Todd and I had a really fun day together today...first we worked on cleaning up the front of the house, raking leaves, etc., and then we started working on the Christmas lights.
At some point on our holiday travels last week--I think it might have been in Columbus--we saw a house that had a white-lighted star with strings of colored lights radiating down from it, and we both liked the look. So Todd cut lengths of scrap pine and made a star.
We attached it to the front of the house and ran some colored lights down from it. Then it was time to get cleaned up for part two of our day--Hampton University's concert of "The Messiah."
We went last year and enjoyed it so much we decided we should make it a tradition. It was wonderful this year, too, although they unaccountably left out one of my favorite bits, where the baritone soloist sings "And the trumpet shall sound..." Last year the singer gave me goosebumps, he sang it so beautifully.
But the choir was in terrific voice this year, and all the soloists were great, too. As we were walking back to our car afterward, there was a lighted boat parade on the Hampton River, with sailboats and yachts all lit up with Christmas lights. If it had been a little warmer, we might have lingered to watch the whole thing!
Then we had a nice dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, and then drove through a few neighborhoods on the way home to look at Christmas lights, but not many people have them up yet. (Actually, it seems to me that fewer people put up Christmas lights here in southern VA than in other places we've lived...I'm not sure why.)
Then we took the back way around to our house so we could see our handiwork for the first time:
Ooh, aah! We were quite delighted with ourselves.
I think we need some more lights on the porch rail and such, and Todd wants two more strings coming down from the star, but I bet neither of us will find the time/energy to accomplish that. I'm amazed we got done what we did. Outdoor Christmas lights always befuddle me--I admire people who go all out and have gorgeous displays. This is by far the most ambitious we've ever gotten!
Then it was time for some chai tea and now Todd is watching a movie while I catch up on my computering. It was a great Sunday.
This Christmas journal has become a holiday tradition all in itself--via Shimelle Laine's annual Journal Your Christmas class. This is my fourth year of making a daily journal through the month of December...I always look forward to getting started!
I'm not exaggerating when I say that this class has helped save Christmas for me. A combination of factors had really soured me on Christmas over the past ten or twelve years, but just taking a few minutes every day to write a little and think a little about the holidays--it's unbelievable what a difference it has made for me and my attitude.
I got off to a late start with my book this year as we were driving back from Ohio on December 1, and I was wrapped up in laundry and chores the next day or two, but here are the first five days, all caught up. Every day you get a journaling prompt in your e-mail, and where you take it from there is up to you. (The photos should be clickable to enlarge, if my writing is too small to read.)
Day 1 is for writing what you want to accomplish in your journal, your feelings about the holiday, whatever:
Day 2 is about snow...the prompt always suggests including a hand-cut snowflake, which I decided to do this year:
Day 3 is about Christmas cards. I included a card that I picked up at T. J. Maxx a couple months ago:
Day 4 is about your ideal or perfect Christmas. It's suggested that you include a photo of some sort, so I took a picture of the little shelf in my foyer:
Day 5 is about Advent. This year I was at church in Ohio for the first Sunday, and my mother did the reading as my nephew lit the first candle on the church Advent wreath. So I included what she read.
This is the album I'm using this year: a spiral-bound 8x8 book from Go West Studios (are they even in business any more?) The cover is etched acrylic with a red liner behind it to show off the holly. At some point I'll do a box for the cover with the year and some sort of decoration.
The last two years I have done very small books with even smaller journaling blocks, and only had room to write a few words for each day. This year I wanted to concentrate more on writing--although I'm finding I still don't have enough room to say everything I want to say!
Journals for 2006, 2007 and 2008 are in the December archives in the blog sidebar (and sometimes in the January archives, too!) for each year, if anybody has time on their hands and wants to look back at the past. Someday I want to combine them all in a Flicker album, but that won't be any time soon!
I climbed into bed feeling very sleepy, but then realized I was not. I hate it when that happens, it's like a false start in a race.
I found this $3.00 sheet set at an estate sale a few weeks ago, after searching in vain for cheap sheets at every yard and estate sale for over a year, and these sheets were worth the wait. They are the softest things I have ever felt. Far, far better than the scratchy sheets I broke down and bought at Kohl's a couple months ago. These sheets feel like rose petals. Every so often as I lay (lie?) on them, I think about the fact that I am laying (lying? neither one sounds right) on a dead woman's sheets, but I try not to dwell on that fact. I hope she'd be glad I'm enjoying them so much. They make climbing into bed so pleasant.
We spent three days last week in Columbus with Todd's family and three more days with my family in northeastern Ohio, plus one day each for coming and going, and got home Tuesday evening. I am still working on catching up--got the laundry done and now I need to buy a big pile of groceries tomorrow.
Plus putting away the goodies I found at an auction on Saturday and at the antique stores on Monday. I often don't have time for vintage shopping while I'm home, so I was glad to have a few spare hours to find great deals.
I was concerned about catching some Ohio cootie and ending up sick, but Todd was the one who developed a cold over the weekend. We had the following conversation in church on Sunday as we waited for the service to start:
Me: I'm so sorry you're feeling bad, sweetie.
Him: Well, it's better for me to feel bad than for you to feel bad. It's much better this way. Much better.
Me (after a short pause wherein I realize that my husband is subtly telling me that I am such a pain in the butt when I am sick that he'd rather be sick himself than put up with me being sick): Well, NOW I feel bad!
He's still sniffling and sneezing but seems to be feeling a little better.
I am looking for some good pictures to share from our Thanksgiving with Todd's family, but he seems to have secreted them in a file some place that I can't find. Here are a few from what's left on my computer:
We exchanged our Christmas presents on Thanksgiving...here's my father-in-law with my niece Anna, opening my present to him (a small scrapbook with pictures of him and the grandkids):
My nephew and nieces chowing down on pumpkin pie:
My mother-in-law admiring the frame Todd made for her:
When I find the rest I'll share a few more.
It was a really nice trip...we did the ThanksChristgivingmas (as I call it) thing with Todd's fam and took a family portrait at Sears; we got in a smidgen of Black Friday shopping in the snow; we froze our feet and noses off at a rural estate auction; Todd and my nephew Tanner helped Todd's folks with some of their moving; I took my niece Kylie to see the Disney "Christmas Carol" movie; I visited my grandma at the nursing home; and I had a nice lunch with my mom and my aunts Molly and Carol, with a couple hours of shopping with my mom afterward.
I got a bit of a late start on my 2009 Christmas journal, but I'm caught up now...I'll share those pages tomorrow. Right now seems like a good time to watch "Elf" again while I wait to get sleepy.
I sat down just now to write a blog entry, upload a bunch of pictures, pour out all the splendid thoughts in my brain...and I've got nuthin'. I am blessedly empty-brained today; it's quite relaxing. The last couple weeks have been so busy, and I've still got a long to-do list, but for a second I am just sitting here with no thoughts except how much brighter it is in the living room now that all the leaves have fallen from the maple and hawthorn trees out front.
I'll try again when the thoughts have started flowing again.
My dad works at a school, and when I was a kid, he often brought home discards from the school library to help meet my insatiable book needs. At that time, the school was eliminating many of its reading textbooks from the 1940s and 50s, so I got to enjoy them at home, and ended up with a deep and long-lasting fondness for the artwork and stories of that era.
There was a reader that I really loved when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. I saved many of my childhood books, but somehow that one fell through the cracks and got lost. As an adult, all I could really remember about it was that a) it was a dark blue cloth-bound reader; b) it was about a tree; and c) it took place over the course of seasons and eventually, years. I didn't even remember the title, and all the other details were hazy at best. I just remembered loving it.
Every time I have gone into a used bookstore, antique mall, or flea market in the past 20 years, I have looked for that book, never really believing I would find it. But I think I found it today!
It was on a shelf under a row of gorgeous Cherry Ames books that I'd been salivating over. I saw the cover and a very tiny bell rang far off in the recesses of my brain.
I picked it up and paged through it. It's the story of Lee and Bill and an apple tree on the farm outside their town. The town is growing. The boys spend several bucolic seasons climbing the tree to look at birds' nests, eating apples, and sledding down the hill below the tree.
But progress is unstoppable. The farm is sold, a park and a zoo are built around the tree, and a whole city is constructed on what used to be the farm. Years later, Lee and Bill bring their own kids to visit the park and zoo, and to see the old apple tree.
It all sounds very familiar. It's been so many years that I can't swear for sure that this is the book I was looking for, and yet it seems impossible that it isn't. I was fascinated with stories that showed the passing of time--I was also a huge fan of The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton, which showed a similar process happening around an old country house.
The book is in decent shape, but awfully musty-smelling--I think it sat in a very damp basement for a very long time--but it was cheap and it was so unexpected to find it! Sometimes when I look through used books, I have that book in my mind, but I wasn't even thinking about it today. That made the discovery all the more delightful!
If you happen to be buying something at Amazon, and you need one more little thing to push your total over $25 so you can get free shipping...may I suggest a nice little Christmas album that I bought for that very reason?
The Joy of Christmas
I have old-fogeyish taste in Christmas music (and almost everything else for that matter.) This is an old-fogeyish album--it's almost fifty years old. It features Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. This is not a quiet, contemplative album--it's a big gorgeous blast of sound, a joyful noise.
It's fantastic and it's cheap. Get it! If you're an old fogey, that is.
So all last week, Google had Sesame Street characters on their home page, in honor of the show's 40th anniversary, and it got me to thinking about my own Sesame Street-watching days.
I came to the show slightly late, in 1976 at age five-going-on-six, when we moved from Missouri to Ohio and could get a PBS station on our TV for the first time. I remember coming home from kindergarten and first grade and flopping down to watch SS with my brother and sister, who were toddlers.
My very favorite Sesame Street Muppets were Bert and Ernie. Or more specifically, Bert. He was slightly acerbic, slightly pessimistic. He enjoyed quiet pastimes like sorting his paper clips and watching pigeons. He was always foiled in these pursuits by goofy, gregarious Ernie. I loved them both, but I could relate to Bert. Watching classic clips on Youtube as a grown-up, I'm now aware of Jim Henson and Frank Oz workng behind the scenes, who brought so much to those characters and played off each other so well.
Love this one: Bert Feels Cold. And this one: Ernie Tries to Remember. And: What Time Is It?Ernie's Note. These are like two-minute sitcoms for kids.
My other favorite was Grover, or "lovable, furry old Grover," as he referred to himself. I loved it when he would spaz out with his pipe-cleaner arms flying around. Frank Oz was responsible for Grover, too--he sure did some wonderful stuff for us kids of the 70s and 80s, didn't he? Here Grover demonstrates Near and Far...here he is a waiter: (love the waiter skits!) The Big Hamburger and A Fly in My Soup.
That is just good stuff.
The animated segments were great, too:
12 Pinball
M for Magic
The Ladybugs' Picnic (try getting this song out of your head...I've been trying for 30+ years.)
Jazzy Spies (I didn't know what this was but I sure recognized it once I clicked!)
A Loaf of Bread, a Container of Milk and a Stick of Butter (I still recite this to myself at the grocery store sometimes.)
And do you remember The Mad Painter? I bet you do.
Thanks, Sesame Street! The memories are so much fun.
We went to a couple of estate sales this morning, but the pickins' were slim. I got:
Last week, my mother-in-law was crocheting some clothes for my niece Anna's tiny baby doll (named Pinky Pie) and I was just pondering how sweet tiny baby dolls can be. So when I saw this one for very cheap I picked her up. She needs a bath and her dress and bonnet need cleaning and mending, but she's the perfect size to tuck into a corner and enjoy. I'll tuck the needlepoint picture into a corner and enjoy it, too!
I'm not really a huge Santa lover, but Santa mugs always make me smile. And my friend Cheryl spotted the Emily Post book first but let me have it. Now that's a real friend!Todd found a cord for his weed whacker (hm, that sounds kind of twisted) and some woodworking magazines. So all was well and a minimum of money was spent. Then we came home and tackled the master bathroom floor, which is glued in place now. Hurray!
While having a post-lunch cup of tea, I was looking out the patio doors and enjoying the beginnings of fall leaves in the backyard...thought I'd share them.
You can see we're getting there with the fall color, but not completely there yet. I was up in Williamsburg on Tuesday, which is only 20-30 minutes north of here, and the leaves there are much prettier. That bright blue sky is sure gorgeous, though.
And we are loving our wind chime!
It has an almost plaintive sound, very subtle, very beautiful. Today is breezy, so there's a constant series of tones playing softly from the deck. I can even hear it through the closed door. Closed because it's too cold to have it open! With what glee I type those words!
While I have the camera out, here are the Halloween ATCs from the swap I hosted in October. I put them up in the foyer, and they are just too cute to take down yet.
They look nice with my Halloween sampler. Which is also too cute to take down yet.
I guess I need to whip up something Thanksgiving-related to hang in that spot, since it's too early for anything Christmas-related. I am thinking about putting up the Christmas stuff in a couple weeks, though, so Halloween can hang around till then. We are traveling for Thanksgiving, and I would really like to come home afterwards and have all my Christmas decorating done already. It would feel so nice!
Look at these cuties I found for 80% off at Ben Franklin today!
I love it when you see something cute and you pick it up and it's so cheap you can hardly believe it! It's such a rare thing, too...They will look very cute mixed in with my Christmas decorations, don't you think?
Hm, could I use the word "cute" any more times?
...waved good-bye to Todd's parents as they headed back home to Ohio.
...watched "The Big Bang Theory" on DVD while folding laundry.
...perused the Christmas decorations at Jo-Ann Fabrics.
...came *this close* to buying a Sinatra Christmas CD.
...started Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene.
...listened to Mozart on the public radio station.
...smelled roses, coffee, chocolate, apples, bread, nuts, pears, and spicy candles all at the same time at Fresh Market.
...plotted a chicken soup for supper to use up leftover roasted chicken and roasted vegetables from the other night.
...smelled wet leaves in the front yard and on the driveway.
...swept up wet leaf crumbs from the foyer for the umpteenth time.
...pondered what to get all the nieces and nephews for Christmas (or "ThanksChristmasgiving" since Todd's family is combining the two this year, cutting my gift buying time down to--yikes! Three weeks!)
...wished for just a smidgen of sunshine. Just a smidgen would be fine.
A year or two ago, a couple of Youtube videos were making the rounds on all the forums and e-mail lists--a 90-something-year-old woman named Clara Cannucciari, filmed in her kitchen by her grandson, cooking some of the meals that her family ate during the Depression years.
Here you can see her making Egg Drop Soup...here she cooks a concoction called Poor Man's Meal...here's the first "episode" where she makes Pasta with Peas. There are quite a few short Clara segments on Youtube now, and they're all charming and fascinating.
Armed with some birthday money, a coupon and some Borders Bucks, I went to Borders in search of something great the other night and found that Clara has a small book out called Clara's Kitchen, with recipes for some of the simple foods her family lived on in the Thirties, as well as some matter-of-fact memories of her life in those days.
I just couldn't resist this book. It makes me wish I had taken more time to talk to my grandmothers about their lives during those years. The stories and the pictures are so simple and yet so powerful. She writes about picking dandelion greens in the yard and mushrooms in vacant lots for dinner, eating eggplant burgers since meat was so scarce, and waiting for her dad to bring home half of his lunchtime ham sandwich for her and her brother to devour. She also writes about having to drop out of high school in her sophomore year because her family could not afford to support a child who could be out working and bringing in money.
Clara's cheerfulness and pragmatism come through on every page. This is a strong woman. You might not want to make every recipe in the book (I wrinkled up my nose at Panecotto--stale bread in milk) but you'll want to read every story. Loved it!
Todd's parents are visiting us for a few days. We went to the Edgar Allan Poe museum in Richmond today--an appropriate Halloween activity, I think.
The museum is set in and around the oldest house in Richmond, a tiny stone house built in the mid-1700s. There's an old courtyard behind, and several more old brick buildings that you walk through to see the Poe displays.
The weather was perfect for gloomy photos--muggy and rainy.
There's a bust of Poe tucked back inside this arched structure, very atmospheric.
Here's me with the brooding genius lurking behind me. I forgot to take the earbuds out of my ears--we each got a little mp3 player with the audio tour to listen to as we walked around.
The courtyard was really beautiful, even in the rain.
We learned a lot about Poe...I certainly had no idea he had grown up in Richmond. The museum has lots of artifacts from the era he lived in.
After grabbing a quick lunch, we went down to the river district and took a boat ride on the old canal that's been preserved downtown.
Turtles hanging out.
The view looks bleak, but the history was fascinating. This canal runs right through the heart of Richmond--it's been here since the earliest days of the city. The warehouses behind the railroad tracks are replacements for all the warehouses that burned down when Richmond was evacuated by the Confederate army at the very end of the Civil War.
Our boat pilot/tour guide, who was excellent, mentioned that this view (below) sums up the history of transportation in America: the canal at the bottom, the railroad tracks going over top of that (on the right), and the freeway bridges running over top of it all. I guess if there's been a visible plane in the sky above, we'd really have seen it all!
We had a fun day. Came home and got ready for the trick-or-treaters. I ran out of candy for the first time ever!
When my grandpa Martin passed away, I wrote down a few facts and memories about him, and enjoyed doing that. So I thought I'd do the same for my Grandma Clark. Here are some of the things I know about my grandma, Mary Anne Fenton Clark.
She was born in Kansas on a very hot August day right in the middle of threshing time. Her mother had spent the whole day cooking for the threshing crew, and then gave birth that evening. Great-Grandma was a strong woman, and she passed that quality along to Grandma.
Grandma was the baby of her large family, and she was doted on by all her siblings. I remember taking her to visit her older sister Helen years ago, and my 88-year-old Aunt Helen hugged my 76-year-old Grandma, and called her "baby sister."
One of Grandma's first memories was sitting on her older brother Lewis's knee at mealtimes. The other children sat on benches at the table, but Lewis, who was twelve years older than Grandma, felt that the bench was too hard for her to sit on. She was very much loved and cherished by her parents and siblings. I think this gave her a core of strength that she was able to draw on for the rest of her life.
As a farm girl, she was responsible for herding the cows along the road and keeping them out of the hedgerows. But she would carry along a book and sometimes get so engrossed that the cows would get away from her. She told me she spent a lot of time chasing cows out of fields.
When Grandma was fifteen, her family moved from Kansas to the area where her father had grown up, in northeastern Missouri. They bought a farm, and Grandma stayed behind in Kansas until the school year was done. Then she traveled to Missouri with her father and her brother Walter in an old Model A, with her cat and kittens tucked in beside her.
After high school, Grandma taught at three different one-room country schools, and taught at another one a few years after she was married. She taught grades 1 through 8, all in one room. My dad's cousin Raymond told me, at the calling hours, how he had come to school as a new kid from out of town in the fourth grade and how Grandma had looked after him and made a fuss over him. She told me she enjoyed teaching and that the kids always worked hard for her.
In her early twenties, Grandma married Marion Clark, whose family farm was adjacent to her parents' farm. I am not sure what drew her to a man who was more than 20 years her senior. Her sister Florence had married Grandpa's brother Elmer, and the families were friends as well as neighbors. But it has always seemed like a strange match to me.
Grandpa and Grandma had a difficult life together. Grandpa's recurrent health problems meant there was very, very little money coming in, and Grandpa was not an easy man to be married to--erratic, stubborn, hot-tempered. They lived in a tiny house with no indoor plumbing. They had five children, and after sixteen or seventeen years, and my youngest aunt's birth, Grandma had had enough. She moved herself and the children out, worked and eventually put herself through nursing school, and divorced Grandpa. Living in a time and in a culture where divorce was uncommon, it took a lot of courage for her to strike out on her own and find a new path for herself.
My parents and I lived around the corner from Grandma until I was almost six years old, when we moved to Ohio, so Grandma was very much a part of my earliest childhood. I remember her as always in motion, bustling around. She still had two kids living at home when I was small, and was working nights full-time, so it's no wonder she was in motion!
She seemed happiest to me when she had as many kids and grandkids as possible crammed around her small kitchen table. She'd feed us big meals, and if you stopped eating to take a breath, she was right there: "What can I get you?"
My brother told me that one of his girls opened a box of Froot Loops the other day and the smell made him instantly think of Grandma. We always knew that there were Pop-Tarts and "sugar cereal" (treats we rarely got) awaiting us at Grandma's house. She loved to spoil us, but she wouldn't hesitate to gently correct us if we needed it. Often it just took a look.
She had this little two-beat chuckle she'd make in her throat whenever she was amused by the foibles of her fellow human beings. She was amused often.
Her life was not easy, but Grandma was a contented person. She often talked about how blessed she was in her life. I never sensed a smidgen of self-pity in her, even when her body began to fail her and her life became more restricted. She had a deep faith in God and a firm belief that He was guiding her and providing for her. She liked to tell stories. She was quick to see the humor in things.
She was one of the strongest people I have ever known--pragmatic, practical, matter-of-fact. She worked nights as a nurse, first at a hospital, then at a nursing home, until she was 75 years old. She said, "Someone has to take care of all those old people!" Many of her nursing home patients were younger than she was.
Her co-workers told us about how she guided them as young nurses through the stressful times at work, brought them cookies, sewed them baby blankets, gave them advice, bragged on her family, rejoiced when her first great-grandchild was born. She expected the nurses she worked with to put in just as much effort as she did, and they did, because they cared what she thought about them. I think everyone who knew her wanted Grandma to have a good opinion of them.
She crocheted afghans and blankets and tatted doilies. I have a quilt she made for me, and a pile of crocheted snowflakes which I'll hang on my Christmas tree again this year. She loved romance novels and Christian fiction. She always had stacks of books for me to read when we came to visit. She was passionate about genealogy and compiled binders full of names and facts and photos for both her family and Grandpa's family.
She gave hugs that were so tight you could almost feel your bones squeak, and kissed you so hard you wondered if there was a dent in your cheek afterwards. 
I'm not sure what qualities I inherited from Grandma...I am far less strong and far more of a whiner than she ever was, but I do feel I received some of her ability to take great pleasure in small things, her love of family and history, and her talent for cutting through the bullshit, although she never would have said "bullshit" or even "b.s." She would have said "nonsense."
I was privileged to have several long conversations with her in the past ten years or so, about her life and her family and her memories. I don't feel like I got to have enough time with her, living as far away from her as I always have, but I will always cherish the moments I did get to spend with her. She was very precious to me and I am so grateful to have had her in my life for as long as I did.
We attached it to the front of the house and ran some colored lights down from it. Then it was time to get cleaned up for part two of our day--Hampton University's concert of "The Messiah."
Ooh, aah! We were quite delighted with ourselves.
