30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #4—Hang Up My Awesome Bird Art

All right, folks. This was not supposed to be our Thing #4. Thing #4 has had to be postponed as Thing #5. Today was a royal SLURGE through my last huge paper of my PhD coursework (although I really do need to get around to working out my shorter 15-minute mock conference paper for my final tomorrow..........when will this semester finally END?! Yeeararearaearaeagahahahghaghggggggpfffff!), so by the time we got around to preparing our Thing #4, the day suddenly ended before we could complete the task.

But tomorrow's Awesome Thing is prepped and ready for awesome action.

Fortunately, while I was riding my bike to the store (on a glorious stormy late afternoon! A perfect summer storm day for riding bikes!), Michaels called to say that the custom framed picture that was supposed to take THREE WEEKS to complete was finished in—shock!—TWO DAYS! Oh, Michaels. Please forgive me for all the times I wished you were HobbyLobby (which closes a half-hour earlier than Michaels, and somehow we are always trying to craft it up at 8:30 instead of 7:30 p.m.).

Momma Grover went to Michaels to pick it up for us, and behold the glory that is my birthday present from David:

The art is Etsy's Jason Laferrera's, and I am so impressed with this find. The bird is a Gray Jay, and, if you can see from the picture (if not, click this link!), the bird is composed from different pieces of maps where Gray Jays are found. David really knocked my birthday present out of the park this year—it is always the best when you are given a gift that you would never think to ask for but completely love when you see it.

I apologize for the bad lighting, but our house has no strong light after the sun sets (and doesn't get much strong light when the sun is up, for that matter). Here is a close-up of the frame itself. It was so hard for us to finally decide on a frame, but we're pleased that we went with this two-toned, sort of woodsy, sort of crafty frame. 

A close-up of the frame and mat. It literally took an entire hour to decide this specific configuration. I love how it turned out.

Even though this wasn't the planned Thing for today, I'm glad I get to showcase this gift. David and I discovered birding together after we got married and received a pair of binoculars as a wedding gift. It has been so fun to learn this hobby together (one of our future 30 things will be to discover a new species of bird that we haven't spotted before). Even though West Texas is the pits for a lot of things (frighteningly little water, no really great trees, incredibly hot summers, incredibly windy winters, and literally no cities around us for five hours in any direction), it has been surprisingly rife with beautiful birds. So was southeastern Idaho (I always pictured southeastern Idaho as all brown from April to October, and all white from November to March, until we discovered the Western Tanager and realized that our city was all kinds of colors we had never anticipated. When we saw a flock of White Pelicans and a Sandhill Crane eating a frog at Harriman's State Park, we felt completely exotic).

So this picture means a lot. David once wrote about how learning to bird was not completely unlike learning about each other. Our courtship was wildly brief according to most people's standards today—we were married on the six-month anniversary of our first kiss (Valentines Day. Chicago. The AWP Conference. A brief three-day introduction to the beginning of a long-distance relationship while David finished his graduate program in Ohio and I taught classes at BYU–Idaho.). So while we were learning the difference between Cedar Waxwings and Dark-Eyed Juncos (it seems so wildly obvious now, but we were bamboozled then), I was also quietly learning about how David breathes easier after the laundry is done and the house is dusted, and he was learning about how I start to avoid eye contact when I don't like the way a conversation is going (something he pointed out to me again today when he was trying to tell me that the original plan for Thing #4 just wasn't going to pan out). And learning all the new and different faces, habits, expressions, and tendencies of each other was just as gratifying and captivating as discovering new birds that had been around us all this time that we never had the eyes to notice before.

David in the Chicago Hilton, February 2009. I swooned over his Cosby sweater and his thick wilderness of hair. Looking at this picture still makes me a little wobbly in the knees.

Grover Family Game Night in Dave's Chicago Hilton hotel room. (Maybe I should get bangs again. It's been a while.) Pat Madden is looking thoughtful on the far left, our professor friend who officially introduced David and me to each other. We basically owe him forever.

So today's impromptu Thing #4: Hanging up my Awesome Bird Art Birthday Present = ACCOMPLISHED.

Bird Art safely at home on our painted-over wood-panelled walls. Welcome home, Gray Jay.