Palm Beach looks a lot different these days...

Today, Steve came home from his errands with flowers for me!!! :) A wonderful bouquet with orange roses, purple mums and alstroemeria, tall green grasses, (which my Kince loves to bite) and these green fluffy, tuft-y blooms on long stalks that remind me of the trees Dr. Suess books. It's beautiful and wonderful and I love it. :) He always brings me flowers when I am least expecting it, and they make me soooooo happy.

He also brought me another surprise! A poster of this picture:


Isn't it wonderful? It's Palm Beach in 1905. He saw it on shorpy and just knew I would love it. I do! :) He is so sweet! I am going to frame it and hang it in our bedroom, on an empty wall where I could never quite hang the right picture. I am so excited. :)

A Fairy Tale Wife

This morning, being Saturday, found me and Steve enjoying a cool, cloudy breeze flowing all around our living room through the open windows. I sat in my yellow chair, with my tea tray all lovely on the table, and he sat on the couch with his coffee, reading. We were both reading.

We used to have a rule, that we must read one fairy tale out of Grimm's Fairy Tales before we watch any TV together. These include the classic, famous, longer tales, but more often, because there are more of them, we read the obscure, short ones, that usually have a moral. Those fairy tales are written so simply, leaving so much to the imagination. They have sentences like, "So, the man got up, put on his hat, and went into the forest to seek the beast." Or something like that.

I've always thought of myself as the damsel in those tales, the princess, lost, bewitched, betrothed, enchanted or otherwise. (I have been all of those things!) I never think of the wives in those tales. If a wife is mentioned at all, it is usually to give some small, practical word of advice, encouragement, or complaint to her husband, who then predictably puts on his hat and goes into the forest, where the unpredictable can finally happen. And the story always follows him there, instead of staying in the cottage, with his wife.

Today, for the first time, I felt very like a fairy tale wife, without meaning to, (and it felt fine! I was surprised!) when I stood up from my yellow chair and said, "I will get dressed, and look for my gold ring." That is just like something a wife in a fairy tale says, don't you think?

I will get dressed, and look for my gold ring, said his wife.

I misplaced my cross ring last night and complained slightly to Steve about it, but was too tired to dig for it on my junky dresser. This morning, as I sat across from him with my tea, I kept offering the unsolicited information that I might get dressed soon. Finally, after dallying as long as possible, I remembered my ring, and decided to get up from my yellow chair. Of course as soon as I did, I said the Fairy Tale Wife line and had to sit back down and write about it.



(This picture is not Grimm's, but it is one of my favorite illustrators, so I liked it best.)

I am going to go have my day now. Even though there are no forests here, something magical might happen! After all, I am a fairy tale wife.

secret bikinis and Mae West quotes

Since life has seemed so serious lately, well, aside from well-behaved puddings...actually I haven't blogged much about the seriousness, except to complain that I desperately need a break from life, but anyway....

In Rockport, the little beach town where I grew up, in the summers, I usually had to do schoolwork because I would put off so much of it during the school year that I'd never finish one grade in time to have a real summer. That is, if I wanted to go on to the next grade come fall. (If you don't understand this, you weren't homeschooled.) It was all my own fault of course, I don't know how I got into college. I never was the stereotypical over-achieving homeschooled child. Sorry. No, not really actually, because I just don't do guilt, and besides, I learned so much about being glamorous instead.

Since Rockport is always hot, and nearly always sunny, on "school days" in the spring and summer I would take all of my reading stuff, like history and english, and lay out in the backyard in my scandalous bikini. That bikini was scandalous not only because of its very existence as a bikini, but also because I'd secretly kept it out of one of the hand-me-down bags that passed through our house. Kristin and I got these bags of clothes regularly from a girl in our church who was a little older than us and a lot richer, and hence, cleaned out her entire closet every season. We'd get everything she didn't want or grew out of. The bikini was secret because in those days we would never have been allowed to buy one! Good heavens, no! ("in those days" sounds like I'm ancient, but really, times have just changed at my parent's house.)

But back to the reading, most of my reading of choice, I (sort of) regret to say, was biographies of old movie stars. I got them from our little small-town library. (the one where if you walk in 20 minutes before closing time, you are accosted by the librarians with upset glances and ferocious whispers of, "You don't have time to find a book! You don't have time!" "Come back tomorrow!") I could tell you everything about the lives of Elizabeth Taylor, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, Vivien Leigh, Katharine Hebpurn, Audrey Hepburn, Shirley Jones, Lucille Ball and Marilyn Monroe. What they thought, and what they did and what they wore and how they lived.


The lipstick, the shoes, the not-fair tiny waists, the gowns, the champagne and romance, and, most of all, their hair. I wanted their hair so much! But straight flat hair, in the humidity of that terribly humid gulf coast, stays quite straight and most flatly flat no matter what you do or how much time it takes. Finish, look in the mirror, count to five and you're back to square one.

In essence, looking back, I was just studying their glamourousness. Every aspect of it I obsessed over. I remember liking history too, especially my 9th grade history book, it was very interesting and I wish I had a copy of it now. It's probably at home somewhere. But I loved that time in my life! Of course, I was a teenager and didn't really like myself, I had straight hair and tons af acne and had "bloomed" way too much, I thought, (the only jeans or bras in the house that fit me were my mother's.) But it was so fun to think and read about those glamour queens and the golden age of Hollywood. I know for a fact that I wore far too much make-up (I would have worn false eyelashes if I had been allowed!) and bleached my hair quite badly, but for all that, I remember being quite happy then.

I am much better at balance now, and actually read academic things sometimes. I love being married, and I love my Steve and our life together. But there is a lot of seriousness that goes on, and I think in a different way than I used to. One friend put it like this, when I asked her if I had changed a lot since I got married. She said, "Well, you used to be a bit more your martini-dripping self." I know what she means. I have not really changed, but my focus has somewhat. But I don't think I should be always stressed about things. It's become almost a habit, and it's my own fault entirely. Steve says I really shouldn't be as worried over things as I am, he wants me to be happy, and sing all the time like I used to when we were dating. So that is good to remember. But also, after 2 years of not quite having the energy to much care what I look like or what I wear to work (which I know isn't everything, and in the grand scheme of things, isn't anything, but all the same, you live your life in your physical self every day) it's refreshing to remember that I used to care, and that it was fun! And I do still care, but I just forgot for a while.


And the champagne-infused, black and white glamour of all the old Hollywood pictures is just uplifting somehow. So, that's what I've been thinking about lately. And so to end, Mae West has some glamourous thoughts about life for us:

~On Love~

Don't marry a man to reform him - that's what reform schools are for.

All discarded lovers should be given a second chance, but with somebody else.

Love thy neighbor - and if he happens to be tall, debonair and devastating, it will be that much easier.

Love isn't an emotion or an instinct - it's an art.

~On Being True to Onesself~ (or something--couldn't quite make the right category for these)

Cultivate your curves - they may be dangerous but they won't be avoided.

I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond.

I speak two languages, Body and English.

I'm no model lady. A model's just an imitation of the real thing.

~Just Funny~

When I'm good I'm very, very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better.

Ten men waiting for me at the door? Send one of them home, I'm tired.

His mother should have thrown him out and kept the stork.

If I asked for a cup of coffee, someone would search for the double meaning.

~On Life in General~

Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.

He who hesitates is a damned fool.

I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.

Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.

Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.

To err is human, but it feels divine.

The score never interested me, only the game.

You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.

The Ettiquette of English Puddings

That is the title of a small pink-striped recipe book I got for Christmas. Puddings (the British kind, which is more like a cake, if you've never seen one) are one of my fascinations. They are cute, usually small, homey, old-fashioned desserts. I guess British foods are known for being bland, and puddings don't seem an exception, at least the ones I've made, but the wine and brandy sauces might help that. Puddings are good though. Just simple and quite nice with tea, especially on cold, cloudy days.

Anyway, this morning when I got up, it was sufficiently cloudy and more than cold enough outside, so I picked out a recipe from my pink pudding book. It was called "Railway Pudding" and I chose it because the recipe went like this:

Mix well one tea cupful of flour, one tea cupful of sugar, half tea cupful of milk, one ounce butter, one egg and one teaspoonful of baking powder and put into a buttered tin, bake twenty minutes in quick oven, (which I guessed meant hot, after it baked 25 minutes at 350 and was still very mushy and doughy) cut in half, spread with jam, sprinkle sugar over.

That was it. I liked how it left me to figure out how big a teacup to use, what temperature to bake it at, and what kind of jam to use and all that. I used one of my actual tea cups to measure things, like the Fauna on Sleeping Beauty, (all I could find was spanish one :) only that's really what the recipe called for! After it baked, I turned it out onto a dinner plate and cut it so that it looked like a layer cake and put strawberry jam in the middle. It looked so cute and plummy and made me so happy. And the best thing was, when Steve woke up, and I showed it to him, he asked "Is it a well-behaved pudding?"

It is. I like it. If I ever learn to post pictures, I'll put one up.

Gone With the Wind

"There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind..."



I am watching Gone With the Wind this evening, having been inspired to watch something by a huge pile of clean laundry that I have avoided folding for three days! I am watching it on the old vhs tape set that Susanna and Kathleen got me for Christmas a long time ago. I love remembering that. It's a lovely set, in a case with a big picture on the cover, you know, the Gone With the Wind picture. I like it. And it has a paper inside with some trivia about the book and the film. Did you know Margaret Mitchell tried a few different names for Scarlett including Pansy, Angel, Robin and Storm. I don't think the book would be the same at all if her name were something else!

I have not seen the movie in forever, and it has gotten me thinking and wanting to read the book again. I think I'll start it tonight. Steve and I are having so many peaceful, non-busy evenings these days. I think we have had more peaceful evenings this August than in our whole first year of marriage! (that wasn't his fault, believe me!)

Anyway, I have to say this: my very favorite thing about watching Gone With the Wind is all the shots with the trees silhouetted against the sky. That is my favorite time of day, when the trees are dark and the sky is still pale.


Trees in general are some of the most touching things in the world, I think. I better go. I could go on about trees forever, and the Kince is lying around on all the clean clothes.