A House IS A Home

May 10, 2014May 10, 2014 / still a dreamer / 11 Comments

You’ve all heard that line from a song, “A house is not a home …”, and while that’s true in some ways, I beg to differ. A house is surely a home when you love where you live.

As I’m crawling out from a week with way too much work, I’m contemplating cleaning off my wonderful deep porches, and getting together what it takes to sit out there, pot some plants, etc.. This reminds me of how lucky I’ve been that the houses I’ve lived in in this side of the state have all had fabulous porches, sometimes more than one. Then I drifted further in my continued wonder/curiosity that every place I’ve lived since I left home and left my college high-rise dorm has been in a specific time period, 1810 – 1920. So for those of you that love homes, I thought I might share some of my photographic, and other house-related, memories.

The house you see here is the oldest I lived in. The front of the house, top photo, is 1810 and that was added on to the smaller part of the house built in 1742. The 1742 portion is now the dining room, and has another room above it, connected by a narrow circular staircase. It was once the home of the farm workers who worked for the gentleman farmer who lived across the road. In the photo just above, what looks like a large addition in the back is the original house. The small section in front with hedges was my entrance and housed a full kitchen, a full bath and a huge walk-in closet, (just to give you a sense of scale.) This was added on about 30 years ago by a woman who restored the house down to the last authentic detail of each period and added those modernizations.

The dining room has original, unpainted wide-plank floors, a beamed ceiling and a walk-in stone fireplace with a bread oven and original wrought iron hooks to hold pots of cooking food and meat. When I was looking for my next place to live, I walked into this room, and knew this was it. It was so warm and cozy; I loved sitting in this room. The 1810 part of the house was built by the gentleman farmer and included two stories, a full attic and basement. He brought his family to live here after his home across the road had a fire. The 1810 portion included two large rooms in the front and the same above with another full bath. The main bedroom was approximately 18′ x 18′, and did I mention, every room had a fireplace, (all non-working, which was a good thing for me, as I know nothing about building fires, properly or otherwise.)

I painted much of the house when I moved in, keeping more or less to what was there before, but a bit nicer. The bedroom had in it, left by the previous owner, this gorgeous replica antique rope bed which she had custom built. The cats loved playing underneath it, and it was quite an experience at first, sleeping that high up. This house, excepting the dining room, had wonderful 9′ ceilings throughout.

Because it was a stone farmhouse, the walls were about 18″ thick and provided outstanding built-in space for cats to enjoy at every window. Above, dining room window with Claude.

If there were any drawbacks to this house, I’d say the heating system, which was forced air and left the house feeling cold again as soon as the heat went off, but on the flip-side, it felt like air-conditioning in the summer with nothing more than a dehumidifier in the DR and an occasional fan. And then there were more than enough small creatures – centipedes the size of alligators and plenty of field mice. The centipedes were too big too kill, for me anyway, so they got used to being herded, and the mice? I had a humane mousetrap and plenty of farmland all around me where they could start a new life.

These were a small price to pay to live here – two porches, deck on the back, a wide circular staircase in front and bright, airy rooms upstairs, cozy ones down. It was a great house, and indeed it was a home.

Stay tuned … we’ll soon be going forward to 1870.

“There is no place like home.” – L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Being in the Moment

April 14, 2014 / still a dreamer / 4 Comments

“You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.”

– Thomas Merton

Searching for Signs of Life

April 3, 2014 / still a dreamer / 8 Comments

No one would argue – at least not up this neck of the woods – that this has been a long, long winter. So when I went walking on a recent sunshiny day, I went searching for signs of life – Spring life! And here’s a small sampling of what I found.

One of two brave little wild crocus poking its head up
among the dead grass and leaves.

Bunches of daffodils were just waiting for a little more sunlight, a little more warmth. While I didn’t find any in bloom yet, there were truly “crowds of daffodils” everywhere, in people’s yards, by the river, in the midst of wilder areas I passed, ready to grace us with their golden trumpets.

Hiding and shy within the shade of an old abandoned garage, these snowdrops just pushed aside the dead leaves — I may be small, but I am mighty!

Here and there in yards that would soon have busy people raking and clearing and mulching were occasional small bunches of crocus in bloom.

“Never stop pedaling to power your dreams.” ~Terri Guillemets

You pedal, little crocus. You pedal!

The Rules We Make and Live By

March 15, 2014 / still a dreamer / 2 Comments

Those of you why stop by regularly know that there are always two books to the right – most likely a novel of some sort and below that a metaphysical, spiritual or self-help book. You may also notice that the top book changes fairly regularly and the lower one may stay there for quite some time. Although it may look like I’m an inordinately slow reader, it hovers there because I usually am “working” the book, i.e., taking my time and attending to the lessons the author has to offer.

I am really savoring Living in the Light by Shakti Gawain. In the broadest terms it is about becoming more aware of and living by your own inner guidance, learning to recognize and trust our own innate intuition, thereby creating a new life and world. The book focuses on getting to know the many aspects of ourselves and at the end of each chapter, Gawain has included exercises and meditations. The chapter I have just completed is titled Authoritarian and Rebel, two aspects that are often alive and well in each of us. To the degree that we are unconscious of these qualities, we may experience related difficulties in our lives, not the least of which is interference in hearing and trusting our own intuition.

Gawain’s exercise at the end asks, after you have read the chapter, that you identify and write down some of your rules and behaviors that feel demanding and controlling, (overly authoritarian), to you. She lists the categories of work, money, relationships and sex, encouraging you to add your own if you wish. (I did.) Gawain then asks you to do the same with rebellious behaviors, and finally to drop down into a deeper place and look at what you really want, to find what is true for you.

There can be quite a difference in what we’ve written and what we really want … surprisingly so. A brief, but related digression – on my desktop at the moment is an image of Buddha, and the following quote by him: “All that we are is the result of all we have thought.” Comparing that list to what I really want is quite an eye opener, and tells me in what way my work is cut out for me and reveals afresh how my thoughts are creating my life, as Buddha said. I want to make more changes.

There is always so much to know, so much to learn, and while a book such as Living in the Light may guide us, the work is always our own. We take many journeys in our lives and perhaps the greatest journey is the one within, for it is there we find the answers we need to know, which when brought to light, transform not just ourselves, but the world around us.

Doodle 4 Google 2014 (and my idea)

March 14, 2014 / still a dreamer

Have a creative child at home or know one? They have the possibility of winning $30,000 in college scholarship funds and a $50,000 Google for Education technology grant for his or her school by entering the Doodle for Google contest.

It’s open to kids K-12, but the deadline for entries is March 20th! So get those kids thinking and drawing. This year the theme is …. “If I Could Invent One Thing to Make the World a Better Place…” OK, so grab a kid and go here and get started!

Now when I first saw that theme, I got so excited I didn’t see, (or remember), that Doodle 4 Google is for kids and I just went off with my own ideas. Here’s mine – it’s a booth that anyone can go in – it’s free to everyone – inside the booth, there are buttons you can push and they have names like “No More Anger”, “No More Fears”, “No More Anxiety”, “Forgive Everyone” and so on. It would be a limited palette, but you get the idea. You close your eyes and are bathed in white light and in about 5 minutes, your anger, fears, etc. are washed away.

No fee, no confession, no angst – just a desire to live a more loving life. Maybe there’d be an optional survey button before you leave – a Yes or No button answering “Are you feeling more loving now? Because you are loved.”

I haven’t worked out all the details, obviously, but I guess it’s a new take on that old concept of free love. No judgment, no punishment, no expectations – just a way to get back on our path of being and feeling more love. See you on the line!