Stream of consciousness

I'm sitting in a bar. 15 minutes to tennis courts. 65 minutes to get there. Some techno music on the sound system. Sports news on the abundant TVs.+

I'm sitting in my USA Quidditch t-shirt for reasons outside this particular consciousness steam. Talked to my sister about how to solve a particular little relationship puzzle involving her son, the registration papers on a car given him by his distant father and the need to preserve a fragile detente in support of having everyone who said son loves at his upcoming graduation and to have them civil and likable to one another. I think we nailed it.

Wondering why there's a Cowboys bandana hanging above the bar when it's April and 2 other Dallas teams are currently in the playoffs. (Hockey and Basketball)

Also wondering why the interim between work and tennis compels me to want to write and yet leaves me feeling rushed and unable to organize my thoughts.

Waiting for tennis, thinking about connecting the dots

I was reading back over my post yesterday. It was hurried and it fails to make the point I was trying to make. But it made a couple of other good points, so I'm not going to mess with it.

Going back to the subject of context, I'll repeat that I don't expect to find a profound meaning by connecting the dots between the random things that happen to me. (I'm not ruling that out either, though!) Instead, my point is that by seeing patterns and themes in the random things that happen to us, we can learn things. We can learn things about ourselves. We can learn things about our world. We can learn things about each other.

That's what I meant when I said, "finding meaning where there is none."

And in the words of Forest Gump, "that's all I have to say about that."

Finding context where none exists

I was driving to tennis tonight and had a hankering for donuts. I recalled a Krispy Kreme just a few blocks out of my way. So I detoured, ordered 2 traditional glazed and wondered.

I wondered because, like you probably do, I travel through life on most days in a very disconnected, disjointed pattern that makes sense only to myself.

But most days themes pop up. And I've decided to start trying to find those themes every day.

It's not so much that I'm looking for meaning. Honestly. I don't believe the world is trying to speak to me or any such nonsense. (Although I do believe in God and that He is speaking to me) Instead, the plan is to insert meaning where there is none.

For example, donuts made me think about context. (BTW context means "the parts of something written or spoken that immediately precede and follow a word or passage and clarify its meaning"). So, maybe the next time I crave a donut, I can stop to think of the context. What happened before? What happened after?

Another thought about context. I saw a meme today about the # 24. (Kobe Bryant, Jeff Gordon, some other sports figures I didn't know). This put my dear ShyAnn in context. She was a young light taken from this world too soon. She wore #24 in her too brief basketball career. It's not as though those other figures' fame gives context to her life. It's that her life gives me a rich context to appreciate those other people.

Context. Themes. The texture and flavor that we can enjoy living in a fast-paced, multi-media world when we take the time to connect the dots!

Tiny Home Living (small home living) - Part 2

In this post, I'll talk about the floor plan.

We bought a shell from Graceland. (See their website here: http://www.gracelandportablebuildings.com/)

We liked Graceland because of the quality of the traditional 2x4 construction. The shell we bought was already on their lot. It had been ordered and the purchaser's deal fell through. So, we got a good price. However, this meant we had to accept the external walls as is. That meant that I had to work with the position of the 3 front windows, the one on the end wall to the left of the front door and the front door itself. We added the window in the bedroom and the back door ourselves. The back window shown in the floor plan never materialized. That is our West wall and - in Texas - not a wall to be messed with.

The internal walls were our design (and our handiwork).

There are some furniture pieces missing from the drawing. My cute farm-style breakfast table is located just to the left of the front door. My adjustable stand-up computer desk is located straight back from the front door in the corner created by the bathroom wall. My granny's antique buffet is in the corner to the right of the back door (instead of the aforementioned window that never materialized). My mother's antique steamer trunk is beside the entertainment center in the living room. My husband's grandfather's cedar chest is behind the couch instead of the buffet (as shown).

The bathroom is spacious and one of the things I'd do differently is try to save space by making it smaller - somehow.

The vision for the bedroom is a bunch of built-ins and his-and-hers closets opposite one another as shown. To date, the cabinets and one closet (hers) are finished - with drawers and the second closet still to come. Currently, we just use the cabinets like shelves without drawers.

The kitchen isn't finished as shown. It is currently missing the cabinets on the interior wall. We also didn't do the corner on the interior wall. We simply stopped the counter at that wall. So, we have more of an L-shaped kitchen rather than a U-shape. But it is HUGE, so there is still plenty of room and time to add the cabinets to make it a U-shape.

Tiny home living (small home living), Part 1

The homestead in February.

I've been asked four times this week (twice on Facebook, twice in real life) to share about the "tiny home" my husband and I built. I'm up to the task, excited about sharing even. I love our little slice of paradise. But, I feel the need to preface everything I'm about to say with several very serious disclaimers:

• Ours is just a small home, it's not really a "tiny home". Ours is 600 square feet. And, we have a large-ish travel trailer that we're able to hook up at the drop of a hat for visitors. We also have a nice garage/shop.
• Building a tiny home yourself is not easy. My husband worked on the project full-time for more than 3 months - from site preparation through to certificate of occupancy. And, he's an extremely resourceful guy with many, many years of hands-on work experience.
• Building ANY home yourself is not easy. The home is never "finished". You'll always have a project to complete. You'll always have a part of the house that you want to forget. You'll always have a "failure" of some sort staring you in the face every day. (Most of the failures staring me in the face are my own contributions to the project. For example, I had the bright idea of using paneling instead of painting walls - big mistake. I had the bright idea of using drawers instead of base cabinets in the kitchen - drawers are REALLY hard to get right.)
• Building a tiny home IS really cheap. But you should only try it if you meet the following criteria:
• You have some land
• The municipality/county in which your land is located allows tiny homes. Otherwise, you'll waste a lot of time filing paperwork and getting variances without any guarantee you'll be successful.
• You have a lot of cash
• OR, you have good credit and VERY low credit card balances.
• You have a lot of patience (and emotional resilience) dealing with setbacks and weather delays.
• You have a huge desire for spending your evenings reading a bunch of instructions, construction code and how-to information. Because, let me tell ya', all that previous, hands-on work experience only gets you so far. The second you begin working on an unfamiliar installation such as electrical feeds or on-demand water heaters, all your hands-on work experience goes out the window and it's time to hit the books.
• You have a huge desire to do NOTHING EXCEPT work on your house during your spare time for about a year or more.

Now that I have the disclaimers out of the way, continue to the next post.

Critical Thinking: a goal

I'm getting a jump on a New Year tradition. I read this information today and I plan to use it as a guide:

 "Critical thinking is self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fair-minded way. People who think critically consistently attempt to live rationally, reasonably, empathically. They are keenly aware of the inherently flawed nature of human thinking when left unchecked. They strive to diminish the power of their egocentric and sociocentric tendencies. They use the intellectual tools that critical thinking offers – concepts and principles that enable them to analyze, assess, and improve thinking. They work diligently to develop the intellectual virtues of intellectual integrity, intellectual humility, intellectual civility, intellectual empathy, intellectual sense of justice and confidence in reason. They realize that no matter how skilled they are as thinkers, they can always improve their reasoning abilities and they will at times fall prey to mistakes in reasoning, human irrationality, prejudices, biases, distortions, uncritically accepted social rules and taboos, self-interest, and vested interest. They strive to improve the world in whatever ways they can and contribute to a more rational, civilized society. At the same time, they recognize the complexities often inherent in doing so. They avoid thinking simplistically about complicated issues and strive to appropriately consider the rights and needs of relevant others. They recognize the complexities in developing as thinkers, and commit themselves to life-long practice toward self-improvement. They embody the Socratic principle: The unexamined life is not worth living , because they realize that many unexamined lives together result in an uncritical, unjust, dangerous world." ~ Linda Elder, September, 2007

 I found this paragraph on a page here: http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766

On dressing up

I just saw a bunch of stats on CBS Sunday Morning about Thanksgiving. One of them said "7% of us will dress up". I have a feeling this used to be a larger number.

My first reaction to this was relief. (I hate to dress up). My second reaction was a bit of sadness because I recall some Rockwellian photos of families sitting around a table in their 'Sunday best' while Father began carving the turkey. I began to wonder why - as is my wont.

I wonder if our propensity in times past toward dressing up for special occasions was a reaction to our former agrarian and industrial laborer circumstances? If we got dirty and worked hard during the week, then when we had holidays we wanted them to be a stark contrast to those circumstances.

Now, such a large proportion of us earn our living at desks. And, even those of us who work in physical jobs would probably say they prefer the modern ways of their job over the same way that job would have been done 20, 50 or 100 years ago. And, most of us who work physically have a prescribed mode of dress or a uniform for our job just as surely as the desk worker has a dress code of some sort.

Therefore, we enjoy dressing however the heck we want to dress on holidays - again in stark contrast to our workaday lives.

Just wondering...as is my wont.

A link to the Wiki page where I found the free-use image