Saturday done right

It wasn't the gloriously sunny day we wanted, but we made the best of it. Cooperstown, NY, is just an hour and a half away. It's best known as the home of the Baseball Hall of Fame-- there's Doubleday Field, a baseball greats wax museum, and a plethora of little shops on Main Street otherwise devoted to the Great American Pastime. We politely ignore all that. We know Cooperstown mainly as a town of spectacular old stone buildings, brew pubs, and beautiful lakefront. Our afternoon started off with a hike at Glimmerglass State Park.

Maidenhair ferns, a favorite.

Witch hazel.
We spotted lots of deer on the hike. These guys (or rather, girls) were posing like Upstate New York poster deer.


This is one of those aforementioned spectacular old stone buildings. I love how the orange mums set off the gray sky and the gray stones. One thing about this town: they have strict zoning laws. Sometimes I think they even regulate what color flowers you can plant in your pots. Plant the wrong shade of mums, they make you move away.


After our hike, we went to visit our other favorite place in Cooperstown: The Farmers Museum. I hands down love this place. It started out as just some old farmland with a pretty impressive stone barn (built by one James Fenimore Cooper), and has expanded steadily, building by building, into an entire recreated early American village. In places where historic buildings were threatened, the Farmers Museum would set about raising the money to have them lifted, moved to Cooperstown, settled on the property, and then restored. When the restoration is finished, the house is open to the public, often complete with knowledgable interpreters in period dress.


This house used to be in Norwich. It was lifted up and trucked here in 2006. Imagine driving down the highway and seeing an 1840 farmhouse go by!

There's a real diversity of buildings: a forge, a schoolhouse, a church (available for private weddings), a pharmacist, a lawyer's office, tavern, and a number of farmsteads. Inside the Moore house, a woman was cooking bubble and squeak over an open hearth, while another sat by the window mending a sock. After a minute (I was chatting with them about food preservation) a young man brought in a bucket from the heirloom cattle who'd just been milked, out in the barn. Outside, their woodshed is full, their bins are full of potatoes. Chickens peck in the dooryard. Walk down the lane, there's turkeys and a horse, pigs and sheep. Say hello!

The place is like a time capsule. It's also a tribute to those things I love best-- handwork, resourcefulness, ingenuity, independence.

We met up with my parents in Oneonta for an early dinner, (mom gave me another infusion of canning jars and recipes), and rounded out the day sitting with some friends out in Endicott. And that, folks, is my kind of Saturday.

A good day

I don't think Patrick and I had had a full weekend day together since July. Between gigs and rehearsals, that was the story. So naturally, when a weekend day to be enjoyed together presented itself, I seized it. In the morning, we sold the car (the white Altima, c. 1998, that I'd been driving since we got married. Huzzah!) and then, with that jubilation filling our sails, we drove to Cooperstown. 
The Farmer's Museum, a lavish meal at Alex & Ika's, our favorite bar. The lake with its ducks, the old, old cemetery with its wonderful 1790s headstones. 
Siiigh. It was nice.

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Of tile board and floor-leveling cement dust, and the realities of life without a shower.

You've never seen pictures of our upstairs bathroom, and there's a reason. It is the armpit of the house, small, with peeling linoleum and no less than four doors opening into it. But all that (except the doors) is changing.

On Friday, the antique claw-foot tub was ousted. Five layers of flooring were torn up, and floor-leveling cement was poured. Saturday, the window was removed, old sheetrock came down, and more cement was poured. It wasn't so bad, really. Actually, it was pretty nice. I stood in the kitchen, singing along to Gillian Welch, listening to the whine of the saw and the wrenching of old nails. I canned applesauce. I made cauliflower soup. I made a beer run, and ushered the guys downstairs for soup, bread, and more beer. This is the beauty of belonging in a family of DIY-ers. "The guys" are my husband and my sainted father-in-law, and they are a formidable home-improvement duo. I love them.

Overhauling the bathroom is another step closer to Gilbertsville. I can't wait to see it done, in its spic-and-span shiny-tiled splendor. I can't wait to clean it for the first time, post-redo, and have it really be clean. You know? With peeling linoleum involved, it was hard to make it really feel clean.

Sunday, the new tub was carried through the kitchen and set into place. *Tingle.*

Afterward, there was the dusting of hands on knees, the satisfaction of a project strongly begun, and the realization that the rest of Sunday was ours for the taking. For the going. So, we went. We went to Cooperstown, to the Farmers' Museum. We bought a bag of molasses peppermint drops, beers at our favorite downtown bar, and a lavish dinner at Alex and Ika.

It was wonderful.

The reality of the redo is, we have no shower right now. It was a weekend of sink-washed hair and intimacy with washcloths. Showering at my inlaws' house this morning, after three days without, was a religious experience. Who knew I could get passionate about a hot shower?

The journey to self-discovery, and a beautiful new bathroom, continues...

Weekend

Summer so far has been a bell curve of busy weekends, and I'm pleased to say that we are on the down-slope now. Sunday Patrick and I had our first day off together since mid-May. And for the first time since November, we spent it doing something other than working on the house!

We made pancakes.

We went to Cooperstown.

We had cold Chardonnay and arugula salad for lunch.

We drove home. Patrick mowed; I weeded.

Then, we grilled.

It was abso-freakin-lutely perfect.

Where did the weekend take you?

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A pause in the action, and a return

Would you like to hear an excuse for where I've been the past three weeks? I could come up with one, I'm sure, but it would sound pretty pathetic. Blah blah blah, family events, blah blah blah, dirty kitchen, blah blah blah, wrapping up canning and freezing and getting sucked in to Christmas present-making, but really? Really I just needed a break. A wee one. I had the past week off from my day job. In that time, I focused a mighty momentum on our little house, and busted out a string of projects that felt good to accomplish.

This is a busy time of year. Everyone knows. Not only are there the preparations for winter, the end-of-harvest food preservation doings, there's Christmas looming large as well, with Thanksgiving tucked in there for good measure.

In the past two weeks, I've taken a very serious look at our house, and appraised the five remaining weeks left in the calendar, and gotten a little queasy. I hosted Thanksgiving for the first time last year. It was a big deal. At the time, I was not working. I was, truth-to-tell, a little bit bored. What better cure for boredom than the excuse to pour heart and soul into a whopper of a meal plan, a menu worthy of Nobel-prize commendation? (They should have a category for that, they really should.) This year, I have two jobs. Things will be different. The next five weeks are going to be very very full.

So in the calm-before-the-storm, I had to step back and ready myself. I went and enjoyed the aesthetics of chickens:

The Farmer's Museum, Cooperstown, NY

I baked hamburger cupcakes.

I handily beat Patrick at Scrabble.

I did some peaceful cemetery strolling.

I did some shopping.

Quite a lot, actually.

I bought a little cottage-style nightstand, and an antique desk in need of refinishing. As a result, the back of our kitchen now looks like this:

Suffice to say, it's going to be a busy five weeks.

What projects are you undertaking this autumn?