I'm Mollie.

Sunday, January 18, 2015

My Parking Space

Maddie D went and made me a place on the street!

The Latest From Svealand

She can see from the front...

....and the back.
Srsly, y'all.

Not that it matters, but this was on the way to church Sunday morning.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Halloween 2014

I love it when the cuteness and creativity of Halloween makes me melt...

Lesson My Impact #1*

This is a bag of empty Colgate tubes of toothpaste, used Colgate toothbrushes, and the boxes they came in:

I got on the Google.

Then I got on www.terracycle.com.

Then I set up an account in the Colgate Brigade.

Then I clicked on

"Ship Us Your Waste"

Then Terracycle emailed me a shipping label.

I went to my email and printed out the shipping label and taped it on the (used) large envelope I found in the Used Envelope Place in the drawer.

Turns out UPS has a store right by Publix!

And we were out of turkey and bread!

Dropped the old Colgate items to ship for free to Terracycle, then got my family some lunch meat.

Boom.

* For those of you grammar geekies out there, Hello I am one of you! I stressed over the use of Less, Lessen, or Lower for this post. Upon further reading about "measurable quantities of time and distance" and whatnot, I became clear that what I mean to say is that I want to have less of an impact on the environment and I want to lower the measurable quantities of my existing impact. I want to find the lesson in the lessen-ing (do you see what I did there??) So lessen away, my friends. I'll join you in your efforts.

Wednesday, January 07, 2015

Dear Peter

Dear Peter,

We haven't met yet, but your pictures sure are cute.
I like to say your name like "Pita," the yummy bread you stuff goodies in.

When your mom was in college, she would babysit my children. She taught them the Burrito Game where she would roll them up in a blanket, then quickly unroll them so they spilled out onto the floor laughing. They loved it. It was like the blanket was the yummy bread and the kids were the goodies stuffed inside.

You are so special, Pita. You are a gift to this world.

This quilt is made from the curtains that used to hang in the nursery of my now 10-year-old son Henry. I think it will be great for the Burrito Game when you get older.

I can't wait to meet you.

Until then, much love from here to there,
Mollie

P.S. Your Christmas card picture was on our kitchen wall and my 4-year-old kept calling you Adam. Or Eve. Ha.

Tuesday, January 06, 2015

I Love The Four-Year-Old Font

Kinda Like Birds

So proud of John Stewart Jackson!!

When you press your ear against this circle, you can hear music.
I AM NOT KIDDING.
It's like magic.
In an art studio.

We all need to listen to more sculptures.
N'est pas?

Love Wins Quilt

Love Wins.

Glennon Doyle Melton says so.

Over and over.

I have to believe her. I need to believe her, that truth teller and hope spreader that she is.

My Sister and I started a quilt as a wedding gift for my brother and his bride.

In 2006.

Now it is 2015 and the quilt has been neatly folded in a cool vintage suitcase I found the other week.

My grandfather died in August of 2004 and we inherited some of his spiffy, trendy neckties. Sister and I thought we could incorporate them into the quilt. We chose colors and patterns based on those ties.

Something always came up or went down when we tried to work on that quilt.

She and I had the history, the fabric, the sewing tools…and somehow…we couldn’t finish it.

It is now eight and a half years later.

EIGHT POINT FIVE.

I pulled the quilt top out, the thread, all of the handwritten notes, the scraps for the backing, and the batting that needed fluffing.

At the same time, I read some of Glennon’s web site about love winning. About families blending.

Love is so big. So irritating, so persistent and relentless.

As is family.

Now, over 3,000 days later I have these pieces of the quilt I want to finish because love wins and because now, my brother and his bride are no longer together.

I still love that bride, even though they are divorced and there is newness and life and love and children and art in new directions. I love this new family too. It has to all work; it has to be big enough for all of this love, and not contained to my original weinie categories of who goes where and when and what for.

There is commitment to the hard work of loving every day. Which is part of being family.

Family.

FAMILY.

By blood or love or universe or God or Jesus or connection. I don’t know the answers to most all of this, but I believe that love wins.

It does.

I shook out that old quilt that has parts and squares and circles – old, ancient and new and stitched my hand sore all around it.

This quilt is full of family, memories, love, cups of coffee, tea, chardonnay, Serial podcasts, This American Life, TED Talks, Joyce Meyer, the BBC’s version of Hitchcock, and some Big Bang Theory.

There are thousands of stitches, rocking in and out, blessing and considering every member of this huge FAMILY we weave, web, and quilt together.

It is large and full of love, bigger than all of our understanding, because, I’ll type it again:

Love wins.

Love Wins.

LOVE WINS.

For all you lovely quilting techie picky pots, we machine-pieced the top and I hand quilted the layers. It is proper length for a king-sized bed and proper width for a double-sized bed. It is not up to form, that is if you measure and all your seams align. This is more of a pull and tuck and sew until it's finished kinda thing. Like my family. I love it.

Tuesday, December 09, 2014

Giving Thanks This Season

Sunday, December 07, 2014

Henry In The Choir, 2014

I had to mark the year, 2014, in this title because I am not sure Henry will ever survive another Christmas children's choir performance. Truly he took it as torture.

Henry: I might bite my tongue if that other guy doesn't rub his eye out.