OMG I meant Saturday

...for the breakfast, that is. Jesus*. SATURDAY.

*This is what it's like inside my head all the time.

Pancake Breakfast

A few months ago, our friend Zoe was diagnosed with breast cancer. This would be shocking and devastating for anyone, but when you are 31 years old, it's just the last thing in the world you are prepared for. Zoe is doing fine- she started chemotherapy a few months ago and seems to be tolerating it reasonably well- but she is going through all of this with no health insurance, and the chemo has limited her ability to work. So, her wonderful friends got together to organize a fundraiser; a pancake breakfast and silent auction to be held this Sunday morning (and you know if I'm getting up at 8, it must be worth it). Patticake, Snowville Creamery, Clintonville Co-op, Betty's and Jeni's are some of the sponsors, so the pancakes will be wonderful, and there will be live music and a silent auction featuring gift certificates for local restaurants, massage therapy and more.

Here are some details about the breakfast. I really, really hope we see you there- good food, great cause (because, seriously, can you imagine?).

Wonderful

This is a photo of a piece done by local artist Eva Ball called "Balloon Ladder" done in '04 for the Park of Roses. It's so expressive- such lightness. Makes me long for summer, too.

Yes.

SJP, wearing Martin Margielas' cloven toed boots. I think I love them.

The family manse

This is the house my grandmother grew up in, just off Flatbush Ave in Brooklyn. My great-grandmother (known to my mother and her brother as OtherMother because she could not bear to something as old-sounding as Grandmother) , an interior designer who went to Pratt, was forbidden by her husband to work (it was common, you know) and so instead moved every year around New York (so she would have new places to decorate) until they fell upon this brownstone in Brooklyn, where they stayed for years, selling only after my Grandmother left to get married (eloped, actually, with her mother and in a lovely lavender suit from Saks). This house is legendary in our family; I have pictures of the kitchen and bathroom from the '30's- spectacular subway tile with black trim and a black pedestal sink, with just astounding black, white and wallpaper on the upper half of the wall, featuring the most cunning goldfish, and the kitchen with it's wonderful enamel appliances and gleaming white surfaces. I'm happy to say most of the decorative accesories visible in the pictures are with either me or my mum to this day, as is much of the furniture that fills our houses. My great-grandparents weren't rich, exactly, but they had occasional years of prosperity that allowed them things like the "Big House", as it was called.

This is a house that my own mother never went to (it had been sold, her grandparents having moved to a lovely apartment in Greenwich Village by the time she was born), but she could tell you where the bathrooms were, and where her mother's room was, and who lived in the house across the street because she had heard so many stories over the years. So imagine her surprise when, while reading the New York Times real estate section (she has always done this- I consider it a bizarre form of masochism) this past Sunday, the featured home was the Big House! Reader, she dropped the paper, gathered her husband (who's always up for adventure), got in the car, and drove the 3 hours to Brooklyn for the open house. She introduced herself to the agent, who was quite delighted by this turn of events, took a million pictures, talked to the neighbors, and turned around and came home.

How do you like that?

Maybe Kansas

is cooler than we think.

Piano Man in the Dining room

Because I don't own a camera (really), I am always purely thrilled when someone sends me pictures- total novelty. Since this is a blog about my domestic life and not about my friends, I will just tell you about what you are seeing and not anybody's back story (but how cute is baby J here?). The piano is an old and awful thing that I fought with B over letting in the house (his argument, "it was my mother's and now E can learn to play the piano and it will make her even better at math"; my argument, " it is so ugly and big and it makes me cry when I look at it". I think my points were stronger but, somehow, I lost). There is nowhere great to put it, and I'm still a little bitter, but moving on. The girl is-slowly-learning how to play, and it's nice when friends play on it. It's not nice when children "play" on it, however; I keep meaning to close it when we have people over but always forget. I also always mean to tell E not to mention the 3 drum-sets in the basement so's no one gets any ideas, but I always forget to do that, too.

Anyway. On top pf the piano is a smattering of books, as it is a flat surface and that is where books go. I used to be extremely precise about my arrangement of books- fiction alphabetically arranged, non-fiction arranged by subject, then alphabetized. The (adult) fiction pretty much lives in the bedroom, and is still alphabetized, but then I ran out of bookshelves so the books have rather taken over. Which I love, actually. Someday there will be shelves that are built into the wall, but this is fine for now. Also on top of the piano are what will probably be the second-to-last round of paper whites for the year, maybe the only things that make winter worth living through (well, that and soup, of course). The walls are orange, which I'm not sick of quite yet, and you can just see in the mirror one of the black walls in the living room, with the lyrics to "At Last" written in chalk, inspired by the inaugural dance, of course, but also from missing B, who was in DC at the time for the party (where he was working, not attending, despite looking handsome in a tux).

As I said, I won't talk about my friends here, but I did want to give the photographer, Ryan, a shout-out. He recently did a small installation in the living room that is really different from what I would normally be drawn to, but I am loving it and feel quite honored that Ryan is letting it live here for now. I'll put pictures up soon (like when he takes some and sends them to me!).

Hilarious

I may have reached a new low in the wasting time department. But certainly I needed to know what kind of punctuation best reflects who I am, yes? The semi-colon is my favorite anyway, so I'm OK with the whole thing .(I was afraid I might be an ellipses, which would be crushing, of course.)

http://www.blogthings.com/whatpunctuationmarkareyouquiz/

Thanks, Abby.

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

You Are a Semi-Colon

You are elegant, understated, and subtle in your communication. You're very smart (and you know it), but you don't often showcase your brilliance. Instead, you carefully construct your arguments, ideas, and theories – until they are bulletproof. You see your words as an expression of yourself, and you are careful not to waste them. You friends see you as enlightened, logical, and shrewd. (But what you're saying often goes right over their heads.) You excel in: The Arts You get along best with: The Colon

Oh, Domino

You were my favorite. Ever, actually. I knew things were not going well for you, and I was bracing myself for the day when you would no longer greet me at my mailbox. All the other recent shelter magazines who've shuttered, Country Home, Cottage Living, House and Garden, O at Home, told the story of a struggling economy and changing reading styles. Design bloggers* have been gossiping for some time about your expected demise. And you did stumble a little with all the celebrity stuff, although we know it was just to help the magazine survive (and actually, Drew Barrymore's office was great, but the Katie Joel spread was tasteless). But still, to have this month's be the last, to shut down your website? So sad. Thank you to everyone who worked on the magazine, and to everyone whose homes were profiled. I am saving all my copies, and your vision(s) will be missed.


*People were really pissed at the March issue, which I never quite figured out. Was it the guilt of not being green enough? I dunno.

Maria Kalman

I do so love Maria Kalman. Her occasional blog for the NY Times has a new posting, with poetic, thoughtful images inspired by the inauguration*. She first became known to us through her children's books, and then did things like New Yorker covers, and the Times blog, and then famously illustrated the new version of Strunk and White's Elements of Style. Once when E and I were in New York we went for a visit to the Children's Museum of Manhattan (so many nannies!) , the whole top floor was an installation of her drawings, including, randomly, all kinds of things about the Beatles. Of course I am very pleased by the drawings themselves, but her observations are so intriguing, I just want to have her over for a cup of tea. Or, better, go to the opera together and talk smack about everyone during intermission.


* I didn't write about this because I don't really have anything new to say, except, briefly: Wow, wow, wow; Justice Roberts, DOH; poets should hire readers;White Will Do Right; Dick Cheney- OMG; the booing made me a little mad; knowing that all those people, and all of my people, were feeling such patriotism for maybe the first time ever was incredible; loved the gold/green/teal, not so much the white Jason Wu; and just how much work there is to do, and how sobering- despite the joy- that really is. Oh, and as much as I would have liked to see Etta James, Beyonce nailed it.