So last weekend was a blast--of activity. On Saturday, we headed to the Applejack Festival in Nebraska City, EVEN THOUGH we swore we'd never go to the orchards during Applejack Fest again since last year's experience was a hellfest. See, Nebraska City has a year-round population of, like, 10,000. A-Fest brings in 50-75,000 peeps. CITY IS NOT EQUIPPED TO HANDLE IT, and so you find yourself waiting in ridiculously long car lines when all you want to do is make a right-hand turn to get out and back on the road.
Plus, you have to scrap with all the other families who are trying to get the peak apples off the trees. Last year, Kiddo was four months old, and we were huffing and puffing, trying to push her stroller down the orchard paths, clogging up the main artery and watching the lithe young kiddies sprint by with bags full of apples. Our apple haul last year? A disappointing mix of bruised, wormholed Golden Delicious.
But we were PREPARED this year! We got up and out early so that we were at the orchard by 10am; Vee wore Kiddo in the Beco on his back, and I bore A BACKPACK on mine, and we dominated the orchard paths. Golden Delicious? ONLY AT THE END! In the meantime, I picked a peck of Empire, Jonagolds, and Fujis, and by the time we were leaving, the orchard was just starting to reach Applejack capacity.
YES!
See, I had to load up on apples, because on Sunday, we hosted our Annual (which is to say, SECOND YEAR IN A ROW) Chili Hoedown, and you know I had to serve up some homemade pies. I am a serious pie-baking fanatic. Was I always this way? Hell no. I looked, uh, forward to every Thanksgiving when my mama would bake apple pie, but DID IT OCCUR TO ME that I could be doing it myself?
Do you guys remember that VEE DOES ALL OF THE COOKING IN OUR HOUSE and I do the baking?
So, like I was saying, I am a pie-baking maniac, thanks to this book that My Best Friend got me as a wedding shower gift back in 06 called, simply and elegantly, "Pie." Yes, a dude writes it, and yes, a dude is the pie-baking master, and YES, THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING COOKBOOK EVER! Seriously, I found my calling when I found Ken Haedrich. God bless the man.
This year's chili hoedown dessert options were the Golden Delicious Pie with Oatmeal Crumb Topping or the Cider-Infused Apple Pie. But wait! But wait! This year, 2009, is the year that I have finally started making MY OWN PIE CRUST! It's embarrassingly easier than I thought it would be, especially since, cough, I make it with my KitchenAid mixer. I can't believe I waited this long and kept buying those sha-nasty HyVee-brand freezer pie crusts.
I am quite in the throes of my favorite season now. Today is, after all, THE FIRST OFFICIAL DAY OF FALL, and the Kiddo and I are going to celebrate by going to a local orchard and picking some Cortlands, the apples I revere most of all and got a serious bend for when we were living in Michigan. OMFG, eat your damn Honeycrisps, I am CHOWING DOWN on the best pie apples ever.
What are you doing to celebrate fall?
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Laboring on Labor Day
(no, I was not GIVING BIRTH. Good night.)
We had my parents (Gramma Goose and Grampa PhD) down to see us for Labor Day weekend. I baked a cherry almond coffeecake pie (coffeecake consistency, pie crust) and, in exchange, they helped put up the IKEA shelves we've been dragging our feet on installing, got a huge headstart on painting the den (AT LAST), and watched Kiddokabiddo on Saturday so that Vee and I could go on AN ALMOST-THREE-YEAR-ANNIVERSARY ADVENTURE to the middle of Nebraska.
Why?
DUDE, BECAUSE! Have you ever driven through Nebraska on I-80? If you haven't, then you need to, and if you have and only have trash-filled things to say about that drive, then YOU SUCK because the prairie, as Laura Bush/"Alice Blackwell" said in American Wife, "is quietly lovely, not preening with the need to have its attributes remarked on."
We got to go to the Archway Museum, which has been tempting us since 2002. It stretches ACROSS I-80!
It was EPIC! I mean, LOOK AT HOW YOU ENTER IT!
Up the escalator and on til morning! You wear these little earphones the whole time and you're hearing voices of pioneers and letters and stuff while you look at the displays. It was great and WORTH THE WAIT!
That's how we do it on anniversaries, y'all: living and loving the prairie. We had to celebrate early since our actual anniversary is the day before MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING and we'll be busy, obviously, since I AM Honorable Woman and all.
We worked our faces off for the rest of the weekend with my 'rents and my arms were so insanely sore by Monday night since I was painting and painting and painting. Still putting the room back together, so I'll get a Home Show post up next week with what we did, but HOLY SNAKE, I have not been that sore since I had to carry Kiddo around all the time.
What did you do for Labor Day weekend? You know, since it was almost a week ago and all.
We had my parents (Gramma Goose and Grampa PhD) down to see us for Labor Day weekend. I baked a cherry almond coffeecake pie (coffeecake consistency, pie crust) and, in exchange, they helped put up the IKEA shelves we've been dragging our feet on installing, got a huge headstart on painting the den (AT LAST), and watched Kiddokabiddo on Saturday so that Vee and I could go on AN ALMOST-THREE-YEAR-ANNIVERSARY ADVENTURE to the middle of Nebraska.
Why?
DUDE, BECAUSE! Have you ever driven through Nebraska on I-80? If you haven't, then you need to, and if you have and only have trash-filled things to say about that drive, then YOU SUCK because the prairie, as Laura Bush/"Alice Blackwell" said in American Wife, "is quietly lovely, not preening with the need to have its attributes remarked on."
We got to go to the Archway Museum, which has been tempting us since 2002. It stretches ACROSS I-80!
It was EPIC! I mean, LOOK AT HOW YOU ENTER IT!
Up the escalator and on til morning! You wear these little earphones the whole time and you're hearing voices of pioneers and letters and stuff while you look at the displays. It was great and WORTH THE WAIT!
That's how we do it on anniversaries, y'all: living and loving the prairie. We had to celebrate early since our actual anniversary is the day before MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING and we'll be busy, obviously, since I AM Honorable Woman and all.
We worked our faces off for the rest of the weekend with my 'rents and my arms were so insanely sore by Monday night since I was painting and painting and painting. Still putting the room back together, so I'll get a Home Show post up next week with what we did, but HOLY SNAKE, I have not been that sore since I had to carry Kiddo around all the time.
What did you do for Labor Day weekend? You know, since it was almost a week ago and all.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Thrifting and Sifting
I went estate-saling and garage-hopping last weekend, as has been my Saturday ritual for most of the summer, to pick up odds and ends and stuff for my etsy store.
YES, YES, we all know I can't really craft so hot, but I can LOCATE AMAZING ARTIFACTS AND SELL THEM TO YOU FOR CHEAP!
My etsy store (prairie ghost vintage) has been doing pretty well--I've still got a huge stash of vintage postcards left over from, ahem, my wedding (almost three years ago. Uhhhhhh...) that I'm selling off, and then there's always those THINGS that I find when thrift-shopping where I buy it because IT'S TOO GOOD TO LEAVE IN THE STORE, bring it home, and then feel immediately guilty for spending $3.27 on a set of coffee cups when our cabinet is overflowing.
So I started reselling them.
ANYWAY, when I was estate-saling earlier this summer, which is BY FAR the best way to go--all these oldsters in the old neighborhoods I would LOOOOOOOOVE to live in keep going to assisted living, or dying, and there is probably nothing I love more than wandering around through SOMEONE'S HOUSE, especially when it is loaded with old books and housewares and STUFF ON THE WALLS and, yep, vintage toys--I came across this beauty:
It was pretty skanky and dirty, but the stickers were all in great condition, and I had to buy it for Kiddo. Because I USED TO HAVE ONE!
So she can now store her little farm buddies in the hayloft (how freaking adorable is this? I want to die)
But the TRUE AND AMAZING best find was last weekend. I hit the road at 8:30am (you have to get MOVING early to get anything in this town--there is no point in being out after 10:30am unless it is Sunday and you are half-price-buying at what's left at the estate sales) and went to the first sale on my list, which was in this absolutely STUNNINGLY gorgeous neighborhood that I would die to live in--you know, where all the houses are huge and built in the early mid-century and the trees are mature and OOH! YES-AH!
I walked up the driveway and was delighted to see all the vintage kids' toys--like rocking horses, old stuffed animals, etc. When I say "vintage kids' toys," I am shamefully talking about toys from my youth. I am THAT OLD! So I was smiling to myself as I sifted through a stack of old kids' records (like Care Bears Christmas, Strawberry Shortcake Christmas) and I got really happy when I looked on the ground and saw this old, old toy record player that I KNOW, FOR A FACT, I used to have!
And right beside it was a carrel of old Disney 45s/books where you'd put the record on and read along--including one that made me mist up--THE RESCUERS. I used to spend HOURS staring at those pages and listening to the sad/scary (because, really, it was both. SO SAD!) music while hoping THIS TIME Medusa wouldn't make Penny go into the cave.
(Aside: it was mildly terrifying to see Medusa in the book because EEE-IKES, I have HAD her hair. HAD! HAD! NOT HAVE!)
There was only one other person browsing around, so I plopped down beside the stack and started looking at the records, and I noticed that there was also an old kids' plug-in record player beside it. Wow. I was moved by my childhood memories and so I told the garage sale owner that I remembered most of them from when I was a kid, and mentioned that I had a 15 month old daughter. She told me that she had a daughter around my age, and had her over last weekend to pick out whatever she wanted to keep, and this stuff was what she had rejected.
I asked the lady, "How much for the record player, the toy record player, and the kids' records (meaning the 45s, and meaning individually what was she asking for them, since none of them were marked with prices)?"
She said, "Mmm, how about $8 for them all?"
I was like WHOA! but I knew I only had $6 on me. So I said, "I've only got $6..." and was about to ask what she would sell me for $6, but she said "I CAN DO $6" and offered to help me CARRY IT TO THE CAR!
Basically dying, but as I went for the toy record player, real record player, and the carrel of 45s, SHE GRABS THE ENTIRE CARREL OF 33 1/3S AND BRINGS IT ALONG TOO, and IT DAWNS ON ME THAT I JUST GOT THOSE TOO!
I should have seriously called it a day after that, since I knew I wouldn't get any better deals. And I didn't. But LOOK AT WHAT KIDDO AND I GET TO PLAY WITH NOW!
Anyone in the mood for "Camptown Races?"
YES, YES, we all know I can't really craft so hot, but I can LOCATE AMAZING ARTIFACTS AND SELL THEM TO YOU FOR CHEAP!
My etsy store (prairie ghost vintage) has been doing pretty well--I've still got a huge stash of vintage postcards left over from, ahem, my wedding (almost three years ago. Uhhhhhh...) that I'm selling off, and then there's always those THINGS that I find when thrift-shopping where I buy it because IT'S TOO GOOD TO LEAVE IN THE STORE, bring it home, and then feel immediately guilty for spending $3.27 on a set of coffee cups when our cabinet is overflowing.
So I started reselling them.
ANYWAY, when I was estate-saling earlier this summer, which is BY FAR the best way to go--all these oldsters in the old neighborhoods I would LOOOOOOOOVE to live in keep going to assisted living, or dying, and there is probably nothing I love more than wandering around through SOMEONE'S HOUSE, especially when it is loaded with old books and housewares and STUFF ON THE WALLS and, yep, vintage toys--I came across this beauty:
It was pretty skanky and dirty, but the stickers were all in great condition, and I had to buy it for Kiddo. Because I USED TO HAVE ONE!
So she can now store her little farm buddies in the hayloft (how freaking adorable is this? I want to die)
But the TRUE AND AMAZING best find was last weekend. I hit the road at 8:30am (you have to get MOVING early to get anything in this town--there is no point in being out after 10:30am unless it is Sunday and you are half-price-buying at what's left at the estate sales) and went to the first sale on my list, which was in this absolutely STUNNINGLY gorgeous neighborhood that I would die to live in--you know, where all the houses are huge and built in the early mid-century and the trees are mature and OOH! YES-AH!
I walked up the driveway and was delighted to see all the vintage kids' toys--like rocking horses, old stuffed animals, etc. When I say "vintage kids' toys," I am shamefully talking about toys from my youth. I am THAT OLD! So I was smiling to myself as I sifted through a stack of old kids' records (like Care Bears Christmas, Strawberry Shortcake Christmas) and I got really happy when I looked on the ground and saw this old, old toy record player that I KNOW, FOR A FACT, I used to have!
And right beside it was a carrel of old Disney 45s/books where you'd put the record on and read along--including one that made me mist up--THE RESCUERS. I used to spend HOURS staring at those pages and listening to the sad/scary (because, really, it was both. SO SAD!) music while hoping THIS TIME Medusa wouldn't make Penny go into the cave.
(Aside: it was mildly terrifying to see Medusa in the book because EEE-IKES, I have HAD her hair. HAD! HAD! NOT HAVE!)
There was only one other person browsing around, so I plopped down beside the stack and started looking at the records, and I noticed that there was also an old kids' plug-in record player beside it. Wow. I was moved by my childhood memories and so I told the garage sale owner that I remembered most of them from when I was a kid, and mentioned that I had a 15 month old daughter. She told me that she had a daughter around my age, and had her over last weekend to pick out whatever she wanted to keep, and this stuff was what she had rejected.
I asked the lady, "How much for the record player, the toy record player, and the kids' records (meaning the 45s, and meaning individually what was she asking for them, since none of them were marked with prices)?"
She said, "Mmm, how about $8 for them all?"
I was like WHOA! but I knew I only had $6 on me. So I said, "I've only got $6..." and was about to ask what she would sell me for $6, but she said "I CAN DO $6" and offered to help me CARRY IT TO THE CAR!
Basically dying, but as I went for the toy record player, real record player, and the carrel of 45s, SHE GRABS THE ENTIRE CARREL OF 33 1/3S AND BRINGS IT ALONG TOO, and IT DAWNS ON ME THAT I JUST GOT THOSE TOO!
I should have seriously called it a day after that, since I knew I wouldn't get any better deals. And I didn't. But LOOK AT WHAT KIDDO AND I GET TO PLAY WITH NOW!
Anyone in the mood for "Camptown Races?"
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Home, and then Home
So. I went to Seattle for the wedding of Vee's best friend + now-wife, and it was utterly and completely exhausting. And I wasn't even in the wedding party! (Vee was best man)
My parents, Gramma Goose and Grampa PhD, along with my sister AKA, were kind enough to fly all the way out there just to babysit. Well, and be on vacation with us in the Pac NW, our first-of-homes, but really it was all because we needed someone to watch Kiddo.
We stayed on Bainbridge Island, a cluster of evergreens, hills, and hopelessly dreamy houses for the work-from-home too-cool-for-Seattle post-yups. I was disgustedly shaking my head at the idiosyncratic tropes that kept bursting against my skull whenever I looked up at the treeline and saw a line of fog (corny, CORNY phrases like "I would give up everything to see this everyday" or "This is what I am MEANT to live amongst"--the same repulsively childish comments I was telling myself when I was ten and we first moved away from Cor Or; believing in the DESTINY of my eventual life in the NW).
WHY COULDN'T I GROW UP?
The flat rooflines of my dream houses, the yards of endlessly tall trees poking their spines against the gray sky, the cool temperature (in August! in August!): I basically relived my adolescence and mooned around the backyard of the rental house as Grampa PhD taught Kiddo how to scoot down the stairs inside, swooning about THE LIFE I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE LIVING!
I am an adult woman, with a husband and a child, a house and a job, and I was making bargains with myself (this alone should have tipped me off: the fact that I was still on the third Kubler-Rossian step) to justify moving there.
MOVING THERE?!
Dude, I love me some prairie, and I love the life I've built, but I was cornily explaining to myself THAT IT ALL NEEDED TO BE SACRIFICED IN ORDER TO GET BACK WHAT I HAD GIVEN UP FIFTEEN YEARS AGO!
(And no, I was not thinking of leaving my husband, or my child, or, frankly, even my job. Working from home STRIKES AGAIN!)
When I am in a landscape that touches me, I automatically start making Faustian bargains because I AM SUPPOSED TO BE LIVING THERE.
The landscape that affects me most strongly? The landscape of my childhood--what I learned to base everything against. Home is SUPPOSED to be heavily treed, the horizon cushioned with uninhabited hills, mountains visible beyond, fertile farms, idyllic sheep, houses built in the 40s and the 50s, recycling bins at the end of every driveway and no Wal-Mart in sight.
Emotions run high when I talk about my time in Cor Or because I was ten when we left, and if you can imagine, the four years that followed (5th-8th grade) were pretty hellish, and the contrast was so extreme that even IF I hadn't been so enveloped in the idea that, if we'd stayed there, my life would have been better, you would have been SURE my life was better.
This is the state I was in as AKA, Gramma Goose, Kiddo, and I drove down through the valley to the Valley (Willamette, thanks) for our ladies-only two-day adventure back to Cor and to the coast.
A STATE OF RAPTURE IN MY STATE OF RAPTURE! O OREGON! There was a REASON people gave up everything to seek HAPPINESS by following THE OREGON TRAIL to EDEN! (It does not help at. all. that the Willamette Valley was actually the valley of promise, the true and honest farmers' paradise where the settlers who were STRONG ENOUGH to PERSIST wound up)
But how can I say this (and then how can I SAY this? Isn't it blasphemy? Won't I be struck down by the MEs of fifteen years?)? I was disappointed. DISAPPOINTED. It WASN'T LIKE I REMEMBERED IT. (And, for the record, I had been back in '94, '03, and '05, so it's not like I hadn't been there since I was a kid)
The constant evergreens--still gorgeous. The hills on the edge of the valley--still comforting and enticing. But it WASN'T WHERE I WANTED TO BE ANY MORE. I don't think you can understand the level of bewilderment as I recognized that emotion. I was so completely and utterly BEWILDERED at my reaction to THE PLACE I HAD HALLOWED AS THE PINNACLE OF JOYFUL LIVING for fifteen years that I kept waiting to shake out of it, to recognize it back as WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE.
But I DIDN'T.
It didn't get any better. We drove up Marys Peak, we drove out to the coast, we drove through the coastal range, we drove to Portland. And I didn't see one place that fit my landscape NEED.
HOW COULD THIS BE?
It was so confusing; I couldn't think of any way to describe it to Vee when I got home. It was like I peeled off a Band-Aid that had been there for fifteen years and underneath there was nothing there: no scar, no evidence I'd ever been wounded, no wound.
I am still working through my emotions, still sifting through what is left behind, what I have left behind, what I still need to leave behind. I know nothing, but I know this:
I am on the prairie, and I am home. And I love, love, love my life, more deeply and more intensely than I ever have before, because I know, with a bewildering new certainty, that there is no where, NO where, no where in my hidden secret if-I-were-only-living-here daydream life, that I want to be more than here.
And not there.
My parents, Gramma Goose and Grampa PhD, along with my sister AKA, were kind enough to fly all the way out there just to babysit. Well, and be on vacation with us in the Pac NW, our first-of-homes, but really it was all because we needed someone to watch Kiddo.
We stayed on Bainbridge Island, a cluster of evergreens, hills, and hopelessly dreamy houses for the work-from-home too-cool-for-Seattle post-yups. I was disgustedly shaking my head at the idiosyncratic tropes that kept bursting against my skull whenever I looked up at the treeline and saw a line of fog (corny, CORNY phrases like "I would give up everything to see this everyday" or "This is what I am MEANT to live amongst"--the same repulsively childish comments I was telling myself when I was ten and we first moved away from Cor Or; believing in the DESTINY of my eventual life in the NW).
WHY COULDN'T I GROW UP?
The flat rooflines of my dream houses, the yards of endlessly tall trees poking their spines against the gray sky, the cool temperature (in August! in August!): I basically relived my adolescence and mooned around the backyard of the rental house as Grampa PhD taught Kiddo how to scoot down the stairs inside, swooning about THE LIFE I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE LIVING!
I am an adult woman, with a husband and a child, a house and a job, and I was making bargains with myself (this alone should have tipped me off: the fact that I was still on the third Kubler-Rossian step) to justify moving there.
MOVING THERE?!
Dude, I love me some prairie, and I love the life I've built, but I was cornily explaining to myself THAT IT ALL NEEDED TO BE SACRIFICED IN ORDER TO GET BACK WHAT I HAD GIVEN UP FIFTEEN YEARS AGO!
(And no, I was not thinking of leaving my husband, or my child, or, frankly, even my job. Working from home STRIKES AGAIN!)
When I am in a landscape that touches me, I automatically start making Faustian bargains because I AM SUPPOSED TO BE LIVING THERE.
The landscape that affects me most strongly? The landscape of my childhood--what I learned to base everything against. Home is SUPPOSED to be heavily treed, the horizon cushioned with uninhabited hills, mountains visible beyond, fertile farms, idyllic sheep, houses built in the 40s and the 50s, recycling bins at the end of every driveway and no Wal-Mart in sight.
Emotions run high when I talk about my time in Cor Or because I was ten when we left, and if you can imagine, the four years that followed (5th-8th grade) were pretty hellish, and the contrast was so extreme that even IF I hadn't been so enveloped in the idea that, if we'd stayed there, my life would have been better, you would have been SURE my life was better.
This is the state I was in as AKA, Gramma Goose, Kiddo, and I drove down through the valley to the Valley (Willamette, thanks) for our ladies-only two-day adventure back to Cor and to the coast.
A STATE OF RAPTURE IN MY STATE OF RAPTURE! O OREGON! There was a REASON people gave up everything to seek HAPPINESS by following THE OREGON TRAIL to EDEN! (It does not help at. all. that the Willamette Valley was actually the valley of promise, the true and honest farmers' paradise where the settlers who were STRONG ENOUGH to PERSIST wound up)
But how can I say this (and then how can I SAY this? Isn't it blasphemy? Won't I be struck down by the MEs of fifteen years?)? I was disappointed. DISAPPOINTED. It WASN'T LIKE I REMEMBERED IT. (And, for the record, I had been back in '94, '03, and '05, so it's not like I hadn't been there since I was a kid)
The constant evergreens--still gorgeous. The hills on the edge of the valley--still comforting and enticing. But it WASN'T WHERE I WANTED TO BE ANY MORE. I don't think you can understand the level of bewilderment as I recognized that emotion. I was so completely and utterly BEWILDERED at my reaction to THE PLACE I HAD HALLOWED AS THE PINNACLE OF JOYFUL LIVING for fifteen years that I kept waiting to shake out of it, to recognize it back as WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE.
But I DIDN'T.
It didn't get any better. We drove up Marys Peak, we drove out to the coast, we drove through the coastal range, we drove to Portland. And I didn't see one place that fit my landscape NEED.
HOW COULD THIS BE?
It was so confusing; I couldn't think of any way to describe it to Vee when I got home. It was like I peeled off a Band-Aid that had been there for fifteen years and underneath there was nothing there: no scar, no evidence I'd ever been wounded, no wound.
I am still working through my emotions, still sifting through what is left behind, what I have left behind, what I still need to leave behind. I know nothing, but I know this:
I am on the prairie, and I am home. And I love, love, love my life, more deeply and more intensely than I ever have before, because I know, with a bewildering new certainty, that there is no where, NO where, no where in my hidden secret if-I-were-only-living-here daydream life, that I want to be more than here.
And not there.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Ho-ly. Wow.
Ok, seriously, I promise a real post tonight (or TOMORROW MORNING AT THE ABSOLUTE LATEST), but I CANNOT RESIST showing you this AMAZING ETSY FIND:
OH MY GOD, I AM LOSING MY SHIT! Can you even IMAGINE how on EARTH you could explain this to, say, your husband? Your boyfriend? Your meaningless-makeout?
"Oh, yes, I know that you thought I was a modern woman of the times, what with my natural-fiber rug, curly willow branch-in-a-vase, and bedroom window overlooking a bustling city. But GUYS, SERIOUSLY, did you not ALSO ascertain that I was the sort of woman who would have a wall cling of Edward Cullen?"
OH MY GOD, I AM LOSING MY SHIT! Can you even IMAGINE how on EARTH you could explain this to, say, your husband? Your boyfriend? Your meaningless-makeout?
"Oh, yes, I know that you thought I was a modern woman of the times, what with my natural-fiber rug, curly willow branch-in-a-vase, and bedroom window overlooking a bustling city. But GUYS, SERIOUSLY, did you not ALSO ascertain that I was the sort of woman who would have a wall cling of Edward Cullen?"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
