Big red Victorian
It’s gorgeous. It’s a B&B. Been in the family for a while. I think it’s the most beautiful house in the world.
This photo was taken in 6-ish inches of snow on Thanksgiving day last week. What a great day that was. Lord, how I love snow.
The Tree
OMFG! YULETIDE SCORE!
I just came home from work after picking up Owen at daycare? And I smelled pine right when I walked in the door? And in my living room is THE BIGGEST CHRISTMAS TREE EVER! At least ten feet tall!
Holy crap, he must really love me. *faints from excitement*
Turkey. Family. Snow. I’m in a much better mood now.
We’re back! Exhausted but happy.
We traveled about 1100 miles total, all but 250 of those with me driving. We saw a bluezillion family members, with stops in Pittsburgh, Corry PA, and northwest Ohio. The weather was brutal but beautiful — maybe a foot of snow, total, in boonietown [and you know they don’t got time to plow]. We got stuck behind a horse and buggy in the snow — it was like an Amish traffic jam.
Owen soiled two grocery bags full of bibs, got his first taste of Diet Caffeine Free Pepsi and slept like an absolute angel. He warmed the cockles of everybody’s heart with his toothy grin and big blue eyes and cheerful demeanor. He was passed around like a parcel and showered with love and attention. I think we can all agree that he is the best baby in the world, and that I’m awful darn spoiled with such a wonderful child.
He went off of table food this week, which I kept trying to tell him was a really stupid time to drink four or five bottles a day instead. Didn’t he know there was delicious turkey to be tasted? Four kinds of pie, three kinds of bread, five kinds of vegetables, plus green bean casserole? He wanted none of it. Guess what he did deign to eat? Cheese. And. Crackers. Is he his momma’s son or what?
I didn’t want to leave. I had SUCH a good time. The older I get, especially now that Iain and I have a child, the more I realize how important it is to me to be close to our families.
I want to write a new chapter in America’s social history. Remember suburbanization and then, after that, re-urbanization? Gentrification? I want my generation — the young 20-somethings, 30-somethings — to move back to the dying small towns and revitalize them. No more “brain drain,” when the best and brightest move far away to the big city. We’ll move back, get involved in local politics, turn the dead and crumbling Main Streets into workable economic districts again, reestablish the family bonds that snap and break from all this moving and condo-buying and job-hopping. America is living in a very disconnected way right now, and we spurn those “losers” who never leave the towns they grew up in, as if that were a flaw in its own right. We live our little disjointed lives, never really knowing our neighbors, feeling stressed out and empty.
Maybe it does take a village to raise a child, you know? And it’s up to us to make an effort to rebuild that village.
I don’t know. I think there are some values our parents and grandparents held that, instead of seeming terribly narrow-minded and outdated, could actually be seen in a progressive, anti-consumerist, grassroots kind of way. Reject the McDonaldsization of America and reclaim life lived on a local level.
I’m feeling very philosophical. The above three paragraphs could probably be an entry in their own right, because I think there’s a lot more to be said and discussed, and they don’t have a whole lot to do with my Thanksgiving Report. However, I have to get ready for work and Owen is going to wake up from his nap soon, so more on all that later.
It’s country music time
We’re gonna head down that red dirt road tomorrow — the Pennsylvania Turnpike — for a boot-stomping Thanksgiving in the backwoods boonies of P.A., where men are men, women are women and children play with rifles before they learn how to read.
Of course you know I’m talking about holiday time with Iain’s family, where we drive up to great-grandma’s house and compare tractors and paintball guns, muck around at “the camp,” eat some home cookin’ and play some penny-ante poker.
Great-grandma’s house is a barn, renovated in the 1970s and once featured in a homes and gardens magazine. It has a great twirling staircase and lots of stuffed animals — the taxonomical variety, not the plush variety — and wood paneling and decorations featuring pheasants and squirrels. Hanging on the wall is a wooden family tree, with beads and blocks stenciled with the names of Grandma Millie’s sons and daughters-in-law and grand-children and their spouses.
I have not merited a bead yet. Maybe one day, but not yet.
Iain’s uncles, Lou’s brothers, are usually around, in flannel shirts and aviator glasses and mustaches. One uncle, with a ponytail down his back and several outstanding warrants in the county, stops in briefly. I’ve never spoken to him before and to be honest, I’m a tiny bit afraid of him. He shoots bears. For relaxation.
There are usually half a dozen children running around; I can’t keep up with their names, much less pin down their lineages. Which is a nice way of saying I don’t know who or whose they are. But they’ll give Owen someone to play with in addition to his first cousins, the brothers Steele, who will be there as well.
There’s always snow up there this time of year, blanketing the pickups, and Super Alert Weather Dopp PredictoCast is calling for, no shit, three feet of lake-effect snow. *gulp*
This is our first Thanksgiving back in boonietown since before Owen was born. I’m excited for him to meet his great-grandma Millie and scattered relations. I’m kind of sappily happy to take him up to the camp, which is a couple hundred acres of the ancestral homeland hidden deep within Amish country. He’ll be inheriting it many decades from now, long after the cherry trees we’re gonna plant have grown, just in time to log them all and rake in the big bucks. [It’s not a 401k, but it’s something].
Also, Grandma Millie cooks a kickass turkey dinner. I’m talkin’ country style. Full on lard. Dee-fucking-licious.
So battle the traffic we shall, with good ol’ Garth and Charlie and Johnny and Willie and Waylon and me. Wish us luck.
Red delicious
Owen, you keep me going.
M.A.S.H.
Cause Jeffy told me I had to: [They have to be places I have actually been to.]
5 Favorite Cities
1) Baltimore: I love the scene
2) Chicago: Oy, the shopping, the neighborhoods, the El
3) New York: A million stories on a million faces
4) Ann Arbor: Coolest little town in Michigan
5) Pittsburgh: Museums and living at just the right price
5 Cities I would live in
1) Baltimore: Just a mile or two and I’m there
2) Pittsburgh: Grandparents just down the pike a piece [in either direction]
3) Chicago: Maybe Owen could learn that adorable South Side accent
4) Detroit: Close enough to everything I’d want to go to, crime enough to keep me cozy at home
5) Columbus: Some of my best friends are Ohioans
5 Least Favorite Cities
1) Washington, D.C.: A web of pissed-off people in my way, and atrocious housing prices
2) Philadelphia: It was frightening, and I can’t put my finger on why
3) Tampa, FL: Holy Christ there are ALLIGATORS on the sidewalk.
4) OK, I’m running out of cities
5) For reals, I don’t travel much.
Tag, you’re it! Linky-doo back to me. It’s like the purse meme, only you don’t have to take pictures.
Snap out of it!
I told this guy at work that I was a whiny bitch this week, and it’s kind of true. I’ve also been very depressed. No reason, just am.
But I’m having company in, oh, three hours, my aunt and cousin down from Connecticut, and I have to haul ass and clean the house, sweeping up toys, coffee cups and all that malaise.
And I’m excited they’re coming, especially since Iain’s mystery plague kept my brother and sister and boyfriend-in-law from visiting last weekend.
And I decided not to kill Supafine after all. I couldn’t sleep last night and so I got up and designed my dramatic GOODBYE WORLD layout and realized I was having too much fun. So I can’t give it up yet. I just need to reassign my priorities so that I’m not comment-surfing when I ought to be feeding Owen his bottle.
Yes, my blog obsession is pathological, and no, I don’t know what to do about it. Find me a good therapist. Share your drugs. Come to visit.
Also, I may post more in my supersecret livejournal so that I don’t feel all, you know, TRODNAK about life and everything. It’s not very good therapy anymore because it just reinforces some things I have a problem with but I’ll take it over nothing.
You know what I need? What I really really need? A good long night of Back Porch Ritual, when Iain and I get drunk and talk for hours and reconnect. I think that would do me an awful lot of good right now.
OK. Enough out of me. There are dust bunnies to be murdered in this house.
I have this disease. It’s called Adulthood.
Wherein I stall by answering your questions.
1. CAN YOU COME UP WITH A TOPIC FOR A PLAYLIST? — Aaron Brazell
Yes. The topic is twofold: Monkeys and molecules. Let me know what you come up with. [I am reading a molecular anthropology book called The First Chimpanzee because I dig that fossil neanderthal shit. Hence.]
2. WHAT’S YOUR GUILTIEST PLEASURE READ? — Patricia
Anything by Jane Green, Meg Cabot or Marian Keys. The fluffier, the British-er, or the blonder, the better. I draw the line at total crap, though, like The Devil Wears Prada [Total crap. I could have written it unconscious, with my toes]. But good chick lit will forever be my favorite vice.
3. CAN YOU FORGIVE ME FOR NOT WISHING IAIN WELL DURING HIS RECENT HOSPITAL STAY? — Pete
For you, Pete? I most certainly can.
4. BOXERS OR BRIEFS? — Jess
Well, I find that boxers give my behindside a funny, poufy look, while briefs look bizarre with that little pocket in front. It’s a draw.
5. HEROIN OR COCAINE? — Ada
What? Are you handing them out? Are they sample sized? Will the sample-sized illicit drugs fit in my purse? Because if they’re free and sample-sized and tiny enough to fit in the tampon pocket of my purse, then I say … Both! Neither! I’m scared! Drugs kill!
6. DO YOU REGRET GETTING MARRIED AND HAVING A CHILD AT THE AGE YOU DID? — anonymous
Not in the teeniest tiniest bit.
7. IF YOU COULD LIVE ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD AND HAVE ANY JOB, WHERE WOULD YOU LIVE AND WHAT JOB WOULD YOU HAVE? — Jeffro
I would live in my hometown in Ohio and be a full-time mom, earning 500K/year plus benefits for such valuable work. Barring that, I would probably live in Baltimore and be a newspaper designer.
Thank you for your questions, audience, but I’m afraid our time is up.
Trivial Pursuit
Denise said in a comment: “Can I ask you something? Of course I can. Duh.”
She is correct [but I wouldn’t call you “Duh”, darlin’, you’re too smart]. Y’all can ask me anything. In fact, this post will be the Truth or Dare post. I will answer anything you ask, or do a dare of your choosing.
Just — be gentle.
And no fair asking about Socks or anything to that effect, Jeffro or Jen. OFF-LIMITS.
But everything else is fair game.
recent flickr
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my sewing tutorials
See my tutorials featured on SMS' Handmade Holidays!
