Can we turn this space into a fantastic wedding reception?

The Garden of Eden

In our backyard, that is.  Tomatoes are popping up, peas will be coming soon, and we’ve been eating our own mint, cilantro, and basil for a couple weeks now.  I made a basil pesto to go with freshly made pasta last week – yum!  I will never get over the miracle of plants – if you plant them, they will grow!  We are planning on planting some pumpkin and squash seeds in an unused and very sunny side of our garage.  Our next mission is to get some cherry tomato plants at the Eastern Market this Saturday and then plant away!  I will probably post a few pictures of the yard with our little patch of paradise next time.  Yes, winter is over!!

In other news, I have been away so long due to a health scare (hopefully resolved soon!) with Fiance, which takes priority over everything else.  Before the health scare, though, we went up north to check out the wedding site and got some vendors locked in.  This may be a bit repetitive, but I am so much more at ease knowing there will be music, flowers, and other things that are kind of necessary at weddings…particularly ministers!

Hope your weather is as good as ours!

In Praise of Cohabitation

 

I just wanted to give props to my handsome, dashing Fiance, who just finished installing a ceiling fan in our bedroom!  So romantic!  He sleeps with this fan on his bedside table, and it kind of gets on my nerves sometimes, so he agreed to not use it during the winter (makes sense right?  It’s cold!).  Now that the weather is warm, though, the fan has reared its unsightly head and constant whir.  At Lowes the other day, we happened across a sale price for a ceiling fan, went for it, and despite Fiance’s recent problem with dizzy spells, he installed the thing almost immediately.  Whether it’s his love for me or his love for all things Fan that drove him to such motivated efficiency, I’m happy.  Now if I can fully wean him off the bedside fan…

Here’s to living with a Handy Man!

MishMash

The Fiance's off with friends so I am home, having some fun of my own...um, blogging....

Okay, my life is not the most exciting, but I do have some positives to discuss. First, I had a volunteer "opportunity" - it's not work, it's an "opportunity" - at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum annual plant sale. I worked as a cashier's assistant and then at plant pick-up, which is a coat-check system for plant shoppers who want to continue to shop or need to bring their cars around for loading. It would have been a fantastically good time except that it was probably 40 or colder with the constantly gusting wind chill. I was miserable. Then, on only two days' notice, I had to show up at my bartending job (not my usual night to work), which was fine because it was warm. I was so exhausted after 8 hours out in the cold (and did I mention that I worked the night before, so I only got 5 hours of fitful sleep, due to thrashing winds?) and was therefore afraid I'd snap, and unleash my exhausted fury on a co-worker or customer. I didn't, though, and that is more a credit to the nice people I work with and the nice clientele than it is a credit to me, though I am pretty nice too, most of the time.

I may have been a bit short with my sister, though, who has been discussing wedding colors and bridesmaid/flower girl dresses with me (she's a bridesmaid, her 6 year old Miss C is a flower girl). I was too tired and confused to talk dresses at the end of the day, so I hope I didn't sound too awful and negative, but I probably did. But a new week begins tomorrow, and with it, a new chance to register for fantastic wedding gifts (why is this less fun than it sounds??), a new chance to find my wedding dress fabric (in case of failure, break seal on credit card and buy a damn ready-made dress!), a new chance to find someone to marry us (did I not mention that shortcoming in our Big Wedding Plans??? Actually, I think I did!).

I've updated the book list to the right. Good stuff now, so check it out! My main book right now is Unfinished Desires, somewhat of a mystery the way it is set up...deep dark secrets, etc. Poseidon's Steed is research for a novel I will someday, God Willing, write. And Say You're One of Them is another in a series of recently (deservedly) popular books out of native African writers...well written, populated by figures that jump off the page with their human-ness, and quite foreign, which gives me a chance to learn about the world I am economically limited from exploring at this particular time. And I am still basking in the afterglow of having finished The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay...new book soon, please Mr. Chabon!

All is well in the world for now. I hope for the same for you, my readers.

I’m Okay with May

 

So happy to have good weather!  And it is gorgeous weather indeed!  Short sleeve wearin’, dandelion-pickin’, tomato-plantin’ weather!  Aaahh, I forgot there was any reason to live in Michigan until this month arrived with its light breezes (and fair amount of rain) and sun to bask in! 

I just got back from a tutor social for the tutors at Washtenaw Literacy, which is an adult literacy non-profit.  Nice people and a good cause!  I will be administering the blog for the yearly fundraiser, World in a Basket, which I will be missing this year because it is the day before our wedding.  Nothing else going on.  I have a little bit of work trickling in, not much, though May is Wedding Month, and hopefully the rest of summer is Work and Earn Lots of Money time!  Off to bask in the season!

A Brief Take on The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

 

First of all, I’ve been away far too long, considering Windows 7 (with which I have a love/hate relationship) makes it so easy to write on my blog – no signing in, no selecting the blog I want.  Despite the ease, work has really picked up for me, and I hope it stays that way, but it makes me realize how leisurely was my career before March/April rolled in, and how exhausting it is to run every aspect of your own business with more than 1 client at a time!

Then there’s the wedding.  We are moving closer to booking entertainment, if I haven’t scared off the musician we like with bridezilla requests.  I also have confirmed a dressmaker, and need only get fabric and nail down the shape I want.

Then there’s the volunteer work, which Fiance does not condone in the least.  I will have to cut back on volunteering if my business picks up any more, so let’s hope for it!  In the meantime, I’ve been tutoring once a week (which ends in June) and I will be blogging for a literacy non-profit’s upcoming annual fundraiser (which I will miss because it is the day before our Big Day).

And then there’s the liquid cash flow job, a.k.a. bartending 2 nights a week, a huge improvement from the last server position, but still a distraction…though often a good distraction, because after my day job, I can relax a bit even though I’m working…there’s no use crying over a spilled Manhattan, after all.

Can you tell my usual joie de vivre is absent?  Fatigued, I guess.  Wishing the clouds would clear and the temperature would rise for good and allow me to relegate my winter clothes to the basement where they belong! 

So, with that update, I’m ready to move on to something I am actually quite pleased with.  I finally finished The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a Michael Chabon novel ringing in at over 600 pages.  While it was no Joyce or Faulkner head-scratcher, it was denser than a 600 page work of genre fiction (I can get through 700 pages of Harry Potter or Twilight in 2 days easy).  Which is why I took multiple breaks lasting months at a time while reading it.  Which is why my disjointed consumption probably disqualifies me from critiquing the novel.  Which is fine, because there’s nothing to critique, I loved it. 

The novel tells the story of Sam Clay and Joe Kavalier, cousins and  partners in comic book creations in NYC during Hitler’s empire-building reign of terror throughout Europe.  Joe comes from Czechoslovakia to escape persecution of the Jews and send for his family later.  He moves in with Sam and they get to work inventing fantastic comic book heroes that fight Hitler and the Nazis.  The first big chunk of the book covers Joe’s escape from Europe in a coffin holding his village’s golem, and the first few years of comic book creation and modest fame, along with Joe’s relationship with artist Rosa and Sammy’s relationship with a handsome actor who plays the radio part of their most popular character, the Escapist.  The second chunk of the book covers Joe’s struggles to get his younger brother to America, along with the lesser struggles Joe and Sammy have with the exploitative owner of their comic book creations, Sheldon Anapol (which is the only aspect of the novel I would critique – somehow this reader was unable to develop sympathy toward the protagonists regarding this storyline, while the other storylines brimmed with humanity and created a feeling of empathy)………

I have decided not to go on with a synopsis.  What’s the point?  Then you might not read the book, and you should read the book!  Like I said, it’s good!  It’s full of interesting characters, tragedy, good dialogue, funny stuff, violence, and love.  What I liked most about the book was the story itself.  I have a hard time reading what I consider “genre fiction,” which often tells a fascinating story but in general is poorly written.  This book is well-written, as is all of Michael Chabon’s work, but it also tells an exciting story.  It was full of action, things happening.  “Literary fiction,” which is what I usually read, oftentimes follows the internal thought processes of characters, but contains little action, or if there is action, it is pretty typical (wife dies, someone kills someone and deals with aftermath, lots of aftermaths as a matter of fact, and people sit around thinking about stuff related to aftermaths).  My point is, well-written novels equipped with fascinating and original stories are not so easy to come by, so I give this book a gold star and hope for more of its quality soon.

By the way, I heard that there is a movie in production of The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, another good one by Chabon.  I can’t wait – the Jewish state of Alaska intrigues me!

I’ll come back soon, with more pep in my step.

Craftsifaction

I was able to channel my strong desire to create and sew my own wedding dress into some other projects. I finally finished a side table/bench I've been working on since early autumn, when I dumpster-dived (curb-scavenged, really) for this worn, old bench in my neighborhood, which I rescued from town dump oblivion by lifting from the roadside and spiriting home in my arms under a light drizzle.



I spray-painted the legs red...thinking it would be nice to have some color in the house. I then took to gutting the moldy cushion, unveiling a flat piece of wood.



Then came the winter, and with it, a crisis of identity and lack of utility for the bench project, and a bout of Seasonal Affective Disorder for me, preventing me from leaving my bed, let along mustering the creative energy to face the red-legged bench.

Alas, the sun came out in late February, bringing with it a desire to undo the red, bring back light. So I painted the legs off-white, wiped the top to make sure no mustiness remained, and cut to size a length of decorater fabric (given to me as a birthday gift by my Sandy in Austin, along with an old copy of Vogue Sewing...she knows me so well!).

I glued down the fabric, smoothed it, cut the edges, and glued it under...



...and, voila!



I am going to put on this bench a lovely flower lamp that used to belong to my grandmother, and that my mother brought with her, with love, in an airplane carry-on from the west coast. The moral of this post: accomplish your work in your own time, in your own way...go with the flow because S.A.D. and winter will have their way, but you will have the last laugh...and the last craft.