Plain Sunday

There are very few weekend days when I am free to do non purposeful things. But today we had no guests, no obligations beyond the usual care taking of the gardens and the house.

So, here is the new doll house I am making from a kit. It looked so cute on line, and I thought of my granddaughter who will be visiting here in a couple of weeks.

The directions are totally incomprehensible, requiring tiny nimble fingers and much flapping of pages. When we first opened the box, Andy, Quincy and I organized all the many pages of balsa wood and set to work. Quincy who is now ten and an expert Lego model builder was very helpful and his spacial sense is awesome. Andy, the grandpa who is a talented and experienced woodworker took the lead in constructing the basics 'by the book". None of us had fun doing it. I was just hanging back, biting my tongue, wanting everyone to enjoy the activity. After a number of burns from the hot glue, we abandoned the project.

I had remembered the wonderful doll house I had made from a kit years ago when our youngest was about eight. That project was one I looked forward to working on when I had a moment after the work day. When it was finally finished down to the roof shingles and the lights inside, we were all happy with it. It was a fixture of our playroom for years and finally just fell apart from the hard play it endured.

But this one is smaller and I am in a different place. As this one (The Buttercup) sat on the craft table waiting for more work, I began to think of how one of my sons approached model building. Chris was a maniacal model builder of airplanes and cars. They were plastic and required glueing that was probably really bad for his health. When he approached the task of completing a model, he just went for it the way he thought it should be. If there were pieces left over, that was O.K. And the completed models were perfect.

So, I thought of Chris and today started in again on the Buttercup. Who cares whether the door jams or the window sashes are inside or outside? Just decorate the roof how I want. Put the doors where they look good. Use lots of hot glue to keep everything together. Abandon those pieces I can't figure out. Think about how much fun granddaughter Caroline and I will have painting and decorating the inside and making furniture from the stray pieces of wood from the kit.

Doing this, I am not thinking of ebola or Syria or ISIS or fan issues. It is just a plain Sunday, a beautiful fall day. A gift.