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A list: My life, our life

Angie Newsome — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 19:33:04 +0000

I don’t know why, really, but I’ve resisted listing out all the things I’d like to do/accomplish/attempt in my lifetime. But the other night, as I pulled the covers close, my mind filled with all the things I could do and just thought and thought and thought about this instead of getting some much-needed post-holiday rest.

It seems appropriate, at the start of the New Year, to do something like this, so I’ve been working on it for the last couple of days. These aren’t resolutions. I fail at resolutions, whole-heartedly. Mine are always uninspired. I had “Have Fun!” on my list of resolutions for years! (I’m fully aware of all that says about me!) But this list and exercise is more about thinking about the next year, and the next and next and next… and what all can happen. It’s inspired by Mighty Girl’s Life List, and the lists she’s inspired, in turn. It’s about thinking about possibilities. It’s amazing, really, the potential we have, and I feel blessed to even be able to navel gaze like this. Maybe that’s exactly what I hated about making a list like this for so long, the self-satisfaction of it all? The absolute priveledge it depends on and is proof of?

But, here I am dreaming about what to put here, anyway. And honestly, it feels really good! Amazing, in fact! It’s been a long time since I’ve felt inspired to even write something like this. I thought about specific things for this list, things I’d be able to check off. There’s the perennial items like volunteer more, be creative, be thoughtful. get in shape and improve my mind, but those things are generally hard to measure. These aren’t. There is a beginning. There is an end. I’m sure this list will change, as I do. After all, it takes more than a few days to come up with a list of things to accomplish in a lifetime, right? Still, here they are, a work in progress:

Own a piano and take lessons : Visit the Spice Bazaar in Istanbul : Start a charitable fund : Swim 30 laps without stopping : Run a 10K : Live in NYC for at least a month : Self-publish a book of my dad’s photographs : Begin and finish Iver’s baby book : Begin and finish Jellybean’s baby book : Start a nonprofit news website : Go camping to see all the remaining old growth hemlock trees in North Carolina : Go scuba diving : Learn all the national and state capitals : Cut my hair short : Take a workshop at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography : Do a photo-a-day project the year I turn 40 : Graft some branches from my grandmother’s apple tree to an apple tree I plant at my house : Visit every county courthouse in North Carolina : Become a friend of my local library : Visit all the national parks with Pat and the girls : Make a family tree for Iver and Jellybean : Read (or reread) 50 of the top nonfiction and fiction books, per these lists : Learn how to bake bread, and do it regularly : Go to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade : Make apple cider : Visit every state fair : Go to a book reading once a month for a year : Play in the rain and splash in puddles with the girls : Work out with a personal trainer : Go to the opening games of the Olympics : Ride in a hot air balloon : Ride in a convertible : Learn how to cut up a whole chicken : Take Iver to Iver, UK : Plant a rose bush : See Wynton Marsalis with Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra perform : Toss and spin a pizza crust up in the air : See the cherry trees blossom in Washington, DC : …

Have you put together a list like this?

Playing with our food

Angie Newsome — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 01:33:26 +0000

I’m a person who likes physical order. I like a clean house. I like having clean laundry. I like a crumb-free floor.

I suppose I get this honestly, really. My mother would, every Saturday, come hell or high water, run three-hour marathon cleaning sessions at our house. We’d mop and sweep and vaccuum and dust and wash everything. Our house was an old (as in 1890s) modified Carolina T two story, so it was big, with towering ceilings and expansive rooms. It was exhausting. Occassionally, we’d clean her silver with silver polish (that took FOREVER), and scrub the linoleum in the kitchen with hard-bristled brushes. And then I spread out our neurotic cleaning frenzies to other places. I began hiding pennies under the knicknacks at my piano teacher’s house, just to see if she ever moved anything to clean. She never did. I suppose that eventually she found all those pennies — maybe 30 of them! — and wondered what the hell was going on. Just me. Being nosey and mean.

Still, I may hate to admit it, but it really does bug me when our house is dirty (messy is OK, though it can still make me anxious). Interestingly, other people’s messes — at their own homes, mind you — doesn’t bother me much anymore. No more hiding pennies! I swear, friends!

Now, I don’t want Iver and Jellybean to feel anxious about making a mess. I want art projects to go crazy. I want their shoes to be covered in mud. I want grass stains on their jeans. I want paint under their fingernails.

So I pocketed all my don’t-get-messy tendencies today, and we played with our food. (Please forgive me, hungry people everywhere, for this! It all for an experience!)

Before lunchtime today, I dumped a bunch of O’s into a giant snap-n-go container, threw in some cups and sat on the floor with Iver. She didn’t know what was going on, this trough of wheat O’s. Was she supposed to eat it? Look at it? Put it in the drawers she’s obsessed with? She looked at me. I looked at her. So in I dove, raking through them, filling up one cup, pouring the O’s into another, sprinkling them here and there. Then she got it. Aha! And there they went!

She flipped them here. She flipped them there. She ate handfulls. She dumped them everywhere — under the stove and the refrigerator, in the corner under the cabinets, down her shirt, in my shoes. I caught myself raking them up into neat little piles, but stopped myself and flung them around, too.

And, really! So fun! And freeing! It’ll be a good activity before a meal or at snacktime when I’m looking around for something to do to occupy this girl who won’t sit still for anything and likes new things and new experiences constantly. Just like her mama. No pennies. Yet.

Goodbye Christmas, hello New Year!

Angie Newsome — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 18:37:39 +0000

Am I the only one who feels that once the hub-bub of Christmas is over, it’s time to get on with it and start the New Year? The days between Dec. 25 and Jan. 1 just seem like a waste of time, like eating dessert after gorging on Christmas Eve buffet (I should know, it happened!) but here’s what I’m up to:*

Software upgrades. My photo library software had a catastrophic fail this year. As in the photos from Iver’s first 10 months are completely inaccessible. Not gone, thank god, but I can’t access them through my library. What a pain! Let this be a lesson: BACK-UP YOUR PHOTOS!!! (Just for good measure, here are some more exclamation marks: !!!!!!!!) After this happened, I bought some online storage, and I’m working on backing all 170+ GB of photos up. (These aren’t all of Iver, despite the fact that I do take a billion photos of her, but include work and scouting shots and photos of all the things we did in Life Before Baby.) I spent hours and hours backing some up to disc last year, but it wasn’t enough. You don’t think you need this until you do. Then you sob in your closet because your photos are gone. Believe me. And I know I’m not the only one saying this! I didn’t listen because I didn’t think it would happen to me. Then it did. Blech. Here’s hoping an upgrade works because I can’t stand to think that I’ll never get to see them again!

Calendar reconfigurations. Goodbye by beloved Moleskin calendars! I’ve decided to save the money and (finally) use my laptop and phone calendar functions. I find the idea of this more satisfying that the implementation, because I’m a Post-It list maker kind of person, and where am I going to store all those lists now? Don’t know. Any ideas? (I realize this may seem ridiculous to some, by I live or die by my calendar and this is a big change for me.)

Planning for work like there’s no tomorrow in which to do said work. I have some HUGE projects on the horizon — including, but not limited to, oh, having a baby! I’m on it! I’ll update you about what’s going on when I get closer to launch, which shouldn’t be too far away.

Baby, baby, baby! Jellybean #2 is on her way, and do we have some work to do to prepare! This time around it’s different, not like last time when we had absolutely no baby supplies whatsoever and it seemed all about counting how many pairs of baby socks I’d managed to find. This time it seems more like marathonish mental preparations are necessary. We need some time planning and organizing and baby care preparations. After we had Iver, we implemented rigorous meal and house-cleaning plans that helped me get through the days without having to divert any brain space to what we’re having for dinner or what needed to be cleaned around the house. They really helped, and we were devoted to them until October or so. I have a feeling they’re going to be reinstated, and soon.

All of this means I can’t sleep at night!

*By the way, I totally realize that I just abandoned telling you how we ended our Advent celebrations. We had a housefull of people visiting and multiple holiday meals to plan and last-minute shopping to do, among all the Advent things I’d planned. It was hectic. I was tired. So, here’s what we did, or attempted to do:

18: Bake holiday cookies and deliver to friends. (Rosemary butter cookies, sugar cookies, pralines, peanut brittle, iced spice spritz cookies, chocolate-covered pretzels! This actually stretched over a couple of days, both the baking and the delivering)

19: Go for a drive and look at the Christmas lights. (Asheville needs to pump some of its love for Halloween zombies into the holidays! The lights were meager!)

20: Go for a winter walk. (Uh, I didn’t do this, really, but rolled it into tomorrow’s celebration.)

21: Walk around downtown and look at the window displays. (See #19. There’s no Macy’s window displays here, my friends. The Chocolate Fetish did have some displays incorporating what looked like antique chocolate molds. Thank you Chocolate Fetish!)

22: Share what I’m thankful for over the last year. (SO much! Things became clearer for me over the past year in so many ways. I’m constantly amazed at the generosity and creativity of my friends, and so, so thankful for our growing family!)

23: Pop popcorn and watch a Christmas movie. (Abadoned this one. I have to say I was getting a bit tired of Christmas movies, even though I’d recorded Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, which I’d wanted to see just to have seen it. Oh, well! Next year!)

24: Read The Night Before Christmas (in front of the fire). Well, the fireplace is sitting in our garage, so we read sitting all wrapped up on the couch, in front of the Christmas tree.

All in all, this was *so* much fun!

Advent Day 17: Here we come a-wrapping, among the paper so green

Angie Newsome — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 03:04:07 +0000

I love wrapping presents. I don’t know what it is, exactly, that makes me love it so. The snap of the paper? Getting to use scissors (I’m suddenly realizing a pattern here…)? Constantly loosing the tape and hunting around for it on the carpet? Oh, the bows! I especially love the bows. And the sharp corners. And the tricky packages with complicated angles. Did I ever tell you that, oh, maybe 10 years ago, I applied one winter for a seasonal wrapping job at Belks? I never got a call back, even though I was desperate for a job. And money. And paper cuts. Maybe it was the fact I said I wanted to be paid $8 an hour. They probably saw that and hung it on the office bulletin board for a good laugh.

So, tonight, it was all about the wrapping paper and the bows and listening to holiday music with a few delicious holiday cookies from our friend Lydia. It was a calming end to Friday’s end-of-week madness.

And now I’m done with the wrapping. And the shopping. And the budget (which I busted, a little anyway — not in a Car-Christmas kind of way (WHO does that, anyway??) — but such it is). Now we’re getting ready for visitors next week (their stockings are done, I think) and I’m hopefully going to get a chance to get caught up on some postponed Advent fun.

And by the way of random Google searches, who knew that you can find lists of songs best listened to while wrapping presents? Well, even writing that it seems like lots of people would know that. But I didn’t! It honestly surprised me, though I almost totally disagree with this list. This list, about movies to watch while wrapping presents, is more my style.

Advent Days 15 and 16: Gingerbread houses and Charlie Brown Christmas

Angie Newsome — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:40:10 +0000

Woah, the combination of work, family, holiday busyness is intense right now! The end-of-December trifecta, I suppose. We did manage to keep up with our Advent celebrations, though, and they continue to be such a fun addition to our days.

Wednesday, we went to the Grove Park Inn in Asheville to see the gingerbread houses entered in the National Gingerbread House Competition. The gingerbread creations — even the tiny Globe Theatre and the amazing matryoshka dolls — seem to pale in comparison with the inn itself, all decorated with holiday trees and roaring room-sized fire and views of snow-covered mountains.

And look!

I want to drive this car around, I mean, what?? Whoever thought of doing this is a wicked genius!

But when you can finally focus on the houses, you see how amazing they are. I can’t imagine the amount of work they take! This was the grand prize winner. How do you mold gingerbread into doll shapes?

But this is one of my favorites, because it’s the likeness of one of my favorite buildings in Asheville, the Basilica of St. Lawrence. It’s a beautiful church, which I appreciate so much even though I’m not Catholic. The artist even put some of the Basilica’s rose bushes out front. They are spectacular throughout the spring and summer!

And then! Yesterday! Finally, on Advent Day 16: Watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas!”

This is one of my absolute favorite things to do during the holidays. I love the sarcasm and honest angst about the holidays, how you’re supposed to be merry, but sometimes it doesn’t happen. I love Snoopy’s decked-out dog house. I love Schroder. I love the pink aluminum Christmas trees and the sighing. I love Linus, in the spotlight, reminding Charlie Brown of his meaning for Christmas. And of course I love the tree! Love, love, love! Do you have a favorite holiday TV show or movie? I want to know!

Advent Day 14: Uh, hmmm…

Angie Newsome — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 00:20:27 +0000

I was about to ask you if you have one of those days when nothing seems to be going right and you can’t get out the door in time or find your shoes and your cellphone isn’t charged (or you forgot it to begin with) and your e-mail goes down and no one returns your phone calls and it’s cold outside and your sweater is too thin and you pick up a piece of fruit at the store and it squishes rotten fruit juice all over your hands and you have a flat tire?

Of course you have!

But all this stuff happened to me today and while there were bright spots here and there (a toasted sesame bagel with cream cheese, eaten in the sunshine), it mostly was a day I wish I could start all over.

Ahem. But, according to the calendar, today’s Advent activity: Go downtown and look at the holiday window shop displays.

It’s getting shifted forward. Maybe one day this weekend!

Advent weekend, plus Monday: trees, lights (and the stomach bug)

Angie Newsome — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 01:51:20 +0000

First, let’s just say that we’ve been stricken by multiple colds and stomach bugs over the last couple of weeks — the latest round over the weekend — so it’s essentially our first Christmas miracle that we even continued the Advent celebrations during the weekend. In fact, I totally forgot yesterday, until Iver spotted the calendar and started pointing at it. Yes, I forgot! I was that down-in-the-dumps and exhausted and just wanted to lie on the couch without anyone touching me for five seconds. But we rallied and here I am! Checking things off my holiday To Do list like you wouldn’t believe. It helps that I’m partly fueled by Hershey Kisses, the dark chocolate one, that I grabbed during today’s emergency snow-and-ice run to the grocery store. They are essential, I tell you, until I’m reunited with my beloved coffee with cream!

Advent day 11: Get a Christmas tree and decorate

We headed to our annual Christmas Tree spot, the WNC Farmer’s Market, and found Mr. McCall’s stand. The trees are from Pensacola, a little community outside Burnsville, in Yancey County. We have gotten our tree from the same farm in Little Canada, in Jackson County, for the past several years, but we couldn’t find them anywhere. So we found a super tree — appropriately Charlie Brownish, with bare spots and a smooshed side, in need of a good home! — among the perfect ones. We loaded it in the truck, drove home and let The Inspector take over.

After tossing her socks in the tree stand a million times and pointing and fluffing the branches and digging through the ornaments, she approved. And now we have this!

I really don’t know anything better than sitting next to a lit tree, listening to Jonathan Winters read A Christmas Carol, which is what we did last night. It really made my heart leap.

Advent day 12: String lights outside

I had visions of turning into Clark Griswold and making the light display on our house rival the sun, but it is cold here and I was sick, so all I managed was a small, but crazy, amalgamation of traditional white lights with a touch of carnival Christmas thrown in around our front porch. So maybe it is a bit Clarkish, minus the neighborhood brownout! It’s still a work in progress. But at least some of them are up!

Advent day 13 (today!): Christmas shopping

Well, let’s just say the majority of my holiday shopping was done from the warmth of my office, surfing the net, combing Best Of lists for ideas, and plunking down a small amount of money (we’re on a tight budget this year, in anticipation of, oh, the new(er) car and crib and car seat we’ll have to buy soon! Woah!) for what I can find. I find online shopping efficient, but a bit sad. I miss the hub-bub! Not the Black Friday 3 a.m. nuttiness (in my opinion), but the regular seasonal rush — grabbing a cup of coffee while waiting in line at the book store (which is where I inevitably end up anyway) and talking with other shoppers about how many days there are left and all there is left to do. The normal holiday chit chat. I love that chit chat, since normally I’m at a loss as to what to say to perfect strangers. The holidays have a built-in script that I’m more than happy to use. Anyway, I still have stocking stuffers to find, because we’re just doing stockings for all the adult family that’s coming to visit, with gifts for the kids sent or wrapped and waiting under the tree, so I’ll still get a little bit of it. Maybe.

By the way, any good stocking stuffer ideas out there? I’m hunting for some good ones before I hit my Yankee Candle desperation shopping mode! Even that’s no fun!

Advent Day 10: go to Krispy Kreme for treats

Angie Newsome — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 00:06:11 +0000

The end of November, I curled up on the couch and brainstormed ideas for Advent. I ran through the obvious ones when I asked Pat what he thought we should do. He said, IMMEDIATELY!, “Go to Krispy Kreme!” I looked at him and kinda (well, really) rolled my eyes. And then I put it on the list though I had no intention of doing it. I was wrong.

He knows of my ridiculous love of Krispy Kreme. I have tons of childhood memories about Krispy Kreme, which, for fear that this blog is becoming just a walk down memory lane for me (and who else cares, really?), I’ll keep to myself for now. And just so you know, our love of doughnuts does not mean that we eat them regularly, sadly, though I do admit to learning of their Cheerwine-filled doughnuts and going out to find them. They were so terrible, I hate to say (and not of this world any longer). But I digress.

So today’s Advent celebration will become an annual one, I’m sure. We went to our local store and I was dazzled by the festiveness. It has to be one of the only places in town that is obviously in the holiday spirit. Twinkling icicle lights! Dangling styrofoam snowflakes dangling from the ceiling! Tinsel garlands around the display cases! A Christmas tree in the corner! Poinsettas on every table. I mean, COME ON, it was fun!

It’s hard not to be amazed by the doughnut conveyer belt. Or the awesome hot chocolate. Or the hats! Did you know they still have the paper hats? They do! And on my Christmas wish list is a replacement of the insulated coffee cup Pat lost somewhere. Are you listening, P Hunt? Huh? I’m serious!

And obviously sugar hyper. Amen.

PS: This weekend, I’ll be taking a break from the Advent reporting. But on the list: finding a Christmas tree, decorating that tree, watching some holiday movies I’ve been storing up on our DVR and going to the Christmas Children’s Reading at the Smith-McDowell House. Happy holidays! See you on Monday!

Advent Day 9: Light and prayer

Angie Newsome — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 23:24:36 +0000

The holidays, for all the wonderful things they can bring, can also be a really hard time for me. I pull out the glass ornaments my mother had for years and remember her. I hear Perry Como singing The Christmas Song and remember my dad singing in church during the candlelight service. I make tins of cookies and remember the plates of cookies my mom would bake and we’d snack on and give to the neighbors. I smell a fire in the wind at night and remember bringing in loads of firewood to make a fire in the fireplace as the sun set. I see Santa and remember the time my dad dressed up as the tallest and skinniest Santa known to children anywhere and came to visit my second grade classroom. (I knew it was him because I recognized his shoes.)

My parents are both gone now, and I miss them. Often, that’s all I can say. I miss them. Everything else seems extraneous than the simple depth of feeling their loss. But I also miss the idea of family, the dreams I have of bundling up Iver and jumping in the car to go visit them is just a dream. They never met her. And they’ll never meet her sister.

So today is lighting a candle and saying a prayer. I’ve been praying a lot over the past couple of years, which is odd for me because I’d given up on prayer years ago. But getting pregnant and having a little girl and having huge wishes and thankfulness for her health and happiness has made me reconsider. And now, with this little fluttering baby growing and coming to join our family, I’m saying prayers for her, too.

Being thankful for the past, sending out wishes for the future. That’s today’s prayer.

Advent Day 8: Keeping the US Postal Service in business

Angie Newsome — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 18:08:17 +0000

Today’s Advent celebration is sending out holiday cards. I love holiday cards. I think I’ve saved every one I’ve received over the last decade or so. (Not that I could find them or anything, but I know I haven’t thrown them away.) So today I’m doing the very office-y tasks of addressing and stamping envelopes and carting them to the mailbox. I wish I could say I had the time or inclination to make my own, but I can’t. I couldn’t manage to make a photo montage card, either. Pat’s grandmother, every Easter, would receive the most beautiful handmade cards from her relatives in East Germany. They couldn’t get Easter cards, so they’d make their own, and they were beautiful keepsakes.

This little Noel gift tag was to a gift my mom received back before she was married. It was from Dan. Who’s Dan? No idea, but I love the design — and the fact that my mom kept it in a box of unused cards, which I found just a couple of years ago.

Are you making yours this year? If I had my freewheeling money-is-no-object choice, I’d send out either letterpress or vintage cards. Here are some ones I’m coveting, which are all available on Etsy.com.

from gomonkeydesign

from WellWudJaLookAtThat

from vintageartssupplies

from LetterpressLight

from pressmade

There are so many great options out there! Love these!