the footstool

when i was 18, i met my father for the first time.   one of the first stories he told me was of the footstool.   he made me a small footstool for a necklace and i wore it for a long time.    although the necklace has been lost to moving and time, the story has stuck with me.   i prefer the memory since it is the only one of the two i can take with me.

the story goes something like this - (it has been a few years since i heard the story so the details may be off but the gist is the same) -
every night my dad would need to get up in the middle of the night.   you know how that goes.   well, he tried to not wake the house full of kids and wife, so he didn't turn on the light.   this would normally be great and not a problem.   he knew where the furniture was.  certainly a man can navigate his own home in the dark, right?
yes, unless you have kids.   the kids were pretty good about the toys, but there was this little footstool that was just the perfect height.   it was great for climbing up, sitting down, hopping over, driving cars under.   everything!  that meant that it got used a lot.   that means it was never in the same place twice.   so, as my dad would carefully and quietly make his way through the house . . .thump!  found the footstool with his toe, banged into it with his ankle or just tripped over the darn thing. . . e v e r y night.  

you would think that at some point he would turn on a light, get a flashlight, light a candle, something.   no!   this was becoming a matter of pride!   this was war!   he was bound and determined to get through the house without the stool beating him!   it's just a footstool, right?   right!

night after night, my dad stubbornly stubbed his toe.   then, he finally decided that his toe was more important than his pride.   toes tend to hurt more than pride after a while.   he turned on a light.   the funny thing is, by turning on the light, he won.   his toes won!

it has always reminded me of how silly our pride, our competition, our stubbornness makes our lives harder, sometimes even painful.   we work so hard at doing something the way we want to do it, that we miss the simple answer that will allow us to move forward.

look around, turn on the light and really look at what is causing you pain, what is it that is making your life harder than it really needs to be?   what is it that just needs a little light?  

grateful for jersey knit

i have been a total slacker lately with my gratitude.      such is life.
a few weeks ago, i made a jump rope for my tomboy princess out of jersey knit, (t-shirt material).  
http://plaidipusmound.blogspot.de/2013/10/homemade-jump-rope.html
it worked great and came back to help me this week.

my shoelaces were wearing through . . . had worn through and been tied several times.   then my little blonde curls wore my shoes, broke the lace again and lost the end so i didn't have anything left to tie.   i was in the middle of something when it happened and didn't really think about it . . .until i had to go somewhere.   stink!   ironically, i had to go pick up the blonde curls when i remembered that the blonde curls broke my laces.  option: wear the hubby's shoes (too big) , wear sandals in the cold and wet (barefoot maybe if i didn't have to go into his school but not sandals.  barefoot is ok no matter the weather for a few minutes, but sandals in the cold, no. and i was going ride my bike), so, fix it is what we have left.    yah for the jump rope experiment.
i just cut a strip off of the same sheet i used for the jump rope, and laced 'em up.   i cut the end really slanted and used a crochet hook to pull it through faster.   you could use tape on the end for an aglet if you wanted though.   it totally didn't match, not really a problem for me.   i'm not fashion conscience.   my pant legs were long enough to hide it anyway.   i just have to put in, this is not a long term fix.   i had to fix my shoe twice before remembering to go buy laces.   i did want to see how long they lasted though.   not long.

the point is not the shoe laces.   the point is doing what you can with what you have, thinking outside the box, applying past experience to present situations that may seem totally unrelated.
the point is not fencing yourself in with the easy way, the normal way, the usual way, the everyday.
the point is it may or may not work, but you tried it, you learn from your failures.   and seriously, this failure was seriously cool!