Category: family tree

How my latest project became way more of a project than I thought it was going to be when I started it.

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When I first met Pat, he had this quilt on his bed.  It was soft, slightly tattered, definitely loved and just the right weight to be used all year long.  That quilt stayed on our bed for some time – I don’t remember exactly when it was deemed a little too shabby to be used everyday anymore, but I do know it was pre-Edie.  I assured Pat it could be fixed, that I could fix it and so I put it in a pile of projects to be worked on and there it sat, for some time.  The quilt would come up now & again and I’d think, fixing that quilt would be a great gift for him.  We have a number of quilts his grandmother made that I blogged about last year (only I’ve just realized that the images are MIA so I’m not linking that post until I figure out where those images are), but as I have realized, this quilt was different, because it was made by his other grandmother.  His maternal grandmother was a beautiful seamstress, quite the quilter and owned a fabric shop at one point. Her quilts are all over our house.  This quilt in question was made by his paternal grandmother, who was not known for her sewing.  She was married to a farmer and I don’t think they had a whole lot to their name to begin with when a tornado came through one spring day in the mid 1990’s,  leaving them with their lives, but not much else.  Pat’s grandfather was never quite the same after that, but I suppose when you are 94 years old and have a house land on you, you’re bound to experience some sort of effect.  
In researching how to repair some of the other quilts around our house, I came to the realization that this quilt needed more than just a few patches and a new binding applied – if I was going to do it right, which I wanted to do, as Pat loved this quilt, not just because it’s one of the few things left from his grandmother, because it was he thought, the perfect sleeping quilt.  And doing it right meant taking the binding off, taking the back off, replacing some quilt parts, the backing and the binding. 
 Surely it couldn’t take that long.  A few hours with a seam ripper and it would all be good, yes?
 I thought I could start it just before Thanksgiving and have it done by Christmas.  His birthday later this month at the latest.  
That was before I got into it and realized that this quilt had been quilted through all the layers – top, batting and back.  Machine quilted, with lots of tiny, tight little stitches.  The quilting rows were about 2-3 finger widths apart, and the quilt fits a full size bed.  That’s a lot of tiny, tight little stitches to pull out. I literally have to take the entire thing apart.
Parts of the quilt are so fragile that I have to very slowly and patiently pull every stitch out as carefully as I can.  I have spent hours on this quilt, I have gotten friends to sit on the opposite end of the quilt and help me, and for about 20 or so man hours spent taking the quilt apart, I have gotten about a quarter to a third dequilted.
I realized as I got into the project that the batting between the layers was disintegrating, leaving a trail of fuzz behind.  I had every intention of surprising Pat with this project, but between the mess it was leaving behind as well as the realization that this project was going to take far longer than I had anticipated had me share with him that I was finally working on his grandmother’s quilt.  So much for the surprise, as well as the idea of it being a Christmas or birthday gift this year. This little project is definitely much bigger than I bargained for.
But the quilt itself?  It is most definitely a scrap quilt.  There are some old flannels that I imagine were shirts of Pat’s grandfather.  There are some sweet children’s fabrics, there are what appear to be upholstery fabrics, seersucker, dressier fabrics, vintage prints and more.  As I slowly work my way up and down the rows, I wonder where each piece of fabric came from and I ponder what scraps I’m going to use to repair the quilt.  
As you can see, it’s very much a patchwork quilt, no real pattern, so I think it gives me some room to include some scraps of our lives in it. I never really knew his grandparents, but as I work on this quilt, as I get to know each and every bit of fabric used, I feel like I’ve gotten to know them just a little bit.  I’m actually glad I’ve waited until now to repair this quilt – had I done it earlier, I wouldn’t have done it right.  This way, it will hopefully be around for many more years.
But first, I need to get the darn thing apart.  

In with the new.

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Another holiday season has come and gone, a new year has been rung in and I’ve managed to survive them relatively unscathed.  You can’t seem to escape the idea that you are supposed to be around family for the holidays – even with the admittance that everyone does not have the picture perfect family scenes that seem to dominate in the songs and images of the season.  For someone like me, who a few years ago realized that my own family was in fact so toxic that it simply wasn’t healthy for me, there are landmines all over the holiday landscape.  This year I came to realization that I do a bit of grieving for my family around the holidays, which is no doubt normal and to be expected and honestly, that realization made it easier for me to accept the time I spent in my own head about it, while also not allowing me to wallow.  In other words, there were moments that were hard, but I managed to name them for what they were and move on.  It felt like progress. After all, isn’t admitting there’s a problem the biggest step in solving it?
The three of us spent the week between Christmas and New Years lounging around the house, eating leftovers and having movie watching marathons.  There was some serious progress made on projects that require me to just sit for a spell, like Pat’s sweater and another project I started with the intent of surprising my husband with for Christmas only to realize it was far more work than I had anticipated. Isn’t that always the case?  
It was all quite lovely and much appreciated, that week where we just slowed down, not always answering the phone or turning on the computer, just lots of sleeping in, hot tea and cocoa, waking up to some sort of winter precipitation every other day.  At one point though, Edie did get a bit bored with us, which then found me apologizing to her that no one was available to play because they were all doing family things with their extended family and that we weren’t seeing extended family, this sitting around and just chilling, this is what our family does after the holiday while everyone else sees their grandparents, aunt, uncles and cousins.  Which of course, was starting to go down that little path in my head where I start to feel sorry for myself, where I wonder if making that break from my own family of origin was really so right for all of us, when that dear sweet child pulled me back off the edge of the cliff, reminding me that we were indeed seeing family this holiday season, because weren’t the Smileys coming for New Years and aren’t they family?
Why yes my dear, they are.  And just like that, I realized yet again how grateful I am for the friends and neighbors that surround us with love, that are in fact, our family in so many ways.  And so we rang in the new year with what we like to call our “Virginia Cousins”.
One of the things I love the most about visiting with the Smileys is cooking with Mollie – there’s no real menu planning for our visits, you just bring what you have on hand and see what happens.  Edie & Abigail still have more definite ideas about what they want to cook together, but watching them cook together?   Such a happy thing. 
Of course, after making their one bowl of guacamole, they were quite content to let us do the rest of the cooking.  This is what my kitchen counter looked like New Years Day early evening.
Which, minus Granny’s crystal champagne glass, is about what any kitchen counter looks like when Mollie and I are together.  Keeping 4 kids, 2 husbands, a dog and ourselves fed is a nonstop process.  It doesn’t hurt that we both love to bake together.  
This is where my stacking baking racks really came in handy.  On the bottom layer are mincemeat tarts, baked in mini-muffin tins, while the top rack is a dairy free cookie Mollie whipped up using chick peas, peanut butter and dark chocolate chips.  Both were delish.  And on a sidenote, I want to add that using southern biscuit flour in your pie crust instead of regular all purpose flour yields the flakiest crust I’ve ever made.  For reals.
And when Mollie finishes tweaking that cookie recipe and sends it along, I’ll share.  Promise.
Their visit was a nice extension of our cozy, lazy week, with the exception of Owen’s constant calling for someone to please play Twister with him, which the girls were quite good about, for the most part.  Then again, it’s hard to say no to someone who would take it upon himself to move all the furniture out of the way and set up the game by himself. Owen is really good at moving tables.
This, with the kids fussing at each other, the baby crying, the dog barking,  the new year rung in with everyone still awake piled in our bed, the husbands deciding to head out to a bar to watch a football game together New Years Day while Mollie and I make breakfast, lunch and then dinner in our PJ’s while sipping champagne from family heirloom glasses that don’t get used nearly enough,  this is the sort of family gathering all those holiday images talk about I think.  Where Owen torments Edie to the verge of tears, to have me comfort her telling her this is what it’s like to have a brother while Abigail pipes in with full agreement to that experience. Where Edie decides to have her own little revenge on the candy cane eating monster known as Owen by rearranging all the candy canes on the Christmas tree just out of his reach, so that he thinks he’s eaten all he can reach by himself.  Where the look on her face when I asked her if she had moved the candy in question was priceless.  If that’s what makes family, well then, that’s exactly what they are.
And nothing sends that fact home more than the only picture that was taken over 3 days where all four kids made it into the shot.
Happy 2013.

How to decorate a Charlie Brown Tree.

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Every year I am asked about our tree.   We often hear we have the best tree and so I find myself answering the question,  how do I get it to look that way?
We start with a tree that Pat & Edie cut down.  We prefer imperfect looking trees.  After Ashlawn-Highland discontinued the practice of having folks cut down trees from their fields, we found a cut-it-down yourself farm near Covesville that has the sort of trees we like.
This year’s tree started out looking like this.
(That would be the good side.)
First the lights go on.
I like to work from the inside out, starting at the bottom, wrapping lights around the trunk.  When I get to the top, I move the lights out just a wee bit and work my way back down.
That’s what 200 lights look like.
Working my way up and down, out and around the tree,  you can see where I’m slowly filling it in with light.
I took this shot after I had 400 on the tree – getting close, but still, not enough.
 This was where I ran out of lights to be used on the tree. That’s 700 Christmas tree lights. I wanted more lights, but I didn’t want to go out and buy them.  So I stopped there. From the moment we brought the tree in the house Saturday, we’ve realized it’s far wider than we initially realized. So 700 lights didn’t quite go as far as I thought they would. 
I know, there are some out there that think 700 lights are excessive.  I’m strongly considering making sure I have 1000 for next year, just in case. 
Next up come the hanging of the ornaments.  Here it helps to have lots of these as well.
This is where Edie comes in to help. Left to my own devices, I will spend days getting the lights just so before then carefully considering where each ornament should go.  I think 3 days is a decent amount of time spent putting a tree up.  My offspring however, thinks that you should be able to do it in an afternoon. She’s ever so proud that this year the lights went up in one try (there have been years where I’ve taken them down and completely restarted more than once) and they were done in under 2 hours.  This year’s tree trimming was definitely the fastest it’s been probably ever.
The first ornament hung is always this gem, the lone survivor of a set of pipe cleaner and styrofoam balls my parents made their first Christmas together back in 1968.  This was the most ornate of the set and every year this was the one my dad wanted to hang first. I always hang it in a tucked away spot.  It’s definitely a bit worse for the wear, but one I can’t not hang.
Edie’s first ornament this year was this beauty, hung in a spot of honor, smack dab in the front and center of the tree.
Until we got other ornaments hung around it, it was my own little episode of having that lamp in my front window. Thankfully, by the time we were done, it was not as prominent, without me having to rearrange it.  Or knock it off while watering plants. And because that kid can hang several hundred ornaments well in less than an hour, she had it blending it in no time flat.
We have a wide variety of ornaments.  There are ones from Christmas past, like this one:
There the ones Pat & I made and were given as children, like these two:
 
 I made that Jack in the Box in Girl Scouts back in 1978.
There’s also this one, one of my favorites.  I found that at an after Christmas sale the Christmas we were engaged while I was shopping with our mothers.  Could it be any more perfect?  Every year I hang it in a prominent spot.
We have ones Edie made.
And the ones she’s acquired over the years including princesses and Hello Kitty.
Ornaments get hung similar to the way the lights go on – from the inside out, so that the tree has a bit of depth and texture to it. I like to mix them all up, so that the Mary I painted as a toddler is hanging next to a Wise Man painted by my mother from one of those 1970’s wooden ornament kits (anyone remember those?) is hanging next to a vintage Shiny Bright I bought somewhere along the way.
I have a thing for vintage Christmas ornaments.  I have a hard time passing them up at yard sales and estate sales, but these days, unless I find something so spectacular that I don’t already have, I am getting better about walking past.  Not having enough room to store them all helps. 
I finish the tree with a set of glass ‘icicles’ I was given several years ago.  There are about 2 dozen of them in various combinations of colors and styles.  After they are hung, I drape a beaded garland, add the tree skirt and call it a day.

The tree skirt is an embellished vintage item. I was given the plain red corduroy skirt with a red & gold trim and green pom poms.  I added the buttons to look like snowmen and snowflakes.  
And here is the finished tree.  While pictures never do justice to it, you can see what a difference lots of lights and a giant tub (and a half) of ornaments and a few strands of beads do for a perfectly imperfect tree.  The only thing missing are candy canes, which will be purchased and hung in the next few days.
 
And that, dear friends and readers, is how you take a Charlie Brown tree and make it beautiful. They really just need a little bit of love.

The Festival of the Bromance.

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Oysterfest, the best holiday of the entire year, the one that kicks off the entire grand holiday season, has come and gone.

Many oysters were eaten.  
Pork rinds were consumed.
 Surprisingly enough, my entire fried food quotient this year was one bag of pork rinds, despite the allure of so many over the top fried delicacies.
This year’s winner for the the most over the top fried treat?
 
Deep fried cinnamon rolls, rolled in bacon bits.
 
That bacon didn’t look nearly as good as the bacon we had back on the grill.
I’m pretty sure Ryan grilled meat from the time he arrived Friday until they left Sunday morning.
 Ryan brought a cooler of lamb & pork he’d raised, Dave brought rockfish he’d caught, there was even some Ankole sausage courtesy of Rieman’s father.  There was also the usual gathering of crockpots, breads, biscuits and other treats made by the sisterhood to round out the meat, oysters and fried foods.
The girls have gotten big enough to pitch in too, with Edie and Abigail baking a coffee cake Saturday morning.  Why yes, that is a bread knife Abigail is using to cut the butter.  She grabbed the first knife she saw laying around.
This year’s stellar bloody mary table was also a staging area for the nearby grill.
Or perhaps you like a hunk of meat in your drink?
No wonder someone thought this was a great event to have a free health screening at.  
There were plenty of our usual traditions, like the Fire Truck Parade Friday night, where the kids try to sit as close as possible to the loudest parade you’ve ever heard. (Don’t worry, we all wear ear plugs)
 
 There is the Saturday afternoon parade, full of Shriners.
 There is she crab bisque from the church on Main Street that is not to be missed.

 We added the oyster shucking competition this year to things we do at Oysterfest.
Those ladies were serious about their oyster shucking.
And we were serious about eating them.
This little guy, the newest addition to the Smiley clan, kept the sisterhood from hitting the bar Friday night, but it did get us a free ticket to wander around the fest by ourselves (accompanied by young Walker of course) Saturday afternoon. We were going to hit the wine garden, but the line was too long.  And we had wine at home.
We also enjoyed some quiet time to ourselves in this year’s back yard fort, as always, courtesy of Brooke, in the form of a pop-up camper that made for a most excellent grown up hide out.
There was plenty of the usual piles of kids and us trying to get them all to gather for one nice picture, whether posed or not posed.

The swords were Ryan’s Sunday morning craft project.  
When we got home last night, I found Edie curled up asleep in the den, clutching it, her souvenir of a good weekend.
They even ate in a pile, declaring this chair the “Mac and Cheese Chair”.
There were plenty of other moments that make the weekend so special, year after year.
 

The most notable moment comes Saturday afternoon, after the parade where someone realizes it’s only 3:30, how can it only be 3:30 when it feels like at least 5:30? Good god, how are we ever going to make it to put the kids to bed, can’t they go to bed at 5?  
Saturday of Oysterfest is the longest day of the year. 
Oysterfest isn’t just about a grill full of meat all weekend, or piles of kids or fried food or parades, it’s the official holiday of the bromance.

The entire group of men have a very strong bromance.  And every last one of the operates on the assumption that if you have a bromance with one of them, well then, you will have a bromance with all of them.
There’s a lot of love between those boys.

So much so that there is an entire holiday based on it.

Scenes from a weekend.

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Hot air balloons overhead, market, soccer, the Fiber Festival and Sheepdog trials (where I left the camera with Edie, only to find yet more photos of her toes), an unwilling photo subject,  inspiration for new projects,  a fermenting class at the cooking school, visit with grandparents and a grown up field trip on a dreary Monday to one of the nearby wineries.
Not pictured – new orange yarn that’s already being knit up into a yummy scarf, a home run on a homemade pizza crust, a sublime batch of sourdough bread served with the last of the bacon jam & melon jam, and confirmation that the okra pickles need a few more weeks before they are prime for eating.

Seriously Old School.

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Back in the day, Friday nights were Big City nights.  Big City was the underage club downtown that all the cool kids hung out at.  And by cool kids, I mean those of us that didn’t really fit in at our various area high schools.  It was really about the music, which was definitely not anything being played on radio.  The friends I made there had a far longer lasting influence on me than most of the folks I went to high school with – it was a friend I made via Big City that told me I should consider checking out this school in Alabama called Auburn.  And the rest, as they say, is history.
Friday night, in the town I grew up in, was the Big City Reunion.   I realized it was a great excuse to go see some folks I hadn’t seen in forever, mostly my old friend Amy.
I’ve known Amy since third grade.  We have moved in & out of each others lives ever since.  Separately, we are both strong personalities, together?  We are the people your mother warned you about.  Our own mothers warned us about each other.
In grade school we would walk back & forth the mile or so between our houses.  We’d walk to the mall and play Frogger for hours at the arcade.  We’d go to the roller rink and skate Saturday away.  We were Girl Scouts together.  We grew apart for a few years in high school, but by our senior year, we had rediscovered each other and Amy was the friend who introduced me to Big City, so it seemed fitting I go to the reunion with her.
No matter how much time has passed between visits with Amy, we always pick up exactly where we left off.  That much hasn’t changed since third grade.  Actually, there’s a lot that hasn’t changed between us since third grade.  As we were getting ready Friday, she opened up her closet to dress me, neverminding that I had brought an entire suitcase for a one night stay- and despite my initial horror that she owned a Kim Kardashian skirt, despite the fact that I swore up one side and down the other it was trashy as all get out with it’s studs and fake zippers, I tried it on and realized it looked fabulous on me.  All that gym time has definitely paid off.

So of course I proceeded to wear it. 
With the tag still attached of course.
Definitely not the first time I’ve worn something of Amy’s before she had.  Probably not the last.  At least this time she didn’t even bother with “You’re not keeping that” and just skipped ahead to “Go ahead and take it home with you”.  Which I totally did because I need to have something to wear to shows that’s not my standard circa 1992 demin skirt – instead, I’m going to rock my standard 1986 taken from Amy’s closet look. 
Really, the only thing missing from our Friday night ritual was Amy’s mother sprinking holy water on us. 
Amy had a pre-reunion gathering at her house. A.J. showed up and it was great to catch up with him there – A.J. lived across the street from Amy back when we were all in grade school together, and his sister was great pals with my sister from Kindergarten, so he was one of those people I just was used to having around back in the day.  And he’s still one of those people I like having around, who understands I need to carry a spare outfit in his back seat, just in case I change my mind about that skirt.
It was also Bike Week in York.  I knew it was Bike Week, but yet I didn’t really consider what that meant. I drove up the back way, avoiding the DC beltway, which meant coming up through Gettysburg.  The route is generally clear sailing until you get to Gettysburg and then you turn onto Rt. 30, which is the old Lincoln Highway and other than paving that route, I can assure you, the road has not changed since Abraham Lincoln was President.  It has been 2 lanes my entire life and what should be a 20 minute drive always turns into the last hour of hell on a roadtrip.  As I was coming into town past the fairgrounds, it hit me that it was bike week, because there was a line of cycles pulling in, queuing up for their parade in a few hours. 
A few hours later, neither A.J. nor I put it together that Bike Week was BIKE WEEK, so as we decided to ‘cut through’ downtown, we got caught up in the mess that was going on, which meant roads blocked off and bikes everywhere you looked.
 When I called home Friday afternoon after pulling into town, I mentioned to first Pat, then Edie, that it was bike week, and both asked if that meant motorcycles.  I forget how so very different the town I grew up in is from where I live now.  In Charlottesville, Bike Week would probably be a convention of road bicyclists, dressed in spandex, not leather.  York is the Snack Food Capital of the World, while Charlottesville has been named Locavore Capital of the World.  Very different foodie destinations indeed. 

The reunion itself was a grand time.  It was held at a bar, with a dance floor of course.  Five of the old DJ’s took turns spinning records and we danced for hours.  It was great to see familiar faces that I hadn’t seen in forever.  It was like a high school reunion, but with only the people that you really wanted to see and far better music.  The vibe was exactly the same as it had been all those years ago, especially so because you can still smoke in bars in Pennsylvania.
Best of all was spending time with Amy.  A hell of a lot has changed over the last 35 years we’ve known each other, but our friendship hasn’t.  She is truly an original free spirit, my best friend from third grade and one of my most favorite people in the entire universe.  And quite possibly the person your mother warned you about.

Breathe.

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The last two weeks around here have been busy.  Pat’s been overhauling his boat – which has been much needed but generally put off with all his other duties for some time.  This past weekend’s Clean Water Act’s 40th Anniversary Celebration and Rally in DC with the Waterkeeper Alliance and plenty of his fellow Riverkeepers about gave him the excuse he needed to just buckle down and do it. He had a volunteer help strip it, but he did the final sanding and then priming and painting.  He finished it up about 3:30 Friday afternoon, just as it was time for him to head up to DC.

I meanwhile, was up to my ears in a free lance project that you will hear more about next week, as well as attempting to sort out details for my next pickling class, doing my home cooked meals to go and picking up some catering as well as back waiting shifts for a friend’s restaurant, trying to bump up our cash flow, in addition to my regular wife & mom duties.

I turned in the last piece of my free lance project this morning, having done most of it last week, writing 4 articles in a writing frenzy last Friday.  There is much relief, although I still have things to wrap up, emails to respond to, an inbox to clean up, a hard drive to clean up, a desk top to find under a mass of clutter…and that’s just for that project.  The house isn’t in too bad of shape overall – moments where I need to procrastinate I found myself cleaning. 

My uncle’s memorial service was this past weekend. It had been pushed back and pushed back for a variety of reasons and Friday afternoon I realized I just wasn’t going to make it.  I was still finishing up one article and after the rush of the last few weeks, I wasn’t looking forward to making a mad dash up to Baltimore and back.  I spent the weekend here with my girl, intent on chilling out.  We had some nice impromptu fun with friends and neighbors, including dinner one evening.  At the time the service was being held Saturday, I was down in the chicken coop, shoveling out the bottom layer of composted leaves and chicken droppings to put some on my garden.  I think, wait, I know my uncle would have appreciated that, as we had many a conversation over the years on our shared love of gardens and chickens and how much better my garden would grow if I had my own source of chicken manure.

It was good to spend some quality quiet time with Edie this weekend.  She seems to be making the transition of new school/new soccer team/bff moving to Guatemala fairly well.  She began last week complaining that one of the boys in her class from her elementary school had stopped her in the hallway to talk college football – the horrors!  I reminded her that she spent most of last football season talking football with this young man (as well as basketball during that season) and that he was probably in the same boat as her, dealing with new school, he was probably looking to talk to any friendly face he knew about anything he could and with her, he knew their common denominator was college football.  I was pretty tickled to discover that by week’s end, she had gotten over the horror of a boy (!!) talking to her in the middle of the school hallway enough to give me the scouting report and matchups for this week’s games.  When I asked how she knew, she just shrugged and admitted to having talked to said boy all week about football in the hallway as if it was no big deal.  I was quite happy to hear it. 

This week is already shaping up to be busy too, although not as frantic as the last two- meetings, get togethers or work just about every night, with a final editing session before my little project is sent to the printer.  I also have some big house projects planned – Edie’s room is getting a desk, but I need to refinish it first, which is prompting a basement clean out so I have space to work before I make over her room.  I also have a glimmer of an idea for a whole new business, because I don’t have enough irons in the fire, clearly.  Last night I dreamt I was pregnant and in labor and we had to get to the hospital before the floodwaters stopped us.   This morning I looked up what all those things meant in dreams – apparently dreaming you are pregnant is a sign of creativity, and dreaming about floods can mean rebirth or unhappiness.  Hmmm.  I can’t quite figure out what the two of them together mean.  Thoughts?

When the going gets tough….

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Cooking is my happy place.  When I’ve had a bad day, there is nothing more soothing to me than heading into my kitchen and playing.

Friday afternoon, as I was procrastinating about several projects I have going on right now, I checked what I like to call ‘the crackbook’ aka….Facebook.  There, I saw one of my cousins had posted a RIP in regards to their father.

I immediately picked up the phone and called said cousin.  Before the rest of our family members could read about the news on the internet, I turned around and proceeded to call other family members, most importantly, those not on the crackbook. 

The uncle in question that passed can best described as a character.  He could be a hard man to love, but I adored him. And he adored me right back.  That fact was evident to anyone who ever happened to be around us – or so says my husband.

He was married to my mother’s younger sister Loretta.  She was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 39 – she may have actually just turned 40 – anyway, when I went through my whole stomach tumor ordeal a few years back on the eve of my 40th birthday, all I could think of was Aunt Loretta. Andoreda as we kids called her.

She fought a long hard battle 10 year battle with cancer that she didn’t win.  She willed herself to live years after her 6 month expiration date given by doctors because she wanted to see her kids grow up. She wanted to make sure they could take care of themselves at the very least, and once the first one was old enough to drive, she let go.  My Uncle Peter had had diabetes since he was a kid – and as long as I’d known him, he’d never really taken care of himself.  I will give him this – I did see him make an effort to take care of himself when he came to visit us a few years ago.  We had a great visit and that memory will live in my heart right next to the one where he would take me to the candy store (the 7-11 on Old Court Road in Pikesville) in his orange Datsun pickup truck.  During that visit, he never stopped talking about his wife.  He was down here to meet up with a woman he’d been talking to on-line, through an equestrian dating website – he told her he was staying with his niece and her husband, he told her my husband had a rack of canoes parked in front of our house and that we lived near some park and she totally knew who we were and where we lived, which amused him to no end and backed up my theory that everyone in a 4 county area knows our house.  We are a landmark even if we don’t have canoes anymore.

I digress.

Uncle Peter’s passing has made me realize that I’m going to have to deal with my estranged siblings and possibly mother in the coming days.  My last run-in with them resulted in several years of heavy therapy, with a therapist that I really love but our current insurance company tells me I can no longer see.  (That’s a totally different tangent).  Thankfully, at the same time I got the news from the insurance company, the therapist and I had agreed, I had come along way and we could use some space between us. 

So, I’m dealing with the dual whammy of losing my Uncle Peter as well as prepping to deal with my family.  I knew Peter’s passing was coming, but what has me most in a tizzy is the fact that I have to face at least the one of my sisters at the service to say goodbye to him.  I have chatted with several friends about this (Thank you Clarabelle!) but mostly what I’ve done is cook.

I got up early Saturday morning and headed down to the market, where I proceeded to purchase no less than 40 pounds of tomatoes.  It’s been unbearably muggy here, but I have had all four burners of my stove cranking with pots of boiling water since 10:30 Saturday morning.  I have canned at least 30 pints of local organic tomatoes, I am working on turning I don’t know how many pounds of them into concentrate via my crockpot, I’ve got a pot of gumbo simmering as I type this, as well as several loaves of sourdough baguettes in the oven (Thanks to Leni for giving me the starter).  I did a batch of green bean pickles earlier today and I’ve been catching up on laundry for the first time since we got home from the beach. Somehow, sand is still EVERYWHERE.

I know the typical response to hearing about a death in the family is “I’m sorry for your loss”.  Ever since my father passed away when I was 19, I have come to hate that phrase.  It just feels false.  I hate it.  Please don’t use that phrase when you leave comments and email me.  I’m not just dealing with the loss of my uncle – which I knew was coming – he had taken himself off of dialysis last winter, so really, the fact that he lasted as long as he did is something – but I’m girding up to deal with having to be in the same room as my family. The family that lives for drama and will stop at nothing to cause a scene.  I’ve already made arrangements for Edie to be elsewhere because I will minimize the damage they do to her.  Peter always held out hope for reconciliation between myself and my mother and siblings – thanks to the same website that told me about his passing, I’ve learned that my most unstable and nastiest sister has jumped in to ‘be there’ for one of my cousins.

The most meaningful family relationships I have, besides my Aunt Jenny, has been with my cousins.  What I don’t have with my siblings, I have with my cousins.  I want to say goodbye to my Uncle Peter, but I also want to be there for my cousin John, whom I have a very deep soft spot for.  We know what it’s like to lose a parent way too early, we know what it’s like to have difficult relationships with our siblings. 

So,  I really just need to pull up my big girl pants and get through it.  I went off on a tangent last night in bed to Pat about well, everything. How I’m terrified about dealing with my family, that it could set me back years, that I’m slightly pissed at Uncle Peter for expecting me to deal with it but at the same time, I know he, nor any other of my extended family members really should have to be in the middle of the whole mess, but you know what?  I’m so incredibly grateful that I do have all that extended family in the middle of the it all that let me know they are there for me, unquestionably, always.

So, I’m going to try to get through the next week.  For their sakes.

My Cousin Molly’s Art Show Extravaganza

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Friday afternoon, we booked it up to Baltimore to attend my cousin Molly’s art show. Show isn’t quite the right word though.  Event is more like it.
My cousin Molly and I are quite a bit alike, with her being younger, better looking with longer legs and possessing of more talent, although otherwise two peas in a pod who happen to be 13 years apart in age.  Molly is an artist, who still works a day job (bartending at a local wine bar, which I guess makes it more of a night job technically).  Since Edie was a wee one, Molly has always made an effort to have a relationship with her.  Consequently, Edie adores Molly and has declared Molly, “her cousin” and not mine.  Every time we visit, Molly makes sure she spends some quality time with Edie and always has a fun little something for her, whether it be fancy new velvet leopard print slippers or art supplies.  Molly’s kind of awesome like that.
Molly and a partner have organized a few events under the artist collective title “HoodSCAPE”.  They combine art, music as well as celebration in the form of costumes, face painting and parades.  They held their second event, UpChuck, Friday night, at The Yellow Sign Theatre on Charles Street in Baltimore.  They even got some local press. 
Before the bands got started, we got to take in some of Molly’s recent works.
Totally not great shots, but you can get the drift, yes?

I’m loving her balloon paintings. 
She’s also done some cool elephant ones that I didn’t get a decent shot of. 

Molly made this for the show.  I think a smaller version would be pretty awesome in a kid’s room, don’t you?

There were also costumes to take in.  There was a bit of a pirate theme going on, with lots of tutu skirts and corsets being worn. 

Patrick was King Neptune.
Of course Edie got her face painted.  The main lights were switched off to spotlight the band that was performing in the middle of Edie’s paint job, so I used the flashlight app on Pat’s iphone to help the artist finish Edie’s face. Of course I had to capture the moment. 
Yep, that’s my kid getting her face painted in the back of a bar by the light of a cell phone.
Poor Parenting Skills on display.  Or are we opening her little mind up to all the experiences there are in the world?  We had her out of there early, so I am leaning towards the latter.
Pretty impressive face painting.  Little Day of the Dead action going on.
When Edie first got near the door Friday night, she was slightly taken aback.  I had tried to prep her for what she was about to go to and Molly’s brother Mark had lent a hand in this, but clearly, we didn’t quite do it justice.  She was a little overwhelmed when we first arrived, but she was able to realize that “under the strange face painting were just normal people”.   (Her quote.)

We did not stay the entire evening, just the first hour or so, since you know, we are old and someone’s parents who happened to have the kid in tow that evening. The only musical act we caught was Joseph Mulhollen, who we really enjoyed.  In the spirit of the event, he was in costume and we found him reminiscent of Rufus Wainwright.  I now wish we had picked up one of his CD’s, so we’ll have to correct that.
We spent the rest of the weekend visiting with family – Uncle Kevin’s sister Mary Ann and her husband were in town visiting as well.  It really was too hot to do much of anything besides curl up in the AC and watch Wimbledon, although we did make it out for Uncle Kevin’s college buddies annual backyard fireworks display and we attempted to go to Molly’s boyfriend Patrick’s band’s show, which was cancelled at the last minute due to weather or something like that.  Instead, we hung out at Patrick’s parents house, meeting them as well as the band and had a darn tooting good time.
I am quite proud of my cousin Molly.  I’m a little bit in awe actually, at her awesomeness.  She’s a great role model for my Edie, who looks up to her, for good reason.

The Sisterhood goes to the Lake.

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It’s hard to believe that just a week ago we were at the lake, gazing at the full moon to our hearts content.

Having piles of ‘cousins’

and more piles of ‘cousins’

and sunset cruises with fancy cheese & crackers & sausage and the occasional  Barbie doll.

The week our friend Will was offered his Granny’s cabin at the lake this year was the week that happened to have the Fourth of July in the middle of it.   Will and Mollie were kind enough to extend the invitation to us as well as a few other friends.  Granny’s cabin was a full house at the lake on the Fourth of July.

I brought my home made Fourth of July flair, remnants of an old dress I had made myself in college for the Fourth.  I realized the dress didn’t quite fit the way it used to, but I still wanted it around, so voila, I just made it into a banner to hang on the front porch on Patriotic holidays. 
The fabric reminded me of the old tv show, Love American Style. I vaguely remember watching that show with my parents, but I do remember it. Does that make me of a certain vintage? I think it does.

We hung it from the canopy on the pontoon boat, so we’d have holiday flair.  We also had a smaller flag off the bow and a large flag on a pole towards the rear of the boat.  With the exception of the boat that had red, white & blue bunting in light form, we definitely had one of the most decorated boats on the Lake. 
We had flair, oh yes we did.
Edie got to try her hand for a few moments at the wheel one evening when the lake was quiet.
She did a great job and was pretty proud of herself.

Abigail and Teal came down, as did Booty and Elizabeth.  We had met Elizabeth previously and I realized I knew her from around town, so it was good to spend some real time with her, since you know, Booty is part of the extended bromance. 
You know how sometimes you see a couple and you can just see that they just fit together?  Booty and Elizabeth are like that.  To see that she totally just gets him was even better.  And she showed up with cake.

She had me at cake.
The fireworks over the water were beautiful.  They were set off at a point just on the other side of the little cove the cabin is tucked away in, so we only had to go out about 50 feet or so in the boat to see them.  We didn’t have to enter the lake at all to see them, we just stayed in the cove.  
It was one of those old fashioned good times where the kids get up, put on bathing suits (or not) and swim before breakfast, the boys got lots of fishing done and the sisterhood cooked up some fabulous meals.
Thanks Will & Mollie for having us all out.  And thanks to Granny for letting us stay at the cabin.