“…ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST…”

GOOD MORNING WORLD

Yesterday was my birthday.  I had every intention of marking the day by writing a blog.  I miss writing on a regular basis and as I have said before AND I say again I would like to get back to it.  Need to make a plan!!!  Or challenge myself again.

I turned 67 yesterday.  That means I have been on this earth for 68 years.  It astonishes me that I am not 68.  Who started this way of counting anyway – after the year has passed not commemorating at the time it is actually happening?  I googled this question and got varied answers from Count Basie to Tolstoy so leave it as an unanswerable query.

I am chuckling as I write this as my kids would be so amazed that I am using “QUEEN” (1) for the lead line.  It simply came to my head.  The lyrics (2) have nothing to do with the sentiment for me.  It simply hit my brain that another year has passed.  The larger question is how do I feel about it?  I am not quite sure is the honest answer.

I was overwhelmed and thank all that contributed to my day with cards and well wishes either over the phone or through facebook and the mail and email.  I felt the love and have to conclude that I am fairly well liked and that is a good thing!!!

I had a glorious day.  There are two grandchildren in residence aged 14 and 11.11 (she turns 12 on 7/10).  My coffee was made and served to me by another resident of the house.  The ‘Grands’ and I went for a swim.  We discovered the pool was locked and a lovely lady behind the fence said to go through the baths so we did.  We were breaking all sorts of rules.  Once the authorities (The Homeowners Association Gestapo) found out about the situation they were there at the ready and we had to get out of the pool. This lasted for only about 10 minutes as the “late” lifeguard arrived.

I could spend minutes – actually hours – on Homeowner’s Associations and how they rule and will leave that as spoiling the day.  I could also go about the confusion of the pool sign that says “swim at your own risk” and “do not swim without a lifeguard present”.  Which is it my risk or not???  Not spoiling the criminal act that I embarked on for my 67th birthday – invigorating and still a rebel at heart!!!  The pool was refreshing and fun!!!

The rest of the day was pure leisure with catching up on some TV and reading.  There is a new acronym that I learned and surprised more do not know.  It is D E A R. Drop Everything And Read.  I think this may become a part of my next year’s mantra.  I must challenge myself with the book list though.  I have fallen into teen lit and I love it.  It is easy and fun.  I am now starting “Allegiant” with “Divergent” and “Insurgent” done!!! Veronica Roth is a clever writer.  I promise myself to challenge myself in the very next book.  Well maybe…………

Today as the first day of the rest of my life I am leaving melancholy behind.  Last night I gave myself a shot in the arm with positive reinforcement and wooed another generation of children.  We all watched “Auntie Mame”.  My birthday my movie right?  The grandchildren in residence laughed and enjoyed this gem.  Today will be all about “are we all lit” and “Live Live Live” and “Labor Day that is sometime in November” which this Grandmother has been saying forever when the parents ask for a return date.  One of these days I am going to whisk them off to someplace farther away than Maine!!!

So as I begin this next chapter a quote appeared on facebook.  It is so appropriate.

You are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream.  C. S. Lewis

While the word GOAL sticks in my throat unless I use the acronym God’s Objective Attained Lovingly, the word DREAM is joyous.  I am about to dream new dreams and makes new choices and live new experiences.  With a smile across my face I am looking forward to number 68 (despite that I have already been here 68)and wonder what will happen in these coming 364 days.

As Peter Banning said in the movie “HOOK” – “To Live – to live that would be an awfully great adventure!”

…..ONWARD TO MORE MISADVENTURE…

(1)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE&feature=kp

(2)http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/queen/anotheronebitesthedust.html

(3)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZc40IuetxQ

DIY

GOOD MORNING WORLD

In this country of the pioneer spirit I came to wonder this morning where the term DIY – Do It Yourself – cam about.  Didn’t we do for ourselves all the time.  Well we peasants.  The royalty or gentry had servants.  Today some of our wealthier have ‘people’.  The rest of us I believe did what we had to to keep our households functioning properly.  I am thinking pilgrim and pioneer times here.  While I know there were trades people I believe mostly services were bartered or swapped.  Perhaps I made a great loaf of bread and John was a blacksmith and could shoe a horse.  I give him bread for my horses shoes.

In my lifetime my mother made many of our clothes as cost savings.  They were lovely and unique as well and I did not ever mind wearing ‘homemade’.  My father painted the rooms in our house.  My husband did all the maintenance on our cars.  I papered and painted our homes and made the clothes, curtains and slipcovers for furniture.  I did not occur to me to have someone do any of it.  We could and it saved money.  I do remember my dad saying how glad he was when he could afford to have someone paint the rooms in the house as he really did not like doing it.  I can so relate to that.  The first time we bought a brand new home all painted I was in heaven.  Still we do it ourselves when we can, or more likely now when we want not that we have to, do a project.

So the big DIY push came when?  Longer ago than you thought I bet.  An article by the National Builders Museum says the term Do It Yourself was first used.

(1) The phrase “do-it-yourself” first appeared in an October 1912 article
in Suburban Life encouraging men to do their own interior painting instead of hiring professionals. Finishing projects – such as painting furniture, touching up trim, or varnishing floors – were often directed toward women, reinforcing the traditional female roles of decorating and maintaining the domestic realm.

The same article went on to say that returning GIs had a hand in the push as they came home and new home products became available for them to work around their home.  The article also said later a desire to rehab older homes was an additional impetus to the DIY boon.  It was not simply homes either DIY was becoming a hobby.

Wikipedia agreed the term had been around since 1912.  They go on to say that in the 1970’s a catalog was created to foster this idea.

(2)In the 1970s, DIY spread through the North American population of college- and recent-college-graduate age groups. In part, this movement involved the renovation of affordable, rundown older homes. But it also related to various projects expressing the social and environmental vision of the 1960s and early 1970s. The young visionary Stewart Brand, working with friends and family, and initially using the most basic of typesetting and page-layout tools, published the first edition of The Whole Earth Catalog (subtitled Access to Tools) in late 1968.

The first Catalog, and its successors, used a broad definition of the term “tools”. There were informational tools, such as books (often technical in nature), professional journals, courses, classes, and the like. There were specialized, designed items, such as carpenters‘ and masons‘ tools, garden tools, welding equipment,chainsaws, fiberglass materials and so on; even early personal computers. The designer J. Baldwin acted as editor to include such items, writing many of the reviews. The Catalog’s publication both emerged from and spurred the great wave of experimentalism, convention-breaking, and do-it-yourself attitude of the late 1960s. Often copied, the Catalog appealed to a wide cross-section of people in North America and had a broad influence.

This article went on to say that by the 1990’s DIY had hit the web.

An article I found from hlntv.com (3) says that now DIY is more popular than ever and sites are exploding on the web.  I am certain that many reading this have been on ehow.com,diynetwrok.com or even pinterest.com.  It is all out there for us today.  I am not certain what you could NOT find out how to do on the web.

I needed nothing this morning.  I simply gave myself a home perm and wondered where the term DIY came from in the beginning.  Home Perms are another whole area of DIY.  Have to admit they are a lot easier today and do not smell as bad as the old “‘Toni’s” of my youth when my mother was determined to make my straight hair have some curls – oh the pictures I could share!  Blessedly I do not have to show any proof.

…..ONWARD TO MORE MISADVENTURE…

(1)http://www.nbm.org/exhibitions-collections/exhibitions/diy.html

(2)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_it_yourself

(3) http://www.hlntv.com/article/2012/10/10/diy-blogs-do-it-yourself-making-it-america