Keeping My Brain Sharp

There is a long stretch of events leading up to the week of January 13-19.  Halloween kicks off the holiday season, then a week later is my brother’s birthday, then a week later is my birthday.  Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Epiphany (I thought I had a photo of the King Cake that Trent baked…), then Tate’s Birthday, then the marathon, then there’s the third week of January. 

It was cold.  The boys were tired from the Halloween until now extravaganza and didn’t want to go anywhere.  The only thing we had to do was get the oil changed in the car, and we didn’t even do that.

But when there’s nowhere to go, there’s always the library.  I love the library so much, I want to take it out behind the middle school and get it pregnant. We checked out a big stack of travel books, which I’ve been sneaking up to my room for 5 minute intervals to read.  They range from Daydreams (South Korea, Great Britain) to Plausible Until I Checked Plane Ticket Prices (Pacific Northwest) to Plausible (100 Affordable Vacations- I want to take a pie tour of the Midwest for sure) to Most Likely (Walt Disney World 2012). 

The travel books sustained my brain for a few days, but by yesterday afternoon I felt it was starting to atrophy.  It took me close to two hours to sluggishly fold a few (or seven) loads of laundry.  I needed some sort of challenge.

So today while the boys were napping, and then for a little while after they woke up, I found a pattern in One Yard Wonders and, with an almost-yard remnant of fabric that I purchased a few weeks ago, I made myself a new purse.

Take that fancy, well lit blog photos:  9:45 PM, one lamp, zero natural light.

The lining is made from a piece of fabric left over from a shower curtain that I turned into a curtain for our bathroom.  And it actually has a magnetic snap, which, surprisingly, I had on hand.  It’s already wrinkled because I started using it as soon as it was finished.

I feel my brain cloud dissipating.