Mom's Things

I'm not a particularly sentimental person. I used to be, but I've lost so many precious things through the years that I've had to learn to be a little Zen about personal memorabilia and trinkets from the past.

Once you lose the family pictures, nothing seems very important.

Over the weekend, we went through everything in the garage. Some things hadn't been opened and gone through for nearly 10 years.

The peculiar feeling for me was finding what little was left of my mother's belongings. As some of you know, she came to live with us in the Autumn of 2000 following a stroke. Most of her things got left in Denver, but I packed her teacups and silver -- mostly things that had been passed down from her mother. Yesterday, I came across two crocheted afghans she didn't get to finish before her unexpected death in December, 2004. What do I do with those? They're small and can't be used for anything, but they were the last ones she worked on. I found pictures of her friends, people who have also passed. No one knows who they are, except Joel and me, so I bit the bullet and threw them away. Sad. I wonder how many of my favorite photos will be tossed because our kids won't know who they're of.

Here some things we found that belonged to both her and us (they enlarge when clicked):

Porcelain earrings that my mother's step-mother made, probably about 70 years ago.

A pillbox that belongs to Nettl.

My filigree pewter and marcasite shoe buckles now sit with a photo of Ville and me at Nettl's and my Holy Union service in 2001, and a silver box I've had for ages.

Have a great Monday, everyone!

He's Not There

Micah left this afternoon to take care of all the falderall surrounding the sale of his father's house in Kansas. He'll be gone for two weeks.

Because I didn't get to raise him past the age of two, having him with me these last few years has been very precious, providing me with the ability to make up for lost time... somewhat. It took me about a year to recognize my little boy in the man who was creating music in his room, but he was in there all along; I no longer feel the grief I knew for so many years. I got to know his favorite foods, drinks, and music. I experienced his quiet strength and I learned how to interpret his silences. He ceased to be a stranger.

Tonight I went out to the garage to look for a curtain for the front door and his absence hit me like a wall. He and I are usually up all night, I here in the living room and he out at his workbench. There was no music, no light cloud of smoke, no head bent over his current project - Micah makes custom-designed guitar straps that are beginning to get noticed by touring bands.

Of course, I know this is only the beginning. In October he's going to England for a few weeks, then next year he'll be moving there. He'll be gone again.

Call me a sap, but I miss him already.

"Guitar is an extension of the Self
Giving reach into the depths of the soul
It is also a friend and loyal companion
When the road of life grows cold."

(Micah Atwell)

There's a World Out There!

Yesterday I set myself to the task of washing the kitchen windows, as well as the kitchen door, which is one of those glass and screen aluminum jobs. All of the windows in this house have storm windows, which aren't easy to dismantle and clean. After figuring out the secret to doing this, I got the door and the large window sparkling clean, using a 3M pad to get rid of water spots, and lots of Windex and paper towels. All that's left in that room is the window above the sink, which I'm going to get to in a few moments.

It's amazing to me that people have lived in this house all these years and never once cleaned a window. Lazy students, mostly. We can actually see outside now!

I only wish this job was as easy as using a squeegie...

Beavis and Butt-Head all Grown Up

I discovered this afternoon that this year Beavis and Butt-Head are 30 years old. I don't mean the TV show, I mean the boys themselves. I had one of the DVDs in this afternoon and in one of the episodes they had to show their birth certificates in order to take Driver Ed. Although Butt-Head's clearly read "1978" the online powers that be say that he was born on July 29, 1979. Beavis was born on October 28 of the same year. Oh man, a Leo and a Scorpio, just like my two guys, Joel and Micah.

I always knew it.

So What Do You Do?

Yesterday I had a meeting with two of the OSU music department professors to do some work on the website I built for them in 2007. It was at Panera, at 8:30 in the morning. Eight-effin'-thirty. What kind of people have meetings in the middle of the night anyway?

The meeting went very well and I walked out with two new sites to build, in addition to the maintenance work on the existing site. Not bad!

Here's a diagram I found called, "Small Talk with a Web Designer". Click to embiggiate.

Because I took a long après dîner nap, I'll be here all night, working. After the job-parched summer I've had, I'm more than happy to be back to my old familiar grind!

Saturday Madness

Yesterday, we worked in the front yard, cleaning up flower beds and trimming overgrown hedges and shrubs. Here are some pictures for you (they enlarge).

Two dogs across the street (a Standard Poodle and a Golden Retriever) played happily with each other. I'm posting this picture especially for Ruby Isabella Jones.

This bed was overgrown with Bermuda grass. I cleaned it out, then added our bird bath.

Next spring, this will be a rose bed!

Nettl trimmed all of the hedges. Want to see what she did? Here's a before shot, taken about 6 weeks ago:

Joel got into the act and helped with picking up the debris.

While a garden friend kept his eye on me,

as I decorated the porch.

After midnight, as we sat on the porch relaxing, Nettl, in her jammies and slippers,

decided to tackle the dead hedges.

Never underestimate a Scott holding hedge clippers and a hacksaw.

"They will never tek our garden tools!"

Coffee in Bed

Coffee in bed on Saturday has become a private tradition of mine. Nothing and no one moves my butt until I have my coffee. Today, however, I wish that I had a plate of Kaiserschmarrn and some good Salzburg bacon to go with it.

We have plans to do some yard work today. Plans, I say. We'll see what happens. Meantime, this coffee is "the boss of me".

Mowsie... Come Out and Pway-ay!

Our cat enjoys staring down her prey.








Photo by HorusJ

Quiet Nights at Last

This is a picture of the candle jar that sits on the bistro table on the porch.

Do you remember my quacking on last summer about the two AC turbines that sat only a few yards from our bedroom at the other house? Well, it's worth everything to be all the way across town from them. No one's supposed to live like that!

Anyway, all this week the cat and I have spent a lot of time on the front porch after dark, watching the storms blow in from the west. The lightening and thunder have been wonderful and the porch is so protected that when the rain doesn't fall diagonally from west to east, we never even get wet. And no turbines! Just little neighborhood sounds, the university clock tower bell in the distance, and crickets, cicadas and frogs. Apparently, the cat got the idea that we're now supposed to go out there, because she spent a bit of time tonight sitting by the front door giving me the hairy eyeball. I didn't feel like it though, so I let her out.

Here is a picture of my late night window. It will be showing up in my banner when I take this summer template down. This window is on the porch; I really like the way it looks at night.

(These pictures enlarge when clicked.)

Our Little Secret

Okay, so it's almost the South. It may not be the Deep South, but it's South enough. It's called the Southwest, but that to me is Arizona, New Mexico, and Southern California. No, to me, this is the outer reaches of the South. Hey, Civil War battles were fought here, so that cinches it for me. It's the South.

Anyway, my point is, it's buggy here. Really buggy. In California we had ants, some mosquitoes, a few flies, June bugs, and snails. Here, it's mosquitoes, flies, cicadas, June bugs, and roaches (the cicadas are polite, however, and never venture into the house. They're happy just to sing outside in the trees). Roaches, especially, are an anathema to me because to have them in California equates filth, trash... filth. I've lived in a few old houses and I've never had roaches. I'm your basic Felix Unger, you understand.

When we first came in to clean and paint this cottage, we found that there were roaches in the kitchen (gods, I blush to even mention it!). Not a major infestation, luckily, and they weren't huge in size. The largest was probably only a quarter of an inch and the rest were tiny, like ants. Still, I knew that I'd be taking them to Fist City if they didn't get the hell out once we started cleaning. Their presence wasn't a hassle as much as it was offensive. Our family will not fight for our food, damn it. You're not welcome here, bastards.

We bug bombed the place before moving in, which got rid of most of the older ones, but new eggs must have hatched and now I'm seeing the little ant-sized ones. Cool. They're easy to spray with bleach water and churn down the garbage disposal. Zero tolerance, zero pity.

I made little balls out of borax, sugar and flour, but I'm not sure that's working, and every night before I go to bed, I spray the bleach water onto the counters and drawer fronts, and lightly wipe them down. Now, I never see them in the day time, but about this time of night I begin seeing a couple of them venturing out. This weekend I'm buying some roach motels and some Raid, and our kitchen will become their worst nightmare.

Okay, I feel better just writing about this. It's embarrassing to me, but this was college student housing for years; it's no reflection on me, after all. I just want the buggers gone.

The Loo Blues

It's an old house, granted, but when we moved in we immediately noticed that the toilet in the master bathroom ran. And ran. And ran. Nettl thought she'd fixed it last weekend, but yesterday it started running again, and badly. Thinking it was a simple float adjustment, I opened up the tank and took my screwdriver to it. Applying only a little pressure to the gizmo that holds the float in place, the entire intake ballcock came off (yeah, I said ballcock). The wingnut that held it in place was so corroded that it snapped in half. (See Anatomy of a Toilet.)

Knowing it would be a big honkin' deal getting the landlord to send someone out, then having to hide the cat all day, I called the property management company. The girl there said, "Okay, I'll send someone out."

That was at 2:00 yesterday afternoon. We still can't use our toilet, and I'm still on pins and needles about the cat. It didn't help that the landlord was all over our corner of the block last evening mowing the lawns. In the meantime, we have to go through Micah's room to get to the guys' bathroom.

If the plumber doesn't get here before noon, Nettl's sending out the guy who is the handyman for the real estate company she works for. Hope it works out that way. I can then just tell the plumber (without letting him in the house) that we fixed it.

No hidey teh kitteh.

I know we shouldn't have an Annne Frank cat, but how do you just get rid of a family member like that? I tried, but because she's pre-diabetic, no one was willing to take her. No one who would take care of her special needs, anyway.
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UPDATE, 3:25 pm:
The toilet's fixed, not because the landlord sent anyone out, but because the handyman from Nettl's work made time to do it. Thanks, Steve! We'll see how long our landlord expects us to be without a toilet... From now on, I'm not calling him for anything, unless a tree limbs comes down on the house, or something.

Grey Tuesday

It's one of those days that comes after a storm. Grey, wet, still. It's cool enough to keep one indoors, but warm enough to open the windows and switch off the air conditioner. It's the kind of day that the old Kodachrome film used to love. The cat enjoys sitting in the window and the plants outside spring to new life.

Have a nice Tuesday.

A Few of Our Favorite Things

Our things just look better in this old cottage than they did in the newer house we recently moved from. I thought I'd share some of our little treasures with you (pictures enlarge when clicked).

My mother was born in 1925, and this was her baby plate. It has a small chip in it, but other than that, it's in perfect condition. If anything ever happened to it, I'd just die. It's nice to think that when this cottage was built, my mother was just beginning kindergarten.

An odd angle shot of the music gallery wall above the piano.

Shall I pour?

Porcelain baby shoes to commemorate the birth of Nettl's three children. Behind sits a lidded chalice that I bought many years ago in California.

We have an angel in our dining room window!

Research books still waiting for a bookcase.

Top of a bookcase.

Books enjoying a temporary home, and a little brass and copper
Chinese pillow box that was given to me for my birthday in 1982.

An 18th century buckled shoe steps out over a nativity dish my uncle brought home from Japan during WWII and two tiny boxes I bought in the Eighties.

Beautiful little Nettl!

Our latest find.

A perfume box, in dappled afternoon sun, that belonged, I believe, to Nettl's mother.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

I am in no way fond of dolls; they kind of creep me out like clowns creep out other people, but I have to admit that Nettl's American Girl doll, Addie, is pretty cool. She has been given a bright spot in the bedroom window seat.

Kitty in the bedroom window, above which hang my Irish grandmother's hand-tatted tea linens.

Pretty lady on a little wall.

Bathroom table.

Diamonds and lace.

Our Cottage Kitchen

As promised, here are before and after photos of the kitchen. It's still a little bare, but we'll take care of that in no time! The color we chose for the kitchen is called Sweet Basil. At the bottom of this post is a recipe for a cocktail of the same name.

Before: A lackluster rental kitchen.

After: Life happens!

Before: From the dining room, through the wine room and kitchen to the mud room.

After: Looking the opposite direction.

Before: Dull, dingy kitchen and mud room.

After: Not so dull anymore.

And now, two bonus pictures:

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Sweet Basil Cocktail
10 basil leaves, plus one for garnish
3 oz. Lillet Blanc
1/2 oz. gin
1 oz. simple syrup

Lightly muddle 10 basil leaves in a cocktail shaker. Add ice and other ingredients, and shake well. Double strain into a chilled coupe and garnish with extra basil leaf. Served in Baccarat, it's a perfect drink!





Pictures of the bathroom will come tomorrow.

The Last Painting Day

We were going to paint both the kitchen and the master bath today, but we did the kitchen last night. Wow! What a difference! I'll post some before and after shots of both rooms later. Right now, I'm trying to wake up. I took a benadryl last night and it made me sleep way too late.

The kitchen is a pale, clean and modern green called Sweet Basil and the bathroom will be Freshwater Blue, not much different than the background color of this blog.

We discovered a little secret about the paint we've used in this house. Being on a very tight budget, we went to Wal*Mart and were really happily surprised at how good their Color Place paint is. It's a great one-coat, low smell, great coverage, true to its samples paint, so we started wondering if it wasn't a name brand in disguise. And it goes a long, long way. I've never used a paint that goes as far as this does. I went onto the web and sure enough, it's actually Sherwin-Williams. Why pay $18-$25 dollars a can when you can pay $8? The only catch is that you don't have as many colors to choose from, but meh. Big deal. Make it work.

Okay, I have to finish my coffee and put on my painting clothes; I'm itching to see the transformation that's going to happen in the bathroom!