Kitchen Renovation Dilemmas

So, here’s what I’m dealing with:

So, please note the god-awful cabinets, which I’m hoping can be painted over. According to Home Depot, i can paint them with an oil-based paint. Seriously, i detest these damn cabinets. Also note the overhead light. It has to go. But what to put there instead - Ideas?

Sink has to stay. Cabinets have to stay. Almond appliances have to stay. Almond floor tiles have to stay. (Considering either Flor tiles, or a very large rug in there, though. Thoughts?)

So, anything that we use needs to coordinate with almond floors (or cover them) and with the almond appliances. I could shoot the old people who used to live here in the head for putting in crappy cheap laminate cabinets, almond appliances, and such light tile. It shows every little smudge and crumb. Also needs to coordinate with the two paintings I have that are going in the kitchen. This is what makes me think blues, grays, cremes, whites, with maybe touches of red or apple green.

Also thinking i will take the doors off those cabinets in the picture above, just to open it up some more.

So, yeah, that’s what I’m dealing with structurally. We can’t afford to knock that wall out. That would be the first order of business if we could. So, my questions:

What colors work with both the almond appliances and the paintings?

Kitchen doors - Should they stay or go? We do sometimes shut the kitchen off with a dog in it, or to block out the sound of dishes banging, but my gut says it would look bigger in there to get rid of them.

What color should the cabinets be? I wanted to brighten the room up, so i was thinking white, but can i use white with almond appliances? Is an off-white or cream a better choice? Or a light blue or gray cabinets with lighter walls? (Oh, HELL! Didn’t even discuss the wallpaper! That shit is gone, baby, gone. It has herb names on it, for fuck’s sake!)

Kitchen table - refinish it and stain it, or paint it?

Banquette seating - How hard can it be to make your own? Can you buy it? Thoughts? Ideas?

Windows - Blinds? cafe curtains?

Floors - Has anyone used Flor tiles in their kitchen? Also thought about just putting down a rug. Or what about those adhesive tiles they use on DIY shows all the time? Looks like maybe they don’t hold up over time.

Seriously looking for input here. I am design-challenged, and Todd is colorblind. I’m hoping folks will weigh in, and then I will maybe post some Pinterest links to things I like, and show the colors I’ve been leaning towards. Definitely want your ideas based on seeing the starting point. Come on, people! Design my kitchen. (On a dime, so to speak.)

Radiohead: A Story of Starcrossed Lovers

Todd and the kids and I had a great dinner last night. They are getting to the age where they are actually fun to converse with. We were fixing plates and the Radiohead song “Creep” came on, and Todd and I were singing along at the top of our voices, and playing air guitar on that bangy guitar part (you know the one), while Rollie yelled for us to stop, and Tiller rolled her eyes. And then Todd proceeded to tell the kids a story of star-crossed lovers back in the olden days. (You know, the mid-90s.)

There once was a boy living in Atlanta, who liked Radiohead. There once was a girl, also living in Atlanta, who - get this - also liked Radiohead. Now, this was before Radiohead was a household name, right after OK Computer came out, but before anyone except diehard The Bends fans had heard the album yet, before folks considered it the Dark Side of the Moon of the 90s. And so this boy and girl, who both lived in Atlanta, and who both liked Radiohead, both bought tickets to see Radiohead at The Masquerade.

And they both went to the show. And the girl was with her boyfriend, who was not the boy. And she stood watching the show with her left shoulder leaning against the sound booth. And the boy watched the show from the front of the sound booth. And they were mere feet apart from one another. And the show rocked their worlds.

And then three days later, she moved to Denver with her boyfriend.

But the story wasn’t over.

Because sometime later, the girl sat drinking beer in a kitchen in Boulder, Colorado, and she saw a picture on the fridge that reminded her of a girl she used to know. And a couple years later, the girl who liked Radiohead met that girl she used to know in a bar, and the girl she used to know introduced her to the boy who also liked Radiohead.

And now the girl who likes Radiohead and the boy who likes Radiohead sit in their kitchen with their two children, who really don’t give a shit about Radiohead, and they play the game horse face. Horse face consists of one person making a funny face and the other person having to match that funny face. And the girl who likes Radiohead makes a face, and it is so funny to her that she laughs until tears run down her face, her stomach hurts, and she almost pees her pants.

And the Boy who liked Radiohead and the Girl who liked Radiohead are happy together.

Babyland

Todd took Rollie to Monster Jam last night and when Tills heard they were going, she was a little upset. So, my sister and I decided we’d take the day and drive to Cleveland to take her to Babyland General. (We took Dash, too. You know. To see if he’s gay or not.)

Now, neither of us had been there since we were little girls, and admittedly, we were pretty excited. We had “Adoption Dolls” as little girls, before Xavier Roberts sold to Mattel and they renamed them Cabbage Patch Kids, and they were like magic. It is funny now to think how all the moms and daughters of the 80s drank the kool-aid on this one: These dolls are really nothing much to look at. Some of them are damn ugly. (Lisa, I’m looking at Tiffany!) But there was something completely magical about them. I can still remember getting my first one (a knock-off named Stephanie.)

This is Lisa and Me, Christmas 1981. I am not sure if we got Stephanie and Samantha this Christmas, or if they just came downstairs with us on Christmas morning. (Yes, this was also the year we arrived in the future and got an Atari! And I got The Black Stallion Breyer horse. A magical Christmas, all in all.)

And here I am a month later, on my birthday, holding both of the girls before opening my gifts. Lisa and I played with these things So. Much.

And I can remember loving her, and wanting another! I remember going into the toy shop in downtown Alpharetta. (I forget what it was called - maybe the Indian Trading Post? It had an old cigar store Indian out front.) I would go in that shop, and look at all the “real” adoption dolls they had in there. I think part of the magic was that there were so many different colors and combinations of eye and hair color, and they had real baby clothes on, and they were given real first and middle names, just like real babies, and when you adopted one, you got a real birth certificate, with baby footprints and your name signed on it, and their birthdays and everything.

Magic.

So, in the end, i ended up with one knock-off, who was my first, and whom I loved just as much as the next two. Stephanie Lynn was later joined by Minerva and Betsy. (I think those were their names. Guess I need to check the birth certificates.) I suppose i remember Stephanie’s name because i named her myself. The other two came with laminated tags on their hands that had their names Sharpied on.) Minerva was a redhead, and Betsy (?) a raven-haired beauty.

Anyways, I digress, but the point of all this is to say that being a parent is hard and sometimes infuriating, sometimes scary, sometimes sad. But sometimes it is wonderful. Taking your child to do something you did as a child, or teaching them to fish, or seeing them touched by magic that you can still remember and feel? That is one of the most special parts of parenthood. Yesterday was one of those days.

It’s a Wonderful Life

We had Christmas Eve at our house today.

We ate lasagna and drank wine. The kids fought and whined and cried and laughed. We let the kids open a present each. They loved it.

And then we ate camembert and summer sausage for dinner, and drank more. We ate cookies and laughed over the letter Tiller wrote to Santa.

I watch it every Christmas Eve. Something new is revealed every year - This year it was when Clarence died. After Tom Sawyer was published, but before Huck Finn. And this year, it rings just a little more true. Perhaps it is my age, but i think it more likely that it is the past year, which has taught me how fragile life has been, and that we all have, at most, a tenuous grasp of life on this earth, and it doesn’t matter whether we are plant or animal, young or old. We are at the mercy of things completely out of our control. To pretend otherwise is ridiculous. As is the very real desire to worry ourselves sick at the thought.

I cannot stop time and make my dog forever young. I can’t stop someone from murdering my loved one. I cannot stop a car wreck from taking a child away in mere seconds, or keep his parents for suffering as he lingers for weeks, holding on to life by a thread, against all hope.

It is all completely and totally out of my control, and all i can do is try to enjoy the now, because while we have it, it’s a Wonderful Life.

Merry Christmas, y’all!

Part II, a.k.a. Shotgun Blast of Thanks

I am thankful that I happened to come across a blog post i wrote two years ago on the Winter Solstice. I am thankful that I spent that lovely evening with my dog, Quint. I am thankful that I wrote about it, so I can remember what it was like to sit in the cold on the lake with him and watch stars. I am thankful I still remember what his ears felt like.

This year has been rough and a lot sad, and it has made me even more sad that I haven’t written as much as I normally do. This is part two of looking on the bright side, so that two years from now, I will maybe look back and remember the good things, not the sad ones.

Because it still makes me laugh every time I think of it. It is a cornucopia of laughter.

And there you have it. One huge shotgun blast of thankfulness. My life is good. Really good.

Thankful

So, damn. That last post was a real downer. Sorry about that. I am pretty good at the ostrich thing, though. I do lots of fun stuff, and I am lucky to have a healthy family, and I still have both parents, and my husband is the best one in the whole wide world ever (for me.) So, here are some things I’m thankful for . . . Think of it as one whole post about shit I’m thankful for, rather than an annoying “I’m Thankful” facebook post every damn day of November. See how good I am to you? So thoughtful . . . .

My friends Shannon and Matt had a baby and we finally visited him.

Posting these so that Harris can see what the rooms were like (he was curious):

The rooms also come with access to the park. It is a private park that you have to have a key to get into. That’s pretty cool. And snobby and elitist. . . but cool.

So, the next day it was cold and pouring down rain. I made plans to meet Anne at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was so god-awful crowded, and wet and damp, but we had a lovely afternoon. I forgot to each lunch I was enjoying myself so much. We mostly wandered, took in the current exhibitions. (Romare Bearden was one Anne really wanted to see and I thought it was great, and was also surprised I had not heard of him in my Harlem Renaissance class in college).

Anne and I both checked out my favorite part - Arms and Armor. I think when she suggested it to me, she must have realized how much I would love it. She probably didn’t realize that I would take so long that she would get hungry and have to leave me there. (Sorry, Anne!) I could have spent all day there looking at the amazing things people have killed other people with over the years! They even had a helm that was (probably erroneously) said to have been worn by Joan of Arc - I have had a preoccupation with Joan since i first read about her as a child. (I also have a weird interest in Marie Curie, Belle Star, Annie Oakley, and Bonnie Parker, among others. I know. I am a freak.)

There was an interesting Stieglitz exhibition, about him and his artists (O’Keefe, Matisse, etc.) While I enjoyed it, i was way more interested in this tiny little exhibit of his early art photography collection. I could have looked at it all day.

And best of all, I found some new (to me) artists to adore: Like Francis Bacon; Like a painting entitled, “End of the Hunt” by Dale Nichols (Anne, that is the one that you loved!);

Or these two huge pieces by Stephen Hannock. You totally can’t see it online, but he put all this writing and mixed media collage stuff in these two works. I almost wanted to cry it was so cool. Oooh, actually, if you go to this link then click on the photo, then zoom in, you can see the writing. Awesome.

Like this one by Paul Cadmus.

Looks like a really cool graphic novel, right? He made it in 1945. Mind-blowing.

When i left the museum, I was starving, and it was raining cats and dogs, and todd wanted me to meet him for a beer at some place near his conference in Times Square, and i was all like, “Ugh, Times Square.” But the bar was actually pretty awesome, with cheap beer, and seemingly no tourists other than myself. It was warm and the barmaid was kind of bitchy, which I can respect, and I sat next to a guy who makes full-length concert DVDs for a ton of bands, some of whom i thought were crappy. But he also worked with Chrissy Hinde, and so I was all interested in hearing about that, because I heart The Pretenders.

Then we left and had to make it back to the hotel to change for drinks with work people, and it was raining and i felt kind of sorry for all the working sad sack new yorkers just trying to get home, but there is something very romantic about a rainy evening with my husband, and taking cover in Grand Central Station to get away from the rain, and just watching the people.

And then i put on my nice stuff, and we went to The Standard Hotel for drinks, and damn, they have a really nice view from their rooftop bar, which, i kid you not, is called The Boom Boom Room. Sometimes I think New York comes up with stupid shit like that just to make me laugh at them. The bathrooms in the bar were rooms with no lights and no window coverings, where you could look out over the skyline while you are taking a shit. Ridiculous, but fun. I was luckily warned first, or I would have thought I was trippin’ in some crazy house of mirrors.

After that? Yummy burgers and home to bed because we were both wet, cold, and exhausted.

A lovely trip. I’ll end here for now, as I have gone on and on, and will never click publish at this rate. It shall be a two parter.

Inoperable Ostrichism

Okay, not really. But i have not really been able to write ever since losing the Q-man and my cousin this past summer. (Apologies to those who are offended for lumping them together, but in my heart, they are both gaping holes. Do not judge my pain.)

I am not usually one to avoid difficult subjects, or as my sister and I call it, “ostrich” (the action of sticking one’s head in the sand), but I keep finding reasons not to write about the things that have been on my mind this year. I will be glad to see this year go - it has been painful in so many ways, and it seems that every time I turn around, i see someone near me affected negatively by some circumstance or accident, or unforeseen crappy event. I think maybe part of that is that the events of this year for my family were so negative that I have on my dark lenses when I look at anything going on around me. I hate that.

I am usually one to try and not get bogged down in negativity. I come from a family of . . shall we say, ‘realists.” We are not a positive people. We save for a rainy day. We look at things with a critical eye. But i am aware of it, and I try, day in and day out, to be thankful for the things that i have and that are going well. But it is and always will be a struggle for me to do that. I have to work at it.

If you think i am irreverent or i make too many jokes when things go awry, you are seeing me fight my basest instinct to get bogged down in the shit.

Maybe that is why i haven’t written about losing my best friend this year. Yes, he’s a dog, and yes, I loved him so very much, and when I think of him, all i can think of is . . I am not ready to write about it yet. I am hopeful that I will get there. Or about what it means to live with the thought that someone you love was brutally murdered, and most likely knew what was happening the whole time.

I will never write about that.

I will continue to push that one down. It seems to get almost more unreal, yet never goes away. I think of it almost every day, in that quiet time when the kids are in bed and i am doing dishes. Every night.

I don’t write about these things because I don’t want to get lost in them. I want to look on the positive side. I want to be positive. Sometimes? There isn’t a positive side. So i ostrich.

And so I don’t write, because i have almost always sat down at Dogwood Girl in the mornings to write about the things that were foremost in my head. It was my therapy. I wrote them down, just as if I had cut my skull down the hairline, pried it apart, and pulled out the malignancy in my brain. But the issues weren’t so heavy before. These thoughts and images are inoperable.

I will get to the dog. I will write about him. The other? It is terminal. Not in the sense that I will die from it, but in the sense that I will die with it. [wipes tear from cheek.]

p.s. Wow. I started to write about what I’ve been up to since Halloween. And this came out. I guess the writing is good therapy after all. If you are still reading my blog, thank you. I know I haven’t been funny, or sentimental, or nostalgic - all the things that people say they like most about reading my blog. I want to be her, Dogwood Girl, again. She is still here. I promise.

Yeah, I Wore Pink Tulle. So what?

“Mama?” Tiller said.
“Yes, baby?” I muttered while cooking dinner.
Tiller: “Mama, will you be a fairy with me?”
Me: “huh?”
Tiller: “Will you be a fairy with me?”
Me: “I don’t think so, baby. I’m not pretty enough to be a fairy.”
Todd: “You know, we just did a tooth fairy spot. I can get you a fairy costume easy.”
Me: “Shut up, Todd.”

And that’s how I came to be a pink fairy for Halloween.

A little background first:

Something that Scares Me

Ferris Wheels. I actually cursed that Ferris guy for inventing the damn things while riding one last night. They really, really scare me. Rollie was determined to ride the double ferris wheel in the background of the picture below, and thank god in heaven, Todd took one for the team and rode with him. I would have had the big one.

So, Tiller decided she would go on the smaller one. I was all like, “Are you sure? It looks pretty scary up there, baby.” And she was all like, “YEAH! SCARY and FUN! Let’s go ride it, Mama!” and I was all like, Well, FUUUUCK. (In my head. I’m not that bad a mother.) And then, when we had to sit at the top of the damn thing, just a swangin’, while they loaded more people, and then the thing started up again, and we came around the front side, going down, nothing but clouds, trees, air and pavement in front of us, I said it again. Out loud.

“Fuck.”

Under my breath, one hand’s knuckles clamped tight and white around the metal bar in front of us, the other one white-knuckling a handful of Tiller’s shirt, my arm wrapped all the way around her back, under her arm, ready to snatch her from the jaws of death at any moment.

Tiller: “What’s that?”

Me: “Yuck. I said Yuck. Ferris Wheels make me feel yucky, like I might throw up.”

And the girl just laughed and laughed, kicking her legs, setting our seat to riotous swinging.

and that’s why I can’t send you Christmas cards

There’s this song I like by the band Tokyo Police Club. (I hate their band name. Kinda bugs me.) All their songs are so catchy. There is this one song that has the line . . .

and that’s why I can’t send you Christmas cards
it’s why I had to keep you in the dark

Whenever I hear it, it reminds me of someone, and I always think i should write about it, but i always forget, riding in the car or listening to it while I run. And for once, i was sitting at my desk when it came on.

Someone once told me that they never wanted us to end up being people who just exchanged Christmas cards. And sure enough, we aren’t. We don’t. But i think of him every Christmas when the cards start coming in, and I think of him whenever I hear that song.

I find it interesting how prescient that comment was, as if he knew what would happen. And how telling it is that I made note of it at the time, even in the throes of overconfident young love, as if really, deep down, I knew how it would end, too.

None of it matters now, and it doesn’t hurt anymore to see the cards on mutual friends’ refrigerators. If anything, they make me smile. That was lifetimes ago. And songs like that, that remind me of my other lives, make me smile where they once made me cry. And they make me laugh, too, at the naivete of my youth.

And I wonder how many other people think about the Christmas cards they don’t get at Christmas.

Update: Got all nostalgic and made a soundtrack for the post. Enjoy.

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• Kitchen Renovation Dilemmas
• Radiohead: A Story of Starcrossed Lovers
• Babyland
• It’s a Wonderful Life
• Part II, a.k.a. Shotgun Blast of Thanks

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