dreaming@echonyc.com

some recent improvements to the living room include the hanging of stuff on the walls...

...with the prize find being this iron grille from an architectural salvage shop. ("no, i want the broken one!")...

...and the covering of the seat cushion on the snake chair in a silk jacquard depicting medieval-looking animals at frolic...

intentionally left out of the picture are the horrible universal torchiere lamp and the motley assortment of tables. we'll get there eventually...

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for terry, some pictures of the stuff i made for the den:

flanged pillow 1

flanged pillow 2

cornice, 1 of 4

goofy little dress for table, view 1

goofy little dress for table, view 2

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if my grandmother is reading this, i hope she'll go no further — not only because she'll weep at the current state of my garden, but because i'm about to use some very bad words.

okay.

you'd think i'd feel better after such a cathartic string of vulgarity...but no.

i went outside today to check the burning bushes under the dining room bay window. last year, inexplicably, they did not burn, so i wanted to take a close look to see if any conflagration was imminent. what i saw made my hair stand on end.

(okay, it's the lack of conditioner that did that. but work with me here.)

exhibit a. the chokeberries. i planted two chokeberry bushes a couple of falls ago, one on either side of the front step. they're known for showy fall foliage and tasty-looking red berries. they've been doing okay, growing, leafing out obediently if not exuberantly. here is one of them — you can see the bright red berries down by the ground.

and here is the other, now shivering naked in the coming chill:

exhibit b. the hole. i cannot swear in a court of law that the deer did this, though i am not above perjury if that's what it takes to send those goddamned deer to the motherfucking electric chair. there is a big hole in the ground, from which several fall bulbs, lovingly planted, have been cruelly extracted. the carnage is highlighted in yellow.

here is a longer view of the same hole, including the displaced bulbs left on the walk.

exhibit c. hydrangea "annabelle". imagine my surprise when the hydrangea bush i planted in the spring actually bloomed. true, it didn't bloom until the beginning of september, but it had three pretty lacecap blossoms still on it...until the rampage of terror. here it is stripped of its glory, never to regain its onetime splendor:

(i admit that "splendor" may be too grand a term for a bush that is, after all, only about 18" high.)

exhibit d. the peony. what? you can't tell it's a peony? well, peonies have foliage you'd recognize if...oh. what's that? there's no foliage left on it? say it ain't so, joe!

i'm afraid it is, kid.

exhibit e. sedum "autumn joy." it took me a while to warm to sedum; their dusty-red color when in bloom doesn't do a lot for me. but it grows reliably, requires little care, and, in winter, sports these wonderful seedheads that gather snow into cheerful little caps. i like sedum now...but now my dreams are dead.

in a few days mom will be here. we'd planned to work a bit in my garden. but dare i revisit the scene of the massacre? i'm not sure i can take it. the ground will be sodden with the bitter, bitter tears of my regret.

Posted by dreaming at 02:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (49)

do you know about goof off? goof off is one of my favorite products. it's a liquid that removes latex paint spackers spatters, a godsend to careless painters (namely, me). it also happens to be profoundly toxic.

just opening the little spout on the top releases a whiff of lethal but delightful vapor, reminiscent of gasoline and lighter fluid. (you're not supposed to snort up a big lungful of those, either, or so i am told.) and working with it in a small, unventilated space — say, my front entryway with the windows closed for rain — brings on a headache almost instantly.

just look at all the maladies i probably incurred in the last half-hour:

• liver abnormalities
• kidney damage
• cardiac abnormalities
• brain damage
• severe eye irritation, redness, tearing, and blurred vision
• gi irritation, vomiting, nausea, and diarrhea

now, i'm not pregnant or anything, but i'm pretty sure that my eventual great-grandchildren will be born with gills anyway. in fact, i wouldn't be surprised if even my long-dead ancestors are now horribly mutated in their moldy graves, thanks to my short flirtation with goof off.

Posted by dreaming at 07:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (43)

from a white house press briefing about the white house's leak of the identity of a cia operative:

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okay, i'm still a moron, but i'm a lucky moron.

i was sure i'd waited too long to order firewood for the winter — every place i'd called was fresh out, so sorry. but i persevered, and i finally found a place that will deliver a cord. "delivered and stacked?" i asked hopefully.

nope. delivered and dumped. because i can find no one else to deliver, i wasn't in a position to quibble. i suppose the stacking is the price i'll have to pay for waiting so long to arrange the delivery — the moron tax, if you will.

Posted by dreaming at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

beef. it's what's for dinner. and snacks. and dessert! from the new york times:

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so this past weekend i painted the downstairs hallway and a couple of other walls that had gotten overlooked when i did the dining room. one of these walls was the one in the kitchen that includes the pantry door.

the pantry door has a pot lid rack on its inside — a very handy way to store them. it's full to the tune of about a dozen lids, glass and metal.

now, when i paint doors, i like to take them off the hinges to avoid drips. do you see where this is going?

that's right. i forgot to stow the lids before removing the door.

it rained many a clattering lid directly onto my empty, empty head.

Posted by dreaming at 06:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (26)

from houma, louisiana, my ancestral home:

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after we said a sad farewell to estes park and our cabin by the river, we headed off to boulder, where our plans were to visit:

• peppercorn. peppercorn is a big kitchenware/tableware/cookbook/linen store on the pearl street mall in boulder. you want everything there — trust me.
  
• celestial seasonings. last year betty and i thought about going on the tour of the factory, but bagged it. (tea factory. bagged it. get it?!)
  
• the air force academy. we thought we'd drive down to colorado springs one day and watch the cadets march, lemminglike, to lunch.
  
• flagstaff mountain, whole foods, the two-rounds-and-a-square place, and many other local delights.

we checked in at the golden buff, where we'd stayed last year. (the chief feature in its favor was the excellent array of cable channels.) because they initially booked us into a room with only one queen-sized bed ("i told you we have three people when i called!"), we were upgraded to a deluxe super executive kitchen king palace, or whatever they called it — a nice little apartment with a full kitchen, a living room, a separate bedroom, and two tvs. we do live large, we do.

now, you shouldn't think that we planned to get back to nature or anything in boulder. the hotel's situated on a very busy street in the heart of the retail district (in fact, almost directly across the street from the mall). this allowed us easy access to peppercorn, which we visited on three separate days — before making a major purchase, we feel it is imperative to visit the item(s) several times to make sure there's a love match. because the pearl street mall also has dozens of comfortable benches, a great restaurant (try the tapas plate, urges aunt betty), and excellent people-watching, none of us minded spending the bulk of our boulder time there.

the hotel was also quite near whole foods, where we stocked up on trip nuts and delicacies from the prepared food section. this was the scene of dare #2.

"ann," said betty, speculatively, "i'll buy you some wheatgrass juice if you'll drink it."

this time, they carefully negotiated the terms of the deal beforehand. "i'll drink a small," my mother clarified. "like, six ounces."

betty waited in the juice bar line and emerged with a tiny cup — like a ketchup cup for dipping your fries — of freshly-wrung juice. you have never seen anything greener in your life. "an ounce," she reported triumphantly, and carefully set the cup in front of mom. (oh, how i wish she'd bought the full six!)

mom drank some, and then offered me a sip. now, i can't say for sure, because i wasn't at the juice bar with betty, but here's how i suspect it's made:

1. mow lawn.
   
2. lace clippings with several pounds of sweet 'n' low.
   
3. douse pile with crystal light.
   
4. allow to ferment, preferably in a hot barn crammed full of lowing dairy cows.
   
5. taste.
   
6. decide, "nah...still not sweet enough." add the urine of an unmedicated diabetic.
   
7. taste again. when the aftertaste is powerful enough to linger past the application of three altoids, it's perfect.
   
8. strain, dispense, and sell.

luckily, the next day's visit to celestial seasonings offered a chance for me to clear my palate. we donned our hairnets, watched the giant tea-bagging machines do their thing, and stepped into the mint room for a moment (like entering the halls of medicine — mentholicious). we may not be huge tea fans, but we're suckers for industry on parade.

before we go any further, you need to know about the at-home dress.

when you get up in the morning and you don't want to appear immodest, you put on your at-home dress over your nightgown. when you've been to the pool and want to change out of your swimsuit at home, you put on your at-home dress for the drive back. and when you're flying cross-country and want to be comfortable, well, by god, consider the at-home dress. (sound familiar, betty?)

it's not quite a muumuu, not quite a bathrobe. it's a colorful, voluminous garment that would be entirely at home on a squat mexican barmaid. i do not own an at-home dress, but mom was kind enough to lend me one of hers for the trip. ¡caramba!

history does not record exactly how this came about, but betty and i dared each other to wear our at-home dresses when we toured the air force academy. but it got worse than that: i had to wear mine over my nightgown, with the cheerful floral hem hanging down like a petticoat. betty had to wear not her more presentable (and clean) green at-home; she'd be relegated to the purple one, with bleach stains at the hem and miscellaneous spots on the bosom.

what can i say? travel broadens one.

dressed to thrill

the beauty of being on vacation is that you won't see anyone you know — and never again will you see the people you've horrified with your sartorial antics. about betty, we figured they'd say, "oh, that poor old lady..." about me...well, the best i could hope for was, "i wonder if she's retarded."

i confess it was an enormous relief when we pulled up to the entrance at the air force academy only to be told the place was closed to visitors. they claimed it was because it was so close to september 11, but i suspect they took one look at my fetching ensemble and slammed those gates closed but fast.

a disappointing finish to a wonderful vacation, yes, but i can always drown my sorrows here at home if i need to.

thanks, mom and betty, for a truly memorable trip!

Posted by dreaming at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

i just like this headline so much.

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none of us is quite sure how this actually came about.

the first thing you should know is that the big thompson river, which ran directly past our cabin, is cold. very cold. it has its origin up in the mountains and is supplied by snowmelt. did i mention how cold it is?

the second thing you should know is that estes park has an aerial tramway — one of those cable car things that sway merrily in the breeze and regularly plunges passengers to an untimely alpine death. (okay, to be fair, i'm not sure how frequently this actually happens.)

i think this is how it happened. we were talking about estes park's tramway, and mom said something like, "i'd sooner sit in the river than go up on that thing."

and then betty said something like, "oh, yeah?"

and then mom said something like, "yeah!"

and then betty said something like, "nah nah nah nah-nah."

and then suddenly mom was planning to sit in the icy river for five minutes if betty would go up in the tramway. okay, maybe i have some of the details wrong — but i assure you the conversation was no more rational than that.

the next couple of days were spent in elaborate taunting. "do you know how long five minutes actually is?" "does that cable look a little slack to you?" and my personal favorite, "ann, the cable might snap, but the river will be cold."

finally our sides hurt so much from laughing that we figured we'd better get it over with before we ruptured something. i took a picture before the event to remember mom by in case she later died of frostbite.

what, the icy-cold river's not refreshing enough for you?

mom kicks back with a good book

freezing your ass off is thirsty work

beating a hasty retreat, toes frozen but intact

then it was time for betty to ante up. that afternoon she and i mounted the tram car and kissed our lunches goodbye.

betty wishes she'd updated her will

the view was gorgeous — i'm only sorry betty missed it. she was too busy plotting an escape route, asking the tramway operator, "we wouldn't die if the car fell down now, would we?"

i am happy to report that no deaths were recorded on this day, though i did almost wet my pants from laughing.

Posted by dreaming at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (45)

one night in estes park, we moseyed out to the lazy b ranch for an evening of cowboy fun. the festivities began with a slide show about the history of cowboy music. you may not know this about me, but i enjoy a good yodel. dad used to wake paul and me on weekend mornings by cranking up the volume on marty robbins and the sons of the pioneers. to this day i love the music. the slide show focuses on the singing cowboys of the movies. who knew i could feel nostalgic for something i never even experienced?

"put...the gun...down, roy. it's not too late to end this thing peacefully."

after the slide show we went into the chow shed, or whatever a cowboy would have called a big barn with long picnic tables and a stage. a wandering minstrel cowboy attempted to teach mom a few fancy cowboy rope tricks.

the cowboy finger

it's hard to lasso and yodel at the same time

ready to rope up the dogies

now, the lazy b offers chuckwagon suppers as part of the package, but after last year's meal there (when betty accidentally sampled "the bite of the chicken that you hope you never get"), we were taking no chances: we packed our own sandwiches.

why? well, here's what we were served, slopped into a metal pie pan, cowboy-style:

• cowboy beans. open can. dump in pot. heat. spice liberally with several witty fart jokes from the cowboy waiters.
  
• cowboy biscuit. a dry white hockey puck that immediately siphoned off every bit of saliva my poor beleaguered glands could make. i didn't check, but i wouldn't be surprised if, in true chuckwagon fashion, it carried a weevil or two as passengers on the long drive across the prairie.
  
• cowboy baked potato. the potato wasn't awful if you applied seven or eight tiny tubs of "country-style butter-flavored spread." that is, until you realize you've just chewed the bite of the potato that you hope you never get. (this was only the second time in my life ever to see my mother spit out a mouthful of food.)
  
• cowboy beef or cowboy chicken. last year betty and i had the chicken. this year, having learned a terrible lesson, i declined the meat entirely. ("vegetarian!" yodeled a kitchen cowboy, and offered me another biscuit. no. but thanks. really.) betty and mom tried the cowboy beef. i believe it was actually called "sliced beef in cowboy sauce." what could be more appetizing than cowboy sauce, for heaven's sake? well, just about anything, according to mom and betty.
  
• cowboy spice cake. "i'm going to eat it," mom said resolutely, even after sampling the meal's many other horrors. "how could they mess up spice cake?" well you might wonder...and yet somehow they managed.
  
• cowboy peach. this was the least objectionable item in the entire meal, a single canned peach half, innocently nestled among the carnage of the rest of the cowboy meal.
  
• cowboy coffee, cowboy lemonade, or cowboy water. on a program we saw later in the trip about coffee, we learned that on the range they often boiled up their coffee using an old sock as a filter. boiled cowboy foot-sweat coffee. what, only half a cup?!

happily we had the sandwiches as a palate cleanser.

the music, though, made the grueling culinary ordeal worthwhile. four musicians in cowboy drag played and yodeled for about an hour, belting out some lovely harmonies (and some abysmal jokes). not quite riders in the sky, but very entertaining and totally professional. the taste of the cowboy biscuit lingered on for hours, but the pleasure of the cowboy music stuck in my head for days.

Posted by dreaming at 06:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (30)

one cloudy day we planned to drive to grand lake. grand lake can be reached a couple of ways. you can drive through the park across the mountains on trail ridge road, which takes about an hour and a half. or you can go down around the south of the mountains, which looks like it'd take about three days. we chose to drive through the park.

near its highest point, trail ridge road crosses tundra. it's above the treeline, so what you see are these fields filled with short grass and stubborn little flowers, strewn with lots and lots of small rocks. the rocks are amazingly well distributed — no large clumps or empty spaces, just a rather uniform scatter. if you squint you can imagine you see a pattern to the distribution of the rocks, left behind as the glaciers receded. (i admit you have to imagine pretty hard.)

you can get out and walk to an overlook at gore range. the elevation there is between 11,000 and 11,500 feet, so walking out to the viewing area is more of a chore than you'd initially think. by the time we got there mom and i were both panting. i assume my eyes were closed to avoid being blinded by the beauty of the mountains.

julie on the tundra

back in the car, we headed up the mountain once again. but as we approached the alpine visitors' center, betty noticed something unusual. "that car has snow on its windshield!" she said. sure enough, an oncoming car was dusted with snow. and the next one. and the next.

elsewhere in colorado, people were experiencing thunderstorms. but thunderstorms + high altitudes = snow and hail, as we found out directly. soon enough we hit the snowstorm ourselves. driving was pretty dicey; we saw a car that had spun out. you'd think that we'd put an experienced winter driver to work, right?

well, no. the lady from new orleans was at the helm. see, i have a problem: if i'm driving as we ascend the mountain, with nothing but a precipice at the roadside, i start to worry that maybe i'll go crazy and drive the car over the edge. i don't doubt my skill; i doubt my sanity. it's an irrational fear, as most fears are. add snow and hail to the mix and, well, it just wasn't a good idea for me to drive.

we eventually made it to the visitors' center, surprising us all, and sat in the snack bar enjoying the view of the snow on the mountainside. ponder this: where do the elk go when it's snowing? also ponder this: why didn't i think to wear socks? it was 36°, for crying out loud.

they don't look that cold...

wait. maybe they do, after all.

as to our plan of continuing over the mountain to grand lake, the ranger counseled, "the weather's either going to stay the same or get worse...it won't get any better." though the weather was bound to improve on the way down, we weren't sure trail ridge road would stay open — and what if we'd gotten to grand lake and found we had to take the long way home? we decided cowardice was the better part of valor and started down the mountain the way we'd come.

the whole reason for going to grand lake to begin with was to eat nachos and try out a segway. not a great disappointment, really: the drive down the mountain, riding the brakes and trying not to slide into the car in front of us, was thrill enough, thank you very much.

in fact, as we headed down, we saw that the rangers were closing the road to upward-bound cars because of the weather. we'd gotten out just in time, i figured, visions of the donner party dancing meatily in my head. it was a relief to sit down to a more conventional supper of pasta and broccoli in our snug little cabin (and to put on toasty socks at last).

Posted by dreaming at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

okay, so it's not a rat. it's a golden-mantled ground squirrel. but it's still kinda creepy when they touch you.

the scenic overlooks in rocky mountain national park have low stone walls at their borders, presumably to keep their less intelligent visitors from plunging to an ignominious death. you can sit on these walls. if you do, you'll notice that the boulders on the mountainside are crawling with these tiny chipmunk-like creatures, dashing to and fro so quickly that it's difficult to get a picture of them.

they're rather appealing, and i think they know it as they sit up on their hind legs, head cocked, hoping for a snack. i had altoids in my purse, but i doubt the squirrels were equipped to appreciate the refreshing burst of a curiously strong mint.

as you sit on the wall, binoculars trained out across the distance as you look for big-horned sheep, you may be lucky enough to get...

planning the assault

attacking mom

begging for food shortly before running over my sandaled toes

when i felt those cold, tiny claws on my bare skin, i yelped loudly, drawing the ranger over. "oh, my god," i shrieked.

"not god," he bellowed, "but squirrels."

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a quick note about the arrival of my suitcase. upon opening it, i was chagrined to find that my tin of café français had spilled, dusting everything inside with a fine and sticky brown powder.

believe it or not, that's not the spackerish part. the spackerish part is that not a week ago, betty told me she'd had that happen with a container of cremora, and she showed me how she'd packed it this time in a ziploc to avert future disasters.

i am that dumb.

Posted by dreaming at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (39)

we saw a whole mess of elk within the bounds of the park, though not as many as last year.

colorado's drought last summer brought them down to lower elevations in search of food; this year there was enough greenery in the mountains that they didn't need to venture in to town. last year they walked to the library. betty seemed nonplussed.

most of the elk we saw were at moraine park, which includes a large meadow where the elk feed in the evening. the place was just crawling with elk (and with tourists). a kindly ranger tried to talk to us about birth control for the elk. naturally, we tried to change the subject. that's private business, sir!

mom and betty, ignored by an elk

julie ditto

aside from the elk at moraine park, we saw plenty of them just hanging out on hillsides along trail ridge road.

• adult male on a hillside
• young female
• adult male

they're either too stupid or too hungry to pay humans much mind, because they didn't seem spooked in the least by our presence.

Posted by dreaming at 01:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (39)

my suitcase has arrived. my pictures are uploaded. i'm ready to begin the travelogue.

after spending saturday night in a denver airport hotel, betty and i met mom sunday morning at the rental car pickup. our trusty white suv was ready to go; it barely held our three suitcases and bean bags, but through heroic efforts we managed to wrestle the liftgate closed and embark on the northward trail to cheyenne.

en route, we stopped at a waffle house to rustle us up some grub. (i'm pretty sure there's a federal law requiring the use of cowboy lingo when referring to wyoming, so buck up, pardner.) betty reported that her grits was good* — surprising when you consider our distance from the hominy homeland. after a quick visit to the dansk outlet and harry & david, we eased on up the road once again.

we hit cheyenne and tried to check in to last year's hotel, but it was full so we settled for the days inn. after half an hour of our favorite ritual (lying on the bed), we struck out to explore town. our first priority is traditionally a stop at a kmart/wal-mart/target to acquire supplies for the trip — a styrofoam ice chest, soft drinks, paper towels, and community toiletries. chores done, we returned to the hotel for dinner and some more bed-lyin'.

i should point out that cheyenne's not exactly a gourmet town. though we drove around town in a valiant quest, we had great difficulty finding any restaurant that was not:

• fast food;
  
• closed and boarded up; and/or
  
• professing to be a "kountry kitchen"

the next day we woke early. (well, mom woke early. betty and i were awakened early. see the difference?) we arrived in estes park before check-in time at our cabin, so we took the first of many drives up the mountain at rocky mountain national park, just a quick visit to say hello. we were back down at the cabin promptly at check-in time.

a few words about that. it's a two-bedroom cabin at idlewilde by the river, comfortable, well furnished, and immaculate. its screened front porch is about three feet from the bank of the big thompson river. it has a tiny but useful kitchen, two bedrooms, and cable tv. the friendly managers, lloyd and donna, keep the entire property in excellent repair. i doubt there's a better place to stay in estes park.

mom in the river directly in front of the cabin

hey, look! mom's in the river! (this will become important later.)

if you sit on the porch swing, you'll see hundreds of steller's jays, big blue birds with an absurdly pointed crest. there were also a mother bear and her cub on the property several times during our stay, though we never saw them.

steller's jay

so we settled into our home for the next few days, unpacking our suitcases and lining up our three different morning beverages. maybe it was the constant rushing of the river, or maybe it was the cool darkness, or maybe it was even the tylenol pm — but i slept like a baby the whole time we were at the cabin.

Posted by dreaming at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

my bag didn't make it onto the 3 pm flight from philadelphia, for some reason. i am now told that "there's a good chance" it will be on the next flight. why it couldn't make it from one gate to another in 18 hours, i'm sure i don't know, but the airline cheerfully assures me that they deliver bags up until 11 pm.

the reason this makes me so cranky is that i can't upload vacation pictures until the suitcase arrives — and i've been wanting to do this for days.

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not only did my suitcase fail to make the connection in philadelphia, it won't be delivered until late tomorrow because the flight schedule is light on september 11.

the terrorists have officially won. game over.

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