Peddling My Backside All Over Town

I've spent a lot of this summer riding my bike everywhere.  Some place along the way, I got back in touch with the inexpressible joy I felt riding my banana bike on Knollwood Road in East Hartford when I was little.  We lived in a 1930's Tudor in those days with vintage cherry wallpaper in the dining room. 

I became curious recently about how many miles I was riding as I took off for Starbucks, or Merrimac Point or to church.  I follow a wonderful blog by an amazing woman named Sheryl Yvette who rides in New York City high heels and skirts. http://www.sherylyvette.com/
 I've also found that I'm more comfortable biking in a skirt and do ride in to church with higher heels. It appeals to the 1940's girl deep within that maybe others who once lived at the Old Shea House at 256 peddled downtown in the same way.

So off I went to East Coast Bicycles in the Ghent neighborhood of Norfolk to have an electronic odometer placed on my bike.  I took the ferry from Portsmouth across the Harbor.  This is what I saw as I waited for the ferry:

I love our working waterfront.  I road over this footbridge to cross the Canal in Norfolk:

Here is the view of the Chrysler Museum while crossing:

After lunch, I found this dim, cool garden area at the side of a Victorian museum.  I was happy to sit down for a few minutes.  My bike is there in the background.

 I forgot one thing.  The streets are all cobble-stoned.  I think I jiggled a few fillings loose!  I thought about all the people in the Netherlands who used bicycles over the same kind of streets during World War II.  Rubber was scarce and many road their bikes on the rims only, no tires.  MERCY!

I headed back to the ferry landing at Waterside here and waited to cross the River back home.  It was so hot and hazy, but I thought the pic looked good in sepia tones.  Over the river and through the streets to East Coast Bicycles I went.  And my odometer tells me that I've done 41 miles since then.

I-Need-to-go-Grocery-Shopping-Lunch Salad

Start with a large can of garbanzo beans (or chick peas or ceci, depending on your ethnicity). 

Add the drips and drabs that need to be used up from the fridge. In my case it was carrots, a green pepper past its first blush of youth, a chopped onion, some black olives, some sugar snap peas, a roma tomato, and some frozen corn.

Add lemon juice, olive oil, and your choice of spices.  I decided to go vaguely Middle Eastern with ground cumin, fennel seed, red pepper flakes, allspice, and salt.  Equal parts olive oil to lemon juice.  Toss.

Make grocery list.  Enjoy lunch.  Go grocery shopping.

Blowing Through the Jasmine in my Mind

Listen, I don’t tell everybody this so you need to keep it to yourself.  There’s a sound track running in my mind all the time, like I’m playing the musical score to my life.  Call me Henry Mancini or John Williams.  Well, no, don’t, but you know what I mean.   Well maybe you can, I wouldn't mind claiming Moon River as my own.

So I guess this blog post is my liner notes.  I hope that I don’t say a lot of obscure thank you’s to folks no one else knows about and make self-conscious references to inside jokes like the liner notes used to look like for Kenny Loggins and other artists when I was a kid. 

About two weeks ago, my soundtrack was playing “It’s Not Easy to be Me” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q896lBPRC60

by Five for Fighting and “One Hundred Years to Live” by the same group: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR-qQcNT_fY&ob=av2e

I’ve been feeling the inexorable sense of time slipping away which is embodied in this haunting song.  I’m a sucker for a good falsetto and I love the music-box melody.  This era of my life will be over seemingly in a breath.  By the way, did you know that there are two kinds of time in the Bible…clock time and spiritual time?

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stone-catend/2Times.pdf

What’s this week’s running soundtrack?  “What Do You Want From Me?” by Adam Lambert. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt3yBQf7LqM
I don’t always notice the soundtrack while I bee-bopp my way along writing, working, traveling, or putting some wash in the front loader.  Just a few minutes ago I became aware of this week’s tune.  As I puzzled over it, because the songs always mean something deeply spiritual, I realized that my heart was crying out to God asking Him that question.

You see, we’re going through a difficult time at Chez 256.  I have been so angry about it that I’ve missed the spiritual lessons.   Today, I was praying with groaning too deep for words when the Spirit intercedes for us Romans 8:26 and 27.  And I got my answer, “pray for those who spitefully use you.”  That's what God wants from me.

You know those clever chalkboards made from vintage frames that I love so much?  God told me to erase the one hanging above the globes in the hallway that said, “He’s got the whole world in His hands.”  And then he directed me to write down the names of those I was so angry with and ask Him to bless them in writing.  So I did.

He put a new song in my mouth,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear the LORD
and put their trust in him.  Psalm 40:3

168 Hours

We all have the same amount of time…168 hours per week. That’s the premise of a book I just finished:  168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam. 

In a different twist on time management, Vanderkam provides an excellent tool for analyzing your use of time.  I was chagrined as I read many accounts of highly-productive people; amazingly well rounded people, who manage to get it all done and then some.

I was reading at the beach, a deserted Chesapeake Bay beach that I sincerely hope never gets discovered.  I was so engrossed in her writing that the tide came in and engulfed my feet and bottom in the beach chair before even noticed it creep in. And no, I don’t get anything out of suggesting the book.

Laura Vanderkam has a website and blog as follows:

http://www.my168hours.com/main/
You can download a free weekly time log.  She examined a great deal of research which indicates that we exaggerate time spent in worthy pursuits and underestimate the amount of time we sleep or do less productive activities. Keeping a time log helps you get real. Vanderkam examines how we spend time from a philosophical as well as a practical view.

A close friend is going through a painful professional time.  I’ve noticed over the months, that he spends a lot of time being frozen, attempting the same report or task many times.  He has difficulty moving forward to completion because he is perplexed about the overall situation.
He worries about tasks, obsesses about them, asks questions, reviews, ruminates, second guesses himself and others, and then finally completes tasks under great pressure just prior to the due date.  In all, he spends ten times more time on the task than he needs to, because of all the negativity he feels.  Think I’m criticizing?  I can be just the same.

Confession: I fritter time away.  I am not disciplined. I don’t get to the things I value.  If I do get to them, I feel pressured and run through them like my hair is on fire.  My big time wasters?  Television. Specifically, Law and Order and NCIS reruns, however entertaining I find Mark Harmon to be. Trust me, really entertaining. Internet surfing vs. internet research.  Helping others prior to getting to my own responsibilities.  Procrastination.

I have a bazillion things I want to do…spending time with loved ones without feeling harried, community activism, decorating projects, trying out new recipes, working in my cottage garden, taking pictures, professional pursuits, and finishing my book.  God has a plan for my time and talents.  I'm not doing a very good job of following it. My tombstone shouldn’t read, “Here lies Annie…she watched a lot of NCIS reruns.”  Actually, I want my tombstone to read, “Hey, thanks for stopping by!”  Dare me.

So I’m analyzing my time, beginning Monday. My goal?  Accomplishing the things that truly uplift and fulfill me, and waiting until the new NCIS’s come back in September. It is only fair, if you think about it.  Mark Harmon isn’t home with Pam Dawber watching me.

The Help

Did you read The Help?  If you haven’t, run out and get it.  It is marvelous.  Even if you haven’t read the book, also run out and see the movie “The Help,” which is based on the book.   The novel examines prejudice, cruelty, kindness, and triumph in the pre-civil rights South.  In particular, the book looks at the lives of maids who worked for white families in Mississippi.

We had a housekeeper who came to live with us in the midst of this same time, just a few years after the setting of the movie.  Her name was Roslyn Brown.  We called her Rose.  She came while my Father was in Vietnam, my brother was perhaps 2 and I was 5 or maybe a bit younger.

She came when we lived in a small brick ranch near a military base.  My room had purple curtains with silhouettes of black cats on them and Chipper Hart lived next door.   My favorite show was Flipper (they call him Flipper, Flipper, faster than lightening…) and I missed my Dad a lot.

I just recently learned that Rose came to us via a work release program from the Hampton City Jail.    My mother’s choice to hire someone who had been in jail was completely uncharacteristic.  She wasn’t really able to explain to me why she did it, but Rose stayed with us for many years.

She was very tall and very large with long, slender hands that looked like they should be playing the piano.  Rose wore a garnet ring some suitor had given her; it was set in a gold knot with the garnet perched on top.  Frequently, she would refer to herself in the third person, as in, “Don’t you be back sassing Rose, now.”  She used to make candy for us on a large cookie sheet, sweet amber colored, vanilla flavored candy that she smashed into bits with a large hammer and stored in a large tin.  She loved to watch her stories while ironing; “Like sands through the hour glass, so are the days of our lives.”

Once as she stood at the kitchen washing her hands free of some sticky dough, my brother looked her up and down and said, “I don’t think it will come off,” referring to her skin color.  Another time he said reflectively, “Rose, you’re just sort of a big, all over freckle.”  She laughed and said, “I expect I is.”

Rose followed us as we moved from Virginia to Connecticut.  She was devoted to my brother and me.  I never questioned her staying on, but I marvel at the idea of her leaving her entire family and her home to care for someone else’s children.  The thing was, she never thought of us as anyone else’s but hers.  We were her babies.

In the movie, the main character ends up being fired and leaving her “baby” behind.  In my life, Rose left when my mother remarried and moved to New York with my stepfather.  She was never fired, but went home to become an African Methodist Episcopal lay pastor. 

Not long ago, I found an old index card in Rose’s angular, distinctive handwriting, listing the ingredients for a cake.  I had been looking through an old recipe file of my mother's.  I was instantly transported back to that time in my life.  I could see her right before me helping me tie a pair of red Keds.  She died when I was in my twenties from complications from diabetes.  I miss her still.

Monday Morning Glories

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
His mercies never come to an end.
The are new every morning, new every morning,
Great is Thy faithfulness, O Lord.
Great is Thy faithfulness.

New Old Park Bench

This old park bench had been hanging around the garage for a couple of years.  I gave it a new coat of paint.  I found the fabulous green pillows at Goodwill for $5.25 with the original Pottery Barn tags still on them.  SWEET!

Vintage Signage

These two signs are a block apart on Warwick Boulevard in Newport News, Virginia.  I adore them.  In my secret dreams, I want to gather a historic preservation group together and start serving home fries, grilled cheese, and sliders at the old diner once again.

Hall and Oates had an album when I was a kid called, "The Abandoned Luncheonette." I think of it every time I pass the Blue Star.

Kitchen

I love Brenda's blog over at Cozy Little House where she is going through changes outside her control with a tremendous amount of grace.

Imagine my amazement when I saw this inspirational picture on her blog on Wednesday:

Here's my kitchen:

By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea

Sometimes people ask me how I come up with decorating ideas.  Mostly, I don't know.  I think I'm terrific at stealing, uh that is, gaining inspiration from decorating magazines. With this project, I can pinpoint exactly how it came together in a quick 13 years!

When I moved in to the old Shea House, my mother bought me a king-sized bed with a good mattress for one of the spare bedrooms.   The bed came headboardless.  That's a new word I just made up.  I toyed around with various headboard ideas like old fencing or one of the old doors stored in my garage, but nothing seemed quite right.

At the same time, I had access to some Navy charts from the decommissioning of the USS McKee, a submarine tender.  The charts were going to be discarded when they mothballed the McKee on the James River, but I knew that I could do something with them.  I was particularly fond of this chart of the approach to New York and Long Island Sound.  I spend many happy days as a child playing in Long Island Sound at Black Point (Niantic), Connecticut.  The back of the chart has quartermaster notes in black Sharpie magic marker, which I think is very cool.

My sister came to visit in June.  We took a long drive to the Outer Banks of North Carolina and stopped at a farm stand that had a lot of snarky signs about how many free samples one could take, that sort of thing.  The signs lack of customer service awareness bothered me, so we went to another, much nicer farm stand where I found the wonderful picture that says "you can't cross the sea by staring at the water."  I also found birch beer for Jason's birthday and some really fab blanched almonds.

In July, I was riding my bike in West Park View and came across two 1940 twin bed headboards sitting at the curb for trash pick up.  FINALLY I realized that I'd found the beginnings of my headboard arrangement. Two twins add up to a king. The whole idea still had to jell in my mind, but after 13 years, I was finally getting something together.

My first task was to spray paint the headboards red.  The posts on the bed are missing something, but I'm still not quite sure what was there.  A nautical theme made me consider using rope, so I ended up with this:

and this:

to hide whatever is missing.

I looked at Cottage Syle magazine

and Waterside Cottages by Barbara Jacksier

for further inspiration.  I saw a room in one of them with an old map hanging on the wall.  The owner had mounted some shadow boxes on  top of the map as if it was wallpaper.  That's how I figured out how to mount the picture on the chart.

I had a coil of rope leftover from Lowes and I'm cheap, so that's how I decided on "framing" the chart with the rope.  Contrary to what you read in high-end decorating magazines about "frugal" decorating, it isn't frugal if you pay $300 to custom mat and frame the cool chart you scored for free.

These, my friends, are all the clever, cheap, nautical, and I-don't-like-the-snotty-attitude-of-Powellsfarmstand reasons that this room looks like "me."  Next time, I'll show you what I did with the worn kindergarten "cubbies' thrown away during the renovation of Shea Terrace Elementary School across the street a decade ago. 

Can you do exactly this?  Nope, because this is my frugal decorating life.  But you can make your house you in the same way by keeping your eyes open for God's provision.  I once just told God I needed a cool new coffee table and found it the next day while walking the dog.

Dear readers, anyone with money to throw away can pay a decorator to buy $2,000 club chairs that they read about in Elle Decor.  But the home is the decorator's vision, not the owner's.  Only you can make your home uniquely Debra
http://debrasotherthoughts.blogspot.com/
or Judy
http://judyh58.blogspot.com/
or Brenda
http://www.cozylittlehouse.com/

 or Annie on a shoestring.  And that, kidlets, is real talent.

Little Bit 1997-2011

I'm Flashing You

I don't usually get intimidated, but sometimes those blog experts with the gorgeous pics really do check my creativity.  There's been a particular bit of helpful advice that's been going around among the elite:  never use a flash.  Well, I've been going along with that for a while, but it is impossible to take a pic in my living room without one.

I have a deep front porch which runs the whole width of the house that prvevents my living room from being extremely sunny.  Today I decided to forget the advice, take my flash pics and blog about what I wanted to say. 

I've changed up the living room a bit, here are my flash pics.  It's my camera and I'll flash if I want to, flash if I want to, flash if I want to...



Independence Day

Old Glory at Fort Monroe.  And remember, freedom ain't free.

The One-Legged Goose

I love this little goose who lives in a gaggle with other able-bodied geese on the banks of Scotts Creek. That sounded so Little House on the Prairie, didn’t it? Did I ever tell you I know someone who actually grew up in a sod house? But I digress.

Anyway, she hip hops along on one webbed foot and does her goose thing apparently unconcerned. Little Goose gets into the water last as the group converges for a swim, but she jumps in just the same.

I wonder how far we would swim if we didn’t know there was anything wrong with us? Maybe we could even fly…

Alexandra Stoddard and Bird's Nest Hair

I’m sitting out at the chippy white table at the hidden corner of my front porch, secluded by a huge trumpet vine with a nest of mourning doves. 

Cicadas are loudly calling out summer to each other. Wind chimes sound faintly from time to time.  The dove’s feathers ruffled when I first sat down, but they’ve decided I’m harmless and my hair kind of looks like a nest.  They’ve started cooing again in the distinctive cadence which gives them their name, so soothing compared to the crow I also hear. Crows seem to have much to complain about, a lot like some folks I know.

As I was getting ready this early morning, I thought about a gracious living book I’d read last night by Alexandra Stoddard.  I was surprised that she did NOT advocate waiting until everything was perfect before you enjoy your home.  Each room did not have to be dusted and pristine in order to read a favorite book in a chintz-covered chair. I was shocked to note that she also pads around in her night clothes well into the morning.  This was not my image of her, but I found it completely refreshing.

I was making an egg sandwich and thought of how nice it would be to enjoy it on the porch.  Then I edited myself with all the things I needed to do first like shower and fix my hair.  For a short time I succumbed to those thoughts.  I folded laundry, threw in another load of wash and did other sensible things.

But you know what?   This is the only July 1 this year, which will soon be gone if I get caught up in the tyranny of the mundane.  It would be hard for anyone else out and about to see my bird’s nest hair and night shirt but the birds.  All this is why you’d find me here if you were strolling down Constitution Avenue and looked very closely behind the pink crepe myrtle, up the six stone steps and behind the trumpet vine. 

A Magical Place - The Ward House

I love this stately old historic home in the next neighborhood over from mine.  Now do yourself a big favor and double click on the pic to see all the detail. 

The house sits right on the water.  The entire property delights me.  The architecture of the front porch area to the right pleases my eye.  I go a block out of my way every time I'm in West Park View just to see this charming place with the lovely and unusual white picket fence.

One hundred years ago today, Mrs. Ward sat rocking in her long white skirt on that same front porch trying to catch a breeze from the water.  She twisted her hair more securely up from her neck fastening it with tortoise shell hair pins while Sonnets from the Portuguese lay unread in her lap and a crow complained loudly of the heat in the trees overhead.  Or I'd like to think so, anyway.

How Harrison Ford Made Me Sick This Past Week

Okay, here's the deal...I adore Harrison Ford.  I have loved him ever since Princess Leia said to Han Solo "I love you" and he famously replied "I know," one of the best withering lines in the history of the movies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO-KR-14uXM

I still loved him when he divorced his rather plain wife Melissa who wrote the screenplay for ET.  I continued to love him even when he married a woman over twenty years younger, whose appearance makes me want shake her by her tiny, boney shoulders and say, "For the love of God woman, eat a Rueben sandwich."  They probably just hold her up to the light to do an x-ray.  She sort of reminds me of the Olsen twins, one of those smudgey-eyed women who look like feral night creatures.

(photo courtsey of Huffington Post)
But Harrison and I are through.  Finished.  It is over.  I've put up with all the other women, but the outrage below cannot be tolerated. It is abusive.

It is a good thing that I was already in my doctor's office when I read this because if I hadn't needed a check up before, I would have been sick after seeing this sacrilege.  AARP?????  Indy, my darling, say it isn't so.

Life and a Bike Route

For some reason, I have always struggled with spacial relations.  As you might imagine, this made geometry and parallel parking a nightmare for me.  I get nervous when I need to maneuver my bicycle in a narrow space.  Well, okay, a space which I perceive as a narrow. 

When I leave my neighborhood on my bike, I need to use the sidewalk for a block because London Blvd. is very busy. I make a sharp right hand turn at the end of Chesapeake Avenue and steer the bike through the handicapped ramp to the sidewalk.  I get concerned that a car may be turning into the neighborhood.

Even though I have negotiated this little space hundreds of times over the years, my stomach tightens every time I bike through it, which is at least ten times a week.  The second I start to get nervous, the bike begins to wobble, as my balance suffers because of my nervous thoughts. 

Instead of concentrating on the many times I have safely traveled in this space, I choose to concentrate on the remote possibility that I may fall or somehow steer into oncoming busy traffic.  In one second, I change from confidently peddling and enjoying my ride to a sick sense of dread. The moment that my thoughts focus on a bad outcome, my body does its best to help me out with that.

It suddenly hit me on Sunday as I rode my bike past that very spot that my situation is a metaphor about many things in my life.  If I proceed forth in the confidence that God is with me and I have all I need to succeed, I do well.  When I allow doubt about my abilities or God’s provision to assail me, I begin to wobble on that narrow road that I’m supposed to be traversing.  God wasn’t just throwing out random thoughts in Phil 4:8 when He told us to concentrate on what is excellent or praiseworthy, noble and true.   He was telling us how to hit the road, so to speak.

Finding Beauty in Unexpected Places

Sometimes you can miss the beauty in life when you fail to take it in all around you.  Saturdays I usually take a longer bike ride.  I head toward a marina along Scotts Creek.   The road that takes me there is Harper Avenue, actually a private road owned by the CSX Railroad.  Last week, I showed you all the Queen Anne's Lace that grows along these tracks.  The picture you see above is Harper Avenue's opposite side.  This area teems with egrets, Cooper's hawks, foxes, and rabbits.

If you were straddling your bike from the picture's perspective and looked over your shoulder, you would see locomotives and shipping containers in brown, orange, and bright blue; Maersk, Chiang Ming, Hanjin, and Hapag-Llloyd emblazoned on the sides.  Looking from the picture's vantage point, you would see my view this morning of nature and a pure white egret.

My focus during the bike ride can be a metaphor for life; something that psychologists call "framing."  We all have ups and downs.  For everything there is a time and purpose under heaven, as the Byrds sang, and God said eons before they made it into a Number 1 hit.  The key to life, and in getting a good picture, is to choose your focus carefully.  As a woman thinketh in her heart, so she is.

This morning, I could have focused on the industrial yuck of the tracks and the rusting containers with the ubiquitous white plastic shopping bag blowing along the tracks.  Instead, I focused on the egret I inadvertently disturbed into flight rising into the blue sky, the Queen Anne's lace, the sun on my shoulders, and the view of Norfolk's skyline as I reached the marina.

From Around the Cottage Garden