It’s that time of year again, the start of school. The newness of the school year has always been something I have looked forward to as a teacher. I loved getting to know my new students and beginning the adventure of a new year together.
This year, while I may not be going back to teaching just yet, I am starting a new school year with my preschooler. I get to watch him as he excitedly begins his new school year as a Pre-K student. He is going to do great! Also, this adventure of a new school year brings the opportunity for new school supplies.
Teacher appreciation was a few weeks ago. Being a teacher once, I remember some of the things I have received from my students. It meant a lot to get notes and gifts from them. I actually have a file still out in my garage of notes that I have received from my students that really had an impact on me. This year offered a reverse of this activity–my son has two incredible preschool teachers, and we wanted to say thank you to them! We made these wonderful flower pots as a thank you.
Flower pot with words, “Thank you for helping me grow!”
I went to Pinterest to look for some ideas. I found several places that had flower pots with the writing, “Thank you for helping me grow!” One of my favorites was this one from Kelly Leigh. I didn’t have time to put the tape measure design around the top, but I think the teachers name at the top looks nice.
About every other week, I’m posting about a project I recently completed. Usually this involves baking, as that’s my favorite project, but it could involve books, home projects, etc. Dads have lots of roles, after all. This week’s project was completing Ursula K. Le Guin’s book The Dispossessed.
And that’s right, there are no pictures for this post. I’m sure Pinterest will survive.
I read a lot of fantasy books, along with horror books. Mix in a little bit of science fiction, a little bit of mystery–yup, that’s good for me. But I will admit I tend to get stuck on the same authors, the same narrow topics sometimes. That’s really not helpful for exploring new concepts, whether from old or new writers.
Into the (Somewhat) Unknown
With that in mind, way back in 2011, I found a list on Amazon of their Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy books. There are plenty of “Top 10” or “Top 100” lists to choose from, but this one seemed pretty interesting, so I grabbed a copy and said, I’m going to read these books.
Quite a few of the books on the list I’d already read–things like Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and some of the Xanth series by Piers Anthony. There were books and authors I’d never heard of though–Larry Niven, Brandon Sanderon’s The Mistborn Series, Timothy Zahn, Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, etc., etc. Enough to push me out of my comfort zone and explore.
Oh No, Not This Author
One author that I’d read before and had not enjoyed was Ursula K. Le Guin. There, I said it–I don’t like her writing. I’d read A Wizard of Earthsea and was very hopeful, but it just didn’t do it for me. Then, I found that there were not one but two other books by her on my list.
Now, here I am trying to expand my horizons, and I did the exact wrong thing–avoided reading those two books. Finally, I forced myself to read the first one, The Left Hand of Darkness. It was alright, and definitely led to some thinking afterward (particularly in regards to the conversations at the very end), but I still wasn’t a fan.
The Dispossessed: Third Time’s a Charm?
Finally, after completing The Left Hand of Darkness, reading several other books, and practicing avoidance of the final Le Guin book, I decided to tackle it. This one, The Dispossessed, talks about a man traveling from his home world to an Urrastas, which is the moon for his planet and vice versa.
There’s a lot of culture shock with the travel: Anarres, the home planet of Shevek, the main character, has aspects of socialism and communism that make for a world where everyone is provided. Everyone has to work, though, in order to survive in their minimalist, non-ownership culture. Urrastas, on the other hand, is like a utopia, a paradise, where so much is available so easily if you are willing to pay. Or, as is the case with Shevek’s hosts, have people pay for you.
Going through Shevek’s early time on Urrastas, and his history on Anarres, takes up the first half of the book. Here is where my complaint comes in–it is a long slog through that first half. Yes, yes, the plot and backstories and intrigues build through it, but it’s not riveting reading.
Fortunately, the second part of the book really does pick up speed and breadth (a tiny bit of a spoiler here). Shevek begins to see the bad that goes along with the good. He learns that his knowledge of temporal physics is what really drove his hosts to bring him to the planet. As expected, it guides him into looking at what is good and bad between Anarres and Urastas. There’s even more, including eventual introduction of other alien species, but I won’t spoil the good parts.
Finishing the Book
I did, of course, finish The Dispossessed–I have a hard time stopping a book once I start. As I mentioned already the overall second half wasn’t bad, and the ending was quite well done.
So was this third book the charm that will drive me to like Le Guin’s books? No. I just don’t enjoy her writing style. She seems to want to drive to a point and sometimes, as with this book, it takes her a very long time to get there. I do appreciate that her books give you something to think about, in this book as with The Left Hand of Darkness. That’s not enough to draw me in for more, though.
Final Thoughts
Ursula K. Le Guin’s book The Dispossessed has previously won the Hugo and Nebula awards. The Left Hand of Darkness, published earlier? The same. Each of those books also won several other awards, and Le Guin won a myriad of awards during her career. So, while I might not like her books, plenty of people did. She passed away in 2018 after writing an extensive number of series, standalone novels, collections, and poetry.
For more information about Ms. Le Guin, you can check out this web page.
I’ve briefly mentioned before about living in a hotel when I was an engineering contractor. Between those stays, which might last up to months, and stays for personal travel, I’ve seen a lot of hotel rooms.
There are lots of nice things about hotels–someone cleans up after you, there’s usually a pool and exercise room, and the “social hour” snacks are alright too. One of the things I liked best, though, was all the little items in your own room that just made it, well, comfortable. When you leave to go home, you’d expect to feel even more comfortable. Home is your own place, after all. But there’s something that never feels quite so open, quite so “getting away” as when you’re in a hotel room. Is there a way you can bring some of that feeling, that hotel living, home? Well, you don’t have to wait–just keep reading to find out how to make the answer yes! 😀
A Focus on Two Rooms
There are two major areas of focus: The bathroom and the bedroom. Why? Those are the two spaces that all hotel rooms are made up of. If you get a nicer hotel room, or a larger one, then sure you’ll have other spaces and items to consider. Let’s keep this simple, though.
You’ll want to focus mostly on the bathroom and bedroom that you use the most in your home. If you’re fortunate enough to have a master bathroom attached to your bedroom, that’s what you’ll want to look at. If there are multiple bathrooms in your home, choose the one that has the best facilities (e.g., a bath instead of a shower, dual sinks, or wherever the kids are least likely to intrude).
Let’s Start with the Bathroom
What do you see when you first walk into the bathroom at a hotel? Apart from the toilet. You see a clean, organized space; the little things on the sink are neatly laid out, the trash can is tucked away, and the towels are all folded up.
Shower time
The shower is likely the epitome of all that cleanliness: There are few things, if any, on the shower’s shelves. If you want to bring hotel living home, start there by getting rid of all the things you don’t need in your shower. Those things that are crucial? Sure, keep them. The bulk size bottle of shampoo and the multiple soap bars? Move the shampoo to a smaller bottle and just have one bar of soap. Give yourself some space to enjoy moving around in the shower!
And, to truly enjoy that space, make sure you invest in a good showerhead. Most hotels have multi-setting showerheads so you can do anything from blast yourself to just have a little mist. You don’t have to spend a lot to get one of these, although you can get some very fancy ones if you truly want to make the investment.
Beyond the shower
To keep the area around the shower clean, get a towel that’s different from all the others to serve as your bath mat. This is one thing that hotels do that has a lot of wisdom: They just use one nice, unique towel for you to step on without slipping. They (and you) could use a fabric bath mat, but those are really difficult to keep clean and a pain to run through the laundry.
Finally, apart from keeping your floors and toilet clean (and your trash from overflowing), the other thing to do is have minimal clutter around your sink. Put all the often-viewed-seldom-used things away, find a drawer for your toothbrush and toothpaste, and minimize the decorations. In alignment with my wife’s post on hospitality, keep an extra basket or stand with some small, extra bottles of shampoo and soap on hand in case you or your guests need them.
Did your hotel ever have a sink this messy?
Much better, eh? You could just walk up and use this.
That’s it for the bathroom. Streamlined, improved, and ready to move on to the bedroom.
The Bigger Space: The Bedroom
Do you really want to know why it feels so good to walk into a hotel room? Yes, sometimes it’s that you finally completed the end of a long, dreary drive. Yup, you can watch TV channels that you might not get at home. But with both of those, and other reasons, there’s one big point: The bedroom has enough space to drop your things, and is clean so that you can go anywhere and sit anywhere without dealing with “stuff”.
The biggest, best thing you can do for your bedroom, then, is similar to what you did in your bathroom: Remove all the clutter. Dirty laundry: into the clothes basket. Coats: They go in the closet. Kids’ toys: Back to the kids’ rooms. Anything on the dresser: Find a place for it. That feeling of openness, of peace you just got there? Already so worth it. Now for the more fun stuff.
Start with the bed
The big focus point in your bedroom is, of course, the bed. In a hotel, the staff makes the bed up for you. Get off your butt and do it yourself every morning to have that experience. Again, it keeps things looking clean and brings hotel living home. While you’re dealing with the bed, get a set of nice sheets and a decent comforter to put on there. Hotels are good at putting nice bedding (though not expensive) on. They’ve also become very good at providing pillows of different firmness and size to help everyone sleep better. If you have a hard time sleeping (like I do), indulge here so that you can find the option that fits you best every night.
Finish with the nightstand
In both the hotel and in most peoples’ homes, there’s a nightstand. Keep it simple: Limit what’s on there to a light, a book, and an alarm clock, just like a hotel room. And turn your darned phone off or to Do Not Disturb, because there’s very little you’re going to be needed for or can solve overnight anyways.
Very much not hotel-level cleanliness there.
No clutter or anything else to stress about here. The little pink monster my oldest gave me is quite happy.
Hopefully, with this, you’ve got a bedroom with very little clutter and a very big sense of space. Since it’s the current fad, you can call this following Marie Kondo’s methods. If you’re like me, you call it minimalism (which came way before Ms. Kondo, by the way). Either way, it’s a step towards having the hotel experience in your own bedroom.
You Can Do This, and More
There you have it: If you want to bring hotel living home to your bathroom and bedroom spaces, it’s primarily about minimizing what’s out on the multitude of surfaces, and keeping organized those few items that are out. With that, and a very few purchases, you can experience hotel comfort in your personal spaces.
There are many other things you can do to try and achieve the hotel living experience. You can prepare snacks for you and your family for your own “social hour” in the afternoon. Putting away the rest of the clutter in your house is great, too (and helps prevent bare feet from meeting hard LEGOs). Even some small purchase like a new entry mat for your front door can be a step in the right direction.
We can’t duplicate the entirety of the hotel experience in our homes. I hope that this post has given you some insight into what you can do, though, to make your bathroom, bedroom, and the rest of your home feel like a great place to be.
Somedays, it feels like “responsibility” is treated as a dirty word. In our current sensationalized-news and media-centric environment, the idea of ensuring that we serve, and love, those around us seems, well, outdated. Tell someone they’re responsible for something and you’re just as likely to get a finger pointing at someone else as an acknowledgement.
From a real-life conversation . . .
This all came to mind the other day when walking with some friends. The one said, “I get the feeling Keith goes home and sits down and reads with his kids and spends time with them”. Then, jokingly, they pointed to another friend who’s a dad and said you expect he just goes home and drops all his efforts at the door.
Yes, they were joking about that other dad. I have known dads, though, who fit that mold. These are the ones who invest more time in their work than their family, who feel like video games are more important than quality time with their kids (see this previous post about that), or who feel they have the same responsibility level as their kids.
Today we are going to venture to something near and dear to my heart, crafting. I find craft time is very limited right now. Anytime I get to craft and it has a dual purpose (i.e., Valentine’s gift), it is a win-win for me. These gift card holders make great Valentine’s Day gifts for teachers or anyone you care about!
VALENTINE GIFT CARD HOLDERS
Today’s project will be Valentine gift card holders made out of recycled material. In this case, I used recycled Kool-Aid drink pouches. I love this project, because it is environmentally friendly, hello upcycling! It is is also cute and makes a fun gift for the receiver. It takes a little sewing, but it does not take long to do one. (If sewing is not your thing, I am sure some hot glue or even fun duct tape could be used to put these together.)
Motherhood is difficult. It is a journey, and it is best not completed alone.
MOTHERHOOD THE JOURNEY
Being a mom is hard, even on its best days. You try to get the little human to do things like sit nicely (so you can buckle them in a car seat), clean up after them for the umpteen millionth time (hello potty training), and are on call twenty-four hours a day (sick child anyone?). It’s easy to get worn out and discouraged. We birth or foster/adopt these amazing little humans, and journey through this life using every available resource to us, as we endeavor to raise responsible adults. Each day can be a learning day for both the child and the parent involved. It is exhausting at times. One of the most helpful things I have found in this journey is Mom Friends, or, my Mom Tribe!
When I was single, one of my favorite things to try baking was cheesecakes. I used to travel around a lot, and thus ate out quite a bit at different restaurants. One of the desserts that almost every restaurant has is some variation of cheesecake, and I thought, why not try do this at home?
In the long run, I haven’t made a lot of cheesecakes (let’s say 20 or so), but I did end up finding one from the Kraft food magazine that was really good. I couldn’t find the exact recipe on their site, but if you use this one and replace the mixture of 1/4 cup sugar and blackberries with two cups of strawberries, it’s the same recipe.
THE BAKE, AND THE RESULTS
I hadn’t made the recipe for probably six or so years, which is a side effect on our one kiddo’s then-allergy to dairy. How did it turn out after all that time? I did remember that the recipe seems a bit sparse with the crust, so I bumped up the graham crackers to 1 3/4 cups and the butter to 5 tablespoons. OK so far . . .
Then on to the batter. There’s something about when the sour cream and eggs get added, and it gets all glossy, that it just starts looking awesome. OK at this step too.
Then finally, to let it bake, put the nice little topping mixture across the top, bake a little more, and this is what comes out.
It’s not perfect by any means (nor is my photography at this point, for that matter), but taste is the ultimate judge. I let the wife try a bite first and she was really happy with it. So happy that she took another chunk out of the piece we were sharing, at which point I moved the plate so I could eat some. Love only goes so far, after all 🙂 I liked the taste, so I let the oldest try it (he enjoyed it) and the wife gave the youngest a bite. At 1 year old, our youngest ate his piece and walked over to the table, waving his little plastic spoon at the cake to try and reach far enough to get some more. With those kinds of reactions, I’m calling this bake a winner.
TOPIC FOR TODAY
I talked in this earlier post about getting a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) back when I was a kid. I loved playing that thing–you got Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt, along with the light zapper, in the package. Back then (believe it or not, kids) you could also go to Blockbuster and rent other video games
Way back in 2015, the grandparents (my parents) got our oldest son one of those big bags of Mega Blocks for Christmas. When I say “big”, I’m not talking, “Oh, there are 25 blocks in this bag.” No, this was the 150 blocks First Builders bag. As a one-year-old at the time, he didn’t quite get what all the blocks were for. As he toddled towards the age of two, though, he and his Daddy (hooray for that being me!) built garages to house other toys, castles to peek through to poke Daddy’s nose, and towers that have dared to reach for the sky.
But then, once he reached two, it happened–he discovered LEGOs. Of course, he didn’t start by seeing LEGOs meant for his age range in the store. Nooo, instead, he discovered some boxes of LEGOs that I’d never put together: The Kingdoms Prison Tower Rescue and the Special Edition Knight’s Kingdom King’s Castle. Then he got excited. Then I got excited, because he was excited. LEGOS! My kid’s getting into LEGOs and . . . THIS . . . IS . . . AWESOME! And thus began our project, which was building these two magnificent sets of medieval goodness, which funnily enough leads into the topic for today–perfect!
TOPIC FOR TODAY
The Tower Rescue set is the smaller of the two sets at 365 pieces, and given that my son was only two years old, seemed like the best set to start with. It was amazing to watch him when he first saw all the pieces that were in the box: Not just squares and rectangles and semicircles of different colors, but doors and a princess and a catapult and fire! This was one of those incredible moments when you get to see the world open up before your child and share in the joy and wonder that they experience at seeing something new that they never even expected existed.
OK, so I am an engineer, and as such like to have a logical approach to things. What does the engineer do? Goes right for the first instruction book, to see where to start. What does the two-year-old do? Dives right in! That’s when I discovered it’s possible to simultaneously laugh and be shocked and internally lurch towards telling your kid, “That’s not how you do it!” The great thing is that this was one of those rare instances where, when I tried to get my son to settle down and check out why I was looking at the instructions, he listened. We checked things out, took a look at the LEGO people, and got started building the first part of the set: The tower with a catapult platform (below).
Catapult Tower for Knights Prison Rescue
Without going through the play-by-play, here’s the grand summary: My son surprised me because he did really well. He figured out how to put things in place, and even the right places, based on the pictures and my pointing and guiding. He was super happy to make the catapult tower, and really focused on the building of it. I feel I underestimated what he, as a two-year-old, could do without assistance. But he blew me away, and so there’s the first lesson learned by me: If you give your kids a chance, they’ll show you just how amazing they really are.
Once we had finished building the catapult tower, we took a break because neither he nor I was ready to build the whole set all at once. That’s when I gave him my lesson and words of wisdom:
Look at this tower. Do you see how amazing you did at this? This is just one part of the whole set. When you look at a house, or any building, after this, don’t worry about how to build the whole thing all at once. All you have to do is focus on building the part you’re working on right now, and you can worry about the other parts once you get to them.
See, I don’t want my kid to look at the Eiffel Tower or the Sydney Opera House or even really cool treehouses and feel like he could never make something so incredible or cool-looking. I want him to be in awe of beautiful creations and buildings, yes, but I want him to know that he can make such things, too, one part at a time. I want him to dream without boundaries, and make those dreams into incredible realities.
We did end up finishing the Kingdoms Prison Tower Rescue, and it’s just as awesome as it looks on the box (below, left). He loved playing with the gate, moving the knights around, rescuing the princess, and raising and lowering the portcullis (by hand–he’s snapped two pieces of string that were meant to raise it and lower it using a turnstile). After a couple days, we started working on the other set, which is an incredible 869 pieces (see below right). Starting that set gave me a final lesson learned: Even when your kid does amazing with one set of LEGOs all the way from start to finish, at two years old, his patience and ability to focus runs out at some point. My son’s now happily trotting the second set’s knights around on horseback, merging the king and wizard figurines to make an all-powerful, shiny-crowned wizard king, while I’m assembling most of it. According to the instructions, of course.
My favorite thing to bake is bread. Yes, yes, I know that there are many other flavorful and magical things to bake, from sweet desserts to succulent casseroles to hearty pies. Yet, the smell of bread baking and, in particular, fresh from the oven is unique in the feeling of warmth and joy it gives me.
The bread book that I use most (and I’ve referenced before) is Bernard Clayton’s “New Complete Book of Breads” (2003). The book was a gift from a friend, and I’ve found the instructions very clear, the notes useful, and the breads (almost always) exceptional. Recently, I made the Molasses Wheat Bread (pp. 99-101), as I’d never made a bread that included molasses before, and I’d done few whole-wheat breads in the past. The really fun thing about this bread is that, before the second rising, you take each of the two loaves and twist it two or three times. I wasn’t too aggressive with my twists, but I did get the nice top that you can see in the picture below. The bread was great when it was warm, and only my oldest son didn’t like the reheated pieces (his loss, the wife’s gain).
Molasses Wheat Bread, as viewed from the top
TOPIC FOR TODAY
It’s a bit shocking when you go along in life, just working and taking care of the family, and then you pause for a moment and take a look at yourself in the mirror of your own mind. While there are positive things you might see about yourself in that mirror, it’s far easier to find pock marks and scars that you didn’t even realize were there. For me, during a recent glance at the mirror, I realized something that truly bothered me: I’ve become a homebody.
Although I think most people know what a homebody is, for the sake of a common definition, I’ll put it this way: Someone who is primarily interested in doing activities at home, and who avoids doing things familiar or new outside of the home. I suppose this could be based out of fear, or laziness, or something else. So how did it happen for me?
I grew up exploring the areas around wherever we were living quite a bit; sure, I spent time indoors, but I also checked out the forest, or the cemetery, or the river plenty. Then, as I entered high school and began to work and be more selective on what I did and with what people, that exploring just kind of–faded. It was simply too much work, or moreso took too much time, to go and have adventures. Staying in and surrounded by all the things I could have fun with close at hand was so much, well, easier. And more comfortable. And safer. Eventually, that easiness, comfort, and safety became the overriding factors in decisions about what to do each day, and turned into the padded chains that kept me at home.
As with most times we’re simply doing what’s comfortable, it took something significant for me to stop and look in my mental mirror. In this case, it was my Grandma dying. Like I’ve heard others say, it was a tragedy to lose her, but at the same time a blessing that all the pain she had or could have had was done, and those conflicting feelings were mixed up in all sorts of other complicated feelings that go along with being a family. When she passed away, I had a chance to look at my Grandma’s life and what I’d observed about her behaviors that I did or didn’t want to be true in my life. And what do you know, she was quite the homebody too. She did some volunteering, but she was far more often at home than she was out doing things. In the same vein, my Mom is still very involved in volunteering, and has jobs, but she is not really a traveler at all–more of a volunteer and explorer within her well-known realm. And do you know what this homebody thought when looking at other homebodies? I don’t want that to be me!
You see, in spite of all the great things you can do at or from home, I realized that the vast majority of great times in my life involved getting out of the house and doing things. I might think with a groan of having to load up bikes to head out to the local bike trail, but then I remember the wind on my face, the sun on my skin, and the thrill of riding down an open path with a gorgeous view. While I may hate the time and expense of planning a trip to another country, I remember how blessed we’ve been to be able to take such trips (well, trip), the awesome people we’ve met, and the incredible things we’ve seen. I may feel like Anger from Pixar’s Inside Out by the time we get things packed, the kiddos into the carseats, and through weekend traffic to go wherever we want to hike–but then, I remember how much I like the exertion of hiking around, enjoy being in amidst trees or on top of mountains, and revel in being with my family in a quiet pocket of nature.
Taking those happy memories into consideration, and realizing I’m not always strong enough to get myself out of this rut of staying at home, I flat-out told my wife she’s going to have to force me into some outdoor activities: hiking, biking, or even *gulp* camping. We won’t be able to get out all the time, and I’ll let that feed my homebody inclination, but when we do go out I’m going to do my very best to find that lost explorer that I know is still somewhere inside of me and let him roam free once more.
MOTHERHOOD THE JOURNEY
