Just a bunch of sunrise pictures

 My favorite pictures these days are the ones I take at sunrise or shortly thereafter. 

Vacation Mode

First of all: my house is kind of hard to find, AND I have extremely vigilant and helpful and kind neighbors who live directly upstairs from me and ALSO have insomnia, so it's actually fine that I'm posting about vacation while still being on vacation. 

Which actually means visiting friends and family, and doing a few vacation-ey things on the side. When I visited New Zealand in 2022, many people whom I talked to about it expressed amazement and admiration at my world-traveler status, but a) I was using my mother's frequent flyer miles (and other resources), so it wasn't like it was a great accomplishment on my part, and b) I go where the family is. If I had a nephew getting baptized in Brazil, the chances of my going to Brazil would rise dramatically. As long as I have no family members there, the chances of my going there are basically zero.

Anyway. This week I've been in Idaho, a state where my father and all four of my sisters were born, and where I was raised until the age of nine. Ironically enough, the friend I'm staying with at the moment isn't from Idaho at all; I know her from being roommates with her in Provo, when we were both at BYU.

But you were here for the photographs, yes? I love taking walks in the early morning, and I LOVE that in this day and age I have a phone that is also a camera, and I don't have to remember to bring one along or to change its batteries or to download photographs, let alone keeping track of film and taking it in to get it developed. If I am a not-terrible amateur photographer, it's largely because the age I live in has provided me with the tools to get in practice and the perspective to realize how valuable those tools are. Well, and a father who talked to me about basic elements of photography when I was very young, but who most of all was so excited about it himself that that enthusiasm was contagious.

Photographs. Here we are.

While I was visiting Aunt, Uncle, and Cousins in Central Utah the youngest cousin in that family "stole" me for a couple of nights, and I was delighted to be stolen. I got both the horses picture and the extra-bright clouds above trees at sunrise picture during my early-morning walks from her house.

The weather and the nature and the everything-- this was just such a beautiful place to visit.

The friend I'm staying with in Idaho strongarmed me into going to Grand Teton National Park with her. She and her husband have a National Parks Pass. The truth is that I wasn't feeling great and kind of didn't want to go, but the truth also is that leaving the house almost never sounds good to me, and I'm often glad after the fact that I did. My personal policy is that I go, if I possibly can, when someone invites me. In this case, I was absolutely happy with my decision to go. (I was also happy that they let me call the back seat on the way home, for sleeping purposes.) I took the above picture from the front seat of the car, on the way in.

My friend's husband drove us to the lake we swam in, and then he drove to park the car, hiked in to the lake, swam for a bit, and then the three of us changed back into hiking clothes and walked back to the car. It was on this hike that I discovered that the smell of dry grass in air with close to zero percent humidity makes me nostalgic for the summer hikes of my teenage years. I took this picture as we were more than half way to the car, looking back at the mountains we were hiking away from. I used panorama mode, and I have to say, I like the results.

This last one is another awesome sunrise, but this one in Southeast Idaho. Now that I have not lived here for more than thirty years, I can absolutely see how others find the state to be beautiful; I do, too. Not that I want to move back, you understand. But it is spectacularly beautiful.

And I don't feel bad for not appreciating it as a child; after all, I was a child then! My personal conclusion is that variety is the spice of life. Also if you want your kid to appreciate landscapes other than green, full-of-trees ones, maybe do something other than reading Lord of the Rings out loud to them four times when they are growing up. Not that I mind, you understand. But that's my best guess for why the landscape didn't strike me as so beautiful when I was a kid.

Advice to my past self about fence painting

First things first: the paint can hack I tried worked so well that I want everyone to know about it:

You can buy pour spouts for regular-sized paint buckets, but a) this is a two-gallon, not a one-gallon bucket, b) I am only sometimes, not always, not pathologically frugal, and c) most importantly, I feel like this probably works better than a rigid pour spout would.

I thought, when I first saw it, that this hack was merely about narrowing the opening the paint poured through, so that it wouldn't spill so badly. And I'm not saying that doesn't help. But if you carefully observe where the tape meets at a point in front of the bucket, you can see it forms a weird almost-triangle for the paint to pour over. If you lay that tape-triangle across whatever you're pouring the paint in to, the paint flows right across it and you can even wipe it off with a brush if you want and it works so well that it's fun and makes you wish that the entire job consisted of paint-pouring.

So. Now you know about the exactly one part of the fence-painting process that has gone smoothly.

I'm not even going to try to tell you what I did in order, because it was such a disorganized mess that I can't remember. What I can give a little more coherent an account of is what I should have done. 

Part of the problem is that my problem is so unusual: after all, who paints a half-rotted fence in high-gloss paint, waits five (or more-- not even sure) years, and then repaints it? I mean, me, obviously, at least for the repainting part, but while I would normally try to do some research into the best way to attack house-repair problems, this one was so weird that I didn't feel like that was a viable option. 

(I keep wondering if it's even worth it, since I'm pretty sure that the fence is going to need to be entirely rebuilt in 5-10 years, but I WAY don't have it in me to rebuild it this year, and the paint color, barn orange, does stand out for weirdness/ugliness in the neighborhood.)

But, as I said, this is what I should have done. First, remember that you don't want to paint anything that is too rotted, so figure out some sort of scraping system that pulls off the most egregious stuff before you start. This maybe should have been obvious to me, but you will want to remove the largest debris first, and then work your way down to the smaller stuff. Here are some tools that will be helpful:

A Phillips-head screwdriver; a wire brush (which are evidently a terrible idea to use on grills, but since you aren't planning on cooking anything on this fence, let alone eating anything that has been cooked on it, you're good to go); and a plastic scrub brush you originally bought because the level of pollen on your front mat was deep and concerning, and you hadn't figured out yet that this is why power washers were invented (and borrowable from the library). 

Use the screwdriver to scrape away the vines that the last painting crew didn't bother to take care of, which are now rotting under the paint. Then, take that wire brush and scrape off what was left by the screwdriver. The plastic brush takes care of even smaller debris, and then after that it's time to power wash. 

Which, it turns out, is VERY fun. I have a friend who works for the Foreign Service, and before she went to one assignment in a high-conflict area, her training included learning how to use a machine gun. She said it was by far the most fun she had ever, ever had at a work training. I thought about her as I felt the kickback from the power washer and noticed that, while it's tiring, power washing is indeed also quite fun.

I have no current plans to get a job that requires me to learn how to use a machine gun, but I did what I could to live up using the power washer while I had it.

BTW, past self, please do yourself a favor, suck it up, and commit to moving the ladder around so that you can power wash the fence from the top down (instead of the side, as you keep trying to do), because that will be much more effective.

Also, don't even bother with the power sander. This high-gloss-paint-on-weathered-wood situation means that the power sander can't really reach most of the paint. You will eventually notice, in fact, that the sander is called a "finishing sander," and the painting situation you are in calls for beginning sanding if there ever was such a thing. 

Fine-grit sandpaper is maybe 200-400 grit. Medium sandpaper is 100-150 grit. Coarse is 60 grit. You will briefly consider driving an extra 20 miles to get 36-grit sandpaper, but listen to me, you could skip all that and go straight to buying the not-to-be-used-on-a-grill metal bristle brush. After you've used it to get the debris off, as I described above, you can use it to rough up the entire high-gloss surface of each board in preparation for priming it.

And, as is so often the case, I'm too tired to write any more tonight! Next week-- er, in two weeks-- I'll see how much further I can get in the Saga Of The Not Yet Painted Fence.

Happiness in Sewing, and also Happiness in Happiness

The wedding dress came out lovely. My apologies-- I don't have a picture of the whole finished thing, let alone of the bride in it, but here is a random process picture: 

One of the nicest compliments I've ever gotten on my sewing happened when the bride's mother, who has more experience than I do, sewed right over my basting stitches on the shoulders which I had modified. (I'd left the basting in rather than doing the final sewing myself just in case she wanted to fix anything I had done.) After that, she told me that the front of the hem looked just right, and since I had pinned-then-basted it three different times at that point, I felt both gratified and justified. I told her I will be eating those compliments for a year, which is true.

I told my friend, the bride, that I had thought about trying to finish up a blue dress I had been working on in time to wear it to the wedding, but because her colors were blue and white, I had decided not to. She told me that to the contrary, she would be thrilled if she looked out at the congregation and saw a sea of blue. 

So, I spent the next day doing my own sewing-over-basting, and I wore the dress to the wedding on Friday night, and then again to church the following Sunday. I felt SO pretty. I'm pretty sure that at this was at least partly due to the "growing your own vegetables" effect-- kids (and grownups) who are involved in gardening often love to gulp down produce they've had a hand in growing. But I don't think it was all that. It's a good color on me, anyway, and it doesn't look home made, which is a win.

At the wedding itself, the most curious thing happened. As the couple met at the front of the room and the ceremony started, I found myself unable to stop grinning. This also happened at the last wedding I went to, a year ago March, and it surprised me then, too.

Because, true confession time, I wasn't this happy at any of my siblings' weddings, nor at my friends' weddings, even a decade ago. This is new for me, and it's lovely, and I wish I had found it earlier, but better late than never, no? I'm so grateful that "years ago" (to quote my father) I was paying attention in a church meeting where a leader encouraged us to learn to be happy for others. At the time I thought this was slightly odd advice, but I've tried to take it, and maybe it hadn't sunk in ten years ago, but maybe it has now.

I remember years ago (there's that phrase again!) a friend quoting her religion professor saying that after you are married, there are only team points. I fully believed that then, and I fully believe it now. But the thing that I've been realizing, as I've pondered how delighted I am to have found my "happiness for others" mojo, is that I'm pretty sure that all points are team points. We're humans; we're children of God. That's the team I'm on, and that I want to be on. 

(But, me being a mortal, fallible human, it sure does help to feel like I have some wins, too, even if they are smallish and have to do with sewing and professional life-- more on that later.)

Adventures in (clothing) alteration

At church a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a friend about how I'd made my own dress for a gala (at the Library of Congress! I'm still floating a little bit over that one). She said she wouldn't mind learning how to sew, but sewing machines always break on her. I knew exactly what she was talking about; I told her about my own sewing machine trauma and how to this day, I kind of have a preference for hand-sewing over machine sewing.

I also mentioned that I now own a darn reliable sewing machine, if she ever wants to borrow it. She didn't want to borrow it for herself, but she did wonder if I might be willing to hem her wedding dress for her. And the answer was yes, of course!

When I got to her house and saw the dress on her for the first time, it became evident that the most pressing problem she faced was that the shoulders were way too big on her. I pinned the shoulders together, then marked the lines where the new seam lines would need to go by sewing these lines in a contrasting color of thread. (I've discovered the hard way that if you're planning to pick something out, it pays to have that thing be in a color that's easy to see.) Then I took apart the existing shoulder seams, matched up the seam lines I had marked, and basted (temporarily sewed) them together along those new lines.

It was a little more complicated than that because the dress is lined, but that is kinda-sorta-basically what I did during that first evening when I visited her house, thinking (ha!) that I could get this project done in one sewing session. I ended up taking the dress home with me after all, to work on in the evenings.

She also needed the dress hemmed, so I pinned it up at when I was with her, and then last night I finished hand-basting it up. I do plan on machine-sewing the hem in the end, but I wanted to make sure that I really had gotten the length correct before I cut any fabric. I do feel like hand-basting wins over pins pretty much every time; it's both sturdier and more flexible than pins. Not to mention the 100% reduced risk of getting stabbed on accident, either for the sewist or for the person being fitted.

The skirt has a gauzy outer layer and a much more opaque lining. I hand-basted both.

This dress also has a train, which she would like to have out of the way when she is dancing during the reception after the wedding. I did an internet search for how to deal with this, and came up with the idea of a "train pin," which is a way to pin the train up on the outside of the back of the dress, but we couldn't make it look good at all when we tested it out, so that was a no-go. However, she did like the idea of sewing a loop to the middle of the back of the train, so that she could carry her train without using her fingers. I installed this last night.

I used some grosgrain ribbon I had saved from some gift bag, which I couldn't bear to get rid of and which has been sitting in my stash of saved ribbons and strings for I don't even know how many years. I sewed it to the underskirt, and then picked apart the seam on the gauzy overlay fabric so that the loop could poke through. Tomorrow we'll try it on her again, just to make sure all the modifications work well, and then I'll hem the hem with my machine, as originally promised, and then I'll probably be done.

I am still working on the fence-painting project (the weather has been mostly perfect for it) but only felt enough umph to blog about one thing this week. But if you show up next week, I'll tell you about the very exciting world of power washing and about having the perfect roller brush and about why I bought catnip this last week, even though I don't have any plans to use it for a cat. Then there's also the excitement of finding rotting pieces of wood in places where there probably really shouldn't be rotting pieces of wood, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Come back next week and I'll tell all.

Oh. Also. If you want to see three more pages of the graphic novel and read a little bit about it, head on over to cordeliafernwood.com.

Delivering myself from famine

Friends! I am alive. At this exact moment I'm planning to start blogging here again as well as continue the new work blog I started a few weeks ago (at cordeliafernwood.com), but I know myself and I'm not... sure... how long this enthusiasm will last. Also I'm not sure if anyone who reads this blog isn't already my friend on Facebook, but if there is anyone who was waiting with bated breath for me to show up here again, hooray! I'm here again. 

So, at Cordelia Fernwood, I've made some stuff and I've sold some stuff, but I haven't sold very much stuff, which is to be expected at the beginning of a venture like this, but the upshot is that I shall be needing grocery money in the relatively near future, and luckily for me a fence-painting job is available for me to do and be paid for at this very moment. This is because my mother owns the building I live in, and she pays me to be her fixit human for my own house. Eventually I will run out of things to fix and at that point will either have to start selling more stuff or else find a real job, but for now the weather isn't heinous and it's a good time to be working outside.

The last time this fence was painted, the workmanship was, hm, how do I say, dubious. Without any apparent prep work whatsoever, such as sanding or even cleaning the surface to be painted, a high-gloss paint was sprayed on to the existing fence. For my part, after using progressively coarser sandpaper and considering driving an extra fifteen miles to pick up extra extra coarse sandpaper, I finally concluded that primer is my friend. (I also picked up a wire-bristle brush at Habitat for Humanity's ReStore, and it is FABULOSO at scuffing up hard-to-reach high-gloss fence parts that have no business being high-gloss.) Like this:

Also there is the top-end-of-the-fence-boards situation. Which is to say, none of the exposed end grain on the tops of the boards got painted during this high-gloss spray-painting job, but were left to weather naturally, which results in stuff like this:

In some cases, the ends don't have moss on them, but in some cases they do. I'm planning to paint the non-mossy ones, just to preserve them a tiny bit longer, but quite frankly the whole thing is going to have to be completely rebuilt within the next five to ten years, so I'm constantly wondering to myself which effort is worth it and which is not.

I did finally conclude that I should replace the most rotten boards on the gate, though. I use the gate every time I leave the house, and one of the boards on the front had rotted out so badly that only the screws that had held it in place were left at the top.

Behold the front of the gate, which already has three boards I've replaced (it's hard to tell, but they're a slightly different color from everything else because I primed them before I installed them ;)

Since I am a fan of whimsy and not a fan of regretting my decisions, I've decided that the crooked board on the far left on the front side is whimsical, and that I don't regret at all the fact that I totally forgot to sight down the long side of the board to make sure it was straight before I bought it. Really truly, though, I actually do think it kind of looks cute, and I'm also not kidding about the liking whimsy thing. 

You can see that the board on the far left on the inside of the gate is pretty ripped up on the bottom. I wasn't originally planning to replace it, but replacing the boards on the front of the gate went so well that I'm sort of thinking maybe I will after all. 

Aaand I'm out of time to write. Probably for the best. Check out cordeliafernwood.com if you're curious about what the first pages of the unfinished graphic novel look like, or what the mostly-finished paper Nativity or paper Easter Set look like, or if you want to read more ramblings about creative work and, like, stuff.

Gluchlich

The German word for happiness- well, probably one of the words, but since my German isn't very good it's the only one I know-- is "Gluchlich." And this used to bother me, just a little, because it is so clearly related to the English word "lucky." It irritated me to think that an entire language could seriously assume that happiness was up to luck, that you couldn't influence your own fate about this most basic of psychological needs. I know very well indeed that we aren't always in perfect control of our emotional lives, but this seemed to be a bridge too far.

Then I read a book by Tony Danza, of Who's the Boss fame, about doing a TV reality show in which he taught a high school English class for a year in a tough high school in Philadelphia. (The book's title is I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had.) What I mostly got out of that book was that good teaching doesn't necessarily make for good reality TV, because good teaching inherently involves less drama than reality TV needs. But towards the beginning, as he was talking about how he got to the point of doing the reality TV show, he talked about how he had many friends who were just as talented and just as hardworking has he had been, but that getting the role in Who's the Boss was a lucky break for him. It was his way of acknowledging that he was no better than-- well, maybe not anyone else, but many of the people he knew and respected. I liked that--and suddenly I became a lot more OK with Gluchlich as a concept. 

I am aware that happiness can be cultivated-- that's the hardworking part. But somehow I feel calmer and happier myself when I know there's some unfairness built into the system. If I don't have as much as someone else, it isn't automatically because I wasn't as good as them at something. It even, oddly, makes it easier to be happier for them. If you know it isn't a perfectly balanced system to start with, there's no use weeping or wailing when it shows itself to be what you already knew it was. :D

The Garden Lantern

Last spring some time I was in Kohl's with a $5 off $5 coupon, and I wandered around until I found the thing I was supposed to buy, which was a solar garden lantern. I'm getting better at this with buying things-- finding what is just right and then going with that. I kind of wish I were so confident in picking out people to be friends with, but people are not things and money is much simpler (and in some ways more dangerous) than exchanges of friendship, so perhaps I should be content.

Anyway, I brought it home and then set it by my door to wait until I figured out exactly where in the garden I wanted to put it. I wanted it to be useful, but I also didn't want to attract mosquitoes close to the front door.

But I also-- and this is the extremely silly part, but it's funny and I'd rather make someone laugh than make them think I'm never ridiculous-- I also hesitated to put it out because I was afraid that the weather would get to it. The garden lantern. That was designed to be out in the weather. So, as I mentioned, I propped it in its corner between my front closet and my front door, and periodically it would fall over, and I would think to myself that I should put it out, and I would worry again about the weather, and I wouldn't do it.

Then last Thursday or so, I realized that while it was designed to deal with the weather, it wasn't designed to be tipped over and fall on the ground repeatedly, and that I should just put in in a spot already. You see, unlike lighting designed for the indoors, this garden lantern didn't have anything flat to rest on; it had a pole with two spikes at the end, meant to be driven into the ground. So I took it out and within about three seconds realized that the perfect spot was just inside the garden gate, and I felt very silly for not having put it there before. And I was so pleased with how it looked as I went out for my walk on Sunday evening that I took a picture of it as I left the house, and that is the picture that I show you now:

I suppose there's some useful moral to be learned from all this, though I'm not quite sure what. I'm just thankful that my silliness didn't result in the poor lantern being broken without ever having been used. The sight of it brings me happiness every time I see it.

Child Abuse Prevention Training

 A new school year is about to begin in our district. This means, among other things, that I have been diligently completing online training modules, including one which is sometimes known among staff members as "child abuse prevention training."

But it isn't, not really. It's actually a training on what our legal responsibility is if we suspect a child has been abused: which is to say, we must report it promptly to the proper authorities. I've cried after work every single time I've had to submit one of these reports, BTW, but having emotions about a legal responsibility doesn't absolve you of said responsibility. Also, it's not a huge percentage of days. I've only ever had to submit at most one a year, and my job for the past several years has involved so little direct interaction with the kids that I haven't had a day like that for quite some time. 

I've been thinking about what it would be like if it were actual child abuse prevention training. If I were designing it-- and to be clear, I'm well aware that no one has asked me-- but if I were designing Child Abuse Prevention Training, I would have the first part be on how to recognize your emotions, the next part on how to appropriately deal with your emotions, and the last part on how much more important it is to be in control of yourself than of any child. 

For good measure, I'd probably throw in a few things about how to get children to do things without being abusive to them, because I know I am personally most at risk of child abuse when I feel like I have to get a kid to do a thing that for whatever reason isn't happening. Now that I think about it, I'd probably also have a bit about what is going through children's heads when they act a certain way. I've noticed an ever-greater tendency in our culture to attribute adult-style motivations and ideas to these young aliens who most often have no idea what is going on, want desperately to win our approval, and haven't learned yet how to regulate their own emotions (which, it's that much more difficult for them to do so when we are giving them poor examples ourselves). Maybe I'd end on a happy note with several videos of people telling "That could have gone south, but I managed to figure out how to stay in control of my emotions, ask for help as needed, and prevent child abuse" stories.

Thank you to Project Gutenburg for making this out-of-copyright image available!
I think this lady looks pretty calm and collected even though one of her charges looks less than enthusiastic about nap time (or wherever they're going) don't you?

Meet the ferns

The Lady Ferns were the first to get their names because it seemed silly for ladies to not have names. I'm not sure why my phone in all its wisdom has decided to give Lady Elisabeth such different lighting than Lady Katherine; I took these photos mere seconds apart, and the ferns themselves are pretty close together.

Lady Katherine

Lady Elisabeth

After that the Hay-Scented Fern told me he could be called Charlie, after my grandpa (who never actually went by Charlie, but whatev). Because I know you are wondering: no, Charlie doesn't smell like anything, hay or otherwise, to me. 

Charlie, poor Charlie.

I feel pretty bad about how poorly Charlie is doing. First, I left him in his pot for about half of last summer, literally overshadowed by the ladies beside him (though I didn't notice that part at the time), and only watering him when I noticed everyone was looking a bit droopy. Then I got so tired of trying to find spots in my yard to plant ferns which hadn't already been cris-crossed by too-large tree roots that I gave up and planted Charlie in an inadequate hole. You can see the result. *sigh*. I can only hope that he will continue to survive, and eventually thrive. Also I'm backing up that hope with extra water and fertilizer and encouraging words.

Dasher and Dancer are next to each other, and Donner is over on the far side of the yard, next to the fence rather than the sidewalk. Dancer was my only Christmas fern last year, but I ended up planting Dasher and Donner this year. As with other Christmas-named plants, these are named for that fact that they still have foliage during the cold time of year, when Christmas is in the northern hemisphere.

Dasher

Dancer

Donner

I decided on the names for the Ostrich Ferns last. The others had practically named themselves. I finally decided to go with Edward and Edwina when Mrs. Weathercolour suggested it; I'd thought of it, since I used to have a picture book titled "Edward the Emu," but her suggestion cinched it. (Ostriches aren't emus, but we both figured: close enough.) I feel a little bad for Edwin and Edwina, since the cicadas liked them an awfully lot. In the weeks since they got all that love the eggs have been hatching out, and Edwin and Edwina's fronds have been dying off rather much. And yet, they started out quite hale and hearty and happy, better equipped to deal with that kind of stress than probably anything else in the garden, so I'm not too worried for them.

Edwin

Edwina

Magical Tennis Shoes and Perfectionism

I think I've written about the magical tennis shoes here, but I'm not finding the post at the moment. When I do I'll link to it.

The TL;DR is that I ended up buying a pair of tennis shoes that was extremely in style, which made me darn nervous because I truly did not want to look like one of the seventh graders I was working with at the time. It turned out that instead of the kids thinking I was trying too hard to be cool (with the exception of exactly one sixth grader) they thought I WAS cool-- and the more trend-aware the kid was, the stronger the impression was. This was pretty weird for me, but nice; the positive feedback from kids was nice, but the truly amazing effect was that the same kids who on principle tended to resist any and all orders, suggestions, commands, etc. would get twirling spirals in their eyes and say "Yes," when I asked them to do things, as long as I was wearing The Magical Shoes. I found these effects to be both hilarious and worrisome.

It was worrisome because I know darn good and well that letting any of your sense of self-worth rest on the approval of seventh-graders is a terrible idea, even if you're a seventh grader, but especially if you're a grownup. Luckily, I was able to avoid that fate at that time. 

However, recently I was in a group discussion about a video featuring a woman who had been an elite synchronized swimmer, whose perfectionism had prevented her from enjoying the successes she had before she became too ill to compete. All of a sudden I made the connection: it does feel good to get compliments from normally hostile seventh graders; it also feels good to get awards and prizes from the sports world (or the academic world, or the musical world, or the world in general); but letting go of your precious sense of self-worth in exchange for those things is a terrible idea.

I haven't been quite as successful at keeping my sense of self-worth safe from these other traps, but at least now I have a metaphor to remind me why I should keep trying. :)

I've become the Crazy Native Plant Lady

Being the Crazy Native Plant Lady might not be as weird as being a cat lady, but it isn't my fault; I'm excessively allergic to cats.

Also: I do try to keep my blog posts pretty vague about exactly where I live, but if you are the sort of person who can pinpoint my location from the (native) plants I'm about to describe, I'm not worried at all about what would happen if you chose to find me.

I moved into a new apartment last spring. While the to-do list for the inside is still extensive, the yard is delightful and green and sun-dappled and no matter how hot the weather, it's cooler than the unshaded sidewalk outside of my gate. It's also enclosed by a 6-foot tall privacy fence. This means that even though there are plenty of neighbors who can see my yard from their second-story windows, in practice as long as I'm moving around the yard, I don't think about that too much and I have fun.

And what kind of fun? Well, pulling weeds. I know. Balloons should be sent for this party. But it IS fun. 

The first year, I started my garden planning by buying a bunch of seeds that I ended up not being able to use: zinnias, zucchini, cilantro, cucumbers. As spring got underway and the tree by the back gate began to leaf out, I started to notice that my garden wasn't just kind of shady; it's really shady. Like, the official definition of a shady garden is one that gets not more than three (or four) hours of sunlight a day, and as I sat in my comfy chair by the window one lazy Saturday and monitored how much sun different parts of the garden got, I couldn't see any part that got more than one hour of sunlight that day.

That's when I began to realize I was going to need a different strategy. I eventually gave away my vegetable, herb, and flower seeds, and began researching what would grow in shade.

And you know what I came up with? Ferns! Ferns are gorgeous and they love to grow in super moist, super shady conditions-- like the forest floor. I knew this because I'd seen them growing there, wild, on walks. I figured that a garden shaded by domesticated trees couldn't be that different. When my older sister lived in Tasmania, I'd heard tales of a fern forest-- I'd still love to go-- but even the thought of having my little 15-by-20-foot yard green with ferns made my heart sing. 

I started researching what else I could plant. I found out about Virginia Bluebells, which looked gorgeous but are a little bit difficult to obtain commercially, and by the time I had figured out I wanted them last year, I had missed my window of opportunity. Instead, I ended up purchasing what they had left that was on my list: a Christmas fern, two lady ferns, and a hay-scented fern. (Because I know you are going to ask: yes, I sniffed it, and no, it didn't seem to smell like hay or anything else to me.) Then I kept them on the mini-concrete-slab in the back yard (2'x2') for at least a month, but probably more like two, while I tried to get around to planting them.

I am not going to pretend that I'm not a procrastinator, but in this case, it wasn't just procrastination. For one thing, I needed to clear the plants that "cumbered the ground" that was the ultimate destiny for the ferns' home. Most of it was English ivy, which isn't that hard to rip up, but it's so prolific that there was just a ton to do. Add the fact that it's not a native, and this is definitely classed as an invasive. On top of that, there were several out-of-control sweetbriar canes-- which, to be clear, were never going to even blossom, given the lack of sunlight, so it was a plant that was literally all thorns and no roses. On top of that, the root systems of the trees that surround the yard like to send up suckers, which need to be clipped off so that my yard doesn't actually become a forest floor. I mean, if I chose to do it, it would be one thing, but I'm not making that decision this year.

And it turned out to be those root systems which caused the most delay, once the overgrown invasives were gone-enough that I could start thinking about where I wanted to plant my beautiful ferns. It turned out that I wasn't going to have a lot of choice, because it seemed like everywhere I tried, I would run into tree roots at least as big around as my wrist, blocking me from digging a hole big enough for my plant.

Part of the problem is that the nursery I have been buying these ferns from sells them in gallon pots, and with instructions to dig a hole twice as wide as the pot, I end up having to find a space that's at least 18 inches wide and nearly a foot deep, in order to get these things in the ground. The Christmas fern went in fine, but the lady ferns took a couple of tries each and the hay-scented fern was put in a hole which, according to the instructions, was inadequate, but I figured by then that it would be happier in the ground than in its pot a few more weeks while I dug hole after hole, trying to find a better spot.

I shifted strategies again. I realized that planting ferns this big, enough to cover the yard, was not going to be feasible. Which was/is fine, since they aren't exactly cheap, and it was going to take quite a while to be able to afford enough to cover the yard. Everything I've read says that each of these varieties will spread once it's established, and I'm SUPER excited for that to happen.

But... four ferns isn't going to provide coverage for a 15'x23' yard very quickly. I decided that I would buy a few more this year, and just let the garden grow a little at a time. Now I have two more Christmas ferns over on one side of the sidewalk, and a couple of ostrich ferns (which I was also too late to get last year) on the other side.

Luckily, I also have some happy native volunteers. I had some cute, tiny but tall daisy-looking things, and after weeks of typing variations of their description into the internet, I finally became convinced that these were daisy fleabane-- I love the name; it's a bit ridiculous, like me-- and best of all, they were natives! So I left my little patch all fall and all winter, and rejoiced when it grew back even bigger and better this spring.

The cicadas loved the daisy fleabane.

I also have wood sorrel, which sort of looks like clover until you look at it closely; it's a lot taller than clover when it's grown a bit, but the biggest tell is that clover has white flowers and wood sorrel has yellow ones. Wood sorrel, check.

This year I was also early enough to get the Virginia Bluebells, Unfortunately, after one night outside in my yard, the Virginia Bluebells got eaten by an unknown creature. Back to the nursery they went (luckily they have a very generous return policy) and that was when I found out that I could get the ostrich ferns. The ostrich ferns are doing pretty well, except that the cicadas tried to lay eggs in one of them, too, so the fronds affected by that little episode aren't doing so well.

Poor cicadas. They aren't very smart.

But I was still feeling a little worried about what to fill in with. Not Daisy Fleabane, because it's so tall it would block what sunlight was getting to the ferns from getting there at all. Wood sorrel is fine in its place but it isn't that prolific.

Then, round about the time one of my older nieces was visiting, in the spring, I noticed these cute little purple violets all over my yard, and felt moved to look them up. Lo and behold, they're native, and what's more, the extension service recommends them as a groundcover! I was never planning on soccer games in this yard anyway. Something that is hardy and native and green most of the year round but gorgeous in the spring sounds exactly like what I want for my yard. Also it needs no mowing. I quite appreciate this quality.

I'm also continuing to look up plant descriptions, to try to figure out what is native and what isn't, and pull out the nonnatives. TBH weeding feels like an IRL computer game, only instead of murdering imaginary aliens, I'm composting real-live plant aliens. I dunno. It's satisfying. 

P.S. I'll post pictures next time. For realz. I just don't have any at the moment, and it's dark out, and I started this post back in May, and I think it's about time to just let it be up and add a picture post later. :D

Your (distant, secondhand) Grief Counts

In the last month or so, I've talked to a couple of different people who were close to me who were shaken by the deaths of people who were not close to them. They didn't want to impose on the families affected by the deaths, but they did need to talk about it, so they talked to me-- and, to be clear, I do know that it is an honor to be trusted this much.

One of the things I told them is that I do know, from firsthand experience, that having someone sad for you because someone close to you has died makes grief lighter. 

I learned this from the secondhand-mourner perspective when a woman I knew and admired lost her husband to suicide. When I got to the casket-- she was standing at the head of it-- and looked into my friend's eyes, all I could do is cry. She hugged me, and said, "Thank you for crying for me."

I didn't know her that well, and I had never met her husband that I knew of, and I felt utterly impotent to offer any comfort in that moment. That is why when she said it, I thought she was being very thoughtful of me to let me think that I had actually done her any good.

I thought this until I lost my friend who was murdered by her ex-husband. Some people were so shocked when I told them about it that I had to spend precious emotional energy calming them down. That was pretty hard. But others-- many others, even some who didn't know my friend at all-- chose to be sad for me, and I learned firsthand that having someone else be sad for my loss is one of the single most healing things that I've ever experienced.

I learned this again when my dad died. Fewer people, though not zero, were shocked and upset and needed me to be emotionally present in ways that were pretty hard. But others offered sweet, loving support. I especially appreciate a couple of the teachers in the building where I worked who quietly checked in on me now and again to make sure I was doing OK. They had lost their own fathers within the last few years, and they knew from their own firsthand experience what was needed. But all of the other people, including close friends, who didn't know what to do and who were just straight up sad for me? I was SO thankful for them, too. Every expression of grief on my behalf seemed to split mine up and take a part of it away.

So, my advice: be aware not to impose, but looking someone in the eye and letting them know how truly sad you are for their loss is not maybe a little perhaps helpful, but it genuinely lifts the burdens of grief. If you feel an unexpected wave of grief over the death of someone you have never met, this not only signals that you are a human with a functioning heart, but it means that if you are in a position to communicate that grief, you could provide the exact support that grieving person or family needs. It tells them that their person mattered-- even to someone who had never met them. And surely, if you think about it, someone who matters even to those who never met them must matter a lot.

The caveat: some people are not going to be up to human interaction when they are grieving. The essence of not imposing is being willing to step back when the person indicates that is what they would like you to do. If this is the vibe you're getting, be sure to respect it, but at the same time understand that your own grief is still real, and that you yourself may need to reach out for support. I learned that one the hard way. My personal experience is that suicides can be particularly difficult to process. I beg of you to reach out for the support you need if you are finding yourself in a hole having to do with this issue-- or if you find yourself in an emotional hole about anything at all. Each life is precious, including yours.

The Unfunny* Jokes Stage is one of my favorites

So, when young persons get to be around four or five years old, they begin to pick up on the fact that jokes exist.** They hear someone tell a joke, then they hear someone else laugh, and they aren't sure what is going on, so they ask. Sometimes, someone is able to explain why it was funny, but sometimes explanation fails, so to the child, it comes out something like: you say a couple of things that don't make sense and then someone laughs. And then they think: that's not a bad deal! I should try that!

And then they do. And, as good language learners, when they don't get it right the first time, they try again. And then again. And again.

This stage can be very trying for parents. Do you laugh? Do you pretend to laugh? And what do you do when your five-year-old is on their hundredth unfunny joke of the day and you just want to scream? 

The thing is, the vast majority of linguistic forms that children encounter in day-to-day life are produced spontaneously, so it makes sense that they assume that jokes fall into this category, too. It's not the kid's fault that they have no idea that (funny) jokes are fiendishly difficult to make up on the fly.

But, as I mentioned in the title, I have a different perspective. I think that unfunny jokes are adorable in the way that, say, watching a four-year-old wash dishes is adorable. If your goal is to get the dishes clean, you will be in trouble. If your goal is to let the kid have fun while trying out something grownup, and to encourage them along the way, you will find much more happiness.

Here, let me give an example. My sister just visited with two of her children, the younger of whom is squarely in the unfunny jokes stage (which, yes, is what prompted this post). This is one of hers:

Niece: Knock knock.

Myself: Who's there?

Niece: Turkey.

Myself: Turkey who?

Niece: Turkey that doesn't exist! while laughing so hard at her own joke that she can hardly stand up, as is normal.

So, look. She knows the basic form: knock knock, who's there, give a name, answer with the name + who, and then-- and this shows a fair amount of sophistication, IMHO-- the very last line, the punchline, should incorporate the name with a surprise ending that upends the original expectation set up by that name in the first place.

I actually laughed at this one. I thought it was so delightful that she had gotten so close to something actually funny. I even retold it to a couple of other people, who because they don't love unfunny jokes as much as I do did not laugh. *sigh*

Anyway, hopefully this post has left you with a renewed-- or perhaps just new-- appreciation for unfunny jokes. The best defense against them-- besides learning to appreciate them-- is to take the time to teach the poor kid an actual joke.*** After that, supposing they can read, you can put a joke book in their hands --and even kids who have outgrown unfunny jokes frequently appreciate a joke or riddle book.****

Also: good luck! If you have a kid going through this stage and you know me well enough to have my phone number, you are welcome to call me up, and if I have time, I will listen to a couple of unfunny jokes and laugh at them. If you don't know me well enough to have my phone number, I would love to get (these kind of) unfunny jokes in the comments. 

*To be clear, I'm not talking about jokes that merely don't fit one particular person's sense of humor. I'm talking about jokes that nobody would think were funny unless they were thinking about them in a very particular way (which I will get to in a moment).

**It isn't that children younger than five can't be funny or make you laugh on purpose, but this verbal unit called a joke or a riddle starts appearing on their radar around this time.

***You will then hear that joke approximately 50,000 times a day, because making others laugh is powerful magic, but at least it won't be one unfunny joke after another. 

****I feel compelled to mention that if a child was not in the habit of cornering friends, relatives, acquaintances, and passing strangers and then assaulting them with multiple riddles and/or jokes, the acquisition of a joke or riddle book can prompt such behavior. Maybe give a manners book at the same time? I don't really have a solution for this one other than ongoing, kind, but firm discussions about when, where, and how it is and is not appropriate to tell jokes.

Thinking about the Heavenly Gift as mentioned in Ether 12

This morning I was listening to Ether 12-- one of my favorites-- when I heard something I had never noticed before. "...[A]nd be partakers of the gift, if ye will but have faith." This is in verse 9.

Wait, what gift? I mean, it makes sense-- faith leads to all kinds of cool things-- but what gift?

So I tapped the "go back" button and listened to this, in verse 8: "...and prepared a way that thereby others might be partakers of the heavenly gift, that they might hope for those things which they have not seen." And then the whole of verse 9: "Wherefore, ye may also have hope, and be partakers of the gift, if ye will but have faith."

Right. The heavenly gift. But this left me with a new question: what is the heavenly gift? I was so curious that I had to stop washing dishes and come over to my laptop to look up where that phrase might be used in the rest of the scriptures. It turns out that there are only two other places: 4 Nephi 1:3, and Hebrews 6:4. In 4 Nephi it talks about how in the perfect, Zion society, all were made partakers of "the heavenly gift." Hebrews 6:4 talks about the heavenly gift as being something that happens to a person along with being enlightened and being made partakers of the Holy Ghost. 

That makes three out of three references to The Heavenly Gift which seem to associate it closely with seeing Jesus Christ, but the one I started with specifically excludes supposing that it is the appearance itself: "But because of the faith of men he has shown himself unto the world, and glorified the name of the Father, and prepared a way that thereby others might be partakers of the heavenly gift..."

I wondered if the heavenly gift might refer to the plan of salvation or to the atonement of Jesus Christ, but again I thought to myself: those who lived before Christ surely partook of those even without seeing Him. Of course it has to be associated somehow, but it somehow seems to be not exactly this.

I looked at Hebrews 6 again and started reading the whole chapter. When I got to a reference to hope, I paused. My two verses that I came from in Ether both referenced hope, too. I decided I should hop over to the Topical Guide listing on hope and see what I could see by looking through those. At first the going was slow, but then it started sticking out to me that hope is in "things which are not seen, which are true." It isn't like I didn't know this before, but it just seemed to jump out at me. It seemed to fit with the idea that the heavenly gift had to be associated with seeing Jesus, and yet it wasn't... exactly... actually seeing Him.

Of course, being as how we are, depending on your point of view, either in the middle of or very close to the start of the Christmas season, it did occur to me that the Heavenly Gift could simply be Jesus Christ Himself.

And as that thought wound its way through my brain again, all of a sudden I made the connection: the Heavenly Gift is any manifestation of God in the world. It's brought about by faith; it's hoped for by (Godly) hope. I excitedly began to read the lists of miracles wrought by faith in Ether 12, and it fit. Being called of God: definitely shows you God in the world. The prison of Ammonihah being shaken to the earth: shows God in the world. The Lamanites' hearts being wrought upon and changed: most certainly these show God in the world. Receiving a promise that you wouldn't taste of death: also shows God in the world.

Over in Hebrews 11, it also fits: obtaining a witness that you are righteous shows God in the world. Being warned of God, directed by God, and receiving gifts of God all show that God is in the world.

And shouldn't that be what we hope for? To see God in the world? It seems like that is a most Godly thing to hope for. It wouldn't exclude a direct visitation, but it doesn't demand it, either. In fact, hope doesn't demand anything, but that's a different post for a different day.

I began to wonder if I might gain an insight into charity by applying this new perspective. Almost as soon as I wondered it, I saw it: if we see God in the world, we have a better chance of becoming like Him, of gaining His attributes, of loving as He does. 

And again, I wonder how much I was set up for this entire insight trail by posting on Facebook on the #givethanks hashtag, as President Nelson asked us to do. Giving thanks is a small and simple-- tiny, really-- way to see God in the world. I'm not sure how much faith it took for me to do that, but it didn't feel like much!

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope that you, too, get to feel some manifestation of God in the world, no matter how small. In my life, these manifestations bring peace and joy.

Maple Caramel Seven-Minute Frosting, with (pan)cakes underneath

I'm not naming which celebration this was for, because I think the internet at large already knows quite enough about what I celebrate when, thank you very much.

Do you ever get a taste-thought in your brain? I think that the closest word for it in English is "craving" (and no, I don't know of a word for it in any other languages), but craving implies that you are at some level obsessed with consuming the thing, and what I'm describing is more like when you close your eyes and see a picture in your mind, or when you are walking along and your brain plays music for you, and if you like it well enough, you try to draw it or describe it or write it down or in whatever way you can realize the idea which has come to you.

Anyway. Today I was thinking about whether or not to make cake for (un)said celebration, and the thought came to me: caramel. And then I remembered how I am wealthy enough-- unlike much of the rest of my life before now-- that I have REAL maple syrup to play with, culinarily.*

So this is what I did. I looked up a recipe for maple syrup caramel, and decided to "use" this one: pinch of yum magic vegan caramel sauce. And by use, I mean that I only used two of the four ingredients she lists; I substituted one, and left one out. (But I linked to it to give credit where credit is due, and besides which, if I could have those ingredients, I would have just gone with them). In my situation, though, I used a teacup in the microwave and put in 2T of maple syrup, 2T of oil, and 1/16t of salt, and microwaved it for a minute. And at the end of that I had a delicious tasting syrup at the bottom of a bunch of oil, so next time I'll be reducing the oil by half and deciding about further modifications from there.

But boy howdy did I mention how good it is?

OK. Next, I used Paula Deen's 7-minute frosting recipe, which I modified this time just because my eggs are oddly small (and which I usually modify by putting in 1 cup of sugar instead of a cup and a half) BUT the modification that matters this time is that instead of vanilla-- which never does taste good to me in frosting-- I put in two teaspoons (as in the kind you eat with teaspoons-- sorry I didn't measure, but I think they were pretty close to a standard teaspoon?) of the maple syrup caramel stuff. Every time I've tried to flavor this frosting recipe before, the flavoring has come out too strong, but not this time! Probably because the flavoring can be eaten straight up on its own. But this part of the recipe is definitely getting made again, especially since three ingredients in the microwave for one minute is my kind of recipe.

I dished out some frosting for Mom to eat (of course snitching as much as I myself wanted). Then I took the leftover oil-and-syrup, and mixed it in with the egg yolks, and then mixed that in with some cake mix, and then folded in the frosting that I thought would not be needed for the top of the cake, and then I put the whole shebang in the oven.

I'll tell you in the morning how it went.

IN THE MORNING: After tasting my cake experiment, I decided to eat my frosting with some pancakes I had made earlier. The flavoring which was just right for the frosting was too weak for the cake, which was also just a little dense. Meh. I never make cakes, partly because I've never liked them that much, partly because my body doesn't like ingredients that allow them to taste good: butter, milk, almonds, any form of coconut. I'll survive. Next time, maybe I'll just make meringues. Or pavlova.

*If I didn't have real maple syrup, I would definitely make some simple syrup by boiling 2 c. sugar** with 1 c. water and then adding a flavoring like mapleine or almond extract or something. It doesn't taste the same as maple syrup, but it tastes good enough that it's sometimes just what I'm in the mood for, over real maple syrup. I'm never in the mood for corn syrup faintly flavored with maple, though.

**OK, fine, most days I'm only cooking for myself and I haven't made a 2 cup batch of simple syrup in at least a decade, but what I DO do is put one tablespoon of sugar and one of water in a teacup and then microwave it for 30 seconds at a time until the viscosity gets to be syrupy-looking. This makes enough for me for one meal's worth of pancakes, and then I don't have to worry about putting leftover syrup in the fridge or whatever. The water boils off much more quickly in the microwave than on a stove, which is why after a couple of tries in which I ended up with crystallized sugar instead of syrup, I changed the proportion for the tiny version of the recipe.

How taking a walk with a three-year-old helped me figure out my writing goals

One day when my oldest niece was about three years old, I stopped in at my sister's house, which at the time was close to a credit union I belonged to. At some point in our conversation that day, we decided that I would take my niece with me on my errand to the credit union. I wanted to hang out with her; I had a couple of hours free; and the credit union was a twenty minute walk away, even if we walked very slowly.

Our plan worked perfectly. She got to walk the whole time, because I wasn't worried about getting there before it closed or in time for me to go do some other errand. Once we got to the window, she announced proudly to the teller, "I'm Cinderella!"

The teller looked at me in confusion. "Is that really her name?"

"Let me give you a clue. I'm her fairy godmother."

And then I did whatever business I had come to transact-- I truly don't remember what it was any more-- and then we walked back to her house, and all was well.

Now, the moral you might take from this story is that you should leave plenty of time for walks with  three-year-olds, and if that is the conclusion you draw, I'm not going to tell you you're wrong. But I feel like there's an even more interesting lesson you could take away from it.

I realized as I was going home that I had two sets of goals for that walk. I wanted most to hang out with my niece and let her explore and have fun. But I also had an errand to run, and it was actually easier to accomplish the first goal once I had that second goal in mind.

I've come to think of these kinds of goals as end-goals and guardrail goals. For me, loving people, protecting the environment, and obeying the law are among my guardrail goals. They are all so important to me that the only way I would break one of them deliberately is if another guardrail goal were involved. But having end-goals as well makes keeping those guardrail goals more interesting, and sometimes even easier.

So, for instance, for a long time-- too long, for my taste-- one of my end goals was to get a bachelor's degree. And I finally have one! Along the way, I lived with roommates, which brought me into contact with others and gave me a chance to figure out how to love them both more and more effectively. Through my general education classes, I also learned enough science to be able to appreciate science writing and interpret it for myself. And in my philosophy classes, discussions about Kantian ethics would always start out with the caveat to his "never tell a lie" rule that we all agree to: if I have Jews hidden in my house and Nazis are at the door, I will definitely break the law.

But wait, you say. Getting an education is kind of a good in and of itself, so it's kind of not fair to be listing how it helps with all of those other things. Aren't there some end goals that aren't good?

Well, yeah. As we can see from the Nazi example mentioned above, if your end goal in and of itself violates a guardrail goal, you gotta chuck it.

But other than that, as far as I can tell, not only does the ethical human have the right to choose whatever end goals she likes; she may even be under obligation to do so, because they are so helpful in accomplishing those guardrail goals.

And that brings me to my writing goals. I want to bring delight, information, and helpfulness to others: that's an end goal. I want to be dependable (and of course honest) in my business relationships: that's a guardrail goal. And what I want for myself is a combination of end and guardrail goals: I want to write things which I enjoy writing (end goal); of course write ethically (which can get tricky when you write about real humans, but I would argue can even be an issue when you write about fantasy worlds-- so, guardrail goal); and at some point I would like to make a profit, which I am leaving as an end goal but would sure be a lot more comfortable if it were a guardrail goal. But it's best to leave guardrail goals as things have more control over, and end goals as things you have less control of, so there you have it.

I was able to distill these goals into a one sentence purpose statement, and it's held for-- let me check-- wow, since December 24th! Well, isn't that nice! (I checked the version history on the document where I listed my writing goals to figure that out.) I'm open to finding out more about what I want, but so far I'm holding to this one: I write to create joy.

I write to create joy.

Daily Feelings Sort + choosing gratitude

I do a "feelings sort" every morning, right at the top of my daily journal entry. (I write in the morning, about the day before, because I tend to be approximately twice as gloomy in the evenings as in the mornings.) It's pretty basic: I write down five words (or very occasionally phrases) that answer the question "how am I feeling?" So, a typical day might include sad, cheerful, OK, thoughtful, and thankful.

Part of the point of the feelings sort is to notice and label the sort of brain-stem, I-don't-get-a-choice-about-them feelings like sadness or anger (please anyone who knows the neuroscience of this better than I do off the top of my head be very gentle in the comments-- I'm just trying to get this written, for now). If I notice and label those feelings, I can work on them; I can take a walk, or organize part of my house, or call a friend, or something. Or, if I'm feeling joyful or triumphant or happy, I get that right down at the top of the entry, to be explored later, and remember that recording my emotions isn't always about controlling them.

I always include thankful, or some variant thereof. That's because I can choose which emotions to project, both to myself and others, and by writing these down, I am nudging myself to that choice. Occasionally I have to write "trying to be thankful" because I do want to be honest, but usually I can find at least one little thing to make it true.

Map Mystery in The Library, Part the first: How this home-made escape room was played

For the last two summers running, our school has applied for a grant to have our library open during the summer, because our boundaries are such that walking to the public library for most of our kids isn't really practical. I got to be the summer librarian this year (yay!) which was SO fun and also kinda stressful. But mostly fun.

Part of the stress is that I had advertised two different escape rooms, but I didn't have either of them actually figured out all of the way until the Friday before they opened on Tuesday. Since I was only being paid for my time, and not for any materials, I set myself a budget of about $20 for the whole summer, and got to work. I'm pretty sure that I used less than that, but I would have needed a little more if I hadn't been able to use school resources for some of the things I did. Also, I used a reasonable amount of my down-time at work to figure this out before the summer started, which means that if you figured in the cost of my time as well, it would have been WAY over-budget-- but part of the reason I'm blogging about this is so that other people who think this sounds cool can do it without having to invest all that time.

This post will describe the escape room as the kids experienced it. The next post will go into more specifics about how I developed and implemented this escape room, with the hopes that my readers can implement these ideas for themselves if they so desire.

1. You enter the escape room

This is where I admit that I've never done a real escape room, though I have done a couple of escape room board games, which were pretty fun. But even in my ignorance, I am aware of the differences between this and a "real" escape room. For one thing, neither of my scenarios involves actually escaping from anywhere-- though this isn't actually as unusual as you might think.*

Even if it had been practical to provide a sense of being actually locked in a space (which it wasn't) I wouldn't have wanted to do it. For one thing, liability! Sheesh! And for another thing, the kids who come to summer library tend to be in upper elementary school (grades 3-5), so I felt like they would be looking for a less-intense escape room experience. And in fact, I got one third-grader who had gone to a real escape room with some older family members and had NOT enjoyed it, but when he came to ours, it was just right. Huzzah!

My boss, the main librarian, suggested that I create a sense of at least being separated from the rest of the library, though, by using our moveable wall that sometimes gets used to partition the library during testing. This wall folds like an accordion, with both ends being on wheeled platforms. Using the wall was a GREAT idea, and worked like a dream. So, when the children entered the "escape room," they went into a space defined on two sides by bookshelves, and on two other sides by this partition wall. Besides helping the teams feel like they were in an actual room, it also allowed the secrets of the escape room to be NOT discovered by a team until they actually got into the "room" itself.

So. You walk into the escape room, and either the game master explains or else you can read the opening scenario:

You have just put a chicken dinner on to roast when a gang of international thieves comes and steals your mother's necklace. You need to locate the gang's secret hideout, find the necklace, and get home, all before the chicken burns. Good luck!

A more important difference between this room and most "real" escape rooms is that both of our summer library escape rooms were 100% linear-- meaning that the teams in the rooms were NOT solving multiple mysteries at once. I was (and am) aware that having multiple mysteries leading to the solution of one puzzle is the most common way to set up an escape room.**

However, since I was making this up all on my own, and couldn't quite figure out how to make multiple mysteries feed into a larger one in the amount of time I had to plan, I finally decided to be OK with it. The advantage of that approach, which I only noticed after I accepted that I would be using it, is that it's a lot easier for the kids-- which again, since my target audience is maybe the youngest that would possibly be interested in an escape room, might not be as disadvantageous as might first seem likely.

All of that is to say that when a teams walks into the escape room, the first clue is a bunch of papers which have been ripped up and are in a small, pink garbage can. Their first task is to put those pieces of paper back together, like a puzzle (tape was provided for this purpose). I took a picture of the escape room after this step had been completed:

On the backs of these sheets were math equations, which, when the children solved them, revealed four numbers. The team could then correlate these clues with numbers on the fronts of the papers to figure out the combination to the lock on the box with "top secret notes" inside:

Once they opened that, they could read the document inside-- helpfully titled "Notes from the secret meeting of our gang of thieves." These notes set out conditions for where the gang wanted their hideout to be. Luckily, the fronts of the "puzzle" pieces were "fact sheets" for various locations. Once the kids figured out which location fit the requirements, they got to go to the next step: the "blast shield shop."

2. The "blast shield shop" and "secret hideout"

Now the team moved from sitting around the table to an area just in front of an aisle between two shelves. In that aisle, we (actually, not really we-- my awesome assistant, a rising 10th grader from our local high school, did this part 100% himself, for which I was and am deeply thankful) set up a "laser maze" with 1/8 inch, metallic washi tape, thus:

At the end of the maze is a "glitter bomb"-- a jack-in-the-box stuffed with some glitter pom-poms. The team's instructions were to use these pompoms to "explode" the "doors" to the hideout so that they can get out the back way-- but the trick is, they can't get exploded themselves. So, at least one pom-pom has to touch one door, and no pom-poms can touch any team members.

And that's where the "blast shield shop" comes in. The truth is that this particular pom-pom-and-jack-in-the-box combo is not particularly explosive. It's pretty dang easy to just point it in the right direction and not get hit. But THEY don't know that, going in, so we gave them the option to get some protection before they do so. Thus:

I added the requirement for the youngest member of the party to answer the questions because I knew that several of the teams that were interested in this escape room were non-twin sibling teams, which I suspected would mean that the older sibling would be more likely to dominate during the math-equation-solving portion of the game. I turned out to be correct in that assumption, and I was really glad that I added this requirement.

Oh, and what are the blast shields? Pieces of posterboard, left over from a library project. Having to carry them through the laser maze added an enjoyable level of challenge to the whole thing.

I did also bring a dollar-store picker-upper that I already owned, from home. This turned out not to be terribly helpful-- which my trustworthy assistant correctly predicted it wouldn't-- but I pointed out to him that we didn't KNOW that it wouldn't be helpful, and that if it wasn't, it would be an interesting red herring. Which it was.

The papers you see were the two maps we used for the geography questions. More on those in a later post.

3. Find the necklace!

Astute readers will notice that unless a team has located the necklace, they have failed in the mission. The necklace I chose was an INexpensive one from home-- something from a thrift store or yard sale would have worked fine, though.


The part that was a little more expensive/elaborate in this section of the escape room, however, is that I ended up making a hollow book for it. It wasn't monetarily expensive, but it WAS pretty time-expensive. But at least now I own a hollow book, which I think is pretty awesome!!!

And the extra cool part is the fact that the particular section of library books at the end of those shelves just happened to be the 916-917 section, which covers travel guides. :)

This is what it looked like on the shelf:

Yes, I made a cover for the book. Yes, with an accurate call number as if it had been an actual book. Yes, I might have put more effort into this escape room than was strictly necessary.

So, that's it for this week! Hopefully in the next week or two I can post about how playtesting helped me refine this escape room, and suggestions for if someone wanted to copy it in detail. Yes, this is explicit permission: if you want to use this for your own home-made escape room, GO for it.*** I would be so pleased. :D

*I learned this from the following source, quoted below: Nicholson, S .(2015). Peeking behind the locked door: A survey of escape room facilities. White Paper available at http://scottnicholson.com/pubs/erfacwhite.pdf

Many narrative paths listed above do not necessarily make sense with a story element of “you are trapped in a room and must escape.” This means that to fit the escape room name, the designer must add a layer onto the game of the players being trapped in some way and needing to escape. Facilities  were asked in what percentage of the games were players actually needing to escape the room as part  of the narrative. Overall, about 70% of escape room games require players to actually escape the  room as part of the winning condition. This means that 30% of the games in escape room facilities aren’t actually about escaping rooms. For the Asian respondents, however, this percentage was much higher – 96% of games in Asian escape rooms require players to escape a room, while in Australia  and the Americas, only about 60% of escape room games are about escaping a room.

** I only figured out how to articulate what I felt like was wrong with the escape room I had come up with from reading the above-quoted Scott Nicholson paper. Even though in the end, with this round, I decided I was more than OK with the all-the-mysteries-in-a-row format, I feel like knowing how to make it more like a real escape room/more complicated will be very helpful, should I ever decide to try this sort of thing again.

*** Just, you know, be safe. I did my best to make this one as safe as I could, and indeed no one got hurt-- but in particular the size of the pom-poms as compared to the strength of the jack-in-the-box could make it not as safe, so please be careful!