Remember my Rowenta rave? That very night, while pressing my latest completed project with my new beloved iron…thwat pop!..It blew a fuse! What is it with Germans and power?
After waiting in the darker dark for a few hours, the building manager finally returned home. Fuse-less. (My heavy-duty wonder had MELTED the fuse, a complete replacement required). I was desperate. Come on, we've got 15 minutes til it closes, I'll drive you to the hardware store myself! So, despite the prime real estate parking space, I moved the car to get light (and Imac, and TV and CoffeePot and GermanIron and oh man, how did we get by without electricity?). With great relief, in half an hour, though my primo parking spot was gone, I had all my equipment buzzing and humming with life again.
The next morning, when I drove away from my in-the-boonies parking spot, I went round the block where I had been parked the evening before….to see that a Huge Tree Downed by Wind Storm Destroyed Two Vehicles. !
That iron saved my little car. One German looking out for another.
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I finally finished this fancy schmancy frilly tablecloth, a present for my grandma Eileen. It's cotton thread, 1.75mm hook, 48 motifs to make a 60" d round. It was intended to be done in time for Christmas, but the attack of bersitus cost me more than four weeks. I don't think she'll mind. I'm just so glad it's done, at last! -
I had an encounter in Target yesterday (yes, I only seem to be able to go as far as Target on my days off, the weather here encourages nesting with an unstoppable force) that the marketing department of a certain German manufacturer would have loved to have overheard.
My dear, beloved Rowenta had been lost–lifted really, by a renter in Savannah. I don't blame the renter for taking the superior machine, use it once and who could blame her? In its place was left a sad, generic model that could barely warm tea, much less press a shirt. This inferior iron, in its despair for being despised, had finally flung itself off the board, dashed itself to cheap plastic bits on the floor boards below.
So, I was inspecting the Rowenta offerings in the small appliance aisle. I was not alone. The other shopper looked at me, and said, "You must get a Rowenta." Turns out, her 15-year old classic Rowenta had just yesterday finally died. The look on her face was of real loss. I knew that look.
We chatted and shared stories of our treasured tools, praising their qualities. The Accuracy–wives all over the world wish their husbands were this accurate with liquids. The Reliablity–the Synthetic setting never scorches. The Heft and Feel—the plate always glides.
We had a moment. After some discussion of the preferred model (oh, how we yearned for the Professional!), we wished each other well with our new machines–as if wishing each other well with new marriages, as if we had shared this moment at a bridal shop. -
I was up at 6am. Not to prepare treats and holiday surprises, but because the goddamn phone rang…
Mom. Getting an earlier flight. Arriving at 1:30 instead of 4:30. Throwing out of whack my carefully drafted do-nothing-until-absolutely-necessary Cleaning The House for Company Plan. Crap.
Keeping in mind the Theory of Good Enough (more on that later), I quickly edited the list of things required for Visitors. Out the window–defrosting the broken freezer compartment of my undersized refrigerator. You see, it's broken. It's been broken for months. I have a mini glacier in my mini fridge. Every few weeks, when the door won't close properly, I hack at it with a butter knife, breaking free chunks of the white stuff to fall, avalanche style, to the floor. Ruby loves these moments–a little violence leading to something new and interesting to eat off the floor. Dogs love that stuff. Eat it right up.
Five hours later, surveying my freshly tidy five hundred square feet with a little bid of pride, the mini fridge was now a major worry. She would find it. She would open it. She would see. And she would squeal, "Kathleeeeen! WHAT is THIS?"
I shook my head to clear it of neurotic thoughts, reminding myself that this is a woman who ashes her cigarettes in decorative pottery. She would be reasonable, see that the fancy bed pillows were just the right shade of aqua, the picture frames dead-on straight, the lightbulbs all optimum wattage, the bathroom bleached top to bottom. She's a reasonable woman, she would understand that one small oversight in a busy life is allowable. It is BROKEN after all.
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She is not a reasonable woman. She is still captive to the Mother gene. The offending fridge was found in the first 2 minutes. "Kathleeeeeen!" Mom spend day two (while I was working), in my apartment, all day, defrosting.
She ashed in my pots. -
Throughout the family holiday, Miss Ruby never lacked for her favorite thing; a warm lap.
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Tom, the Tattooed Elf
Tom and Devon, the Threes of Us, I better get baking!, Traditional Christmas Jammies styled for the Italian life, and Tom Injures Self with Own Gift. -
Mom rocks out….thanks to her new iPod Shuffle from Tom and Devon…already thoughtfully loaded with a hundred of her favorite tunes…no techknow required! -
Mom's going home to her own gift….Marco (scroll down), her new boaty hired-hand.
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It's snowing!
Holy crap, it's snowing! I left my snow equipment behind long ago…thought I'd left the snow there too. -
I was asked an interesting, and bothersome, question today: "What is your hometown?". Huh. I'm not sure how to answer that.
Born in San Francisco, but only there for one year.
Then lived in Columbia, Missouri but gone by the age of 3 or 4.
Raised, as it were, in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. But we spent many weekends in 'the city': Chicago, Illinois. (I'm clinging hard to the fact that Mom and Dad did technically own a co-op there).
Then, Chicago proper in my late teens and early twenties. (And don't forget a year in boarding school in Lake Forest, IL, but then I'd also have to count that boarding school year in Beaver Dam, Wi too.)
And as an adult, it's back to Wisconsin, Madison this time (but it's an island unto itself, does that count?).
Then off to Savannah, Georgia for nearly five years.
Two years in Antibes, France and now I find myself in Portland, Oregon.
Did I miss anywhere?
I considered this hometown question very carefully because the reply is going to be IN PRINT. The pressure.
I settled on Chicago, because that's were I feel most at home. I gave my sister a hard time once for listing Chicago (instead of Fond du Lac) on her college graduation program, but now I think I understand—do you really want the world to think of you as hailing from a place where the local paper has a Big Buck Club photo feature??
