There are three things in life you should never delay: filing your taxes, visiting the doctor when things start to flutter, ooze, or become malodorous, and buying special occasion shoes for boys.  Left untended, the first will imprison you, the second will hospitalize you, and the third will kill you.

Knowing this, I should have bought the shoes for Nicholas’s baptism in January.  I should have shopped online from the comfort of my own home, the cost of shipping my fee for peace of mind.  But, no.  Something happened, although I am not sure what, and that something turned into that other thing which turned into two colds, the stomach flu, and the evening of February 5th.  The evening of February 5th coincided with the eve of Nicholas’s baptism and left me exactly two hours to find a pair of dress shoes for a boy.

And herein lies one of the most crucial differences in raising daughters and sons.  You tell the mother of a little girl she has two hours to find dress shoes and she says, “How will I ever decide what to buy in two hours?  The options are endless!”  You tell the mother of a little boy she has two hours to find dress shoes and, after looking at both pairs, will calmly turn to you and ask, “If I burn the Wolverines off the sides, do you think the smell of plastic will linger more than 24 hours?”

Did I mention I needed them in soft white?

I can best describe boys dress shoes by associating them with small pockets of male society not known for their imitable taste in fashion.  Accountants have the market on brown shoes cornered.  I imagine that, when drawing up the designs for Boy Dress Shoe No.2 in Brown, the designer sat back in their chair, arms akimbo, and thought, What would a guy named Stanley wear? The Reference Librarian at most universities is what comes to mind if I am looking for something in black.  Something about the way those rubber soles cotton-ball their way across the Stride Right floor say Dewey Decimal to me.  For white shoes it is, hands down, the orderly in a psychiatric hospital.  Sterile fields of solid white just waiting for an affective disorder to numb.

I went to nine stores and came up empty handed.  The entire time I imagined my sister-in-law, who was having her daughter baptized alongside Nicholas, sipping wine and idly flipping through a People Magazine on the sofa.  Nicholas is not an accountant, librarian, or nurse.  He’s a Catholic (now) and on Friday night he needed white shoes for his baptism.  I decided Nicholas would not be a man of numbers, letters, or science.  He would be a little boy in tan sneakers from Payless, a look that suited him just fine.  It helped that he and his cousin looked like angels.  No one ever looked at their feet.  (Not that Addison, a girl, had anything to worry about.)

I had so much more to say about this series of images.  I had a long post written in my head, my analytical nature incapable of simply tossing online four pictures without some sort of explanation.  Unfortunately, I have a touch of the stomach flu.  Clearly I am on the mend, or I wouldn’t be here.  Still, I am not yet recuperated enough to artfully say everything that is in my heart.  I’ll do my best right now.

Late last year, around my birthday, I felt within me a need to be more creative.  I can’t explain it, other than to say it felt more like a compulsion, an absolute “time is up, your paper is due tomorrow” call for action far stronger than the whims that often grab me on ordinary Wednesdays.  I answered by registering for Holly Becker’s Blogging Your Way class a week after my birthday and made a note of other classes of interest, held later in the year by other bloggers, which focus on creativity and the satisfaction of living a life fulfilled.

If the other classes I am considering are as useful, I will be very happy–although Holly is working me a bit like a pack mule with some of these homework assignments.  In a good way.  I can’t divulge the assignments I have done thus far, but I will say that they force you to focus on what you want from your blog (hobbyist or not) and how these goals mesh with the passions in your life.  Not a simple task for someone who started a blog on nothing because her friend twisted her arm.

The inspiration board you see above is homework assignment three, which was the creation of an inspiration board that best defines your style and what you want to cover/do cover on your blog.  The second part of the assignment was to post it online where your instructors (and classmates) could check it out.  Mine looks nothing like what I expected.  There are so many things I write about that didn’t seem to make the cut, but it feels right.

I read in waves, one book after the other until I stop, exhausted. Occasionally I will write something that makes me proud.  I like things natural and simple, but I am a contradiction.  Sometimes I am drawn to labels and sparkly things.  The extended family I grew up without continues to shape who I am and the decisions I make, and almost everything I do is done with my husband and our children in mind.  My faith is becoming increasingly important to me.  I remain regimented.  Most of my classmates posted inspiration boards layered with images.  I retook the first picture because the pencil was crooked.  The only thing I thought I didn’t effectively communicate was my sense of humor– until I realized the thrift-store book I tore up for this project was perhaps a bit…spicy. Heaving breasts and quivering loins can be funny, right?

They’re here!

But, I don’t know about these guys.  They aren’t lined (I knew they weren’t) and despite knowing how much of a pet peeve unlined curtains are for me, I still bought them.  And, yet, knowing they weren’t lined and consciously making the decision to buy them regardless, I still groused about the fact they weren’t lined ten seconds after they were up.

Also, you have no idea how I pleased I am that an opportunity to use the word “grouse” has all but fallen in my lap.  It beats the word “grumble” by ten, at least.

So, the curtains.  They aren’t lined.  And is the silk too twee?  Too formal against all that rough and tumble stone?  I’m not too worried about how they hang.  They’ll look better once I iron and then train them properly.  They are hanging on double rods, so I can always put sheers behind them.  Plus, I was thinking of hanging some bamboo matchstick blinds for more texture.  (Can you tell I am now paranoid about having enough texture?  I’m about ready to glue-gun a cotton ball installation on the south wall.)

Silk?  Canvas/burlap/linen/velvet?

I repeat: good a good decorator/designer is worth their weight in gold.

It’s 9:36am and I am waiting for Nicholas to wake up.  He was up most of the night coughing, shivering with a mild fever.  I rocked him for about thirty minutes in the five o’clock hour this morning.  We both enjoyed the comfort only early morning snuggling can bring.  I’m a bit torn up about him being sick, actually.  His baptism is on Saturday (at long last!) and while I know he will be fine by then, I can’t help but wonder why it is my boys always seem to catch every cough and cold they come across.

They eat a variety of fruits and vegetables, many of them organic.  I give them water to drink, or fresh juice on occasion.  Never any artificial fruit juices and nothing with added sugar, real or not.  The snacks they eat are either made here at home or made with all natural ingredients you can pronounce.  Yesterday I spent five hours making homemade beef stock for the homemade minestrone soup I plan to make tonight for dinner.  Really, I don’t think they can eat more healthy.

We aren’t zealots.  They get fast food several times a month.  Balance is good.

So why are they always sick?  Maybe they aren’t, but it sure does feel that way.  I wonder how they would fare if I let them eat junk food full of colors, preservatives, and chemical ingredients.

9:44 and he is still sleeping.  Not even a peep.

In the meantime, would you like to see what we did this weekend?  We painted the kitchen Oatmeal by Ralph Lauren.  It was a bit dicey finding the paint.  With Ralph Lauren officially discontinued at The Home Depot, I had to travel to the ends of the earth (Moreno Valley) to find just one can.  Still, I’m glad I did it.  The color turned out pretty perfect.  Maybe a touch darker than I had planned, but still quite soothing and lovely.

I love it so much; I want to paint the whole house in this color, including the living room.

9:50am and I hear him coughing in his sleep. Le sigh.

I don’t know if I have ever mentioned my love for oil paintings. I do. Love them, I mean. Especially en masse on a wall. As a child, I always associated oil paintings with long, far reaching ancestral lines. This is my great, great, great grandmother Adelaide. This fox hunting scene belonged to my husband’s great aunt Mildred. This is one of my distant cousins, perhaps from my father’s side. Do you see the resemblance in the eyes? Anyway, it all sounds terribly romantic to someone whose extended family lives tens of thousands of miles away.

{From the book Restoring a House in the City by Ingrid Abramovitch}

On Friday I decided it might be fun to collect some oil paintings. Nothing expensive, and nothing new. It’s the same day I started fiddling with the curtains in the living room and decided to keep the wall color as is, making the room a tone on tone creamy-caramel delight. On Saturday I walked past a rummage sale and saw this oil painting sitting next to a poster of mallard ducks in flight. There was a mallard duck lamp to match, too. I left behind the foul but brought home the $2 oil painting, which is admittedly filthy. I need to google how to clean it properly.  Still, I feel like God is giving me a big thumbs up on Plan G.

I don’t plan to keep it on the mantel. Against our more neutral walls, the painting looks far less orange. We’ll see. Things are always changing around here thanks to my fickle beast of a personality.

What’s this? 10:07am and I think I might hear a certain sick little boy rousing from sleep. True love is calling, so off I go. Have a nice day, everyone.

A good interior decorator or designer is worth their weight in gold.  The amount I have spent in paint, paint samples, curtains, furniture, and God knows what else would easily cover their professional fee along with a few core pieces for the house.

Last week I spent over $40 in paint samples.  I tested nearly every color I posted about last week plus a few more.  (All this because Sisal, the awesome color Maria recommended, is unavailable thanks to The Home Depot no longer selling the Ralph Lauren line.  I could have color matched it, but that’s too simple a solution, isn’t it?)  Some of the paint colors I tried were okay, some were unspeakably bad.  But, even the ones that were okay didn’t look any better than what I already have on the wall.  So, guess what?  I’m not painting the walls.  I’m leaving them as is (Devonshire by Ralph Lauren) and am embracing the fireplace.  More on that in a minute.

I find it funny that an over-educated book worm like me can know so little about design.  Even worse, most of the time I don’t even know what I don’t know.  I was chatting with Seleta last week about how flat a pale color scheme looks in my home.  I would love a tone on tone room, but it seems so cold and stark; I can’t figure out how the rest of blog land makes it look so darn welcoming and warm.  Seleta, a designer, was kind enough to point out the obvious.  My fireplace is large; it commands most of one wall.  One wall of rough, natural, boulders in shades of gold, copper, caramel, butterscotch, plum (!), and lavender (!!).  In order to make the fireplace work in a room with a pale or tone on tone color scheme, I need to add incredible amounts of texture to balance all the texture in the fireplace.

Well, duh.  Now that she puts it that way.  Oh well, it’s a boring day the day you don’t learn something new, right?

Which brings me to Plan G for the living room.  (Note that plans B-F wouldn’t have happened with a designer.)  The walls stay as is.  The fireplace becomes the star, diva that it is.  No longer will I try to beat it into submission with bold curtains or deep wall colors.  Instead, I went ahead and bought new curtains in antique gold from Overstock that should take the colors of the fireplace all around the room.  Hold me.

I bought the curtains sight unseen, obviously, so I am a little nervous.  I am fairly confident it will look fine after placing one of my silk curtains from the den/toyroom up next to the fireplace as a test run.  That’s what you see in the picture above, and I don’t find it objectionable, do you?  Speaking of objections, I know I give my fireplace a hard time (it is a bear for a novice to decorate around) but look at those stones and the variations of color.  Isn’t it just amazing the beauty nature can produce?

I’ve been deep in a book the last few days.  I haven’t been able to put it down and, frankly, I’m thrilled Mikey and Nicholas are bathed and fed.  Fun reads notwithstanding, I had to give my fellow book lovers a heads up on the latest site devoted to bibliophiles.  Book worms, meet Book Swim.  Have you heard of it?  Am I late to the game with this one?

Book Swim is to books what Netflix is to movies.  From what I gather on the website, you pick out a rental plan based on your estimated rate of reading.  You order your books (there are no additional shipping fees for plans with 2 or more books a month) and get busy when they arrive.  Once you are done, you ship them back, again without paying shipping.  If you love a book too much to part with it, keep it.  You can pay for it with a click of the button on the Book Swim site.  From what I understand, they even carry textbooks.

I’m still on the fence about Book Swim, mainly because I am terrified of the commitment monthly payments require.  It’s the same reason I don’t have memberships to Netflix or any of the other online movie rental sites.  Still, I know sites like Netflix can save avid movie watchers a great deal of money.  I assume Book Swim offers the same benefit and wanted to pass it on to people who are able to make a decision without complicated decision matrices, actuarial data, and p values.

{Thanks to the very rad Bookilicious blog for the heads up.  I’m too busy reading without restraint to find such cool things.}

As promised, on Sunday we spent the day boring Mikey at Universal Studios.  Well, really, it wasn’t about him.  My parents were entertaining my aunt and cousin who are visiting from Argentina and invited us to tag along.  The fact Mikey was bored and complied with one of the few New Year’s resolutions we haven’t already chucked in the trash like old chicken was pure happenstance.  And, maybe he wasn’t bored so much as he was terrified to the core.

Did I mention Mikey is at equal turns obsessed and and horrified by zombies and vampires? He talks about them nonstop, especially at bedtime, asking about how they came to be, what is their purpose, how strong they are, and how someone, say, a five year old boy, could destroy them if said boy were to find one in his bedroom at night. Hypothetically.  I told him that when dealing with the undead, your best bets are daylight and God.  I went to check on him later and found him asleep with his head completely buried under the covers, clutching his baby blue cross and wearing a crucifix my mom bought for me in Cancun.

Knowing this, you can imagine the reception Beetle Juice, a zombie, received.  It took over four hours for the color to return to Mikey’s lips, which is when we found the life-size great white shark.

The Jurassic Park ride was closed.  The Jurassic Park themed gift store was wide open.

Things settled down a bit once we got on the guided tour of the park. The bus tour lasted about 45 minutes and, really, was enlightening. Lots of fun special effects and interesting trivia.

Were it not for the tour, I would have never known that Gabriella’s house on Desperate Housewives is Conchita Banana yellow. The rest of the houses on set are sedate, feminine numbers painted buttercup, lilac, and respectable greige. The only way ABC could have better communicated the message that a “Latina Stereotype Lives Here” would be if they left a trail of empty tamale husks leading to the door.

This is a real plane, destroyed to bits.  It was actually a bit unnerving, especially with the smoke and smell of gasoline.  Tom Cruise fans might recognize this set from War of the Worlds.

Cars bursting into flames, earthquakes, Jaws, spitting beetles from Egypt, The set from How the Grinch Stole Christmas–it was little boy heaven concocted by big boys with incredible imaginations and bank accounts to match.  It was fun.

Then we did the shows. We watched Orangutans dance and then pet the chickens.

Almost lost Nicholas to a rogue band of furries.

Saw a loud and somewhat alarming Terminator show (computers will one day come to life and kill us, just so you know) that electrified Mikey and scared Nicholas so badly, all he could do was point and whimper. Also, 25,000 blogger points go to me for posting a picture that accentuates my back fat, flies in the face of double chin elimination, and makes me look like I have kielbasa arms.

Then the boys went for a ride, Mikey worked on his form, and The Mister met Flat Damon, which he took very seriously.  All in all, an exceptionally boring day.

The end.