I like the backsplash and counters.

I Can't Stop Staring

Do you see what CitySage did?! First of all, yes, they're all Anthropologie winners to the left, and that would be enough for most, but people, that's not all. They're pretty clothes with matching pretty rooms paired next to them. And, can I add, it's not just the comparable colors--it's the parallel tone, texture, lighting, subject matter of each set of photos. You don't have to say anything. I know you love it.

France!

My friend David Lebovitz just told me that France has chocolate scented stamps, printed to look like an unwrapped chocolate bar, and if you look closely, you can see some of the history of chocolate anthologized on each of the stamps. Oh, France, how predictable of you.

Clarification

FYI, Lurkers, we haven't gotten Linus/Little Bill yet. I'm just getting these pictures from Petfinder.com. I look at his profile about 20 times a day. They even have a You Tube video of him playing with one of his buddies.

He was dropped at the Collin County shelter and is now at a foster home somewhere around McKinney. I've been emailing back and forth with the foster mom b/c we just submitted our application for him on Monday, but they want to get to know you and your schedule and your other pets, and then they do a home visit after that. If we're approved after everything, we'll have a five day probationary period with him to see if he settles into our family. Only then, will he be officially ours.

So pet pending.

Seconds?

So I was skimming an online MFK Fisher bit and found another excerpt...

"She was a grim woman, as if she had decided long ago that she could thus most safely get to Heaven. I have a feeling that my Father might have liked to help with the cannings, just as I longed to. But Grandmother, with that almost joyfully stern bowing to duty typical of religious women, made it clear that helpings in the kitchen was a bitter heavy business forbidden certainly to men, and generally to children. Someitmes she let me pull stems off the cherries, and one year when I was almost nine I stirred the pots a little now and then, silent and making myself as small as possible.

But there was no nonsense anyway, no foolish chitchat. Mother was still young and often gay, and the cook too... and with Grandmother directing operations they all worked in a harried muteness... stir, sweat, hurry. It was a pity. Such a beautifully smelly task should be fun, I thought.

In spite of any Late Victorian asceticism, though, the hot kitchen sent out tantalizing clouds, and the fruit on the porch lay rotting in its crates, or readied for the pots and the wooden spoons, in fair glowing piles upon the juice-stained tables. Grandmother, saving always, stood like a sacrificial priestess in the steam, "skimming" into a thick white saucer, and I, sometimes permitted and more often not, put my finger into the cooling froth and licked it. Warm and sweet and odorous. I loved it, then."

(again, no permission from anyone)

Um, who doesn't love her? This talk of fruit and especially rotting fruit reminds me 1) of the shrively blackberries I threw away from my office mini-fridge this morning and 2) of a Seamus Heaney poem about blackberry picking, which is, to me, mostly about growing up and the passage of time and how poignantly irresversible it is, this very Robert Frost "nothing gold can stay" sort of idea.

Hm. How many days until my birthday?

I Put It Aside

I'm reading The Gastronomical Me by MFK Fisher, and I love it, but it was tucked in my purse by someone, and I've gotten away from it, and it has taken me a embarassingly long time to read. However, can I supply an excerpt for you?

"Then we sat on a rough bench at the table, the three of us in the deep green twilight, and had one of the nicest suppers I have ever eaten.

The strange thing about it is that all three of us have told other people that same thing, without ever talking of it among ourselves until lately. Father says that all his nervousness went away, and he saw us for the first time as two little brown humans who were fun. Anne and I both felt a subtle excitement at being alone for the first time with the only man in the world we loved.

(We loved Mother too, completely, but we were finding out, as Father was too, that it is good for parents and for children to be alone now and then with one another... the man alone or the woman, to sound new notes in the mysterious music of parenthood and childhood.)

That night I not only saw my Father for the first time as a person. I saw the golden hills and the live oaks as clearly as I have ever seen them since; and I saw the dimples in my little sister's fat hands in a way that still moves me because of that first time; and I saw food as something beautiful to be shared with people instead of as a thrice-daily necessity."

(published w/o even a hint of permission from Robert Lescher, Trustee of the Literary Trust MFK Fisher)

Please don't judge me, but every time I read that last paragraph I get teary. If you even have minimal family ties or a crude understanding of the importance of sustenance and human bonding or a fraction of un-hardened heart, I think you could love this book. She talks about food, but through the filter of her life. I want to be best friends with this woman. She's adventurous with her palate and her love life and her travels.

But I haven't finished it yet.

His Name Is Little Bill

Well, presently, his name is Little Bill. We might change it to something a little more meaningful to us. I'm getting ahead of myself.

Carter and I decided to adopt another pup. I think it was more like I browbeat him until he submitted to getting a second dog. Never underestimate the power of persistant nagging I always say. Well, here the little man is...

I used to dislike the brindle, but after seeing it on Lu, I just love the little stripes. This guy's markings are pretty dramatic. Quite the tiger he is. He's a year old and about 20 pounds, but expected to gain a few more after everything's said and done. He is part Boston, and I'm guessing part Boxer with this strong of a brindle-flavored coat. He looks like a shrunken Boxer, a pygmie Boxer, if you will. With Lu barely pushing 15 pounds, he'll be just big and tough enough for her to roughhouse as much as she wants.

I've actually been thinking of this whole transaction like an arranged marriage for Lu. We're bringing in this suitable partner for her to learn to love. What would Lu's dowry be? Her treasure trove of shredded doggie toys? Stack upon stack of fluffy down comforters in which to snuggle? ...That's all I can come up with actually.

We're thinking of calling the new boy Linus, after Benjamin Linus. They will be Linus and Lu. Plus, Linus smacks of nerdy, piano-playing Linus from Peanuts, and I like things that harken back to nerds of any stripe... Get it? Stripes? Anyone?

Ahem.

Carter has also suggested tweaking Little Bill to White Power Bill (from Arrested Development). Lu's name originates from AR--Lupe, Lucille 1's maid, so I can appreciate the etymological consistency, but it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. I'm not sure how that would go over around the dog park either. (Actually, it might go over frighteningly well at the dog park, judging by the charcters I have seen there.) I will admit that the episode that includes White Power Bill, the one where Tobias goes to jail, is one of my favorites. Also, any epidsode with Mrs. Featherbottom. If we were getting a female, maybe we'd name her Mrs. Featherbottom.

We actually had decided on Rousseau if it was a girl, a la Lost again, and we'd call her Roux for short. Lu and Roux. Plus, Roux, aside from being a nickname for the French philosopher, is also, I'm sure I don't need to tell you, a thickening agent of butter and flour used in soups and sauces. However, it is indeed a "moo" point b/c he's not a girl and will be Linus... or maybe White Power Bill. Just kidding. I would never.