I don't know exactly what to write, but i want to.
It has been very difficult lately to speak well, but figured i might as well say this:
You may find it easier to consider a seemingly impossible
condition
or
trial
or
sin issue
or
catastrophe
for yourself,
for others,
or for the world
to be a lost cause.
Only God can truly know if something is a lost cause;
keep praying.
Philippians 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
So, as I wrote before,
John and I went to House on the Rock in SW Wisconsin.
It was creepy, as "A" from the urban home who recently commented on
that old post from last month. Not only creepy, it was also many other things,
many of which occurred in mutually exclusive instances:
borderline pornographic...
as if the guy who built it to be a house to educate the masses about the female anatomy using almost lifelike dolls or manikins in sporadic-yet-frequent sightings throughout the three-hour tour.
Actually, I just got inspired.
How about I tell you about this house to the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme song?
Here's a refresher:
Here we go -
Just sit right back and read a tale
A tale about a fateful trip
That started with a spoiled college drop-out
Atop a rocky cliff.
He made himself a short-man's room,
though he was 6-foot-4,
Then built himself a great big house
with a three-hour tour
a three-hour tour
I'm 5'10", and I couldn't stand up straight in here!
Ok, here's just a little more background. This is the short version - trust me.
Alex Johnson, the guy who built the House on the Rock, was the son (I think the only son) of two successful entrepreneurial parents who built buildings and rented out housing in central Wisconsin. Johnson did not have the go-getter attitude his parents possessed throughout his young adult life, so he dropped out of college and decided to "go have picnics on a beautiful cliff he found."(1) Well, turns out that cliff belonged to a farmer who "asked him what he was doing up there." (2). Eventually Johnson was able to buy the plot of land from the farmer, if not the whole farm eventually (I can't remember), and he started building a place to live on top of that cliff. He had quite the operation going, with all sorts of contraptions that allow one to move rocks and wood and other building supplies up a steep cliff, say about 60+ feet above the most steady, level part of the hill.
(1): He was a bum who was living off his parent's money and didn't feel like working
(2): a.k.a. "GET OFF MY PROPERTY!"
People got curious as to what Johnson was doing, so they asked if they could come up and see. He eventually conjured up the idea that if he was going to haul these people up the side of the cliff and entertain them for the prerequisite 30 minute Midwestern visit time, he might as well charge them 50 cents a trip. Thus began the decades of people paying to see this spectacle of a construction, each walkway weaving into another part of Johnson's materialized imagination that was funded, eventually, by the reinvested ticket money those people shelled out just to see what was on top of the cliff that used to belong to that old farmer.
Until his death, Johnson kept adding, adding, and adding both real and fabricated artifacts.
Such items include:
-the world's largest chandelier
-a multimillion dollar carousel containing no horses (they were on the walls)
-a tiled town car (individual tiles on the entire exterior - think Snoop Dogg + kitchen back splash)
-a refabrication of the Crown Jewels of England (plastic...SO plastic)
-PLAYER ORCHESTRAS PLAYING THE BLUE DANUBE.
And PLAYER MARCHING BANDS!
All you had to do was put in a token and you'd hear a song for a good 5 or 6 minutes!
-a whale-like creature who not only contains both a head and a tale strikingly comparable in size to a blue wale, but also a proportionately sized octopus wrapped around its torso.
Yes, this place was creepy. Amazingly creepy. Kind of Amazing. Mostly creepy.
The gardens were cool, though! And in all honesty, it was a really interesting, thought-provoking experience that I would recommend to just about anyone who is not a child. This isn't a kid's place, that's for sure.
Here are some more pictures. Sorry for the "meh" quality. Asking for a good camera for Christmas.
Oh, and thanks for reading all of this if you made it this far.
If you didn't, I will just call you and read this post verbatim.
This is the "Infinity Room." If you look House of the Rock up on Google images, you'll probably find this room jutting out from the main building. It also has a place where you can see a straight drop down to the bottom.
There is about 10 or so feet of shelves you can't see here.
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is
hands-down
one of my absolute favorite movies from my childhood.
Heck, it's one of my absolute favorite movies,
period.
Source. And no, the Johnny Depp one doesn't compare.
On a (literal) side note,
there are some parts of this movie that
kids honestly shouldn't watch;
the messed up trip through the water tunnel
is one example I can think of.
If you don't know what I'm talking about
regarding that, imagine the disturbingly absurd scene
from this year's Halloween party on
The Office where Erin showed
Gabe's "new and hip" creepy movie.
Gabe - they were doing that kind of stuff back in '71.
Anyway,
as I was walking back to work from my lunch break today,
a tune from the movie thankfully popped into my head.
It's been a hard week...
well, a hard 3 weeks...
and it probably won't really let up until Thanksgiving at the earliest...
-makes for a person to not feel so great about themselves.
So when I walked toward the Mansion (my office) with my
head hanging down for reasons other than knowing where my
next steps were leading me, "Cheer Up, Charlie" played in my head.
I like google,
but they took something away from me.
That something is...
no, was...
like.com.
How am I to find a new winter coat across the wilderness of the interwebs
when I actually have to SEARCH???
Sigh...like.com, you will be missed.
Anti-trust law suit, you will be desired.
Google...well, you'll still be used.
And that is my sole reason for writing tonight.
p.s. all is ok here in chicagoland, for those that are wondering. sorry for being a.w.o.l. it's been a tough couple of months. not unbearable, but tough.
So hello to all you out there who have patiently waited for another post.
It's been tough to write much of anything, mostly because I
a. am stilll grieving, but in weird, unexpected ways (lathargy???)
b. don't have a particularly obvious aspect of my life that stands out enough to mention
and
c. well, "b." isn't 100% true, but there aren't a ton of great things to write about, except that
Today the hubs and I are going on a little vacation!
:::side note: I almost wrote "Swisconsin," and it made me think of Switzerland. Do go to Switzerland if you ever, even remotely get the chance! Also, do go to Zürich if you get the chance.:::
Anyway, we'll just be staying the night tonight, going on the tour of the house tomorrow, and
then we'll head up to MN for the rest of the weekend.
I may post some pictures on here if I'm allowed/remember to take them
(I'm awful at remembering to take pictures these days).
Hopefully soon I'll also post about John's commissioning -
he's officially (and finally!!!!) a 2nd Lieutenant in the US Army!
That's all for me for now. I hope the rest of you have restful, encouraging weekends this week!
When life throws you lemons,
make lemonade - - right?
But what if you're caught in a big ol' lemon,
and you can't see your way out?
Just kind of what it's like when
you know you need to do something with your life,
but you just don't know what.
Yes, this isn't the happiest post,
and I truly feel like blogging about anything wrong is
borderline offensive to people
(self-imposed guilt; I'm an expert),
but getting thoughts OUT of my head
helps me keep from drowning in them.
It's been 3 weeks since Dad went Home,
and I'm thankful here's there, but sad that he's not here.
So here are some shots of things I/John and I/John, my mom, and I have done since that day.
A couple treats for Dad's birthday
Lake Michigan for part of our anniversary
Chicago Botanic Garden for my mom's birthday
and this weekend I'll have to figure out how to celebrate my own birthday.
not sure how,
but that's the case pretty much every year.
I'll miss my dad's traditional, goofily out-of-tune singing of
"Happy Birthday" to me over the phone,
but I'll be happy to pray to God that He tells my dad "thanks" for
being a part of bringing me into the world,
and to tell God "thanks" for
putting Dad into my life.
Just some stories about me and my Dad.
Many of them are from when I was little;
that's when I got the most time with him.
I was an only child until I was 6, and my sister got my dad
all to herself for 6+ years after I left the house for college.
I'm sure we both have great stories from
when we got to both individually take our turns as "daddy's girl."
When I was little, my family and I (only 3 of us - it never got bigger than 4 until I married)
lived in a part of town that was near many things:
the grocery store,
the bowling alley my parent's owned,
the daycare I attended,
and the park.
My dad would take a break from fixing the machines at the bowling alley to
come get me from daycare for a walk to the park.
Our favorite things to do at the park
- well, at least my favorite things to do -
were going on the merry-go-round and
going on the swings.
I remember Dad making me sit in the middle of the
merry-go-round
to keep from flying off;
it thankfully worked, and I giggled like crazy every time
he pushed those rusty red and yellow bars.
Despite how fun the merry-go-round was,
the best was when he'd push me on the swing.
After Dad got his second or third surgery, he
told me a lot of the same stories, and one of those was
how I'd always tell him to swing me "higher, Dad, higher!" when
we did the swing - the farthest one on the right.
It is probably borderline-illegal to push a twig-like little girl
as high as my dad did, but man -
was that fun.
My favorite part about our trips to the park, though,
was the walks.
There was something about my dad having me hold onto his
two fingers instead of his hand
- so I could actually get a good grip -
that just felt so special, even for a little kid.
It's how I have little kids hold onto my hands today - learned from my dad.
It's hard for me to write when
it comes to really difficult topics -
topics that are difficult to express out loud or
even in my own thoughts.
So, as I prepare to embark upon documenting some things I want to remember
and things I hope others can use for their future struggles,
please pray that I find leading by the Spirit,
clarity of thought,
and ease of composition.
Because if there are a few things that are true about me, it's that
1. I don't think at all before I speak except for when I'm about to say the wrong things (extrovert),
2. When I speak aloud (and when I write) it's easy for nothing to be cognitively linear, and
3. When I write (not when I speak), it's hard for me not to let go of some of the rules
one learns when they study and teach in the field I have studied and taught.
I'm not going to write everything down here at this very moment, so
please forgive me for this obvious delay of the actual substance of my message.
I don't intend to draw you back through some blogging ploy.
I'm hoping that,
with this little prefix to something more substantial and ongoing,
I can find a bit of courage to keep writing.
If I don't write,
my thoughts become muted and dim.
If I don't write,
my memories become distant and indistinguishable.
So, the next time I write on here, it might be about something particularly important
or completely not,
but I will write about these current and upcoming struggles.
They are struggles I just don't want to forget.
