Having recently moved to my first big-girl apartment, I needed a lot of stuff. I needed dishes and glasses and living room furniture and a cake stand and a compote dish. Who doesn’t need a compote dish, right? Many of my … Continue reading
Heirlooms
Category Archives: Bittersweet
My Garden
These are some of my flowers in past years at my parents’ house. I considered it my contribution to the household to plant and take care of the flowers.
I got really into gardening when I was in college and decided I needed a perennial flower garden a few years back. I dug out a bunch of the rocks in the soil around the edge of my parents’ yard (New England has very rocky soil). My dad and my sister helped. I then used the rocks to build a low rock wall (pictured below), which I then backfilled with better dirt for my flower bed. My sister helped with this as well. It was the last time she participated in any gardening activities. She discovered that she does not like manual labor involving dirt and rocks.
A year after I built the rock wall, I convinced my dad to help me put in a patio. He did a lot of the heavy duty prep work, like using his John Deere to level the dirt and remove large rocks and dead tree roots. I helped with spreading and leveling the sand and then I laid the stone pavers.
Thank you for helping me/doing the hard part, daddy!
And then the John Deere and I got to work planting new plants and transplanting plants from other places in the yard.
I did some transplanting from the front yard….
…and from the backyard….
…and then I bought some new plants and planted them.
And then I did some more planting and there was still a lot of empty space, but the plants needed room to grow and I would fill in new plants over time.
Apparently, I wore very strange attire one day when I did some planting. I don’t know what to say about this ensemble except that it was very hot outside and I was trying to keep my feet (but evidently not the other 90% of my body) free of dirt. I must have been delirious from heat exhaustion at this point to strike such a pose, in such an outfit, in such a setting…with a shovel and without a tan.
Moving on…
This is what my garden looked like last summer, the third summer of the perennial garden/patio’s existence. Two years ago, my dad and I transferred 4 cubic yards of good dirt one lawn tractor load at a time from the driveway, where the truck dumped it, to my garden at the edge of the yard. This definitely improved the growing conditions for my plants. It also improved my appreciation for every poor soul in the landscaping business.
But my plants were happy.
I’ve always loved to play in the dirt and I’ve spent every birthday for the last 5 years planting something in my parents’ yard. This year for my birthday, perhaps I will plant something at my grandparents’ house or maybe I’ll see if the landscaping crew at my apartment complex will let me volunteer for a day. I’m not sure how well that will go over, but it’s worth a shot.
I added this rock wall (behind the hammock) 2 years ago from even more rocks that we uncovered when mending the soil.
I was constantly moving things around, into the sun or into the shade. I would sit in my hammock with a book, but after about 30 seconds I would be staring at my garden, thinking about my next move or project. It was such a therapy for me. I can’t wait to see how much the garden has grown this year when I go back to Boston to visit my parents.
So this year I’ll be gardening on a very different scale. I will be confined to container gardening for my flowers, but I am determined to make the most of it.
Thankfully, my papa has agreed to let me help with his vegetable garden so I will at least have a decent amount of square footage to play in when I visit my grandparents in Kentucky.
More to come on the container gardening on my 50 square foot deck.
Y’all come back now, ya hear?
Sugarlump
The First Supper
After a tearful goodbye with my parents at the airport, I decided I needed something to cheer myself up. Food usually does the trick (because to me a good meal = home), but the only problem was there wasn’t any food in my apartment other than cheerios, so I decided to go grocery shopping.
When I arrived at the store, I browsed at my leisure for a while and then walked out with a very random assortment of items, such as herbs de provence, granola, polenta, and dried pinto beans. I can’t explain these choices except to say that it was an emotional afternoon.
Thankfully, I had the sense to purchase frozen macaroni and cheese because I was busy all day and still unpacking and was not up for cooking a full meal.
I got home and took that sucker out of the box and went to put it in the microwave.
Oh wait, I don’t have a microwave.
Undeterred, I searched the box for oven directions because I do, in fact, have an oven. And people must have made frozen macaroni and cheese before there were microwaves, right? ……..No? ……..Frozen macaroni and cheese was invented for the microwave? Oh….…. Well, anyway, there were oven directions on the side of the box.
The oven directions said to unwrap the plastic and place the container on a tinfoil-lined baking sheet.
Oh wait, I don’t have any tin foil. Bummer.
Not to worry, I actually bought stovetop macaroni and cheese because I found it before I got to the frozen section. It was a long day of unpacking and I was tired and too lazy to take the stovetop macaroni back to its isle so I left it in my cart and purchased it. Good thing, because I was ill-equipped to prepare for myself what seemed to be the impossibly easy dinner of microwave macaroni and cheese.
So then I got out one of my new pots, filled it with water and set it on the stove to boil.
Then I smelled something similar to what a hair-dryer that’s about to burn out smells like. I turned the stove off momentarily and immediately called my cousin Lauren who I thought might have a similar stove at her apartment. Luckily she answered and told me that that had happened to her before if it had been a while since she turned on the stove and that it was likely the cleaning solution burning off from when my apartment was prepared for my arrival. Phew.
Confident that I was going to be eating dinner, I got the water back up to boiling and threw in the pasta.
Then I realized I didn’t have a strainer, but that was fine. I would just use the lid to the pot to drain the water. I only lost a few past shells down the drain.
As I was pulling out a bowl to put my pasta in, I saw that I actually did have a strainer.
Oh well.
I then made bake-and-break cookies without incident. These are normally against my religion, but judging by the chain of events I just described, do you really think I had the ingredients, equipment or mental capacity to make cookies from scratch? Ah, no.
The cookies weren’t terrible but they didn’t quite taste like home sweet home either.
Full of sub-par macaroni and cheese and square cookies, I continued to unpack and the cats watched, exhausted from tracking my quest for dinner.
Just as I was worried about the drive and hotel stay with the cats, I thought they might take a while to adjust to my new apartment. As you can see, Gus is barely managing to hold it together on the sectional.
While things are going well in the living room, I think there is only room for improvement here in the kitchen.
Y’all come back now, ya hear?
Sugarlump
Boston
I’ve spent 13 years, the majority of my life, in Boston.
I went to middle school, high school, undergraduate and graduate school here. It’s where I learned to drive and where I started my business. It’s where I have met people who have been very important in my life. In large part, it’s where I became who I am.
But there’s always been a part of me that belonged to the South. It’s where my family is from and it has always felt like home. I have visited my extended family in Kentucky at least twice a year for my entire life. I used to cry on the way back from visiting Kentucky when I was little because I wanted to live there so badly.
I guess as I was planning my move to Nashville I was thinking mostly of the excitement of living in a new city, in the South, within an easy car-ride of my extended family. I knew that would mean leaving behind some great people, but it didn’t really sink in until this week as I said goodbye to my clients, my friends and people who have become like family to me. I always loved the South because of the genuine people, but it turns out I have found some really wonderful people in these Northern parts, too.
I will miss my friends. Even though most of them are dispersed throughout the country (and even the globe), there were a few good friends who stayed in Boston that I saw regularly after we graduated. I will certainly miss our get-togethers and those last remnants of college. I guess we are officially grown-ups now as all of us start new phases in our lives with new jobs and new homes.
I will miss my neighbors. The kids I once babysat are now driving, but they’ll always be those cute little kiddoes in my mind who kept it real.
I will miss my clients. When people invite you into their homes, even though it’s for business, there’s no getting around the fact that you will learn about their lives and often develop a friendship. I have had many wonderful clients that I have gotten to know well and I will certainly miss our meetings.
I will miss my trade network. Working alongside people in the design and building trades, you make small talk to make the day more pleasant, you see how hard they work and how they are just good, down to earth people.
And then there are people who don’t fit into just one category, but span many. Although we are certainly an unlikely pair as she is 44 years my senior, I will greatly miss a woman I have known for over a decade, who has made window treatments and pillows for my parents and then for my clients after I started my interior design business. She gave me great support and advice as I was starting my business and she has become a very close friend and mentor. Whenever I would bring fabrics over for a job, we would quickly go through the details and then just talk. Sometimes we would be so deep in conversation that an hour would go by before we knew it. Even though for most of my day I am in a hurry, I’ve always cherished my talks with her.
It goes without saying that I will of course miss my parents terribly, but my hope is that they will move back to the South to be near me and my sister in the very near future. So I’m just thinking of this separation as temporary because that’s the only way I can get through it.
I’ve had some great times here with some really great people, but I am excited to finally get my wish to live in the South. Just like the best chocolate, it’s bittersweet.
Thank you for everything, Boston. I will miss you.
(But don’t worry, I’ll be back to visit 🙂 )
Sugarlump
Packed
This is Amarillo, my moving truck. The name just came to me and I think it suits him. This is his best angle.
My dad and I packed up Amarillo all day today and I am pooped. My back is broke. On the bright side, my biceps are now bulging. Kinda.
We started out filling up the truck with all of the boxes I had ready to go. Things were going swimmingly and it seemed like I was going to have a ton of room in the truck. My apartment is not a whole lot bigger than Amarillo so this was good news.
I finished packing up boxes and then we put in my colossal disassembled work desk.
Satisfied with our progress and how much room we had left, my dad and I went to lunch. I had to have one last fix of Mexican at one of our favorite lunch spots (more like one of my favorite lunch spots, but my dad is a good sport and went with it (for the second time in a week)).
When we got back, we decided we should go ahead and put all of the pieces of my bed in the truck. Moving a queen-size mattress without handles is like trying to move an enormous piece of Jell-o (as my dad put it) or trying to give my cat Scarlett a bath (the first comparison that came to mind for me). It just ain’t happenin’.
I would also like to note at this point in time that shrink wrap is not my friend.
After many nearly fatal moments, my dad and I wrestled the mattress into the truck. Although I did not enjoy moving my bed components, I did learn a new trick from my dad.
As he was tying up my mattress, headboard and box springs to secure them to the truck, he showed me a way to pull the rope really tight.
“This here is a hay-hauling knot.” -my dad
I had not seen this technique or heard of the abovementioned application before, even in all my time as a farm hand.
I hope you enjoyed that farming/physics lesson.
Somehow, I managed to fill Amarillo completely. I’m not really sure how that happened or where all of this stuff came from or how I am going to have any room to circulate in my apartment after I unload all of these things…
…or why I need all of this stuff.
…or how I am going to transport these things up two flights of stairs.
…or how to haul hay.
Wish me luck.
Y’all come back now, ya hear?
Sugarlump
P.S. Thank You
The great thing about cleaning out my parents’ house as I prepare to move is finding little treasures like old pictures, cards and papers dating as far back as kindergarten.
The bad thing about cleaning out my parent’s house as I prepare to move is cleaning out my parents’ house.
We have accumulated a lot of stuff that has not been thinned since…..ever.
(WARNING: tangent ahead)
I’ve decided I like organizing, but not “cleaning out.” Give me a closet full of items tangled up and in a heap and I will gladly put like with like and in nice boxes and baskets, all labeled, color-coded and sorted by occasion/season. After all, I used to organize the silverware drawer just for kicks when I was in elementary school. I know, I’m weird. I can’t help it.
I do NOT, however, care for “cleaning out,” which includes deciding what to throw away, give away or keep, because this involves many messy (and HEAVY) piles, bins, trash bags, nosy cats and 459 trips up and down the stairs from the warzone to the garage.
After completing this process in several rooms this past week, I still have to organize and store what is NOT going with me to Nashville AND pack what IS going with me. And THEN I have to drive 18 hours, haul the “keep” pile (mountain?) up TWO flights of stairs and UNpack it. YIIIIKES! Maybe I’ll just stay in Boston.
Oh wait, nope.
My love for the South is greater than my hatred for “cleaning out,” so I’m sticking to my plan (but apparently not to the point of this post. My bad.)
Anyway, back to my first point: I have come across some real treasures in this “cleaning out” process, such as this card from my little seeester, Eugene:
Although she has no recollection of this card, judging by its content, her lovely cursive handwriting, and the fact that this card was created using a card program popular in our household at the turn of the century, I have concluded that this card dates back to the day after my sister tried to amputate her arm.
That may be an exaggeration. It was her finger and it was unintentional (allegedly).
It was just after her 10th birthday, the height of her horse phase. She had received several toy horses as gifts. These particular toy horses come packaged as if they are going to gallop off the shelf, with layers and layers of cardboard, molded plastic and lethal plastic ties that keep the horses’ legs bound to the cardboard. My sister was in the family room trying to free her toy horses from their boxy oppressors when her scissors slipped from the lethal plastic tie and launched into her left index finger which was holding up the box.
I was up in the attic on the computer when a calm voice and a trail of blood drops made its way toward me. Upon processing this scene, I realized that this was not good but tried to keep my cool. I was 13 at the time and obviously could not legally drive my sister to the emergency room. Oh and my parents weren’t home. Did I forget to mention that? My mom was on a business trip and my dad was at a dinner in Boston and somehow in the 2 hours between when our nanny left and when my dad was due to arrive home, my sister and I found ourselves in a situation requiring professional medical attention.
After calmly escorting my sister down to the bathroom, I pulled the scissors out of her hand (turns out I should have left them in there, but I thought she might contract tetanus or something terrible) and wrapped her finger up tightly in a towel. As she sat tight and with very few tears, I called my dad and asked him what I should do and he told me to call my neighbors to see if one of them could drive us over to the emergency room where he would meet us as soon as he could.
I then called one of my neighbors.
Ring, ring, ring…ring… “We can’t come to the phone right now, please leave a message.”
I figured maybe they were having dinner or something so I tried again immediately, hoping these back-to-back calls would communicate a sense of urgency.
Ring, ring, ring…ring… “We can’t come to the phone right now, please leave a message.”
Hmmm (translation: AHHH!). I tried one more time and then decided they must not have been home. Then I called my other next-door neighbors. They did not pick up after several calls either. I was about to lose my cool, but remembered that my sister was watching me very closely so I called my dad again and asked him what to do.
He told me to call 911. All of the sudden, this seemed very serious and scary, but somehow I called 911 and the ambulance arrived a few minutes later. As we were getting into the back of the ambulance, the second neighbor I called came running out of her house, got in the ambulance and traveled with us to the hospital. At this point, I started to tear up, but my sister (the injured one) kept her cool.
We arrived to the hospital quickly and the doctor checked out my sister’s wound. My dad got there shortly after. After seeing my sister’s wound under fluorescent light and hearing the doctor say she needed stitches, I started to feel a little light-headed and had to go back to the waiting room until Eugene was all stitched up and released from the ER.
Even though she was the brave one for not freaking out when she stuck a pair of scissors in her finger, she made this very nice card to thank me for taking care of her. The card was very sweet and thoughtful, but the P.S. note cracks me up:
As if I didn’t catch on to the sentiment on this card, she just wanted to be sure I got the message in the postscript. I don’t know why I find this so funny, but I do. Even though that was not an evening I would like to relive (and I’m sure Eugene wouldn’t either), I’m so glad I found this card because it is so Eugene and it makes me smile.
To help you make sense of this post, I have put together a list of takeaways:
- Always answer your phone because it might be your panicking 13 year old neighbor calling about a scissors accident
- Deliberate long and hard before deciding to have children
- Packaged toys (particularly horses) pose a threat to your life and opening them may result in stitches
- Don’t move to a new place or you will be subject to some “cleaning out”
- “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”
- (what?)
- P.S. Thank you
Y’all come back now, ya hear?
Sugarlump
The Sugarlump 