Tag: photos

A place I’d like to visit

On this day in 1862, Edith Wharton was born to an affluent New York family. She was the first woman awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, an honorary doctorate of letters from Yale, and full membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Money and marriage did not bring happiness, but they did help provide the material for novels like The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome, and dozens more novels, essays, poems, and non-fiction books on architecture and gardening. She wrote until her death at age seventy-five.

Wharton’s ideas on architecture and gardening were manifested in her beautiful Massachusetts home, The Mount. Wharton designed not only the house, but all the gardens. After her death, the property went through several owners, including a school and a theater company. By 1980, the buildings were in disrepair and the gardens overgrown when it was taken over the by the not-for-profit Edith Wharton Restoration.

After years of work on the house and other structures as well as the gardens, the property was almost foreclosed on last year. With help from continuing donations and careful planning for new and more financially sound uses and management of The Mount, there’s hope that this one of only five percent of Historic National Landmarks dedicated to women is preserved.

An unexpected bonus

Sometime in December, I carelessly broke three of my glasses. Over our twenty years of marriage, Tom and I have naturally lost dishes to breakage, but probably never three at one time. Since the traditional twentieth anniversary gift is china, last June he replaced a half-dozen bowls in our china pattern. I figured it was a year when an appropriate Christmas gift to myself would be bringing our iced tea and claret wine stemware back to a dozen each.

I was pretty sure I could find the glasses online. Fostoria has been around a long time, and mine is a fairly common pattern. I was delighted to find Replacements, Ltd., who not only sells my glasses and more than 300,000 other dinnerware patterns, but they have them at different price levels. If your dinnerware is older (as my glasses are), Replacements, Ltd. often stocks older pieces that will better match yours–and at a reduced price. Perfect!

I was completely pleased when I received my order. After mixing them in with my older glasses, I can’t pick out the new ones.

I’m not getting paid for this endorsement, and normally I wouldn’t bore you with it. Who cares about my dishes, right? BUT–what I do care about, and I hope you do, too, is what kind of companies I do business with. Located in Greensboro, NC, Replacements, Ltd. was founded by Bob Page in 1981 with just fifteen patterns. And today, I found out that Replacements, Ltd. is a Bronze Level National Corporate Sponsor of the Human Rights Campaign. This means a company has shown a commitment to improving the lives of LGBT Americans in the workplace by scoring 85 percent or higher on HRC’s Corporate Equality Index.

The Compound follows a tight budget, and replacing those glasses was a luxury. It makes me feel good to know our dollars went to a company that supports a fair workplace. The names of other companies with a high CEI can be found here.

Cheers!

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day

I’m a little late with wishes for the day. I was busy witnessing some of the best and worst behaviors of humans as I went about my errands over the past few hours.

That seems appropriate, actually. The halting progress of civil rights in our nation showed us at our best and worst. This year, the day seems more poignant because tomorrow our first black president will take his oath of office. For me, it feels like a milestone when we should stop looking back and start looking forward. And when I say that, I include my fervent readiness to shake the last eight years out of my brain and move toward a better future for all of us.

In the meanwhile, I’m on a bit of a cleansing mission. There are so many nagging duties I’ve gotten out of the way over the past month–financial, physical, emotional–and I’ve decided to detox my body. I’ve upped the water intake, added twenty daily ounces of green tea and about eight ounces of orange juice a day, and I’m going to omit meat for a few days. This really isn’t a hardship for me, as I’m a passionate raw and cooked veggie lover, but I don’t want to deny The Compound menfolk any culinary pleasures. Some nights I’ll probably cook two different meals.

But for tonight, they’re my guinea pigs. I’ve created something. I don’t know if it’s a pie or a quiche or what. Leeks sweated down in butter, nestled among thinly sliced potatoes, with a milk/egg mixture lightly flavored with nutmeg, salt, and pepper, poured into a crust, then topped with the thinnest layer of grated Gruyère cheese. It’s baking now, too late for me to throw in the garlic I’m wondering about. I sort of adapted the recipe from several I found online. It’s an adventure!

Also, because I know Lindsey’s going to care, here’s a photo of some things I picked up today.


Tools for cooking and for wrangling logs!

My baby heater that I keep in my office sparked and hissed at me today. It was very dramatic, and I don’t do drama, so into the trash it went. Even though Mercury’s retrograde, I got a new one, because as long as I can keep my feet warm, I can keep the thermostat down in my house.

Finally, in the category of entertainment, I’ve made this confession to my family and a few close friends, but now I think you all should know. There was a time I mocked Tori Spelling with the best of them. But having recently finished this book:

I’m totally in like with her. So I’m really excited that Tim just found this for us to indulge in:

Me, Tori, and popcorn. Sounds like a great way to spend an evening. If my cooking improv doesn’t kill us.

If you know me at all…

…you know I don’t do well with dog death. This is why, if a dog is a character in a book or a movie, my friends pre-read or pre-screen for me, or give me a “dead dog disclosure.” It’s why, one year when Timmy did not pre-read a book he gave me, after I finished it, I took a photo of my tear-and-mascara-stained face, then e-mailed the photo to him with a simple, “Thanks!” much to his remorse. (Don’t worry. I’ve forgiven you, Timmy.)

It’s why, when Lynne had bad news to deliver last week, she freely admitted to being a coward and calling Tim so he could tell me instead of calling me herself.

Though I’m sad that a wonderful dog has left our lives, there’s so much to be grateful for. We’d never have known him if his previous family hadn’t encountered a challenge. As much as they loved him and wanted him, their baby was severely allergic to him. Jess and Laura, even with two large dogs already in their home, made room for this gentle giant. They chose to keep him when their own newborn complicated logistics, although there was another home willing to take him. Laura said she just couldn’t let him go through another displacement.

So he stayed. He was nothing but good. Nothing but loving. Nothing but kind. In spite of his size and his big bark, he had the sweetest of natures. His name, which he already had when he came to Laura and Jess, is one of my favorite names. I’ve used it for two characters–one in an unpublished novel, and one in a just-published novel.

In his last hours, Lila played with him, laughing, falling on him, and burying herself in his thick coat. He loved the attention and understood that he was her guard and protector as well as her playmate. He embodied everything that is good and noble about dogs in general and his breed–bullmastiff–in particular.

Sam, you will be missed.

More photos of Sam behind the cut.

Fire!

A few years ago, someone in Tom’s family gave him this jigsaw puzzle for Christmas.

I’d forgotten about it until this past Christmas, when his sister J. got a similar one, and everyone complained about how hard it is to put together. When we got home after our holiday traveling, I dug ours out of the window seat. I set about doing the edges, which was a LOT harder than I expected.

Tim likes jigsaw puzzles, so he began putting pieces together. Then Tom got into the act. Last night, Rhonda and Lindsey came over. Lindsey decided the puzzle was the devil, although she successfully managed to put six pieces together. Rhonda felt like her brain had worked enough for the day, so she shunnnnnned the puzzle. However, major progress was made on the edges by Tim and Tom while The Brides were here, then later, while I was looking for a Photo Friday picture, Tom and Tim, with little fanfare, finally ended up with this:

Yay, it’s done! But I’ve found another way to lure our friends to The Compound:

Yup, the chiminea is waxed, seasoned, and in business.

I think marshmallows, Starbucks, and fireplace tongs are in our not-too-distant future.

Three Shots

I didn’t exactly get permission for this, so if you want your photo removed, let me know. But here are three reader shots. If you have a photo of yourself, your dog, your child, your armadillo (we can’t keep those in captivity in Texas), your entire class, office, or knitting group, or strangers on the street reading A Coventry Wedding, please send it on and I’ll post it here.

Here you see the coy, the tough guy, and the happy bookseller:

Thanks for these photos, and for the photos of the novel on the shelves in stores!