For the Sake of Normalizing Relations:The Home Post

I've been feeling a little weird about you lately and it wasn't until last night that I started to realize why: When Annabelle died I suddenly had the urge to write- what was once the title of a fake magazine that I designed for a graphics class in '94 became a reality. It was a reality I saw as a sort of memorial to her, and I thought of it as a way to extend the time that I had with her, to spend some amount of my new found time- time that I may have spent walking or playing with her- writing to you. For quite a while writing was an anodyne- writing was fun and in a way I felt like I still was with the dog who'd been w/ me through the last of my teen years, my entire twenties, and one and a half years of my third decade.

And then my Nana died- and I feel like I stopped writing. Granted, I do still write but more often than not it's when I comment on others' blogs and in emails. My writing here has become increasingly distant and further from the play that I'd imagined it would be. When I began writing you I knew that I'd only divulge a carefully measured amount of human stain fodder. And I also knew that I would, as Susie Sunday wrote, be not just expressing what wasn't really the most personal that I could, but also creating myself through the writing.

So, taking into consideration that Annabelle has been dead almost a year and a half, that my Nana's death shut me up, and that in some ways I'm surprised I'm even still writing here at all, I am going to try and steer back towards more personal (albeit carefully measured) posts. So, writing to you from my tightly wound, teeth clenching perch I present the following photos with captions as a little attempt towards "normalcy". These are snaps from our home- I feel like you should see little parts of it- I love seeing snaps of Scruffy's family and environs so let's think of this as the "home post".


These are my coffee makers- they're called maccinettas and they're Italian stovetop espresso makers. Two of them were my mom's and the largest (on the left) was my Nana and Pop's and I just got it about a month ago. Since we moved I've been on a quest to replace the gaskets in them- as of tonight, they are all replaced. They were strewn about the kitchen and after we did dishes Kim lined them up like this.





We made fish this evening for dinner and I accidentally left the broiler on while we ate dinner (we eat in our LR/DR combo room and so didn't feel the swell of heat until it was too late). While opening the window I broke a pane (this is the second time this has happened, first time was in my room) and as I refuse to put cardboard in our window. I cut a piece of foam core to size and taped a picture of a cloud to it. I think that during the day most will be fooled by this sly trompe l'oeil, Kim disagrees.

It's difficult to discern in this pic but Kim got that lamp in Charlottesville this summer and it's neat-o. Hopefully it is so neat-o that no one notices the broken window pane.





This is Todd's cat Reno sitting in the hall, between mine and K's bedrooms. My feet are not small- in fact I have pretty large and wide feet. Reno is a huge kitty and she's staying with us until Todd finds a place to live where he's permitted to have a gato.

Reno is great- she's cranky, particular, wakes me up in the morning, and keeps K's cat Sid from attacking us when he gets crazy. He attacks her instead. There will not be a picture of Sid on this post- he kept squinting when I'd take a picture.



This is my Romertopf- an unglazed terra cotta cooking (vessel?) that I inherited from my Nana, that had belonged to my Aunt Lily. I'm not going to go into the details of Romertopf cooking but I'll say that it's only slightly younger than the concept of agrarian living. You can find info here.

I'll say this too: moist and on our bookshelf.






And finally, this is my nightside table complete with a lamp and saint from my Nana, and a very old Pooh Bear (with a shirt homemade by my mom long, long ago). Pooh has come to live with me after years of being in a bag in my parents' basement, and after years of not needing him because I had Annabelle.