The Blessing of Ordinary Days

"We need to learn to appreciate the ordinary days," explained a lay speaker at my church recently.  "Those are the days when we and our family are all alive and well, when we have a job to go to, when we turn on the tap and water comes out, when we go out to our car and it starts immediately."  These are the days that we often take for granted, that essentially escape our attention.

My preschool class at the Methodist Church

So far I have been blessed with essentially an ordinary life.  I laughingly have told my friends, "I can't write my memoirs--my life has been too ordinary."  I grew up in the fifties in a middle class home with two loving parents who worked hard to provide for me and my two younger sisters.  My dad was in the furniture business with two of his brothers. 

After my youngest sister finished grammar school and we moved into a "suburban" home near my grandmother and two of our uncles, my mother went to work for the federal government. 


My Oklahoma cousins, my sisters and me at the house beside the railroad tracks (before suburbia)

Our home in "suburbia" where my mom still lives

I grew up in small town America, in one of the most beautiful parts of the country--the mountains of Southwestern Virginia.  We enjoyed picture perfect Christmases with neighborhood carolers and, often when we were little, with personal visits on Christmas Eve from Santa Claus, i.e., our great-uncle who worked for the town newspaper formerly owned by his father.  Our great-uncle Joe was a volunteer fire fighter and served as Santa in our small town for 50 years or longer. 

Santa (aka Uncle Joe) visits my sisters and me on Christmas Eve at our grandmother's house!

Winter also meant sledding on the streets of our neighborhood or, as we got older, walking to "Cow Hill" behind our neighborhood to ice skate on the frozen pond there.

Spring is beautiful but a tricky season in the mountains, warm days and cold ones intermixed.  Spring mainly meant the tulips and dogwoods in the yard bloomed, Daddy had to start mowing the lawn again on Wednesday afternoons, and the end of the school year was approaching.  For me, it also meant my hay fever would begin in earnest, and I'd walk around with a fistful of tissues.

I remember summer as being perfect-- the streets full of kids to play with, running through the water sprinkler or swimming in the neighbor's pool on really hot days, visits from out-of-state cousins, long evenings of Hide and Seek or Kick the Can, extending across multiple contiguous lawns in the neighborhood while the adults sat out on my grandmother's patio loosely monitoring our whereabouts.  As darkness fell, the lightning bugs would appear creating their own light show if they managed to elude our grubby hands and old mayonnaise jars.  I was also free to wile away hours during the heat of the day, lying on a cot in the cool basement, reading my books.  The days might be hot but once the sun disappeared behind the mountain ridges, the sweaters came out.

While fall meant the end of summer fun, I enjoyed returning to school, seeing school friends who didn't live in my neighborhood, and getting new clothes and school shoes each year.  Fall meant the inky fresh smell of the new Sears catalog, which my sisters and I pored over although we rarely purchased any clothes from there.  My dad believed in patronizing local clothing stores, and my mother made some of our new outfits to cut down on the cost of clothing three girls. 


I'm wearing navy blue jumper Mother made me. 

Fall meant football games, the smell of bonfires, especially in high school when I was a cheerleader.  My dad was a big football fan: the last year he was quarterback of our hometown's high school team, the team was undefeated.  My sister and I found a small gold football in the cedar chest that commemorated this feat.  Even when I was small, my father would take me to football games while the younger girls amd Mother stayed home.  Mainly I remember being cold and begging for hot chocolate.

I could go on and on with details of my ordinary life where things were predictable and my sisters and I were sheltered from life's harsher realities.  I'm now incredibly grateful for this stability, this happy childhood to build my life on.  And when horrific events occur, such as the Boston Marathon bombing or the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, I am saddened that the ordinary lives of so many disappeared in the blink of an eye. 

There will be a new normal, families will survive, life will go on, goodness will prevail--and hopefully, you and I will wake up each day and thank the Divine when it turns out to be just another ordinary day.

An Exercise Space of Ones Own

A room of ones own needs to be part practical, part whimsy, part funky, with a mixture of indoor and outdoor elements.  Today's featured space is my exercise room.

You may have seen Daisy, the cat, and I enjoying a warm morning on the patio this week (if you look at Facebook), but today I'm featuring Katrina, the neurotic sleeping porch cat, because she often keeps me company as I ride the recumbent bike in the mornings.  I love my tiny "bike room" that used to be kind of a fancy potting shed where I also made teacup bird feeders out of vintage teacups and saucers. 

Katrina watches the patio & backyard as I exercise.

 

Now it's morphed into the exercise bike space but still retains the close to nature feeling next to the patio.  We added this area onto the guest cottage when we renovated it, but the room is accessed only from outside. 

Hmmm, my better photo of this entry area turned out to be on movie setting rather than still photograph.  Oh well.....I used the phone on these shots rather than my good camera because I always have the phone with me when I exercise so it's convenient.

You enter through the door and you're in my private, "room for only one person" exercise area. 

This is what I see from the exercise bike as I ride each day, catching up on emails, Facebook and, of course, reading.



Painted floor of the exercise room

Ricky laid the floor in this room and then we painted and distressed it.  I'm certainly no expert with sponge stencils but I still like the effect, splotches and all.  There are a couple of more utilitarian elements of this room not depicted in these photos, i.e.,  a TV and a sink, both of which come in handy at times.

Garden fairies also occupy this space.  They bring good luck to all the plants.

 

 

 

And I'm pretty sure this pot shard lady keeps an eye on things when I'm not in here.



 

This planter beside the back door that made it through the winter.  See what I mean
about the English flower fairies bringing good luck to our flowers!

English dogwood, or mock orange, growing beside the carport.

 

One great thing about my partial retirement is having more time to move about

our house & grounds, enjoying all the special places.

What about you? What do your special places look like? 

Christmas Mysteries

It's the first week in April, and like much of the country we've experienced a chilly spring in Louisiana--but not the surprise snowfall that some of our friends and relatives recently had in Virginia .  While we gird our loins here in the Deep South for the approaching summer heat, in my volunteer life I met yesterday with a group of women to plan the Christmas Tour of Historic Homes that we do every other year in our National Historic Districts neighborhood.  I can't believe we are starting this early, but such an event takes a lot of advance planning and behind-the-scenes work just to line up the venues. 

We have several Bed and Breakfasts in our neighborhood, and we hope to feature a newly renovated one in this year's tour.  Below is the entrance to another B & B featured on our last tour!

I guess prepping for Christmas this early isn't freaking me out as much as it might, because I had so many Christmas mysteries laying around the house that I continued to read them long past the holidays.

In my mind I subtitle a post like this as Book by Book: Reading a Home Library, because I continue to pick books off my shelves to read as the mood strikes me.  Then a few other books enter my life through gifts and passalongs from friends.

Christmas mysteries I've read since Christmas:

A Fatal Winter, by G. M. Malliet (2012)
A former spy who became a cleric, Max Tudor serves a rural English parish as their pastor but still manages to use the skills of his former profession to solve murders that mar the peacefulness of village life.  When several members of the wealthy Footrustle family die as the estranged and far-flung relatives gather in the family homestead (a castle) for the holidays, Max is asked by the local authorities to assist.  The setting of the castle and the Footrustle family became tedious for me as I read this book, though Max and other village characters are likable.  This was a passalong book from a friend.

Antiques Flee Market (a Trash 'n' Treasures Mystery), by Barbara Allan (2008)

This paperback appeared on my front porch left by the neighbor who passes books on to me and I to her.  Written by husband/wife writing team, Barbara Collins and Max Allan Collins, this light mystery series is set in Mississippi and features a neurotic mother-daughter duo who "pick" and sell antiques. In this book, they track down the killer of one of the mother's old boyfriends.  Mildly entertaining read for the holiday scene.









Dude on Arrival: A Christmas Mystery, by J.S. Borthwick (1992)
Who knows where I got this book but I found it packed away with some holiday decorations.  A dude ranch and resort in Arizona appealed to me as a different place to spend Christmas.  Add to the western setting some colorful characters, a feisty older woman and her English teacher niece as protagonists and this was an enjoyable, escapist mystery.










'Twas the Bite Before Christmas, by Lee Charles Kelley (2005)
I learned so much about training dogs and dog behavior in this book by dog trainer Kelley that I was ready to read more in this mystery series just to add to my knowledge.  The mystery features an ex-cop and kennel owner, Jack Field, and the plot to me was forgettable but I was fascinated by the dog psychology information.






Holly Blues, by Susan Wittig Albert (2010)
If I let time elapse between reading books in Albert's China Bayles series, I enjoy them.  This mystery set at Christmas is the 18th book in this series.  The ex-wife of China's husband comes to town with a hard luck story and an expressed desire to spend some time with her son, China's step-son, Brian.  While the ex-wife is Trouble with a capital "T," China can't turn her back on Brian's mother and when a killer begins to stalk the whole family, China has no choice but to act.  Reading this book was like catching up with an old friend.



The Fleet Street Murders, by Charles Finch (2009)
The story begins Christmas 1866 and finds amateur sleuth Charles Lennox newly engaged to his neighbor, Lady Jane Grey, and standing for a Parliament. seat in Northern England when the murder of two newspapermen captures Lennox's attention. The police appear to be after the wrong men, which pulls Lennox into the case.  The climax comes rather abruptly, but the man who is pulling the strings of the "puppet perps" is brought to justice.  The ancillary characters are well-drawn in this series, and I've enjoyed all of Finch's books that I've read.





The Snowman, by Jo Nesbo (2011 audio book)
I listened to this unabridged version of Norwegian author Nesbo's 2010 (English version) mystery when I drove to and from Virginia at Christmas.  If the other books in this list are cozies and forgettable, though relaxing, reading, this thriller was the opposite.  It served its purpose in keeping me awake during the
drive, but the stark horror of the murders and the
graphic descriptions of the violence made this book hard to listen to at times.  Don't get me wrong, Nesbo is a masterful writer and the intricate, terrifying plots are extremely well-done.  If you enjoy "Nordic Noir" (as some critics term the books coming out of Scandinavia, such as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series), you will love detective Harry Hole.  In this book, a serial murderer stalks women in Oslo and seeks to show he can outwit Harry, and even if you guess the murderer's identity before the end of the book, it doesn't matter, this book keeps you holding your breath until the final scene.  With a giant exhale, I felt like I had accomplished something by completing the book, but oddly enough I was ready to read more thrillers featuring Harry Hole.

The Heroine Who Cultivates Poison Ivy

My favorite camellias find another weathered chair in which to lounge on our cottage porch,
while I lounge about reading one of my favorite mystery authors.

Sparkle Hayter wrote 5 mysteries in the 1990's/2000 featuring TV executive Robin Hudson, whose alarm and personal protection system for her New York apartment features poison ivy growing in a planter on her window sills, cans filled with rocks strung in strategic places around her apartment and an old Enfield rifle.   It is the planter of poison ivy, which provides the fragile segue from my posts about the plants in our yard back to mystery reading.

Penguin Books (2000), 228 pages

At the beginning of this book, Robin's apartment burns up, forcing her to kick the planter of poison ivy out of the way so she and her cat, Louise Bryant, can flee down the fire escape and join the other residents of her building in their pajamas standing on the sidewalk.  Escaping with just her laptop, a few mementos and her purse, Robin finds herself bunking at the famous Chelsea Hotel in the apartment of a friend who is conveniently out of the country.  However, Robin soon gets an unwanted roommate, a young woman from an unnamed Easter Bloc country fleeing an arranged marriage, and bedlam ensues.  Murder, mistaken identities, performance artists, inept thugs, a looted piece of art, revenge of a woman scorned, a religious zealot, a convent of nuns who bake and sell expensive cakes--all mesh together somehow in this wild and crazy mystery from Hayter.

The setting of New York city and, in this particular mystery, the Chelsea Hotel, are elevated to character status in the book and make me want to see New York City and the Chelsea Hotel for myself--preferably with someone as wild and crazy as Robin or Sparkle herself.

The plot is relatively unimportant in a Hayter mystery--the Robin Hudson books are so outrageous and entertaining .  Up late one night to finish the book, I was laughing so hard during one scene that I was afraid I would wake up my husband on the other side of the house.  Now I'm sad that there no more Robin Hudson books to read. 

Other books in the Robin Hudson series:
What's a Girl Gotta Do (1994)
Nice Girls Finish Last (1996)
Revenge of the Cootie Girls (1997)
The Last Manly Man (1998)

Wait, I don't think I've read The Last Manly Man!

Hayter was born in British Columbia but has lived all over the world.  She worked at CNN and then reported on the Afghan civil war, but subsequently decided to give up reporting in war zones.  She returned to the states, wrote novels and did stand-up comedy.  She has lived in Tokyo, Paris and most recently has become fascinated with Bollywood and India, where she is currently working on a project.

More Scenes of Spring in Louisiana

I continue to putter about the garden and our plants continue to bloom, so I sharing a few more pics that show off the beauty of our Louisiana spring in the Historic Highland neighborhood.



When the dogwood blooms, our entire front yard looks beautiful.



Carolina jassamine climb the screen that shades the front porch swing. 



Pink Gerber Daisy blooms outside my exercise room on cottage patio.



This Professor Sargeant camellia blooms in front yard.



Yellow Bearded Iris, along with the purple iris, blooms along the carport in back yard





Vase of camellias sits on cottage porch in salvaged chair.

Still Puttering about the Garden

Since my stated goals for my current semi-retired state include spending more time outside in the "garden" (loosely defined as the outdoor space around my house) and learning more about photography, I decided to combine the two intentions today.  I continued with the Zen of pulling weeds and puttering, repotting a few plants I had rooted over the winter.  Time will tell whether they survive.

Then after Ricky took some photos of flowers in our yard and of course his pictures are dang near perfect, I decided to get out the camera that Ricky gave me (his old one!) and take photos.  Ricky says that is the only way to learn to take good pictures is to take a lot of them.  It is such a gorgeous day and spring in Louisiana is truly beautiful, especially before the pollen tints everything yellow, that I figured it would be hard to take awful photographs! (And besides I have Adobe Photoshop, so I can cheat a little.)

The following photos give you a peek at our "garden" spaces and flowers:

My favorite late blooming Camellia beside the cottage porch is bursting with flowers.
 

It hasn't yet gotten too warm to kill the winter pansies and violas in the planter--Mardi Gras colors!
 

The Gerber Daisy in a pot outside my exercise room has bloomed almost all winter.



These yellow flowers in a pot survived the winter and are blooming on the cottage patio.





The bearded irises are starting to bloom beside the carport.
 

The azaleas along the drive-way are blooming
(There is always a cat sleeping, hidden in azaleas--can you see him?)



Baby's Breath and Azaleas line the drive-way
 

Also blooming beside the drive-way are the sweetest clump of snowdrops
(Scientific name: Galanthus nivalis)
 

The last flower on today's tour is a tiny one blooming beside the drive-way--it could be a weed or wildflower.  I really don't know much about flowers or plants, if you haven't figured that out by now.  I grow them, inherited a lovely yard when we bought the house, but often don't know what I have--I guess that's another goal to add to my retirement list!

In the Meantime....

This is my first post since Christmas, and I'm not sure why I haven't written.  I don't live in a climate where one wishes to hibernate during winter months, emerging only with the return of spring.  There were a few bone chilling, damp days that only those who live in the Deep South can appreciate.  We know it isn't that cold by the thermometer reading, but the cold permeates and settles into your bones.  My Dearborn heater in the library quite satisfactorily keeps me toasty warm and there I sat and read.


Fun for all ages

Mardi Gras here in our Highland neighborhood was a grand success, and our annual Open House saw more than 100 friends and relatives pass through on parade day, the Sunday before Fat Tuesday, enjoying traditional Louisiana cuisine of shrimp and grits, two different gumbos, red beans and rice, king cake and much, much more.  Ricky then headed to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, while I headed to the sofa to rest!


Parade goers at end of our street

Some folks dress up

Besides the floats, there are other attractions....
 

I retired from my Early Head Start (EHS) position at the end of February, which necessitated packing up two offices and moving furniture and many boxes to our cottage in back.  Leaving was bittersweet as I was the "Mother" of the Early Head Start program here, having written the grant and worked with my wonderful staff to establish the program, then supervised it for over 10 years.  The staff gave me a delightful going away party at a local restaurant where it was like Christmas and birthday combined.  Some of my original EHS teachers returned for the party, and we laughed so much that our waiter was glad when we called it a night. 

Life rolls on in cycles.  After leaving Early Head Start (my first job the summer after college graduation over 40 years ago was teaching Head Start in my hometown), I returned to LSU Health Sciences Center, Allied Health, part-time as an Associate Clinical Professor where I worked for about 15 years before the EHS experience. 

So, the boxes are slowly moving from the cottage to my new office space at LSU Health.   I thought I might find academia too quiet after the excitement of working in early childhood centers filled with noisy young children, but I'm thoroughly enjoying my new position.  The job is "special projects," and, thus, still evolving but I love it.

My goals in my increased leisure time include: work more in the "garden" (I love the way our French friend refers to her outdoor space broadly as the garden, so I think I will, too!); write more; learn more about photography; travel; exercise more; try new recipes so we won't be tempted to eat out as often; and to read every book in my library!  I've started on the last goal with the books shown below. 




 

Christmas Greetings

This has been an extremely busy pre-holiday season for me, thus, no writing!  But I've decorated my house to a fare thee well, entertained on several occasions, cooked some holiday foods, prepared for a federal review at work, and I'm now recuperating from bronchitis and getting ready to drive to Virginia for the holidays. 

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday surrounded by family and friends. 

I'll see you in 2013!

Thoughts of Food on a Cold Winter's Night

 

I spent much of a Christmas holiday a few years ago in the mountains of Southwestern Virginia where I was born and reared, and where my mother, my two sisters and our families gather every year.   An ice storm's aftermath, plus a dusting of snow, had provided us with an icy, cold, white Christmas.

My childhood home

One frosty night I decided I wanted a pot of spiced tea that, in our family, we have always called "Russian tea."  I had only made the instant mix in the past, so my mother had to show me how she mixed up the pitchers of Russian tea that were often in the refrigerators at our house, or at our grandmother's house, during the winters of my childhood.  Soon, a saucepan containing water, cinnamon sticks and whole cloves was simmering on the stove, filling the house with its fragrance.  We next made a pot of tea, then added orange juice, lemon juice, sugar and the liquid strained from our spices.  I kept inquiring about a recipe but my mother worked intuitively and with frequent taste tests.

Once the tea was made and I was sitting with my steaming cup, my mother retrieved her recipe box from the kitchen shelf.  Inside the box were 3 x 5 note cards, newspaper clippings or handwritten scraps of paper representing my childhood in the form of recipes for casseroles, salads, cakes, cookies--even my grandmother's Russian tea recipe!

My mother began to look at each recipe, culling out duplicates, or dishes she said she would never make again.  As she discarded recipes, I would often protest, "But these have historical value, you can't just throw them away."

 

I started my own stack of cards, and that is how I came to own my grandmother's Russian tea recipe written in her own cursive handwriting, my Aunt Dean's recipe for Christmas fruit drop tea cakes and a version of Snicker Doodle cookies made by Mrs. Brown, an older woman in our neighborhood.  All of these women have passed away, but each was alive again as we read their recipes.  I copied my mother's recipe for lemon squares that I had needed several years ago for a party, and didn't have, and recipes from my sisters for blueberry cake and moist 'n creamy coconut cake.  My mother and I spoke of recipes we wished we had--my maternal grandmother's roll recipe that called for potato water and my paternal grandmother's recipe for carrot cookies. 

Reading recipes on a cold winter night in Virginia helped me remember many magical times from my childhood and evoked memories of family and friends.  I know how fortunate I am to have grown up in a household where we had plenty to eat, surrounded by a loving, extended family.

M.F.K. Fisher, the essayist who writes about food in many of her books, stated it this way: "When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and the warmth and the love of it."    She went on to add that, "...with our gastronomical growth will come, inevitably, knowledge and perception of a hundred other things, but mainly of ourselves."

A Cold Christmas mystery

Hampstead, Kansas is caught in a deep freeze which is affecting not only the weather but apparently the characters in Charlene Weir’s fifth Susan Wren mystery.   Weir immediately sets a tone of desperation touching the lives of many Hamstead residents at Christmas.  There is an immediate feeling of foreboding, followed by some graphic descriptions of the deaths that occur--it doesn't seem like a "cozy" mystery.  

Initially Weir introduces a lot of characters quickly and it seems like a creepy furnace repairman is the only connection among them, but eventually the small town relationships emerge.  To me, as an introduction to Weir's Susan Wren series, this mystery does not work well as a stand-alone book.  Since I haven’t read any of the earlier books I had no idea who some of the characters were or their relationships with Police Chief Wren, e.g., other police officers who were at home sick with the flu. 

 

Worldwide Mystery, 2002
Original publication, 2001, St. Martin's Press

There seemed to be a lack of character development but the plot kept me turning the pages as the book drew to an end.  The family around whom the main murder mystery evolves both evoked my sympathy and extreme irritation.  I was hoping someone would intervene before child protection got involved.  One Good Samaritan did step in to help but it seemed to be a one and done attempt.  Again the book's focus seemed to be people in town who were socially isolated for one reason or another—illness, abusive husband, sanctimonious busybody, a character too proud to ask for help, people under stress who were basically unhinged.  Important details about the characters seemed to  emerge willy nilly in the book.  To me it read like a draft rather than a finished product.  Weir dedicated A COLD CHRISTMAS to mystery writer Susan Dunlap who had advised Weir that a book could be created from a manuscript of complete confusion. Maybe so, but the initial problems of the manuscript show.

Even noting all these issues with this book, I would read another of Weir’s Susan Wren novels to see if they make more sense when I start at the beginning of the series.  Weir’s first Susan Wren mystery THE WINTER WIDOW was winner of St. Martin's award for best traditional mystery.