Rearranging...and cheese straws...

A few days ago, when asked what I planned to do over the weekend - one of those pleasant sort of non-committal questions we ask to make conversation - I replied that I thought I might take a day trip to Galveston just to sit on the beach, look out over the horizon and listen to the waves. It's about a 50 mile drive, so not too stressful...and a complete change of scene...and there are tasty shrimp to be found.

But then, I had forgotten that I had a date with the company that maintains my heater at home, so I needed to be there. I decided to rearrange the landscape of my bedroom instead. We are not talking about anything huge, just an addition of a small folding table, and a removal of clutter on the floor and accumulated boxes. My life in that room is about addressing my music, writing, crochet, reading, relaxing...generally re-creating myself when I can't get away to Galveston or elsewhere. The problem is that creative spaces tend to get cluttered, and then, start to drive you as crazy as the parts of your life over which you have no control.

So, I rearranged, reorganized, restructured, re-shuffled. And then I made faux food cheese straws for Yuletide - our next installation at work. Surely there is some kind of irony in that.

The year has just flown by...

This time last year, we were celebrating the opening of our new education andvisitors' center, with dignitaries galore, and crowds and festivities and displays and craftsmen, and so on. A culmination of years of work, 3 of which I had been a part. It really does seem like a great deal has transpired since. Well, doesn't just seem - actually has.
This table was part of the display, a representation of what we do with our Yuletide installation, which usually involves "dressing" a table in a "period" fashion with appropriate ceramics, silver, crystal, and of course, faux food from our extensive collection. Even the chairs around the table are antique - hence the ribbons and little signs reminding the crowds that they are for looking at and not sitting on. And all expertly created by some of our most experienced Yuletide curators, volunteer docents.
Part of the job that has fallen to me in the past year is the care and tending of our Teaching and Yuletide collections. This is a potentially huge project, due in part to the fact that we are talking about close to 2,500 objects to catalog, unpack, re-pack, inventory, keep glued together, etc.
Since then, we have also added a children's library of approximately 100 books - all of which seem to have become my responsibility. So let's see - my hats now include, besides chief bottle-washer to a director, and two 2 managers, being the calendar/attendance guru, the room set up guru, a curator, a registrar, a conservationist, a preparator, a librarian, an office manager, and an errand runner. That comes close to covering all of it. Oh. and there are those extra-curricular events where I go to represent us on a weekend, or weekday evening. Detail floods through my veins with astounding frequency.
I think one thing that has always been true of my life has been that I appreciate variety. I would get extremely stir crazy without a wide spectrum of activities, and without being able to learn something new. I guess I'm in the right place.