End of Fiesta

Fiesta is everywhere, houses adorned with paper-flower wreaths, multicolored yard garlands, the sound of fireworks at night. It's a beautiful time to visit San Antonio. 

Fiesta includes elaborate parades, an oyster bake, band concerts, an arts and crafts fair, NIOSA (Night in Old San Antonio), and hoards of beer and margarita drinkers at night events.  The finale happened today in my neighborhood--the Pooch Parade--an event that draws hundreds of dogs and their people.  

People come from all over for the Pooch Parade.  Vendors sell Fiesta medals, dog treats, and other dog-related fare.  Adoptable dogs find new homes.  Proceeds from the parade help dog shelters and service animals.  It's a good thing. 

For the first time I sat it out--literally.  I knew it was going to be a Foot Day, so I stayed in my car at McDonald's parking lot and talked to my brother Bob for an hour. When the foot pain abated, we went to a thrift shop to drop off a few donations. 

Whether it's a Foot Day or not, a short walk around the block first thing is non-negotiable. On that early walk, cars and vans were parked everywhere, and we did get one visit with a woman and her standard poodle, both dressed in pink:

A man pulled up beside us and asked, 'Is this your one-dog parade?"  A woman in a white van called out, "I love your puppy!" 

Fiesta is a defining trademark of our city.  But it stretches out into smaller festivals in every little town around here, too.  It's party time always somewhere. 

I think of Robert Earl Keene's rendition of: "The road goes on forever and the party never ends."

Well, tonight is better. 

I decided to get away from it all, drove out to The Rim to buy a mirror from World Market, shopped a bit at Ross, and had a delightful patio dinner at a place called General Public.  Luci got water and scraps of my lettuce wrap and we enjoyed sitting outside people-watching and feeling the breeze.  To make it up to Luci, that she'd followed me all over the place without a solid meal, I stopped by Vallarta's and got her a fajita.  

The contractor came over and reassured me that all the issues are fixable, and Will said exactly the same thing.  I just needed to chill!  On Tuesday he's sending his carpenter over to fix the doors, whatever it takes, and he's phoned a window specialist who's going to call or come by this weekend.  Voila! 

Will and Veronica buy houses with major issues, even foundation issues, and fix them up as solid rentals.  A couple of wonky doors and bad glazing are minor in their world. I said to him on the way home and he said, "Well, for us, it's a business.  We're not emotionally involved as you are with your own home."

I am, without question, emotionally involved.  

A few glitches

As you all know, I regard this little house as my canvas, and I love the new colors for a change.  

But there are problems, as often happens with even the best contractors.  The problems are built in to a house this old--door frames are not square, the windows are those old casement windows.  I had hoped to keep the four main windows, but the man who glazed them (recommended by the contractor but not part of his team)  made a mess of the glazing. 

 I have one more trick up my window sleeve.  I'm going to find a man I know of who specializes in these old windows.  If that doesn't work, I'm going to have to get new windows--and at the moment, the thought of another big project is daunting.

Two new doors were installed, as I requested, but apparently, the measurements were off on one (there's a big gap under the door that I stuffed with cardboard last night).  The other door was installed in a wonky frame--so the gaps are on the side.

The twinkle lights around the porch edge were destroyed as was my garden hose.  So I've spent the morning at Lowe's getting a fan with a light and a new hose. 

If I had the skills to do the exterior work, I have a few ideas--like shimming the door to match the gaps, but I just made that up.  Stuffing cardboard under the door is a temporary solution for one--as the gap is big enough that mice could come right in, not to mention roaches and other small critters. 

I'm thinking nostalgically about Mike and Bob, two former boyfriends who are no longer here.   Bob used to say, "If I can't fix it, it's not broken."  Mike could figure out how to fix anything!  A project is not complete until the details are done right. 

If my house is a mirror of myself today, think deflated, discouraged, exhausted.  I'm going to take a nap and start over!

House As Mirror of Self

I  just ordered a used copy of a 2006 book I used to own:House As Mirror of Self, by Claire Marcus Cooper. 

When I read this book, it struck so many chords with the book I was then writing, but mine was from a personal perspective; hers was based on years as a Jungian therapist and personal interviews.  My book was personal and anecdotal; Cooper's book was extensively researched and brought a whole different scope to the table.

When I was accepted into Bread Loaf Writing Conference in the mid-nineties, I joined a group of writers and aspiring writers that was stimulating and exciting.  I drove to Vermont in my turquoise 1990 Acura to spend ten days with writers from all over the country and beyond.  Sue Monk Kidd sat beside me every day in our Creative Nonfiction class. Sue has published at least ten books, including The Secret Life of Bees. 

In response to my manuscript Women and Houses,   Terry Tempest Williams, my mentor, wrote, "You must publish this book.  It will be a healing balm to all women." I was euphoric with this praise, but I never published the book--even though I had the good fortune to have an agent who liked my book enough to take it on. 

Visiting her at the Ellen Levine Literary Agency in New York was its own unforgettable experience. This was the place where books were made--not physically made but adopted, or not, by people who knew how to get them to press. 

Instead of following through, I returned from Bread Loaf, decided to end a long marriage, and my energies turned to tending to all the tentacles of single life in my late forties. Suddenly, I needed to support myself--teaching as many as seven college  classes to make a living. I jumped from the peak of Maslow's hierarchy (self actualization) to the bottom rung (survival). I thought it would be temporary. 

"But knowing how road leads to road," in Frost's terms, my road led to leading writing groups and other things.  Those are stories for another day. 

This is all preface for what I'd like to write about on my blog for a while--the relationship of this now 75-year-old woman to this 75-year-old house.

Here are a few quotations from House As Mirror Of Self as prologue.  You can tell by the television references that the book was written twenty years ago: 

"We have become more self-conscious about home as a vehicle for communication and display. The neighbours, our visitors, and ourselves are the intended recipients of this communication. 

If you have any doubts about the extent to which homes communicate, think about the number of TV shows that began with the camera panning over the exterior of a home-Dallas, Dynasty, All in the Family, The Waltons, The Cosby Show, Roseanne, and the list goes on...

A child constructing a den or clubhouse under the hedge is doing far more than merely manipulating dirt and branches. He or she is having a powerful experience of creativity, of learning about self via molding the physical environment." 

If this interests you, stay tuned for more. 

Talking Southern

Being with folks from Georgia always juices up our Southern accents and memories. When talking to people from back home, wherever home is, it's like wearing your most comfortable jeans and sweat shirts. 

Even native speakers of American South sometimes mimic colorful Southern accents--there are so many variations--but when non-Southerners do it, and when most actors do it, it's nails on chalkboards to us. You have to have lived there to get the nuances and hues of it. (This is probably true of any place, but it seems to me that Southern accents are the most-often imitated-- verified by Ms Google.)

"When you gone [long o sound] do your homework?" a Georgia parent asks for the third time in an afternoon. 

"I'm fixin' to...." my former self replies, "After I finish practicing piano." 

"We're gone [going] go see Mama and 'em"  some say when setting off to visit grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  

Whoever lives at or visits a grandmother's house--that's the "them."

No matter how much we love the daddies, no matter that they own the house along with mamas, a house in the South is always "Mama's house." It is, traditionally, Mama who picks the furniture, makes the curtains, and hangs the pictures.  It's she who cleans and cooks; the house is always Mama's, from front porch to back door.  Daddy gets the yard and the car. 

Even though we Baby Boomers and our parents tend to be excellent spellers, we often omit final G's and other letters when we speak.  From years of reading and spelling bees, we know how words are to be spelled and spoken in standard English, and we follow the rules in school.  But at home, and with other people from home, we relax into the accent we grew up speaking.

Oprah used to do that on her show.  She'd be talking in impeccable standard English, then she'd switch the register and say something in Black Southern, like "Y'all know what I'm talkin' about." 

When Nellie and I were in Italy twenty years ago, we perked up our ears when we heard Georgia-speak at the next table.  Before speaking to them, we each guessed what part of Georgia they came from, a nuance only a sister-Southerner would hear.  One of us said "Fort Valley" and the other said "Unadilla"--two tiny towns a few miles apart and three hours south of Lawrenceville.  

Later we struck up a conversation: "Where are y'all from?" we asked, knowing that they were "Y'all" people. 

Turns out one of us had guessed exactly right--though I don't remember which of us. 

Last week,Nellie and I saw a book at The Twig about pies--we say PI instead of PYE--and it sent us down the pie trail.  She found a recipe for soda cracker pie--Southern mamas made it--so I tried it out and it was delicious.  I found an almost identical recipe in my recipe box in Carlene's handwriting, but she called it Macaroon Pie. 

When Nellie arrived, I'd just found my little green leatherette diary of my first year in Lawrenceville, junior year of high school, and I read Nellie a few pages.  I used words like "splendid" and "magnificent"--most often to describe, I'm embarrassed to say, the college man I was dating--and would marry less than two years later. 

We were on two different tracks in high school.  Nellie, the red-haired cheerleader and dynamo, dated boys our age while my boyfriend was seven years older and opposed to "all that high school stuff." Even after I was crowned Homecoming Queen my senior year, we didn't go to the dance--as he'd had enough of teenagers for one night. 

"It was almost like I was..." I trailed off, and she finished the sentence, "married already."

We talk about our mamas' cooking and things our daddies used to say.  She tells me about being a childhood playmate of Art, their mamas "best friends til the day they died."  Early on, they married different people, and Art served in Vietnam as a Marine. But in 2000, they found each other again and married on the beach in Florida.

I tell her about driving around town selling donuts for a Cochran High School fund-raiser.  I was fifteen; my boyfriend was the requisite adult in the car. 

Nellie tells me that the two of us and one more are "probably the only Democrats" in our 1966 class.  My diary tells me that I played the piano at graduation to Nellie's solo, "Our work is done."  

It wasn't.  But at seventeen, we didn't know all the stuff we know now. 

Another Good and Busy Week

My house and casita have been painted grey, and I love the color!  So far, the doors and floors are all that's left and it should be a wrap on Monday.  

After numerous frustrations with handymen who didn't show up--or for whom I had to run errands--I hired Groovy Hues to do the work, and I've been very happy with their work. Trey's truck won me over: a hippy-colored vehicle with these words on the side: Peace, Love, Power-Washing, and Paint. 

When Day was here, she helped me do a color palette on her fancy iPad program, Pro-create.  I wasn't able to see the exact colors, but I could visualize the general idea.  Then we chose Grey Clouds for the main color and we're accenting it with a dark charcoal and white--quite a contrast from white all over trimmed in red and turquoise.  The new doors will all be green.

Grey clouds is appropriate for the weather we've been having.  The back yard is bursting with colors, pink and yellow and purple.  The bees and the occasional hummingbirds are enjoying all that color.  The front yard has not yet bloomed, but it's on its way.

Will and Bonnie made wonderful Pad Thai for dinner for Wednesday night and Luci enjoyed playing with her three doggie cousins.  Bonnie gave me a book I'm enjoying this morning, one I highly recommend to people who like dogs and horses and solo travel.  The true story is set in the early 50's, and the solo traveler is a woman in her sixties who travels from Maine to California--without a cell phone or credit card or road map--on horseback.

The Ride of Her Life by Elizabeth Letts 

A Delight-filled week

I met Nellie junior year of high school--a lively red-haired cheerleader.  I'd just moved from Cochran, three hours south, and Nellie took in this newcomer and made me feel welcome.  She was the life of any party and I was happy to be part of a new group of friends. 

We graduated and went our separate ways, marrying, starting our careers, and being moms.  Then one year we both attended a Christmas Eve service at First Baptist where we'd met decades before and started a grown up friendship.  Soon thereafter, I was about to lead a writing group for a week in Tuscany, and Nellie was the perfect traveling companion. 

We rented a teeny tiny car.  Nellie was tour guide and navigator and I was the driver.

I can hardly believe I had the courage to drive said teeny tiny car all around Tuscany with Nellie and three other women as passengers.  The roads were curvy and none of us spoke Italian, yet we managed--even on the day that several Italian drivers blew their horns and gestured wildly at us to warn us that smoke was billowing out of our teeny tiny car.  Two women spoke Spanish and were able to cobble together words and communicate with the mechanics.  While they were fixing the car, we were told to go across the street and drink a little wine while they fixed whatever was wrong. 

The most magical parts of that trip were the days the two of us traveled from Milan to Florence and the Cinque Terre.  We so fondly remember walking the streets of Venice, Verona, and Florence, shopping at little markets, and feeling free to explore together or separately, each of us doing whatever we wanted.  We boarded trains and walked up and down steep stairs.  We lay on the beach near one of the villages of the Cinque Terre--and got Tiger Oil massages from a young Chinese woman.  

We've kept in touch through the years and seen each other a few times, and it's always like drinking something bubbly.  Nellie inspires me.  

This week, Nellie and Art went to Austin to see the eclipse and to celebrate her son's 50th birthday. 

Charlie, his wife and four children and dad, celebrated his fiftieth with Nellie and Art all these beautiful decorations made by Nellie! 

He designed the eclipse T-shirt and Nellie made the candle card and the banner of photos of him at different ages.

On Tuesday, Nellie and Art came here and spent four nights in the casita.  

Here we are yesterday having lunch at a place called Peggy's in the Old Kendall Inn in Boerne.

We had a wonderful time poking around San Antonio and a bit of the Hill Country, and I miss them both!

Z to A

Z--for Zebra

Imagine driving down some country road in Texas, the sky a brilliant blue, the roadsides blanketed with coral Indian Paintbrushes, and you see this: Eight dark brown and white zebras!  

I was driving and Luci was sleeping on some farm road around Fayetteville, Texas.  Bob and I were talking on the phone.  I let out a yelp of joy.  

These were magnificent creatures.  I could have watched them for hours.  Luci and two zebras sniffed each other through the fence, and we finally parted so I could get us home before dark. 

A--for Amaris

Today I had the most magical visit with a little girl named Amaris. Her daddy was moving a couple of things in my house and I noticed her looking with fascination at the brightly colored bird house Joy had given me, hanging in the tree.

Her mother and 3-week-old baby got out of the truck and I invited them inside.  Amaris charmed me from the get-go, such a curious little girl who walked around my house noticing every detail with pure unprompted delight.  (Neither of her parents was particularly impressed.)

She stopped on the porch to look at my potted plants, mostly succulents, and wanted to know the name of each one.  "I have my own little garden at home," she said.

She loved my wooden painted giraffes, metal houses on the wall, a jeweled ukulele Day made years ago, my big white light fixture ("It looks just like the moon!" she said),  a South American stitchery, and a recipe box Day made with a fork handle.  

Her attention to details and colors made me ask her, "Are you an artist?"

"Oh yes," she said.  "I can draw anything.  My best things are dogs and birds, but I can draw anything.  Next time I come to your house, I will bring you some art." 

"Could I open the box?" she asked.

 I watched her fingers opening the box, so I read to her the words Day had inscribed inside the lid:

"Love as powerful as your mother's love for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar...no visible sign...to have been loved so deeply...will give us some protection forever.  It's in your very skin."

                        from Harry Potter

When her parents said it was time to leave, she said, "I don't want to go yet! Can we stay some more?" 

This may be the best compliment one can ever get from a guest!  I can hardly wait until she comes back with some art--but she, herself, is a work of art who made my day. 

Last night I drove to Helotes for Elena's induction into the National Junior Honor Society; recently, Pam and I drove there for Nathan's induction into the NHS. 

17-year-old Nathan plays percussion in the high school band, raises pigs, and takes all honors classes.  Elena (12)  is a wonder on the rodeo field barrel racing. This year she also raised two sheep for 4H and plays violin. 

I'm proud to be their grandmother for a million reasons, but mostly because they are such caring human beings.  Even now that he has his own wheels, Nathan is always there to support Elena in her events. Brings her flowers when she's getting an award, like last night. Likewise, she's his biggest fan and cheerleader when the O'Connor band plays. 

e

While Luci is at the vet's for her annual check up and shot, I am washing every fabric in the house.  She went out last night to pee and was skunked--for the third time!

So the vet adding Skunk Bath--even though I washed her in the middle of the night.  After her home bath, after rubbing herself in grass and bushes, she jumped onto the furniture. The stench is hard to get rid of and it lingers.  So while she's away, I'm cleaning, spreading hot spices and orange peels around the yard. 

Spring is the time when creatures are exploring. The internet tells me to keep the outside lights on all night--which I'll start doing for the next few months.