I spent the last two weeks of February reorganizing the back bedroom. Every night after work I’d hurry home, eager to get started. I’d change into my comfy fleece pajamas and socks and sit on the rug in front of the bed to sort through …
I took last Friday off and had another long weekend. Hooray! “I have so much to do!” I said to Rob on Thursday night. “Well, you won’t be able to get to it all,” Rob warned kindly. “But I’m going to try!” I said. Here …
Last Monday at my lunch hour I ran over to Rabbit Creek, a great new antique mall in Tallahassee, and bought a rocking chair and footstool I’d had my eye on for a while. The owner of the booth where I found the chair was sitting in the store doing some paperwork when I came in to make my purchase.
He said, “That chair was sold to me by a 76-year-old lady, and it’s got its original upholstery.”
“I’ll take it!” I said.
And I hauled the chair and footstool to my car and raced back to work. (I’m always rushing now that I’m in the office five days a week once again and have such a long commute. I feel like a hamster stuck in a wheel.)
I couldn’t wait for the weekend to come so I’d have time to arrange my new finds in the back bedroom. On Friday night when I got home from work, I was ecstatic. I love being at home—and I had a precious, rare, wonderful three-day weekend ahead of me! That evening I merrily cleaned the back bedroom, preparing the way for the new rocking chair. I scrubbed the floor and waxed the furniture and removed unbelievable amounts of cat fur from the premises.
The cats were having fun too, because I was moving furniture around and they found all the action very exciting. To make room for the rocking chair, I moved the ugly old chaise lounge out of the bedroom and into the hall temporarily. June, Carl, Tellie, and Frankie thought this was an awesome home improvement and spent the whole evening scratching the chaise and snuggling on it.
I quit cleaning at eight so Rob and I could watch The Pale Blue Eye, a mystery thriller involving a fictional version of the young Edgar Allan Poe when he was a student at West Point in 1830. The movie was beautiful to look at, with most scenes taking place in snowy woods, and shadowy interiors lit only by candles and glowing fireplaces. Becky slept on my lap, and Buntin bathed herself on Rob’s lap as we sat in our chairs in the cozy living room.
“This is so great,” I said to Rob. “Sitting here with you and the cats. Eating popcorn. Wearing my pajamas. I’m really loving everything about it. I just wish it wouldn’t be over so fast.”
The next morning I was up long before dawn, cleaning the back bedroom again. I cleaned it from top to bottom, then got the new rocking chair and footstool into their proper positions.
“They look perfect,” I said to myself, admiring my new additions.
I took some quick pictures. Ha! But then, immediately, I had to completely cover/smother the chair and footstool in quilts to protect them from the cats, whose favorite hobby is, of course, destroying everything in the house.
For the past year, I’ve been working on outlining all my garden beds with bricks. I dig a trench around each bed, sink the bricks about halfway into the soil, and arrange them in a sawtooth pattern. The bricks add a nice, tidy edge to …
Last Friday after work, I embarked on a little decorating spree that lasted through Saturday evening. Around noon that day (Friday, I mean), I received in the mail a pair of vintage McCoy wall pockets—two sunny yellow ceramic flowers that I’d ordered off eBay. I …
Tonight I’m finishing up a rare four-day weekend. It was so much fun and felt like such a luxury! During most of my time off, I worked on a painting of a chubby baby bunny frolicking in a patch of bluets. I took breaks every hour and a half or so. I’d go out in the yard and water plants with my trusty watering can (it’s so dry here right now!) and pick armloads of ripe satsumas (we have three loaded trees).
I also strolled around our three acres with June, our smart little tuxedo cat, on her new harness and leash. She looked so cute walking along beside me through the still-green grass littered with golden leaves.
“She’s doing just as well as a small dog!” Rob marveled as we walked on Saturday afternoon. “June, you’re being so brave out here in the big, wide world!” (June is an indoor cat, so going outside on her leash is an exciting new adventure for her.)
June began practicing her bounding then (she’s so athletic!), and I had to run as fast as I could to keep up with her. After bounding all the way around the house a couple of times, she started rolling on the sun-warmed driveway to celebrate. She was rolling and squawking and just generally rejoicing in being alive. When I carried her back in the house, she was very disappointed.
I always get nervous about returning to work if I’ve been out a little while. Today I woke up with an especially bad case of the Sunday scaries, so I decided to comfort myself by whipping up a big pot of Sweet Potato-Black Bean Soup. It was delicious—full of rich coconut milk and my favorite spices. I ate it sitting in the backyard under a big Moonshadow sasanqua, which was in full pink flower. (Rob had left for Atlanta on a business trip so it was just me.) I watched birds and talked to the trees and pretended it wasn’t the end of my time off but the beginning.
2 tablespoons grapeseed oil
1 large onion, minced
6 cayenne peppers, minced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons curry powder
3 teaspoons cumin
3 cups water
3 large sweet potatoes
2 15-ounce cans diced tomatoes
2 cans black beans
Salt to taste
2 15-ounce cans coconut milk
Heat the oven to 450 degrees and bake the sweet potatoes until they’re soft (about an hour). Let them cool, then peel the skins off and coarsely chop the insides. Set aside.
Heat the grapeseed oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion and hot peppers and sauté until the onion is soft and translucent. Add the garlic, curry powder, and cumin and sauté for a few more minutes. Add the water, sweet potato chunks, tomatoes, and black beans and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low and stir in the salt and coconut milk. Simmer for five to 10 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and puree the soup until smooth using an immersion blender.
On Tuesday, I took the day off from work. I really needed it. Tuesday was my day off, but I’m not going to tell you about Tuesday. I’m going to tell you about Monday night because it was even better than Tuesday. On Monday night, …
For the last half of January, all of February, and most of March, I was working obsessively (in the evenings and on weekends) on a small painting of our backyard. The painting was very hard for me to finish because the scene I was trying …
Last weekend Rob and I painted the trim in the back bedroom. The trim in there had always bothered me because half of it was painted and the other half was bare wood. Plus, the bare wood part wasn’t even stained or varnished and wasn’t even completely bare; bits of old white paint were stuck around all the nails. Obviously somebody, years before, had tried to strip the wood, but they hadn’t quite succeeded. I wanted all the trim to match, so Rob and I gave everything a few good coats of a nice neutral color called Mannequin Cream.
We had fun painting, and the cats got into the spirit too. The house was in complete disarray, and Buntin, June, and Frankie were making the most of it. All the bedroom furniture and decorations were piled up in the hallway, and the cats were climbing precarious towers of books and leaping from one wobbly end table to another. As we painted we kept hearing crashing sounds.
We took a break for lunch on Saturday at the Laredo Grill, one of Quincy’s few restaurants. It’s a cheerful place near the Piggly Wiggly and a great asset to our little town. The waiter at the Laredo Grill likes to tease me about my vegan-ness. I always order the Double A Combination Platter with “no cheese and no sour cream,” and whenever he presents me with my plate, he says, “For you, señorita. Extra cheese!” He says it in the most deadpan manner; he never cracks a smile.
On Sunday Rob and I touched up the trim with our artist brushes. Then, after the last coat had dried, we cleaned the cat fur off each piece of furniture and moved it back into place. We cleaned cat fur off the walls, too, with a dust mop.
The room was transformed; it looked so much better.
“I don’t know what made more of a difference,” Rob said, “the painting or the de-cat-ifying.”
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| Carl supervising the painting process |