Sneezy

Today is going to be better. It just is. I have declared it to be so and with all the powers of denial and imagination I have in me, it will be better, even if it actually isn't.

Unfortunately my allergies have flared up. (Which is probably part of yesterday's distress as well - right before an allergy attack, I get kind of dysphoric and easily-overwhelmed and tired). I'm sneezing this morning and had a sore throat when I got up. (This is about the time of year when trees start flowering here, and even though it's kind of cold out, I suppose they could have. Also, we are having a lot of renovation done down at church and there are paint fumes EVERYWHERE - not bad enough to actually make a person sick, but I'm kind of sensitive to all those things and so it sets off my sinuses).

I will say youth group went fairly well last night. We had to have game time indoors (it was cold and it gets dark early enough that there really isn't a chance to play outdoors). One of the kids suggested charades (Charades!) and they all went for it, to my amazement (this is a fairly diverse-interest group so it surprises me to find a game they all like). The only disappointment was that some kids had a hard time coming up with things, and since the game was kind of on short notice, we didn't have a list to choose from. So I told them that for next week, I'll make up a bunch of slips of paper with things on it they can do, and they can draw one out of a coffee can or something if they can't come up with a thing to do.

(One of the kids last night did "roadkill" as his thing).

I'm still thinking about those "embroidered childhood heroes" things that I linked to the other day. I love that idea so so much. I got to thinking and came up with the idea of selecting a bunch of my favorite authors, doing embroidered portraits of them, and turning it into a quilt. That idea pleases me - sleeping under a quilt representing one's favorite authors. I'd have to have on there Madeline L'Engle, and Anthony Trollope, and M. F. K. Fisher, and C. S. Lewis, and Margery Sharp (who wrote some wonderful grown-up books, which she should probably be better known here for, as well as the Rescuers series), and maybe Kathleen Norris, and Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Agatha Christie....
Of course, it is one of those things that would be a lifetime project for me - I have so little time to work on anything like that, ever, and it takes me a long time to do embroidery, so I don't know if I'd actually do it, but the idea pleases me. And yes, it would specifically have to be embroidery, and my own sketched portraits of the author plus things indicative of him or her...like for Margery Sharp I'd have to put a white mouse in there (Miss Bianca) and for Lewis certainly his pipe and either a cup of good strong tea (how does one depict STRONG tea, I wonder, using embroidery) or a pint of ale, and for Fisher there would have to be vegetables and prawns and things like that. Cooking things.

Also, I can't draw very well, especially drawing recognizable likenesses of people, so that would be a stumbling block. (Though then again, I could enlarge-photocopy dustjacket pictures and trace them, I suppose).

But still, it's an idea that pleases me, and sometimes having an idea like that, even if I don't put it into practice, is good enough.