Cold Toes and Warm Memories

Yep, I should be finishing up packing for our trip, but in the course of checking the weather I unearthed a memory I just wanted to splotch up on the old blog for everyone to see.

So when you're planning for two trips in one (a vacation in one place followed by a conference in another) things like exactly how many sundresses you have to have for the beach and whether your wool coat is strictly necessary for upper 40's weather become rather important because it's times like these you realize that even "light" packers can rapidly run out of luggage space. On one hand you really want to bring that cute sundress, and on the other hand you really don't want to be standing around San Francisco freezing your knees because some bright eyed male (aka the species that doesn't admit to cold) mistook when the bus would be stopping by your corner. But, as I pointed out to Allen, if this were Yosemite in late October after a long evening's drive up through the mountains I'd probably be jumping around in my jeans and chacos and a lone cotton sweatshirt complaining about the cold and too excited to stop and put on warmer clothes because the payoff is climbing into your nice warm down sleeping bag and pulling on some thick wool socks and listening to the wind and feeling the cold air on your cheeks as you snug your sleeping bag up around you and reflect on what a very nice thing it is to be the luckiest girl in the world. Or maybe you're reflecting on that one rock that managed to hide out under your back. Same thing :)

We are the disobedient?

There's an online art shop I found a few months ago called Fresh Words Market. It's where I found our wonderful "Time for Another Adventure" print, and it's also where I found the print above. It puzzled me. While none of the art sold by Fresh Words would, in my opinion, count as intellectual, I've often found it to be at least somewhat witty and thoughtful in a bumper sticker sort of way. That might sound like damning with faint praise, but they're bumper stickers I'd think about putting on my own car (or my computer) or at least smile at if I saw them on someone else's car. This whole disobedience thing I don't get though. That particular collection of prints contains others such as "Robin Hood was Right" and is inspired by the 99% movement, but honestly I have to wonder if anyone even thought about these before slapping them up on a poster.

In case you didn't see the whole message, that poster says "It is through disobedience that progress has been made." Really? When? According to whom? Imagine for a moment a teacher reading her class a book in which the central character learns freedom and creativity through disobedience (you probably don't have to imagine very hard because I'm sure those books exist in fair measure). Now imagine said teacher closing the book and announcing it's time to put the story rugs away and get ready for recess. What are those kids supposed to do? What have they been trained to do? Can the teacher fault any of them if they decide to break the bonds of coerced labor and head directly for the monkey bars? Suppose she makes the fatal mistake of trying to reason with them. If she loses then she's lost her authority. If she wins she's won through force of rhetoric and/or personality and set up a precedent for her students to follow the most persuasive leaders instead of the most principled. I say this because I can't think of a single way that, absent of an appeal to some authoritarian first principles, a teacher could convince a child to do anything without overawing them.

I saw this play out in the book To Sir, With Love. The teacher who worked such miracles in his classroom really did work wonders with his class, but as you read through it you start to find where the seams fray and the principles at play start to unravel. There are times in the book where he appeals to student's duty to respect their parents without once having a good foundation other than customary usage. To share one instance in particular, a girl's mother was worried her daughter might fall into promiscuous habits. However, when it came out that the mother herself had once let a man spend the night with her, it was treated as of little consequence to whether her daughter might behave in a similar manner. There was no authority for the standard which the older adults where trying to impose on this younger girl and no reason why she should respect a value (in this case chastity) which did not apply to those adults who were supposed to be guiding her. Obedience and disobedience become matters of personality and not principle.

Nevertheless, for Christian this sort of sentiment should appall us because it's precisely opposite of how Christendom advances. In the very beginning we see Noah saving his family by obedience, Moses freeing Israel through obedience, and of course Christ Jesus bringing salvation to the world through obedience. As Jesus said "I come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it." There's a difference between smashing idols and breaking the 10 Commandments. The first thing we are authorized to do (even if it's not cool), but the last thing we are not authorized to do (even if it is cool). So a Christian might be against things like crooks on Wall Street or in Washington DC or downtown USA, but we are against these things because we are for obedience to Christ. This is why we teach our kids, our students, and ourselves to be obedient - because obedience ("honor your father and mother," "love your neighbor as yourself," "do not steal," "worship the Lord your God") is how the world actually advances.

Under the description of this poster it says "Inspirational artwork, fit for adult or child space." The question I have to ask is this. Would you hang this in your child's room? If so can you tell me why you're so little interested in your child's welfare?

we're almost there

We're less than one week from closing on our house. I must say it's pretty unreal. It'll be good to walk into our house and slow down and feel like we own it. I've been so focused on the work that needs doing (and it needs some!) that the thought of living there has become just a tiny bit disconnected from reality. It's as if our house is a space conjured out of pinterest boards and a few scraps of paper covered in circled initials and legal descriptions. Perhaps it'd be good to thrown down our mattress and camp out there for a week just to get a feel for the place before we start tearing down walls and ripping out counter tops. Still, I rather hope we don't have to put off doing the kitchen for too long as I'm not sanguine about any of the appliances. However given a number of unexpected expenses (ie replacing the roof) I may just end up getting better acquainted with my propane camp stove :)

Here's our roughed out remodeling plan:

Replace the roof, gutters, repaint the exterior, and repaint/replace the exterior doors. Allen and I plan to do the repainting ourselves. Fortunately the exterior is at least partially brick. Either way it's a pretty big project =)

Fix the bedroom layout (ie remove part of a very unnecessary closet wall), replace the carpet and wall hvac unit, add a new window (maybe), and paint.

After that we'll look at our finances and decide what it will take to put in a new kitchen and vault the ceilings in the main living area. We'll either find some bargains or put it off a few months until we get another quarterly bonus or two tucked away. Depending on how that works out we'll be refinishing/patching floors, painting, and generally finishing things up. We also need to replace virtually every window in the place, but that can wait until next year.


That's all the stuff that we need to do. Here's my wishlist of smaller projects to work on while we're not doing major remodeling:

Replace the bathroom vanity top and remove/cover that terrible painted over wallpaper in the master bathroom.

Start an herb garden

Get some more trees and a few other bits of landscaping started in the yard.

Get my friend set up in her art studio (she's taking over one of the spare bedrooms).

Recover the dining room chairs and make new cushion covers for the living room chairs (this is what happens when you buy used furniture).

Install in a banquet/built in bookcase in the kitchen eating area.

Put in a deck off the living room (yeah, this may not happen for a while) and replace/repair the deck/landing outside the master.


It's funny but writing that down makes me think that this is a manageable project after all. There's some big ticket items on there, like the kitchen and ceilings, but there's also a whole lot that I can do myself and a whole lot that Allen and I can work together on some weekends. It's going to take time to get it all done right, but I think this is a house (and a location) that will reward our efforts. If all else fails I've at least confirmed that there are trees of adequate spacing for me to hang my hammock and forget out the mess inside :)