My Life, or, A China Cabinet

You may have been thinking that my absence from blogging means that I’ve been involved in less thrift-store-frippery in the last month. However, as you can see, the basement room in my house is actually starting to resemble the Ashmolean Museum:

Tea cups abound. This can mean only one thing: I’m planning a wedding. My own, in fact.

expensive tastes

Darwin, who is essentially a giant moth when it comes to sweaters, recently ate a huge hole in the front of a J crew cashmere tee. Now, the sweater was out of its normal, animal-proof storage space because I was thinking about donating it, but still, I think I would have liked to make that decision on my own. It came from a thrift store in the first place, so I guess that its untimely demise is just part of the second-hand shopping cycle—win some, lose some.

I’m not sure what to do, though, with the sad remnants of my former sweater. I’m thinking about turning it into two small dog sweaters. I have no idea how to go about this, but I was tired of looking at a heap of mangled cashmere and got out the scissors. I cut off the sleeves and then realized that each of the shoulders actually forms a pretty good sweater size/shape. Then I made Darwin wear the whole thing around for a bit, looking like a big, sad, oatmeal-colored slug. Then I got bored with this project and put it away. It might work… someday.

Consider this another sad tale of the life of a dissertator. Writing things and making dog sweaters. Sort of. Not really.

wintry walk with a disobedient dog

I’ve been trying to get Darwin to sit at crosswalks before we go across the street—this was inspired by his attempt, a few months ago, to rejoin the wild. It’s not really going so well. He sits every time, but it takes a while. And he gives me this look. Maybe the look also has to do with the jacket?

It was kind of snowing today. Darwin licked some ice off a bridge.

In the distance, you can see the Thai pavilion at Olbrich Gardens. It’s looking a bit out of place in the landscape these days.

bowls

is this a theme? might be.

 

Believe it or not, I’m actually trying to fatten this cat up. Keats started acting out of sorts last week and had some issues that resulted in a vet visit, $200 of lab work, and lots of worry. It turns out that he is fine, if a bit of a medical mystery. But he did lose some weight (don’t worry—he’s still over 15 pounds), so I’m on assignment to tempt him will all kinds of gross food made from baby ducks or something. Apparently, 18 pounds is not overweight for such a cat. The result is lots of dirty cat bowls—probably more cat dishes than human dishes, which, given the current ratio of people:cats, is probably appropriate.

 

I am addicted to these, which I just found at Costco.

 

This is not a snack, though it looks like one…especially to the cats. I always have the idea of putting ornaments in footed silver bowls, but it’s never happened before today. I went back to a thrift shop and bought this bowl, which I saw last week, specifically for these birds. That’s kind of nuts, I know.

reflections

My house is full of mirrors. Sort of like a funhouse, but with more antiques. The mirrors don’t make you look fat or short, just silvery or slightly out of focus.

It’s also full of cats—only some of which are the product of “vitreous trickery*.”

There are some new cat-faces around here—we took in a pair of cat-sisters from a refuge in North Carolina. This is Alice, looking for the enchanting cat she sees in the mirror. Her sister, a calico we call George Eliot, is around here somewhere.

Five cats and a dog is quite a bit to manage in 800 square feet, but not as much as you might imagine. They all find their little spots to perch, and the two new cats—though full-grown—are as tiny as they are sweet. They charmed Ricky during his shifts as a volunteer at the refuge, and, after weeks of saying no, I succumbed as well. After all, it’s long been clear that we’re running a small and thoughtfully-decorated animal refuge here. It’s work I’m willing to do—joyfully, and with delight in their company.

*that phrase, which I love, comes from an article on glass by Chris Otter—I read it several years ago, but the words are always bumping around in my head.

Starting Slow

I wasn’t going to decorate for Christmas. It seemed like one more thing to do—one more thing to worry about, to keep the animals from gnawing on, to try and keep clean.

But then I did it after all. Last year, I lusted after this West Elm by David Stark twig tree and all its accoutrements. I bought the tree in the post-holiday sales when, oddly, it was wait-listed until April. It showed up on my doorstep right before spring. I stored the box away without even opening it. The ornaments were harder to find—I tracked them down in a tangled post-Christmas clearance heap at the West Elm store near Ricky’s parents’ house in New Jersey.

Given that prolonged and unseasonable purchasing process, it really seemed ridiculous not to bring it out this year, even if decorating a tiny corner of my tiny living room feels a bit pointless. Ricky’s family always has a large and lovely Christmas tree that I get to enjoy each year, so my own decorations always feel kind of stopgap.

When I think about it, my family has always had kind of a strange relationship with holiday decorations—I have vague memories of my dad wrestling with a Christmas tree stand in my early childhood, but mostly I remember the artificial tree we had in Boulder. The cats always climbed it, and over the years, I think we lost most of our glass ornaments that way. One year, we left for Mexico either right before or right after Christmas—taking the cats with us—and stayed gone until spring. I still remember how odd it was to see the fully-decorated tree still standing in our living room when we returned. A glass pickle ornament that I was particularly fond of survived the cats that year.

Later, when Christmases were often just me and my mom in the St. Louis house, she let me decide what I wanted to do. I think we still had the same artificial tree from Colorado—it had sharp, plasticky needles that stabbed and sliced our fingers as we wrestled the branches into some semblance of nature.

One year, we decorated the tree with bunches of faux grapes. Another year, we cut out chains of paper dolls holding hands. I made an army of tiny angels out of copper wire and plum-colored beads. 

My mom bought the sparkly brush animals for me when she was here a few weeks ago—they’re Martha Stewart (of course) at Macy’s. I have quite a few of these animals now, but I can only bring a few out at a time—they’re rather hard to protect from the cats.

Change (kind of)

Remember back when I was planning this kitchen renovation and thinking about wainscoting? I had a piece of it leaning against the wall for many months while I stared at it and tried to work up the nerve to finally engage in this project. Bonus: you can see the old tile backsplash here, too. And a curtain that I never got around to hemming.

Well, the wainscoting is done:

Keeping the old cabinets and working around their distinctly irregular measurements was the biggest challenge of this project—and the reason I avoided it for more than five years. I wanted to keep the cabinets, though, because they are so well fitted to the space (they were build on site back when the house came to be, c. 1940). Anything that I had the budget for would come out looking clunky and, well, new. I like new, to a certain extent, but as we know, I also like old things. The kitchen is kind of an unusual mix of vintage and modern—better than looking like everything came straight off the floor of Home Depot.

I love the wainscoting and the subway tile (both of which also feature in my bathroom). Note the different, un-hemmed curtain. And the binder clips holding it up. I wonder how long it will be before I get around to that project…

It’s kind of hard to believe, but the kitchen is actually sort of… done. The dishwasher swap stirred up some small issues that I have to fix, but other than that, it’s become a pretty place to cook.

:::edit:::

Here, for fun and/or horror, are some early picture of the kitchen.

The image from the listing. Apparently, it looks its best here?

The day I moved in…to the garage.

This one leaves me speechless…it looked like this for most of the first summer.

A kind of stasis during my first year of grad school—note the evil little Magic Chef stove in the spot now occupied by the dishwasher (the house didn’t have one until the end of this first year, when the stove died and I replaced it). Also note my beloved childhood kitty, who lived out the rest of her long life in this new house.

questions.

Where have I been? What have I been doing?

Kitchen things, in large part. Like this:

Confusing, yes? Let me explain. I’m on my third dishwasher in five years. LG Washer the I was a lemon and died within weeks of delivery. LG sent someone out to try and fix it; it didn’t work even though they tried to tell us that it did. I put on some stompy heeled boots and went to Home Depot to yell at them; they wisely agreed to replace it. Then they delivered LG Washer the II. And left it in the middle of the living room, because someone decided not to specify that it needed to be INSTALLED. So I put my yelling boots back on and refused to leave Home Depot until someone came with me to install it. And they did.

And LG Washer the II limped along for almost five years, coughing, wheezing, and intermittently leaking large quantities of water from various washerly orifices. I became intimately acquainted with said orifices and turned the dishwasher over more than once to tighten hot water lines. I also took apart the entire sprayer/filter piece more than once to fix loose gaskets, remove clogs, and all sorts of lovely things.

LG Washer the II announced its demise the same week as the major work in my kitchen came to a close. I heard some water running, which I thought was the water softener. Turns out it was the dishwasher, draining buckets of filth into the basement. Great!

Nobody works on LG dishwashers, which is part of why I have a scar on my leg from the last time I had to turn it upside down. We finally got someone to come have a look. The news was bad. The worst part? The dead pump might have been caused by too much soap.

Apparently, those little soap pellets that they tell you are great for high efficiency dishwashers are, in fact, not good at all. With the high temperature and stainless steel interior of dishwashers like LG the II, you only need, I was told, about 1/3 that much soap–the compressed equivalent of about 1T of loose soap.

So, I got a new dishwasher: Whirlpool, the First of His Name. And then I got out the hammer and started making soap pieces, because I buy everything at Costco and have about a gross of these wicked little things remaining.

Like any good Victorianist, I had to find the correct implement for this situation. Since the Victorians didn’t think to make dishwasher soap tongs, I had to make do with silver-plate sugar tongs from an antiques market in London.

I have a new dissertation deadline: finish before the end of Whirlpool the First.

Flanerie (adjusted)

I had no idea there were so many State Parks in Wisconsin. So many parks, in fact, that Darwin has already become a bit bored with them:

Since the weather is nice—we’re into flannel sheets now, but not down parkas yet—we’ve been doing quite a bit of park wandering, the dog and I.

This is Lake Kegonsa at my feet.

The prairie flowers at Governor Nelson State Park tower above our heads as we wind through paths that many feet knew before these ancient sites were “discovered.”

Yesterday we raced the sun as it sank behind the farms and fields in the distance. My flanerie has gone country, it seems. Look at them boots.

photographs

Despite the number of photographs that I take and post here, my house is actually completely empty of displayed photographs. I’m not really sure why. I seem to prefer paintings (often of cows) or mirrors (the older and more silvered the better).

Last week, I came across a box full of old and rather grubby photo frames at a church rummage sale (which was otherwise quite terrible). I bought a stack of them for five dollars, put them outside to clean them off, and then forgot them overnight—during a rainstorm. I guess they’re clean now, though a bit worse for the wear.

You can’t really tell from the front, though, and I tend not to like the look of immaculate new things anyway—with the exception of my continually problematic white twill upholstery. I should have gone for a bit more grubbiness there from the start.

Last year, a box of old photographs surfaced in my mom’s house— large portraits of my paternal grandmother, her family, and my paternal grandfather’s family.

One night—much later than was perhaps advisable—I started scanning some of them and printing smaller versions to fit in my new/old frames.

Some of the family stories that accompany these portraits are quite sad. Nevertheless, I like having their faces in my midst. I added in an old school portrait of my maternal grandmother and a picture from a dear friend’s wedding. One of the frames I bought came with a mirror in it, so my face is in the mix, too.