TN Museum

We headed out of the library and up to the TN Museum.  Along the way, we crossed a couple of streets and Ben reached to hold my hand out of habit.  Instead of holding his little hand, his fingers wrapped around my hand, it was another reminder of how fast time is passing.  My baby has bigger hands and feet than I do.  It won't be long, maybe Christmas, and he will be taller than me. Waa

I love the streets in Nashville, they are so busy and there's so much to see.  We bustled along with the lunch crowd and took the long way to the museum.  The weather was warm and breezy, but not hot-thank goodness!  It was a great day to just walk around and see things.

We arrived at the museum and headed down to the first level, we cruised through pretty quickly, spending about 90 minutes.  It could easily take a whole day looking at everything.  At one exhibit of a log cabin, Chan wanted to play Spot The Anachronism.  When did she learn that word?

Jake and I think this looks like the alien from Alien.

Jake wanted to be 'as awesome as possible' while in the stocks.

Chan pulled her hand out and pushed the lock pin out of the hole.  She would have been in the stocks about 3 minutes, probably getting put back in them right after for being a witch.

This was a revolving exhibit, we all know how I love those so I can play with shutter speeds!

My favorite of all the quilts.  There's something about the simplicity of stick people that appeals to my inner artist.  Maybe...because that's all I can manage!

I dreamed about these gloves the night after we saw this.

That's pretty well the bulk of most of my internal issues.  LOL

The single most uninspired cop-out photo I have taken in a while!  Go me!

You can tell they are siblings, he's trying to stick something up her nose.

I know it's exotic Egyptian jewelry, but all I can think is 'scary clown'.

This guy reminded me of the Stikfas I bought for Matt years ago.  They are still in their boxes on the shelf, I don't even think he opened them. 

Ben West

 Matt took these.
It's me, doing one of my 4 favorite things: Driving!

 Matt has this week off, we have been working on the house and yard all week, the weather has not been camping-worthy and we have not been any further than the nearest Lowe's for more paint all week.

Thursday had the best weather forecast, so we decided to get out of the house and go somewhere.  We had planned all along to go to Anniston with friends, but that fell through, so instead of going without them, we decided to go to Nashville and see the King Tut exhibit at the TN State Museum.

Our first stop was the Ben West library parking garage, 2 blocks from the museum.  We went in to have our ticket stamped and the kids wanted to go see the children's section while we were there, so we climbed the huge marble staircase up to the children's wing.  We could see kids playing in the courtyard, fountains splashing, moms setting up picnic lunches on little tables scattered under the trees. 

Inside, the swarm of librarians were reshelving books, helping kids at the computer stations and checking out books to a small daycare group that had been in for storytime.  The children's section of the library would hold 4 of our local library buildings and is nearly the size of the entire Huntsville downtown branch.  There is a craft room, a children's theater, study rooms, rooms with tables for small group meetings, rooms with copiers and binders and such for printing out nearly anything. 

The Ben West Library is one of the top 10 libraries in the entire US.  It is beautiful and huge and we used to go there every single week, the kids thought books came in the thousands and were free to take and bring back.  That riding escalators from the parking garage was what everyone did, that puppeteers and ballerinas gave free shows every Friday everywhere.

I could have cried when I looked around.  We gave up so much moving here, Alabama is SO far behind in so many things and I wish at times we had never lived near a big city, that I was not so aware of what could be.

 This is the mouse hole, I have a pic somewhere of Chan still in diapers looking at this same house front.

 Tim Tichenor, who designed many of the puppets and wrote many of the plays the marionette team performs at the library is in the above pic, on the left.  Walt Disney is 3rd from the left.

In the Courtyard Gallery between the stairwell and the TN room, there is always a display, usually of local artists or a traveling exhibit.  Chan is checking out the paintings of the Freedom Riders by Charlotta Janssen.

Painting

Wow, I had no idea going into this project how much would be involved!  We have painted the trim 3 different times in the last 7 years and I have painted the bathroom and kitchen floor and other things in the house, furniture and what-not.  But I have never taken on the house itself.

We have needed to repaint a couple of years now, there are chips in the paint here and there from things hitting the house or where the wood has been damaged by rain and we have gone over those places, repairing wood and sealing off around windows and doors and so on.  Without the exact color to cover chinks in the paint, we have covered them with white...which protected the siding just fine but did nothing for the house's self-esteem.

I had the color in mind-a faded blue, like denim.  I even had the paint chips-stacks of them in fact-and I looked at them and envisioned the house that color and really wanted to have a nice, subtle clean/fresh coat of color on there.  I even did the color swap thing on the camera and took pictures with the 'new' color on the house to see how it looked.

Then we went yesterday to get more spray paint to finish a project I had going and I decided to get a couple gallons and start on the porch.  As I picked up the chip that had the chosen light blue color on it, I saw the one next to it.  oooo.  Blue Phlox, same color as the flowers, as lilacs and irises and snowball bushes.  That bright purple-blue that we all love.  We decided to go for the much more bold color and if we did not like it, we were out $50 and a few hours of time.

I had just pressure-washed the porch and the house walls and eaves, so it was ready to start on.  The kids got going with the rollers and Matt and I worked on the cracks and details.  Then we decided to do the ceiling the same color-we paint it light blue every year and it keeps away the wasps.  The last 2 years we painted it, it looked white 3 months later and we had all kids of trouble with dirt daubers and wasps.  It won't fade this time around!  Not in a year anyway.

As the color dried to a lighter hue, we all stood back and looked at it.  It's not trimmed out or even filled in all the way yet, but we LOVE it. 

We were back out this morning to finish up the gallon we opened yesterday before the rain hit and Matt was painting the wall and saying how he thought it was a great color.  Ben said he thought it was beautiful.  Even Chan and Jake commented on how happy the color was, how blue is calming and now we have a serene house.  The most I got out of everyone about the other, lighter colors was 'it's fine'.  I am glad we went with the brighter shade, it certainly is a big difference over the faded grey green.  It feels happy.

We went and got the price for replacing the fascia boards-which we can paint before we put them up, which will be nice!  That's next, after we finish the porch and the front of the house.  2 gallons will barely make a dent in the whole of the house, at the rate we are using it, we will need 8 or even 10 more gallons, plus several gallons of white for the trim.  We are going to do the porch first, then the remainder of the front of the house.  The bathroom floor in the hall needs to be replaced, so that will be next in order of necessity. 

Then Chan's surgery, then we can start on the rest of the painting once that's paid for.  So it won't be done all in one go, but it's underway at least!

The color looks different in all of the shots!  You will just have to come see it when it's done, I guess.  : D 

July 4th

Good News Friday!

First, Matt is off early today and has next week off!  Eep!  : D  We are going to home improve ALL week (and swim!).

Secondly, Powerade and ears of corn are on sale and we stocked back up (and, um, peach Popsicles).  Also, the local grocery store is giving away cold soda and hot dogs all day.  They offered Jake a hot dog and he said he didn't want trichinosis.  I need to encourage him to just say 'no thanks'.

Third, we read this article today and sadly, it amused us to the point of having to wipe our eyes to keep reading.  "How did you get the inspiration to create such a loud sonar?"  "Uhhh, no comment".  Also, we have these guys in our little corner pond, I plan to check further into the whole thing this afternoon.  If Bobby or Gina were here, it would have been harder to recover, collectively, we average about 13 years old.  I am reminded of the ice cream shell incident of last Saturday and how well Dave held it together while we all 3 nearly collapsed with the giggles.

Last, well, I have no last item.  I got to chat with Jacki today and that always sets me up for a warm and fuzzy glow, I love, love, love my friend J.  : ) 

I was contacted via facebook by an old boyfriend this past week.  Slightly scandalous, it was a very dramatic break-up, my last long-term relationship before I got married...some 3 years later.  The kind of break-up where I would sit in the tub with the shower running and cry, months after the event.  Ahhh, nothing like that feeling of total heart shards, I wrote bad poetry afterward, too.  I'd love to find that one poem...hmmm...

At any rate, he is actually doing really well, has kids, wife, career, eyeballs.  All the things I damned him of when I was 20.  LOL!  I think it was good to check in, it stopped him being the age he was in my head, it allowed him to apologize, which I needed-sad as it is-and now he's a dad off in California and he's in his mid 30's and not 'that guy' anymore.  It broke some kind of...thing...in my head, something I was surprised to find I was still harboring, an ill will maybe, or even just a sulky spot.  I mean really, I am a catch, he was a fool. (I established in an earlier post that I have no shame.)  Now I can let it go, like the books about beekeeping and craft projects I gave away last year.  I feel better not having that around, even if I never looked at it.  Does that make sense? 

Now we can go on as friends, have something totally different, something normal.  Matt's all for it, I think he knows that 20 was my very worst year in SO many ways.  If I can get rid of some of that baggage, I am sure I will be better for it.  I love that he supports everything I take on, even if it's just my own inner angst. 

Oh hey, I DO have a last good news.  My check engine light came on last weekend and I took out that part and repaired it AGAIN and put it back in and today, the light went off again!  I know WHY the light is on-air hose leak-it's just that seeing it is like seeing a wasp or a cop, it's that same level of potential crappy encounter.  That's all the news from the castle.