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Posts Tagged ‘books’

As Pictured Below: Little Treasures in My House

Posted in As Pictured Below, Cats, Family, Home, Photographs, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 23, 2012| Leave a Comment »

On Sunday, I posted this photo to Facebook, noting that I had owned this book since I was 2 1/2 years old.

It took a friend approximately three minutes to name two of the kittens (Paddy Paws and Toddly) featured in the tale. He also quickly found a link to the series, titled Books for Young Explorers, on LibraryThing.

Looking at the inscription date — December 1974 — and considering the fact that the book was from a branch of the family with whom we did not usually exchange Christmas gifts, I can only reason that this book was offered to me as a consolation prize after my little brother was born.

A kitten would have been more appreciated.

My real question is how I didn’t manage to obtain this entire series. Because a quick look at some of the titles (Amazing Otters, Animals of the High Mountains, Animals that Build their Homes) tells me that this series was written specifically for me and my kind.

It’s made it through a lot of moves and book purges, I think because I love the title so much: Little Tigers in Your Home. I also must admit, however, that flipping through page after page of kitten photos never gets old.

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As Pictured Below: Crosspatch

Posted in As Pictured Below, Photographs, tagged , , , , , on February 7, 2011| 1 Comment »

As I recently outlined, this little guy is the reason that Lion’s Head Garbage Can can’t be named Crosspatch, even though I suspect that both represent the same children’s book character.

 

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Do One Thing: Sorting the library, garage and fridge

Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 31, 2011| 1 Comment »

The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.

Day 29: Listed a couple of books and CDs for sale at Amazon. I’m always tempted to keep every book that comes into my hands, but I don’t have room, and I don’t miss them when they’re gone.

Day 30: I have been granted permission to scour the garage and make executive decisions. Best. Fling. Ever.

Day 31: Who’s the genius that came up with side-by-side refrigerators? The freezer section isn’t necessarily small, but it acts small, with two deep drawers that items just get lost in, and a couple of flimsy wire shelves, one with too much vertical space, the other with too little. The design of the refrigerator section is slightly better, but it’s not proportioned quite right either. And, because it’s shoved into a just-right-sized hole in the cabinetry, I can’t open the fridge door enough to remove the drawers. So they’re only as clean as I can get them while they’re still inside. No soaking old dirt and grime off; it’s there for life.

I’ve only chosen my own refrigerator once during my entire life, and we had to leave it behind when we moved four years ago. Therefore, I’m always stuck with somebody else’s bad decision and missing accessories.

Sigh. Today, I repacked some small bags of frozen cantaloupe, strawberries and greens into bigger bags in an effort to make one of the freezer drawers less of an abyss. The other one may hold a human head for all I know.

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Tempest in a Tupperware Tea Pitcher

Posted in Cats, Family, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , 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?

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Just say no to needless bags

Posted in Home, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 15, 2010| 1 Comment »

Too late for a New Year’s resolution? Fine. I sort of started this one in November, anyway.

I’m tired of disposable bags. I have a few of those hip reusable “green” bags that I do my best to keep in the car and use, but I don’t always want to or remember to drag them around with me. What I am aiming for is to reassess how I transport purchases and take some responsibility for decreasing the distribution of single-use bags.

I realize that some bags double as marketing. You can’t walk around Bridge Street without seeing a half dozen women and teens/tweens toting those distinctive pink Victoria’s Secret bags. The statement: I buy underwear. It may be risque. Or cotton.

Several weeks ago, I took a post-Gap trip to Victoria’s Secret. On a whim, I told the cashier that I would just put my purchases in the Gap bag. She hesitated, holding my undies over the pink tissue paper that is also part of the Secret overpackaging, so I gently took them from her and put them in the first bag. Still not really happy with myself for having a plastic bag for one pair of jeans, but I’m making one change at a time.

My next move is to stop accepting bags for small purchases. I was fast enough to stop the Pier 1 guy from giving me a plastic bag for five easy-to-carry chocolate bars (fancy, on clearance) this week, but I wasn’t quick enough to keep the used bookstore lady from putting two paperbacks in an oversized plastic bag. I’ve learned that if you tell cashiers you don’t need a bag AFTER they’ve already put your purchases in one, most will remove your items from the bag and throw it away. (I won’t insist that this action is taken out of spite, but it would be if I did it.)

I can’t change the world, but I can change how I treat it, even if it’s just the smallest of actions.

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Coffee Tree offers a sweet taste of home

Posted in Eats, Huntsville, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 27, 2009| 4 Comments »

Last week, I wanted beignets. More than that, I wanted to sit at the Cafe Du Monde with friends at 1 a.m., drinking coffee and chicory and listening to street musicians. I wanted to try to convince my husband that I really did need a tattoo, and have him remind me that I only say that after I’ve had too many hurricanes. (For better or worse, BTW, too much alcohol for me involves not that much alcohol at all.)

I spent approximately 25 years of my life within a couple of hours of New Orleans. Now the Crescent City is an entire day’s drive away, so spur-of-the-moment trips just aren’t happening anymore.

But I did find beignets. A Huntsville friend was kind enough to introduce me to the Coffee Tree Books & Brew, located at 7900 Bailey Cove Road. Every Saturday morning, they serve beignets until they run out – and they DO run out. And I’m talking authentic beignets, perfect in size and shape and coated in about three times as much powdered sugar as necessary.

Honestly, I had worried that I was dragging my husband out of the house before noon on a Saturday for a big plate of disappointment. Right after we moved up here almost three years ago, a seafood chain claimed to be serving real New Orleans-style beignets. And they may have been delicious if they hadn’t been coated with caramel-flavored syrup.

Powdered sugar AND syrup? That’s IHOP, not dessert.

The Coffee Tree did not disappoint, however. As a bonus, my friend knew the proprietors and had told them we were coming in just for the beignets, so they were extra eager to see how we liked them. That said, they seemed eager to be sure that ALL their customers were happy.

The used bookstore attached to the cafe area is lagniappe.

No chicory, no street musicians, but I persevered.

Good coffee, good conversation, and good beignets – really, other than that elusive tattoo, what more could a girl want?

UPDATE: I’m told that there IS chicory available if you ask. This just gets better and better

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Finding your people with a roll of the dice

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 26, 2009| Leave a Comment »

A chapter in Benjamin Nugent’s American Nerd: The Story of My People describes the use of childhood nerdiness as an inner defense against a disordered home life. Nugent cites Dungeons and Dragons, a quite orderly role-playing game, as one of the tools used by a childhood friend to cope with the chaos of a dysfunctional family living in a cluttered home.

A chaotic home life wasn’t a prerequisite to D&D play among my small group of friends in the late 1980s, but an acute sense of “otherness” certainly seemed to be. Yeah, yeah, all teenagers get the feeling that they don’t “belong” at some point, but some of us really didn’t blend into our surroundings. Whereas our classmates were content with pegging their jeans and listening to love songs by Chicago, a few of us were striving for hair colors that didn’t exist in nature and digging around for older stuff from the Violent Femmes and the Sex Pistols.

That’s not to say we didn’t have our Bon Jovi moments, but we didn’t get stuck there. We went all out to discover exotic-to-us bands like Marillion, and a couple of us were even accused of being Satanists after choreographing a talent-show dance routine to a particularly dark Depeche Mode song. (Note to accusers: I bet you’re still cretins.)

Our home lives weren’t what you would call chaos, though some might be termed “loosely structured.”

We belonged in our D&D group, our fates determined by our imaginations and dice rolls. To our parents, it was a safe, acceptable weekend gathering (there was just a bit of intergroup dating, most of which ended amicably). It’s probably the No. 1 reason that I have more male friends than female friends to this day – I had so much fun with the boys (there were usually only two girls in the group) that the girl stuff held no appeal.

Not belonging stinks. But when you ultimately find your people, it’s a better feeling than pretending.

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