In All My Years

I have learned a lot. I have. And I know that I only have 24.391781 years (that is correct to the day by the way) chalked up to my name, but that is more that some people have and those people might benefit from my life experience and knowledge so who am I to withhold it? So without further adieu—Life Lessons from Michelle will now commence.

Number 1- (This is some fairly recently acquired knowledge) There is a silent ‘i’ in the word adieu.

Number 2- Being genuinely nice to people for no alternative motive rather than treating them well is one of the best things you can do for yourself and for mankind. That may seem like a very broad claim, but I believe it. It is called loving your neighbor and it works.

Number 3- There is such a thing as miniature pot belly pigs and they will make you smile no matter how bad of a mood you are in. Go ahead, think about how bad your day has been and then look at this and try not to smile. 

Number 4- Handmade or thought-filled gifts trump more expensive, generic gifts every time.

Number 5- The world is not like Bolivar, Texas.

Number 6- You may have the best of intentions, but if you don’t follow through it doesn’t count.

Number 7- If you melt chocolate, and grind up some graham crackers and then dip marshmallows in the chocolate and roll it in the graham cracker crumbs you will have instant joy in your mouth and happiness in your belly.

Number 8- Marriage is tough. Worth it, but still tough. It is that whole living with another sinner thing that will get you.

Number 9- There are lots of people in this world that are beautiful and the more you get to know them the more beautiful they are. My mother is one of them.

Number 10- It is possible for your parents to be some of your best friends and confidants. I think America has this view of- you get married, move off, become independent, and visit your family on holidays because you should be able to make it on your own. I have a different view- get married, move out, support yourself, visit as often as you can and go to your parents for love and support and wisdom because they have made it on their own.

Number 11- If someone doesn’t have the kind of family that they can turn to when they need help, then adopt them.

Number 12- I don’t want to have triplets. They are cute and all, but dang- that’s a lot of work.

Number 13- Chocolate always wins.

Number 14- I think that Microsoft Paint can do a lot for a picture.

Number 15- Dress for your husband and no one else.

Number 16- The simple life is the best life.

Number 17- Smile even when you don’t mean it. You might just rub off on yourself.

Number 18- Not everyone appreciates engineering jokes.

Number 19- It seems like everyone else in the world has an accent except Texans, but apparently that is not the case.

Number 20- If you do anything that you have to hide from anyone, then stop doing it. (Unless it is like a surprise party or something.)

Number 21- If you hate big cities, working in one and driving to one everyday will slowly and painfully begin to chip away at your soul. Sometimes it will make you cry. But you have to remember that it is not going to be like this for the rest of your life and someday, Lord willing, your commute will be down the hall to your kid’s room to pick them up when they are crying and that will carry you through the traffic.

That’s all I got.

Michelle

Candle holders, Beans, and Peas

I got to work Friday morning and found a gift-wrapped box sitting in my desk chair. Talk about an awesome way to start your day! I absolutely love receiving gifts! Absolutely love it! And I love giving gifts, especially to John Darrin. It is just so fun! But, this isn’t about John Darrin—this is about me and the present sitting in my chair. Turns out it was an early Christmas present from the lovely Malorie at work! Isn’t that cool? Christmas in September, I love that idea!

So I tore open the box to find two beautiful glass candle holders. They are gorgeous and immediately ideas for decorating started pouring through my mind. Well, Sunday afternoon I had an experiment in mind that I wanted to try out so I started playing around with them and this was the result.

Aren’t those fun? I already had the metal candle holder in the middle, and these two glass ones go so well with it! I was so happy with how they turned out. The green color you see is split green peas, and the white is great northern beans. Here is the how-to for making them criss-crossed:

First, I went to Burrus (the grocery store in Sanger) and bought two 1 pound bags of split green peas and two bags of great northern beans. It was less than $5 total.

Next, I cleaned the inside of my candle holders with glass cleaner. I waited to do the outside so I wouldn’t have to worry about getting finger prints all over them.

Ok, so you have your candle holder. Now get a piece of paper- I used card stock that I had because it is a little heavier and I thought that would work better. It would probably work with regular paper too, I bet.

Now measure the diameter of your candle holder and cut two pieces of paper to that size. Now cut half-way up the middle of both pieces of paper. Like dis:

Then insert the paper cuts into each other to make an ‘X’. Like dis:

Then try and see if it fits snugly into your holder. I had to trim the bottom corners of mine so that it fit all the way to the bottom of the candle holder.

Ta-daa:

Next, cut the corner off of one of the bags of beans. Don’t make the opening too big because you want to be able to easily control the flow of beans. “Easily control the flow of beans” is not a statement that I thought I would be typing today.

So start pouring beans into one of the four quadrants, if you will. Some beans may sneak underneath your paper if the bottom isn’t perfectly flat. That’s not really a big deal because you aren’t going to be able to see the bottom anyway. Pour a bit into one quadrant and then a bit into the one catty-corner to it. Kinda like this:

This means it is working!

Now pour some green peas into the other two quadrants.

Keep going back and forth between the peas and beans until you get to the depth that you want.

This was great for me. I used one bag each of peas and beans per candle holder. I had a few peas left over because if I had used them all the heights would have been uneven.

Alright so now you are ready to gently pull the paper ‘X’ out.

Nice and easy! Here is the top view:

Isn’t that fun?

Then I smushed a candle down in it to finish it off.

Now if your lines between the beans and peas are kind of curved or not perfect ( I had one of these the first time I did it) you can use a butter knife to gently weave it between the beans/peas and then straighten it up so you have a nice crisp line.

Then you are done!

Kind of fun, huh?

And there are lots of different things you could use if you aren’t feeling the green and white. You could use pinto beans or coffee beans and do brown, black beans for black, rice for off white, noodles if you are into that sort of things. The possibilities are endless! If you do this, let me know how it turns out! Better yet, send me a picture!

I Love Dogs

I do. I am a dog person through and through. They are so lovable, easy to get along with, easy to train, snuggly, loyal, and can have so much personality. I grew up with dogs. Dogs are the best.

Cats are another subject all together. They are ok at their best and demonic at their worst. They are not lovable, not easy to get along with, not trainable, have claws, no loyalty except to Hitler, and they have personalities, but not the kind that is enjoyable. I grew up with barn cats and a few indoor cats here and there throughout life. If I had to choose between dogs and cats I would choose dogs every time.

Unless, of course, the question was something like, “What animal should be chosen to fly an unmanned air craft to the sun to see just how close we can get?” In that case my choice would be cats. Or maybe daddy-long-legs spiders. Yes, definitely daddy-long-legs.

To recap thus far:

Dogs >> Cats > Daddy-long-legs

Now that we have the hierarchy of things established, allow me to tell you about John Darrin’s and my pets. We have zero dogs, two cats, and lots of daddy-long-legs. HOW MESSED UP IS THAT???? Granted, the daddy-long-legs are not really pets; they just live under our back steps and do their creeping undulating thing that is just so nasty. I honestly just shivered thinking about it. Ugh. Sick.

We do have two cats, however. One cat is our pet on purpose and the other cat adopted us. JD found our first cat in my parents’ garage when she was about 3 months old and brought her home. She is our indoor cat and her name is Fea (pronounced fay-ah), isn’t that a pretty name? We thought so. Fea is the Spanish word meaning “ugly”. This is a very fitting name for her. When Dad saw her for the first time he said, “Well, it’s an ugly little thing isn’t it?” And he was right. She is an ugly little thing.

This is Fea. Isn't that it kind of cool how the colors on her face
split down the middle?

This is Fea being cute.

Our other cat’s name is Ita (pronounced ita), isn’t that a weird name? It is actually a nickname for Bandita. You see, Ita is a Siamese cat. She is gorgeous- brown legs, face, and ears, a beautiful creamy-tan body and crystal blue eyes. When JD was growing up they had a Siamese cat also and his name was Bandit. Since our cat looked similar to his cat, he named her Bandita, and we just call her Ita. So there you go. Ita adopted us. She lived under our house for a while and we started feeding her and gave her a cardboard box with an old towel in it to lie on. Eventually she let us pet her and she moved to living on the front porch. She is there every morning when I leave for work, and every afternoon when I get home, and every night before I go to bed, and I am fairly certain every time in between.

This is Ita. Isn't she gorgeous?

Such beautiful blue eyes, and such a sweet disposition.

Another recap:

Fea- pretty name, ugly cat, ADHD indoor cat

Ita- weird name, beautiful cat, lackadaisical outdoor cat

And finally to recap both recaps to pull this thing together completely:

We like dogs the best and have zero. We don’t really care for cats and have two, an indoor one and an outdoor one. The indoor one is crazy and ugly. The outdoor one is laid back and beautiful. We hate daddy-long-legs and have 5 billion under our back steps undulating as I type.

There is a term for this and it is backward!!!

Shivering at the though of what is under our back steps,

Michelle

Our Addiction

So, Miranda is what is known as an ‘enabler’ in my book. She is the kind of person that leads you to things that you can easily get addicted to and then keeps feeding the addiction. Alright- I don’t know if enabler is the right term, but I seem to remember people using it in the context of drugs so I just went with it. If that is not it’s actual meaning then just pretend like it is for the next 5 minutes, ok? Thanks.

Miranda is an enabler. She has led me down many paths in life and many of these paths have led to addictions and it is ALL HER FAULT! She took me with her to Goodwill and a few thrift stores and now I clothes shop nowhere else, seriously. Besides a few pairs of jeans, I cannot remember the last article of clothing that I bought that wasn’t from Goodwill. Miranda also introduced me to crafts. Not your popsicle stick VBS crafts, but DIY curtains and pillow cases and decorations and designspongeonline.com. Have you been to Design Sponge, oh my goodness gracious holy moly.

Miranda the Enabler, also introduced me to Librivox. It started out innocently-

“Hey Michelle, I am listening to this audio book at work. You should listen to it to and then we could email back and forth and talk about it. Ha.”

“That sounds great, Miranda. How do I listen to the book?”

“Allow me to show you, it is called librivox.org and once you go there you will never want to read another book in your life.”

Gee, thanks.

So, Librivox is this free website with free audio books you can download or subscribe to in iTunes. All of the books are in the public domain which is why you can get them for free and also why everything on there is like 50+ years old. And that, my friends, is the glory of it. Nobody is going to remember trash books in 50 years, so it is ALL good. There are entire books, short stories, poems, hymns, sermons, fiction, non-fiction and anything else you can imagine from authors like Jane Austen, Rudyard Kipling, Spurgeon, Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, O. Henry, Hans Christian Anderson, Lewis Carroll and everyone else that you have heard of forever but never read any of their stuff.

The books are read by volunteers so it can be hit or miss sometimes with if you get a good reader or not. But there are many of them that are fantastic!!!

I have downloaded and listened to 17 books, countless short stories, and a couple of Spurgeon’s sermons. Many of the books I have listened to several times. It is just so great! I listen to them at work when I am doing something that doesn’t require a whole lot of brain power, if you know what I mean.

Here is the list of the books that I have listened to:

Pride and Prejudice- romance, duh!

Jane Eyre- perfection, my favorite and a great reader, currently listening to for the 8^th time

Les Miserables- hmm, action and beautiful

Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island- just plain girly fun

Little Women- girly, a little romantic, just life

Sense and Sensibility- romance

A Pair of Blue Eyes- lovely, great reader!

Far From the Madding Crowd- excellent, same reader as A Pair of Blue Eyes

The Mystery of the Yellow Room- well- mystery obviously, with a great twist at the end

The Princess and the Goblin- action, caves, goblins, a princess, and brave hero

The Prisoner of Zenda- action, murderous plots, body doubles, romance

The Scarlet Pimpernel- action, trickery, love, disguises

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz- weird, short people

Alice’s Adventures, Through the Looking Glass- even more weird

Every Sherlock Holmes ever written- elementary, my dear Watson

And then the short stories! There are so many good ones, but two of my favorites are Wee Willie Winkie and Rikki Tikki Tavi by Rudyard Kipling.

You should go to Librivox and download some audio books. And then I can be your enabler, but it will all still be Miranda’s fault!

Peace,

Michelle

John Darrin Barker

John Darrin started taking fiddle lessons again last night. He knows how to play the fiddle very well in my opinion, but wants to get even better. I am so excited that he is taking lessons again. He is so musically talented it is crazy. He plays the fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and drums. *cough-show off-cough*. The drums are his main instrument, and from what I hear from people that know music- he is pretty dang awesome at it! I think that is cool myself. I mean I married the awesome drummer that rocks out and is all cool and talented and stuff. While some of you might have known about how awesome JD is, some might not be familiar with it so allow me to educate you on the awesomeness of my husband (and by proximity- me.)

We will start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. This is what JD looked like when he graduated from San Saba high school.

Now that is some curly hair! He calls them his doo-doo curls. Apparently, being the rebel that he is, John Darrin didn’t particularly like getting hair cuts in high school. This dislike of haircuts carried over into college and with his newfound freedom from dress codes JD didn’t get a haircut for the next three years. That’s right THREE YEARS!

That brings us to the next stage of the life of John Darrin. The stage when he moved to Denton, became a hippie, played in a rock band, and was a scallywag.

Hippie and scallywag at the same time…

Making eyes at his friend, David.

And hanging out with more scallywags in his band, Black River Crow.

Oh, and here is a picture of him playing the drums and looking awesome…

Sidenote- I bought this completely tasteless shirt that I only where around the house (and to my brother’s just to freak him out a little bit) that says “Save a drum, bang a drummer.” I think it is awesome.

I have to be completely honest with you friends and tell you that I had the biggest crush on John Darrin when he had his long hippie hair. It was HOT! For real, super attractive to me. Which is kind of funny because I was never really into hippies that much. Well, John Darrin finally cut his hair in February of 2008 and we started dating in April 2008. This worked out really well for me because my mother always told me that I couldn’t date a guy that has prettier hair than me.

Here is the before and after comparison for you.

And that is my husband now. He loves me, and his horse, and roping, and playing the fiddle, and me, and sunsets, and me, and Bob Wills, and his family, and my family, and me. And that makes me awesome by proximity.

A Great Oak

We went to see John Darrin’s family in San Saba last weekend. It was such a great weekend, as is every weekend that we spend there. His parents live in the house that his maternal grandfather, Granddad, grew up in. He calls it the Home Place. I like that. They have a beautiful house surrounded by pecan trees and some astoundingly huge oak trees. The oak trees are magnificent. Darrin, my father-in-law, estimates that the one in the back yard is somewhere around 300-400 years old. I would guess that it would take 4 adults to reach around its massive trunk. Here is a picture of it:

It is a little difficult to grasp the enormity of this tree. There is another tree on the western edge of their property that is known as “The Wedding Oak.” It is equal in size to the oak in the Barker’s back yard. It is a magnificent tree. Here is the explanation of the name:

“Long before the Spanish invaded this rich San Saba River bottomland, where native pecans grow in profusion, Indian braves and shy Indian maidens met and were united in wedlock, as local legend has it, beneath this oak's sheltering boughs. Later, in horse-and-buggy days, the tree was a popular spot for matrimonially-inclined residents of the area to visit and exchange pledges and marriage vows. The tree was also a legendary place for Indian council meetings.” [source]

One really cool part of the wedding oak is that if you look closely you will see one of the areas the tree to growing over a cut off limb resembles a heart.

Pretty neat, huh?

Between the oaks that we saw this weekend, and Colton Wayne being born and Candace becoming a stay-at-home mom, I am reminded of a poem that I wrote for my mother, a great oak, last year for Mother’s Day. I hope you enjoy it.

A Great Oak

A great oak stands strong in the world,

Tirelessly weathering all that comes upon it.

Weary bodies seek rest below it and protection from storms under its boughs.

And once the rain is gone and the respite taken, they go on their way.

They sometimes thank the great oak,

Though not always and not to the degree merited.

They do not see all that it weathers,

They do not see the burden borne by the tree that was given by them.

The great oak gives all and forbears all, patiently lovingly quietly.

It wants only security for those whom it protects, only joy for those who find rest ‘neath its canopy.

It is all beauty, all grace, all loyalty, and all perseverance.

If it does grieve under the burdens given, the great oak does not let it show.

It embodies love of the purest form.

The love of a mother, unconditional, unswerving, without regard to the recipient’s merit.

The great oak lives to give of itself, to serve those whom it loves so dearly, to comfort those who seek it in distress,

It is a great oak indeed.

Eventually they will see these truths, when they are grown themselves.

The great oak will become their standard, that which they emulate and strive so hard to be like.

They have a great deal to live up to, but the great oak will be ever present, 

To gently guide, softly correct, and strongly love,

Until they are great oaks too.

C-Dub Doodle Bug is here!

My family is all about nicknames. Well, maybe I am all about nicknames. I love coming up with names to call people. My brother, Jason, is Bubba, which is a pretty normal nickname. His wife, Candace, is Candy Butt. (If I were one to cuss I would call her something else, but Candy Butt is suffice.) My father is Papa Bear. My Jeep is Dotty. JD’s truck is Gertrude. And so on and so forth.

When Candace was still barely pregnant Momma read online that their baby was the size of a pea or a doodle bug. At this point we didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl, so we started calling it Doodle Bug. And it stuck. Then we found out it was a boy and that the name was Colton Wayne. So, C-dub Doodle Bug he was christened, and C–dub Doodle Bug he shall remain.

Well, C-dub was born on Saturday, August 28^th at 6:00 am. (She wasn’t induced so JD lost our bet by the way!) Being the awesome aunt that I am, I have yet to post pictures of Little Bit on my blog. Today I am here to redeem myself with some never-before-seen photographs of Colton.

In this first picture I personally think he looks just like Bubba, the same chin, eyes, and cheeks.  What do you think?

You can see the resemblance, can’t you?

Ok, here are some actual picture of Colton Wayne and his Grandpa.

Now, you can see the family resemblance, can’t you?

This picture makes me smile. I love my Papa Bear so much. And I love Colton Wayne so much. There is a lot of lovin’ going on in this picture. If you look closely you can see the monkey face on Colton Wayne’s bobo!

Pure content.

He is just so perfect! I love him so much already and he is just my nephew! I can’t imagine the kind of feeling you have when it is your own child.

Daddy has big thumbs and Colton has tiny hands. This pictures makes me say, “hmf” with a sad puppy dog look on my face because it is just so precious.

Big thumb. Little Baby.

I really like taking these pictures in case you couldn’t tell.

Here are some pictures from when Colton was 45 minutes old and Candace had been unpregnanted (a new word created by my mom. Hi mom!) 45 minutes.

She looks pretty happy to me. And very in love. And very lovely. Candace is one of those people that looks good no matter what. Like even after 10 hours of labor she looks good. I don’t particularly care for those kinds of people.

A pretty awesome feeling.

I don’t think that I would be able to take my eyes off of him either.

Well, now that I am restored to your good graces for posting pictures of C-dub Doodle Bug, I am going to go enjoy my three day weekend. I hope you do the same!

Love ya,

Aunt Michelle