Monday, September 29, 2008

Painting


Watercolors

We had a very productive Saturday as we got all the painting done in the new nursery.  Painting is definitely work, but I have to admit to enjoying it a bit, at least as much as you can enjoy anything that isn't an actual leisure activity.  We did 3 walls in the light pink color and 1 wall in the red paint.  This was the first time I've used Benjamin Moore paint and I was so pleased with it.  The red wall only took 2 coats to get really nice coverage (except for a 3rd coat on a little of the brush work), which I couldn't believe.  This is the 3rd red wall or room I've painted and I always had to do 3 or 4 coats with the paint from Lowe's or Home Depot.  Benjamin Moore may have just made a loyal customer.

Artist Grace

These pictures are, of course, of Grace painting sometime last week.  I regret to admit that we were not so adorable while doing our share of the painting in our home.  Grace was off at my parents for the day, a large part of why we were able to finish the whole project, down to clean-up, by 4pm.  It's amazing how much more productive one can be without a toddler running around!  I know-- what an amazing revelation!  We so appreciated my parents spending the day with Grace.  One wonderful thing about moving back to Texas is being close to my parents again.  They live about 45 minutes away so we don't have overlapping social circles or see them on weeknights or whatever, but I so appreciate having them accessible and close.  I'm not someone who gets homesick or sad when living far away from family but still, being near is wonderful.

After the painting and picking up Grace, I went with my mom to hear my dad play at a CD recording their church had.  My dad was playing guitar and mandolin there a mere 24 hours after returning from a trip to Ireland, just a week after playing at an open mic night at a coffee house over in their side of the Metroplex.  Live music, international travel, recording sessions-- yeah, it turns out that my dad has a way more happening life than me.  And their church is way more rock & roll than the church Rob and I go to here.  Seriously, one time I left a Sunday morning service there with tinnitus like I'd been at a club or something.  I'm open to pretty much anything as far as musical styles at church so it was generally lots of fun.  What I'm not open to is the deep mistrust of science within conservative evangelical circles getting reinforced from the pulpit.  Grrrrrrr...  There was a little speaking and one of the leaders made a brief condescending comment about the Large Hadron Collider. I don't want to overemphasize it, because it was just a few seconds in a whole evening that was largely great, but oh, how things like that madden me...  It's attitudes like this that make books like this and this necessary ("The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind"-- HA!) and give the world outside Christian circles, especially the educated world, good reason to dismiss us as backward and ignorant.  And more importantly, it is not what Christians are called to; it's a perversion of what Christian faith should be.  This particular brand of hogwash makes me appreciate the church we were part of in New Haven; it is certainly not a perfect place but as it sometimes seemed like half the people making up the church had PhDs or were on their way to having them, nobody would have pulled that there.  I find myself disappointed and distracted by such things.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi there, Julia! You're in Dallas!? That's great!! Haha. Great to hear from you. And I love your blog! I never knew you were so artsy! I'm so jealous. Hope you and the fam are well!

angie.a said...

Good post. (And Yay for the red wall painting!!)