THE TOWEL SAGA CONTINUES...

I’ve been at this blog-writing gig so long, I can now write sequels.

Seven years ago, after we moved into our current home, I wrote My Big Hairy First World Problem, in which I discussed the havoc that occurs when one decides to furnish a bathroom with black towels and how, after endless trauma and sleepless nights, I exchanged the black for green. That story went on to win a couple of awards. (It also appears in my book, Out of My Mind: A Decade of Faith and Humour. Shameless plug.)

Seven years later, the green towels were worn out. The whole bathroom needed a facelift. I contemplated painting. A light gray would work well with the flooring and countertop. The problem was the room has four honey oak cupboards—all the rage in the nineties. The oak still looks lovely, and even though everyone who’s anyone is painting their oak cabinets, I refuse. I predict that in a few years, everyone who’s anyone will be stripping their cabinets down to the raw wood again. If I’m wrong about that, I still like the wood. But I didn’t think it would look great next to gray walls.

So I turned to the experts: my Facebook friends.

If you ever want to engage social media, ask a decorating question. At least half the respondents told me to paint the cabinets even though I specified I wasn’t willing to do that. Some named specific gray shades for the walls which wouldn’t appear greenish next to oak cabinets.

I went to the paint store. When I walked in, Phyllis greeted me with, “Hi Terrie. I heard you might be coming in.” Don’t you just love a small town?

Phyllis gave me samples of the gray shades that would work. I also took chips that matched the current wall color, and another to represent the cabinets. I told Phyllis that if I decided to paint, I’d be back. Armed with all those chips, I headed for a bed and bath store in Winnipeg. By buying from a specialty store, I hoped to avoid a repeat of my towel fluff fiasco from 2013.

The store displayed floor-to-ceiling towels in every color of the rainbow. But every time I chose a color, there’d be no matching washcloths, or they’d be short the number of hand towels I needed. Or something. I grew hot in my face mask and nervous about keeping my distance from other shoppers. My stomach growled. I wanted to lie down on a bedspread and nap. I found it ironic that a store specializing in bathroom furnishings had no bathroom. Argh! I grabbed a shower curtain with a gray and paprika pattern, then some towels and rugs that matched the various paint chips. Loaded my cart, paid the much too expensive bill, and left the store.

When I got home and hung everything, my bathroom looked like somebody had barfed on a pizza. How can I be so bad at this?

Furthermore, the idea of painting around all those fixtures and cabinets was growing increasingly overwhelming.

Long story short, everything went back to the store. Instead, I shopped locally and spent less. Found the right number of soft, fluffy, charcoal gray towels with rugs and shower curtain. Even found a gray candle, scented like sandalwood. I added a few small touches and I love it—without painting a thing! This time, I wisely ran the towels through the washer and dryer four times before their first use. They’re still giving off lint, but nobody has hinted it’s time for electrolysis, so I think we’re safe. Unless my friends are just too polite.

The lessons? Sometimes a simple change is all that’s needed, and shopping locally really is best.

“Godliness with contentment is great gain.” (I Timothy 6:6)

 

 

Where I May Have Acquired My Hope Genes

Mom with her original five.

So this week we celebrated Mom’s 85^th birthday at a local restaurant with my siblings and Mom’s little brother who always seemed like more of a brother to us. It was a good time, with my brother making my sister laugh so hard she could barely breathe at one point.

As we celebrated Mom, we played a trivia game with questions based on the autobiography she published ten years ago. Even she didn’t get all the answers correct, but she did win the prize in the end.

One of my favorite stories from Mom’s life and book happened in 1950. Shortly after she and Dad moved into their first “real” home (a converted granary they had fixed up!), they were so proud to be able to order from the Simpsons catalog a complete living room suite—sofa, chair, coffee table, and two end tables. It even came with two lamps.

The trivia question surrounding this story was: What made this purchase so ironic?

The answer:  Their home didn’t have electricity!

Mom proudly placed the lamps on the end tables where they served as decorative ornaments for a year until the power company rolled through their district, stringing the wires that would make everyone’s world a little brighter. At the party, we teased Mom about whether she put bulbs in them and if so, did they burn out during the year? I suppose the house must have been wired for electricity when they built it, anticipating the day.

The reason I love this story so much is because it speaks of two things: contentment and hope.

The Bible says “We are saved by trusting. And trusting means looking forward to getting something we don’t yet have—for a man who already has something doesn’t need to hope and trust that he will get it.

 
But if we must keep trusting God for something that hasn’t happened yet, it teaches us to wait patiently and confidently.” (Romans 8:24 TLB)

Faith is about buying electric lamps before you can connect them to power, confident it will come. Faith is about waiting patiently for the fulfillment of our dreams here on earth, trusting that God is working out the details in his timing. 

Most of all, faith is knowing there is a “fully-charged” home awaiting us when our time here is done. So we can live out our 85 or 95 or 105-year allotment here, in the midst of life’s loneliness and disappointments, with peace and joy and patience and love. I’m grateful to have a mother who’s still here with us, exemplifying that very kind of faith every day.

Yay! A coloring book!

New Furniture, Same Old Heart

After 37 years of marriage, hubby and I recently bought our first new furniture. Call us late bloomers.

Somehow, the items that have furnished our home until now have always landed by default. Most of them came gently used by parents, grandparents, or siblings. A couple of dressers were included with our first mobile home. We’ve owned at least six televisions in those 37 years, but have never actually purchased one. And a couple of things I can’t imagine parting with, like my solid oak World War II desk and the stuffed rocking chair I rocked my babies in, came to us free from storage warehouses.

And we’ve got along just fine.

Lately, though, the shortage of seating for guests and the mishmash of cast-offs in our living room (I counted nine different kinds of wood) were getting on my nerves. I began to dream of things that actually matched and spots for every bum. I decided to use the money I’d saved from my column-writing—usually reserved for writing-related expenses—on new furniture instead. So I thank you, dear readers, and the advertisers who keep the Central Plains Herald Leader going. You’ve unwittingly played a role in this new acquisition at the Toddheim.

With our first furniture shopping experience, I discovered you’re never too old to learn things about yourself. I didn’t know what kind of furniture I liked, having never chosen for myself. I learned I don’t like leather—too cold. I learned I prefer warm beiges and browns over cool greys and blues. I felt bummed to learn how much new furnishings cost. While I’d hoped to replace both seating and tables, my money ran out before we got to the tables. Guess I better keep the columns coming for a while. 

But there’s one thing I already knew about myself because it’s true for every human on the planet. The joy provided by new possessions is temporary. The stuff we chase after will never fill our hearts. Don’t misunderstand, I’m thrilled to see the new furniture in my home and hope I’ll feel thankful to own it for years to come. I enjoy the satisfaction of knowing I earned it with the writing skills God gave me. But I also know a nice, new living room will not make me a nice, new person. In fact, sometimes our possessions simply begin to own us as they require maintenance, time, and vigilance to protect. We become servants of our stuff instead of the other way around.

Khaled Hosseini (author of The Kite Runner) wrote a dark little tale about a man who finds a magic cup and discovers that if he weeps into the cup, his tears turn into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he creates ways to make himself sad so his tears can make him rich. As the pearls pile up, so does his greed. The story ends with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife’s slain body in his arms.

A gruesome picture, but a vivid reminder of how greed destroys us.

Jesus understood the secret to living a contented life. In Luke chapter 12, he told his disciples, “Take care! Protect yourself against the least bit of greed. Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.” 

I’ll reflect on that as I nap on my comfy new couch this afternoon.