Laowai

This is Charred Man. He was a fixture in my mom’s living room when I grew up. Mom says he was a gift from her brother Tad – a friend of Tad’s made him. Now he lives with us and gives us a healthy appreciation for modern art. He is very evocative of the sculptures by Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti that I saw in Zurich.

I’m happy to have Charred Man living with us now.

It’s taken me a while, but I have fallen in love with our long chime doorbell.

Yes, this is what I think about.  

I happened upon an article tonight that explained the history and the charm of long chime doorbells. Here are a couple snippets from the article:

The premise that a doorbell made noise and a door chime was pleasant to the ears was quite the hot topic in the 1930s. Although electric doorbells had only been common for about 25 years in American Cities and less than 5% of farms even had electricity as late as 1936, marketers were busy convincing consumers they needed a door chime to live in peace.

From a 1930s brochure:

“How often has the peace and quiet of your home been disturbed by shrill, nerve-racking ringing of a door bell? This new and practical door chime replaces the harsh door bell ring with a pleasant musical chime… a sound that will not annoy or startle, yet loud and persistent enough to attract attention.”

I particularly like that our bell goes ding-dong when someone rings at the front door and just ding when someone rings from the back door. Also, strangely, there is a button in my bedroom that  rings the doorbell. Why? The girls love the novelty of ringing the doorbell from the comfort of my bed. It rings ding-a-ling-a-dingity-dong when you press the button in the bedroom… 

Just kidding, it just does one ding from the bedroom. 

Anyway, I think I should shine it up and repaint the top in a contrasting color someday. It’s here to stay.

I love this time of year. I love seeing the plants coming up all around my yard. Shooting out of the ground so small yet so strong and bright. I’m drawn to them. I walk around the yard and check their progress. They reassure me.

I have some nice shade plants between our house and the neighbors house. They surprised me when we had our first Spring here – they’re not in a spot where I usually look. But now that I know they are there I make time to notice them – Bleeding Hearts, May Apples, Ferns, Trillium and some Squill that I planted.

I planted carrots and spinach in my garden today. I don’t have big expectations for the carrots – for some reason I have it in my head that they are hard to grow. But the girls keep asking for carrots so we are giving them a try. Our peas are a few inches tall already – they should be latching onto their trellis soon. 

Who would believe you could put these little brown bits in the ground on a cold spring day and get big beautiful green plants in a month or two? Ah the promises of Spring – it never grows tiresome.

We had a really nice long weekend with Grandpa and Grandma J. We celebrated grandma’s birthday. We went for a lovely walk at the botanic garden. Mom and I went to a church rummage sale. And we made some progress on our front yard – removing those old shrub roots and buying some new shrubs (pictures to come).

Unfortunately Mom was suffering from a cold and she felt pretty bad. Now the girls and I are sick too. I was hoping for a productive week, but the girls are home from school and I’ve lowered my expectations to just cleaning the kitchen today.

Here are our photos from our walk at the botanic garden – there was so much color!

They were setting up the miniature railroad garden – all the little buildings were waiting to be placed into the landscape of mini plants and railroad tracks.

We had some rainy days – lots of opportunities for puddle jumping.

I spotted some spotty mushroom cookies at a new favorite cafe. Cute.

Claire is doing great learning to ride her bike. She does fine pedaling and balancing – she needs practice starting and stopping.

Why do I spend my time doing silly things? Probably because we were all in a good mood and Bea said can you make a hamster for me? Bea is reading the Humphrey books – Humphrey is a hamster. Bea named hers Humphrey and Claire named hers Hamsteriffic. Also, Pinterest is amazing – search for Hamster softie pattern and voila you get a great hamster softie pattern. Amazing.

Claire on her way to a birthday party:

Brian returned home from Zurich with a huge pile of cheese and chocolate – he has a problem.

Spring is bringing some changes to our little home landscape. The grass is getting green and flowers are blooming.

And a big, big change in the front yard – we cut down the old, overgrown shrubs along the front of our house. Here’s the before and after:

Wow – what a change. It makes our house look so different so much bigger. I’m excited to get on with my plans for that space.

And here’s my other project that I haven’t mentioned lately – our master bathroom. I’m taking paint off the tile just like I did in the girls’ bathroom. I really like the pretty blue color that I’m revealing. It will look lovely with white walls and probably a black floor. I’m choosing the floor tile, a new (white) toilet and working out all the details with my contractor. It’s definitely in the ugly stage right now – can’t wait ’til it’s done.

Today is my wedding anniversary – Brian’s too (ha). We’ve been married 13 years. This morning, after getting Bea off to school, l did something I haven’t done in a long time. I got out my wedding and honeymoon albums and took a trip down memory lane. 

We got married on a Tuesday at Midland’s beautiful courthouse.

A few weeks later we had some pictures taken at Dow Gardens. It was the most beautiful time of the year at Dow Gardens – when the crabapples and tulips are blooming.

Much of my memories center around the fact that I made my wedding a pain in the butt for my mom. It was mostly because a big wedding felt uncomfortable and meaningless to me, but I think I was afraid to admit that for a while. I did want a dress and I did want some pictures at Dow Gardens. I remember Brian was really uncomfortable taking the photos. I’m glad we have them now – they seem special – especially after not looking at them for many years. 

After we were married we took a big trip to Italy – it was the first big international travel that Brian and I did together. At the time I could never imagine how much travel I was going to get to do. All thanks to Brian – he’s taken me all over the world.

I spent a lot of time putting together our wedding album and then our honeymoon album. It was back when I did it by hand and included bits of ephemera from our travels. We went to Verona, Bolzano, Venice and then Sienna.

The other day we saw a wedding on some TV show and the girls and I were talking about weddings. I told the girls that mommy and daddy’s wedding anniversary was coming up. I explained how you can get married in a church or you can go to a courthouse and a judge will marry you. Claire looked at me and said “so daddy was a judge when he married you?” Ah love – I guess I didn’t explain that very well did I.

I think I’ll sit down with the love of my life and look through the pages of our special, special albums tonight. He’ll be smiling too.

To end our Spring Break week we took a quick trip to Midland. The good parts were watching the girls eat up all the love from grandma and enjoying lots of yummy Easter foods. Just one bad part – we woke up to snow on Easter morning. Uhg. This Spring seems to be teasing us.

Here we are coloring eggs:

It’s nice when your grandma lives on a cul-de-sac and you can use that big round piece of pavement to scoot around and around and around.

Thanks for giving us a nice weekend grandma.

It’s spring break. Brian is gone to Japan all week. Bea’s best friend is out of town.

I’ve been trying to think of fun things to do besides sitting around watching My Little Pony all day long. I ordered this bubble maker and it was a hit.

Fun!

Also, I cracked an egg for french toast this morning and got a double yoke. And the daffodils are just about to pop. A good day.

We got 3 inches of snow today, but that’s OK – Spring has arrived inside our house.