10 Random Things, From Tombs To Tunes

1. I find it rather surreal that I, the non-Christian, spent much of yesterday evening creating a model of Jesus's tomb. It was a prop that I needed for teaching "The Story Of Easter" in the SpiritPlay classroom at our UU. I contemplated making one out of wool (knitted and then fulled? needle felted over a foam shape?) but I did not leave myself enough time and had to resort to Model Magic clay and some gray paint. The bad: I had some traumatic flashbacks to a sixth-grade science project that involved making a volcano. The good: while painting I had time to try to think of how this could be turned into a blog post title: Tomb With A View? Tomb Much To Do? So many possibilities.

What's even funnier is that after being handled by many children, the model needs a small repair; so item number six on my "To Do" list for this week is "Fix Jesus's tomb." Can any of you top that one? (My sister's response to this was, "Hey, don't fix it up too much, he isn't going to stay there long.")

2. Thanks for the interesting comments on my previous post about cars. When I lived in a more rural area, I never questioned having two (or more!) cars for two adults. But it just seems that, in a more urban area, it should be possible to be a one-car family. Clearly I am living in the wrong city (in oh so many ways). That said, I love my new wheels and I think we chose the correct time to purchase a car that gets 30 mpg.

3. A finished project: Coronet hat, in Valley Yarns Sugarloaf (wool/microfiber blend), made as a chemo cap for a friend. It's modeled here by my daughter and now she wants one of her own!


4. Another finished project: Capelet for Grandma, who is 96 and still going strong. Pattern is a capella with some mods, yarn is Lion Brand Homespun.


5. The other night my four year old marched up to me and announced, "Mama, I know a new word!" I braced myself for something interesting, like a good curse word, and asked, "Oh, really? What is it?" My little drama queen spun around with a flourish and sang out, "Exquisite!" She apparently learned this one from a Max and Ruby episode and had no idea what it meant, but she loves to sing it twenty times in a row to the tune of any Disney princess song.

6. Any of you remember my grand plans to create a craft room, to be completed in the fall of 2007? HA HA HA! I'll be lucky if I'm done by the fall of 2009 at the rate I'm going. Here's a current pic of my slow progress.
Isn't is lovely? Those swirly lines are the glue from the fake wood paneling. I have now stripped all of that wallpaper, but I haven't patched and painted the walls yet.

7. If any of you have kids under, oh, nine or ten, you should check out Spare The Rock, which is a local radio show of indie/hipster/fun kids' music that isn't painful for adults. You can stream recent episodes from the blog page, which works perfectly for us now that my wonderful husband has connected the computer to our home audio system. (This also means that I can now enjoy Pandora in a whole new way.)

8. I read in our local newspaper that if housing prices fall another 15-20%, then more than half of American homeowners will owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth. More than half! And if the subprime mortgage crisis does not make you anxious enough, then check out this article in the March 2008 Atlantic Monthly: "Fundamental changes in American life may turn today’s McMansions into tomorrow’s tenements."

9. I just listened to episode 61 of Cast On, and after listening to the song "Exactly" I hopped on the computer to check out Amy Steinberg's Myspace page. (The song will play as soon as you open the page.) "I am exactly where I need to be, I need to be exactly where I am, I am a blessing manifest...." Amazing.

10. Daylight Savings sucks, and March is about 31 days too long.