I did this over the weekend, before everything happened.
I decided to re-do the arrangement of stuff on my mantel. I had all my pressed/cut glass things up there, and had had plans to put candles in them and light the candles some evening (because it looks pretty) but I never got around to it, and it's nearly spring (or at least my allergies are telling me it is), so I had to change things up.
I decided to go with the teapots-shaped-like-houses, of which I have quite a few. (It's interesting what becomes a "thing" in design. Most of my teapots and such are older, probably 40s or 50s vintage, but there are a few more current ones out there). I had also opened a new package of pony figures I got (The "Rainbowfied" version, because it had a DJ PON-3 and a Dr. Whooves in it) and had just set them on the mantel (because I needed somewhere to set them).
And then I realized: a lot of these little houses have sort of a Tudor beamed feel. Like the houses in Ponyville. And I realized they were kind of the right scale.
So I decided to go all out and make my Own Private Ponyville:
I also took three closeups, so you can see the figures in more detail. This is by no stretch of the imagination all of the pony figures I own (one of my plans over Spring Break is to go find a wall shelf, either in an antique store or just get plain shelves from the Lowe's, and put it up somewhere, so they can be on display). But all of my favorites are in there:
The schoolkid ponies that I have (they really need to make a Scootaloo and a Sweetie Belle). And Dr. Whooves and my little self-painted Derpy (there is a Derpy figure in one of the sets now, but the only place I've seen them for sale, they're incredibly expensive, because I guess the seller figures that's what the market will bear). And Carrot Top. And the DJ PON-3.
Princess Twilight (she came in the "rainbowfied" set). And the other two princesses I have (I need to get a Luna somehow. I have Nightmare Moon but I tend to think of her as a "different" character.)
And you can see Mr. Cake over to the left. (Most of my "favorites" are the characters that have a different mold, that aren't just one of the Mane 6 recolored).
Creatures that fly can sit on top of the houses. So Soarin' and Gilda are there. And there's Zecora. (The Pony-Personality test, which is based on the MBTI, claims that she is the one I am most like).
Yes, it's silly, but it made me happy. This was one of the things I loved as a kid: building little worlds, arranging stuff in a pleasing pattern. My mom tells me that when I was a kid (and also to some extent, my brother), when we would get our Easter baskets, rather than wanting to eat all the candy right away, we would spend time arranging the candy in the basket into different patterns and scenes. I also had a succession of dollhouses as a kid, some of which I made entirely myself.
***
And yay for a tiny bit of stability: one of the items of business last night at the Board Meeting were to re-up the minister (he's actually a divinity student close to ordination) for another year. He had been doing a year of "supervised pastoring" (like student teaching, but for a minister) with us, and I was kind of afraid that when the year was up in May, that would be it, that he'd have to move on to something else, but apparently we have the option to keep him on, and perhaps even the option to hire him "for real" after he's ordained.
I like him, and anyway, we haven't had much success finding someone through the search committee method, so.
One of the dynamic tensions in my life is stability vs. the feeling of things being like the movie "Groundhog Day." On the one hand, I like stability in the big things - how my career works, stuff like what is going on at church. But on the other hand, some days I do tend to feel like it's the same thing, just a different day. I don't know how to find the balance between the two, and frankly, some things (the externals to me) are kind of out of my control. (If the Legislature were, for some reason, to decide that we needed to be closed down or merged with another university, my job would probably be gone and no amount of anything I could do would fix that).
***
And one more thing. This picture (originally by MadHotaru on DeviantArt) showed up on the MLB site. I felt it was begging for a caption:
I wanted a script font there; that was the best that was available.
No comments:
Post a Comment