Inside and Outside

Temperatures reached 88°F here yesterday, and since I had started my walk too late in the afternoon, I managed just three miles in the blazing sun before feeling too sick and shivery to continue.  (I passed at least three women pushing babies in strollers and more than a few runners, though, so I have to wonder--as I always do when the tempeatures are this high--if I'm just not sturdy stock.  Babies!  Runners!  In what felt like 90+° heat!  Goodness.)  After returning here for a rest in the air conditioning with an iced tea, I felt good enough to head out for The Walk:  Part II , but by then, it was almost time for Mike to get home from work and I still had to run out for groceries for our supper, so three miles my tally remained.  The days have been glorious this past week, and the nights have been windy with rumbling thunder and lightning like flashbulbs that we see even with closed eyes while we try to fall asleep.  (I just remembered Eddie Rabbitt's 1980s hit "I Love a Rainy Night" and looked it up online only to learn that he died on my birthday back in 1998.  I don't remember hearing about that at all.  Cheers on yet another stormy night this week to Mr. Rabbitt.)  One of this week's walks included the seeking and finding of one of  the country's only remaining wood-bricked streets.  If one of the sweet old brick homes on this little cul-de-sac were available and I had the means to make it happen, I'd be packing moving boxes right now, let me tell you.  It's a charming spot in the city, and examining the wooden blocks that make up its street has been one of the quiet pleasures of this week.  

I have been deliberately and most-obviously cutting back on the time I spend online--you all are in my thoughts and prayers even if I'm not in your comment boxes and email inboxes lately  ♥--and recalibrating how I spend my days so that there is a better balance of fresh air and miles walked and quiet time (reading, napping, writing, puttering around the apartment, etc.) and social time.  Both my personality and my paid work always find me somehow taking care of others, and I am feeling healthier and more content now that I've made taking care of myself more of a priority this spring.  Laundry-doing, email-and-comment-sending, and letter-writing have temporarily fallen by the wayside as I get into new routines and better habits in other areas.  As I've said before, this self-nurturing bit seems to be one of my most-revisited life lessons, and although it's now taken me almost my entire first forty years to figure it out, at least I'm figuring it out.  :)  I had the sweetest dream a few weeks ago that I decided to drive down to my grandparents' house for a surprise visit.  Grandma and I greeted and hugged each other so joyfully, it still makes me smile.  "Oh!  I should do this more often!"  I squealed when I realized how happy this impromptu visit was making us.  "I should have been doing this all along!"  While she and I were catching up with each other in the kitchen, I looked out the window and saw Papa building a giant bee box in their side yard.  (He was a beekeeper [in real life].)  That was really all there was to the dream, but the feeling of it and my gratitude for it have remained with me almost a month later,  both because it was a rare happy dream of my grandparents and because it gave me a taste of the peace and nurturing I've been cultivating here, one steamy mile and one steamy bowl of oatmeal at a time.  

 

 

3 Good Meals and 8 Miles a Day: 37

Spring arrived with better health and a renewed commitment to it.  Two months later, I've lost eight pounds and have only forgotten my daily vitamin twice.  My breakfasts have become a routine of oatmeal, yogurt, and berries.  My tax refund bought me two new pairs of walking shoes, one for my "real" walks and one for my walks to/from work.  I have been keeping up with both my journal and my food/health diary.  (The food/health diary usually falls by the wayside.)  Heart-healthy raspberries, dark chocolate, oatmeal, and red grapes are now weekly purchases.  (I know red wine is good for the heart, but I've never liked the taste of alcohol, so I will stick with heart-friendly groceries instead.)  I realized the local marathon will fall exactly on my 40th birthday in May 2017--the city holds it on the first Sunday in May every year, and in 2017, that will be May 7th--and have decided to dedicate these last three years of my 30s to training for it:  I have enough time to get back into shape and to become a long-distance runner, and after having already suffered-though/completed two half marathons on no training, I have faith that with proper preparation, I can finish a full.  Walking in the meantime, then, and running again by year's end, I'm thinking.  More water and tea.  My beloved Diet Cherry Pepsi as a treat and not an almost-staple.  Talking things out with Mom and Aunt Laurie instead of keeping my thoughts bottled-up.  Making the time to write.  'Am now a third of the way through my first effort at a children's book.  Today's birthday cake was a single-serving dark chocolate one with cream cheese frosting and more dark chocolate chips, based loosely on this recipe.  (Mike enjoyed a slice of cheesecake and some cookie dough ice cream.)  Tonight was Taco Night.  It included an ice-cold  Diet Cherry Pepsi.  This past week has been filled with visits and messages from family and friends.  Life is quiet and sweet and good.  ♥

When I made a second trip to the grocery store this afternoon to pick up my forgotten-this-morning birthday candles, the cashier ringing me up asked who was turning 73.  "It's 37," I said.  "They're for me."  The cashier and bagger both goggled at me and said in unison, "You're 37?!"  The cashier said I don't look it and that she'd have guessed  25.  THANK you!  The bagger said something like, "You wear it well."  And thank YOU, young man!  The cashier then started singing "Happy Birthday" to me, and she and Young Bagger Boy both wished me a happy birthday.  This was undoubtedly one of 2014's sweetest epsiodes.  ♥  A friend told me in 2003 that I look young but wouldn't appreciate it until I was 40, and today, at 37, I know that he was right.  As ever, aging fascinates and amuses me.  I feel quite blessed by the entire process. 

The green Holly Hobbie birthday tablecloth is actually a section of vintage fabric I'd set aside to finish the side of the wing chair with, and onto the chair it will soon go, but it only seemed fitting to use it first as a tablecloth today and infuse it with this happy time and all these sweet memories.  Oh, 37!  I am loving it so much already.  ♥

Dite, dite, Hodey. :)

I mentioned back in 2011 how much the following Sunday newspaper comic by Lynn Johnston made me and my parents laugh when we first read it.  The next-to-last panel's line has become something Mom, Dad, and I say to each other when one of us is sick and stuffed-up.  When I called them the other night, I told them about the horrible cold I've been suffering from this past week--as if they couldn't tell from my voice--but I forgot to sign off with our catchphrase until I was wrapping up a quick note home to them this morning.  While I recover here, please enjoy one of our favorite cartoons.  ♥ 

♥

At Mom and Dad's

My work schedule and my mom's work schedule magically coincided last week and we ended up having all the same days off, so I took a bus home and got to spend a rare four February days with her and Dad.  While my motion sickness wore off last Monday night, I sat in the window booth Dad built a few years ago and unpacked a bag of Honeycrisp apples for him and a foil pan of gluten-free cinnamon rolls for Mom. 

Usually my visits home are much shorter, so Mom and I find ourselves staying up much later than we usually would in order to have more time together.  This visit, that wasn't the case, so we were in bed by ten every night, better for me since I've been making quite an effort to take better care of myself lately, and better for her Mom since her Lyme disease tremors were troubling her the entire time I was home and they ease up a bit when she's resting.  Likewise, a visit the next night with my younger brother and his wife and baby was a bit short since the baby was suffering from her first cold, and what was to have been a Wednesday dinner with my older brother and his family was cancelled when he called to say he and his wife were sick.  It was an even more leisurely four days at home for me, Mom, and Dad, then, which meant more rest for everyone, all-around. 

Mom's been redoing the kitchen, which has alternated between blue gingham and red gingham my entire life.  This winter, it is red gingham with creamy butter-yellow walls.  The booth above is the one Dad made for her and is one of my bird-watching spots when I'm home.  I haven't yet learned to use the zoom feature on my new camera, but even without it, I could sit at this window and get good shots of Chickadees, my favorite birds, in the Rhododendron bush, and I spent a good bit of time doing just that last week from the warmth of this gingham-windowed booth.

My parents moved into this house in the summer of 2003, so it's not the home where I grew up.  I gave up my apartment in 2003 and moved in with them here, though, while I finished graduate school and worked and re-built my savings after a few rough starts in my early twenties, so being in this little blue and red house always reminds me of that time in my life.  That's sometimes nice and sometimes not.  I was twenty-six when I had to move back in with them in 2003 and thirty when I moved out in 2007. . .a frustrating four years of having my own furniture and most of my own things stored in their basement and garage, of coming to understand that my ex was my ex and not yet knowing that my just-a-friend Mr. Mike would hold such a place in my future, and of struggling with school and depression while working toward getting back out on my own.  For a long time in those years, I thought that my parents' perennial gray-blue and red gingham would forever remind me of those sad times, but I wasn't gone long at all before I wished I could see Mom and Dad and their cute little house more frequently again, of course.  Such is life. 

I have told Mom many times that I can't look at her kitchen now without marveling at the fact that she and Aunt Laurie transformed it into such an airy pastel pink and green wonderland for Mike's and my anniversary party a few years ago.  She laughs every time I bring it up and just says it was fun for them.  It's been a joke between us since I was a kid that someday she would want to "be like me" and have pink everywhere--Picture me coming home from elementary school to find her wallpapering the kitchen in yet another Colonial blue print and yelling at her, "Aw, come on, Mom! Give up the blue and red, and try PINK!  Just think:  Pink roses and pink gingham and bright WHITE everywhere!  And we could work in some GREEN!  You should at least tryyyyyyyyyyyyy it!  You don't know--You might really LIKE it!"--so walking into our surprise anniversary party a few years ago and seeing Mom's kitchen and dining room finally in pink, white, and green was such a treat.  We laugh together every time the subject comes up.  ♥  

So many of these items in her collections were in the kitchens of my childhood too--The hen-on-nest-beside-red-milk-jug-against-fence wall hanging that's behind the hen shakers above was a piece we found together at a Ben Franklin store in the mid-1980s--but she is always finding and painting something new for her home too.  The nut didn't fall far from the tree, etcetera.   When Mom's in "Blue Mode," she repaints the milk jug in blue and brings out her blue Spatterware and copper mold collection.  When she's in "Red Mode," it is gingham and hens.  The adjoining dining room is almost always blue and filled with her Americana and tavern signs, though.  Every now and then, she'll move the pewter and Colonial things into the living room, but they always seem to find their way back out here.  

Dad built the corner cupboard below for her to store her cherished old Pfaltzgraff Yorktowne dishes in, and the collection is yet another thing that automatically, and forever and always, equals "Mom" to me. 

The red gingham wing chair in the photo at the top of this post was one I saw on eBay years ago.  Mom had been wanting one just like it for decades--she has magazine clippings from decorating magazines from the 1970s that show similar chairs--so even though the eBay seller mentioned in her listing that the chair was "local (Texas) pick-up only," I emailed her to beg her to be willing to ship the chair.  She kindly agreed--and that still delights me ♥--and I won the auction (as if I wouldn't, in this case, right!), my brothers and I divided the cost, my older brother drove to the local bus station to pick up the chair in his truck, and we somehow managed to surprise Mom with it on her birthday in 2006.  :)  

Giving Mom with this chair for her birthday that night is one of my favorite memories of all our times in this house and certainly of my four years living in it.  She moved it into this spot right away and sat down with my nephew, and these are the first two pictures I took that night.  ♥  And Mom and I both mailed thank you notes to the eBay seller for her kindness. 

Sweet, happy memories--and now this chubby little toddler is almost ten years old.  ♥  And the chair now has a skirt.  "Never too much gingham" is one decorating creed on which Mom and I agree.  :)

When I'm home next, for my birthday in May, the views from Mom and Dad's windows will be green, and the Cardinals, Woodpeckers, and Chickadees will be more than outnumbered by the buds on the Rhododendrons. 

 The snow on the hill outside their house will have melted to reveal the spring's first wildflowers.

And since Aunt Laurie and her family will also be in town next visit, coffee cake and homemade bread will likely be on the counter beside the cinnamon rolls covered in gingham dish cloths, Mom and Dad's TV will seem permanently set to a baseball game, and their blue and red house will smell of brewing coffee in between everyone's walks and fishing trips and flea market jaunts. 

In the meantime, February has turned to March, and we had our rare four winter days together.  And that, as Mom is known for saying about something she loves, is "not!  too!  shabby!"  ♥  

Thank you for all the health and all the experiences that I have lived. . . . ~ Carolina Kostner

The only event of this year's Olympic games that interested me enough to look up the TV schedule for it was the ladies' figure skating--the skating is the only winter event that ever seems to catch my interest, just as gymnastics used to be the one in the summer Olympics--and I found myself enchanted by one of the skaters:  Carolina Kostner.  One of her programs was performed to "Ave Maria."  It is hauntingly beautiful, and all I have read about Kostner's road to this Olympics has only made the performance more touching to me.  Apparently, she has battled injuries the past few years, fell a number of times during her programs in the 2010 Olympics, finishing in sixteenth place--prompting the satirical newspaper "The Onion" to post a headline earlier this week that described her needing to be rescued after falling through the ice this Olympics--and had decided after 2010 to retire from skating.  She took time off but eventually came back to it, deciding to return for the pure love of it, instead of thinking in terms of competitions, judges' scores, and others' expectations.  Kostner, in her "Ave Maria" performance above, reminds me of one of those miniature ballerinas inside a music box.  I have watched this over and over.  In an interview after this Olympics--in which she finally earned an Olympic medal, at the ripe "old" age of twenty-seven--she commented that the this lovely performance "felt almost like a prayer saying, 'Thank you for all the health and all the experiences that I have lived.'"  Ah!  ♥  I think it more than shows. 

Home Today

♥