Greetings from Chattanooga

Why doncha sit a spell?

We finally unpacked the cord that will allow me to download some pictures, so why don't I show you around?

Here's our new home.

Of course, I'm kidding. These are pictures taken nearby, of Audubon Acres. It's a wildlife park we visited, and it's close enough to go all the time, if one wanted to do that.

Here's a more accurate picture of what we've been living with.




But, who wants to look at boxes? We sure don't, so we've been finding lots of excuses to get out of the house when we can. Lacking furniture and storage solutions, we've found lots of excuses to go out. Today will be more unpacking, and tomorrow will be more going out.

My daughter seems to be finding her way in high school. She attends Ooltewah High School (pronounced Oo-de--wah) as a freshman, and aside from having to get up at 5 am (ouch!), she seems pretty happy.

My husband and I have put out lots of applications and resumes, and will keep doing that, but so far we haven't found jobs. At this particular moment in time, I'm not very worried. At other moments, I find myself quite anxious. But really, after all we've been through in the past four years, living in Singapore and all that attended that life, I don't feel like I have any right to worry. I have been taken care of and will continue to be taken care of, and that's all I need to know.

But your prayers are appreciated.

The past couple of days have been rainy and cool. I'm sure you know how happy that makes me feel. I'm currently sitting in my living room with the sliding glass door open, quite comfortable. It's stop raining for the moment, but the sky is grey, so we may get more rain.

Here are some pictures I took on our recent hike at Audubon Acres.



Not sure what kind of flower this is, but it was hiding in the grass.




Isn't this inviting? One of the things I really missed when I was living in Singapore was going for a walk in the woods. Of course you can walk in the woods in Singapore, if you like sweating. It's so humid there. It was humid in these woods, too, but not nearly as bad.




I forget what creek this bridge spans; I think it's the Chickamauga. I can't get my mouth to say that word correctly.



Everybody needs friends, right?



And speaking of friends, these two trees struck me with their closeness yet obvious difference in their bark. I'm aiming at some profound statement about unity in diversity here, but I'm not quite making it.






Tomorrow my sister is coming down and we are having A Day. Hopefully we will both remember to take lots of pictures so we both have something to blog about.

Finally, A Post!

Dear Friends and Followers,

I am so sorry to have put my blogging on hold, but with all the indecision about my future going on I really had nothing useful to say except how frustrated I was and all that. Not fun stuff to read. But I finally have news to share, and so here goes:

We are, after careful consideration and lots of prayer, moving back to the United States. We will fly into Phoenix, visit with my husband's family in Arizona for a few weeks, and then drive east to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where we will be putting down roots. 

For at least a year, maybe longer.

Let me backpedal a bit and say that my husband got accepted at his school, and my daughter got accepted at her school. But, with the economic situation being what it is, it seemed like a bad idea to move us to Germany with no job and little prospect of finding a job as nobody speaks German. We tried to find funding in the form of a scholarship, but things just didn't work out. Most of the scholarships for the coming year had already been awarded. So, we will return to the states and try to figure things out from there.

There are so many things to do, but God seems to be working a step ahead of us. I only have to think about the next problem I need to solve when the solution appears. But, because we are dismantling our lives, I am certain that I will really have to put my blogging on hold. This morning I put my etsy shop in vacation mode until August 1, and I think that is a wise time frame to put my blogging on hold for, too. We are leaving Singapore probably on July 2, so I think by the beginning of August, we should be settled in our new home - or at least I will have internet access at my sister's house - so I should have lots to tell you by then.

Thank you for being more faithful than me! Have a wonderful summer and I will talk to you all soon!

Blessings,

Brooke

Mother's Day and Birthday Pictures

For Mother's Day this year, I requested a set of lino cutters. I became interested in the idea after watching this video on Geninne's Art Blog.

I mean, how could I not become interested? If you watched the video, I bet you are interested, too! Anyway, so my family got me a set of lino cutters, and I spent the morning (after eating these wonderful pancakes - recipe here)

playing around and making a stamp. Actually, I made 2: the stamp is double sided.


This is carved from a white plastic eraser. Very easy to cut. I made both a positive and a negative stamp: one side I carved away from the drawn lines and one side I carved into the drawn lines.


And here are the results. I'm pretty happy, altho I can tell this is a skill that needs lots of practice before my stamps will be as fine as Geninne's. And then maybe I can stamp my quilts!

The day before, as in the year of her birth, we celebrated my daughter's birthday. (In 1995, her actual birthday was the day before Mother's Day. It doesn't always happen that way every year.)

She went with two of her friends to a theme park here in Singapore and spent the day getting dizzy and wet.


Here they are, on the train going to the park, all wearing glowing earrings.

My camera seems to have some kind of short in the wiring because if I leave the batteries in it for any length of time, they run empty. And that is what happened on this day, so I didn't get many pictures. But I did post them to my Flickr account, if you are interested.


This is like the linkiest post I've ever made!

Also new and interesting: last week the AWA Choir gave its first two performances, one at a school for special needs kids and one in the lobby of a hospital. We had so much fun. We've had two of our performances cancelled due to the Swine Flu scare, but we picked up an extra one which will be this Thursday. And our final performance is on Sunday. I will miss going to practice twice a week. I've had so much fun and it has been just the best thing to distract me from the move and all the attending intricacies of that. But I guess it's time to focus on moving, anyway. Wahoo.
The choir is hoping to get someone to video tape our final performance, which we will then upload to YouTube. If it happens, I will post the link here.

Some Welcome News

This morning my DH received two emails from the University of Potsdam.

They were both in German and had to be translated. Funnily enough, the first one informed us (in German, no less) that he would be permitted to submit his dissertation in English. However, he will have to submit a 10-page conclusion in German. Given the availability of translation software, this should not be a problem.

But this is not the acceptance letter we are waiting for, which he needs in order to request scholarships.

The second letter was from the International Scholar's office, to alert us that some forms are still missing for matriculation, but we knew that and we can do that after we arrive in Germany.

All of this is strangely anti-climactic seeing as we've been waiting for so long to find out where we're going from here. There are still hurdles to be jumped before we are certainly going to Berlin, but we are one step closer. I am having a hard time feeling anything about it, but I guess maybe I will later.

Limbo is not a nice place to visit, even for vacation.

Sanity Check

In the midst of all the chaos of my current life, I have relied on creativity to keep me sane.  

Or to allow me to express my insanity.  Something like that.

I found this recipe that seemed interesting, and I sent a link to my daughter to see if she wanted to make it for her upcoming birthday.  She was very enthusiastic, so we decided to do a trial run.

It's called a rainbow cake, and it uses no fat in the recipe. But it was so sweet that all three of us found it difficult to finish even one slice! So, we decided to make the recipe but bake up cupcakes instead.

I also decided to finally make a project I've been thinking about for some months now. A case for my crochet hooks.





I've seen many different types of things like this, used for crochet hooks, colored pencils, and other similar items. I was inspired, but sometimes it takes being under stress to make something like this happen. All in all, I'm happy with it. Now all my hooks are in one place and I will know right away if one is missing.

After these creative bursts, I felt that I wanted to draw with pen and ink. I'm also itching to use my colored pencils, but I haven't gotten to that yet.
To mix things up a bit, I decided on white ink on black paper. And I just sat and drew without any plan or idea of where I was going.




After I got to a certain point on this one, I decided to try and add some color with the colored pencils, but I wasn't pleased with the result. So I went back later and drew this one.



These are highly reflective of the craziness and indefiniteness of life right now, but drawing them was keenly satisfying. They are sort of sprawling doodles which I drew as fast as I could and let my instincts guide me. The first one seems sort of like underwater life to me, while the second one looks like plant life. The state of mind the work put me into in process was one I really yearn to enter again, soon. It was restful and challenging at the same time. Especially when my family wasn't interrupting me....




And lastly, for today's post: the Leetle Birdies have been spotting in cyberspace! Cuteable has included them in her latest post. Let's hope that generates some sales!

Things My Mother Taught Me, Inadvertently

If you are a follower of my sister's blog, or came to this blog via my brother's myspace page, then you already know that our mother died on the 19th of April.  Both of them have posted about her passing, but it's taken me a bit longer to get my thoughts together on the matter.  

It's only been a week, but I feel like I still have a lot of emotion to unpack. My most frequent feeling is anger, but I know that's just one of the stages of grief, so I'm not letting it manifest itself.  I think I've been angry at her for a long time, without really letting myself know that I was.  

Last fall, when my sister and I went to settle her into a nursing home, it was a very shocking experience.  I remember that after that part of my trip was over and we were driving back to Tennessee, I began to work on what I called my Anti-Mom Manifesto.  It was a list of reminders of things that she was or did that I didn't want to become or repeat.  So, in essence, the most valuable things I learned from my mother were all about seeing her life as a cautionary tale.

1. Take care of my health.  Don't allow myself to become addicted to anything harmful.  Don't take my health for granted.

2. Forgive those who wrong me (including her!)  Lack of forgiveness leads to bitterness.  

3. Don't be a victim.  Have good boundaries and defend them.

4. Make good decisions.  Try to correct mistakes, and then move on.

5.  Don't accumulate material possessions.  Accumulate healthy relationships.

6.  Pets are not more important than people. 

7.  Don't settle for crummy from myself - strive for excellence.

8.  Be honest with myself and others.  Be willing to examine my life and tell the truth about what I see there.

9.  Put my child's needs before my own most of the time.  Not always, but mostly.  

10. Only cook with fresh, wholesome ingredients.

I'm sure that not every item on this list will have the same significance for my readers as it has for me.  I'm sure there's more.  I don't really want to talk about how she didn't do these things.  

So, in addition to dealing with my mother dying, I am still living in limbo regarding where we're moving to in...a little over 2 months...GRRRRRRR!

The options are Berlin, Germany or back to the states.  I mostly feel like I could go to either place and it would be ok, but we are just waiting and waiting and waiting and it's getting a bit tedious.  To say the least.  

To keep myself sane, I have worked on a few projects.  But I will save that for tomorrow's post.  And I'm still singing with the choir - we are getting close to our performances in early May.  And then that part of my life will be over.  I'm so glad I joined the choir and hope I have the opportunity to do it again wherever we wind up.  

Etsy Store Opened!

I am pleased to announce 

that I have opened a store on Etsy.com 

to sell my 

Leetle Birdies, 

art quilts, 

and other stuff I like to tinker around with. 

Of course, being new to this type of thing, I expect there will be the usual learning curve. But I think I thought of most situations that could arise.

Anyway, I cordially invite you to visit and leave comments - here or there.

BethanyStudios