Lunch Plans

One of my quirks that makes Mike shake his head is my habit of eating a variety of snacks over a period of a few hours--sharp cheddar, some almonds, something leftover from supper, carrots with hummus, cucumber salad, a hard-boiled egg, whatever sounds good--as breakfasts and lunches on my days off instead of taking the time to "eat something real."  I don't think one way is better than the other, but it occurred to me this past week as I brainstormed ways to make this winter better for myself that taking the time on one of my days off every week to cook a "proper" dish that has some fondly-remembered significance to me would be a sweet habit to get into this winter.  Similarly, a friend from high school who is a marathoner mentally dedicates every mile of a race to a different loved one to get her through the hardest stretches and to refocus the endeavor for herself in that way.  Yes, yes, yes.  I've long thought the finest thing about my life is the beautiful people who have been in it, so why not honor them in the days ahead by measuring out the same ingredients and performing the same steps of measuring and boiling and baking that they did or do.  Yesterday I kicked off the project by cooking my grandfather's gnocchi and my grandmother's meatballs.  I cried once as I smelled the potato-flour dough and then again when I tasted my first bite.  I make the meatballs often, and I used to cook the gnocchi a few times a year, but neither Mike nor I should have the extra potato or white flour anymore, and I'm not interested in the healthier versions out there--I want Papa's heavy gnocchi or none at all--so it had been at least five years since I'd made these foods together.  I will modestly but honestly say I hadn't lost my touch:  My grandparents would have proudly recognized both their beloved dishes.  :)  Here's to the best of grandparents, here's to memories of Sunday dinners at their house the first 24 years of my life, and here's to all the LOVE.  How blessed am I.   

♥

Daisy-Henriette :)

One of the highlights of watching the finale of "Downton Abbey" yesterday was being surprised to see Daisy transformed into my grandmother's 1927 high-school-graduation portrait-self.  Even their dresses were so similar.  I started crying as soon as I saw dolled-up Daisy after Anna styled her new haircut. 

For Grandma's high school graduation present, her older brother treated her to a trip to stay with him and his wife in Detroit.  Below is Grandma on that trip, looking like she could be visiting "Downton's" Mary and Henry at the race track. 

Such a dear hairdo.  I tried its once in my mid-twenties and can assure you that it just doesn't happen with naturally curly hair.  :)

But Daisy and Grandma--and certainly posh Mary--more than make it work.  

Those eyes!

That lace collar!

Sweet, sweet Grandma.  And sweet "Downton" too.  I didn't like a lot of this final season, but the finale was solid.  Their "Happy new year" and the home in the snow, and with Grandma on my mind. . .I cried a few times while I watched this yesterday.  "Auld lang syne," indeed. 

June 2015

It is about 90° here and another day and week when sleep is eluding me. 'Not an issue for certain cats who have taken over the dining table as they convalesce.   Ever since Stuffed first jumped up onto the was-intended-to-be-temporarily-fleece-blanket-covered table at the start of last Friday's vet visit, it has been The Place To Be.  Sweet Kit Kat.  ♥  His side looks so much better, and although he still hasn't joined us in bed since this all began, he seems much more himself. 

Has it been two years since I mentioned how Grandma would try to come up with names of flowers--and birds, and who knows what-else--that began with each letter of the alphabet the nights she couldn't sleep?!  I thought I had written that just last summer.  As it was for Grandma, my not being able to sleep seems to be a life-long issue, and it is worse in this humidity.  She would be proud--or bemused, at least, let's get real--to hear that this past week, before giving up and getting up to read--another "Grandma thing," that--I decided to think of Things I Would Have in My Dream Home from A to Z, and although sleep didn't come as a result, I had quite a charming list going:  African Violets, Braided Rugs, Calico, Daffodils, Elementary School Photo, Fresh Flowers, Groundhogs, Hyacinths and Hollyhocks, Ice Maker. . . .Whatever gets you through the night. 

I'm going home to see my family--and to visit my childhood home!!!  ♥--this weekend and could not be more thrilled.  Yet to pack a thing, I've just gathered a few tops to take with me and have made a couple to-do lists.  Always, with the lists. 

♥

Brighter Days and French Breads

"The shortest day has passed, 

and whatever nastiness of weather 

we may look forward to in January and February, 

 at least we notice that the days are getting longer.  

Minute by minute they lengthen out.  

It takes some weeks before we become aware of the change.  

It is imperceptible even as the growth of a child, 

as you watch it day by day, 

 until the moment comes when with a start of delighted surprise 

we realize that we can stay out of doors 

in a twilight lasting for another quarter of a precious hour."
~  Vita Sackville-West, 

December 30th, 1956

♥

I love that passage.  Right now at five-o'clock, it is still light out.  I'm not minding January this year.  Some years, as they say, are better than others.  Last year, almost everything about the month got on my nerves, or so I remember it.  This January finds me feeling hopeful and cozy.  Three loaves of Glenda's French bread are in the middle of their second rise and will soon be placed in the oven to go with tonight's supper--it feels like a soup and bread night here--so the scents of yeast and flour are in the air.  Love.  The last time I made French bread, it was 2001 and I had just turned twenty-four.  I used my grandmother's recipe and ended up with ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! dozens?! of small and almost-inedible loaves.  Grandma had died just a few weeks before and I tried to honor her by making her bread for a family dinner.  Bad, brokenhearted timing, and after hours of kneading, punching-down, forming loaves, and baking:  Bad, brokenhearted bread too.  I trust that tonight's loaves will be better.   The smell of homemade bread, in all the bread's stages, always takes me back to my grandparents' kitchen outside of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.  Just before sliding her loaves into the oven, Grandma would slice a small X into the top of each one.  One Baking Day while I was staying with at my grandparents' house, I decided to add the finishing touch of a letter V to each of the loaves, and Grandma was first perplexed and then amused.  Few things taste as good as fresh bread with butter, and the smell of the loaves instantly transports me back to Grandma's apron-covered side.  It is always--likely forever and always--almost impossible to believe that if I went to my grandparents' house at any given moment, that I wouldn't find them there.  Surely, Grandma is nodding off a bit in her armchair right now as I write this and thinking every time she wakes that she really needs to get up and put together a little supper for her and Papa.  Surely, Papa keeps walking from the back porch to check the thermometer to the kitchen to look out the window at the snow.  If I called right now, I would wake Grandma from her catnap, but she would be tickled to hear from me, and we would want to hear that the other was staying warm and would ask what the other was making for supper.  She would tell me what she and Papa might watch on television that evening--usually a nature program--and would mention that Papa would be walking down to the post office in the morning to mail her next letter to me.  I would tell her that I'm taking down the Christmas tree tonight and that Stuffed has been stretched out like a piece of gum along the bedroom radiator all day.  We would say "I love you" before hanging up and soon we would both settle down to our simple meals of homemade soup and French bread.  

Happy New Year

One of the stunning old cards in Grandma's box of saved correspondence.  And one of my favorites.  A happy new year to you all.  ♥

Tuesday Mish-Mash

I'm enjoying another cozy rainy day here, and from the looks of Stuffed ever-rearranging himself in his nest of old quilts, I'm guessing he's happy too.  I'm thinking pot pies for supper, to use up a mish-mash of ingredients in the freezer.  And I'm making an effort to whittle down some of the things I've saved in my email over the years.  A few items from my Miscellaneous folder of found quotes, ideas, tips, stories, and General Things I Love and Don't Want to Lose:

• In a CNN story online this summer about how eating apples helps you live longer, someone concurred in the comment section:  "I've been eating seven apples a day since 1811.  I'm over 200 years old and going strong."  :)  Mike and I laughed over that off and on the next few nights, it's so silly.  :)
• Whenever I get to visit Vermont, Jericho is on my must-explore list.  Have any of you visited?  It sounds fascinating and just beautiful.
• When I started this blog, I was working in a deli and bakery to save some money for my move here, and one of the store's resident curmudgeon customers huffed his way up to the counter and asked for however-much white Cooper cheese.  I told him that we were out of the white Cooper just then, but that we had yellow.  "Ohhhh," he growled at me.  "The whole world's gone to hell!"  That still makes me laugh.  "The whole world's gone to hell" became a catchphrase between me and my coworkers and me and my parents for the next couple weeks.  
• I love Sean Hayes' song "Powerful Stuff," and I emailed myself a link to this live performance of it in May 2012.  ♥  ♫  "Every day, do like a flower does.  Sun rises and she opens up.  Sun rises and she sings. . . ."  ♪  Mmmmmmmmmm.  Gorgeous song, gorgeous voice, gorgeous lyrics
• In the text of an interview with historian David McCullough I emailed myself in 2007, McCullough is asked by the interviewer what he hopes to accomplish in his then-new book 1776.  "Most important of all," he responds, "I hope I've conveyed that no one knew how things were going to turn out.  All the signs were that they didn't stand a chance, that the war was over and that we had lost.  It was the darkest time in the history of our country.  The prospects for the United States of America never looked so bleak.  But because a handful of very brave people refused to see it that way, we are the beneficiaries.  Without them, the Declaration of Independence would be only that, a declaration, words on paper."  He goes on to say that, "Ingratitude is a shabby human failing."  Beautifully put.  
• I'm a sucker for a good how-to-clean-your-home-with-[lemons/vinegar/in this case, Alka-Seltzer] and emailed myself this article years ago.  I use the sink-drain-cleaning tip often.
• In 2005, wise and witty Julie of the blog "A Little Pregnant" shared this gem of a conversation that took place in the New Orleans airport that summer.  The paragraph begins with "I miss Southern women," and ends with "That, my friends, is grace."  Indeed.  ♥
•  When I was a kid, thirteen or younger, I had a dream in which I was standing inside my grandparents' bedroom with my grandmother.  She was showing me a pearl necklace as the dream began, and as I looked at it with her as she held it in her hands, she said, "God has a necklace of pearls.  Every time one falls (from the chain), a human life is restored in its place."  That was the entire dream.  I woke up then and wrote it down, but I would have remembered what she said anyway.  
• This banana bread recipe makes the best I've ever had.  There is a container of sour cream in it, and the loaf pans are dusted with a cinnamon-sugar mixture.  Otherwise, it's a basic recipe.  But ohhhhh!  Truly!  Banana Bread Heaven!  ♥

There!  Back to sorting here, then on to pot pie-baking.  'Hope you all are having a good day.  Thank you again for your sweet comments on my autumn walk post too.  ♥

On August Walks

 

 

 

I've been walking in the late afternoon and early evening when shadows are long.  Heading out first thing in the morning feels so much better but is too hard to coordinate with my work schedule, so I instead slather myself in SPF 100 sunscreen and hope for low-humidity hours between 2-6 pm. And no matter how disgustingly slick from sunscreen and sweat I am each time I arrive back at the apartment, the walks themselves are always therapeutic.  They are precious minutes of thinking, of praying--Grandma once shared the poem "Out in the Fields with God" with me, and it comes to mind during my walks--of telling people how pretty their dogs are as they bound past me, of admiring gardens and shadows and rock walls and faster-moving and better-looking bodies, of encouraging children as they wobble along on bikes as their parents jog along behind them, of breathing deeply, of being grateful for my health (because no matter how much slower or older I am than the Super! Toned! Twenty-Somethings! I am healthy enough to walk, period, and that's worth saying "Thank You" for), of wishing Mom were here with me so I could show her this sweet cottage of a home I'm hoping to get a good picture of without being spotted and shooed away by its owner; of remembering that between the tremors and other Lyme issues, Mom couldn't walk at this pace or for this long anymore anyway--and so then I just carry on a conversation with her in my head as I walk, the way I carry on with Papa and Grandma and Sommer and other loved ones I have to be content to hold in my heart since hand-in-hand is no longer an option, and the entire walk feels that much more like a prayer.  It's the Ivy that makes this house so sweet.  It's the dome shape that does it for me, Vally.  I love the Ivy, though.  Aunt Laurie had those beautiful bay windows, remember?  Yes.  I loved that house.  Love, love, love.  One of my college professors once told me that he thinks one of the keys to life is to be passionately in love with something every day of your life--a person, an idea, a cause, a flower, the moon, the ocean, a poem, a book, a movie, just something.  There is wisdom in that.  My younger brother and I would play a game of my invention on even car trips when we were kids:  We would have to come up with something--at least one thing--we liked about each house or yard we passed.  There we would sit, half-turned in the backseat of my parents' car, straining to take in the sights of fast enough to find that hurry!-just-one-thing! before it would pass from view.  Oh, yes, this is a Val game, for sure!  But I play it even now when I'm a few years shy of forty, and I hear us wildly laughing as little kids again as I find myself shouting out "That snowball bush!  That rock wall!  The way the sunlight's hitting that chair on their front porch!  That DOG!!!" in my head as I walk each afternoon.  And this week I think of dear Robin Williams and some of my own lowest lows, having struggled with depression for two-thirds of my life now, and I say prayers for him too as I huff and puff up the heights of hills and stairs.  Each return to the apartment sees me marking my mileage onto a calendar in the bathroom and awarding myself a pink "Thank You!" sticker for that day's walk.  "Who exactly are you thanking with these stickers?  Most people would do gold stars," Mike teased me the other night as I proudly slapped a new one into place.  But the "Thank You!" stickers suit me, and I enjoy seeing the strips of them I keep on the desk for this post-walk ritual.  I am thanking God, of course, and I am thanking myself for making the effort.  I am thanking neighbors who plant pretty flowers for no reason other than to add a little more beauty to life.  I am thanking animals and birds for existing.  I am thanking the children for being children--and their parents for giving them good childhood memories.  I am thanking my own parents and brothers and grandparents and friends for being there, period, and for all the love.  Oh, love!  Love, love, love!  I come back to it and come back for it and come back with it, over and over, day in and day out, and that is my biggest "Thank You!" of all.  

Grandma's Fudge

If my brothers are reading, they should act surprised Tuesday night when they receive these little boxes.  ♥  Grandma's fudge was one of our favorite things she made.  She would mix up a pan of it for Christmas and other special occasions and "just because," as well, and keep it in a box on top of her dining room buffet.  One summer week as a kid while I was staying with her and Papa, I told her I wanted to learn how to make it, and she went along with it, showing me how quickly I needed to stir in the chocolate chips and marshmallow cream and reminding me to make sure my pan was at-the-ready when the time came, even though it was really too humid out that week to be cooking fudge at all.  That first batch, despite Grandma's patience and tips and tricks, didn't turn out, and I didn't try it again until after she died in 2001.  Someone needed to keep the fudge tradition alive, and at least a few pounds of the weight I gained during grad school in the next few years can be attributed to my determination to figure out the recipe.  (And the bread recipe.  And the meatball recipe. . . .)  

It isn't difficult--no candy thermometer involved--but took me a few tries to get just right.  The original recipe is here, but I go by the rewritten version in my little cookbook.  I need to update my little cookbook a little bit, though, because I've learned more since adding Grandma's recipe to it.

I knew I really had it down when I arrived home for my younger brother's wedding in July of 2011 and was greeted by my mom with a bemused "Brian's asked you to make some of Grandma's fudge for the reception."  That turned into another humid summer day of fudge-making, but by then, I knew enough fudge secrets to be successful.  I use butter not margarine.  Butter.  As soon as the 1.5-sticks-of-butter/3-cups-of-sugar/exactly-2/3-cups-evaporated milk mixture begins to boil, set your timer for five minutes and stir it all five minutes while it bubbles and makes your kitchen smell like Grandma's.  Five minutes.  All five minutes.  Have your ingredients open and your 13" x 9" pan greased/prepared ahead of time.  And begin washing your Fudge-Cooking Pot immediately after you're done with it.  

One of the things I wish I'd thought to save from Papa and Grandma's house was the deep saucepan Grandma used for this recipe.  This pot's another one of theirs, but I wish I'd had the foresight to take the other one too.  Dad made me the sturdy wooden spoon below.  It's extra-tall and perfect for stirring thick fudge with its big billy club handle. 

Not realizing when to begin the five-minute countdown for the boiling stage was my mistake with my first however-many batches of this fudge.  Set your timer when you first see bubbles at least as big as the ones below.  Stir constantly, and I mean it.  The sugar can get scorched if you don't, and the more you stir, the smoother the fudge will be.  Gritty fudge still tastes good but doesn't do Grandma proud.  Off-subject, Aunt Laurie sent me that sweet pot holder last Christmas, and I treasure it.  Grandma's recipe and pot, Dad's handmade spoon, and Aunt Laurie's pot holder.  This fudge recipe was brought to you by love, thank you.  ♥

And you will need to feel the love after you add the bag of chocolate chips, and then, most especially, after you add the marsmallow cream, because the fudge will already have the consistency of fudge at this point and will be hard to stir. I use the smaller (7 oz.) jar of marshmallow cream, but the fudge turns out with the large jar too.  It's just a bit softer in both color and consistency when the extra's added.

That my grandmother, even in her early nineties, made this fudge for us as often as she did--and voluntarily, and without complaint--is a testament to her love for us, truly, because the incorporating-chocolate-and-marshmallow stage makes the arms ache.  I marvel at her strength every time I cook this.  ♥ 

Quickly pour it into the pan, begin washing the pot, and let the fudge cool.  I've just opened the kitchen window and let the pan chill on the stove-top under it the past few times I've made it.  By the time I've finished all the boiling and stirring and am starting dishes and kitchen clean-up, a wide-open window feels like heaven anyway. 

Target had the little treat boxes in the top picture in their dollar section, so I picked up two and packaged some fudge in them to add to my brothers' Christmas presents.  Walnuts omitted for Brian.  Christmas sprinkles added to the top of the entire batch, although I'm sure Grandma would shake her head at this newfangled addition to her recipe and murmur, "Well, I suppose that's okay. . . ."  :)  Best Fudge Ever.  ♥  Love to you all this Christmas.  December's been a blur this year.  I see my family--and meet Bianca--Tuesday!  Life is sweet.  

All that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about. ~ Charles Kingsley

One afternoon while sitting with my grandmother on her and Papa's front porch swing, flipping through the pages of a wildflower guidebook together, Grandma confided that sometimes when she couldn't fall asleep at night, she would try to think of a flower that began with each letter of the alphabet.  It has probably been almost thirty years since she told me that, but like Grandma, I've never been able to fall asleep easily either and I often find myself employing her alphabet trick.  Flowers tonight, I hear myself thinking.  Anemones, Bachelor Buttons, Camelias. . . .Some nights, it is birds, and sometimes they come even after the flowers if I'm still wide awake.  Auks (thank you, Laura Ingalls Wilder and The Long Winter [my favorite book in her series] for that one), Baltimore Orioles, Chicadees, Doves, Eagles, Finches, Grackles. . . .I'm not too strict with myself with my twenty-six-item lists.  I often skip Q and X, no matter the subject.  More often that not, the flowers, birds, places-I've-been, and words-in-Spanish aren't enough, and I decide to alphabetize my gratitude list or Things-I'm-Looking-Foward-To list.  It is not a bad note to end the day on, and there are certainly worse ways to fall asleep than by reflecting on all the good and sweet in one's life.   

A is for a big salad, I will tell myself tonight.  My mother-in-law recently bought us huge restaurant ware-type salad plates, and we used them for the first time tonight.  ♥  B is baking.  My third (and maybe final) attempt at meringues has been in the oven about three hours now.  This batch looks okay but isn't thrilling enough to me to bother with again.  Catching up on sleep.  That's always wonderful.  Sleep usually is on my list somewhere.  David Bowie:  Starman, an impressively well-researched biography by Paul Trynka.  There is so much glorious detail in this book.  As a boy, Bowie, along with his friends and apparently like so many children in post-war London, used to play in former bombsites, digging in the dirt, imagining, and unearthing little treasures lost until then to the war.  "It was unbelievable," one of his childhood friends is quoted as remembering.  "There were these huge spaces from the bomb sites, and ruined houses, which seemed like mountains to us, covered in Buddleia:  they were our plagrounds."  I will think of David Bowie every time I smell or see powder-scented Butterfly Bush now, and I like knowing that he probably remembers his childhood whenever he catches a whiff of the flowers too.  Dishes have been washed and are all put away.  By the end of the week, all the piddly and naggy little errands that have been on my to-do list for ages will all have been run, so E is errands all the way.  Fresh air.  (Months now of) Good health.  I cut back on sugar last fall to see if it would help my immune system, as I had read that it would, and who knows, but I have gone cold-and-flu-free for quite awhile now, so maybe. 

Heart-shaped leaves.  I prefer blue Morning Glories to any of the other colors, but their heart-shaped leaves always charm me.  I have tomorrow off from work.  Just hearing about a friend's maybe-possible-I-hope-we-can-go travel plans.  Knowing a letter likely reached my parents over the weekend.  One of my new loves:  Linen-scented candles, particularly Glade-brand's "Clean Linen and Sunny Days" ones.  My grocery store carries these for just a few dollars, and the scent is so relaxing, as if I'd just carried in a basket of laundry that had dried out on the line.  A movie I'm looking forward to watching (When Do We Eat?), thanks to Heidi who mentioned it on her blog a couple weeks ago.  Nancy Drew.  I bought the first ten books awhile back and just finished (re-)reading them.  As a kid, I was introduced to the Bobbsey Twins and Trixie Belden books by my mom.  I don't remember when I read my first Nancy Crew books, but it's been fun to dive back into her world of sporty blue convertibles and classic sheath dresses.  Organizing to pay bills this payday.  I'm determined to have one of my student loans paid off by spring, and I've been getting real satisfaction from playing the little if-I-pay-this-much-toward-the-balance-I'll-only-owe-this-much-but-if-I-can-pay-this-amount-the-new-balance-will-be-even-lower game.  Plans for next week include a visit home to my parents.  ♥  Quinoa, since I keep seeing recipes for it that I look forward to trying soon. 

A gift from a friend of a mini Silvertone radio that not only plays both AM and FM, but also looks vintage and fits onto my little corner shelf in the kitchen.  I will think of her every time I play it, making it even sweeter. ♥  Stuffed meowed at me this afternoon.  He rarely "talks"--he is silent most of the time and saves his few meows for Mike--so to hear anything besides the jingle of his collar was sweet.  Time to myself tonight and tomorrow.  Updating aunts in letters and email tonight.  Vanilla soy milk.  Creating another faux wallpapered wall tomorrow, this one pale green with bouquets of pink roses--the wall beside the mantel and that the wing chair will be against.  I might skip X as I usually do.  I never thought to ask Grandma what she came up with for the hard letters.  Maybe she fell asleep before she reached them.  Maybe that was the point.  :)  Y will be the 80s song "Your Love" by The Outfield since I've had it on repeat-play this past week.  And Z--Z, I can do, Grandma, if you've listened all the way to the end ♥--Z is for Zucchini-Tomato Tart, one of my favorite dishes and one that will be my supper later this week.  Any recipe will likely be wonderful, but I just throw sliced zucchini and tomatoes into a pie crust with feta or Parmesan cheese and maybe some olive oil and bake it about thirty minutes.  (If you could be my guest at luncheon, Nancy Drew, I'd serve you this tart with your oft-mentioned iced tea and fruit salad.)    

People are often asked what they've learned from their loved ones or their favorite teachers, and it seems that peoples' first thought is the grand life lessons, but Grandma's little alphabet trick is one of the things she told me that I most appreciate.  Some people get up to watch television or read when they can't sleep, but Grandma stayed-put and made mental lists of pretty things.  ♥  Pansies, Queen Anne's Lace, Ranunculus, Snapdragons. . . .It makes me smile now to think of garden-loving Grandma's silent recitations.  To know that the sun will come up eventually, even if sleep doesn't come at all, and to decide to focus on the happy and beautiful in the meantime:  This is a lesson worth passing on too.

We Make Our Own Sunshine

Likely because I have had to spend the past few days inside the apartment waiting for packages to be delivered, I am craving sunshine and light and fresh air and bold colors like mad lately.  The joke has been on captive-feeling, Cabin Fever-ed me so far this week, since although online shipping notifications stated that the packages were "out for delivery" starting in the morning both Monday and yesterday, the buzzer didn't ring until 3 p.m. Monday and until 6 p.m. last night, so I had stayed indoors "for nothing" hour after hour both days when I could have bundled up and headed out for a walk.  I love my little home, but even a homebody needs fresh air and exercise, especially a homebody who recently polished off most of a Valentine's Day carrot cake by herself.  :)  

This reminds me to tell you that in last Sunday's post about my grandmother, I should have mentioned that whenever my dad would try to get Grandma to join Papa on his daily walk or to do a bit of exercise on her own, Grandma would shake her head and reply, "But I did that already!  When I was a schoolgirl, we all had to do fitness exercises!"  As if physical activity was a life event.  :)  Year after year, Dad argued the benefits of a daily walk, but Grandma never budged on the issue.  She had done that already, end of story.  Remembering their frustrating-to-each-other arguments on this still makes me laugh.  ♥

Meanwhile, back at the ranch. . . .Stuffed and I have spent my time off this week here in the apartment, Stuffed more often than not cuddled up with paws outstretched under the space heater or radiator while I've tried to get some more projects crossed off my seemingly epic To Do list.  I have been faux-upholstering (just kind of making it up as I go along) the wing chair above for awhile now.  A post for another day, and hopefully, not too long from now either, as I'm eager to be done with this project.  After rearranging the fabric squares with straight pins the past couple days, I think I have the patchwork the way I want it.  (A quick glance behind me and I see it's changed a little more since I took that photo, but you get the idea.)  The seat, for now, is a vintage pink roses baby blanket.  It's not at all a cutter, and I almost hate to hide the size and condition of it by using it as a chair seat, but it's also perfect for the project, so for now, it stays.  I haven't touched the chair's sides or bottom/skirt yet and have only begun to re-cushion the arms, so there is still much to do, but it's beginning to look the way I'd envisioned it.  And Stuffed has been content to nap in the warmth instead of nosing around the needles, thread, and hot glue, so we're both happy.  

A few rays of sunlight have been spotted in here this week. 

Pay Day will find me treating myself to this year's first bundle of Daffodils.  They are my favorites, so they show up here and there in various ways in the apartment year-round, but there's nothing like a real Daffodil, especially during these dreary end-of-winter weeks. 

February wraps up tomorrow.

March is almost here. 

And today itself is cozy and certainly good enough, with its comfy cat and spots of light and its colorful patches and tea and a husband on the way home from work soon.  There is even--although Grandma would shudder at the thought--time and opportunity for a brisk walk.  Life is good, life is very good, and let me not forget it.  ♥

Henriette

Today is my grandmother's birthday.  On what would be her final birthday, the local newspaper noted that she was now the oldest person in town, a fact that she rolled her eyes upon sharing with us. 

Grandma was the only child in a family of nine who wasn't born in France.  Her father died not long after her family came to America.  Her mother hated having anyone underfoot while she was in the kitchen, so Grandma didn't learn to cook until she herself had gotten married. My mom still marvels at what a great cook Grandma turned out to be given that, but I am more impressed that someone who had never met any of her own grandparents back in the Old Country ended up being the epitome of a sweet old-fashioned grandmother. 

To her fellow high school students in the Class of 1927, she was "Frenchie."  Papa called her "[his] little Napoleon."  To her nieces and nephews, she was "Aunt Hen."  Her name was Henriette, in tribute to her brother Henri who had died not long before she was born, although it was informally Americanized into "Henrietta."  She hated it, she told me when I was a kid, and I was surprised and responded honestly that I thought it was pretty.  Her foreign name conjured up to my young mind happy images of both cozily-roosting chickens and lovely French ladies. 

Grandma taught me how to play cards and bake bread and peel an apple in one long unbroken strip.  I taught her that when an apple is sliced in half horizontally, a star of seeds appears.  She once said that it was impossible for her not to laugh when she heard me laugh, and she called me "[her] sweet girl." 

She cried while holding my younger brother for the first time, and since his, our older brother's, and Grandma's birthdays are all in February, she would always make a special birthday dinner sometime that month in shared celebration. 

The next-to-last time she and I saw each other was a May afternoon in a city hospital far from her home, and I was wearing a tie-dye t-shirt.  When I leaned over her bed to give her a hug and kiss, Grandma took in my wildly-colored top and weakly commented, "My arms look like your shirt."  Poor Grandma's skin was splotchy with bruises in various stages by that point.  Her observation was the last dry-humored comment of hers that we smiled at together.   

A rainbow appeared soon after she died, and as she had requested, she was buried with a letter my dad had written her from Vietnam.  She had wanted me to have her writing desk and handmade crochet tablecloth, and I do, but it is her scrapbooks and recipes and family papers and photos I treasure more.  She has appeared in a few precious dreams since I've died, and one helped me gain perspective at a time I felt I was spinning out of control in life.  

I think of her when I see cottage gardens, round loaves of homemade bread, delicate script handwriting, canned goods, cantalope, Poinsettias, political cartoons, poetry anthologies, pastel mints, and barkcloth.  When my ex-boyfriend and I visited her grave a couple weeks after she died, I left her a letter promising, among other things, to try always to be her sweet girl.  That I am forever her granddaughter is one of the most beautiful-to-me things about my life.  I miss her more, not less, every year.  And I hope she still laughs when she hears me laugh.