Arts and Crafts

For some unknown reason, I have been harboring an insatiable urge for crafting. And the biggest reason why I cannot satisfy this urge is because I have no supplies! I would love to make a "wellness pack" of heat and cold therapy packs like these, but I don't have a sewing machine or materials. (I realize the materials piece is pretty cheap and easy to find, especially if I am just using scraps to piece together, but I haven't yet been able to find a sewing machine on craigslist and don't really want to shell out $200+ to get a new machine... plus we don't really have a good space to put it in our apartment.) I want to make this handy coffee cup cozy for one of my coworkers who I get hot beverages with on occasion. I have two very blank walls in my office that I would like to hang some art on, but I have no art to hang! It would be nice to create personalized blankets for my neices and nephew for Christmas. My creative juices seem to be flowing, but I haven't created an outlet for them. I am almost afraid of going to JoAnn's or Michael's for fear that I will walk out with a year's worth of craft projects that I would lose interest in completing... or that I would want to continue to complete, frittering away the money we are trying to save for important things (like a house) on crafts that we don't really need sitting around the apartment.

What is a girl to do?!

I tried to satisfy my need by baking two different types of ball cookies over this past weekend, but it only helped a little. My only remaining hope is that my mom will have some craft stuff that she is willing to part with next week when we visit.

Conflicted

I just finished reading The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini last night. Overall, I thought the book was really well written and it was a pretty easy read. The subject-matter was interesting and relevant to our time, I think. And being the somewhat ignorant American that I am, I was really unfamiliar with Afghanistan's political and military history. I would venture to say that before September 11th, I probably hadn't really even heard of Afghanistan, and if I had, I definitely didn't pay much attention. While it is a fictional book, my assumption is that the author is either speaking from his own experience or did some research about how life was in Afghanistan in the 1970's.

Which brings me to the point about which I am conflicted. I do not think that the war we are fighting is just. My beliefs are that we went into the Middle East because of some wrong information and persistance from a group of national leaders who wanted to be there. I feel like there have been a lot of people killed for the wrong reasons. But reading this book made me start to think that perhaps the American occupation of Afghanistan to help remove the Taliban has made Afghanistan a better place.

Maybe.

I obviously have never been there. I am making this conjecture based on a piece of fiction writing. I live a "cushy" life in the United States. I have never been afraid of sleeping in my house. I have never been physically threatened by another person. I have never seen a gun, let alone been afraid that the person holding the gun would harm me in any way. I have never witnessed a murder. I have never had to return to a place from my past to find it riddled with mortar shell or bullet holes, or to find it reduced to rubble because of war.

If I had, would I be celebrating the arrival of a foreign military power that has helped establish a more safe day-to-day existance?

I am not sure that my views about the war have completely changed, but I definitely think that it was helpful for me to start to think about the situation from another point of view. If you haven't read the book, you should.