Wednesday Hodgepodge, on Thursday

From our Hodgepodge Hostess: "Here are the questions to this week's Wednesday Hodgepodge. Answer on your own blog, then hop back here tomorrow to share answers with the universe. See you there!"

1. Do you find yourself influencing your world, or is it more the other way around? 

Somewhere in between, and it depends on how big a world we're talking about. People have told me that I've influenced them to homeschool their children, or to read certain books, or that I've encouraged them (strangely enough) in the way they teach math. But it comes back just as much the other way. Sometimes I've thought I would actually like to be more influenced by the world, but I couldn't find anyone to tell me how to do whatever it was, so I ended up doing it my own way by default.

2. July 14th is National Tape Measure Day...the device was patented on this date in 1868. When did you last use a tape measure? Do you always know where to find one in your house? Tell us one way in which you feel blessed 'beyond measure'. 

Tape measure: we used it when we shifted the dining room furniture around. Generally I would be using it to sew with, but the sewing machine was temporarily packed away and I've been letting the small jobs pile up rather than drag it out and work at the kitchen table.

3.The Plaza Hotel (Eloise), The Land of Oz (The Wizard of Oz), Narnia (The Chronicles of Narnia), The Hundred Acre Wood (Winnie the Pooh), Wonderland (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), or Never Never Land (Peter Pan)...which storybook land (on this list!) would you most like to visit and why? 

Definitely Narnia, but maybe one of the safe spots (like the Beavers' house). Narnia can be a dangerous place. 

The Hundred Acre Wood would be second.

4. Where and when do you get your best ideas? 

Whoah, that's kind of a lifetime question, isn't it?

And sometimes you don't know which ones are the best ideas until much later, when you see which ones worked out and which ones didn't.

I think the really best ideas tend to grab onto you more than the other way around. Something you can't stop thinking about, a problem, a possible solution. Bang, out of the heavens.

But Pinterest is helpful too.

5.  So what have you been watching on TV this summer? Anything good? 

We're working through the Poirot episodes on Netflix. 

6. 'Don't swim for an hour after you eat', 'Dog days of summer', 'Knee high by the Fourth of July'...choose a summer saying from the list or share one of your own, then tell us what image or memory comes to mind when you hear it spoken.

"Put that book down and go out and play."

Probably good advice, but not what I wanted to hear when I was deep in the Hundred Acre Wood or off in Neverland.

7. In a single sentence, sum up one life lesson you've learned. 

You can probably find one at the thrift store.

8. Insert your own random thought here. 

One of my favourite minimalist bloggers posted about deliberately keeping books she's reading to a minimum. I don't mind minimizing clothes, and our fridge is much less crowded than it once was, but hands off my books. Not that I don't thin them down on the shelves--I have definitely done some of that. But the reading process, for me, is not very sequential. I have a lot of starts and pauses, then suddenly I do finish something. I'm only about a third of the way through this year's GoodReads goal, but I aim to get there.

Linked from The Fresh from the Garden Hodgepodge at From This Side of the Pond.