Welcome Home

When I first started blogging in December of 2011, I had a vague idea of what I wanted my blog to be about.  I was thinking primarily fashion, with a side of crafting and maybe a bit of philosophizing when the mood struck.  That is why I called my blog The Closet Intellectual-- I liked the sound of it and it fit the concept.  Harper Ann, my youngest, was in to photography and was excited about the idea of doing fashion shoots, and we had a lot of fun cruising around looking for cool locations.  And blog life was good, and the blog was fun and I had a good time.

As time passed, I sorta fell out of love with the idea of doing fashion photos.  I still love pretty dresses, and I like to think I have a unique sense of style.  Harper Ann got busy as teenagers do, but mostly the problem was with me.  By the time I got home from work, when we did the photographs, I was wrung out.  I didn't want to have to freshen up my make up or hair.  I wanted sweat pants and slippers.  So that aspect of The Closet fell to the wayside.  I found myself doing fashion collections just to justify the blog name.

I felt the blog sort of lost direction.  I was doing a lot of blog hops, which was awesome, but I always felt kinda bad.  Like I wasn't really offering new followers a reason to hang around.  Life was still good, and blogging was still fun, and I met a lot of fantastic people, but I didn't have a focus anymore.

I took a lot of pictures of tomatoes.  I'm not sure why.  I do like tomatoes, but I don't know why I felt the need to immortalize them in film.  If you could see the number of tomato pictures I have saved on my computer, you would not believe it.  A lot.  You'll have to trust me on this one.

For the past few months I've been thinking about making a change.  There are only so many tomato portraits one can take before one begins to question one's blogging life, you know?

This time I'm a bit wiser.  I know what my natural focus is, I know what I like to write about.  My heart really does belong to family and home.  And if I'm honest, not always in that order.

True story.

Five years ago, when Tucker was 11, he stuck a piece of straw from our broom into a wall heater because he wanted to see what would happen.  Boys.  After the inevitable flare up occurred, he flushed it down the toilet and rushed out of the bathroom leaving the strong smell of smoke in his wake.  Now our house is a wee one (you can read more about her and why we call her Cecilia here), and Jeremy and I were in the living room which is right next to the bathroom.  We both smelled smoke and rushed to find the source.

Cecilia's wiring is old and persnickety, and the wall heater was installed when the house was built in 1971, so when the smell of smoke was traced to that heater, we immediately figured there was a fire in the wall.  Jeremy ran to get all the kids. Tucker was stunned into silence by our reaction.  He said later that he thought maybe he really had set fire to the wall somehow and was miserable at the thought.  Anyway.

Jeremy grabbed the kids and raced outside.

I grabbed a screw driver and attempted to pull the heater out of the wall.

Jeremy called the local fire department.

I grabbed a spray bottle of water and ran to the basement to the spot below the bathroom, looking for flames.

Tucker finally blurted out what had happened to Jeremy (this all happened incredibly fast, so don't judge him too harshly) who then came and got me.  The volunteer firefighter who showed up shortly after Tucker's confession was wonderful.  He checked out the wall heater, just to be safe, and hung out chatting with us about the other false alarms he'd been called out for involving wayward boys and heating apparatuses.

I never could get the screws I took out of said heater to line back up correctly so  I disconnected it.  I left it in the wall though, with screws hanging out and all.

The moral of  this story is that when we thought the house was on fire, Jeremy's first instinct was to grab the children and mine was to save our house.  I would love to say that somewhere in my mind I was thinking to save the things in the house; the memories, photographs and mementos that most people say they'll grab, but that would be a lie.  I now know for a fact the answer to the question what would you save in the event of a fire--  I would save Cecelia.

I love my stupid house.

So welcome to our lives with Cecilia.  We'll do some repairs, a little decorating, a lot of crafting, wish list a bit, have some adventures and whatever else Cecilia has in store.  The only thing we won't do is move.

Settle in, I think we're gonna be here for a while.