OK….here’s the plan.

I’ll get up early….by about an hour….earlier than usual…”4″ instead of “5”….get a little bit of a jump start on the day…..and then when the ball drops later tonight….when the year is tripping over into tomorrow….I’ll be alert and will have all my ducks in a row and I’ll be able to ring in the New Year right (!!).

How’s that for a plan?

I know it’s not going to work like that….no matter how much coffee I drink this morning, I think that I’m going to fall asleep on the couch if I don’t struggle today to STAY ALERT!!

Maybe that’s a good and reachable resolution?! To “STAY ALERT” in the coming year?

I listened to this song for the first time in about 30 years this morning.

I hadn’t heard it for a long time.

“another year” Leo Sayer

Let’s see….he’s singing about ’76….so I guess that album came out in 1975? Let’s see….

I”m right! The album came out in 1975!!

Let’s see (again)….I never bought albums “new”….or rarely….so I probably was 16….maybe 17 when I was listening to this.

Sitting on my bed with headphones on….listening to Leo Sayer.

That was a while ago.

Hmmmmmm…..how did that happen?

I guess that sometimes music is my marker….music and cars that I’ve owned….now, it’s children who are making good markers for the passing time.

What the heck? I have a good repertoire of “markers” for the passing time. Time is passing and I’m gathering all these “markers”….and there’s a whole lot more than the ones I’m listing here….

But to think of me sitting on my bed, listening to all this melodramatic stuff….what was I thinking?

Life’s too short to let something like someone else’s melodrama get me stirred up.

Anyway….you can’t move forward looking back….unless you have some of those glasses that let you see behind you….the ones with the little mirror on the side.

The ones that you wear when you’re trying to be safe and zipping around on your bicycle.

I never see any bicyclists riding backwards, though.

Most of the time, they must be using the mirror to see what’s trying to catch them.

Maybe that’s the key? Only look back when something’s trying to catch you?

The only thing chasing me is the ticking clock….and who needs to see that?

I’m going to keep my eyes open this year.

Beyond that, I really don’t have any resolutions.

Maybe just “Stay Awake”….and to take care of my family.

Here’s another song from that album that I used to listen to in my room…..

“i will not stop fighting” Leo Sayer

The happiest of New Years to you.

 

 

 

“Hey! This one’s in Asheville!” I thought.

I’m always interested in the local talent….it’s always good to see something pop up in my general neck of the woods.

It’s a cabin….but it’s small enough to be called a “tiny house”….so it gets a different kind of attention than some dude building a cabin on an inaccessible (by vehicle) lot would get.

That’s goofy.

When I first moved up to NC, I lived on the north side of a mountain in a great house that some friends had built in the middle of 50 acres.

It was on a steep piece of land, too….and, because it was on the north side and didn’t get a lot of intense winter sun, the driveway stayed icy most of the winter.

Because the driveway stayed snowed in and icy, it was very awkward to make it up the 800 ft road with my two-wheel drive truck for much of the winter.

Carrying all your groceries up a steep, icy driveway most of the winter loses its “romance” a couple of months into the experience.

So, now that I’m getting older and maybe a little smarter….maybe….the appeal of a place that I have to carry all my building materials to gets kind of limited.

A “once in a while” cabin….maybe.

My house….the one that I live in all the time, the one that I carry sleeping babies into after I pick them up out of their car seats in the minivan, the one that I carry a gallon of milk into?….nah.

Nah. I don’t think that sounds too interesting.

We looked at some goofy “houses” when we were first married.

They were built by people who didn’t have any money…..built in weird places because the land was cheap….and the selling price was low because they were weird little houses.

One that we looked at had about a mile walk on the railroad tracks to get to.

It was a little shack.

I don’t think that it was cool enough to be called a “tiny house”, though….and it was a while ago, so even if I’d “made the grade” (square footage wise), I don’t think it could have ever been in the “tiny house” category.

It would have been in the “little shack” category.

This is a nice little house, built from plans purchased from Jay Schafer….of Tumbleweed Tiny Houses.

It’s a beautiful little “tiny house” in the woods.

Much nicer….and cooler…and trendier…..than the “little shack” monstrosity that two dreamers found across the river and a mile walk in on the railroad tracks so many years ago.

I’m glad that we didn’t buy that house.

That would have been so crazy.

I like access.

I like room for a bunk bed that I can lay my sleeping child into.

I like a room to sit in ( and watch television! ) and not wake the kids up.

What did those bears say?

I like a house that’s “just right”.

Here’s a link to the homeowner’s blog….

 

“Come On Up To The House” Willie Nelson

The thing that messes me up with videos like this is that, when you find out what was spent, (and it could be a “Bob Vila” type situation where the cost is exaggerated in a favorable way….and things are said to be less expensive than they actually are)….anyway…when you find out that the land in Hawaii (island paradise? maybe….) was 8,000 dollars….and the home was built (without permits) for 11,000 dollars….well, it makes the remodeling that we plan on doing look like it should be a lot cheaper than it turns out being.

Of course, we can watch programs that show people remodeling their kitchens for 100’s of thousands of dollars.

That’s kind of goofy…but if you buy crazy, fancy fixtures and use expensive contractors…..and don’t worry about spending the money, I guess that you could figure out a way to get rid of your money fast.

I guess that there is always a way to get rid of your money fast if you work at it.

That’s the thing that works for me…..a video like this helps me think that anything is possible….and that I might be able to afford it….before I actually get into the project and figure out that, hey, this is going to be more expensive than I thought.

Or….and this turns out to be true more often than not….a little bit of money spent to make our lives nicer really is money well spent. You can do a lot with a little….small tweaks can really get a place livable….or better, enjoyable…. cheaply.

But, usually….Ignorance is complete and total BLISS….until the bills come rolling in and I GET SCHOOLED!!

What’s to worry, anyway?

I don’t ever get anything good done if I’m always worried about the cost.

Spend some money!! Live!!

Live.

That’s the whole deal….just keep living.

Just keep on living….tiny house or big house…island paradise or mountain cabin….on land or on sea….just stay alive.

Keep breathing….and while you’re doing that….stay alive.

 

 

 

This isn’t a picture of Jesus.

I don’t think you can get one of those….except maybe in your mind….maybe in your heart.

Photography wasn’t big back then.

Sparrow was up last night….goofing around.

She wasn’t crying unless we tried to get her to stop goofing around.

These babies….they have no respect for the sanctity of the idea of sleeping in until 6:00 on Christmas day.

They don’t respect exhaustion.

What was that first morning like for Mary?

You know that she was tired….it was probably a pretty stressful experience for her, what with those wise men poking their heads in and the Angels and everything.

That must have been kind of hard.

Divine….but hard.

And did Jesus cry out for her that first morning?

We don’t usually talk about that, I guess.

Maybe it’s a way of distancing ourselves from the whole thing a little….go heavy on the “miracle” part of it….the part that we can’t completely relate to (what do we really know about “miracles”, anyway?)….and go a little bit lighter on the human side of it.

If we understood the human side of the experience as well as we pretend to know the “divine side”, it might make us more….what’s a word? Culpable? Responsible? What’s a good word?

If the whole thing was “connectable”…if we let ourselves remember that Jesus was the bridge….a very human little baby laying in a rough manger after a hard night….laying near his very tired and blessed mother….well, then we’d have to relate a little deeper than when we could think of it all as just another mysterious and unreachable “God Thing”.

I think that Jesus probably cried some….in a nice way.

What a mysterious miracle this day was.

I guess that maybe what I’m wondering is this….if we understood what the experience really was for Mary…and Jesus….and Joseph….we’d have no excuse for not understanding completely….every day….how close this brought us to God.

No excuses. We’d have to understand. We’d have to relate.

Who wants to be left without excuses?

A giant neon plastic nativity set is easier to ignore.

“Way back when”, we spent our first Christmas in our new old house with a very, very young daughter and no insulation in the rafters.

It was a plan that, in retrospect, wasn’t really all that well thought out.

It was cold.

We went up into the woods behind the house that first year and cut a sad little sapling…..brought it inside…nailed a couple of boards to the base of the tree….put a few decorations on it….and put it up where our loft is now.

It was a pathetic little tree….but it was a good tree.

It was our first Christmas tree in a house that no one should have been living in.

It was camping right by the road.

It was a place that a man doesn’t move his young wife and baby daughter to….no matter how optimistic and naïve he is.

You just don’t set things up to be hard like that if you have much of a plan….unless you have a plan to live out in the country and don’t have much money.

Then you can call “goofy ideas” a “plan”….and just roll with whatever happens.

I think that we must have given our neighbors something to talk about.

Goofy.

Now….things are more comfortable….and we go somewhere else to buy a tree that has a better shape….that’s fuller and isn’t something that we could make fun of.

It’s a real Christmas tree.

We’re surrounded by woods….there’s trees everywhere I look….but there aren’t any that look just right to use for a tree at Christmas.

There aren’t any that look the way a Christmas tree should look.

It’s kind of funny/strange to cut down all these trees, anyway.

The ones we buy aren’t any more meaningful than the scraggly little tree that we had that first year.

They’re just better looking.

The Christmas story that I remember is a pretty humble little story, anyway.

It’s grand….but humble.

A manger! A barn! A bunch of smelly animals! What a way to start a miracle!

There wasn’t anything perfect about that scene….except what happened…at that scene.

We have a nice tree now….and we can dust off our Nativity set if it gets a little dirty.

What we bring to Christmas is really the important thing, anyway, right?

Having a scraggly little tree….or a grand spectacle of a tree….doesn’t really matter if we look at it with the wrong set of eyes.

That must be why the birth of Christ took place in such a humble surrounding.

I don’t think I could relate if it happened in a castle or something.