{"id":18342,"date":"2014-08-17T17:05:55","date_gmt":"2014-08-18T00:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=18342"},"modified":"2014-08-17T17:05:55","modified_gmt":"2014-08-18T00:05:55","slug":"sunday-check-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/17\/sunday-check-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday check-in"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Too hot to accomplish anything right now. Gads, it&#8217;s so <i>nice<\/i> to be able to say &#8220;too hot&#8221; when talking about the coastal NorthWET.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>One thing I did accomplish this weekend: I got my entries ready for the county fair. Tomorrow is submission day for all the artsy-craftsy stuff.<\/p>\n<p>Feels kinda silly to be doing this. I wouldn&#8217;t have entered anything in a fair when I was 10. Or 14. So why am I doing it now that I&#8217;m (mumble mumble)?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Because when I was 10 or 14, I&#8217;d have approached the whole project with one big whine: &#8220;I nnnevvvvver winnnnnn annnnything.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It was true. If there were three ribbons being given out, I&#8217;d place fourth. If five scholarships were in the offing, I&#8217;d be sixth. I hated that! Alas, it never occurred to me that I could just work smarter or try harder or practice more. I thought it was all about some mysteriously innate &#8220;talent&#8221; (or lack thereof) and I was dooooooomed forever to mere above-averageness.<\/p>\n<p>Mere above-averageness is all I ever have achieved, thanks to being a fool. But given the small talent pool hereabouts I&#8217;m ruthlessly confident I&#8217;ll crush the competition. <\/p>\n<p>Partly because I&#8217;m likely to <i>be<\/i> the only competition in some categories. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>So off I go tomorrow with five drawings, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/2013\/10\/08\/creative-tedium\/\" target=\"_blank\">a necklace<\/a>, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/2014\/07\/28\/catching-up-scrambling-about-mondaying-and-oh-yes-let-me-do-a-little-ranting-while-im-here\/\" target=\"_blank\">Foundling Table<\/a> (now dubbed &#8220;Doorway to the Sun,&#8221; courtesy of Commentariat member Pat).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll keep you posted. <\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Heard some ominous news last week. I can&#8217;t yet talk about it; maybe by the end of this month. It&#8217;s not just ominous for me. It&#8217;ll clobber my income if the rumored Bad Thing comes to pass. But the effect on me is the least of it. It&#8217;s mad, bad, sad, and completely blindsiding. <\/p>\n<p>Wish I could tell you more. I will. Just not right now. I&#8217;d like to get you all roused up about this thing so you could shake fists and write indignant letters and maybe keep it from coming to pass. Instead, I just have to bleed on you without even telling you what the wound is. Sorry.<\/p>\n<p>Will change subject now.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>This is funny. If you follow such news you&#8217;ll remember that last week the publicists for the BBC series <i>Downton Abbey<\/i> released a very dignified, very rich, very 1920s-ish photograph of two of the main characters &#8212; apparently without noticing somebody&#8217;d left a very modern, undignified plastic water bottle on the mantel behind them. The incident became known as &#8220;Waterbottlegate.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The cast of the show <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Entertainment\/downton-abbey-cast-responds-water-bottle-gate\/story?id=25012116\" target=\"_blank\">responds charmingly<\/a>. I only wish they&#8217;d done it in full costume.<\/p>\n<p>Now the same people who got excited about the erroneous water bottle in the first place are speculating that it might have just been a stunt &#8212; a lead in to the follow-up.<\/p>\n<p>People have altogether too much time on their hands.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>The other thing I&#8217;ve been doing today is Organizing. Yes, the capital-O kind. I could tell you exactly how much I love this activity, but the words might get me fired from BHM.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve acquired Stuff (also with capital letter). I&#8217;m not a big stuff person. I never end up with too many clothes or closets full or unworn shoes or extra cars or shelves sagging under thousands of unbearably cute <i>tchotchkes<\/i>. What I have is tools and materials. Saws and hammers, kaleidoscope mirrors, bargain doors I&#8217;ll install two years from now, art supplies, a spare window, beading supplies, drawers full of glues and epoxies, packing peanuts and bubble wrap, ammo and gun-cleaning kits. <i>Useful<\/i> stuff.<\/p>\n<p>I can get pretty ruthless about throwing junk away, but there&#8217;s nothing here to get rid of. This is all useful. Alas, there&#8217;s no good, useful place to stash it.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m feeling the need to acquire more stuff &#8212; shelving and storage containers &#8212; to get ahead of the stuff I already have. This seems wrong. Just wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Too hot to accomplish anything right now. Gads, it&#8217;s so nice to be able to say &#8220;too hot&#8221; when talking about the coastal NorthWET. &#8212;&#8211; One thing I did accomplish this weekend: I got my entries ready for the county fair. Tomorrow is submission day for all the artsy-craftsy stuff. Feels kinda silly to be doing this. I wouldn&#8217;t have entered anything in a fair when I was 10. Or 14. So why am I doing it now that I&#8217;m (mumble mumble)?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,14,16,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-aesthetics","category-home-improvement","category-humor","category-rural-and-small-town-living","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}