The Sky's the Limit

Given that we live in this ancient house, I can't help but muse once again about the projects that have transpired. Thankfully, the bones of it were sound -- a good roof, the original trim and doors intact, and none of the floors were falling in. If you venture to crawl around under the house, there are all many of crazy things holding it up. Stacks of bricks, stones, jacks -- a testament to the many advances in technology over the years. Don't roll a marble across the dining room floor...it goes wonky. But that's okay and part of the charm.  

What wasn't charming, besides the challenging bathrooms, was the living room. I adored the 100-year-old crackly wallpaper (though my mother-in-law thought I'd lost my mind), but the trim was cracked and peeling (with all that wonderful lead-based paint), the ceiling was wallpapered with fragile-looking paper and covered with all manner of mysterious stains. Then there were the old stained glass windows surrounding the front door....two of the panels were threatening to implode at any moment. Every child and adult that passed by them just had to reach over and touch them, too. I never understood that. I couldn't just let them fail, so I sold a house and put the proceeds towards restoring those windows. I will never regret that one. But that ceiling... 

There are gorgeous reproduction ceiling tiles to be had on the internet. What did we do before we had all these instant solutions? After much mental wrangling, I decided on a design and ordered enough to fix the blight above our heads. Liz and I again started one of our grand projects. Two of my sons got up in the ceiling and popped chalk lines so we would have something to go by. She and I laid them out and then started applying them. In very short order, I saw the results of my directionally-challenged brain. North was now slightly northwest and the river was meandering. We kept going, but before long the cracks between tiles got wider and my heart began to sink with the truth that this just wasn't going to work. We got off the scaffolding and took a nap. Weeks later, after beating myself up and despairing of ever fixing it, my son Daniel agreed to help. He has an artist's eye and is a skilled trim carpenter, thank the Lord. And he loves his Mama. He peeled off the bad seed, worked like a Trojan to undo the havoc and before I knew it, our gigantic living room had a new crown. I caulked all the woodwork and Liz set to painting the nasty trim. Now it looks like the King and Queen live here.

I still haven't gotten around to caulking between all of those individual tiles. Every time I think about getting up on that scaffolding up there in the stratosphere, I get shaky knees. I'm going to have to do it someday soon, 'cause everyone's sick of me whining about it every time I stretch out in my recliner. 

 

Great Expectations

 You would think that while in Paradise, there could be nothing to get in your way of having just the most wonderful time. Especially since we've been in some pretty crummy settings and just had a ball anyway. But then, even if you are dirt poor and have actual access to a beach, you can put your toes in with the rest of the bourgeoisie people and you're all on equal ground, because God's gorgeous creation trumps everything. Ken and I always head to the beach with our grown kids, usually every May. We share a big ole house and it's a cheap vacation for everyone. There's lots of kids and mayhem and we come home exhilarated and exhausted from all the goodness. So he likes for he and I to take a separate trip, later, to have time alone and remember who we are, to reconnect, relax and reignite. This year, because Liz and Marcus have their first newborn, the family decided to do our big trip in September. Ken desperately wanted a beach trip in May, so here we are…

There was hardly anything available, not surprising since Covid has kept a lot of people from traveling up until now. And everything was expensive. I booked a sweet place, in a darling, quaint village in Sandestin. It's a convoluted, manufactured village, not one made of collected years and layers of entrepreneurs…but a planned community. That should have been my first clue. We're not people who are naturally inclined to Disney-like vacations. Not that this was Disney, and not that I might not want to go there someday. But we've just never swam with the pack. We're more likely to swim upstream and away from the general crowd. We think that's normal, but apparently it's not. 

The night before we left, I realized that there is no kitchen in our little condo. This is bad, because I eat a special diet that involves "normal" food. Do you know how hard that is to find, in our current culture? There's never enough veggies or fruit, and everything is dipped and cooked in vast gobs of oil, if you go out to eat somewhere. So suddenly, I'm faced with the fact that we will have to eat out most of our meals, expensive and fattening. 

We arrive to our place and walk down to the wharf, with a sweet, gentle breeze blowing. We enjoyed an hour and then headed to our room. After deciphering the masses of codes that it took to get inside the parking deck, then the door code to the condo, then the code to our place…my brain began to scramble and I wondered how I might ever detach from my phone. I needed it for all those codes. Then there was the wifi password, passcode to the pool and not to forget the card to get on the tram that takes you to the beach. But all that is worth it, when you finally get to sink your hinder parts into that white, warm, silky sand. The next morning, we threw all our beach stuff into a bag and hauled it down to the tram pick-up site. This was going to be great. No long trek to the water…they just drop you off and there's even a restaurant right there. As we made our way over the little berm of sand, we were completely unprepared for the sight in front of us. We've been to the beach so many times over the last 39 years, I've lost count. But I've never seen a place where there were literally thousands of people crowded like sardines for as far as the eye could see. We knew there was water somewhere, but where? We wound our way around legs, towels, canopies all the way to the shore. We found a tiny speck of land, right by the ocean, where we could park our chairs. There wasn't even room to lay out our towels. Ken told me later he really wanted to just turn around and head home right then and there, but couldn't bring himself to disappoint me. So we put our chairs close together, with the cooler close by. The water was so cold, I could not stand to get in, which is big for me. I'm actually part mermaid, but not a northeastern one. So we passed a couple of hours, each wondering how we got here. Neither of us said anything negative…just wanted it to work. At this point, we were both contemplating the logistics of a whole week of this. Then, of course, the next day, the bottom fell out and it began raining. Like buckets for days.

As we holed up in our place and gave up hope of any grand adventures, I remembered why we were here. To rest, unplug, talk to each other, think about  nothing and everything. We live in what has been a blessed life, far more blessed than we deserve. I remember lean times, where we scraped all we had together to eat peanut butter and jelly for days, a house full of loud and hilarious kids. Then there were times of harvest, when we got to indulge in steak and fancy Italian water. None of it means a thing if you can't be thankful in the moments or if you are looking for some pie in the sky that may or may not happen. My children's old pediatrician once said, "Life is good, even if you are just watching the sunset from a gutter." I think she might be right.

Studyin'

The majority of my work is done here in our lovely study. When we bought our Queen Anne Victorian some 9 years ago, it was a bedroom and the ugliest room in the house. Three walls had wallpaper with pink and blue rosebuds on it, then a third wall had burgundy paper on it. The ceiling was papered with nasty stuff that had years of stains. All of it was threatening to come down, as if that mattered. I wrestled with what I was going to do to the room. We had found a cool, original painting out in the barn, an Impressionistic scene of old men around a pot-bellied stove. It was to go above the mantel and wound up informing me what to do with the room. Ken said he wanted it to feel like a man cave in there, so I chose a wall color that would coordinate with the picture. Then the real work began...

Daughter Elizabeth was my assistant for my decorative painting business (how dare that gal go off and get hitched?) We set to work scraping the mess off the walls. Underneath everything was plaster. Half the paper wanted to fall off, the other half wanted to stick like glue. We spent a month trying to get it at least somewhat smooth, then set about getting it primed. Since there were still bits of paper still clinging to the walls and ceiling, we had to Kilz it with oil-based B-I-N primer. That stuff is beast. We were up on scaffolding in the 12-foot-high ceiling, having a fine old time. The tunes were piping out of my phone and we were enjoying dancing and singing while we worked. Ken arrived home from work and bellowed "why don't you have the windows open?!" Suddenly I understood where some of that joy was coming from and why we were starting to see visions of Elvis. The fumes were thick and noxious. Pretty soon, Liz and I were laid out, sick at our stomachs and higher than two kites in the wind. We threw open all the outside portals, turned on the fans and passed out on the front porch.

After a few days of recovery, we started up again. I faux-finished the painted trim to match the other half that was stained, used textured paint to finish the ceiling, then sueded the walls with a rich mushroom color. Ken built gorgeous wall-to-wall shelves for our mountain of books. The old guys and their stove went above the mantel and we were done. I've enjoyed this room immensely and practically live in it. It's where folks visit me, it's where I do most of my work, practice my music and write stuff. But I am a lover of light, and it's starting to feel like a cave in here. Yesterday I started pulling books and tchotchkes off the shelves and throwing them into boxes. Anything that doesn't spark joy (Marie Kondo, you devil) is headed to the Good Will store tomorrow.  I gotta get some light in here and get rid of all this clutter. Who knows...we might just start over, me and ole' Elvis.