Hope, Spring, and Eternal Issues

Dale has alerted me to the first squirrel I've seen in months, hopping around the front yard. He must have just awoken from hibernating. Squirrels hibernate, right? I feel bad because he just climbed the birdfeeder pole and found nothing. There hasn't been food in it in months due to my having learned that feeding birds isn't good for birds. I should take down the feeders. This spring I plan to switch to feeding butterflies and hummingbirds. Yes, I realize hummingbirds are also birds.

It warmed up to 45 or so today and the snow pack is trying to melt around the edges. It would take a few days for it to melt totally and we're supposed to be heading back below freezing tomorrow, so this is just a tiny taste of spring. We went to the library this morning and Stanley remarked as we walked through the back yard that it would be nice to do some gardening again. This made me realize that now I have seen all the perennials, weeds, and tree and shrub blossoms that come up automatically around our house, so I can plan accordingly for annuals or splitting up hostas or trimming back certain weeds so they look like I intended for them to be there, and pulling up other ones as soon as I see them, rather than after they have sent roots into the bedrock. We don't have any big home projects planned this year (except trimming trees, fixing the chimney, and installing a projector TV in the basement, but those won't take long) so it looks like we'll have time to enjoy the deck and yard. Party!

Anytime I ever named a favorite color before now, I was lying. I would just make something up if I had to name a color. I never wanted to settle on a favorite color and I always felt that there weren't enough choices. But now I am happy to say that I have fallen in love with this one:



This shows several shades of it because I don't have a favorite shade of this particular color, and in fact I wish this swatch also contained darker and lighter version of it. I also don't like to label the color because it seems like color labels aren't consistent. But if you want, call it aqua, blue-green, peacock, teal, or turquoise. It bugs me though because the only way to know if something "turquoise" is going to be the color I want it to be is to look at it. I don't like the color of every turquoise I've seen. So I'm giving the color it's own name, which will be the random squiggly letters I'm asked to enter when I go to the comments page. The name of the color is "bermet". If I'm honest, this is the fifth option I was given after reloading the page to get a new letter string. I didn't like the first four.

This is great. I've succeeded in taking a giant step forward with my favorite color issue, while at the same time taking several giant steps backward with all the descriptions, qualifiers, disclaimers, and pretenses about the color.

A lot of the things I've purchased in the past few weeks have been this color and I was just going to post some photos but Stanley has arrived home from the grocery store so I need to put the food away.

My Favorite Magazine Is Biting the Dust and I've Been Working on My Dressing Room

I'm perplexed and annoyed to hear that Domino, my favorite magazine, is ceasing publication, and closing its website as well. I checked my account and my subscription isn't set to run out until April 2010. A few months ago, another home decor magazine I subscribed to, House and Garden, stopped publishing, and the publisher made up for it by offering to extend my Domino subscription by the number of issues of House and Garden I had paid for already. That was fine, since I wanted to cut back on my subscriptions anyway. But now what's going to happen? According to blog comments, which are second only to BBC News in their timely and accurate reporting of the facts, I might expect to get offered subscriptions to Lucky (blech) or Vogue Home (meh). But really I'm just sad about losing Domino. It was so fabulous. It gave me lots of decor ideas. And it was only $12 per year.

But I shall carry on.

Check out my dressing room re-do, currently in progress, as is every decorating project I have ever begun, because that's the nature of the beast.

Before: A dark, dank, depressing, dangerous dungeon.



After: An okay place to get dressed and store guests.





I love it now that it's got more furniture and color and things on the shelves (belts, shoes, jewelry, etc.) but it's not done, of course. It probably needs some adjustment of the existing elements and it needs to be painted badly. Right now the walls are exactly the color of silly puddy. This is a paint color that should never have been created. I can't imagine where or how anyone would have ever thought it would look good on a wall or any other surface. I am a little stumped as to what color to paint the walls, but I'm thinking it should be a light color such as light beige (warmer and lighter than silly puddy), cream, light green (not mint, more of a light forest green, if such a thing is possible), or light gray. Or you know, light pink would be great, just really light so you don't immediately think "pink". If it's mainly a dressing room, a color that doesn't clash with my alabaster-white-with-pink-blotches skin tone would probably be the most cozy and flattering. On that note, cream that is on the warm red/orange side of yellow rather than the green side of yellow would probably work for warmth yet still keep it neutral. And the ceiling (both the high side and the sloped side) will either be white, or a lighter shade of the wall color. I might paint some black and yellow stripes on the sloped ceiling so people don't bump their heads. Just kidding.

So then the trick would be to actually get that color onto the walls, knowing that it's not going to look the way I expect based on how it looks on the swatch or even if I were to paint a big square of it on the wall like Domino (sniff) and other mags have advised me to do so many times. I bet the silly puddy color looked great on the swatch and as a little square on the wall. I bet it looked great right up until the last of the old color was covered up. At that instant it went all silly puddy on them, so they put the house up for sale. I'm sure that's what happened.

The landing outside the room that connects to our bedroom and bathroom is also silly puddy, so I should paint the landing as well. The bedroom is brown, bathroom is light blue, so I don't want to add yet another color, so perhaps the landing and dressing room should still both be painted the same color, whatever that turns out to be.

Another item on the to-do list for this room is to add a rug. I'm thinking neutral. It could also stand to have some art on the wall, and a chair or two. The bed is a temporary blow-up bed which I am too lazy to take down from the last time we had more people stay over than would fit comfortably in the guest room, but it works fine in the space and the only thing that would be better is just comfortable seating that can be moved when the bed needs to come out. Or a sofa bed. The cats will scratch it up, though.

As always, I'd love your opinion.

Europe Trip Journal Part 5

1/4/09

Day Trip to monarchical-era palace and grounds at Versailles. Toured main palace w/ hall of mirrors, walked through gardens, toured Grand Trianon (a mini palace about 30 min walk from big palace, on same property). Huge palace and gardens, an embarrassment of riches, can see how people would revolt.



Dinner at a cafe back in Paris. Sat by the window, watching people, had smoked salmon, cantal cheese, foie gras. After dinner we went to a movie: The Day the Earth Stood Still, starring Keanu Reeves, in English with French subtitles.

1/5/09

SNOW!! Approx 1/4 inch. Makes the city look even better. Stanley woke up not feeling well, so we went to the Louvre later in the morning than planned to avoid the crowds, but it was not crowded at all. We glanced at various ancient treasures,




but tried to head directly to the piece de resistance - le Joconde (a.k.a. Mona Lisa). As expected, there was a big crowd around her, and she was behind glass, and it all seemed kind of ridiculous. There have been better paintings, you know.


Then we went home and Stanley went to bed for the rest of the day while I shopped and looked for take-away meals. I was lucky to find take-away soup, which was delicious and made Stanley feel better. We think it was something he ate, perhaps the foie gras.

A nice surprise on the TV - Breakfast at Tiffany's, very well dubbed into French. "JE PROTESTE!!!!!"


1/6/09

Stanley feeling much better today. Packed everything up, Then walked to Musee Rodin - a really cold walk - prob in 20s F. Saw "The Thinker", Gates of Hell, both of which were roped off and we couldn't approach "for our safety" due to tiny amounts of ice and snow. It's all relative.


Said goodbye to Paris and took the train back to London. Dinner at Seashell, a fish and chips place recommended by Stanley's dad.


Huge amount of food, and was apparently good but made me finally realize that I don't care for fish and chips. (So now the list of foods I can't eat or don't care for gets slightly bigger. Let's go ahead and lay it out here, just for fun: Fish and chips, whole wheat bread, jalapenos, orangina, sea urchin).

We used our last pence to buy a New Yorker magazine. Looking forward to going home. Laptop not fried after all.

1/7/09

Going home today! Uneventful but long and crowded flight from London to Toronto. Sat in middle row w/ a soldier on leave from Afghanistan next to Stanley and a mortgage broker next to me. It was like a little slice of current events. No free internet in Toronto this time, which made me realize just how much I was looking forward to free internet in Toronto. But at least I'm not being shot at, which the soldier confirmed was a horrible experience (we didn't press him for his thoughts, he freely expressed them), so I can continue to use that comparison to keep things in perspective.

The End