Two More Tiny Things

I have had 'make-up tables' in more places in this house than I can remember.  When we slept in the East wing, the window was one (only sometimes the East sun was hard on the eyes).  I used the bathroom mirror for a while, but the lighting was poor, given that a legal requirement is that bathroom windows have frosted glass.

For a while the window sill in the West wing was an ideal place to prop a mirror and I sat on a cedar chest with a basket of make-up and my hair dryer next to me.  When we had new double-glazed windows put in the #&%@ company ripped out my window sill without any notice of the loss.

See?  It's great lighting!

The box room was good, until I put a plant stand there to enjoy the warm western sun and then Bill moved into that corner.  I went back to being a nomad in the mornings til one day I had a brain wave:  I bought one of those glue-on sticky hooks and put it on the bathroom window frame.  It blends right in with the PVC frame and it holds my little mirror.  The northern light is perfect and the window sill holds my make-up until it goes back into a drawer.  So the hook is one tiny thing. 

The other is that I replaced the string hanger on the mirror with a delicate blue ribbon from my Aunt Rita's stash.  It's a teeny-weeny thing, but it does make a difference.

Have you ever been a nomad in your house?

An Old Cedar Chest

I have a question to ask.  You know how there was for a while a fashion of 'distressed furniture'?  Seriously - people would paint a piece and then damage it to make it look old again...  Well, my question is

How distressed is TOO distressed?

Because I'm having a hard time bringing myself to paint this.  Fix the hinge so it shuts straight, repair the lock so it hangs right, sand down the inside tray so that it slides easily, all those things, yes.

But cover those little cartoon characters? 



 I'm not sure I can.



This was my toy box from my little girl bedroom in Oklahoma City.  It sat in the bottom of my closet for, well, about 35 years.  Mom put those decal stickers on her cedar chest to make it mine.



It currently holds a collection of video tapes (soon to be turned into DVDs or given away).  My aim is that it will eventually hold photo albums - of photos scanned and backed up.  Being so hesitant to renovate it, I just made a cream colour gathered-skirt cover for it out of heavy weight twill. 

The chest is labeled and the Internet tells me that it was made by the Ed Roos Co. of Forest Park, Illinois.  ER Co went out of business in 1951. 

The desire for cedar chest just went away with the building of new homes that had lots of closets, and the insect population dropped off making the need for the protection of cedar no longer needed They started is 1916 and built every know type of cedar chest known to man. It was said that at full production they went through 1500 board feet of cedar every year." 

It's not particularly valuable as a collector's item.  So,  have you any suggestions about what to do with this cedar chest?

March's Happiness

I've been re-reading Gretchen Rubin's book, The Happiness Project each month.  Her focus for March was aiming higher in her work.  Her weekly goals included


- Launch a blog
- Enjoy the fun of failure
- Ask for help
- Work smart
- Enjoy now


I might have been tempted to skip over this chapter; after all, I'm retired!  But I never saw myself doing nothing after I left work, I always intended to pursue all those varied interests for which working didn't leave me sufficient time or energy.    As it happens there is much wisdom to mine from this chapter.

She talks about how happy people perform better than unhappy ones.  It seems pretty obvious to me.   She points out that people who enjoy their work don't need to rely on the success/rewards that may or may not come at the end; they've enjoyed the journey.  However, she also talks about having changed her career from law to writing on the basis that she didn't read about lawyerly things for fun like her colleagues did; she wrote books for fun.  She says:

I love writing, reading, research, note taking, analysis, and critcism...I've always spent most of my free time reading.  I take voluminous notes for not apparently reason.  I majored in English...

In these statements she could be my twin; well, I almost majored in English.  I just couldn't see what I would do for a living other than teach.  Perhaps I should have pursued a writing career, but as it happened I found a job that I loved.  It involved giving advice to people on the phone, collection and analysis of data to solve problems, writing reports and public speaking.  I even liked meetings because I learned loads at them.  In fact, the best thing was that my work involved continuous learning and then sharing of knowledge.  So, I think I found the work that I was meant to find.  Sadly, it just wasn't quite as much fun to do here in Britain, but never mind.  I get to do many of these things in writing my blog, just about a whole bunch of different topics.  So, obviously, I'd already taken Gretchen's first step.


She talks about the seeming conflict between being one's self  and 'Fake it till you feel it', another piece of accepted wisdom.  One of her commandments is 'Be Gretchen', but another is to 'Act the way I want to feel'.  She decided that the 'Fake it till you feel it' approach is fine for changing the mood of the moment, but not for making longer term life decisions.  Gretchen quotes W.H. Auden,

"Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass without impunity." 

I don't want to think how many of my 56 years I spent going against my grain trying to make myself fit into a mold of a different shape.  I wish I'd read Auden long ago.  


"Enjoy the fun of failure" and "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly" are two ideas I constantly have to apply to my running and my sewing, not to mention trying other new things:  home decorating ideas, recipes, exercise classes. 


I was with a friend the other day whose first language is not English and though he speaks it exceptionally well, writing is more difficult.  I told him I had some spare time and he could ask for many more favours than he realised.  He said he wasn't used to asking for help.  I had to admit I'm not either.  That said, most of my ambitions are around developing skills for which I'm thinking classes are the way forward, so that is my plan for getting help.

When she talks about 'enjoy now' she mentions the 'arrival fallacy'.  I lived under this delusion for ages - many of us do.  We know that things will be better when we turn 16, 18 or 21; we have our own house, have a better job, the kids start school, summer comes, I get this project at work finished...  I did finally work out that whatever 'whens' arrive, the wait for 'when' is real life, how it actually is, and likely how it always will be.  If I want a different life, I have to change it or me; not wait for something outside there to happen.

Gretchen applies this to work, that people need to enjoy what they are doing while they are waiting for that promotion, that book deal, whatever.  In this respect, this is one way in which work and retirement are very different for me:  I'm not waiting for anything else to happen so I can be happier.  I'm thinking this is pretty much as good as it gets!

Do you feel that you could 'Aim Higher' in some aspect of your life?

Fit for A Monkey

I ran across a curious tea bag the other day.  Being part of British culture, individual tea bags in envelopes seem to collect in this house like those little packets of salt and sugar.  They come in goodie bags for races, samples through the post and from hotel rooms no doubt. 

I was perplexed to read the following on the bag branded PG Tips:

PG tips

3 Steps to brewing the best cup of PG tips tea. 

Brewing methods may vary but we suggest:

Use one bag per 250ml of freshly boiled water

1.  Allow the tea to brew for 1-2 minutes or to preferred strength, then remove the tea bag.

2.  Always use fresh milk where possible.  And there you have it, a delicious brew fit for a monkey.

What on earth did they mean by that?  Thank you, Internet, for solving yet another mystery (and are there no bounds of imagination used by advertisers?).  

Bikes in Belgium

I discovered a photo I snapped of a magazine page at the library about Pashley bicycles. I keep toying with the idea, but no, I already own two bikes I rarely ride and Pashley's are expensive.  I think I might ride more often if I had a step-through (with a cute basket!), but it's not a gamble I'm going to take in the near future.  (But they are pretty.)

In any case, it reminded me that I never showed you photos of all the amazing bikes we saw in Belgium.  In fact, there are a number of things I didn't show you from that trip, which I will do in future.  Travel agents around here advertise 'City Breaks' or 'Short Breaks' which just weekend trips.  Just think of these long-after-the-trip posts as one of those.

Belgium is flat like Holland so cycling is relatively easy, particularly as bicycles have right of way in most places. 

People apparently commute quite a bit by bike and by train. 

Love her hair and her outfit!

There are a lot of cycles to be seen at some British train stations, but neither Bill nor I had ever seen this phenomenal number of parked bicycles in one place.  You see them at station after station in Belgium.





Also, everyone rides, not just youngsters or young men. 

Business men, older women, stylish women in high heels, entire families.  I could have shown you an amazing young woman riding down the street wearing a purple mini-skirt and tall platform heels with bright orange tights on her long legs, but 'someone' elbowed me to point her out just as I was snapping her photo.




The bikes themselves can be quite unusual, with bits welded on or trailing behind in really amazing ways. 



We found an interesting collection just outside of a primary school.

One could haul all sorts in that wheel barrow shaped thing in the front:




This seemed pretty straight-forward, just lift up the wheel of the child's bike, weld it to your bike and away you pedal!

I'm not clear who sits where on this one!

Some of the bikes were motorised, it has to be admitted.   

I guess this young man didn't want to get his smart leather jacket sweaty.



And Bill couldn't help but admire this unusual bike as well. Or is it a trike?

We took stock one evening sitting outside at a pavement cafe at rush hour one evening:  we only saw one or two people who could remotely be considered overweight.   Then again, the cyclists are probably not a representative sample, just the fittest end of the spectrum.   Cycling, along with cafe pavements and wearing scarves! seems to be a major characteristic of the European city life.

Another Tiny Thing

I always find it amusing when I read how one can 'update' one's home by purchasing new throw pillows.  The articles always feature lovely, vibrant coloured modern fabrics, often shiny or with buttons.  I think they are lovely, but I love old fabric prints. 

Like this cabbage rose pillow that belonged to Bill's mom.  It's been a sad, understuffed pillow for some time, but when I re-cycled some pillow covers that came in the motorhome, I found I had some spare fillers.

I knew just where to put a couple of them.  The only hitch was that there was no zipper, but it was only a half hour's work to cut and restitch one side.



Do you prefer 'modern' or 'vintage' when it comes to your throw pillows?

Sunk Costs

This is the last of the MBA Monday posts (via DailyLit) that I'm going to talk about, and this is about Sunk Costs:

Sunk costs are time and money (and other resources) you have already spent on a project, investment or some other effort. They have been sunk into the effort and most likely you cannot get them back.

Of course this doesn't just apply to businesses, but to everyday life.  I just have to look around the house, in my closet, at my bookshelves, my sewing stash (though most of it came to me free) and  my hoard collection of magazines to see prime examples! 

The important thing about sunk costs is when it comes time to make a decision about the project or investment, you should NOT factor in the sunk costs in that decision. You should treat them as gone already and make the decision based on what is in front of you in terms of costs and opportunities.

He goes on with another business example, but I know this whole idea of Sunk Costs haunts people when they think about clearing out their clutter.   They punish themselves for clothing mistakes, hang onto books they feel they 'should' re-read, treat magazines as a source of encyclopedic knowledge to be treasured.  A downside of being interested in re-fashioning is that every lovely piece of fabric looks like it has 'potential'.  (Have you worked out yet that for 'They', read 'Shelley'?).

Several major blessings of late have been that Bill's son and son-in-law have each got interested in running, so I could easily pull out all the Runners World magazines for re-distribution.  The local community centre where I go sewing is having a book sale in a few months.  As all our books had to be boxed up in preparation for Bill's painting project.  The process of re-placing those books in the shelves has presented the perfect opportunity for re-assessing ownership.  Even Bill has been culling his collection.  I have been offering my books to the sewing ladies first, in return for all the nice books and fabrics they have given me, then the rest go to the centre.  The ladies often read their selections and bring them back for donation the following week.

It has just occurred to me that, having decided that I don't do cross-stitch projects any longer, I could go through that drawer and pull out some items that a few of the sewing ladies would enjoy!  I might get over those Sunk Costs yet!

Do you look around and see a lot of Sunk Costs?