Historical Dollhouse

An old friend of mine from school found out about my love/obsession with dollhouses and very generously gave me an old dollhouse she found in her barn! She's living in an old old house in Indiana and is remodeling it. The house was in pretty bad shape having apparently spent the last 50 years or so in a barn, and I literally spent a full year in paralysized contemplation about whether to put in new wallpaper and floors or just restore as much as possible. The wallpaper inside is so pretty and I'm fairly certain it's a lithography printing. It has a gorgeous art deco trompe l'oeil scene downstairs and a darling flowered print upstairs. A wall swings out to give access to the interior and you can also lift off the roof. After some research, it seems like it's from the Schoenhut dollhouse company (Philadelphia) and was probably made in the 1930s.

 Here's how it looked when I got it

and here it is cleaned up a bit - the pressed cardboard roof is a little shinier now, but otherwise I didn't change anything on the exterior but wipe off the cobwebs.

This is the swinging out door - it had a lot of yellow crayon some child must have applied.

Here's a before an after I really love - a lot more crayon from an interprising child (unpopular opinion:  Dollhouses are not for Children!)

after:

And here's that great art deco scene on the first floor before and...

after!

To my incredible delight, what I thought was torn paper was actually just paper stuck on there!  So with some delicate application of moisture and gentle nudging, I was able to remove all of it!  There is, alas, a tear in the middle of the wall, but an amazing improvement overall.  

I was also able to clean up the floor which also had the most enchanting wood grain you've ever seen...

Here's a sort of before and after that shows the difference.  I cleaned with first a mixture of vinegar and water, then lemon and water, then... dare I say it... Magic Eraser which really did the trick.  Of course you have to be very very careful.  If you clean too much, you'll Magic Erase the whole damn thing.

After all that cleaning, I really didn't want to touch it very much, and since I wasn't able to find the exact house (although similar ones) online, I have to think it's pretty rare.  I offered it back to my friend, and also mentioned we could donate it to a local history museum, and because she's super-cool, she wants to donate it.  I couldn't be more pleased.  

Way up there

I lost a friend recently.  A friend I actually never met in person but nevertheless had a close kinship with.  For a while we really supported each other's writing through our blogs, back in the early aughts when I updated this blog at least once a week instead of every other year.  We both loved crafting and reading and feminism and music.  We traded favorite songs and favorite books and mailed each other little things we made.  She was generous and funny and an enthusiastic friend.  Looking back through my social media she is always there, making my Facebook memories a landmine of reminders and grief.  She was my Online Friend but she was my Friend. She gave good advice and cut through the bullshit.  I think it's clear she shared at least two of my love languages, "Quality Time" and "Words of Affirmation" and she lavished both of those on my online self - on my self.  She had those qualities I cherish in a friend: Steadfastness. Kindness. Generosity of spirit.

Recently I heard a song and knew she would have loved it.  She loved nearly every song I shared with her as she had a welcoming ear and a joy in discovering new music, the same as me.  The song is French and I didn't understand the lyrics very well.  When I looked them up - it seems like this song could have been written about her.  

Au delà des fourbes apparences Derrières nos loups de circonstance Sous nos masque cousus d'espérance Se cachent les fêlures de l'enfance De l'enfance

Beyond deceitful appearances Behind our occasional wolves Under our masks sewn with hope Hidden are the cracks of childhood From childhood

For about the last few years we haven't been as close. I thought it was mainly because I had stepped back from social media a little bit and perhaps she had too.  Honestly during most of the pandemic I had so much stress and anxiety I couldn't deal with anyone's problems but my own.  I saw her make a few cries for help on Facebook and I disregarded them.  I think of how casually we lived/are living with chaos.  How texts to and from my best friends would go something like "I can't go on like this" and "lol SAME".  When I heard she died alone in a hotel room my heart was pierced not only with the sadness of loss but the thought that I should have reached out and didn't.  I learned that she was going through some devastating personal losses, the kinds I can hardly imagine.  

L'air de rien on n'est pas mal tout là haut On goûte aux étoiles tout là haut On oublie nos certitudes On chérit la solitude A faire une escale tout là haut A nourrir le calme tout là haut On ne joue plus d'artifice On sait pourquoi on existe

Like air, we are not bad up there We taste the stars up there We forget our certainties We cherish loneliness To make a stopover up there To feed the calm up there We no longer play tricks We know why we exist

Although she was taken from us too soon and too terribly, I hope she finds peace tout là haut/"up there", away from the fray of this earth. At least for me, I'll think of her whenever I hear certain songs, and probably every time I look at Facebook.

She died on her birthday, a day, I know, she was flooded with messages on Fb from friends and family. On my birthday, I want to say: I'll miss you, my friend, and I'm so sorry. You were loved.

Gift Lists!

Have you ever bought anything off a Gift List?  I love reading them, but they're pretty useless.  I scour Lists for Dads looking for something for my Very Hard to Shop For Dad, but find things like SOCKS?  GRILL-RELATED? SPORTS-RELATED? A $25 Banana Hat from this list? Have they ever even met a dad?  They already have all things, socks, sports, grill, banana.  

The 27 Absolute Best, Wirecutter-Approved White Elephant Gifts Under $25 sounded promising, but held the usual collection of socks and adult coloring books.  I have enough adult coloring books to color every day of the rest of my adult life.  

Mike told me about a list called "56 gifts every woman in your life would love to receive" which included a Menopod Instant Cooling Device." Thank you, husband, for thinking about my menopause needs - although the description "Get near-instant relief from menopausal hot flashes and sweats with this palm-sized, electronic gadget" made me think it zaps you into temporary unconsciousness (yes, please!)

Hey, I could write a pretty good gift guide, is something I thought to myself, even though I prefer to make most of my gifts, and most people are already drowning in a bunch of garbage they don't need.  

Poetry for Neanderthals - $13.  This game looks fun and includes an inflatable club.  What could go wrong?

Set - $8.85.  I love Set because you can play it with people of all ages.   Literally like 3 year olds and 70 year olds.  

Spot It - $27?  That's ridiculous.  Don't pay that much.

Another game you can play with people of all ages.  Spot It also has a lot of variations like Camping Spot It and Sports Spot It and so on.  I have a soft spot for plain old Spot It because it has a few weird symbols that you just have to make up a name for like, "Handface!"and "Orange Guy!"

It's dumb not to have a jade roller and gua sha tool - get one for every woman you know.  Then you get them a small bottle of argan oil or rose oil and you're done.  BOOM. Perfect. Works for dudes too, but not dads.  Not my dad.

A very fancy lipstick.  Get your best gal a fancy pants lipstick that she might not buy for herself.  The finest one I know is this YSL for $38 (ask the salesperson for a shade that looks good on everyone).  People say Tom Ford is a very fine lipstick.  Tom Ford lipstick costs about ... $58.  That's a lot of money for lipstick.  

A fancy doorknob.  Guess what?  Literally everyone likes fancy doorknobs. This might be a good dad gift.  I have no idea.  The best gift my dad ever got, and said so, was a bucket full of stuff to wash his car with because Washing Cars is his Love Language.  Do not ask him about this, he will have no idea what a Love Language is.  

On John Wick II, Language, and Hoosiers

After diligently checking DoesTheDogDie.com, I watched John Wick 2 and was rather amazed at his foreign language abilities (not to mention his ability to get hit by a car, punched a million times, get shot in the actual kidney and still go on to kill like, literally 400 people).  First he meets a Russian gangster and tells him, in Russian, Let's have peace, this feud is over, etc.  Then, an Italian guy shows up in his house, and they converse, in Italian, about having coffee and becoming an assassin again.  THEN, I shit you not, there is a deaf assassin in the movie, and he starts talking to her in ASL.

I finally took an ASL course this year - something I've been wanting to do for many a year.  It was great to finally get started.  Obviously I'm nowhere near fluent but I want to keep practicing (there are some great tutorials online - try these if you're interested).  Speaking of languages, one of the best things I've read this year was The Idiot, a hilarious book about, amongst other things, the connection between language and thought, something that's been occupying my mind a lot recently.  Little did I know that John Wick, of all things, would continue to pique this interest.  Without a word for "assassin", for example, would John Wick have ever become that thing?  Naturally, I wanted to learn all the dirty words in sign language but that is an on-going education.

Here's a funny story:  My parents came to visit this weekend and I mentioned that, God forbid, if anything ever happened to M, I would most likely never love again, with the possible exception of my cheesemonger. "Due to his kind nature or something else?" asks my mom.  "Due to his knowledge of and access to cheese!" I said.

Mom tells me an old family friend loves talking about "Hoosier Go-to" and when asked to explain she said, "Oh, you know, who you would go to if your spouse died."  And I said, "Well, do they have to be a hoosier?" and then there was some confusion until I finally understood that she was not saying "Hoosier go-to" but rather "WHO'S your go-to" to which M shouted out, to general hilarity, "WHO'S EAR?"  A joke, I suppose, only Hoosiers will understand.

Twinsters

We watched this really wonderful documentary on netflix called Twinsters - it's about this American girl who was adopted from Korea as a baby.  She grew up in New Jersey, but now lives in LA and is an actress.  She did a webseries, and some guy in France watched it and thought the girl in the video was his friend, Anaïs,  He shares it with her on Facebook.  Anaïs messages the American (Sam) with her birthday and birth city.  Sam's is the same.

It's through the miracle of social media that these two find each other, despite Sam growing up in New Jersey and Anaïs growing up in France (then college in London), and it's through social media that they build their relationship - they skype right away (first talk=3 hours) they WhatsApp constantly (they even nickname each other "pop" - that little sound of a new message coming in).

It's amazing to me how utterly compatible they are right from the beginning.  It's Sam, the outgoing LA actress and budding filmmaker who has the instinct to record their initial meeting and ultimately make the documentary, so you see the amazing progression of this incredible story, yes, but more importantly you see the beautiful and immediate connection these two very sweet, loving girls form.  And, not only do the two girls fall instantly into sisterhood, but their adopted families immediately love and accept the other girl and her parents.  I just couldn't help but think, if I found my identical twin on the opposite side of the planet, she'd probably hate me and I'd think she was a jerk, and no way would our families get along.  Maybe that's just me because I'm a cynical, cold-hearted person?

The two girls eventually go to Korea together and attempt to find their birth mother.  They do find the women who fostered them for a few weeks before they were adopted out, which is so sweet because Anaïs tearfully says that she never really felt that her life began until she was arrived in France with her adopted parents - but was so overwhelmed to find that she really was loved and cared for as a baby in Korea, and that the woman who fostered her remembered her still.

Although the doc doesn't really get into the politics of international adoption, there's a lot of food for thought there.  It does get a bit into twin studies, as these two are a goldmine as identical twins who were raised apart.  To tell the truth, I'm real "Nurture" person when it comes to the whole Nature v. Nurture development debate but this film really blew apart some of my ideas.

Anyway, if you're looking for something to watch, it's utterly charming and has really given me a lot to think about lately.  As someone who really aches to be physically closer to her sister, I hope those two twins find an opportunity to live closer to each other soon.

old news: The Martian

I saw The Martian when it came out a few weeks ago, and wanted to write about it, but had a hard time putting it into words until I saw this by the great Sarah Mccarry (her blog is The Rejectionist) who writes, "who doesn’t love space, idiots is who, but what was missing from that movie for me was a sense of wonder, of joy, of holy shit guys we’re on Mars, look at the crazy nonsense human beings get up to for absolutely no reason: art, poetry, flying around in spaceships, discovering the secrets of the universe. For a movie in which things are constantly happening there is next to no interiority, so little joy or emotional truth, and so ultimately it’s boring."  Yes.  So much yes.

I liked The Martian but it sort of felt like a morality tale that was basically: When something bad happens, just figure out how to resolve it and get through it, dummy.  Which, whatever, that's fine.  That's a fine lesson for school children but is it a great movie?  Not really.  The whole time I'm wondering, doesn't Matt Damon have a family on Earth?  That he misses or even thinks about occasionally?  He's supposed to be out there alone for 3 years or whatever.  And even if he doesn't have anyone, why does he want to live anyway?  Like, take Gravity, an amazing movie - Sandra Bullock's daughter is dead, all joy is lost from her life, for some reason she goes to space, everything goes to shit, but you see her decide: Actually, I do want to live!  Simple - "emotional truth" that's exciting and beautiful and touching.

Anyway, this guy gets stuck on Mars by himself in a kind of Home Alone situation, and so he's like, I'd better start growing potatoes in my own shit pronto, and at the end of the movie, in case you didn't get it, (spoiler: he makes it) he talks to a group of incoming astronauts and says You Gotta Work the Problem.  And that's the point of the whole movie, I guess?

In other Mars news, many of my friends have been raving about a book called Red Rising, about a miner that lives on Mars.  So far, I really like it, although it was all too obvious the beautiful, passionate, 16 year old wife was not going to make it, and, what a surprise: she gets killed (didn't work the problem).

There's Bears in the Pool

What I love the most about this video is how the underlying subtext of both the Mama in the pool and the Mama in the window is Will You Idiots Give Me Two Seconds of Fucking Peace? Poor Mama Grizzly holds her cub’s head in both her gigantic paws and does that thing bears do where they seem like they’re going to bite your entire face off: Will you! Just. Quit. HANGING on me. Meanwhile Mama in the window’s eye rolls couldn’t be more obvious even though we never see her face. Her toddler is freaking out: There’s BEARS in the POOL! and whining: ONE IS EATING MY CAAAAAR. The dog’s barking, the husband’s disgruntled: Well, that’s it! The pool’s done for the summa. Moma in the window is like: It’s fine. Let them play. Will you! Just.

I thought this was all happening in like, northern Canada, but it turns out it’s fricking NEW JERSEY (I hear it in the Dad’s accent now). I guess it’s true that flora and fauna will quickly take over after we leave this Earth. There’ll only be the rare survivor of the apocalypse to whine about bears swimming in our pools and sleeping in our beds and eating our porridge.

Mama in the window is trying to enjoy the, I mean, really quite astounding visage of another mother relaxing in her pool - just like we do, leaning against the edge, resting her arms on the ledge and chucking out all the extraneous detritus. She just watches as bears ransack her already ransacked yard and dirty her already dirty pool. Her children are crying and whining about their domestic goods, her husband flips out and leaves (where did he go? I mean, WHAT is more interesting than 6 bears frolicking in your own corner of the world?) She only shows the slightest dismay that her expensive floaty is getting ripped to shreds by baby bears. She’s more afraid the Mama Bear will eat the chlorine or electrocute herself. Utterly sure the cubs will be fine - they’ll follow where their mother goes and she will protect them, that much is clear, just as her own cubs are perfectly fine in their suburban home one hour’s drive from Manhattan, separated by a fence from a wilderness full of bears.

Anyway, summer IS over and what a dramatic ending: THERE’S BEARS IN THE POOL! My own realization was no less shocking as I rode my bike to the beach for my last possible weekend day there and stepped into the 50 degree waters of Lake Michigan. It was like looking out my back window and seeing bears swimming in my proverbial pool. Summer IS OVER, y’all. Get out your sweaters, hide your kids, hide your floatie, hide your porridge. There’s bears in the pool.