summer days

We woke this morning and started the day in the usual boring way: household chores.

Then I went upstairs and put on my swimsuit (call the police) and stood at the top of the stairs and yelled we are going to the beach.  My children didn’t know if they should be horrified at me in my swimsuit or excited at the beach news.

Now they are running and grabbing stuff and changing and yelling.

And we are off!

PS Sean is from my daughter Hadley who is braving the TX heat and we wish she was going with us.  We miss you, Hadley!

worth every penny

Last year I bought a small cookbook called Picnics and Tailgates at a discount store and I find myself using it often.  I love every recipe I have tried.  Williams Sonoma put out several in a series and I was happy to see they are being sold used rather cheap.  Like a penny kind of cheap (.01).  I’m splurging on two for a whole two cents.

The chopped chicken salad is my favorite, I make it huge with three heads of lettuce as I like having the leftovers in the fridge all week for lunch.

Since we are talking about Williams Sonoma cookbooks I will tell you about a larger  one called Family Meals. It isn’t set up like a traditional cookbook but it has some great stuff in it. And the paper in it smells really good, I’m not sure why but it smells like good matte paper fresh from the printer.    I will be trying the blueberry jam recipe this weekend as today the kids and I picked 25 pounds of blueberries. 

We hadn’t been blueberry picking in years.  It used to take all day to pick 25 pounds and now that the kids are grown it only took a couple hours.

We are big fans of the kids book Blueberries for Sal and while Henry thought blueberry eating picking was mighty fun he was on the watch for bears…..

 

 

 

well color me terrific

Just a warning that I might fill this post with words but yet say nothing of importance.  I’m pretty good at that.  Can I just start off by saying thanks for reading me through another move… this might be our last military move as my husband may retire out of this assignment.  Surely I just jinxed that. But we mustn’t dwell on the what ifs, only the what-is and the what-is is exactly what I want to write about.

This house we bought has equal parts good and bad, it would be easy to just blog about the good and never let you know about the blue floors and such.  Maybe it will help you think your house isn’t so bad. 

The good:  open and airy front entry

The bad: um…smurfy floor

Of course I’m a sucker for any room with bookcases, and I can even overlook their blueness but what stinks (and I mean stinks) is the whole room.  It smells like dogs really bad.   I have scrubbed and mopped and sprayed and just when it seems to smell better we will have a dark rainy day day and the smell comes eeking back in.  It overpowers the old book smell (good smell) and zings our nostrils with wet dirty dog smell (bad smell).

The good: big vintage bathroom

The bad: big vintage bathroom

A woman recently stopped by, she was raised here.  She said they are same bathroom fixtures from the 1940’s.  She thought this was great.  Me? Not so much.

 

The good:  There is a great room added by the last owners, it is huge and sunny.

The bad:  The only entry to this room is through another 1940’s bathroom.  And like you couldn’t guess the color of the carpet.

It is so silly to me that they did all that work and you have to go through the bathroom to get there.

There is a long list of stuff we need to do but I think we are up to the challenge.  The big stuff has been done like all new windows, septic and heating system.  The bathrooms are at the top of our list, and trust me I can’t wait!

Did you learn anything today? 

Good: peaches

Bad: blue countertops

Got some house quirks of your own?  Please share!

gentle

It often seems that all us humans rush around doing this and that.  It seems like we are in search of something whether it’s that perfect vase at the home store or a certain kind of shampoo.  We waste half the day in transit.  I always wonder what it is we are looking for because deep inside I know it’s not the vase or shampoo. 

As I age I realize what I’m looking for is within myself.  It’s right here.  A little bit of happy solace.  It really doesn’t take much.

A few moments to sit with an open window and realize the birds are chirping, that dinner can wait, that everyone is okay. 

I can obsess about everything that needs doing… and often I do, but I am learning to reckon with these rare moments when I can just sit and listen to the sounds of my life.  

I have a little room in this house that beckons me each day to sit a minute.  I love the oldness of it.  It feels like a woman from the 1800’s was just in here sewing by the window. 

It feels gentle, like only happy thoughts must be thought. 

Molly and I sat and made loom potholders on one of those red toy looms.  We spoke to each other and after a time just sat in the quiet and wove those little nylon bands over and over until my fingers were cramped.

Someday when the kids are grown and my husband has relegated himself to having a huge belly and reading three newspapers a day I will miss these days of having to find quiet.  It seems a far away thought, but having brought my oldest to the airport on Thursday to fly far away because she is a grown-up and has an exciting life of her own, really makes me realize how fast time goes by.  Too fast….much too fast!

How do you spend your “me-time”? 

Happy weekend to you!

yesterday

A long time ago while we were still in Texas (yee haw) I bought three tickets to a July Red Sox game for my husband’s birthday.  If I can say so myself I will say it was a stupendous gift as for months my husband and two of our kids talked about their upcoming Fenway game.  It was an exciting thing to talk about and it helped these two particular kids with the umph to move away from their happy Texan lives.

So yesterday was game day.  It started pouring in the afternoon.  I drove them to the base on the edge of Boston to meet my husband and catch the base’s  outdoor rec bus to the stadium.  It was still raining hard  as my husband changed his shirt in the parking lot in front of the whole busload of people. (He doesn’t really have any chest hair to speak of which is funny as he is kind of old but is A-okay with me as we used to have a neighbor that was hairy like an ape and when I was pregnant and saw him mowing his lawn shirtless it made me nauseous.) 

I drove away with the two youngest kids and took all kinds of wrong turns and actually drove by the same base gate 3x  within 1 hour.  I get lost everyday and it is really wearing at my nerves.  But this isn’t a story about that but I will mention that I stopped at TJ Maxx in the rain and found a lovely Italian carpet which is magnifico.

But yes the game didn’t start for two hours b/c of rain and to make this story short (too late) I will say that my husband and children stayed until the game ended at 2:00 am (seriously, that is the true time the game ended) and rode the bus to the base and drove in our yard at 4:00 am.  Then my husband woke at 6:30 am and went to work for 12 hours.  That means he slept 2.5 hours in case you aren’t so great at mathematics or as my British friends say, numeracy.

Maggie was really excited to go to the game (she loves the Red Sox and especially the Celtics).  This is why she is a gem because she is a very girly girl and did her hair for 2 hours before the game.

But then it rained and rained but she was okay with it because she bought a trucker style Red Sox hat (I don’t like that style, FYI) and wore it crooked like a rap star.  Everyone was rowdy (she says) and she told me all the stuff my husband yelled, some of it was funny (some of it wasn’t).  She boogied and twice got on the big screen (says her brother).  My husband also danced and got on the big screen, it was his regular dance of slight hip sways and pointing fingers (says both his children).   At around midnight I saw my husband on the television while I was eating chopped dates and shredded wheat. 

That is the end of my story.  It is all strange but true.

PS After 14 innings the Red Sox lost.

 

when the kitchen feels like home

After dinner as I looked around my cluttered kitchen I expected to feel frustrated at the whatnot that is collecting on the countertops.  All those items that have made it out of the boxes but have no real home yet.  Instead of frustration I realized things are coming together.  This kitchen with it’s almost ugly wallpaper is my kitchen?  I made a humungous salmon fillet with a thick coating of fresh garlic and the smell in the kitchen will clear your sinuses- in a good way.  Is there any better way to break in a kitchen other than pungent garlic and fish?

The dishes are in the cupboards.

The hen is on her perch above the door.

The sheep are herded on the sill with a spider plant baby from my mother.

Best of all there is a small child in the sink.

It definitely feels like home!

The things you tried not to think about for 17 years

Things are settling down and this house is starting to feel like our house.  Everyday gets better and better and truthfully I contemplate a little guilt for my happiness.  I’m really so very happy.  It feels strange to live in a place that I want to live, a place I could easily live the rest of my life. 

We live in New Hampshire, in a quaint old village.  Our house was built in 1820 and is nestled amongst other old rambling houses.  We can walk to the library and general store but have enough land to have some hens and an animal or two.

As with all our moves there has been stress and truth be told our house is in need of some updating.  I overheard my daughter describe this house to her friend as 1800 meets 1983.  But the stress and drama is short lived as the sky is blue and the grass is green.  And the little babbling brook in the back has mossy rocks and an abundance of ferns growing alongside it.

I don’t have any good pictures as I’ve been lazy about the camera.  But soon!

Instead I will tell you it’s really nice to think about extended family and picnics and how to spend the weekend with them.  And about how I can trade magazines with my mother and how  I told my brother I will help him inventory all his horse tack in the barn.  These are such nice things.

I took this picture of my mother and her brother from her house and promised up and down that I will bring it back.  And I will.  I will drive the 1.5 hours and hand it right to her, because I can!

My mother is the cutest little lady and Unc J though you are so gosh darn cute in this picture I just want to tell you don’t stand so close to the hind quarters again as it makes me nervous.

Hopefully my blog will be back to normal soon with less ranting about wild ferns and more serious life stuff like what I made with Martha glitter and how my oldest threw her retainer out into the grossest bag of garbage ever.

Tootleloooooo!