Happy Mother’s Day

 
Mom and me, the day of her brother’s wedding, 1968-ish.

From my mother I got:

my face
my love for and ability to cook and entertain
my love of reading (although I remember my dad teaching me to read)
my sense of style
my need to make a house a home
my work ethic (she shares that 50/50 with dad)
my ability to be frugal when needed and make the best of a bad situation
my compassion
my ability to be a good sport, especially at card and board games
my preference for British costume drama (and afternoon tea and other British things)
…and my love of nerdy sci-fi.

Mom and me, sailing in Long Island Sound, 1987-ish.

I did not get:

Her way with houseplants. I kill them all.
Her unwavering faith. I question, question, question…
Her patience. Need to work on that.

Thank you Mumsie, I love you. Happy Mother’s Day!

Me, Me, Meme

I love me a good meme and Sherri at The Claw was kind enough to include me with some pretty fab bloggers in her tag list, so here goes with her Eight Questions:

1. best news you've heard in a while? Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth was finally made into a movie. Well, a miniseries. A great book, I hope they don’t screw it up.

2. first concert you ever saw? Toto, 1982, at a theater (vs. an arena). At the time I knew only one of their songs but the French exchange student who was living with us that summer was mad for them, and she was cool, so they must be cool, so I happily tagged along. We sat right in front of the speakers and I was deaf for at least a day afterward.

3. who was your teenybopper crush? Young Patrick Dempsey was a fave. Current Patrick Dempsey also, but wasn't he so cute in Can't Buy Me Love? Also, the whole cast of The Outsiders. Except maybe Ralph Macchio. Not my type. Also: too Karate Kid.



4. favorite new blogs you'd recommend? These aren’t new per se, but they are new to me: La Maison Boheme, Small Place Style, From Me To You (really gorgeous photography and food styling and I love the Diary of a Brocavore series of recipes and photos).

5. would you be interested in a bloggy pal meetup, and if so where do you suggest? New York! Or Chicago. I'll go anywhere.

6. total eclipse of the heart - crank up or change the station? Crank it up once for old times sake and a loud sing-a-long. Definitely not on repeat though.

7. currently reading? Catching up on stacks of magazines before diving into a new book.

8. karaoke - yes or no? I love the idea of karaoke, but the few times I have gone it seems to be very cliquey and elitist, and that is no fun. So ‘no’ on principle. Maybe we could have a private Total Eclipse of The Heart karaoke party at the blogger meet-up?

Want to play along (and I hope you do)? Answer my Eight Questions in the Comments or on your blog (and put a link in the Comments):

1. Favorite non-John Hughes ‘80s movie?

2. Cake or pie? Discuss.

3. Here is $100 cash, what would you splurge on?

4. Here is another $100 cash, but you have to donate it. To whom and why?

5. First job you ever had.

6. Something that you collected and have since stopped but people keep giving you (and what do you do with it now?).

7. Describe your perfect Sunday.

8. Look! Time travel is now possible! Where would you go?

I’m thinking Freddie Mercury would’ve approved…

I love me some Muppet rock-n-roll.

I Miss The Muppet Show

It would make this recession so much easier if The Muppet Show was on again, don't you agree?

Rockin' Robin, tweet tweet tweet

Rockin' Robin, as sung by the Jackson Five, was the bane of my grammar school existence. John Turner used to sing it to me every day on the bus. Also, lots of jokes about Batman and Robin, Robin (robbing) the bank, Robin Hood, etc. Hilarious. But the song was the worst. Over and over, every day. Kind of like the way it is stuck in your head now. He rocks through the treetops, all day long...


Third-grade angst aside, lets talk about tweeting. As in Twitter. As in I am in a self-taught crash course in Twitter via a personal account so I can start Twittering professionally for work (is that an oxymoron or what?). I was trying to avoid this, but apparently all the kids are doing it, even in the business world, and I figured its safer to muddle my way through on my own before I create a profile for work and drag our sterling reputation into the muck and mire of social networking, late to the game though we may be.


Besides Julia @hookedonhouses (and thanks again Julia for my first tweet) do any of you Twitter? Got any advice, tips, or tweets for me? You can find me at @abirdinthehand.




He rocks in the tree tops all day long
Hoppin' and a-boppin' and singing his song
All the little birdies on Jaybird Street
Love to hear the robin go tweet tweet tweet


Rockin' robin, tweet tweet tweet
Rockin' robin' tweet tweetly-tweet
Blow rockin' robin
'Cause we're really gonna rock tonight...

Dreaming of candy pink earrings

It is evening. I am five or six years old. I am in the bathroom with my mother, she at the sink, me sitting cross-legged on top of the carpeted toilet seat cover. Our bathroom has the most fabulous '70s wallpaper: giant purple poppies (or anemones?), white daisies and bright green ferns.

I am watching her "put her face on". She is getting ready to go to a party with my dad, wearing a pink satin tunic that she sewed herself, two rows of silver sequins adorning the keyhole neck and the cuff of each 3/4 sleeve. Her frosted hair is pulled back from her forehead with a tortoise barrette, the ends are straight with a flip. She looks so glamorous and pretty, even without the makeup, and I am in awe as I watch her apply powder, blush, eyeshadow. Her eyeliner is in a red plastic pencil that requires a twist, and it doubles as an eyebrow pencil. Mascara, lipstick for her, less lipstick for me. A spritz of Joy perfume for her, much less for me, on my wrist.

I am holding her earrings, candy pink squares that dangle from long silver sticks. They almost touch my shoulders when I try them on and they have always fascinated me. They are one of the items I covet most in her jewelry box, even more than the iridescent green crystal earrings, which are like shiny fairy moss, or the chunky smoky quartz ring, which barely fits my thumb and I'm always tempted to lick, certain it would taste like the root beer barrel candies that I don't really like anyway.

The babysitter is here. She is very pretty and she gets me into my pajamas soon after they leave for the party. She lets me brush her hair, which is dark brown and really, really long. It's time for bed, and I fall asleep smelling the perfume on my wrist, dreaming of candy pink earrings that dust my shoulders like magic.

{all photos from Etsy, click on the earrings to get to their respective shop}

A Rainy Home Companion

I grew up listening to Garrison Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion every Saturday night. I loved the familiar notes of the opening song,* the goofy commercials for duct tape, rhubarb pie and Powdermilk Biscuits, the guy who makes all the sound effects, and the folksy News From Lake Wobegon. Although the show is taped live at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul each week, the majority of the audience is via radio. From time to time they take the show on the road; I've seen it live once at Radio City Music Hall many, many moons ago, and each summer it comes to Tanglewood for one show.

The BF and I were going to drive up to Tanglewood to see tonight's live broadcast, but alas, this is the forecast: thunderstorms, followed by scattered thunderstorms. Not conducive to sitting outside on the lovely Tanglewood lawn or under their metal and wood Music Shed filled with electrical equipment.

Sigh. Oh well, there's always next year...

*Well look who's comin'
Through that door
I think we've met somewhere before
Hello Love
Hello Love
Now where in the world
You've been so long?
I've missed you so since you've been gone
Hello Love...

Happy Father's Day

{Dad on his 65th, photo by Chris Adams}

My Dad's been an off-and-on bicyclist for as long as I can remember, but he really took to it with fervor when he retired two years ago. He rides probably 30 to 40 miles a day as long as it is not snowing. Neither rain, nor cold, nor heat shall keep him from his appointed rounds! Here he is at Lighthouse Point in New Haven on his 65th birthday, April 3, 2007. He'd had a goal of riding a metric century (100 km, or 62 miles) for his birthday, and since it was such a nice day out, he and his biking buddy did 65 miles, one for each of his years.

He is also an avid kiter, making his own kites and leading kite-making workshops. He's always on the lookout for some nifty materials for making kite templates or for indoor mini-kites. If you give him a gift wrapped in mylar or that gauzy tissuepaper that resembles colored dryer sheets, he squirrels the wrapping paper away for later use the way my grandmothers did. Only they would use it to wrap another gift; he will use it in some kite-making scheme.

{The Master at work at a kite-making workshop, photo by Mantaray. Note, Dad's sewing machine is nicer than mine or my Mom's.}

{The finished product, photo by Postman1107. This kite is actually 8 connected kites. I love the tails!}

{Up and away, photo by Postman110.}

I love you Daddy, Happy Father's Day.

You know you are old when your prom dress is "vintage"

{Vintage '80s Gunne Sax taffeta dress, photo from Midnight Glamour}

When I think "Vintage Prom Dress", I imagine a spiffy little number from the 40s, a Dior "New Look" full-skirted, wasp-waist frock from the 50s, or a something mod or Jackie-esque from the 60s. So I am a little disturbed today to learn that my prom dress is considered "vintage". I sported the lovely black & white number above to my high school prom, only 24 years ago. While everyone else was wearing pastel prairie dresses and lace, I was pushing the ol' fashion envelope. Well, as much as one could push it, back then in the 80's, when it was already pushed pretty far. We had our prom at a very grown-up catering hall. Our theme was the power ballad of the decade, "Heaven" by Bryan Adams. The DJ used a turntable, and played records (I was tempted to link that to a wikipedia entry for all you young'uns).

Midnight Glamour sold the above dress (and no I did not buy it) for $135, pretty close to what Mumsie shelled out in 1984 at the Jordan Marsh Department Store. But let me tell you, we sure got her money's worth:

1. Wore it to my Junior Prom in 1984.
2. Update (June 7) Wore it to emcee "Mr. Advocate" high school pageant*
3. Wore it to someone else's Junior Prom in 1985.
4. Had my grandmother (a seamstress) shorten it to "tea length" and wore it to some guy's college formal at SUNY Maritime in 1986.
5. Had grandma deconstruct it and sew the knee-length skirt to a drop waist black taffeta bodice with big puffy sleeves (please try to remember this was the 80s, people) and wore it to a formal at my college in 1987 with some guy from SUNY Maritime.
6. Wore it to yet some other guy's college formal at SUNY Maritime in 1987 (what can I say, I liked a man in uniform).

Stopped short of a Molly Ringwald/Pretty in Pink New Wave redesign of the dress. I think it went to Goodwill after that. Adding in the cost of the additional fabric (but not for labor -- for that was priceless) and dry cleaning, the average cost per wear was about $29. Not bad, eh?

I almost wish I still had it in its original incarnation, because I still think it is pretty cute. I have no idea where the heck I would wear it though!

*The Advocate was our HS newspaper and every year we did a "pageant" as a fundraiser. The contestants were all boys. It was a lot of fun, especially the big opening dance number. We had some good sports at our school.

It's The Lush Life for me & Simon LeBon

Stacy over at La Boudoir held a little contest in honor of her forthcoming trip to London and Paris, and yours truly won! I never win anything! She asked her readers to name their favorite UK band. Naturally there were many votes for the Beatles, but I had to stick with my first love, and the group everyone (at the time) said were the new Beatles: Duran Duran.


You have to remember I came of age in the 80s -- people, I was there when MTV launched. I went to my friend Kim's house every day after school (she had cable, we didn't) to watch MTV for hours. Duran Duran, Adam Ant, Flock of Seagulls, The Clash, Men At Work, Cyndi Lauper, Pat Benetar and of course Michael Jackson, back before he became a weirdo. But Duran Duran was the best. They were cute, they had cool videos and they had great hair.

The prize from La Boudoir: a gift certificate to Lush, a yummy UK-based bath and body shop that specializes in using fresh, organic ingredients. I've been to their store in Banff, and they just opened a store in Connecticut at Mohegan Sun (ginormous Indian Casino), so I will get to go and smell everything in person.

When she's not counting down the days to London & Paris, Stacy blogs about design, fashion, art and other lovely things, with the occasional funny rant (I love the post with the Office Space still). Hop on over and say Robin (and Simon LeBon) sent you.

If they don't have it, you don't need it

{Hardware store dog (Bo), originally uploaded by estteolson}

I had to go to Home Desperate this weekend to pick up some little thing and I was dreading it. I miss small mom & pop hardware stores like the one in the town I grew up in. It had creaky old wooden floors and the store was really narrow but ran the full length of the building. You could get keys made, buy tools and grass seed, pick out paint and wallpaper and order lumber. But you could also get some Pfalzgraff (when they still had only 6 patterns and hadn't moved into every outlet mall in Suburbanville), a hurricane lamp, real linen dishtowels, a crock pot, baking pans, horsehair brushes, and a red flyer wagon. I bought a steamed pudding mold there that I still use. I think there was a cat. If there wasn't, there should have been. They had the best selection of greeting cards, lots of Boynton, Kliban and other non-Hallmark staples. There was a simplicity about shopping there that the big box stores completely lack. You could walk in, find what you wanted pretty quickly (and if not, someone who worked there -- and who actually knew what they were talking about -- would help you find it). You didn't have to hike through a huge warehouse of a store, and there were only two or three options at most for each item, not like the option overload of modern-day shopping.

I know there are still stores like this -- there's one on the main street of the town just west of mine. But they are a dying breed, and those that are still around are having to scale back on what they offer as the big box stores eat their profits. I know for a fact that the store near me did not have the item I ended up buying at HD, because I went there first. I did, however, buy some soy candles, a flower pot, and some picture hooks. ;-)

Happy Birthday Shakespeare

{The esteemed Bill S., doesn't look a day over 443.

Portrait attributed to John Taylor. Pic from Tudor History}

My first encounter with The Bard was at McDonalds when I was in grammar school. No, he was not shakin' down the Hamburglar for some change so he could buy an apple pie. He was, however, plastered all over the place in a 1970s Tudorbethan fantasy of "stained glass" windows and half-timbering, interspersed with stencils of famous lines from his plays. Very Merrie Olde England.

Why, you may ask (and I did when I was a kid) was this place an homage to Shakespeare? Because it was in a town called Stratford, named for the fair city over the pond, home of the Globe Theater abroad and the (now defunct) American Shakespeare Theater here. Back in the day, my parents tell me, the AST was the place for great theater in the region, Shakespeare or otherwise. Folks drove for miles to see Christopher Plummer, John Houseman, Lynn Redgrave, etc. perform on its stage, and restaurants in the area did a brisk trade in pre- and post-theater dining. The Bard became a bit of a theme and I guess McD's just jumped on the bandwagon.

I half remember someone's birthday party (mine perhaps? Third grade?), sitting with a group of classmates in two booths that spanned the end of the aisle. We took turns eating each other's fries (back when they were cooked in beef fat and quite tasty) and reading the quotes on the wall, but we were too young to understand them or their references, and too engrossed in our smorgasboard to care. Fast food was a rare treat then, and going to McDonald's for someone's birthday was a novelty. We were easily entertained.

Table for 4 please, in the "Rose by Any Other Name" section if you have it.

My purple heaven

{Iris at work in the woods, originally uploaded by zenera}

When I was a little girl, my dad (who was a self-employed carpenter) was doing some work at a very, very old white house, owned by a very, very old woman named Mrs. Parrott (you know how when you are 7, you have no idea how old "old" really is? She was probably only 70, but to me she was at least 110). Since the house was ancient, it needed quite a bit of work and she kept my dad pretty busy.

Sometimes my mom would take my sister and I there after school or on weekends while my dad was working on the house. Mrs. Parrott's property was as neglected as her house, and so whatever garden there had been in the past had melded into the woods behind it, and everything was overrun with wild concord grapes. When they finally came to bear, the air hung heavy with the foxy, heady scent of ripe fruit. If purple has a smell, this is it. My mom and my aunt picked baskets and baskets of grapes, and we were eating home-made grape jelly for, it seems, years afterward.

Across the road from the house was an old red barn that housed an even older cow and a white horse with blue eyes. Both were gentle (or just old and slow) and didn't mind my dad fishing in their cow pond for sunnies or my sister and I running around. How I longed to ride that horse! Of course I had never ridden a horse at that time (that would come later, at Girl Scout Camp), but what little girl doesn't want a pony?

The best part about Mrs. Parrott's house was the cats. She gave new meaning to the term "cat lady". She had hundreds of cats. Some were in the house, some were in cages in the garage, but most were loose on the property. She told us that people would drop them off for her to watch while they went on vacation and they would never come back to get them. I suspect she had become a defacto humane society and folks knew she would take little Mittens or Smokey or Fang off their hands and not ask any questions. Now, we had always had a cat at home, and it was pretty tolerant of a the "affections" of two little girls. But this was like winning the Cat Lottery. My sister and I reveled in the abundance of fuzziness. Tiger, tortoise, tuxedo -- it mattered not to us what color or size, all that mattered was here was a cat to be held and petted. And another. And another. This cat is tired of being "loved"? Just put him down and pick up that one.

Fast-forward almost 20 years. I am wandering some back roads in an effort to skirt the traffic on the way to a new job in the same town. I find myself sitting at a light on a side street, looking at a boarded-up old house in an overgrown patch of woods, maybe a half acre; it was all that remained of a once-larger estate that had obviously been sold to a developer. Behind it was a large shopping plaza, and across the road was a small office park. Lounging about on the weedy "lawn" of the house were a couple of marmalade cats. Next to the garage are a couple more, white with small patches of orange. And suddenly I realized where I was... the cat-filled purple heaven of oh-so-long-ago!

It was so sad to see it in that state, but I understood the reality of the situation - I don't think Mrs. Parrott had any children, and the town had undergone booming growth at that time. Every farm, hill and meadow had been or was being developed into an office park, shopping strip, or McMansion farm. But here was a last holdout, tangled with grapes and guarded by some hardy felines who would not give up their spot and surely were so feral as to be vicious to anyone who wanted to rip down their paradise.

Sadly, they failed in their mission. There's a Staples there now...