoke. I’d be terrible at naming — too many options! so much specificity! — but I delight in the work that paint-namers do.

For the month of April, I will publish a 10-minute free write each day, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Trying to get back into the writing habit.
We didn’t play it safe

March 7th, 2016

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I were contemplating painting our living room an unusual color. We stressed — do we go safe or do we go bold?

We decided to go bold. We painted the room a dark dark grey — almost a charcoal. A few nights later, the pizza delivery guy squinted into the room and asked, “Are your walls black?”

“No, they’re grey,” I said. I looked inside. I love our walls.

His eyes got wide and he smiled. “Cool,” he said.

Yeah, I think so too 🙂

https://me.sh/x3huv49/3l5-q7g
We might not play it safe

February 12th, 2016

We’re thinking of doing something bold. It’s been a long time since we’ve owned a house that we can do whatever we want with. A couple weeks ago, I painted the kids’ trim to finally check their rooms off the Finished list. Last weekend, my husband painted our living room ceiling.

Now, we get to paint the walls.

We originally thought we would go with a sand color, to evoke the feeling we get from the Gulf of Mexico and the ocean. We have seaglass colored lamps and are playing with textures and shapes in our furnishings: a rich cream shag rug, a curved white chair, a blocky sofa and chaise lounge with square edges and linen textured fabric. We wanted the walls to add another layer of depth, but when we painted patches of the sample, we thought, Blah. Boring.

The color blended with the furniture, and it did not show off the beautiful floors that are our favorite part of the house. Nothing popped.

So we pulled out the paint chips again, this time holding them against the warm oak floor; wondering which would best punch up the shapes and textures of furniture; thinking about the deep yellow, green, and blue of the painting we bought a couple years ago; and most importantly, asking what will be interesting?

My husband pointed to a dark grey paint chip. “I like that one,” he said.

This color is not a cloudy sky grey, or a silver grey. This is an almost-black grey.

“That’s really dark,” I said.

I looked at it again on the floor. “It would look amazing against this wood,” I said.

“I don’t know, maybe this one’s a little safer.” I pointed at a lighter grey — more of a pewter. I held it up to the walls, the furniture, the floors. It was definitely safe.

It was definitely boring.

Today I’m taking a flex day. I work tomorrow (Saturday), so I’m taking today off to write, read with a kitty on my lap, have lunch with my husband, and go to the paint store. I’m going to get a sample of the dark dark grey. It’s a bold move. Kind of scary. Definitely not safe.

It is the one option that I’m excited about. I can’t wait to see how it looks.
2016 Resolutions: Create Balance

January 9th, 2016

2015 was an exciting year: we bought a house, got kittens, and I helped organize a mini-conference for our company’s annual meeting. My only resolution in 2015 was to dedicate ten minutes per day to writing, and that resolution ultimately provided an opportunity for me to speak at WordCamp US.

I noticed, though, that by the end of 2015 my focus shifted so much towards work that I barely left my home office — some days I never even went outside — and I had little energy for relaxation or projects at home.

I love my job, and I also love the outside world, my home, and my family. This year I want to be mindful of balance in my life. Working too hard can lead to burnout, and it can also exhaust you so that you don’t have energy for your non-work life. I don’t want those things to happen. I don’t want to burn out on a job I love, and I don’t want to neglect my love of the outdoors, our home, or my family.

For 2016, I’ve made a list of a few simple things to do to help me create balance:

Work outside of my home twice per month
I work for an amazing company where I am able to work from anywhere I want: my home, coffee shops, RV parks, wherever. I’ve worked there for over a year and never once worked outside of my home. Until yesterday. I worked from a coffee shop for a few hours yesterday, and I loved it. I was among people and the clatter of coffee shop sounds, I was not dressed in pajamas or workout clothes, and I didn’t have to make my own coffee. I’m looking forward to doing this more.

Build plant, animal, and home care into my daily routine
We bought these awesome flower boxes back in Septemeber, and within a few weeks, all of our beautiful pansies had withered and died. None of us were in the habit of watering plants. My work schedule is flexible — I don’t have to work any specific hours, and I can make up my own schedule — so I’m slotting in one hour per day that is dedicated to tending plants, animals, and other home care. By building it into my day, I will help build a habit.

Work on one home project per weekend
I had a lot of momentum when we first bought our house. I was a painting machine. I burned myself out, though, doing too much too fast and never taking a break. As a result, I stopped working on the house. We’ve got a million projects we’d like to do, though, and we have big ideas for our home. I don’t want to kill myself and never have time to relax, so I’m not going to work all weekend every weekend on house projects. I am, however, going to make sure I dedicate some time each weekend to making progress on our projects.

Hike twice per month
We live in the Appalachians. The hiking around here is ridiculously beautiful, and ridiculously accessible. It’s shameful how little hiking we did last year. This year I’m changing that.

Read through Massachusetts on my reading project
I am reading 3 books from each state in the United States for my Andrea Reads America project. 2015 was a year for writing, and 2016 will be a year for reading. I’m reading the states in alphabetical order and am currently reading Indiana. Completing Indiana through Massachussetts (8 states) would give me about 6 weeks to research, read, and write up each state’s three books. I’d also love to give my Andrea Reads America blog a makeover, but I don’t want to go too crazy here.

So there it is. I’ve transferred my scribbled resolutions from my private Moleskine to my public blog. That means I have to do them now, right? I’ve got a calendar for recording my hikes and coffee-shop work-days, I’ve got a time tracker to make sure I build in plant and home project time, and I’m reading Indiana. I’m ready for 2016.
Spare parts

November 18th, 2015

I wish my brain had spare parts, like a memory card I could insert to remember all of the thousands of things I seem to forget: the names of kids’ friends’ parents, that awesome gift idea I had for our son, whether I left the stove on.

It would be nice to have spare arms, too. So I could do more things at once. Although I guess those wouldn’t be spare arms: they’d be extra arms.

I’m not sure how many things in my daily life require spare parts. I do have multiple keyboards and headsets for work, and we keep a massive supply of AA batteries on hand at all times. I have one spare ink cartridge for my pen. We have a couple spare chargers for electronics. Other than those things, I don’t keep a lot of spares around. I’m sure my husband could name a dozen spare parts I’m not aware of.

Or maybe not. We’ve done a lot of work to streamline our lives. We don’t keep a lot of extra anything around. We own one car instead of two, we throw items away when we no longer need them: our old tea kettle, the kids’ outgrown clothes, trinkets we’re tired of dusting.

Clutter is enemy number one in our household, including in the garage, where spare parts would tend to accumulate. I’m not as good about throwing things out as my husband. He’ll throw anything away. I used to resist. I clung to stuff for sentimental reasons, and still do. But when I see how much lower maintenance our lives become the fewer possessions we own, the more on board I can get with tossing things with abandon.

Thanks to Geoffrey for the prompt “Spare parts.”

For the month of November, I will be participating in NaBloPoMo and plan to publish every day of the month. Usually, I will publish a 10-minute free write, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Follow along with the tag #NovemberDaily.

Category: At home

Summer with Windows open

Paint chips

We didn’t play it safe

We might not play it safe

2016 Resolutions: Create Balance

Spare parts