Do Something Useful

I’ve spent a lot of time with my Grandfather throughout my life. He passed away last week at the age of 92, although he was as healthy and independent as a 60-year-old still driving cross-country by himself. After my Grandmother passed he would spend his summers living with my mom. A few summers ago I also moved back home with my mom to refigure out my life.

We were roommates. I would spend my time in the room next to him making and creating whatever oddities excited me while he would watch baseball on the “Boob Tube,” which were the best seats to watch the game. After the game he would shuffle his way to bed, but always stop to see what I was making. One night I was making a bunch of hand knit cupcake toys. He picked it up and was completely perplexed as to what it did. I believe he said something like, “What do you do with it? What is the point? It can’t keep you warm? Why don’t you make something useful?” He threw his hands up in the air and went to bed.

I go through fits of creative mania where I have to make something large, be it a quilt in a week or a hundred multiples of little things. It serves as therapy in way, to take that energy, put it to use and have something to show for it. The day he died, I decided I had to make 100 paper hearts with wild flower seeds embedded inside to keep his memory alive. Somehow it blended the worlds of a quirky oddity and something useful.

The Four Legged Adventure Bot!

This living, breathing, heart pumping, wide eyed, little lady can save you from the mistake of locking yourself indoors with all your fancy gadgets waiting the winter winds away. It’s the way she plops down on the floor and doesn’t hide that stagnate bored expression you may feel inside your own head.  When the walls that keep the icy winds away from your skin begin to make you claustrophobic, bundle up in your artificial winter fur and see what you and your Four Legged Adventure Bot can discover!

That crisp contrast between the pure bright white snow and the deep blue ski that gradients down into a light birds egg blue with a hint of green as it reaches the horizon on a cloudless sunny day after a big snow storm is one of the honest joys that the winter season brings. The quietness that surrounds the landscape makes every bird chirp sing out as that perfect solo note. So much life still exists as a blanket of icy jewels dazzle the tips of tree branches and the land is protected by a layer of glassy ice. The air is crisp, clean and refreshing.

At times my glasses would fog up from breathing in my scarf and the world looked as a dreamscape sequence out of a movie.  Sophie, my furry tour guide, blended into the dream with her curly off-white coat and sparkly nose from sniffing out adventure in this snow-covered world. In the minds eye, wandering through landscapes can turn into something as magical, if not more, as the motion pictures.