Keep Calm, It's Okay To Be Out Of Style

See that little blue sign in my old kitchen window? It's a "Keep Calm and Carry On" plaque. I bought it in 2010, three years after I first saw the poster, and two years after the image jumped the shark and was appearing on rugs and key chains. (Check the comments on this Apartment Therapy thread about the poster to get an idea of the vitriol this image inspires.)

The original "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster, Barter Books

You know what? I don't care. I have liked the image since the first time I saw it. It resonates with me. As an anxious person, I need the message. When I see my little plaque, I remind myself to just breathe. It also reminds me to stick with what I like, and not be influenced by what anyone else says is "in" or "out". Here's a graphic with some history of the poster, and some figures on exactly how (overly-)popular it's become:

Keep Calm and Carry On infographic by forevermelody.

I did think about scrawling on the back of the plaque my back-up plan for when "Keep Calm and Carry On" fails. That would be "Freak Out and Call Your Mom!" I wouldn't be the first to make a parody:

The Evolution of the "Keep Calm and Carry On" Meme Tree (The One) infographic

I picked up my plaque for $5.99 at HomeGoods. It's not even a good reproduction. The typeface isn't right and the crown is different. Seriously! Stuff like that usually drives me crazy, but in this case the plaque is less a design statement and more a life affirmation.

Keep Calm plaque in my current kitchen. Note the wrong crown and wrong typeface.

Right now I have a big dilemma about what colors to paint the big, main room(s) of my house. I painted my last house gray, in mid-2011. No one around me had gray on their walls yet. I loved how it turned out, but then gray started to be EVERYWHERE! If I were still in that house, I probably wouldn't be considering repainting. Not for another three years. But in this new house, even though I still like gray, I'm not sure I can commit to it, because it seems like it's "over". Which is silly, because very few people here even have gray. What's the next neutral? Has Jenna Lyons repainted her living room yet? What color?

Besides the trend aspect, there are practical concerns with the gray. The living room is vaulted, and the windows face north and west, so it's not the warmest light. I'm afraid such a huge expanse of gray will be too cold. Also, it's the only painting project in the house we aren't going to tackle ourselves. We have decided to hire painters because of the 20 foot ceilings. We NEED to get the color right the first time, because we sure don't want to pay twice!

Here's the listing photo of the room, and loft, in question. These are the previous tenant's furnishings. I know, a lot of ooooooooaak! The paint is light tan, with a darker clay accent wall, and a rag-roll faux paint treatment of both colors on the balcony wall. It reads mauve-y pink in some light, which is blech! It all feels very fleshy to me. The entire upstairs hallway, including all doors and trim, are painted the dark clay color. It's very dark in that area, and I just don't understand why the trim is the same color. Standing in that hall feels like being trapped in a legume of some sort. That makes no sense. Neither does the paint.

Anyone have any great ideas? I know, I know...keep calm and carry on. :-)

A Year From Now...

Hey people! I am taking a couple days off from lengthy posts so I can clean my house, parent my children, and put in some DIY time on numerous projects. I wanted to share with you the quote I mentioned in my welcome post.

"A year from now you will wish you had started today." Now, I've searched and searched trying to figure out exactly who this Karen Lamb is, or where the quote originally came from, but I can't find it. I do think that it was the people from the Making Things Happen workshop that put the quote on the red background you see above, but I still don't know exactly where the quote originally came from.

But that's all beside the point. The point is, the quote stuck with me and I knew it was time to make some changes in my life. I wanted to write regularly again. I wanted to have something that was mine. I wanted to learn. I wanted to be my own person, not just an accessory to someone else's life (a position I had relegated myself to, mind you).

While searching around for the source of the above quote I came across a couple of blog posts that are worth reading. Wish I had written them myself, but these are the types of things I WON'T be writing for at least a couple days. I hope you enjoy!

Get Fired Up: How to Make Things Happen, Vol. I (from the blog of Lara Casey)

A Year From Now (Hands Free Mama)

----

So, I'm curious...what is the thing YOU are thinking about starting or doing? 

Being Grateful For...DIRTY DISHES?!?! {{{In Honor Of Wendy Partridge, 1978-2012}}}

What's your least-favorite household chore? You know, the one you dread the most and put off if you can?

For me it's the dishes. Not so much loading the dishwasher, but just the things that need to be hand washed in the sink. I don't know why I dislike it so much or why I procrastinate this chore. I don't mind doing a sink full of dishes at someone else's house, and at my house there usually aren't more than a few to do at a time, so it really doesn't take long. The warm water is even kind of relaxing. But still the prospect of doing the dishes gets me procrastinating every time, and I always say I can do those dirty dishes "later".

(Not my sink or dishes, photo copyright Miss Pupik, found on flickr here)

However, I've recently been enlightened to a new way to think about dirty dishes. I can be thankful for them. I'll tell you more about this new viewpoint in a minute, but for now I want to leave those dirty dishes in the sink and talk about something more personal and sad that happened this past week.

Wendy Partridge
1978-2012

A childhood friend of mine, Wendy, passed away on Wednesday. Her death was due to cystic fibrosis (CF), an inherited chronic disease she lived with, fought against, and I suppose she would say learned from since birth.

Amazing. Miracle. Angel. Strong. Christ-like. Teacher. Hilarious. Example. Friend. Beautiful. These are the words people use to describe Wendy, and they're all true.

Wendy moved into my neighborhood during our late elementary school years. She was one year behind me in school, but we were just a month apart in age. We went to all our church classes together and often played in the neighborhood and sometimes at each other's houses. Wendy always had a cough and had a hard time breathing. CF primarily affects the lungs. Thick mucus forms in the lungs, causing extreme breathing difficulties. CF affects other organs as well. Over time the lungs and other organs lose their ability to function and the patient dies of the disease. It is a painful way to die. When we were kids that was one thing always in the back of my mind about Wendy: she was going to die. I was terrified about that.

You see, treatment and life expectancy for those with CF have improved greatly over the past 60 years. In the 1950s a baby born with CF would most likely only live a few years. When Wendy was born in 1978, the median survival age had improved, bur it still was under 18 years. Wendy and her family didn't know if she would grow to adulthood. If she would be able to serve a mission for our church, get a higher education, join the workforce, or have the opportunity to date and perhaps get married. Another CF patient in my grade at school died while we were teenagers. Wendy's time was always borrowed. That she lived and worked until age 33 is quite a miracle. (In case you're interested, the median survival age for CF patients born in 2009 is 38. So much improvement over the past 30 years!)


During our childhood Wendy was often in the hospital. I remember several trips our church classes took to visit her there. We would have our lesson in her room. These were tender experiences for me. Wendy's nurses would perform a fairly violent percussive massage technique on her back to break up mucus in her lungs. It looked painful. She was brave. She always had a sunny disposition and a smile. I never heard her complain.


After we graduated from high school Wendy and I worked together in church for a few years as co-teachers of three successive classes of energetic seven- and eight-year-old children. I'm sure Wendy surpassed me as a teacher in every way. She always had a strong testimony of our Savior Jesus Christ and a natural and unselfconscious way of sharing that testimony with others. She shared her testimony out loud, and I was blessed to hear it often over the pulpit in our church services, but she also shared her testimony by her example.


Now, I don't want to make Wendy sound all pious and boring. She was funny! She had a sweet and quirky, somewhat sarcastic and self-deprecating sense of humor. We had some fun times co-hosting class parties at her house for our little students. (Class parties are a well-worn reverence reward for primary children.) After a few years as primary teachers together, we both moved on -- me to a church congregation specifically for young adults, and Wendy to a mission for our church. Yes, she was able to serve that mission she desired, and I can only imagine how many lives she changed.


Our paths crossed again after her mission for a while, but then I moved out of town and my parents did too, and we lost touch. The advent of Facebook put us back in touch with each other, and over the years I have enjoyed reading Wendy's funny status updates there.


While I was living in Pennsylvania I learned her health was really beginning to fail. A few friends planned to visit her as a class reunion of sorts, but I couldn't attend due to distance. I don't know if they ended up going. Her health improved somewhat and she was able to continue working.


A couple of weeks ago she posted saying that she had had to leave her job, and that she was receiving hospice care. The end was near. I wrote to her privately about coming to visit her if she was up for it, and started reaching out to other friends who might want to visit with me. At first Wendy sounded like she might not be well enough for visitors, but then on Monday this past week she wrote and asked me to set it up. I wrote back and asked if Thursday would work, but a day or two went by and I didn't hear back. I went to her sister's Facebook page, thinking I would check in to see how Wendy was doing. Instead I saw the first of many condolence messages that would soon be flooding in, "I'm sorry for your loss."


Wendy had died, and I was too late.


In the weeks leading up to Wendy's death, her sister posted some links on Facebook about Wendy. One was a short video made about Wendy by a friend of hers, which I highly encourage you to watch, and the other was a link to a blog of Wendy's on a CF support website, where Wendy talks about the approaching end of her life. Here's a passage from that post. She posted under the name "stillkicking".


"...Well my friends, I don't know how much longer I shall be coherent enough to write my ramblings.  Also I don't want to focus on the negative side of dying.  It is a painful process.  But I never walk alone.  I thank the Lord that He is there helping me with each painful step.  


To close, with one last final sarcastic remark.  I wrote my own obituary, but my family doesn't want to use it (shocker), so I'll post it here  


"Now we lay her down to rest, a load of mucus in her chest.


Since she died before she woke, that's one less day she'll have to choke"


Happy coughing everyone, and be sure to laugh a little, cry a little and just enjoy the journey  God bless you all!"


How do you like that obituary? It's great! A taste of Wendy's humor.

I enjoyed that post a lot, so I clicked through a few of Wendy's other posts, and one really hit me.

Okay, Back to That Sink Full of Dirty Dishes

One of her posts was about doing the dishes at her house, and a sprititual experience she had while doing them. Wendy says it best, so I will put her full post here. Please read it. I promise you will be touched and have your eyes opened to a new view on work, trials, and what you think you "can't" do. Understand that Wendy was living at home with her parents, so the sink full of dirty dishes she describes likely weren't just from her.

The Lord Works in Mysterious Ways

Posted By: stillkicking @ 04/11/2012 03:26 PM

So as things have been getting tougher lately, I'm pretty darn sure my days are numbered, and I don't think there's that many numbers in there  Anyway, it's been particularly hard with the "air hunger" games  I just can't get enough air, even on higher O2 flows.  It's a horrible feeling.  Plus all the other lovely CF things, exhaustion, coughing, constant aching, AKA crappy lungs.  Last week was particularly difficult and it was all I could do to make it to and through work each day. I started wondering and praying to know if it was a battle I needed to continue to fight, or if I could quit.


I work for a small business, so I only have a 6 month cobra extention.  Medicaid qualifications in my state are particularly difficult, I would have to wipe out all my savings and retirement before I'd qualify.  That idea doesn't thrill me, so I haven't wanted to go that route.  Anyway, come Saturday, I was still having a great difficulty with the air hunger and feeling awful.  There was so much to do and I didn't feel like doing anything.  I was however, thanking the Lord for a weekend to rest.


Well that evening there was a large pile of dishes that had been sitting out all day, I thought, I can't do much but I can at least, do these dishes.  As I began I immediately got my answer from the Lord about my work situation.  The Spirit whispered to me that work is a blessing to me not a curse.  He knows it's difficult but it also helps a great deal in taking my mind off the suffocating feelings of this stage of the disease.  I see how that is true, even while doing the dishes I immediately "felt" better, mentally wise.  I was able to focus my mind on something besides breathing.  Yes, there will be days where I have to rest, many of them, but inasmuch as I can work, it will be a blessing to me.


By focusing on others and serving and contributing whatever I can, even though it may be a great deal less than I used to, is what feeds and drives the spirit inside us, and the spirit can then drive the body further than it otherwise would go.  How grateful I am to a merciful God who pours out His blessings upon me and then opens my eyes that I may see them for what they are here and now.


Now please realize I'm not suggesting or recommending anything for anyone else.  This is my blog, and my experiences - you can go have your own  But for me this has been a big help and I've seen more and more each day at work this week, how much of a blessing it is to me, even when it's difficult


Happy Coughing everyone


----

I really can't add much to what Wendy said. All I know is, I will never look at my dirty dishes the same way again. I will always, always think of Wendy standing at the sink, gasping for air, washing those dishes and thanking the Lord that she could wash them. She is right. Work is blessing, trials are blessings, and WE CAN DO HARD THINGS!

----

Wendy Partridge's Obituary and Funeral Information

One of my favorite articles: The Blessing of Work ("Work is not a matter of economic need alone; it is a spiritual necessity..." It includes direction on how to apply your interests and talents to your work and how to teach children the value of work.)

Video about Wendy, "The Joys of Adversity"

Visit the website of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to learn more about cystic fibrosis, get involved in increasing awareness and research, or make a donation

http://www.cff.org/

----

Thank you for reading. I'm interested to know, what's one positive lesson you've learned from someone in your life who is now gone?

Even Perfect People Aren't Perfect!?

This week two of my favorite bloggers have written honestly about anti-perfection (or pro-real life, to frame it in a more positive way), and I'd like to share their thoughts with you today. I hope you'll click and read these posts. Don't forget to check the comments, too, because so many of their readers share great things! (And I'm not just talking about myself, even though I did comment and link to my post GOOD vs. PERFECT: Why Worse Is Better because I felt it went along so well).

Jen from IHeart Organizing posts the most beautiful organizing projects -- whether it's an amazingly neat fridge and freezer or color-sorted Legos in a fun, functional playroom.

Organized fridge and freezer from this post by Jen of IHeart Organizing,

Lego storage from Jen's IHeart Organizing home tour

I know, right!? She is naturally tidy and organized, and her brain seems to easily put together efficient ways of doing things. In other words, she is nothing like me :) Because of the focus of her site and because of the beautiful pictures she posts, it's easy to think of Jen as "perfect" (and easy to think of oneself as not perfect enough). Jen took a stand against this in A "Perfect" Post. Go read it!

Photo by Dana of House*Tweaking, from her house tour

Then there's Dana at House*Tweaking, one of my newer finds in the blog world, whose butcher block island I linked to as an inspiration on my post about my butcher block choices. That's the pretty dining room in her former house, above. She talks about the other side of "pretty" and affirms her allegiance to "real" in a tangent on the post Closet{s}Maid Right. The closet part of the post is great, too, but the part I'm talking about starts after the photos ("Which brings me to another tangent topic: pretty.").

So this is a short post. That's about all I can muster tonight, because, guys, I've got to tell you something. I'm TIRED! Not worn out tired, like when I became anemic at the end of my pregnancy. Not sick tired, like when illness saps my energy. Just sleepy tired, because I've been staying up way too late learning, learning, learning and writing, writing, writing. And I love it. It's so invigorating to be writing daily again and to be filling my mind with new things to think about! I stay up late because night time is the only time I can focus without ignoring my children and husband. At night they are asleep and he is at work. But on the other hand I can't be a good, present mom and wife if I don't get enough sleep.

I am taking on a paid writing project next week, so posting here may be light. I had intended to write every day, and I have been. If not here, on Lisa Loves Logan. I love the lab this blog has become for me, but part of an experiment is making adjustments, and right now I might need to adjust my posting schedule a little.

Anyone else have some thoughts on this pro-real-life stance? Do blogs and Pinterest make you feel motivated or defeated? Been inspired or encouraged by any words lately? I'd love to hear. Okay. Must. Go. To. Bed. I am seriously mis-typing every single word. Good night!

Motivational Song: Never Let A Bad Day Be Enough...

Never let a bad day be enough
To go and talk you into giving up
Sometimes everybody feels like you
Oh, feels like you, just like you

----

I have been catching up on TV shows from last season, including Smash. I've only watched the first two episodes so far. I've heard the show goes downhill over the season, which is too bad because I really liked how it started. Me? Like a musical? Yeah, I guess that's not much of a shocker.

The final number of the second episode was a song called "Crazy Dreams", performed by Megan Hilty as Ivy Lynn after she has just learned she has landed her dream part playing Marilyn Monroe in a musical bound for Broadway. I have not been able to get it out of my head ever since I heard it! While I remembered that the lyrics had a good message about dreaming big and not giving up, it was the piano accompaniment that was really sticking with me. I finally turned to YouTube so I could hear it again and learn to sing along properly (I'm a big Broadway star in my head, and even more so in my car -- any other car-singers out there? Crap I am so awesome at singing in my car! I have won American Idol sooooooo many times in my car!). Since I think this song is so great, I just have to share it. The video is actually just audio, I assume for copyright reasons.



Now, I learned something interesting when I searched for this on YouTube. It's actually a Carrie Underwood song! One of her lesser-known ones, from her 2007 album Carnival Ride. Carrie was a co-writer of the song, and her version is much more up-tempo. Again, this video is just audio:



Which version do you like better? I like both, but like I said, the Smash version really hit me. I wonder who did the arrangement. It reminds me of the type of cover one of my favorite singers, Eva Cassidy, would do. Here are the full lyrics, some of which are cut from the Smash version. I think this song contain a good message about not giving up on yourself.


"Crazy Dreams"

Hello you long shots
You dark horse runners
Hairbrush singers, dashboard drummers
Hello you wild magnolias
Just waiting to bloom

There's a little bit of all that inside of me and you
Thank God even crazy dreams come true

I stood at the bottom of some walls I thought I couldn't climb
I felt like Cinderella at the ball just running out of time
So I know how it feels to be afraid
Think that it's all gonna slip away
Hold on, hold on

Here's to you free souls, you firefly chasers
Tree climbers, porch swingers, air guitar players
Here's to you fearless dancers, shaking walls in your bedrooms

There's a lot of wonder left inside of me and you
Thank God even crazy dreams come true

Never let a bad day be enough
To go and talk you in to giving up
Sometimes everybody feels like you
Oh, feels like you, just like you

I've met some go-getters
Some difference makers
Small town heroes, and big chance takers
I've met some young hearts with something to prove

Here's to you long shots
You dark horse runners
Hairbrush singers, and dashboard drummers
Here's to you wild magnolias
Just waiting to bloom

There's a little bit of all that inside of me and you
Thank God even crazy dreams come true
Thank God even crazy dreams come true

---

I'll be following up on a line from this song in a later post, the one about standing at the bottom of walls you thought you couldn't climb, so stay tuned.

I hope you enjoyed this song. Are there any songs that help you feel motivated, capable, fearless? What about songs that just put you in a "get it done" mood, like ones you'd listen to while cleaning? I'd love to hear some suggestions!

GOOD vs. PERFECT: Why Worse Is Better

This is the promised post that I talked about when I introduced my "One Good Way To..." series yesterday. Why am I focusing on a good way to do something, rather than on the best way? Read on to find out.

I don't know about you, but I'm a big devotee of America's Test Kitchen. I'll just call it by the pet name ATK throughout the rest of this post, mmkay? I own several ATK cookbooks and a few DVDs. Yes, I will watch a cooking show on DVD, like it's a blockbuster new release or something. Is that weird? Don't answer that.

Angel Food Cake by America's Test Kitchen

ATK's "thing" is that they have the BEST recipe for angel food cake, meatloaf, Caesar salad, or whatever else you want to cook. To quote from the ATK website, "Our mission is simple: to develop the absolute best recipes for all of your favorite foods. To do this, we test each recipe 30, 40, sometimes as many as 70 times, until we arrive at the combination of ingredients, technique, temperature, cooking time, and equipment that yields the best, most-foolproof recipe."

Sounds great, right? It is. For them. And for me, when I use their recipes. But I'm trying to get over the idea that I need to translate this idea into the rest of my life. I've tended to think that if I research and analyze and worry and be anxious and plan for all contingencies and try and try and try again, I can yield a foolproof life. My parenting methods can be foolproof. My cleaning methods can be foolproof. My purchasing decisions can be foolproof. My decorating choices can be foolproof. And if I CAN'T do it perfectly, I CAN'T do it at all. When I do try, I often waste a lot of time procrastinating, planning, and overdoing...only to end up with a finished product I consider inferior because I had set my expectations so high in the first place. And you know what? The difference between doing nothing and doing anything at all is huge, but the difference between doing something and doing it to perfection? Not really all that noticeable, especially to anyone but yourself.

Ed Batista - Measuring the Infinite

So, farewell to all that striving and worrying and supposed foolproofing! It's madness! ATK has a 2,500 square foot kitchen with over three dozen cooks working to perfect those recipes. I'm just one person. Me. I don't need to be practically perfect in every way like Mary Poppins (great show, by the way -- my sisters and I completely wore out our recorded-from-TV VHS copy when we were kids, then still watched it with black and white tracks all over the screen). I am trying to incorporate into my way of thinking and living the principle that my efforts are of value -- even when they're not perfect. That good enough is good enough. That an imperfect dinner served is better than a perfect dinner never served. As Voltaire said [paraphrased/translated], "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Now, I'm not saying that perfection doesn't have its place. It just no longer has a place in my day-to-day life. Now I just need to start practicing what I'm preaching and quit messing around with this post :-)

Cute illustrated print by Mandipidy on Etsy

What things do you like to have done *just right*? What things do you not mind letting slide a little? (I like to do a good job sweeping, but I don't really mind if I don't mop the "right" way every time.) Are you a perfectionist? Are you a successful perfectionist? Are you a reformed perfectionist? I'd love to hear feedback and ideas from others who struggle with this perfection problem.

{You might enjoy this article by Gretchen Rubin (author of The Happiness Project), which covers this ground more eloquently: "When 'Good Enough' Is Better Than Perfect".}

A Farewell to CAN'T

Original ad here

In case that's hard to read, it says:

A Farewell to CAN’T

This goodbye does not make me sad. I will not miss you.

I have discovered what it feels like to do the unthinkable.

The hard. The long. The challenging.

You have no business here anymore.

From now on, difficult will seem doable.

I will see the impossible as simply not-yet-conquered.

Farewell, Can’t. You will haunt me never again.

Hello, Can.

Welcome to my world.

Welcome! Welcome!

Wait a second. I'm basically welcoming myself, because this is the first post on this blog and no one knows about the blog besides me. Oh well. It's not the first time I've talked to myself, and it won't be the last!

I am an avid blog reader, and I have really wanted to start my own blog for a long time, like a couple of years. I should have started one sooner. I saw a poster on Pinterest that said "One year from now you'll be wishing you started today". Yup. But better late than never!

Before I was a stay-at-home-mom (SAHM), I was an advertising copywriter. Just like Sherry from Young House Love! Only she worked in New York, the center of the advertising world. I worked in the far, far outskirts. Not the outskirts of New York. The outskirts of Salt Lake City. Very outsy-skirtsy, as far as advertising goes, but I enjoyed my clients and my work. I have not been a full-time writer for almost five years now, and I really miss it. This is a place for me to start writing regularly again.

Speaking of copywriting (which is, by the way, any marketing-oriented writing for print ads, radio, TV, billboards, brochures, websites, etc. -- and not, as my husband once thought, a job putting a circled letter C on stuff), I would love to give proper credit to the writer of the ad above. Unfortunately, copywriters don't have bylines (wouldn't that be weird if they did?). Hey copywriter, your name is unsung but at least your words are not unread! The ad was for the organization Outward Bound and ran in magazines last year.

I hope you find the words as inspiring as I do. I hope my blog will be inspiring, too! Thanks for joining me on this journey. What's an inspiring or motivational thought that gets you in the mood to grow and change?