Outside and in

Nothing much to talk about today, just a few playing-with-my-camera shots to share.

I've been working on some reverse-applique inside, which I'm enjoying. It's not perfect, but not bad for my first time. I'm inspired by this:

Pretty gorgeous, right? 

On Monday it was 52 degrees and I harvested kale, beets, spinach, and mizuna. Then I hauled a cold frame out there (top middle) and planted it. Then it snowed, but that is okay. Next month, when we really start gaining daylight, those little seeds I sowed will have a head start. Yesterday I baked peanut butter cookies, and my neighbor/friend Heather came over toting her seed box. It was awesome. I need more people willing to trade me heirloom tomato and Belgian endive seeds for simple tea and cookies. 

Tonight we have a pot luck with neighbors, Saturday Kat and Alexis are coming for fireside debauchery, and Sunday we're meeting up with our Friends with Babies in Binghamton. I love these full winter weekends.

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Miscellany

**Thank you to everyone who commented on Monday's post. It's so nice to hear other stories, and be reminded of what we gave him, and what he gave us. Thank you.**

So. Last Wednesday I decamped into the great, gritty wilderness of upstate New York antiques stores. I love antiquing, if you hadn't gathered already. The dusty, dimly lit corners, the crazy crap, the thrill of the chase. This time, I told myself: no impulse buys. No more aqua art pottery, no more cute planters, no more clutter! Just a buffet, a perfect buffet, thank you ma'm. 

I went to Iroquois Antiques, and Old Hickory Antiques. Ed's, and Pete's, and Charlie Brown's. I did not come home with anything last Wednesday, so I expanded my search into Friday as well. I went to Binghamton with Patrick, and I hit up America's Attic.

It is not the place to find bargains, but if you want to take your pick of a variety of solid-wood, unscratched antique buffets in a myriad of shapes and sizes, it most emphatically is the place.

If you want to be lured into buying a lovely Victorian bookcase, too, completely on impulse, because you've never seen anything so perfectly in step with the feel of your Victorian house, well then, America's Attic is also the place for that. Photo of bookcase coming soon. She's a gem.

Meanwhile, progress goes on. 

Why am I reminded of a Mary Oliver poem? Meanwhile, the world goes on. Things are ready. We have all our tile, a fine tub, a repurposeable toilet, ten sheets of hardy backer and five bags of thinset. 

The tub is sitting in our guest room. Every day I walk past it and think about the first time I get to soak in it. In March, with Epsom salts, after a garden-digging marathon. Ohhh baby.

Meanwhile, things downstairs are being tweaked. I packed away all the Christmas stuff on Sunday, then swept, and dusted, and turned the corner with the little aqua desk from this...

...into this.

Much better. All our old snow melted away outside, giving the chickens a break from coop-captivity, but we have a fluffy new blanket falling this morning, a happy thing indeed.

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Ready to talk about it

I owe it to you, and I owe it to him, to write this. It's been three weeks, somehow-- three weeks of near-constant sad reminders, the empty chair, the lack of yarled or yipped greeting when we arrive home from wherever we've been. Losing a pet isn't like losing a dear though distant relative. Like a grandma. Sure, you'll miss her at Christmas dinner, and Thanksgiving, your heart will be sore for a time. But this emptiness, all the time, the whole house feels quiet and lonely. That is losing a pet.

 It was very fast. I guess that's a blessing. Five days before Christmas, he didn't seem like himself. He was having trouble walking again-- a trouble that came and went usually depending on how recently we'd given him a cortisone pill. This time the pills didn't help, though. He wasn't pricking up his ears anymore, really-- they were back, or out to the side: the worried, confused look. Then he stopped eating. 

The day before my birthday, we took him in.

Man. That was hard.

I'm not sure if it's a good thing that it was during Christmas. In a way, it was good-- the house was full, we were surrounded by friends. We didn't have to sit in the dark and feel the loneliness.

 And now, Christmas is gone, winter goes on. Life goes on. It is so quiet.

 This little dog saw us through so much. Saw Patrick through so much-- twelve years, three girlfriends, three houses, one wife, three cats, many mountains and lakes and trails. We can torture ourselves by remembering and reliving the end-- because that is really the only thing a human mind can do, when you put down a pet-- or we can tell those great stories together, The Good Old Days. Playing monkey in the middle with a stuffed trout, the day we came home and found he'd climbed onto the kitchen table and made a nest in a fresh-from-the-drier comforter. Overlook Mountain, from that first picture, and those first trips out to Gilbertsville. He was freaking blind, he had no idea, but somehow he knew it was the beginning of something awesome. That first time he felt his way up the front steps, he knew. And this past summer, those warm days I could leave him outside while I weeded or worked on the greenhouse, those evenings the three of us (and sometimes Pete too) hung out in the cool grass by the chicken yard.

Damnit, I even miss him eating the cat litter.

Ugh. This sadness! Really, I'm okay. I don't spend all day moping around, but every day I think of him. As it should be, I guess. Patrick and I talk about The Good Old Days, we raise our glasses. We talk about getting another dog, soon but not too soon. When the snow melts. When spring comes. And I think about what I'm going to plant under the birch tree, to mark the place. Something variegated and effusive, I think, would suit.

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Scenes

In the way of all things, it gets ugly before it gets pretty. 

That's okay. In the mean time, there is archaeology to contemplate. Layers of vinyl and plywood and hardwood to peel away and wonder at.

And the new tile to think about and envision in place. We went shopping on Sunday, and came home with a truckload. I had imagined we'd go with stone-look ceramic for the floor, but then these boxes of clearance marble eyed me from their pallet and whispered my name.

So then they came home with us. We sapped out the store's stock of white subway tile, too, and chose a big, deep soaker tub and a fancy schmancy "raincan" showerhead. 

I am so incredibly unbelievably ecstatic for my first soak in that bathtub. 

In other news, we've decided to keep our toilet. It seems there aren't a lot of options in between the very basic $89 toilets that look blah and the ridiculous designer toilets that are $800 and up. Our current one has nice lines, y'know, for a toilet, and it's in fine shape. So, there's a few hundred dollars saved. Yes.

I'm still not sure about wall color, but with the marble the whole room could really rock this look, which I find myself fall more and more in love with... ahhh, we'll see...

Alright. Time to get my butt to Norwich for my weekly Zumba class (fun!) and then spend the afternoon touring antiques places, looking for the perfect buffet to turn into a sink. Wish me heaps of good antiquing karma.

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Snowy debauchery

As you may know, I am friends with this kid. It's been over eleven years. As you may not know, we were born six days apart in the same year. Which means, blessedly, that we turn the same age at nearly the same time, and whenever there are feelings of curmudgeonliness about said birthday, they can be shared. Wallowed in or embraced. 

On Saturday, Alexis and I went snow tubing. It had been such a very long time before I'd done anything designed to get the adrenaline going-- years, YEARS-- and I wasn't prepared for how good it would feel to zoom head-first down a very steep white hill hollering Oooooooh SHhhhhIIITTT!!! at the top of my lungs.

I may have corrupted some innocents. But hey, I'm 30. To them I'm an old lady, and old ladies are supposed to be profane, right? Are we also supposed to drink vodka at the top of the hill we slide down? Yes?

Well, I'd say mission accomplished there. There's something a little thug about us in this one. Makes me chuckle. 

We rounded out the day with dinner and wine at a very old-school restaurant where the marvelous French onion soup swam beneath an unctuous layer of liquid tallow. It was the perfect indulgence.

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Bathroom considerations

You haven't seen much of this room, and there's a reason for it.

It is bad.

Real bad.

But all that is changing. It needs new everything: tub, hardware, sink, toilet, tile, lights, plus concealed storage and shelves that aren't slabs of MDF rested atop rusty L-brackets. 

So here's what I'm thinking, in a few shots:

Colors/balance-wise, something like this above. Dark stone (or stone-look) tile floors, subway tile walls in white. I'm dreaming of finding a perfect antique dresser or sideboard in a dark finish that I could repurpose as a vanity, possibly with a vessel sink. Someday soon I will be undertaking a road trip through all my favorite local antiques stores to search for such a piece. 

I'm not sure what color I'll end up going with above the subway tile-- I really like the contrast here, but don't want to make anything too dark. Fortunately, paint will be one of the last, and cheapest, steps, so I can wait to decide.

Since I'm pretty adamantly anti-Venetian blind, I'm planning on frosting the window (as long as Patrick doesn't have any objections to that) and DIYing a faux-roman shade like this one. Lately I've been really into Marimekko-ish minimalistic fabrics, so we'll see what I end up with.

Other than all this stuff, we're going to bump out the wall behind the toilet to conceal the ugliness behind it, and maybe do recessed shelves there. 

Over the weekend we'll be "moving out" of our upstairs bathroom and into our downstairs one (which fortunately also has a shower!) and making a big-time shopping trip for new fixtures, etc. It's going to be a long process, but one we'll be enjoying a long time.

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Too stool for school.

Bare with me here. I admit, this is no feast for the eyes. But she's very old, and she was free, and she has been sitting in our back bedroom gathering great dust since we moved in. Since the very weekend we moved in, to be exact. 

And furthermore, now she looks like this.

This is officially my first project of the new year. I mean, This is officially my first project of the new year! A good way to start in on my winter to-do list, which hangs on my desk right here. Reupholster tufted chair, paint blanket chest, paint clearstory (that awkward space above the stairs that probably hasn't been painted since 1962), tile inside fireplace, copper leaf coffee table... yeah, I've got a good long list. 

The project ended up being free, and damn, I love it when that happens. I kept the weird straw cushion (whatever), and covered over it with a layer of cotton batting. The fabric and braid I had in The Stash-- it was truly one of those times when it rocks to be borderline-hoarder. I even reused the damn tacks I'd pried out. Hey, c'mon, it was snowing out and all our tools live in the garage and I was rocking pajama pants and fuzzy slippers. You'd reuse the tacks, too. You would.

I'm not sure where its permanent home will be. The fabric looks terrific next to our dining room walls, but doesn't match the yellow accents going on in the rest of the room. For now, it serves.

Anyway, one might think that a list of fiddly painting and finishing projects might be enough to round out a winter that will also include plenty of sewing and seed-dreaming and writing. But we're planning on tackling our upstairs bathroom this winter, too, which will be major. We have Patrick's dad on board to help us through it (new floor, new tub, tile, new toilet, built-in shelving, new sink, new lighting...) thank goodness, but it will still be messy, and chaotic, and an adventure. I need to round up some inspiration photos for you all, then I'll post about what we've got in mind. It was one of the worst rooms in the house when we bought it, just cheap and ugly, and it's nice to know that soon it'll be fresh and bright and purty.