A Road Less Travelled

Nearly random thought of the day- One should never try to catch a knife. If a knife is falling one should just let it fall. Also, one should not inadvertently catch a knife with one’s leg. It hurts.

Addendum- Yes, all of my limbs are still attached. The point of the knife just gave me a bad nick in my leg. After someone contacted me and asked if I was okay I realized I didn’t mention that I was perfectly fine. So, I’m okay. Thanks for your concern. If anyone was concerned.

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For those who are interested in making your own duct tape sandals, I have created a tutorial here. Please do let me know whether it’s helpful, if the wording is clear, and all that sort of thing.

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Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, cats and dogs, bugs and wildlife– We, the creators and proprietoresses of A Road Less Travelled, are pleased to announce the grand opening of a Frequently Asked Questions page. If you direct your attention to the right side of the screen you will no doubt notice the page. No, your other right.

Find the answers to questions you have always wanted to ask us. Find the answers to all the question you never thought to ask us. Find some answers to questions you really didn’t care to ask us. Or not.

Do enjoy and if you have a question you would like us to add just leave a comment with your name, rank, serial number and question. Thank you for your time.

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 Today I refurbished my duct tape sandals. Just a replacement for a frayed ribbon and a few strips of duct tape for the worn spots, and they’re good for another season. This year I even thought to use a drop of clear nail polish on the ends of the ribbon. Now my sandals could go for years on half a roll of duct tape.

Laugh if you will, but it feels good to have my feet in my duct tape sandals again. Decadent soul that I am, I even have plans to make a second pair in a different color. Ah, summer…

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If I’d gone to college I’d probably be starting my fourth year this fall. That’s rather an odd reflection. I could be most of the way to a degree. I can’t say I regret my decision, but it does sound so nice to be close to finishing something. I’d have something to show for the last few years of my life. Something that says I really did accomplish something. Something that says I’ve completed a stage of my life.

As it is, the next time I’ve completed a stage of life, I’ll have a ring on my finger, and I don’t seem any closer to that than I was three years ago.

I’m not usually the one yearning for social approval. If I believe in what I’m doing, well then, everyone else is just wrong, and they’ll have to deal with their consequences while I deal with my own life. I could be a firebrand revolutionary without a qualm. But right now I’d like to have to something I can point to that shows all those normal people out there that yes, I really am doing something worthwhile.

I could tell you about my course load right now: Friendship 201, (very, very) Basic Photography, a review of Pre-Calculus and Practical Sewing Skills Upgrade for starters. There’s a remedial Anti-Procrastination course I keep flunking out of… It’s a subset of an ongoing Time Management class. Then there’s How to Constantly Feel Like an Idiot and Still Keep Trying in 3 Painfully Difficult Steps. I think that must be extracurricular, because it’s a thread that runs through everything else. It doesn’t sound that impressive does it?

There are other bits and pieces that don’t even qualify to get on my faux curriculum, because they just pop up and they’re gone. It’s just life it keeps happening whether I can qualify and quantify it or not. Sometimes I look at college a little wistfully because it would have worked my brain a little harder and challenged my soul a lot less, and both of those sound very pleasant. But I look at those bits and pieces and I know this is where I want to be.

I never would have had the courage to choose this path if I’d known what I would have to go through. If I knew what was coming in the rest of my life I’d probably chicken out now. But I’m glad that I’ve learned what I’ve learned. I’m glad that God will bring me safely through whatever happens next. I’m glad that I don’t have to depend on the opinion of the general populace to make my desicions in life.

I’m also glad that even though I don’t have any big milestones coming up, there are some things in my life I can count as having finished. The book Gabrielle loaned me last week. A crocheting project that’s been hanging around for months. And sometimes, even a blog post.

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  Today Theresa and I finally trimmed each other’s hair. We’ve been meaning to do this for a while, and today finally worked out. I think it was the combination of James being out of town and Theresa and I both being kind of tired which spurred us on to accomplish this monumental task. (This almost makes sense if you consider that we had a very light schedule today because of those things.)

After it took all of ten minutes to complete our set task we decided to go the extra mile and put goop on our hair. No, not henna–we have not yet joined the ranks of wild and crazy henna people, though I’m contemplating a henna-based purplish burgundy color for my hair.  No, we went with the hot oil treatment kind of goop, specifically oil, honey and egg. Which is why I’m now sitting here with a plastic bag on my head. (Over my hair only, I should hasten to clarify before my great-grandmother rolls over in her grave.)

I’m sitting here with sticky, goopy hair containted under a plastic bag in the hopes that when I wash the goop out my hair with be shinier, healthier and generally have more joie de vivre. Yeah, that sounds really sensible, doesn’t it? Hey, at least I don’t have cucumber on my face…

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Yesterday was Tuesday or, as I like to call it, Laundry Day. That makes today Wednesday or, as I like to call it, Laundry Folding Day.

There is something about laundry that is both relaxing and endlessly aggravating. Every day around here we wear about a load of clothing. And then once or twice a week the washer runs all day and the dryer spits out clean clothes. That’s the aggravating part. Most of my tasks have almost no lasting power. I wash a dish only to put more food on it. I change a diaper knowing full well that soon the clean will become dirty. Laundry is the same way. Sometimes I don’t even get to folding it before it gets dirty again. And yet somehow I don’t mind so much.

I love folding laundry. There is so much calm and peace to be found in taking a heaping basket of chaos and disorder and transforming it into neat, ordered piles. It is no longer laundry; once the laundry is folded it becomes clothing. It is the magic of order and relabeling.

Today is Wednesday. Some of you might have noticed. That makes today Laundry Folding Day. I spent two and a half hours turning six baskets of useless, chaotic clutter into eight baskets of neat, sorted, orderly clothing and linens. I was putting away a stack of napkins when Crystal stopped me to ask me a question. She looked at the napkins and said out of nowhere “That’s pretty.” I looked down and, you know what, it was pretty. And then I put it away and it was still pretty.

Currently almost all of the only dirty clothes in the house that I know about are on people’s bodies at the moment. Almost all of the clean clothes are neatly folded, waiting in baskets to be put away. I conquered the Laundry. It’s a good feeling.

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I am not a geek. I am so much not a geek that I mock all geeks and geekishness. However, there are some times where it would be inappropriate not to geek-out. And my mother taught me to act appropriately wherever I am. So, you will now be forced to listen to my geek-out.

I am writing this post from the dining room table. Why am I writing this post from the dining room table?, you ask. Because I can. Yesterday my beautiful, beautiful new laptop arrived at my front door. Last night Seth did his IT, geek thing to it and now I can write blog posts from the dining room. Hooray!

You should know that the laptop thing was my idea first and that Raquel stole it from me. She just managed to implement it before I could.

The reason I got the laptop is almost as exciting as the laptop itself, but a little scarier. I am going to take the stories I write and try to turn them into something good instead of something good enough. It was getting very difficult to elbow out some room at the family computer to type my stories and edit them. Also, it might be quieter and easier to focus at our computer if I moved it to Grand Central Station. Hence the laptop that I can move to my room if need be. I am hoping it will bolster my confidence in my writing to be able to focus long enough to put more than two words together at a go.

Looking back over what I’ve written I realize it wasn’t a very good geek-out. There was no technical jargon impossible for the layman to understand. There weren’t even many exclamation points. Well, what can I say? I guess I’m just not a very good geek.

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I am a Crystal Wanna-Be. She started using henna in her hair and then I started using henna in my hair. I like using henna, but I never think to do it until Crystal is doing it. I feel like such a follower.

Yesterday Crystal was trying out her indigo sample. I wandered into the kitchen and thought “Natural goop to put in one’s hair and turn it funny colors? That looks like fun!” So I got out our new box of henna, mixed the henna up and walked away for a few hours like you’re supposed to.

Now, I’ve tried henna before with mixed results. My hair is so dark it is easy for the henna to get lost among the darkness. Sometimes the henna dyed my hair nicely, though never as obviously as I wanted; sometimes it just kinda sat there and didn’t seem to do anything at all. The other times I tried henna, though, I mixed it with spices to adjust the natural color. This time I just used straight henna and I am so very pleased with the results. The color should change a little over this week, but for right now it looks like I have bright red highlights. That makes me happy. However, when I put the henna in my hair I didn’t use gloves so it also stained my hands orange. That makes me amused.

We bought this henna from the local International Food Market on Main Street. It is very high quality henna and I would reccomend it to anyone who wants bright red hair and/or orange hands.

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 For no apparant reason I’ve have the word ‘amanuensis’ running through my head for most of the morning. Even worse, I could not for the life of me remember what it meant.

 As a courtesy to others who may be having the same difficulty, I provide the definition below (from Webster’s 1828 dictionary):

 

AMANUEN’SIS, n. [L. from manus, hand.]

A person whose employment is to write what another dictates.

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