dual personalities

Happy Wednesday. Daughter #1 here. I just finished viewing this week’s DWTS. SPOILER ALERT: No one was eliminated because “it was Disney Night” which was incredibly lame. I had Monday off for Columbus Day. As someone who spent ten years in news, any holiday I am not working is a treat. I used the day off to learn how to make a pouch with a zipper.

There isn’t a straight line on this pouch, but the zipper works. You can seriously learn anything on youtube. I highly recommend the ladies at the Missouri Star Quilt Shop (I’m not precise enough for quilting, but the tutorials are interesting to watch). Yes, they are Missouri-based and yes, I’m trying to invent a reason to go there for work.

As my mother mentioned, we had tremendous luck at an estate sale on Saturday. I got a lovely little chair (I love ladies chairs because they are appropriately sized). I also this great rug for my office.

I mean, does that bring you joy or what?

This post is turning out to be a mish mosh of things.

I suppose I’ll leave with you this quote from The Wind in the Willows which I am reading for the first time (in between old Delano Ames mysteries and Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs). Speaking of mish moshes.

“The Wild Wood is pretty well populated by now; with all the usual lot, good, bad, and indifferent–I name no names. It takes all sorts to make a world.”

Boy, that’s the truth.

This weekend, DN and I ventured out to the very edge of the suburbs, where there is still farmland. (We spotted horses and alpacas, of all things.) Our first stop was a farm that runs an incredible business each year selling pumpkins, sunflowers, apples, and vegetables. Mostly, they sell an Instagrammable Autumn. Everyone there is wearing flannel and boots. There are lots of babies being perched on bales of hay.

I am not judging — I, too, partake in the marketplace of October content.

We did pick some delicious Stayman apples, which I will put into a pie when I feel up to it. (Making my first pastry dough of the season is always a real hurdle.) We also grabbed Asian pears and sampled the fruits of a few other rows, as well.

To appreciate the wild and sharp flavors of these October fruits, it is necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air. The outdoor air and exercise which the walker gets give a different tone to his palate, and he craves a fruit which the sedentary would call harsh and crabbed. They must be eaten in the fields, when your system is aglow with exercise, when the frosty weather nips your fingers, the wind rattles the bare boughs or rustles the few remaining leaves, and the jay is heard screaming around. What is sour in the house a bracing walk makes sweet.

–Henry David Thoreau, from Wild Apples

DN’s system is aglow with exercise

On our way home, we stopped at a place called “Brookeville Beer Farm.” What is a beer farm, you ask? I’m not sure. But this place had a similar edge-of-the-suburbs vibe, in that it was clearly set up for a mix of adult and child groups and the space was sprawling. I had a pretzel with beer cheese and couldn’t complain. It was a very October day — down to the frosty weather nipping my fingers. I think it’s time to get out my jackets!

Alas, Autumn won’t last another week, let alone a million years, but it sure is pretty while it lasts. Here’s the view out my (dirty) living room window on yet another rainy Saturday.

I’m a little late posting today because I spent the morning working at our church rummage sale. Fellowship hall was hopping,

a happy coworker attempts to control the clothes stacks

and within minutes of opening, our neatly stacked clothes piles were a mess.

I had a fine time playing cashier but my happiness level skyrocketed when someone I know from church let me hold her baby while she shopped! I was so thrilled that I insisted on a photo.

This little guy was a perfect gentleman the entire time I held him and I’m quite sure that his adorableness inspired people to donate to our worthy cause. What a cutie-pie! He had quite the grip on my thumb and finger and will no doubt grow up to be a strapping lad.

I feel as if I should not attempt to do much else today — what could top baby-holding? — but maybe I’ll venture out to buy a pumpkin  or put up some more Halloween decorations. So far, I’ve gotten out my votive candle holders and that’s about it.

Writing this post has put me in the mood for a good scary movie. Not one of the gory, over-the-top modern slasher types, but one of the classics. I could go for Ray Milland in The Univited, couldn’t you?

It has a good creepy vibe and nice chiaroscuro cinematography, and it’s a good, old-fashioned ghost story. Sounds just about perfect.

Enjoy your weekend!

*Ray Bradbury, Long After Midnight

I’ve mentioned before that action movies are an unexpected overlap in the Venn diagram of genres DN and I will choose when browsing movies. For a while now, I’ve been promising DN that I will watch some iteration of Mission: Impossible with him. Well, this week, the time came to make good on my promise.

I didn’t not like the movie, but I had a number of complaints:

First of all, the movie is TWO AND A HALF HOURS long. We watched it over two nights. That is way too long. The movie had too much plot (but also, somehow, very little plot?) and could have used some extensive editing.

As you might guess, there isn’t a whole lot of character development, but there are two women characters that are vaguely in love with Tom Cruise and look EXACTLY THE SAME. So the whole time, we were like, was that the spy? Is she the one that killed that guy? Is she married to Ethan? Is she chasing them right now? Why? Only at the very end, when the two women were in the same room, were we certain who was who.

Speaking of character development, none of the allegiances were entirely clear, and thus none of the betrayals were surprising. There’s a scene with Alec Baldwin (who put him in this movie!?!?) representing IMF and Angela Bassett representing CIA and and then a good guy in a literal mask of a bad guy, and at the end of it, you’re still just left assuming that “good” and “bad” are fairly arbitrary designations.

It’s fine; I do not expect stellar writing out of a spy movie. Typically, I just need a handsome lead or two.

But TOM CRUISE IS NOT THAT LEAD. You might have heard that he does his own stunts. I guess that’s cool, but it’s also insane, and ALSO he looks pretty stupid when he’s running. And he runs a lot in this movie. And really, as a child of the nineties, and more importantly a teen of the aughts, I just can’t with Tom Cruise. We’re talking about a man who got this excited about KATIE HOLMES:

I’ll take Melissa McCarthy any day.

Happy Wednesday, Daughter #1 here. Well, long-time viewers of my insta-stories know that my parents’ neighbors are recurring characters. The sight of the dad can trigger my mother like few other things–he wears shorts year round [shudder]. The house has been having exterior work done for over a year. They frequently park their behemoth RV on the street. And I hate the inflatable camper they park on their lawn during the holiday season.

Well, good news for them. Because I have new neighbors in my apartment complex and, after two days as residents of my building, they are clearly aiming to be characters in my insta-story. On Sunday, they parked their vehicle, in the middle of the street, on the wrong side, with their flashers on while they unloaded. They weren’t closer to the building on the wrong side. It made no sense.

And tonight, they locked themselves out of the building while cooking dinner. I got home late and heard a fire alarm going off and smelled smoke, but figured someone burned a pizza. I went to the kitchen to prepare my dinner, and when I put my dinner on the table, I noticed flashing lights outside the building and heard lots of clomping. I went downstairs as a lady firefighter was coming in and asked if I needed to evacuate and she laughed and told me what was going on. “I think you’ll be okay.”

I mean, she’s not wrong.

This weekend had a little bit of everything: puttering around, entertaining, running errands, and resting. Not too bad!

We had friends over for dinner on Saturday night, so I spent a good amount of time that morning deep cleaning. It’s nice that, even after everyone leaves, the apartment still feels like it’s in ship-shape. (Having a dishwasher for party plates helps in this regard.) We also managed to fit in a long walk around the neighborhood and a quick stop at the hardware store. I think we have become people who go to the hardware store every weekend, but that doesn’t feel like a bad way to be.

My main goal for Sunday was to get the car washed. Easier said than done! DN told me he wanted a very specific level of clean: “Deluxe Exterior but Standard Interior.” Well guess which options were available to me: Deluxe In & Out, Standard In & Out, Deluxe Out (no interior) and Standard Out (no interior). Ye gods! I think the Subaru did just fine with a standard in & out clean. Later I went to Home Goods, where I was overwhelmed by (but ultimately triumphant in) choices for Tupperware-equivalents and storage baskets. Could I have had a more suburban day? (Yes: it ended with prolonged couch-sitting with a dog in my lap.)

I know this is a hodgepodge of very basic weekend anecdotes. I’ll leave you with a musical conclusion. DN played this song for me today:

…and it reminded me of this song:

I mean, it turns out they’re really not very similar at all. But that’s how my mind worked.

The wear and tear of daily life takes a toll on all of us — not least on the objects that we rely on for our comfort, including all types of dishes and glassware. We rarely think about the things we use every day until something gets broken. Take, for example, the tea-making paraphernalia that we use constantly.

The electric kettle needs its weekly vinegar cleanse. We have hard water.

We store our tea in the Spode cookie jar at the back of the photo. I’ve broken and repaired it twice.

If I drop the lid on it one more time, it’ll be a goner and I will be very sad.

And so it went with my DH’s tea mug. He’d used it for going on forty years until he dropped a heavy knife on it while emptying the dishwasher, and broke it beyond repair.

At least I didn’t do it! My DH is not the sentimental type. I’m the one who saved it from the garbage to photograph. Like an old friend, that mug had seen him through many trials and tribulations. Every ding and chip represented a story. At the very least it deserved a photo!

Fortunately, we are not short of mugs. (In fact, most of our mugs are packed away. Two people don’t need that many.) Guess which one the DH is using now?

I use the rooster mug that my Aunt Donna gave to me 25 or 30 years ago. It has survived very well and has no chips (touch wood). Am I a sentimental fool or is it normal to take ownership of objects this way?

I’ll leave you to ponder these deep philosophical questions. Meanwhile, I’m off to a local conference to give a talk on experiential learning in the premodern classroom (eye-rolling is permitted).

Have a great weekend and don’t break anything!