If You Are a Dreamer...

My best friend had her baby shower last week.  The new trend is requesting guests to bring a book instead of a card to help build the baby's library.  I walked into Target trying to think of a book that would capture both my 15 year relationship with Kristen (and still going strong) and everything I wanted the little nugget to learn from his or her Auntie Katy.  My eyes fell to Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends and while it wasn't a baby book, I could see the values Kristen and I share in every page of the poetry.  The inside jacket of the book has his poem "Invitation" ---->

by Shel Silverstein Where the Sidewalk Ends

I have always been a dreamer, a wisher and a pretender.  And, while I probably shouldn't admit this, I am a pretty good liar (it goes along with the whole pretender thing).  I have so many dreams I want to test out before I die.  I want to build my own tiny house (see Tumbleweed Tiny Houses) and buy a plot of land and live in it while paying off all my debts and simplifying everything.  I want to put the house on wheels and experience living in places like San Francisco, Seattle, Boston and Maine.  I want to try living in a big city and living in the middle of nowhere.  I want to blog about how I still cook and bake and live happily in a tiny house.  I would be free to find my happy.  I dream of being a teacher - the dream changes from little kids to college aged "kids".  I would love to be in a musical just once, even if in the chorus.  I dream of building a darkroom in my apartment and go back to taking pictures wherever I go, on real film, and developing them myself.  I dream of being a mother and teaching my children that quirky is good and anything can happen.  I have so many dreams, I lose track of them all as they slip out of my ears as another one is born in my brain.

by Shel Silverstein Where the Sidewalk Ends

I have been restless for some time and I think while I can't quite follow any of these dreams just yet, I can start enacting change in my life to put myself on the path of change.  I love Cleveland, but my dreams involve seeing other places.  I love the people at my job, but my job doesn't embody quirky and independent.  So, my readers, I have accepted a job (still as an accountant) at a quirky company in Chicago.  While I'm not in a tiny house with no set job, I am shedding the required busy season and going to a company with a unique culture.  I am scared.  I will miss Cleveland a lot.  But this is something I have to do.  I can't be a magic bean buyer if I don't ever head to the market.

Have you been keeping up on your dreaming?

Springtime Sunday

I have mixed emotions about daylight savings time. On one hand, it means spring is just around the bend and the sun won't be setting at 4:30. On the other hand, the lost hour really sucks when your busy season weekend is only 36 hours to start with. Boo.

This year, Cleveland put some salve on the wound of the stolen hour by providing a 60 degree day with blue skies and sunshine.  Everyone was outside soaking in the long awaited vitamin D nourishment in whatever way struck their fancy.  I elected to head south to the Brecksville Reservation and get my hike on.

For those of you unfamiliar with Cleveland or those that are unaware a great perk of Northeastern Ohio living - I am surrounded by the "emerald necklace", which is the Cleveland Metroparks network of parks that encircles the city of Cleveland. Dirt paths, paved paths, bike routes, horseback riding trails, creeks, rivers, hills, valleys, grass fields, so on and so forth.  Whatever a person is in the mood for in order to "get her nature fill", there is a park for that.

After my hour hike, which was accompanied by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony in the ear buds (don't ask, I'm reconnecting with my high school self), I headed to Target to grab a few necessities.  Like all Target trips, these necessities morphed into a basketful of impulse purchases.  It truly isn't my fault this time because no one told me that CBS TV has each season of I Love Lucy on DVD. I had always been tempted by the full series in a box set that cost an arm and a leg, but each time the desire to buy it swelled up, I would quickly quash it.  However, this time there was no need to "be reasonable" because with each individual season on sale, I only had to buy a couple to get a fix!  Seasons one and two ended up in my basket before I even knew it.

 As I sat on my couch eating an early dinner and legitimately laughing out loud by myself to Lucille Ball's antics, I decided these DVDs are to be free from buyer's remorse/guilt.  She was a genius.  Growing up, my favorite part of each summer was Nick at Nite's Block Party Summer marathons.  Did anyone else watch this?  Or was I, at age 7, already foreshadowing my future obsession with all things vintage and classic?  I Love Lucy Tuesdays were my absolute favorite.  As I watch these episodes now, I am transported back to when the sticky July night air would set in, the lightening bugs would come out and my Mom would make us kids come in from playing for dinner.  We would eat around our glass top table on our screened in porch so that my parents could get their share of the summer night after long days at work.  Afterwards, I would take a bath, put on my pajamas, and while my family watched more grown-up (read: boring) sitcoms downstairs I would curl up in my parents' bed to watch Lucy.  Sometimes my Mom would come up to check on me and we would watch together.  She loved Lucille Ball as a little girl, too.

Source: buzzfeed.com via life.com

I realize now that, as a child, it was lost on me what a female trailblazer Lucille Ball was in 1950's.  For goodness sakes, she was a producer on a show that, since premiering in 1951, has NEVER gone off the air.  Think about that for a second - for the past 62 years some television station somewhere has I Love Lucy in the line up.  She is, posthumously, still kicking business butt in a game people didn't think women had a place in when she joined.  She was classy, yet willing to get her hands (and feet... in grapes...) dirty to get the laugh.  She was beautiful, yet wasn't afraid to compromise that beauty by scrunching up her face awkwardly to portray her signature quirkiness (quirky!).  Did you know she was a model and was one of the final girls in the running to play Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind?  She embodied everything I strive to be, yet she had to do it when women weren't supposed to strive for such things.  That is why, ever since those Block Party Summer marathons, I have considered Lucille Ball an idol.  Both in business and in character.

I'm going to go back to my I Love Lucy now.  How did you enjoy your Sunday?  What transports you back to age 7?

Downtown Cleveland Nostalgia

Courtesy of Life Magazine and
Cleveland Memory Project

Since I was a young, I've had a soft spot for eras long past.  Especially the 1940's and 1950's.  Perhaps it was being raised on Pleasant Company's American Girl Dolls (sorry, Mattel, it just isn't the same since you bought the doll line).  Or maybe it was my affinity for pearls and housekeeping.  Whatever the reason, every so often I will get an ache in the pit of my stomach and a feeling of all encompassing sadness for the fact that I will never experience "simpler times".  It passes quickly; however, I realized early on that this isn't a response most people have.


The holidays seem to bring on this unjustified nostalgia.  The cocktail of classic Christmas movies, Rat Pack music, and sharing memories cause it to rush over me like a tidal wave.  The other day, while randomly surfing the web, I came across a documentary that made me so desperately want to find a Delorian and travel back in time.  Cleveland's PBS station (WVIZ) apparently made a special called The Way We Shopped years ago and I found it on YouTube.  The hour long special takes viewers back to the golden age of shopping in Downtown Cleveland: Higbee's, May Company, Sterling Lindner, and Halle's.  The talk of dressing up in your best to be seen Downtown, uniformed elevator operators, and the famous Sterling Christmas Tree put me in awe.  I now officially declare that I hate shopping malls and the 1960's and 1970's urban sprawl that ruined it for everyone.

Courtesy of CSU Digital Library

If the idea of wearing your hat and gloves out on the town puts a slight smile on your face, I suggest checking out this special.  It transports you to a time when Christmas window displays were a quarter of a million dollars of a store's annual budget.  The stories remind you that no one had heard of "customer service" because it didn't need a name: it was simply implied.  Stores were closed on Sundays and shopping was as much a community experience as it was an errand.


Who wants to grab a penny for the streetcar to Public Square and eat lunch at the Silver Grille after an afternoon of last minute Christmas shopping?



Courtesy of the Cleveland Memory Project
http://images.ulib.csuohio.edu/u?/press,180