22 September 2011

My all-time fav Seedbox @ Bottoms Up



I've been meaning to post these pictures of this space belonging to my friends Brian and Meloney of The Seedbox at last month's Bottoms Up show in downtown Kansas City. They can all be enlarged with a click for a closer look. I so miss their storefront and went all the way to the big city to track them down. My sister Lane and I had a great time at the show in an old warehouse in a rough part of town with such amazing potential. We both wanted to move right into this big place as is. The Seedbox, as expected, had the best stuff, like this amazing chair, lots of farm/industrial pieces, and some great shelves that Meloney says Brian has been making. I could have just loaded it all up and headed south...











My purchases for the day included this gravy boat and the rusty wire rack below, with the long wooden box, too. This show is definitely worth making the drive for, and if I have to make it find The Seebox, that alone is worth it...I'm (finally!) linking up to Debra's Vintage Inspiration Friday.

18 September 2011

Drizzly, drowsy Saturday

I've never seen this happen before. Our grouchy old Alice curling up with her much younger brother on her own accord. But it's been a cuddly, loungy type of day around here with almost constant rain. I think we're all glad to see it, to feel the heat break and the skies dull over. How nice not to squint and swelter. After picking Bub up from a sleepover this morning, I spent much of the day in my bed reading and dozing, with the sliders open in my room so I could hear and smell the raindrops on the trees. I've been trying to eat better but I caved and suggested the Villa for dinner. It had been a long time and we all agreed it was so deliciously good/bad to be back. Ryan's come down with something and we thought the ultrahot sauce might clear his sinuses. We browsed the new mega Academy Sports afterwards. We went to look at camping gear but left with a kickstand for Macauley's bike (he wants lights for Christmas) and a new pair of Crocs that he picked out on his own. Even though we have plans to visit Ryan's granddaddy Earl at the farm where he volunteers, I hope it rains again tomorrow, that the day passes as leisurely as this one before it's back to work on Monday. Last week was a hectic one for me (Open House and lots of preps at school, 3 doctor appointments including successful but surprisingly painful VNUS closure on my left leg, supporting Ryan through some major stress at work, organizing and picking up around the house that just had to be done) and I needed this kind of weekend to recoup.

11 September 2011

To commemorate

It's hard to accurately remember a day so huge, so incomprehensible, that we couldn't wrap our minds around it when it happened. Ryan and I had been married two years. I'd flown to Paris and London and back with 2 of my closest girlfriends via the Newark airport just weeks before. We were living in our first house, the one with the sunken living room and a big screen TV we pondered the purchase of for months. I was in grad school, working on my M.A. in English Lit and getting certified to be a high school teacher. Up early that day to observe at a private school here in little Springfield, Mo., I turned on the Sony Trinitron TV Ryan's mom gave him for his birthday when we were first dating, to see normally poised news anchors floundering, touching their ear pieces to see if they were hearing right, relaying the words as they came, all of us--them, too--thinking there must be some mistake. Still, I had made a commitment to be at the school and I had a paper about what I saw due the next day, so I headed that way in my Mitsubishi Eclipse, my first ever (and only) brand new car and heard from the radio that one of the towers had collapsed in on itself. I sat behind a two-way glass and watched with teenagers in a sheltered, private, progressive school as footage of the second collapse rolled. Some put their heads down; others giggled nervously, as young people sometimes do when they don't know what else to. Classes at SMS were cancelled, but people I passed in the hallways and some I worked with each day were huddled around a TV on an A/V cart in the English department office, faces washed out or clenched in disbelief, grief. At home, Ryan and I huddled on the navy blue couch he bought me for helping him with his senior thesis and stared at the images on that huge screen, wishing we weren't seeing what we did, blown up supersize just feet from us. It might have been going on for a long time, but that's the first day in my memory of the instant news feed we are so accustomed to today, the ticker tape running across the bottom of the screen with updates, answers (?) and explanations, the news itself evolving and reshaping as more and more information came in, everyone in the world there on the front row as the day unfolded, as the images looped. The visual I couldn't shake, and in fact never have, was this one of NYFD Chaplain Mychal Judge, killed by falling debris as he ran to the towers to give comfort, to save. Such a handsome older man. Wise. Distinguished. Thoughtful. He stood for peace and kindness and goodness, everything that what happened that day was not. To see him broken in that way, his sock pushed down and his bare leg showing, cradled by his men, juxtaposed on the screen with shots of him smiling, proud, looking off into the horizon thinking...alive and well...alive and good...my heart still goes all heavy when I see it.

Today there is football on, laundry to put away and a week of school and work to prepare for. We've lived in five houses since that September, bought other couches and a flat screen, traded in the sports car for one SUV and then another. We've brought a little boy into this big world, one where evil comes flying in on an airplane and catches us unaware, but also one where there are beautiful people like this man I didn't know but won't forget. In many ways, my comfortable little slice of the world hasn't changed much. I didn't lose a sister or a father or a friend in those towers. Despite the downhill slope of the economy since that day, I've never wanted for a thing. I don't look to the skies in my little city and think what if. There are thousands of people who this day is about, and I am not one of them. My life was touched that day, but it might have been more of a tap, not the shattering shove of someone I love being taken in such a violent and senseless way, or having my feet knocked out from under me as my sense of security and home collapsed in a tragic and messy heap. We were there--but we weren't, you know?--that September day 10 years ago. Regardless, our flag is out front this morning, at half staff, its edge brushing the pink zinnias that have grown lush and tall around the boxwoods in the flowerbeds. I will treasure the insulation I have from the fear and the grief all these miles from Ground Zero and think of those who cannot say the same.

07 September 2011

ten days in


My blogging always goes by the wayside when school zaps me of time and energy, but so far we seem to be off to a good start on the year. Macauley answers, "Awesome!" every day when I pick him up from third grade and ask how his day went, even if we're both still having trouble getting up in the morning. Ryan and I were up until after midnight last night trying to coerce a opossum out of our garage (turns out they are hard to budge--he finally left on his own accord early this morning after being holed up under a cabinet in there for a number of days, looking young and scared more than the nasty and aggressive you might imagine), which left me a bit groggy cruising into school at 7:30 in the A.M. But my seniors are nice and the days go by quickly, so I don't guess I'll retire. This month.


The lazy days of summer have come and gone and we've been busy since. I've done some great antiquing I need to blog about, we took a fun Labor Day weekend trip to KC and I have some wonderful pictures of the Renaissance Fair we ended up at on Sunday. I've also got my summer reading to review and several other things I hope to get into print before I forget them all. Only two days til the weekend...maybe I'll get some thoughts down then. So we're 10 days in...just 160ish more days to go!

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