Quick Tip Tuesday

... or Thursday. I'll get used to this rotation one day.

Read the instructions of IKEA furniture before you put it together. Especially if you have carpentry experience. Because I have discovered that the language of IKEA makes perfect sense those illiterate in the terms of furniture with the directions, but is not engineered in a way that makes sense to those who actually know furniture.

I wish a National Geographic team to film my dad, a natural builder, installing my IKEA pants hanger. I daresay my commentary on this creature out of his element was quite amusing.

Slightly like this, except insert the part where all my pants fall off the hanger. 

(from this article on learning and cognition)

Gold Star to anyone whose Dad is too smart for his own good (and I say this will all the cheeky love in my heart).

Pics of pretty

In celebration of fall...

from MalloryBethh's Flickr

Some lovely apples. I can't wait to go apple picking this week!

Gold Star to those who wait all summer for cider season (with cinnamon sugar doughnuts, of course!)

For the love of Post-Its

(taken from here -- which has other cool art)

A long, passionate affair indeed.

If you look on my desk, alongside jars of pencils and some choice items to inspire me, you will find piles of Post-Its -- both used and of many variates of lovely crisp newness. 

I have been gathering pretty Post-Its for a while, but they really became a go-to item in college. I couldn't bring myself to violate books by writing or highlighting them, even though textbooks are low on the levels of book sanctity. So, I used Post-It notes. To this day, you can tell which books I used in lit classes because I never bothered to remove the many colorful passage markers. 

After a while, I began making my own little flags by (slightly obsessively) tearing bigger Post-Its into tiny line markers. 

Now, I use them in my job, to pull out passages of my company's books that are clever, define them, or make them unique. My current assignment has me writing promotional materials, which require many of these little nuggets. 

They really are one of my most often used tools, in that they allow me to keep track of the things that jump out at me, require my attention, and need to be remembered. It allows me to keep track of my reading in a way I need to do when I'm working with books, as opposed to reading for pleasure. 

Gold Star to everyone who can't bear to write on their books. 

Things that inspire me...

The crazy family members.

This weekend, I was at a second wedding with my mom's family in the last couple of years, and once again got to experience the abundance of character that is my Great Aunt and Uncle's brood.

My great uncle himself fits the profile of the crazy old coot. As a general rule you don't want to leave anyone alone with him for too long or they'll get the whole life story plus some. At my cousin's wedding, I got more career advice than I could ever need. This time, it was my Dad. But at the same time, a crazy old coot is entertaining, and you learn a lot from him, whether you want to or not.

My great aunt is another character. She is known, and a bit infamous in our family, for her letters. She sends them only on the choicest of occasions, and as she says with a tiny smile, "they're a bit nutty." In celebration of a second cousin getting an apartment, she sent him a Minnie Mouse card, because, "every apartment needs a mouse." At the most recent wedding, she identified me by "I sent you the card with the shoe, when you graduated." As per my mother's instructions to cherish it always, I still have it saved.

And through my mom's stories, I could talk about the CIA cousin (though of course, we'll never know that for sure, the one who has lived everywhere, the Yooper engineer who occasionally sails into Canada without his passport..., the one who was my mom's buddy, just now un-bachelored, and their girl.

This is just a sampling of the characters available to me, who, if I ever get time to write the stories in the back of my head, will provide endless manifestations.

Gold Star to everyone who loves their crazy-wonderful family.

Pics of pretty

This lovely composition makes me want to live in a Barn

This lovely composition is taken from Dove Tree Design

"What, did you raise your kids in a barn?"

"Why, yes I did."

Gold Star to those inspired by Harvest Moon fantasies.

A writerly affair

So, another thing I would like to get started is a posting of things I use as a writer, to help inspire me and assist in my job. A sort of "what's in my purse," had I a Merry Poppins bag devoted to all things writerly.

from nicolekrauss.com

I first read Nicole Krauss in my contemporary lit class, and she is definitely an example of "writerly" fiction. Not only in her use of unique forms, but in that she tends to write about writers. In Great House, like a History of Love, my lit-class introduction, she weaves together stories of several seeming strangers in a dreamily seamless way. And in Great House, you get the lives of writers from the writers and their families, illustrating the eccentricities of a creative mind, and how people love and cherish them. And you get this superimposed with other lives and stories, all layered together brilliantly. I read this book and  see in the characters and language why I chose to write. A good reminder to keep handy :)

Gold star to anyone whoever masters the Mary Poppins bag someday in the future.

Things that inspire me...

My car

Perhaps an odd thing, to be inspired by a '95 Buick LeSabre, but I love it.

Mainly because I love things with unexpected character, which my Pearl possesses in abundance.

Firstly, she is a complete and total granny car, white exterior, a very thoroughly blue leather and faux-wood paneling interior, it even came with a box of Kleenex. Also, the height of nineties luxury. Not only does my car have passenger heat control and motorized seats, it has the most awesome cassette player I have ever seen. It can skip through songs and flip sides automatically. No discman I ever had could do that.

But asides from her physical character, I think my favorite thing about my car is that one day, After packing her trunk to the brim, some wire to the trailer hitch got disconnected. The result is that the back-left blinker didn't work. Instead my clock blinked. Only when I had my foot on the break. When I didn't, all was normal, as it was once my dad reconnected the wire.

Character. TBS has it right.

Gold star to anyone who drives a granny car.