My Victorian Dream House

Dining room to left, study to right.
Diningroom. Real china. The art is a copy of a picture on my diningroom wall; it's by Tissot and I made the miniature myself.

Young Peter's room. Still a work in progress. Since I took this picture, I have placed a butterfly collection over his desk.

The Parlor, where a soiree is in progress. I am still awaiting the delivery of Alice and Marcia, who will complete the tableau. Again, the artworks are copies of art in my home, and I made half of them myself.

In this picture, you see the diningroom and another view of the study above, and have a glimpse of the kitchen and the truck garden below. The picture is a copy of "The Captain and His Mate" by Tissot, and I made the miniature.

Here is a view of my work in progress. In a later posting, I will show you the girls room, the music room, the garden and the kitchen. How do you like it so far?

Lady Kathleen, Parva Domus Manor House, the Shire :)

The Same Thing Happens Every Time

I’ve been having a recurring nightmare lately. In it, I am 77 years old, barely mobile, half-blind…and I am still dragging Dave’s mother around everywhere I go. It could happen; some people live to be 98 years old, and if anyone will, Mother will.
I wish you could meet Dave’s mother. She really needs to be experienced, she cannot be described. Having said that, I am going to try to describe her. She is short, scrawny, with bird-like legs, salt and pepper hair that is still mostly pepper, and glasses that magnify her eyes so that she looks like an owl. She stares and blinks like an owl as well. She likes clothes that are too big for her, and tends to wear shorts most of the time, so she looks like a cartoon character with her stick legs dangling out of shorts that three of her could wear at one time. She walks bent over, elbows working, taking four steps to my one- and I slow down for her, so my one step is very leisurely- but she can never keep up, so I slow down even further… and when I come to a complete stop, I realize that she has zigged with uncanny speed either to the left or right, and is gone.
Which brings me to this segment of “The Same Thing Happens Every Time.”
Examples:
Dave and I take her to Lowe’s because she says she wants to come. We don’t have much shopping to do, but even so, when we get there, she decides to stay in the car. Not up to all that walking. We dash in, dash out, gone 15 minutes tops, get back to the car… and of course, she is gone. 30 minutes later, we find her. She went for a walk.

We head out to visit our son and his family. Mother wants to come with us. We travel to Manchester, spend a little time, eat a little dinner… and notice Mother is gone. Where is she? Sitting in the car. No pressure to go home, huh?

She likes to go out to eat. She won’t tell me where she wants to go or what she wants to eat, and is usually disappointed with whatever choice I make. When we get to the restaurant, she refuses to order anything to drink, heads straight for the bathroom, and comes back expecting me to have ordered for her. When the waitress asks what she wants to eat, she stares and blinks. When she finally speaks, 7 times out of 10 she uses what I lovingly call her “stroke” voice - swollen tongued, halting, over-exaggerated pronunciations- which is so patently phony that waitresses have been known to laugh out loud. I’ll tell you about her phony faint some other time, but will mention here that it is hilarious.
Anyway, back to the same thing happens every time… she orders her meal and the minute the food comes, she asks for a doggie bag. She eats about six mouthfuls and is “full”. I have learned to inhale my food rather than eat with her sitting with her doggie bag on her lap, blinking at me. The waitress offers her something to drink several times during the meal, but she doesn’t ask for anything until the bill comes. We wait for the drink, wait for the bill to be re-tabulated… and she leaves without drinking the drink and forgets her doggie bag. (Which is just as well, because when she remembers to bring it home, it just rots in the fridge- she doesn’t like left-overs.)

She’s always spoken with a barely comprehensible Polish-American accent but as she has aged- and survived a couple of mild strokes- her speech has become more disjointed and harder to follow. I am her interpreter because I understand what she is saying, though there are times when I misinterpret her deliberately. Well, unless she walks up to 600 pound men at Tractor Supply, and says things like “Oh, you are so fat!” It’s kind of hard to misinterpret that. I just follow her around and mouth “stroke victim” to whomever she is currently talking to.

Mother loves talking to strangers. She loves inflicting her personality on people. She has been calling herself an “old lady” since she became a grandmother at 41; now she tells anyone who will listen that she is 77 years old as if expecting them to say “NO! Surely not! That’s older than the world!” and is always disappointed when they don’t. She tells perfect strangers that she is homeless (she's not -she lives with Dave and I and has a whole wing of the house to herself); she tells them that we don’t feed her (we do), or that we make her stay in her room all the time (we don't); and, my personal favorite, that she has no one to care for her. As you may have surmised, Mother is not the most truthful person on the planet. She will tell her tale of woe to someone one day, and Social Services will show up the next. Thank God we live in a small town where people know us- and Mother.

Whenever Mother is bored- which, sadly, is most of the time because she won’t do anything for herself anymore- she tends to make long, prolonged, and very irritating sounds. Barking like a dog. Cackling like a hen. Repeating a phrase over and over, LOUDLY! If we are watching something on TV she doesn’t want to watch, she sings. LOUDLY! If that doesn’t work, she interacts with the cat. LOUDLY! (By the way, she has decided my cat Patches is a dog, because she doesn’t like cats, but she does like Patches, so Patches must be a dog.)

There are other little things. My housekeeper Stephanie is also her caretaker when I am away, and is as good and gentle and sweet with her as one human being can be with another. Mother calls her Sadie. She calls her Sadie because my last housekeeper was named Sadie. Apparently Mother thinks all housekeepers are named Sadie. The only problem with this premise is that my last housekeeper was named Sandy, not Sadie.

Don’t get me wrong. Mother can be and is cute, she can be sweet, and she is incredibly generous. When I was sick with the flu, she took care of me the best she could and I appreciated it. She is willing to scratch my back, an admirable quality in any person. It’s not that she doesn’t have an upside. There are lots of times when we crack each other up and for the most part, we live and work well together. I love her. I even like her.

It’s just that I keep having this recurring nightmare.

All it takes to be happy is a fully furnished Victorian home

Unlike my dear husband, I did not have a happy childhood. My family was large, chaotic, and dysfunctional; there was altogether too much alcohol, violence and neglect and too little nurturing and calm. Add chronic health problems and a well-founded sense of being unloved to the mix, and happiness just doesn’t fit. I have spent a disproportionate part of my adult life overcoming the effects of my childhood, but now, in my middle fifties, I believe I have found the solution.

I have a glitzy little thing-a-ma-bob dangling from one of the lamps in my living room that reads “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” So, with Dave’s help, I have been giving myself one. Naturally, this process involves toys. Lots of toys. And, in my case, lots and lots of little tiny perfect toys. Miniatures. Yes, yes, I am providing my second childhood with its own house… a “dollhouse”. I have converted a lovely five shelf curio cabinet into a vignette display case for all the dollhouse furniture I have coveted my whole life.

The top shelf is the master bedroom and the bath. The master bedroom is in mahogany, as is most of the wood in the “house”. The bed has real sheets and pillowcases and a satin brocade comforter and throw pillows. There are two nightstands, a dressing table, an armoire, floral carpets on the floor… When complete, Barbara the nanny will be reading to the baby in its crib in the bedroom, while Peter, the eldest son, dries off after his bath in the sumptuous bathroom, complete with blue floral carpet and filled linen case. (Peter is here. Barbara and the baby are here, but we are waiting for the crib and the rocking chair, so they are sitting together uncomfortably on the brocade bench. I sometimes I think I see Barbara tapping her dainty foot impatiently. In fact, I fear Barbara may be a problem if not watched- she’s much prettier than a nanny has a right to be, and the man of the house is sure to notice that.)

The second shelf is the nursery floor. Peter’s bedroom, and that of his two sisters, are here. Peter’s room is rather spartan, as the rooms of Victorian era boys usually were, but he does have a comfy trundle bed, a dresser and a table and chair- and will soon have a shadow box butterfly collection to hang on his wall, being, as he is, a young naturalist. His sisters’ room is furnished in white and pink, of course. Mama, when she gets here, will be sitting on a chair, cuddling younger sister Beth while big sister Christy (who is here, being a timely child) sits on her bed reading a miniature copy of “A Child’s Garden of Verses”- one of my childhood favs, of course.

Mama has come to say good night because she has a houseful of people in the (third shelf) parlor. It is a well-appointed Victorian room, with rich carpets on the floor. Many of the pictures on the wall are miniature replicas of pictures I have chosen for my own home, most of which are works by James Jacques Tissot. The parlor boasts two conversation areas and a music room. In the small corner conversation area, Alice, who is shy, is sitting listening to Eric, who is also shy and has yet to put down his hat. In the main part of the room, Mr. Michael O’Toole has captured the rapt attention of Katherine, (Eric’s older sister), Rhett (the man of the house), and George (Katherine’s husband, who is enjoying a pre-dinner drink). Marcia (when she gets here) will admire the grand piano, which she will play for the assembled guests later in the evening.

In the (fourth shelf) dining room, Hazel the maid is waiting to put the finishing touches on the table. This is pretty tough right now, because the china hasn’t come yet, so dinner will be delayed until it gets here. It’s coming from England, so it may take some time. But there is a fire in the handsome fireplace that makes all the beautiful serving dishes in the hutch gleam, a beautiful oriental carpet on the floor, and a Japanese screen that separates the dining room from the library, to which the men will repair after dinner for cigars, brandy and a game of chess.

The (fifth shelf) kitchen is a beehive of activity as Ruth the cook, with Susan the ladies’ maid’s help, prepares the evening feast. I am having a ball outfitting this kitchen. I have a porcelain sink, an icebox, and an AGA stove (okay, AGA stoves are NOT Victorian, but I have been in love with them since my trip to England, and this was the only way I was ever going to get one). I have two kitchen dressers, and a pantry on the way. To the right of the kitchen is the truck garden, already “planted” with lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower and strawberry beds, and with a green man overlooking it all.
I am having SO MUCH FUN!

BUT… I am forcing myself to STOP buying anything more until after Christmas. I am giving everyone who has been complaining that I am impossible to buy for a Miniatures.com catalog with everything I want in it circled. I have purchased a lot of my stuff from Miniatures.com (http://www.miniatures.com/) and can recommend the site highly. Another site I use a great deal is the Dollhouse Emporium (http://www.dollshouse.com/) and it is also a wonderful source of yummy goodies.

My “people” are actually figurines, since I am creating vignettes rather than playing with them, but they bring a wonderful dimension to the scenes. Katherine is leaning in to hear Mr. O’Toole. Alice is glancing sideways at Eric. They are wonderful and, while not poseable, are much more realistic than even the priciest porcelain miniature dolls I have looked at.

If I can ever figure out how to post pictures to my blog, I will post pictures if you are interested. In the meantime, I am really am enjoying my second childhood.

It's true... you really CAN find everything on the internet

When I was a kid, my mom was a prodigious cookie maker.  She was a superb cook in all areas- well, okay, she made undrinkable coffee, but that was her only failing- and a remarkably versatile baker.  One of her favorite cookie recipes was that for By Cracky Bars.  She made them from time to time and the taste and smell of them particularly lingers in my memory.  She got the recipe from a publication of the Pillsbury Cook-Off entries, a slim, paperback 5X7 little book that bore the stains of frequent use.  

When my mom died, my sister inherited most of her effects.  This was entirely fair, since she had been Mama’s primary caregiver throughout the long illness that finally took her.  Among those effects was that little cookbook.

For the past couple of years, I have been obsessing about By Cracky Bars.  Even though I am diabetic and can’t eat them, I want to make them, to see and smell them again, and to feed them to my granddaughters to see if any of them love the cookie as much as I did as a child.  I asked my sister for the recipe- but after 15 years, and a couple of moves, she could not find the cookbook.  

Sigh.

And then I thought, what the hell?  I googled “By Cracky Bars” and up popped a partial recipe.  All the ingredients were there, but oven temperature and baking time were not.  What WAS there, however, was the source for the recipe.  The 1953 Pillsbury Bake Off Cookbook.  A title. A year.  A miracle.

So I immediately scurried to the online Barnes and Noble,  www.bn.com straight to the out of print book tab, and typed in 1953 Pillsbury Bake Off.  Voila!  There it was in all its glory- actually several copies were listed- and so it is now wending its way to my kitchen.  I will be so happy to have it, not just because I will get to taste By Cracky Bars for the first time in 40 years, but because I will have a little “memorabilia” of my mother’s days as a baker.   I wonder if her recipe for prune coffee cake is in there?