I called my grandma.  I made a meal that took more than 20 minutes to prepare (hellooooo, eggplant parmesan, those two and a half hours were totally worth you).  I wrote a song.  And I made my little music corner a little more inspiring.

In the last house I lived, I had two rooms to myself.  That meant I had a bedroom and a room for music and other creative endeavors.  I could go in there and mentally shut out the rest of the world.  It was my sanctuary.

In this house, I live with good friends who always have stories to tell, a lot of shared space, and just a little to myself.  It’s not a bad thing, but it’s been an adjustment.

I thought my bedroom was just the way I wanted it, but earlier this week I realized it needed a little something more… not for the sake of the space but for the sake of creating a space in my head where I can go to just be.

I think I’m one step closer now.

Do you have a sanctuary?

Tell me about it.

Today I have a story to tell.

There is a new dude at our office.  Well, there are a lot of new dudes but this story is about one in particular.  He’s not on my account, so I have no idea what his name is, but we’re going to call him Rob.

Ever since the first time I saw Rob, something about him bothered me.  I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but I knew something wasn’t right about his appearance.  His hair is perfectly messed up, he probably lives in a tanning bed, it’s like he’s wearing eye liner but I swear he’s not, and his skin is like porcelain.

From time to time I have to walk by his desk, and often we’ll look at each other and I just think, “DUDE.  This guy is NOT OKAY.”  His eyes are just sort of…. empty. He gives me a weird. feeling.

Well, today, I walked by his desk again at lunch time, but he wasn’t in his desk.  He was in another desk across the aisle.  Head cocked.  Eyes glazed.  Staring. At. The Wall.

And that’s when it occurred to me.

Rob is a Robot.

Our company is known not only for great technology but for leading the industry in our particular field.  We’re always trying to come up with new ways to get things done even better.  More efficiently.  In a way that will make the world say Whoaaaaa.  We test out one idea or another on a particular account and once we assess it’s absolute awesomeness, we spread it around the whole company like steroids on a freshman football team.

So today when I realized Rob the Robot looked perfectly perfect every day and had soulless eyes and was apparently rebooting over his lunch break because he is a ROBOT, I started to get a little worried.

If this works out for him, it may be the end of me.

Maybe I should switch professions.  Maybe I should learn to build robots.

I’ve been friends with Preston since sophomore year of college, which I’m slowly realizing is actually quite some time ago.  We were both going to school in North Dakota and were in and out of some of the same buildings and classes.  I always knew he was someone to admire but kind of thought him as Out Of My League, even on the most basic level.

One day, though, he overheard me talking to our jazz band director about an audition I was hoping to do down here in Nashville, and our friendship was like instant super glue from that point forward.

He’s a fiddle player.  A damn fine fiddle player.  He works his ass off and had been working his ass off since, let’s be honest, before he even started preschool.

He moved down here before I did, but honestly, I may not have made it if not for him.  He was the one calling every other week asking what my plans were, excited for me to experience all the things he was experiencing.  I finished school up North, he came down here to finish school, and in the mean time he started recording and playing in bands and all around being awesome.

He called me yesterday afternoon to tell me that he was finally making an appearance in town for the first time in months, and I was welcome to come see him play if I wanted.  With Carrie Hassler.  At the Station Inn.

(yeah, he’s in those videos.)

I don’t go to the Station Inn much anymore which is a shame because, oh boy, the music there is never a disappointment.  It was especially special last night, though, knowing one of my best friends was up there, and realizing how far he’s truly come.

My dreams have been put on hold for some time, maybe even completely reconsidered.  I don’t know that seeing him up there reinspired anything in me, necessarily…

But it did remind me that no matter what I decide I want… anything is possible.

Grant was, of course, along for the ride, and so rather than plopping down on the couch and contemplating what on earth there could be to do next, as we always do upon arrival in such a place, I offered to show him around the house.  First I showed him around the main floor, which was… well… exactly as I expected it to be.

Then I took him downstairs.

Now, let me just stop for a moment and tell you I still have dreams about this basement… and in my dreams this basement is a bit like a tent in the Harry Potter world.  From the outside it looks normal, but on the inside it’s huge and beautiful and completely nothing like it is in real life, and yet, it is itself, through and through.

The basement is, I think, the most recently “finished” part of the house although I don’t know that it is actually what you would call “finished.”  The walls are still cinderblock and one of the rooms doesn’t have a door in either doorway and the shower in the bathroom drains straight into the floor.  It’s pretty awesome.

But there were corners down there that were always cluttered up, and some places I just never thought to go.  So as I was showing Grant around down there, we found my grandpa’s old collection of Popular Mechanics magazines, and then when I turned around to the other wall in that tiny little corner, I saw it.

A door.

A door?  Had this ALWAYS been here?

So I flipped on the little light switch and opened it up and…

Well, it wasn’t Narnia, though I really half expected it to be.  It was an old, tiny room full of shelves stacked with mostly empty mason jars, although a few of them still contained things like tomatoes and pickled beets and grape juice.  One looked like it was labeled ’48, which upon closer inspection was actually a 2/8… whatever that meant, but that REALLY sparked my curiosity.

So I went upstairs and exclaimed, “GRANDMA! There is a room in this house I DID NOT KNOW EXISTED!”

And my aunt asked what I’d found and I told her and she said, “Oh! The vegetable room!”

And my grandma said, “You little snoop!”

I love my grandma.

It was a topic of discussion for the rest of the trip.  I saw cousins later on and exclaimed, “THERE WAS A SECRET ROOM!” and they, being the older more knowledgable cousins, apparently to this day, said, “Oh yeah, that’s where all the good cookies were always hidden.”

Um, thanks for telling me now, guys.

Aside from all that, my mom and aunt and I went shopping through the crawl spaces and closets on the top floor, laughing about old bridesmaid dresses and “house coats” and dresses that, um, matched Barbie clothes I still have because that’s what they did with the scraps.

I actually found a dress I liked except for the length, and a hem is an easy thing to do, so I tried it on, but it was a little too big (I am not adept enough to be completely taking things in, yet), so I reluctantly put it back in the closet to be admired by a later generation – although who that would be I don’t know as I am in fact the youngest granddaughter.  The first great granddaughter, perhaps, who is already like, five or some crazy business.

Any way, the whole point is that, whoa, there is always something new to learn or discover, even in a house you’ve been visiting regularly for 25 years.

Next time I’m going through boxes.  Because you know what?

Yes, Grandma, I am a little snoop.

Yes, I live in Nashville.  Yes, if I bothered to watch Twitter closely enough, I could catch Dierks at the Station Inn more than often.   And I can’t say I’ve purposely been holding out to go home to see Dierks rather than tracking him down here in the neck of the woods we both occupy, but I’m more than happy it turned out that way.

I actually had visions of a post-show hangout dancing in my head (like visions of sugarplums, but not in December)… one where I could say, “Dierks, I live in Nashville, and here I am in Sidney, MT, seeing you play.  I came all the way from Nashville to see you.”

And then he’d say, “Man that’s awesome.  Why are you here?  Why are you there?”

And then I would very excitedly and succinctly tell him that this was my home, this place, right in front of this stage, I grew up here, I was inspired here, I became the person I am today right in front of this stage… and I went to Nashville to BE the person I became.

A songwriter.

And then he’d say, “I don’t usually do this… but here’s my number.” or “… email address.” Or heck, “a good way to contact my publisher.”

I’d have told him how his first album was an eye opening experience to the kind of country music I was sure was worth making.  How his way with words… how simple they were and still said so much… is a way I’ve strived for ever since the first time I heard “I wish it would break.”  How he started my obsession with train songs.  And the Del McCoury Band.  And bluegrass in general.

How that first CD was the first big turn out of my hometown  (literally – one of my first trips out of town on my own in my own little car, just to buy this CD), and yet here I was, 8 years and 6 – almost 7 – albums later, back where it really began for me.

At that one concert we ever had, all year.  The last night of the county fair.

I’ve been to some amazing shows.  I’ve been to the Ryman to see the Grand Ole Opry as well as a band or two along the way.  I’ve seen Garth Brooks in an arena, I’ve seen Nickel Creek in a beautiful old auditorium in Minneapolis.  I’ve been to incredible venues.

Nothing will ever be as good as that stage set up in the middle of that rodeo arena on the last night of the county fair in Sidney, MT.

Thanks for an amazing show, Dierks.  You brought it home in a way I never could have imagined.

And while I’m at it, a special shout out to Jason Jones, who warmed that crowd right on up for Dierks the same night.  I had no idea who he was until he sang that one single he has out on radio right now… his first one… but even before he busted out Ferris Wheel – I knew he was adorable and rockin’ and worth my time.

I’ll be tracking both of you down in town.
And if you ever need a little red headed co-writer… I’m here.

He was the second to bear a name my dad is the fourth to own, and as far as great grandparents go, he was a young one.  If I’m remembering family history correctly, he was about 20 when my grandpa was born, and my grandpa was about 20 when my dad was born.  My dad was 26 when I came around, that that would have made my great grandfather around 66 years old when I was born.  That’s younger than some regular grandpas.

I was already living here when he died.  They didn’t have a funeral for him because he didn’t want one, but even if they had, I wouldn’t have had the money to go back.  I couldn’t have afforded to miss work even if my parents had helped me with travel expenses.  The part that bothers me most is that I honestly don’t even remember the last time I saw him.  I know the last time I was home, but he and my Grandma didn’t spend all of their time in their own house anymore so I don’t even remember if he was there when I was.

I do remember how frail he was.  I remember when he first got really sick… how the surgery caused complications that he dealt with the rest of his life.  I remember the stuffed dog my dad took to him in the hospital which eventually ended up in the possession of my little brother.  I remember being on his front patio with my great grandma and their son, my grandfather, talking about his incredible little life, all while he slept, weak and in pain, in the house.  That’s the last memory I have for sure… I have other fairly recent memories but I don’t know where they fit in the time line.

What I do remember is the magic of going to visit them in the summer when I was much younger.  They had a tiny house with one tiny little stained glass window above the standard windows in the living room.  There was no air conditioning, and grandma was always cooking, so the house was hot.  The upstairs had a few bedrooms with beds adorned in old quilts.  There were books at the top of the staircase I always looked at as I passed, but never took the time to pull off the shelf.  Mostly, though, us kids spent our time outside.  They lived on the street that was the Montana/North Dakota border, and we’d stand in the middle of it, proclaiming ourselves in two places at once.  There was an old rope swing hanging from a tree and a pile of tires you could climb and jump off of to get the swing going.  For awhile, there was a huge pine tree with branches that came out and touched the ground at their tips… We’d play under it like it was a castle, or a fort, or a house, or a thicket Bambi used to live in.  There were always strawberries and raspberries and peas growing in the garden.  There was a little play house that looked just like the real one, with old furniture full of old dishes… probably from the 40s or 50s now that I think about it, but then, I was oblivious.  It was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’ cottage to me.  There was an old trailer house out back and the silly thing is that the thing I remember most is an old calculator in it that I used to love to punch numbers into.  One year, my uncle dug a bit of a ditch that I (probably incorrectly) remember being lined in yellow bricks, so I spent that summer on my way to see the Wizard.

Us kids – me, my brother, my cousins, my dad’s much younger cousins – would go play in the yard, and when we’d come in with the berries we’d picked, Grandma would make us raspberry milkshakes, and we’d go sit on the floor and play concentration with a deck of cards while grandpa sat at his card table with a bowl of pistachios and wrench to crack the shells, playing solitaire and watching the Portland Trailblazers on TV.  It always amazed me how there ALWAYS seemed to be a Portland game on TV.

I thought about it yesterday when I was pulling things out of drawers, organizing and packing, getting ready to move.  I found a notebook I was fairly sure I didn’t need to keep, but I flipped through it first just to be sure.

One page.  One page had these lyrics written on it… I’d written them on a break at work when I was still working at the mall.  Just a chorus.  I’d never put music to them.  I’d never been able to bring myself to finish the song.  But I’d written them soon after he died… about what I hoped Heaven would be like for him.

Magical.  Just like his house was to me.

I ripped the page out of the notebook and threw the rest of it away.  I opened my current songwriting notebook and taped it in, thinking I’d get to it later… but within moments the song was finishing itself in my head and I had no choice but to stand in front of my piano and write it all down.

I hope someday when I get to Heaven, I can meet him at his front door… and Heaven can be his house… for all of us.

We ended up in Restoration Hardware, one of the best places on earth (but seriously)… and also one of the most NOT affordable places to buy all the pretty things you want.  He found a coffee table made out of a rail car of some sort that he just couldn’t stop drooling over… until we saw the price.  And I said, you know… you’d have to get lucky, but you might be able to find something you could fix up like this in an antique shop for a better price.

So guess where we headed?

He knew of a row of places in the city, so we started wandering around.  Amongst many awesome things we saw in a couple very cool places (although never finding a rail car of any sort), the one shop I really fell in love with was not really antiques at all, but retro.  Most stuff was from the 60s and 70s, maybe the 50s here and there.  One room was set up so that entering it made you feel like Red Forman would walk in threatening to put a foot in your ass at any moment.

Love.

It was at this place that we found a little corner full of owls.  I don’t remember making a much bigger fuss over the owls than I did over many other things in that store, but whatever I did made an impression on Grant.  Because a couple days later, he showed up with this:

This is the cutest little owl lamp ever, from Urban Outfitters.  I’d look it up and link it for you but gifts are no fun when you know what they cost.

I was having trouble finding a really good home for my owl (we’ve recently named him Bartholomew) so I just let him sit where you see him sitting now, under another lamp.   He’s not really bright enough to suffice as a reading light or anything, he’s really more mood lighting.  He’s about as bright as a candle would be under there.  So I couldn’t just replace my other lamp with him, and quite frankly wouldn’t want to as my grandfather made that lamp.

But yesterday I had a flash of inspiration:

I’ll make him a tree to live under!

The lamp shade on that’s been on this lamp for years is a very standard off-white thing with no real personality to it whatsoever.  I still had some of this fabric laying around from another project I did for this same room, and I thought to myself, I’ll cover the lampshade.  IT WILL LOOK LIKE A TREE.

I know.  So great.

I would probably be no good at the tutorial thing even if I tried, but basically this project included fabric, scissors, and hot glue.  The end!

Those ruffles though?  Totally can’t take credit.  I first saw them at your wishcake, and she links the original idea to little miss momma.  Of course, theirs are necklaces, mine is a lampshade.  So I still get some points for originality, yes?

Anyway, I’ve spent the last two days making that tree grow.  I’m proud of it.  I wanted to show you!

Did you do anything fun this weekend?  Share!

Happy Sunday!

This is something I never thought I would care about.  Actually, I really don’t care that much for it now.  But there is one thing it means for me this week:

Night shift.

My company is trying to keep round the clock support for the next week and that means I get to sleep in and enjoy the pretty mornings and watch The Breakfast Club while making quiche.

I know, it’s brilliant.

It’s strangely lovely to be in a huge office with just four other people, the motion-sensing lights staying off more than turning on.  Yelling at each other across the office.  Being silly.  Being quiet.  Whatever.

When there are five people in the office you can kind of do whatever you want.

But there are drawbacks.  I’ve gotten ridiculously used to seeing a certain someone every day… and it has already been strange having such off kilter schedules.

Still… the potential for dance parties in the office makes up for it.  More than.

And getting to make a quiche in the morning.

And before I knew it he was saying I could be his, if I wanted to be, and I was saying I did. 

It was simple. 

It was sweet.

I’m so used to being left alone for days at a time.  For being the one who has to do the chasing, the phone calling, the suggesting, the seeking.  I’m used to wanting more and sometimes getting it and being completely satisfied but mostly not and logically explaining it away.  I understand how I feel in those moments because I know I want something simply because I can’t have it.

This is different.  He never leaves me wanting anything.  Wishing for anything.  Hoping that a little more time fix things. 

Now, there’s just nothing to fix.  Sure, it’s still early, and sure, things could still change. And I don’t exactly know how I feel because… well… it doesn’t hurt.  But what I do know is I know I’ve never been so lucky, or treated so well, or…

Been so speechless.

So that’s what’s going on with me.  How ’bout you?

I made dough for the crust a few nights ago… I’d gone to the store and picked up a jar of sauce, an obnoxious amount of mozzarella, and mushrooms.

I had pepperoni in the fridge.  I didn’t bother checking to see if it was still good.  Pepperoni is solid preservatives.  Duh.  No need to check.

So I pulled the dough out of the fridge and spread it out on an oven sheet… I covered it in sauce… and cheese… and then I pulled the pepperoni out of the fridge…

And it was moldy.

So I threw it away in mild exasperation.  Mushroom pizza?  Well… I guessed I had part of an onion left in the fridge.  And part of a bag of spinach.  Veggie pizza, maybe?

So I went into the fridge after that when I spotted it – chicken tenders!  I had bought chicken tenders on my last trip to the store!

So I threw them in a pan with some olive oil and covered them in Italian seasoning and I chopped everything up and threw it on the pizza.  Then I topped it with more cheese.

And as I was eating approximately 30 minutes later, I thought to myself…

And I could have just been eating pepperoni pizza.

Moral of the story:

Sometimes you’ve just gotta throw away the old stuff that’s gone bad… the new stuff, the better stuff… it just finds you.

But first you gotta let go of the moldy pepperoni.