Posted in As Pictured Below, Family, Photographs, tagged animals, beastie, childhood, creepy dolls, grandmother, lemur, mother, plastic dolls, toys on August 17, 2010| Leave a Comment »
What manner of beastie is this? A lemur, perhaps? I remember being quite fond of him when I was a child. Specifically, I remember chewing his long, rubbery tail (you can see it’s a bit stubby at the end).
My mom was kind enough to ferry him home from my grandmother’s house. She was also kind enough to keep the old plastic dolls that would have been entirely too creepy to have in my house.
The lemur, however, abides.
Posted in Cats, Family, Photographs, tagged books, bookworm, childhood, gaudy, grandmother, mother, stuffed animals, tea set, teacup, tomboy, toys, Tupperware, unbreakable on August 2, 2010| 1 Comment »
Everything anyone needs to know about me as a little girl is reflected in my favorite childhood tea set, recently rescued from the highest shelves of my grandmother’s hall closet by my mom.
Made of unbreakable, dishwasher-safe Tupperware, it’s decidedly non-delicate, perfect for non-delicate little girls. It showcased an array of gaudy colors, as did I. It included only four teacups, because how many stuffed animals do you expect one little girl to serve tea to at once when there are so many books to be read?
Posted in Family, Home, Photographs, tagged childhood, death, family, funeral, grandmother, husband, memories, mississippi, pineapple bedposts, South, spice on June 22, 2010| 2 Comments »
I don’t even know what to call this piece of furniture. Spice cabinet? Spice drawers? During its long tenure in my grandmother’s house, it was simply the blue drawers in the hallway; for adults, the holder of telephone books, for kids, the source of puzzles and books, pencils and paper.
I brought it home after my grandmother’s funeral last week, stuffing it into my tiny car along with a few photographs and a handful of handwritten recipes from the bottom kitchen drawer.
I asked for this piece long ago (my grandmother had been assigning artifacts to children and grandchildren alike for nearly three decades), choosing it over the fancier formal china cabinet that resided in the den and didn’t match my personality or decorating style any more than pineapple-topped bedposts.
Seriously, what’s with the pineapple-topped bedposts?
It’s in my office now, slightly cleaner thanks to a brief encounter with Murphy’s Oil Soap, but still bearing evidence of its age. Rather than puzzles and phone books, it holds the essentials of a perpetual graduate student. Mostly, though, it just holds memories, and I’m grateful that my husband maneuvered it into my car with mere inches to spare.
Posted in As Pictured Below, Cats, Family, Home, Photographs, tagged animals, antique, cats, chair, decor, decorating, furniture, grandmother, home, long-tailed, mother, re-caning, refinishing, rocking chair, tabby cats on March 19, 2010| 3 Comments »
Several years ago, my grandmother gave me an old rocking chair that I kept meaning to have re-caned. Last year, I decided that it did not go with any part of my decor. Neither was it very smart furniture to have around our two long-tailed tabby cats, constantly underfoot and underchair.
Turns out that my mom thought she should have had first dibs on the chair anyway. Done deal, right?
Wrong. Yang, the larger of the underfoot tabbies, claimed the chair as his own not two weeks after Mom claimed it as her own. Cushioned with a Mom-made afghan and a blanket, it’s one of his favorite nesting spots.
So, the chair complements nothing, needs refinishing, and technically belongs to my mom. It stays, of course, because a 13-year-old, 12-pound cat likes to nap in it.
Welcome to the Crow Haggerty House of Cats. We’re all mad here.
Posted in Eats, Family, Home, tagged alabama, conversation, cupholders, diet, dining room, eating, flood, floodwaters, food, food guidelines, health, healthy, Huntsville, hurricane, Hurricane Katrina, manual transmission, Mobile, Pandora, remodeling, rewiring, table on March 16, 2010| 3 Comments »
Ever manage to inadvertently start following a healthy eating pattern?
This weekend, I realized that I’ve established two useful food guidelines over the past few years: I don’t eat in the car, and I don’t eat in front of the TV.
Both situations came about entirely by accident.
I purchased a car with a manual transmission six years ago, meaning that the “extra” hand required to eat while driving is only accessible when cruising speed has been reached on the interstate. City driving does not free up this hand. As a bonus, the car’s tiny cupholders are a marvel of engineering; the two up front are too small for anything but a 12-ounce soda can, and the larger one between the buckets seats requires the flexibility of a Cirque performer to reach.
The living room embargo is a bit more complicated. As we watched the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina approach our home in Mobile in 2005, we grabbed our table from the dining room and flipped it onto the bed in hopes of keeping it dry. We ended up with only the back third of the house flooded, but the teardown, rewiring, rebuilding, re-everything meant that the table was taken apart and stored in the bedroom closet for the better part of two years.
What I discovered during this time was that no matter your intentions, eating dinner in the living room off of the coffee table pretty much ensures that you WILL turn the TV on. It’s just what happens. And once the TV is on, conversation is off.
The first thing I set up upon arrival in Huntsville, therefore, was the table. There have been no dinners in front of Smallville, no breakfasts in front of The Soup. Just talking, newspaper-reading, and, occasionally, a subtle Pandora soundtrack.
Not eating dinner in the living room leads to not eating much of anything in the living room except for the rare bowl of movie popcorn. Nobody heads to the kitchen and grabs a bag of chips to mindlessly munch on; nobody sits down with a sleeve of cookies to polish off.
Focused eating is more likely to be healthy eating, and dining without distraction makes for much better family time. And you don’t have to buy a manual transmission or wait for a flood: Declare the driver’s seat off limits for noshing, and insist that nothing crosses the dining room border but popcorn. In both cases, your seat cushions and your waistline will thank you.
Posted in Family, tagged bittersweet, dad, family, father, football, New Orleans, Saints, Super Bowl on January 25, 2010| 1 Comment »
The thing about paying attention to life is all the bittersweet moments, like last night when the Saints won and the first thought that popped into my head was, “Wow. I wish my dad would have lived long enough to see the Saints go to the Super Bowl.”
The thing about bittersweet moments is that you can make them more sweet than bitter if you try. So, way to go, Saints. Dad would be proud.
Posted in Christmas, Family, Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, co-workers, family, friends, gift cards, gifts on December 7, 2009| 1 Comment »
So … gift cards. The hip, hassle-free gift, the only thing that you KNOW your recipient will appreciate, etc.
In theory, I have no problem with gift cards. Newlyweds can head to Bed Bath & Beyond and purchase the exact items they need, freed from the burden of first returning three s’mores sets. Teenagers can purchase the songs they want, without the worry that some hipster relative has decided to help them “improve” their musical tastes.
In reality, gift cards have become a way for adults to simply swap money at Christmas.
It’s ridiculous. Adult A buys her daughter-in-law a $30 gift card for Barnes & Noble. DIL in turn buys her mother-in-law a $30 gift card for the Pottery Barn.
Two adults have just exchanged $30. Merry Christmas.
I know it’s a hassle to purchase Christmas gifts. But I think it’s a hassle mostly because the gift-giving has gotten out of hand, along with the season’s celebrations in general. We have unrealistic expectations for Christmas, and we buy spouses, children, siblings, in-laws, co-workers, nieces and nephews entirely too much stuff. (Note: When your small children have a meltdown on Christmas morning simply because they have run out of packages to hastily unwrap, you have bought them too much stuff and they are clearly overwhelmed. Rethink your generosity.)
Many times, giving someone a gift card means that you simply haven’t been paying attention. People eat. They drink. They watch TV and listen to music. Many wear jewelry (not necessarily the expensive stuff). They wear bathrobes and slippers. They cook. They read.
Afraid you’re going to get someone the wrong thing, or a duplicate of something they already have? Include a gift receipt. (I am continually amazed, BTW, at the number of people who will pretty much hand someone cash in lieu of a gift, but refuse to enclose a gift receipt when they have actually purchased a gift. What is that?)
I LIKE finding the perfect gift for somebody. I get a little shot of adrenaline when I realize that someone I care about has inadvertently dropped a hint, whether they’re complaining about an item that needs replacement, pondering something new they’d like to try, or describing something they love and would like to have more of.
When I try to name gifts that I remember most, the list doesn’t have a single gift card on it. It includes things like the set of springform pans my mom got me the year she heard me saying I’d like to learn to make cheesecake. It also includes a fun, funky old vase my mother-in-law picked up at a garage sale and decided was perfect for me. To this day, I can’t open a bag of Cafe L’Orange coffee from the Fresh Market without thinking of a friend in Mobile who would give me a pound of it without fail on birthdays and at Christmas. Never mind that it wasn’t some rarity that I couldn’t get for myself. He knew I loved it and would appreciate it – in short, he paid attention. A $10 gift card to the Fresh Market wouldn’t have carried the same message.
Truthfully, the gift I’d like most to share with friends and family is the gift of time, a few laid-back hours to talk and eat and drink and just enjoy one another’s company, without the zero-sum exchange of money that Christmas gift-giving has become.
Entirely Adequate 