The Good Life

Heather at HumbleArts posted recently about 3 people who have inspired her idea of domestic bliss. I'm taking up the theme, though it's hard to pick just three. I'd have to say, most of all, my mother, and paternal and maternal grandmothers. All of them kept/keep very different but tidy and industrious houses, and they all did big projects. Dad's mother always had a vegetable garden larger than my house lot, and when I was very little, two milk cows, a flock of chickens, and a few pigs. These are the things I think she herself was responsible for, above and beyond the other activities of a beef farm. I don't remember Mum's mother doing farm work even when she was younger, but she must have, I suppose, before the 12 children got numerous enough and big enough. I do remember her always working on complicated, fine quality pieced quilts. In the past few years, she has moved to an apartment in town, and she keeps this up. Mum always has lots of projects, including gardens but not livestock and quilts so far (the quilts, not the livestock). A short list: sewing wedding, prom, and bridesmaid dresses; upholstering sofas and chairs; and renovating a century-old farmhouse. She manages these with a full-time job. When Ron and I moved into our house last year, we found that we couldn't get the double boxspring (mattress foundation) up the staircase because of the limited headroom. I was ready to give it away and asked Mum and Dad if they wanted it for one of their spare beds. Mum asked if I really was giving it away. Yes, I said. She and Dad opened the seams of the boxspring cover, peeled it off, used a circular saw to cut the slats in half, folded it lengthwise with springs intact, and then carried it up the stairs and put it back together. Not a trace of this operation was evident when they were done, and the boxspring has never so much as creaked. The moral of this story is "No project is too big or too crazy." I like the idea that I am carrying on in the example of other women in my family, keeping an industrious and beautiful homelife that somehow manages to calm the craziness. I don't have mad bulls in the pasture (and my garden is the size of a big postage stamp) or big quilts (ok, no quilts) being basted in the spare room, but I think of their everyday busyness and it makes my punctuated multi-tasked life seem more manageable.

Two corners

The front porch is done, and of course, we asked why we hadn't painted it earlier. Well, that's because we had to do Peter's room, the office, the bathroom, the back porch, and the kitchen cupboards (since we moved in last February), and our bedroom, the playroom, the living room, and the kitchen in the month between closing and move-in. Ron, Peter, and I played with the Sico color chips last night and picked out these new colors for the hall and staircase.

You might be thinking that the red Moroccan rug (well, klim actually) is an unusual choice to go with the vintage-y quilt, chair, and everything else. It is. That's my life. I got the klim during my first Moroccan fieldwork in 1998.

Me-me!

Tom sent me this. I have the timer on 5 minutes. Here goes:
1. WHAT COLOR ARE YOUR KITCHEN PLATES? blue and white, several different patterns
2. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW? Last Child in the Woods, Market Day in Provence, Imagined Diasporas.
3. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? I have touchpads instead of mice.
4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE BOARD GAME? Carcasson or Scrabble. I don't really like board games.
5. LEAST FAVOURITE SMELLS? Dirty diaper when I'm tired and don't really want to change another one.
6. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING? What time is it?
7. FAVOURITE COLOUR: Green.
8. LEAST FAVOURITE COLOUR: Black, either despite or because I used to wear a lot of it.
9. HOW MANY RINGS UNTIL YOU ANSWER THE PHONE? At the office, first ring, even when I'm working. I can't stand a ringing phone. At home, often several because I don't generally have a phone next to me.
10. FUTURE CHILD'S NAME? Won't go there.
11. YOUR FAVOURITE ICE CREAM? Good vanilla.
12. DO YOU LIKE TO DRIVE FAST? No.
13. DO YOU SLEEP WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL? No.
14. DO YOU LIKE THUNDERSTORMS? Yes.
15. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CAR? Mazda Protege 1997, which we still drive.
16. WHAT IS YOUR SIGN? Virgo, but think that horoscopes are more opportunities for psychoanalysis than prediction. I won't go on about that because of said timer.
17. DO YOU EAT THE STEMS OF BROCCOLI? Yes, but I hate broccoli.
18. IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY JOB WHAT WOULD IT BE? Current job, with tenure.
19. IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY COLOR HAIR, WHAT WOULD IT BE? I like my hair, even the gray.
20. IS THE GLASS HALF FULL OR HALF EMPTY? Half full, definitely.
21. FAVOURITE MOVIES? The Last Night (Don McKellar), What Dreams May Come (sorry, I don't have time to look up the director -- the one starring Robin Williams).
22. DO YOU TYPE WITH YOUR FINGERS ON THE RIGHT KEYS? Yes. I used typing-lesson software back in the days on 1200kbps dial-up.
23. WHAT'S UNDER YOUR BED? A folded blanked, I think.
24. WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE NUMBER? Huh?
25. FAVOURITE SPORTS TO WATCH? Oh dear. Football, but only with Ron, definitely.
26. YOUR SINGLE BIGGEST INTENSE PAIN? Childbirth.
27. KETCHUP OR MUSTARD? Both.
28. HAMBURGER OR HOT DOG? Rarely.
29. WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE SEASON? Whichever one it is. I'm very Zen.
30. THE BEST PLACE YOU HAVE EVER BEEN? Hmmm. Maybe hanging out in Tarifa with Ron during a fieldwork break. Or hanging out in Tarragona or Barcelona with Ron. Both were vacations during stressful times, and we didn't have a lot of money.
31. WHAT SCREEN SAVER IS ON YOUR COMPUTER RIGHT NOW? Family pictures.
32. FAVOURITE FAST FOOD? Hamburger Happy Meal with a milk and cookies instead of a toy.
33. WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE TYPE OF MUSIC? Classical, always.
34. FAVOURITE REALITY SHOW? I can't bear to watch reality shows. I used to like La Course du Monde in the 1990s. Maybe the wrong name? Made in Quebec, 30 contestants were sent around the world with video cameras and sent in short documentaries.

11 minutes. Oh well.

Self-portrait Wednesday? Oh well.

I have been reading people's Self-Portrait Tuesday posts for a while. Many people take honest pictures sans makeup, sometimes of what they think are their worst features. Everyone looks quite beautiful, in fact, and it scares me into waiting another few weeks before considering my own contribution. Today, one day late no less, I decided that this would be the day. I took a few pictures without makeup, and I think I look like Sir Edmund Hillary in them. Well, actually this website said I look like 69 percent like Sir Edmund Hillary. That's not so bad, right? He's tough and smart and it shows in his face. And he's a 93-year-old man. If you check the link I've included you'll see a picture of him when he was young and arguably handsome. This is not the picture that the website said I look like. They meant the old one. Not to disappoint SEH, several months later, I finally got out the lipgloss, mascara, and handy Maybelline concealer, and tried again. I think the fear and scepticism show in my expression. But hey, I'm out here on Mount Everest.

Little projects

On the way home for lunch today, I looked through the window at the Sally-Ann's linen rack and saw these two quilts. Both are machine sewn and hand-quilted, about 6 stiches per inch. The lavender one is all cotton; the log cabin is a mix, and needs a bit of repairs. (There was an article on this in MSL August 2005. Basically, cut a block, fold and iron a hem all round. Back with quilt batting. Invisible stitch in place, over the existing tattered block.) In any case, the colors are charming: soft greens and blues with punches of black, red, and orange. Great for Peter's new room. They were $3.99 each.

Can you tell, by the way, that I've started painting the front porch? It was yesterday's little project: I got most of it done during Peter's unexpected afternoon nap. If you look closely, you can see where I stopped painting in the upper corner of the clapboard. Little baby woke up.

Imitation

Peter's laying down reading a book on his back with his knees bent, just like me. After Ron took the picture, Peter said "Beep," like the camera's electronic noise. He's become quite interested lately with sitting like I do, often cross-legged on the floor, or cross-legged on a chair. His legs are so short that he can manage just to cross his ankles, but seems very happy with that. When he was younger, he seemed to be a random variation machine as he tried endlessly different combinations of movements, especially as he was trying to roll and then crawl. But one of the things I notice is how much Peter has has learned by imitation. He surprises us with these little gifts every few days. For a few months now, he has been placing his socks and shoes on top of his feet; then, a few weeks ago, he put his feet into Ron's size-9 slippers. Last week, he took my keys and pressed them against the porch doorknob and then tried to turn it. Yesterday, he put his hat on before going outside. Then, after watching me prune off last year's flower stalks from some of the perennials, he pinched the pruners and started poking at the lavender with them. (Are you thinking, What? She let a 13-month-old play with pruning shears? I did, with very, very close supervision.) Ron noticed a few days ago that Peter had got out his two xylophones and placed them side by side and was playing them both. And he seems to be suddenly interested in books again, especially ones with realistic drawings. Yesterday, he said "Kitty" while looking at a book with cat pictures. We can see that he's slowly learning that things have functions and similarities.

Garden shopping, light hiking, and my desire to be less productive sometimes

We managed to do a lot today: up early and out in the garden, dug up some plants that are going to a new and more spacious home with friends across town, then off to Corn Hill Nursery after lunch to buy some climbing roses for the front garden (to hopefully climb over the porch) and to have a little walk through their gardens. We had lots of fun picking out Henry Kelsey and William Baffin from the Explorer series climbing roses, and a single-flowering (ie 5-petaled) Rugosa Alba for a hole in the back garden hedge. The front garden is quite small, and I've been calling it a Shakespeare Garden (inspired by the beautiful one at Illinois State U's Ewing Cultural Centre) although it's really early for such a grand name. Last summer I planted some old roses, lavender, irises, lilies, thyme, rosemary, and a few more plants mentioned in the plays. This summer I'd like to work on planting a camomile lawn, probably by cutting out a few small areas of turf to begin with and direct seeding. Advice welcome. The back garden is a well established perennial garden with formal bones: a neat square of wide beds with a lawn in the middle. It's tidy and small, with good hedges on two sides, and the house and garage on the other two. I've been giving away the things that don't make my heart sing (creeping phlox anyone? centaurea?), and replacing them with white and yellow fairly low key flowers. I describe it as a Victorian fantasy of a wildflower garden. I'll blog about the gardens once they are more than mulch: it's so early in the season for us.

Cornhill's display garden seems a little bit behind Sackville, maybe a week or so, but it was beautiful. The early spring garden really shows off the quiet things like bark colors that we often miss. It also highlights the structure of the hard elements, like branch fences. Not quite the wild nature hikes I wrote about earlier this week, but it's a start. In any case, I was wearing flipflops.

Ron was away for a few days, and Peter and I picked out a hiking in New Brunswick book at our local bookstore yesterday. I'm excited about some local trails that I hadn't heard of before, but as I was going through it tonight, I started to think again about domesticating nature: these are all "official" trails, not quite boardwalks, but they've been authenticated and described and given a stamp of approval. What I'm concerned about it increasing not just our time outside, but our time exploring and getting muddy, not racking up points on a list of trails. It's hard to rein in that desire for productivity.

Munchausen by proxy, fieldnotes, and baby blogs

I had made a note about this in a sidebar that got lost. I started this blog last summer partly because we have friends and family in many different places and we're not very good at sending letters with pictures in them (ok, we've never done that), but mostly because we're both somewhat hypochondriac. As Peter grew and started to look and act less and less like a crying, flailing potato, I found myself thinking, "There, he's smiling. He's making eye contact. He's engaged." Not because these were milestones that he had reached before some other real or imagined baby, but because they were little bits of evidence that he didn't have autism. A few years ago, I read a feature on autism in the Globe that reported some expert's hypothesis that the remarkably high rate of autism in the Silicon Valley area was due to a concentration of nerd genes. More or less. So these fieldnotes on babykeeping were (are?) about having proof (if you write it down it's data) at some point in the future that Peter had smiled, made eye contact, occasionally volunteered appropriate words. I don't worry so much about it these days, but it's always in the back of my mind: what if something goes wrong? When does baby-strange become clinical-strange? Will I notice the difference? My heart breaks for those who know.

Another kitchen corner

kitchen shelf
Originally uploaded by run lily.

Although what was on the counter in this picture was cheddar cheese (Sussex Extra Old) and my daybook, this corner is usually where more serious cooking takes place: measuring dry ingredients, folding chocolate into egg whites, crushing garlic and spices. This corner is behind "my" side of the table too, which is where I pare and chop, and especially where I go through my Joy of Cooking, looking for something fun or challenging or fast. I just finished reading Julie Powell's Julie and Julia about cooking her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year, and I have to say that I'm glad that never occurred to me! I got my copy in Illinois, tried a few things that I liked (especially the basic vegetables) and a few that I didn't, but mostly used it for sauces and basic techniques. But when I got Joy of Cooking in 2002 I started keeping track of the ones I made with a handwritten date, and when I noticed that I had worked my way through a few pages completely, I started to joke with Ron that I was planning to cook everything. I think I have blogged about it occasionally, but I'm still cleaning my kitchen, and I'm not planning to test recipes on dinner guests.

Bye

my guys in the kitchen
Originally uploaded by run lily.

Sandra, Peter's keeper for the three days a week Ron and I are both working, says that Peter saw someone putting on her coat today and started to wave goodbye. He says bye quite a bit, though mostly after the person leaving has already left. It was "bah" for a month or so, then this past week it really became "bye" with a good dipthong at the end. He likes to practice at the door from the kitchen to the playroom, standing behind the door and opening and closing it, smiling and saying bye.

Wordlist

Ron and Peter 3
Originally uploaded by run lily.

We sat at the table after supper tonight and made a list of Peter's words so far: dada, mama, nana, no, bite, what, Sandra, hot, cold, hat, kitty/Lily, yeah, good, all done, hello, bye, hi. Mama was his first word, but he abandoned it until just these past few weeks. Dada seemed to mean everything good for a while, but now it's just dada. Nada was also popular for a week or so: it seemed to mean mama and dada. Kitty/Lily sounds like ee-ee, in a high-pitched voice. Hot and cold (ot and old) were popular for a few days when Peter was first discovering the fridge. Thank heavens he's not so interested in it now. Hello is mostly associated with the telephone or proxies for the telephone, which have included the remote control, a toothbrush, hairbrush, blocks, a long car, and a banana. Good goes with the telephone too, as the answer to "How are you?" All done is the answer to "All done?" at meals.

Peter's things

I've been thinking about this for a while, and keep meaning to post it. It's so easy to forget. Shortly after Christmas, we started finding Peter's things in funny places. The first thing was a little white dog figurine on the red step stool in the kitchen. Then the dog on the black footstool in the living room. Then Peter's yellow Tonka dumptruck on the windowsill in the playroom. That's when I mentioned it to Ron. Last week, I noticed that Peter had put a little magnetic frame on the edge of the stairs, behind the babygate; the next day, it was his keychain. The edge of the stairs is where we put things that need to be returned to their "homes" upstairs; the next one to go up takes them. Peter's becoming more and more of an agent, asserting increasingly articulate actions. He hasn't yet adopted a toy that goes everywhere with him, or started to take things out the door when we leave the house, but I suppose that might be the next step. Peter's changed so, so, so much in just the past few months.

Front porch

Front porch
Originally uploaded by run lily.

This is another "before" picture. I think this little corner will be robin's egg blue before too long. It's bright with windows all round, and it's been a cosy place to sit and read, but the cool gray has to go. When we bought the house last winter, the floor was gray carpet too. It's since been replaced by my favorite linoleum (back porch too), and the walls are next.

Daniel Kedinger ...

dk_IMG_2944.JPG
Originally uploaded by danielkedinger.

This is flickr serendipity. I found the most amazing series of photos the other day. Daniel Kedinger's images of Easter week celebrations at Saint Joseph Abbey and Seminary in Saint Benedict, Louisiana, are breathtaking. They looked like stills from a stunningly beautiful film. Flip, flip, flip. And then I saw this one. Ha! Can I pick them, or what? I want to start the Daniel Kedinger fan club.

(Home) office windowsill

office windowsill
Originally uploaded by run lily.

I hesitate to call this an altar, but it is a little corner of the house that holds things that help me to pause and refocus. I like that they're all pretty close to nature, and simple forms. The stone vase was made by a Nova Scotia craftsperson; it's about 5 inches high, and often holds a few flowers in the summer, but only wildish ones, often a leaf or two. We bought it in the cafe/shop at Corn Hill Nursery on a beautiful day that we spent picking out plants for our new-old house. The square box is from Essaouira (Morocco) where I did my first fieldwork in 1998. And the tall vase with the leaf and flower imprint was a gift from one of my first honours students; it's made from local clay.
My office-office is cosy too. I'll have to post about it someday.

Reading: Last Child in the Woods

I've been reading Last Child in the Woods. The author argues that many social and physical problems can be traced to our decreasing regular, intense experience of nature. It makes me wonder if we get outside enough. We walk regularly to work and in the evenings and on free afternoons with Peter, and we do spend time digging in the garden, but we don't have opportunities for the long days of outdoor play that I experienced growing up: days when I'd leave the house after an early breakfast, and come in just for lunch and supper, both times tired and dirty. We are lucky to live near a park, but it pales in comparison to my grandparents' farm and the surrounding countryside that was my range when I was small. The waterfowl park has boardwalks and railings to keep people in, ostensibly to protect nature, but also to keep our feet dry and our faces and legs free from nicks and bruises. It is a zoo of a park. We also live near the shore, several shores, in fact: Silver Lake, which is very close and good for swimming; Cumberland Basin, which is edged by walkable dykes and mussel beds; Shepody Bay, where we lived on Dorchester Cape before Peter was born; and the Northumberland Strait, about half an hour's drive, but eminently beachly and worth the time in the car. I suppose that when Peter is bigger, he'll discover the wild unkept edges of the waterfowl park a minute from our door, and perhaps if he still notices the outside when he's bigger than that, the paths to Silver Lake and the dykes. I hope these will be more than beer-drinking places for his generation.

Mel's

Mel's
Originally uploaded by run lily.

Across the street from Bridge St Cafe (where, I once mentioned here, Ron says that you will see everyone if you stay for about 2 hours) is Mel's Tearoom. I do think they serve tea, but it's actually a diner/corner store. I often pick up milk here on the way in to the university, and we usually get our papers here too. These days, we also get maple cream here ($3.50 for a block the size of half a pound of butter). The menu is good diner food: club sandwiches, roast beef dinner, turkey dinner (apparently this is a maritime thing), and (ahem) canned Heinz spaghetti. For those who aren't skilled with a can opener, I guess. It's all good.

Peter's fourth auction: Babies Days Out

Peter's fourth auction
Originally uploaded by run lily.

One of the Flickr groups I like is Babies' Days Out. (I especially like the apostrophe in the group name, but I won't go on about it.) The group owner, Camster Factor, writes "I want to ensure that in years to come Amelia doesn't just have a (undoubtedly massive) series of close up portraits showing her facial development from first wind induced gripe through to self confident baby bouncer model via first tentative smile. There'll certainly be plenty of that in the albums, but I want to provide her with a set of memories by proxy, documents of the world she grew up in where she plays a key role as actor in those memories but importantly the stage on which those memories are played out is still included in the image, clear to see." This snapshot of Peter at Sunday's auction is notas good-looking as most of the BDO pool, and God-love-him he's right in the middle looking as posed as can be (that or a tantrum these days), but it is a document of our favorite kind of outing these days. This auction wasn't actually a great one: almost all of the furniture was quite new, the auctioneer was slow, there were too many Royal Doulton porcelain ladies. But the crowd was good humored toward the little guy wandering around, and he got to talk to lots of people before falling asleep for an hour and a half. The proceeds of this auction, an estate, went to support the Moncton Hospital.

yesterday's auction find

yesterday's auction find
Originally uploaded by run lily.

The auction season has started up again. We went to one on Sunday (I bought a 1950s-era quilt for the spare room), and then another yesterday. I now have my oak table, and paid $65 for it. The auctioneer described it as "early," which I think means "that looks some old, doesn't it." The legs are turned solid oak, and the top is made of 5 boards, each 6 inches or so wide. We pulled off a sheet of chipboard that had been nailed to the top, and cleaned it with salt. It's missing its drawers, but I think we can get that taken care of.

A felted wool coat for Peter

A felted wool coat for Peter
Originally uploaded by run lily.

This little coat is just about done -- it still needs a zipper, and the trim. Peter loved it even half done, and wore it around the house for half an hour after I took his picture. He protested when I started to take it off, but eventually agreed to trade the coat for two little cuffs that he wore instead. The sweater was a men's large before felting, and I've resewn it in blanket stitch with 3 strands of embroidery thread. Lots of fun today!

Things that make Peter laugh

Peter started laughing when he was just a few months old. At first, his laugh was a burble -- like a brook. Sandra (who keeps him a few days a week) said that Cohen (who's 4) had asked one day about the sound Peter made, and she explained that he was laughing. He used to laugh like a nut when I played pattycake with him, and then a bit later when we played peek-a-boo. He still enjoys those games sometimes, but they don't make him laugh the way they used to. Now he laughs loudly, big "ha ha ha!" kinds of laughs. These are some of the things that he finds funny these days. I wish I had started this list earlier.

1. Seeing someone he loves -- mama, dada, Lily -- come into the room.
2. Having mama whisper silly sounds against the back of his cheeks and neck.
3. Watching dada pretend to scare him with funny faces.
4. The word blah-blah-blah.
5. Being tickled on his kneecaps and behind his knees.
6. Other people laughing.

Green, green, green

We painted Peter's room right after his first birthday. I like the color: it's calming, and soft, and reminds me of the color of tree leaves with sunlight streaming down through them. We added a soft (made in Canada, artificial fibre) straw-colored rug for playing and reading on. At some point, I'll replace the quilt (this one was made by my grandmother many, many years ago) with one that can take more frequent washings.

The gingham one folded over the rocking chair was made by Grammy too, especially for Peter. It has hand-stitched heart appliques, and is entirely hand-quilted in a circles and stripes pattern. She's 88 now.

Vintage

Even though my students no longer look incredulous when I (only half in jest) say that I was already in university when they were born, I still don't get it. Really, I mean. The 80s are as far off now as the 50s were when I was in elementary school. The 50s were Happy Days and sockhops for us, a theme-park of a decade. And the 40s were a fable, some far-off place where our parents were born but left as children to come to the New World and be modern. Even the 1970s seems like the recent past to me, though more and more the catchphrases are seeming odd. When I felt last week that I just never had fun anymore, and grocery shopping by myself qualified as a "day out," I suddenly realized that this is what women meant in the 1970s by taking time to "find yourself." Except no one says that anymore. Ron brought this "vintage" tricycle home from his mum's a few weeks ago. They bought it new for him.

Tuesday

Peter's at Sandra's playing with the kids, and I have been working at home today, mostly on a book review of Imagined Diasporas, by Pnina Werbner. It's very good, but dense. This afternoon I want to spend some time making a wish list of acquisitions for my new courses. This will be fun, as finally I'm spending someone else's grant money! Woohoo! The university hasn't employed a Middle East specialist before, so the collection is weak and unprogrammed in that area. It's a big task, but I've got a plan: a list of topics (overviews, economy, political systems, kinship, gender, belief systems, popular culture, ethnic minorities, language, social movements, life cycle) with major backlist and current works for each. I'm not even thinking about what this may cost.

Friday's foray to the art sales wasn't as much fun as I'd anticipated. Peter and I went at 4:30, just as Ron's auditions were beginning. The benefit auction works were still being hung, but we poked around anyway and didn't find anything that made my heart leap. The student sale did have lots of fun things (piles of linocuts for $7 each!), but everything was on the floor and I couldn't put Peter down. That made going through things very awkward. I tracked down an illustrator a few years ago by asking the drawing prof to recommend someone, and my lovely linocuts for Peter's room may come about this way. The ones I liked on Etsey have sold, and the creator doesn't do commissions. I was disappointed by that.

Otherwise, things are going well, I guess. Ron's mum is in the hospital (a few hours away) and we are concerned about that. Peter is getting over his cold. I'm sleeping somewhat better, but still stressed and tired. I need to get this review done, then back to my henna practices article. Ron's schedule is getting busier and busier, and there are more and more evening meetings and shows. That is our life, I guess.