Home is where aliens hang their beads.

I've been waxing philosophical lately and felt sure you're dying to hear all about it.

I posted this picture on my FB wall a while back showing how my husband hung the random strand of green Mardi Gras in our new house. They used to hang from one of the ceiling beams in our old house...for no reason at all.



One friend made a joke about how I should just hang beads on all the banister rails. So I did. And another friend said "home is where you hang your beads". Little did she know that I've been mulling over that concept for quite some time now. Not the concept about hanging your beads but the concept of home.





Where is home? And what is it? What do people say about home? My extensive research (5 minutes on Google) shows these results:

• Home is where the heart is.
• Home is where you hang your hat.
• You can never go home again.
• Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
• A man's home is his castle.

And now we can add to that, "Home is where you hang your beads". I am going to carve that on a plaque and hang it in my foyer, giving full credit to its wise author.

So this whole "home" concept has been on my mind lately probably because we just relocated to Houston. I was born in Wichita Falls, Texas and lived there for the first 36 years of my life. That was home and I thought it always would be. Then my husband found out that if he wanted to keep his job he would have to relocate to Lafayette, Louisiana. My first thought was, "It could be worse. It could be Oklahoma." So I did my adaptable wife thing as we moved to Lafayette and spent the next 9 years in the Bayou.

It was during our time in Lafayette (which I loved and miss terribly) that I began to get confused about "home". Whenever I would talk about visiting my family back in Wichita Falls, I would refer to it as home. As in, "We're going home for Christmas this year."

But while we were in Wichita Falls, we would talk about going back home to Lafayette. For example, "It's been great but we have to get back home now." (Because you people are going insane and we don't want you to take us with you. Bless your hearts.)

So which one is home? I came to the brilliant (in my opinion) conclusion that for me, home is wherever I'm not. Home is the place I'm always going to but I never actually get there.

That might sound sort of sad but it's really not. I'm not wandering around feeling homeless and constantly in search of where I belong, and I'm certainly not trying to "find myself". There's just too much 'self' in all that. I view it along the lines as the saying that life is a journey, not a destination. Who said that? Ah, Google tells me it was Ralph Waldo Emerson. I'm too lazy to read the context of the quote but I'm sure it was brilliantly thought provoking or even borderline life changing. Or whatever.

I was talking to a friend a while back about how I always have this feeling that I don't belong. It doesn't matter where I am, there's always this slightly uncomfortable 'you don't belong here' feeling underneath everything else. If I ever dwelt on it I'm sure I could work myself into a full blown middle school panic attack and never leave my house again. But I don't dwell on it simply because I really don't have the attention span to dwell on much of anything.

Anyway, while talking to this friend I told her that I thought maybe it's because we (meaning Jesus loving people like us) really don't belong on this earth. We were created for an eternal life that we will someday have and our time here on earth helps to prepare us for that. Somehow. It's not always clear but I have lots of faith that God knows what He's doing. So maybe my niggling sense of not belonging and of feeling like I'm never really at home is just God's way of reminding me not to get too comfortable with my life on this earth because it's just a temporary layover on that journey that Ralph talked about. My real life, my destination, is yet to come.

As I was explaining all these philosophies to my Jesus loving friend, she nodded if not in agreement then at least in understanding. When I finished she said, "Or maybe you're an alien. Out of all my friends, you would definitely be the one most likely to be an alien."

I think I cracked up and blew coffee out of my nose then I thanked her because that was just the best compliment EVER!

How to Pick a New Church: Start in The Ladies Room

We test drove a new church today: Cypress Bible Church. We chose to try this one first since it meets our criteria of being a bible church and it's half a mile from our house. Google Maps says we could walk there in 10 minutes. We would never do that but it's nice to have that useless option.

We haven't had to look for a new church in over 8 years and that hasn't been nearly long enough. I rank the whole process right up there with looking for a new OB/GYN. Or worse...a new hairstylist.

Overall, we liked the church just fine. It was our first visit so we'll need to go back a few times to get a feel for the place but in general, I can't complain.

Are you cracking up? Well you should be because I can ALWAYS complain, even if there's nothing to complain about. I really don't consider myself a complainer although I have been called a nitpicker a few times. I prefer to think of myself as hyperobservant, that's all. I'm just tellin' it like I see it.

I did try not to compare this church to Trinity but then decided that was an impossible goal. I think it's okay to compare as long as I don't use Trinity as a standard of measurement. Different can be good.

Traffic was horrible so it took us 3 whole minutes to get to the church instead of 2. What a nightmare. Plus we had to drag ourselves out of bed at the crack of 10 a.m. to get there for the 11:00 service. Their signage was good, we easily found the visitor's parking spots right up front. There was a pleasant tree lined walkway to the entrance where "Rhett" greeted us and handed us a bulletin. We gave everyone we saw the name of their Trinity counterparts for our own entertainment.

As soon as we walked in, I made a bee line for the Welcome Center while Jayson and Taylor went into the auditorium (or sanctuary or whatever they call it) to get us some good seats. This church is probably 4 times bigger than Trinity but still not freakishly huge. Jayson didn't want to call attention to us as visitors in case they did some kind of freaky embarrassing visitor ritual before the service. I didn't much care as long as the welcome gift was good.

I bellied up to the Welcome Center, slammed my hand down on the counter and said, "I'm visiting. What do you have for me?" With a church this size I was expecting their welcome gifts to be something awesome like an iPad. Instead I got 2 brochures. Can you believe it?! NO welcome gift! Okay, there's strike one but "Lou" at the Welcome Center was really nice and explained the brochures and showed me where to go to get information on their other ministries.

I took my two stinkin' brochures (one of them was on a cheesy 20# bond plain copy paper and I nearly gagged) and went to the little alcoves where the various ministries have information available. I hit the women's alcove first and, naturally, it was stuffed full of pictures, events, upcoming bible studies, crafts, Beth Moore and all kinds of girlie goodness. I grabbed one of everything.

Then I crossed the hall to the men's minstry alcove and it was completely empty except for a little decorative border across the top that was falling down. I am not kidding. There was absolutely nothing available for the spiritual leaders of our households. That's about par.

Next to that was the missions alcove which was sparse but not completely bare. There was a rack of pictures of what I assume are each of the missionaries the church supports. There was a flier with information about how you can support their global missionaries or something like that but I didn't pick it up because it just had a whole lot of words on it and no pictures.

There was a table in the foyer with at least 30 coffee pump pots on it. I didn't investigate since I was already wired enough but next week I will judge try their coffee. I went into the auditorium and found Jayson and Taylor firmly planted in the very last row right next to the sound booth. Okay, that just screams "I'M A VISITOR!" Plus it was distracting for me since I was preoccupied with their sound equipment and was dying to know which OS and presentation software they were using. By the end of the service I had decided they were running Media Shout on a PC. Next week I will have to come up with some subtle way to find out if I was right.

The auditorium and really the whole church in general is a little too churchy for my taste but not extremely so. They get a penalty for excessive use of crosses but kudos for the background graphics they used during worship. The auditorium had pews (yuck) but at least they weren't covered in red velvet. And the aisles were carpeted but the area under the pews was painted concrete so you could spill your coffee in there all day long and no one would have a cow. I loved that idea, although stained concrete would have been a wiser choice but that's just me. On the down side, when you're in the aisle and turn to step into your pew, there is a little step down where the concrete and the carpet meet. I tripped on it getting into the pew, made a mental note to remember it when the service was over, then tripped on it again getting out of the pew.

Worship was okay but nothing special. They did say that their "Joel" had the day off so the stand-in was leading and maybe that's why it felt a little...off. There was nothing wrong with it, just a little too rehearsed and K-LOVEish. I did notice that their stand-in "Joel" as well as half of the worship team was bald and I figured this must be an industry standard. Or a hazard of the industry? Hhmm.

Their "Dennis" was bald too and not nearly as gifted a teacher as the real Dennis. Still, I didn't fall asleep so that's a good sign. But he did have that strange Houston accent that I've decided is some kind of a hybrid mix of the nasally North, the nonexistent California, and that South Texas accent that overcompensates so it won't be mistaken for Mexican. It's strange that I've never noticed it before and it will require further investigation.

I had a feeling the church was more believer oriented rather than seeker oriented and that was pretty much confirmed when their "Dennis" used the word pentateuch twice during the service and there was no slide presentation to explain the word. In fact, there was no slide presentation at all during the service. I actually liked that. The sermon notes were on a separate sheet folded inside the bulletin and it was basically an outline of the sermon. Then on the back side there were extra verses with daily devotionals for the week that small groups could use. It looked to me like the small group curriculum was sermon based with their weekly discussion notes available for download from the website. They scored another point for that.

The service started promptly at 11 and ended promptly at 12. It was the shortest church service I've attended in a long time. We'll go back next week for another look. Jayson liked it, it was casual and comfy and not too pretentious. Taylor said it smelled good and she was right. The whole building had a pleasant floral smell to it, like it just got out of the shower. I'll have to see if they can make good coffee, because that's important for my spiritual journey, and I'll have to visit the ladies room. You can tell a lot about a church from their bathrooms. Or rather from the conversations you hear while you're in the bathroom. Girls talk, I'm just sayin'.

Progress on Our Urban Shabby Cottage Modern Vintage Chic House

I'm making progress with the unpacking and putting away thing, but it's taking a lot longer than I thought it would. I'm going to blame the movers for this since it certainly can't be my fault. They did a very thorough job of wrapping and packing all our stuff, but in some cases I think they went a little overboard. Taylor's flip flops were individually wrapped. My little dry line white out thing from the desk drawer was individually wrapped in two layers of paper. Okay, seriously? I can only guess that they've had previous bad experiences with people complaining about broken flip flops and white out. I appreciate the care they used with our belongings but it sure does make the unpacking process quite tedious.

Here area  few pictures of some of the stuff I've put away. I just can't imagine who would be interested in seeing the inside of my kitchen cabinets but evidently some people are because I get the most bizarre emails from them. I'm not sure if I should be flattered or frightened.

This makes me happy.

I love this pull out bin thing under the kitchen sink. The chrome one that matches all the other pull outs I got was just too expensive but I'm happy with this.

I may go back today and get one more of these lid older things. This one is great for my cookie sheets but I'm not happy with my lids.

I put a pull out thing in all of my lower cabinets because I'm too old to squat and dig.

Plastic stuff and small gadgets.

My spice cabinet with the handy dandy pull down rack.

My appliances. My big honkin' vintage KitchenAid Hobart mixer gets to live on the counter now which makes me happy since it weighs 30 pounds and is hard for me to lift since I don't weigh much more than that. Ahem.

The broom closet. I left a space on the right side for some kind of little shelves that I haven't found yet. When I do find them they will hold stuff for the dog like treats, shampoo, medicine, chew toys, etc.

This is the shelf over the washer & dryer with little baskets I got at the 99 Cent Store. I do have things to put in those empty bins, I just haven't unpacked them yet.

Snappy is watching me blog. She can see in the window just fine from the ground but she gets a better view if she stands on the table. Guess I should move it.

The pantry still needs a little work but I like that I found a place to put my recycled bottles and jars on the top shelf. I put a piece of scrap wood under them. See that little ledge on the wall above the bottles? There's still lots of room above that...wasted space. I've asked Jayson to make me a narrow shelf to put on that ledge for my taller bottles so I can use that dead space.

Lest you think I'm hoarding empty bottles & jars for no good reason, here are a few examples of what I do with them. My EVOO is in a bottle that had some kind of peach tea in it at one time. I see I forgot to make a label for it. My cornstarch is in a little jar that I bought and used when I made satsuma marmalade a few years ago. The vinegar bottle used to have apple cider vinegar in it so when that was gone I peeled off the label and put a cork stopper in it and now my regular white vinegar lives there. Yeah, I hoard corks in all different sizes but as you can see that can be a good thing.

I've had these canisters for a hundred years and this is the first time they've actually matched my kitchen.

This linen closet is way smaller than our previous one so getting everything in there was tricky. Thank God for Space Bags. Plus I have an unfinished blanket chest in the garage that will help with this whenever I get around to fixing it up.

This makes me happy too. Those little bins were on sale at The Container Store and I spent over an hour measuring and reconfiguring the arrangement before I ordered them so that they would fit just right. I don't know what to put in that little empty square bin but I'm glad it's there.

I'm not excited about this drawer. It's smaller than the silverware drawer and the bins didn't come in the sizes I really needed so I had to make do. It's okay for now but I hate that the can opener is in the same bin with the knives. That's just not right.

I miss the bayou.

Gang Green and Death by Flying Flip Flop

Last night as I was unpacking the boxes for the linen closet, our dog Snappy quietly snuck up behind me, curled up in the sheets and fell asleep. My spell check thing underlined snuck so I looked it up and it is now generally accepted as the past tense or past participle for sneak, thank you very much Merriam-Webster. I just wanted you to know that I'm not an uneducated moron. I'm an educated one.

Anyway, when I called to Snappy to get her off the sheets she looked up at me for a second then she squeezed her eyes shut really tight so I would think she was asleep. She looked so dang cute all curled up snoozing and she knows that we generally leave her alone when she's sleeping so she'll fake it to keep from having to move from her comfy spot. She got me thinking about our pets and their odd behaviors.

Snappy was a stray dog when she adopted us about 10 years ago. She's a mix of breeds but we're not sure which ones. We know one is definitely Rottweiler and I think the other might be some kind of husky. She has webbed toes, confinement issues, and she rarely barks, just like a husky. But she's scary smart which is NOT husky at all. As far as my landlord is concerned, she is a 4 pound toothless Chihuahua.

Taylor was about 10 years old and was out riding her bicycle in the neighborhood when Snappy followed her home...with a little coaxing I'm sure. We tried for several weeks to find her owners but no one claimed her so we took her in. Once she joined the family I told Taylor she should think of a name for the dog since she would be part of the family. Taylor said, "Her name is Snappy." I asked Taylor if that was a name that someone else gave her and she said no. I asked her why she chose that name and she said, "I didn't choose it, that's her name," as if the dog told her what her name was. That was just too creepy to argue with, Snappy sounded good to me.

It took several months for Pongo, our Dalmatian named by Taylor when she was 2, to agree to let Snappy live but he finally gave up on tying to kill her and they both begrudgingly tolerated each other. Unfortunately Pongo's alpha dog status didn't last long once Snappy discovered his Achilles heel. Dalmatians are prone to hearing problems but Pongo never lost his hearing. He did suffer from chronic ear infections for the 5 years we lived in a house with a swimming pool. He was already prone to ear infections but we couldn't keep him out of the pool which kept his ears wet all the time and made it worse. Sometimes they would get so bad that they were painful to the touch and once Snappy discovered this she used it. Oh boy did she use it. If Pongo tried to assert himself or got in her way, she'd just whack him in the ear and send him to his knees.

When you have large dogs in your backyard, you seldom have landscaping of any kind. If you are a person with big dogs and beautiful landscaping, I don't want to hear about it. But we had this lovely patio and pool and one spring morning I decided I wanted a flower bed in the backyard. I used those edging stone things to make a nice kidney shaped flowerbed up against the house where we could see it from the patio and pool area. I hauled in dirt, planted some inexpensive perennials, and put up a plastic fence barrier thing around it. I figured that would be temporary until the dogs got used to the flowerbed being there and it would give us time to teach them that if they got near it they would be assaulted by a flying flip flop. We don't beat our dogs, we just throw stuff at them which confuses them into a game of fetch so they are basically undisciplined little beasts.

This worked well and eventually I took down the plastic fence and began to do more planting and weeding in the new flowerbed. This is where I went wrong. I let the dogs, Pongo specifically, see me digging in the flowerbed. I think most dogs live their lives just trying to please their masters, even though sometimes their own impulsiveness gets in the way. This is what happened one afternoon when I was out by the pool and noticed Pongo behaving in a strange way. He would run over to me and bounce up and down in front of me (he knew not to jump on me or he'd get a flip flop in the head) then he'd run over to the flowerbed, look back at me and wag his tail so hard that his entire butt got in on the action.

It didn't take a genius to figure out that Timmy was in the well. Pongo obviously wanted me to look at the flowerbed. I did notice an unusual mound that wasn't there before, although the bed in general hadn't been completely destroyed. I obeyed my dog and went to see what he was so excited about. As soon as I walked over to the flowerbed he jumped in it and started digging at the mound. Of course I started yelling our typical dog commands. At our house we don't use commands like "NO" or "STAY" or "DOWN". We use commands such as, "HAVE YOU LOST YOUR FREAKING MIND?!" "GET OUT OF THAT FLOWERBED OR SO HELP ME I WILL KILL YOU WHERE YOU STAND!" These actually work quite well and it gives the appearance that our dogs understand spoken English. Or maybe they really do, I dunno.

Hearing the daily death threat from his master, Pongo abandoned the mound and jumped out of the flowerbed. There, buried in the dirt up to his neck was a dead rabbit. The way Pongo had positioned him and then halfway uncovered him, he looked like he had been planted there. I swear my dog thought he was contributing to the garden by planting a dead rabbit for me. All I could see was its precious little head and 2 ears sticking up. If it wasn't so comical I would have cried! Pongo was standing beside me, looking from me to the rabbit and still wagging his entire butt. He was expecting me to praise him for helping in the garden. Bless his little heart. I know he saw me digging holes and planting stuff so he thought that's what he was supposed to do. I couldn't even get mad at him for it.

I did rush into the house to grab Jayson who is the official Green Family Disposer of All Dead Bodies. The bunny crop had to go before Taylor saw it. She was about 10 or 11 at the time and the sight would have permanently scarred her worse than the scars already inflicted by her well meaning yet highly dysfunctional parents. I don't know where the bunny body went after that, I never ask The Disposer questions about his work. He makes the unpleasantness go away and that's all I care about.

Okay, except this one time when he failed to come to my rescue. But, in all fairness, the body wasn't dead yet and I am the designated Green Family Adopter of All Stray Things. But I didn't really want this stray thing since it was a 4' long bull snake. It had draped itself along the top of our fence to soak up some sun. Normally I would have just left him there since they're harmless and they eat rats. But Taylor was about 2 at the time and not much bigger than a New York City rat so I was a little concerned that he might gobble her up.

The snake had to to go and The Disposer has some kind of snake issue so it was up to Mama Bear to protect her cub. I generally don't mind snakes as long as they aren't the little slithery ones you see in the yard sometimes. Those things are gross. I prefer them to be over 6 feet long and a least as big around as my leg. I have a picture, somewhere, of me and my cousin each holding huge snakes that belonged to our uncle. If I remember right they were both pythons, one was 10' long and the other was 14'. We wrapped them around us and drove to Sonic but for some reason they wouldn't serve us. I'm not afraid of big snakes like that because if you ever run across one you'd have time to make a sandwich, pack a bag and call a taxi before it ever got to you. They're slow. On land, that is. If you're in the water with one, you're basically screwed.

I know how to kill a snake having watched my mother do it many, many times while I was growing up. If they're small, you just chop their head off with a garden hoe and toss the carcass over the back fence into the pasture. If they're big you shoot them, several times, with your pink pearl handled pistol then use the garden hoe to toss the body over the back fence. I have several problems with this. One is that I am not capable of killing an animal unless it is trying to kill me or someone I love. The snake wasn't trying to hurt us, it was just sunbathing. I couldn't hurt it. Besides, it qualified as a larger snake and I don't have a pink pearl handled pistol like Mom does and there's no back 40 to toss the body into.

I don't mind handling snakes if they're someone's pet but I'm not stupid enough to just grab any random slithering thing. I came up with a plan that I though was brilliant but soon found out was extremely stupid and impossible. My big plan was to use a broom handle to scoop the snake up off the fence, then I would twirl him around the handle like a strand of spaghetti and place him in my mop bucket where I could safely tote him to...somewhere I hadn't thought about yet. I also hadn't thought about the snake not being willing to wrap itself around my broom handle or the fact that it could just slither right on out of that mop bucket if I ever actually got him in there. Which I did not.

I placed the broom handle under the middle of the snake and lifted him up. Much to my surprise, he just slithered right off the end of that handle, went into the backyard and, to my horror, slid into a gap that was between the vinyl siding and the brick on our house. I knew he wasn't actually "in" the house but the fact that he was hiding my house's covering sort of freaked me out for a couple of days.

It took that long for the snake to come out of hiding and when he did he met up with Pongo who used him a chew toy. I found chunks of snake strewn all over the yard at which point The Disposer stepped up to the plate and did his job. Again, I have no idea where the body went and I don't care. I just know that I never want to see that again. Yucky poo.

I have more animal adventures but I'll have to save them for another post. There's the time that Pongo got out of the yard, ran down the street to a neighbor's house, grabbed their 19 year old cat off their porch, shook him till he was dead then proudly deposited him on our porch as he sat wagging his tail, waiting for praise. The cops showed up for that one. Then there's the time I hit a dog on a busy street, there was no way to avoid him. That tore me up for weeks. Oh, and the time when we got home and I heard a noise in Taylor's closet and when I went to investigate, there was a wild squirrel (as opposed to our pet squirrel) sitting on her shelf looking as surprised to see me as I was to see him. For over an hour Taylor and I sat outside her bedroom door laughing hysterically at Jayson and the animal control guy trying to capture the squirrel. All we heard was CRASH, *curse word*, BANG, THUD, *curse word*, *curse word*, CRASH, THUD... It was entertaining. There's never a dull moment with Gang Green.

Chicken Hair

My new best friend.

The Big Clean Sweep of 2011 has morphed into The Big Move 2011, or Our Journey Back to The Promised Land.

I'm too tired to do more than post a few pictures. All I've done all day is sit on the couch and doodle in my sketchbook so I'm not exhausted from effort. But the moving guys were here promptly at 8 a.m. this morning and I didn't get to bed last night as early as I had planned.

Our friend and realtor, Jamie Knight, got the sign up on the house before Jayson went back to Houston last weekend but it won't officially be on the market for another day or two. That's okay. Jamie has plenty of time to get the house sold since the deadline we gave him isn't until June 1.

Our moving guys packed themselves silly all day long today and still have some things to finish up tomorrow. Then they'll load the truck and head for Houston. This is the second time we've had a moving company pack up our stuff for us and it has proven to be very entertaining both times. The guys we have this time are all very nice and friendly. And chatty. Which those of you who know me well know that chatty isn't my favorite thing. Unless I'm doing the chatting. Then it's perfectly fine.

The last time we had a moving company pack us, the best thing about it was the way they labeled some of the boxes. Taylor had some peacock feathers in her room that the movers carefully rolled in padded paper, taped within an inch of its life and labeled it "chicken hair". I held on to that wrapping for years cuz chicken hair just makes me laugh. So far I haven't run into any labels of that caliber but here are a few that are worth mentioning:

I don't know what a gulf ball is but apparently we have a glass case for it.

This is just a careless misspelling. It should be nicK nacks.

This is not really a misspelling, just an unusual way of writing. We all know what it says but it looks like pots/paws. And there's even another box of just paws.

This one is my favorite so far. Yes, we Greens have silver bowels.