I Wish Her the Shire

Mom's birthday was yesterday, and our phone call left me wishing I could send her some carefree days with her beloved hobbits: Frequent tea and snack breaks, warm sunshine and flower gardens, long visits with good friends. . . .Mom has been battling Lyme Disease since last summer, and although she and Dad went out for supper and a movie last night, her tremors were quite severe throughout, making it a little less enjoyable. "I was glad I was in a dark theater!" she reported today. Another doctor appointment this morning and yet another in three weeks. It could be worse, and we all know that, but I'd take away the past six months of stress and illness for her if I could, no matter what it may be teaching all of us. I'm only human, and she's my mama: I just wish her happy days.

In the package I mailed her Tuesday, I included along with the cuddly floor-length blue gingham robe, gluten-free and dairy-free chocolate chip cookies, and other goodies, my latest salt dough ornament, a birthday gnome. :) I added a Daisy, Mom's favorite flower, to his hat, and made him a card to hold, and she oohed and ahhed over it when we talked. It was the smallest thing in her package but also what she got the biggest kick out of, as I'd expected. And that made me quite happy. 

Maybe by next January, Mom's illness will all be but a memory, and maybe it will go on for years. No one knows, of course. In the meantime, I send her hopes and prayers, cookies and tea bags, blue checkered bath robes and well-wishing gnomes. I send her love. 

For Aunt Laurie's Birthday

Aunt Laurie's birthday was this Monday, and while I was home a couple weeks ago, Mom and I decided to make a special birthday gift for her that Mom could include with the box of wrapped Christmas presents she was going to mail her the next morning. It began simply enough, with Mom showing me a pretty green gingham dishtowel she'd found for Aunt Laurie and saying, "I was thinking about decorating a little Christmas tree and putting it in the box for her. What do you think? This as a tree skirt? Or should I just wrap it by itself?" Mom should know better than to ask me such things: She and I ended going to bed sometime after midnight that night after spending about four hours constructing, instead, this miniature birthday party table, the gingham dishtowel now a tablecloth. :)

The table was a taco kit box from the cupboard. :) The cake began as a tiny container with cake/cookie sprinkles in it. I emptied it, flipped it over, painted it with acrylic paints until it looked frosted/decorated, and glued a few silk flowers onto the sides and a bit of a paper-doily-as-cake-plate underneath. A birthday candle from the cupboard was whittled down and poked via nail hole into the top. 

And of course, Aunt Laurie had to have a frog, so I made one out of a few tiny Styrofoam ball-type things from one of Mom's silk floral arrangements and painted it all up until it looked frog-like and glued it all into a mini gift-box with an even smaller "to/from" label attached. She had to have a frog? Yessssssss. :) When I was a kid, I told my mom that Aunt Laurie should collect something green since it's her favorite color, and I decided, much to elegant Civil War-era costume-making, Ann-Margret-adoring, lace-loving Aunt Laurie's dismay, that it should be frogs. Tradition must be upheld!

Her miniature card from me read "Hoppy birthday," of course, and Mom made a more traditional card for her older sister. A green button with cake sprinkles glued to the top became a plate of cookies or candies. The tiny gift packages began as corners of Jell-O boxes. We cut them into different sizes and wrapped them with scraps of different papers we had stashed away. Curling ribbon and more tiny silk flowers made perfect package decorations. The plastic lid of a perfume or hair spray bottle worked as a vase. :)

Paper napkins became smaller paper napkins, white plastic toothpicks were trimmed and glued beside them to suggest forks, and we cut the floral part of a shelf lining paper into circles as cake plates. I drew the balloons, "laminated" them with packaging tape, attached them to more toothpicks, and poked them into the top of one of the presents. We framed an already-right-size photo of Aunt Laurie with silk flowers. And hot-glued everything to everything until we could shake the entire table upside-down and nothing moved.

I only wish we could have seen Aunt Laurie's face when she unwrapped her "birthday party in a box." Now she has a little decoration she can bring out each year for her birthday, though. Since it is the day after Christmas, a hard time to travel, we never get to share it with her, but now we can, even more so than usual, celebrate together in spirit. :)  

Updated to add that Aunt Laurie has passed along this picture of her with her "birthday table."  

Sweet face!  It almost makes me feel bad for hiding the little frog in the gift box.  :)

♥ Our First Christmas Together ♥

This Christmas was one of my favorite ones ever:  After four and a half years as a couple, my first Christmas Eve and Christmas with Mike. 

Many hugs and kisses, our new apartment shining brighter than usual, Stuffed looking like a kitten under the 6' tree, 

phone calls to and from our parents, and cinnamon and ginger in the air. Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas and Love, Actually, the Festivus episode of "Seinfeld," A Christmas Story, Scrooged--and all the Christmas specials I watched (and am still watching) on YouTube and amazon after Mike goes to bed. Mike's Yankees stocking beside my pink gingham one, 

pink snowman sheets and matching pillowcases on our bed Christmas Eve. Cards strung along a ball-trim garland beside our tree. A surprise package mailed to a friend and a surprise package for us from Aunt Laurie. Watching The Bishop's Wife while painting salt dough ornaments. Mike and I wrapping gifts in separate rooms while sugar cookie dough chilled in the fridge. Christmas carols. A funny Christmas memory shared with my younger brother over email, and his reply: "Soooooo so funny you said that because I was just thinking this morning about [that]!" A wreath around the bathroom nightlight, a sprig of holly over our "Welcome!" cross stitch, and a candle in the bedroom window. "Phone calls from Santa" for my niece and nephew on Christmas Eve. 

I was tearing up over something Christmas afternoon, and Mike asked if I was wishing I was with my family. "No. It would be nice to be there, but I'm glad we're here. I'm just crying because I'm happy."

In the kitchen window:  Green gingham stockings my mom sewed for us last Christmas, a year before we would have this green gingham kitchen in our new home. :) She always looks for the vintage village houses for me at flea markets. The red heart is from my friend Madai. 

The little trees on the coffee table between our chairs were going to be our only Christmas trees this year, but I wanted us to have a big tree too and walked to the drugstore Christmas Eve morning to buy one.  I moved the heavy old coat rack that is usually in that corner, put the tree together, lit it, and decorated it while Mike slept, so he woke up to a colorful surprise in our front door corner Saturday morning. His addition of SpiderMan was the finishing touch. :)

We have yet to see any real snow this winter--just flurries a couple mornings--so I transformed our biggest window into a snow scene with paper snowflakes, pulled cotton, and white trees. 

It looks prettiest at night, and surprisingly, after an initial sniffing of it, Stuffed has left it alone. :)

Christmas Day's breakfast was a simple but pretty little feast of cinnamon rolls and an egg casserole, with the usual coffee and orange juice for Mike and iced tea for me. Aqua felt right this Christmas morning, and I had just enough aqua things to doll up our table for the meal. 

My younger brother gave me the lace snowflake tablecloth for Christmas last year. 

The aqua heart dish is a wedding present from my dear friend Vickie; Sunday it contained a love note for Mike. 

Mom found us the aqua knit-looking "Warm Wishes" mugs last year. 

(Ah! And you can also finally see how I've fixed up the little Hoosier cabinet-top I found on craigslist last fall. The base of the "new" hutch was the bottom-part of a bookshelf I took apart with a saw before we moved out of our old apartment in July, and the two pieces fit together just the way I'd envisioned. I keep all my baking supplies and spices in the top and pots and pans in the bottom. We will soon be adding our just-received-for-Christmas Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, and "Seinfeld" Trivia games to our stack of games on the very top. It's not "done" yet, but I love this little corner of the apartment.) :)

Christmas night's meal was the traditional red and green, and after eating, we managed to watch a couple Christmas shows and read a little before fatigue caught up with us and we went to bed.

The more sleep-deprived of the two of us, I spent most of today napping in the bedroom and then falling asleep reading while Mike watched movies in the living room, but it was another relaxing night at home with him and Stuffed tonight. 'Back to work for Mike tomorrow, but I have a couple more days off, so we still have a lot more time together this week than we usually do. A sweet and happy first Christmas together.   ♥

Val Home

"Val home" was written on my mom's calendar twice! in the past month, as I got to see family both for a belated Thanksgiving and an early Christmas, and now Mike and I will be spending our first Christmas--AND Christmas Eve AND day after Christmas!--together here in our cozy apartment. It is partly due to the nostalgic time of year and partly "just Val," but I have been near tears with gratitude and awareness of my blessings this past month with its happy chaos of family-visiting, package-mailing, card-writing, ornament-making, and gift-hiding. Have you heard Tom McRae's heartbreakingly lovely version of "Wonderful Christmastime"? ♫ "We're here tonight. And that's enough." ♫ I have had that and Wham's "Last Christmas", another favorite, on repeat-play this week. (And did you also catch my dear George Michael's statement to the press on the news today? He has just been released from the hospital following a month-long stay for pneumonia. He is another favorite of mine, the voice of an angel, so note that I have added "George Michael alive and home for Christmas" to my growing list of Things Big and Small Making Val Weepy This Week.) It is my first Christmas ever spent without my family, but I have learned that Christmas (and Thanksgiving) and home and loved ones are things you carry with you, work schedules and distance and time apart be damned.

Mike gets out of work in just a few minutes, so soon he will join me back in our cinnamon-scented nest where I am now mixing up another batch of salt dough to make more ornaments and finalizing my grocery list before I head over to the store. Tree-purchasing and tree-trimming tonight--this is the latest I have ever gotten a Christmas tree, but so be it, and we will just leave it up through January to make up for it--Chinese food-eating and ornament-painting later tonight, and the rest of the weekend will be spent baking, cooking, and celebrating. ♥Christmas!♥ And all this rare free time with my Mike!! ♥Home!♥ 'Much more to say and share, but in the meantime, I do hope you all enjoy peace and love these holidays, as well.

♥ "Love is a force
more formidable
than any other.
It is invisible --
it cannot be seen or measured,
yet it is powerful enough
to transform you in a moment,
and offer you more joy
than any material possession could." ♥
~ Barbara DeAngelis
  

Pink and White and Heart-Filled Thanksgiving

Mike and I had our Thanksgiving together Sunday afternoon. Turkey breast, sausage (for him), a mushroom-stuffing dish we always make, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, Boston Brown Bread, dinner rolls (for him), and Apple Crumb Pie and maple-walnut fudge for dessert. Everything turned out good, and we had enough for two suppers and a couple snacks and lunches. 

 We are blessed and thankful.

I did the table in pink and white with our owl, pine cone, acorns, leaves--and framed wedding cake topper, since it is our first Thanksgiving as husband and wife--as decorations. :) 

I am always finding and being gifted with heart-shaped dishes, and they were put to good use this pink and white and heart-filled Thanksgiving. A couple more hearts are candy bowls on our side table and coffee table.

We watched Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, a favorite movie, and then read and finished addressing Thanksgiving cards and just enjoyed a quiet night at home together. 'No word on the position I'd applied for in August, so it seems this is not meant to be Year o' New Job for me and that Mike's and my opposite work schedules will continue, but that only makes us appreciate the time we do get to have together that much more. We are blessed to have each other and to both have jobs and all that we do have, and we know it, and we say our thanks.   Much love and happy Thanksgiving to you all.

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

On Veterans Day, I am thinking of Dad, who served in Vietnam with my mom's big brother. Dad and Uncle Dan lived in the same Air Force barracks and became good friends. Uncle Dan mentioned to my mom in a letter home that a guy he was serving with was lonely and would appreciate some mail. Mom and Dad remained pen pals throughout Dad's entire time in the service. When Dad came home after his required four years, he and Mom got married--and celebrated their 41st wedding anniversary two weeks ago. Uncle Dan, who also made it home safely, still reminds them from time to time that they can thank him for their marriage. That is a happy Vietnam story, and yes, we can all thank Uncle Dan. There are other things to thank him and my dad for, as well, of course, although "thank you" is too little in comparison with years of sacrifice, lost friends, and the dark nights and nightmares. 

My grandmother once told me something her brother Al had recounted to his family about his experiences in the army in World War I, and it still gives me chills. Uncle Al and the men in his unit were lying in wait on a hillside, still in the silence and straining to hear any movement, when they suddenly saw a line of what Grandma described to me as plumes marching over the hill toward them. Uncle Al had explained that the German soldiers at that time wore helmets with a distinctive spike or plume on top and later told his family that he had never been as terrified as he was in that moment, seeing that line of helmet-tops appear. Uncle Al also came home safely. One of his daughters, likely now in her seventies, proudly sent me his army photo above when I asked years ago.

My grandfather's youngest brother's war was World War II, where he served in the Marine Corp. Amongst the lifetime of personal papers, photographs, and paper ephemera of my grandparents' that my parents and I long ago had to sort through was a yellowed wall calendar with a note written onto one day's square marking Uncle Mike's departure for boot camp. Uncle Mike lived into his 80s.

A favorite old Veterans Day comic strip from Lynn Johnston:
(click to enlarge)

  

Dad and Uncle Dan and Uncle Al and Uncle Mike--and Uncle Warren, who served in the Navy, and Great-Grandpa, who was an Italian POW during the first World War, and Papa Lee, who was one of the helmsmen of the USS Wasp--and veterans everywhere: Thank you and happy Veterans Day.  ♥

Window Perch

I recently bought Stuffed a new collar and updated tags for our new address. His Christmas-in-October present that he loves most, though, is his window perch. I'd wanted to hang it in our combined dining/living room, but there wasn't enough wall-space, so Stuffed now has a perch in the bathroom window and will soon have another in the bedroom. Those are the better spots anyway as he can watch the neighbors' backyards and more birds, squirrels, people, falling leaves, and overall action from those views. It is a little thing, this perch, but a little thing that makes him quite happy. Having never moved with a pet before, I was worried in August when we first moved in here since Stuffed seemed so disoriented by it, so to see him happier now that he's found some of his own favorite spots in our new home is quite a relief to me. 

~You Fill My Head All Full of Rainbows~

I actually choked up a bit late last night when I learned that my beloved Robert Smith and the Cure will be performing in New York City three nights over Thanksgiving weekend. I have wanted to see them in concert for so long. Their "Halo" is one of my favorite songs, and that and other Cure tunes have been a big part of the soundtrack of my twenties and thirties. I have the time off of my work and could have afforded the trip or the hotel or the show but wouldn't be able to justify throwing what little money I have at all three, even if it would make for an awesome experience. I lived in New York City while a New York University grad student in the fall term of 2000, haven't been back since the fall of 2002, and have been aching to be in the city again. And to see the Cure! And to get away for a weekend! Thanksgiving weekend! My heart breaks a bit at the thought of missing out on all this, but it is just not meant to be right now.

Their gorgeous "Halo," the words and melody of which will just forever epitomize dizzying first love and true love and summertime and friendship to me:

"Lovesong":

And, of course, "Friday I'm in Love":
They have just been nominated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and I'm sure those who do get to see them in a few weeks will give them the applause of a lifetime.  Alas, I will just go have to go heavy on the eyeliner Robert Smith-style that weekend and dance around the apartment with Stuffed instead. ;) 

Green Gingham Kitchen Window

"Red check gingham seems to have
the same affinity for a kitchen
that red Geraniums have.
Blue. . .is equally friendly.
Green is very agreeable
and too rarely used."
~ from a 1922 House and Garden magazine

We have just one window in our tiny new kitchen, but it is window enough, especially as our last apartment had none. My favorite home from my childhood had the classic Window Over the Kitchen Sink, but in this home, the kitchen window is above the apartment-size stove. That's okay too. Accustomed--or resigned, depending on how full I'm seeing my glass on any given day--to small apartment kitchens, to have one now that I can move around in at all, let alone one with a brand new even-if-apartment-size stove, and then to get to have a window over that stove in that kitchen too--A window! A kitchen window!--is just a sweet and exciting thing.

I knew before we'd even found our new apartment this summer that I wanted green gingham--a bold vintage-looking Kelly green gingham, not a sage or celery or mint or pine--in the new kitchen. I didn't expect it to be so hard to find. After a fruitless search for fabric in the right shade of green, I did manage to find the vintage skirt above. It was the color I wanted, and I soon started transforming it into kitchen curtains. It was a shame to have to destroy the skirt, though: Look at that ruffle! Picture that skirt with a black turtleneck and black knee-high boots! Ay! It hurt to cut into it.

I had to abandon plans of a cafe curtain for the bottom due to a limited amount of the skirt fabric and instead fill in the middle with an old dotted Swiss-type lace from Mike's mom, but there was, after much sewing and hot-gluing, enough of the skirt to patch it all into a valance and the bottom piece, and I love the curtains now. They are obviously handmade and have all kinds of little flaws, but I love them, and they suit our simple little kitchen.  I want to bring my little cardboard house collection back from my parents' place next visit to perch on top of the frame above the valance, and I have a stained glass piece in mind for the window pane so we can continue to have the natural light but also a bit more privacy in the kitchen, but in the meantime--and until spring when the next-door neighbors use their fire escape/deck area again--this is our kitchen window. One more puzzle-piece of our home's now snapped into place. And someday, I'll find--or make--another green gingham skirt. :)

Fall Leaves and Frog Stickers: My Pen Pal, Aunt Laurie

My sweet aunt Laurie is one of my favorite people, and she and I have been exchanging cards, letters, and other little "love notes" through the mail since I was a kid. The photo above is of our November correspondence from last year--she always makes collages and includes them with her letters, and I pass along pretty fall leaves that I know she'll appreciate. Her Halloween card, collage, and letter in response to my own arrived in Monday's mail, and although I just saw her in July for my brother's wedding, her words made me miss her even more than I already did. I have been missing my family a lot lately, as I had told her in my letter, and I wish I could be in at least three places at once. "I'd love to just appear at your door and offer some dinner and hugs," she wrote in Monday's letter. "'Sending hugs through the mail."

When my best friend died in 1995, Aunt Laurie was having a traumatic week of her own with one of her children, and I sent her a card a couple days after my friend's death to check in with her and to send love to my cousin. "Oh how I wish I could hold you and tell you everything will be okay," her letter back began. It is one of the things I remember verbatim from the haze of those first few weeks without my friend.

Knowing how I love holidays and seasonal meals, Aunt Laurie added an illustration to her Christmas letter's collage a few years ago of a woman studying a cookbook titled 10 Festive Meals You Can Make with Canned Peas. It still makes me laugh. :)

Aunt Laurie's a lover of all things Victorian, lacy, and pretty.

She writes poetry, loves to take nature walks and sew, and makes amazing Civil War reenactment costumes.

She is more than a little psychic and has amazingly vivid spiritual dreams. The pictures she takes often have orbs of light in them.  

She is soft-spoken--a bit Jackie Kennedy-ish--speaks slowly, and has a way of seemingly moving in slow motion, as well.  Her handwriting has the same almost-fragile quality. She has gentle brown "doe eyes" but can only be pushed so far before proving she's tougher than she appears.

She likes peanut butter and doesn't like chocolate. She sometimes drinks tea but adores coffee. She loves doughnuts but tries not to eat them since my uncle is always watching his weight and is too easily tempted. Her homemade bread is to die for--light and sweet loaves that come to loved ones covered in pretty dish towels.

She wraps presents beautifully. Her Christmas package is the biggest treat, since there are always linen snowflake doilies as package decorations, lovely fabric ribbons and rick rack with tree ornaments tied into the curled trims.

Her favorite color is green. When I was little, I told my mom we should start collecting something green for Aunt Laurie, and Mom asked what I thought we should collect for her. All I could think of that was green was frogs--poor Aunt Laurie!--so ever since, it has frogs and frog-related things for her. When her times are hard, I am sure to mention that "It's not easy being green," and "Have I toad you lately that I love you?" candy boxes have been known to appear in her mailbox on Valentine's Day.

She is the only person in my family who calls me "Valerie" instead of "Val."

She lives in a gorgeous old white farmhouse with her husband of 42 years and one of my cousins, she loves to garden, she gets a kick out of gnomes, and Lily of the Valley is her favorite flower.

The first gift I remember ever receiving from her was a lavender unicorn-covered diary I got for Christmas in the third grade. I still have it. For my birthday last May, she took me and my mom out for breakfast and presented me with a Rose afterward. While I was home in July, she threw me a mini bridal shower in the dining room with my mom and cousins present.

Aunt Laurie hates to be called "cute," always envisioning herself more like a sexy Ann-Margret, of whom she used to keep scrapbooks. (Aunt Laurie was thrilled when I performed in my high school's production of Bye Bye Birdie, and she and Mom reminisced all that spring about the songs and movies from their own high school years.) Aunt Laurie really is adorable, though, and even now that she is retired and has a granddaughter in high school, she still gets called "Honey" and "Sweetie" and "Sweetheart" by sales clerks and other strangers and has that air about her that makes people want to pinch her cheeks and cuddle her.

She lived across the street from my family for a few years while I was growing up, and I remember one Christmas, my mom, my cousins, and I were sitting in her living room while my mom read some silly magazine personality quiz to Aunt Laurie. "You want to go Christmas caroling with the neighbors," my mom read aloud, "but you know your singing voice isn't the greatest. Do you A.) go anyway or B.) stay home?" "Well, shoot, I'd go!" my aunt cried out in a surprisingly indignant tone, shocking my mom and making us all laugh at her unexpected response. "What do I care what they think? They don't have to like it!" It is probably twenty-five years since that conversation and I still can't hear mention of Christmas caroling without remembering Aunt Laurie's uncharacteristic outburst (and her younger sister's surprise at her boldness) and smiling.

When I was twenty years old, I mentioned during one visit that I had a small success to report. I had finally stopped biting my nails, was all, but before I could go on to explain that, Aunt Laurie quietly said, "Ah! That's good, Valerie. Small successes are good." :) She was proud of me for losing a lot of weight a few years ago but was happier to hear that I was happy and loving my life again after a number of years of not loving it very much at all. "Oh, Valerie, that's WONDERFUL!" I can hear her exclaim at every mention of something that I'm excited about.

Neither she nor I can easily stop laughing once we get started, and Aunt Laurie starts slapping her knee when she really gets going, which makes everything even funnier. In 2003, the subject of hair dyes came up while she, Mom, and I were hanging out looking at magazines over tea and coffee, and I mentioned that when Marilyn Monroe had been asked if she minded that people thought she was dumb because she was blonde, she had responded, "No, because I know I'm not dumb. I also know I'm not really blonde." Aunt Laurie loved that, being a brunette-turned-blonde herself, and laughed and laughed.

She adored her grandparents, has been with my uncle since high school, and is best friends with my mom, who rightfully calls her "Lovey."
 
Although there are phone calls and visits, as well, it is the letters that have kept us close over the years, each parcel of news and magazine clippings and recipes and dreams and quotes and fall leaves and frog stickers tying our ties a little tighter. My pen pal since childhood, Aunt Laurie can always be counted on to stay in touch, and that is no small thing to say about someone. Her jack-o-lantern-covered Halloween mail is smiling at me from a bookshelf this morning, and this year's November mail will soon be winging its way across the state to her, Kermit the Frog Macy's Thanksgiving Day Day Parade float pictures gracing the envelope. :)