Day 2 Day radishes

March 31/ Road trip home

My plane landed in Seattle on March 27 among a few snow flurries. Nothing stuck, but it was really charming. My daughter and grandson came to the airport to pick me up, and came inside the airport to help with luggage. The same luggage I had repacked curbside because I was $50 overweight, at check in at Bush International in Houston.

I stayed in Seattle for two days with my daughters mainly because the news talked of snow, and I have never driven in snow except in a parking lot type situation. From some of my long past skiing trip, I am afraid of driving in snow. But . . . I wanted very much to go to my house to home. I needed to regroup. I had no clue as to where anything was in my suitcases, and I had run out of winter clothes. I needed my home.

I called home to my neighbors, they said, come on up the weather is fine. And every thing was fine except that midway through the trip I needed to go to the bathroom, so why not stop at Barnes and Noble. Back in the car, the weather is fine, broken clouds, but 12 miles up the road it starts to rain. This particular area is called the convergance zone; not without reason. Seven miles later a huge dark cloud lie ahead. Then it started to snow. Traffic slowed to 30, which is unheard of. But it seemed to me the right speed to go. Visibility was an issue. But I kept on driving. I did think to turn my lights on. And I kept on driving to my 212 exit. At the bottom of the ramp, were three highway patrol cars all with flashing lights. I kept on driving.

I turned onto my local highway and it continued to snow. The snow was heavy on the road, and I wondered if the low part of my car would make it over the snow that had collected. I kept on driving. Many cars were off the road to the right and left, but tow cars were doing their best. Police were out to help. I kept on driving. I do not know how fast or slow I was going, because I did not want to lose traction. There is only one car a head, and I see two in the rear view mirror. I am very concerned, but my knuckles are not white. It is only four miles to the town where I can pull over into a grocery store parking lot. The lot was filled with water, snow, and a mixture. I got out and my feet went ankle deep in the slush. But I noticed that no one had a concerned look on their face as they came out with groceries. Again I called a neighbor to ask if it was safe. They said, "the weather is fine". Back on the road. The snow stopped half way home, and when I got to my home, the streets were dry, and the sun shined. Thank you God. Big Girl, Radish.

March 28/ Family decorating

My sister and I like French décor. Over the years she has achieved it much more satisfactorily than I. Living where I live in the Pacific northwest, French décor is difficult to achieve on a budget. I make an effort, but my husband’s crap and legal files do not make with the feminine side of French décor. I try not to let Mr. Radish know that French décor is what I am trying to achieve, because he does not like the French.

And by the way, Mr. Radish went into the dark hole of Bejing. Communication has not existed. But I do know everyone is having a wonderful time.

Anyway, back to my sister, my sister is a decorating maniac sometimes. She knows a lot, but refuses to have faith in her judgment. She also has always liked the very traditional. She thinks I know how to decorate, which is untrue; come to my house. Three months ago she moved to Houston. She and her husband have rented a very plain and small apartment across the street from the office where her husband is trying to start a business. She has orangish tan walls, and rented furniture that was chosen by her husband. She brought a few little lamps, trays, tassels, a few silver pieces, an American flag, and one dresser drawer from Oregon. That was her extent of stuff to make a home. She was a pilgrim in a covered wagon moving to Texas. Her husband got most of the small U-haul space for office furniture and equipment.

But now, my God, my sister has come into her own. She has come unleashed. Now she wants French Texan. The last three hours that I was with her, we decorated. Notice the white alabaster hand on the dresser. The mirror is plastic and I think was found by her husband, in a waste basket. She is now so uninhabited, she is talking antler’s for the wall. Tropiary might next go on her minute patio.

March 25/ Martha Stewart housing

In a little town named Katy just west of Houston is a Martha Stewart subdivision.  A builder has teamed up with Martha, and her mark is everywhere down to the shelves of white vases.  The homes are inspired by homes in which she has lived.  Turkey Hill was not present.  The outsides are tasteful and not over done, however the square footage runs from 3,600 to over 5000.  There is a starting price with many add-ons.  Everything is an add on from the hardware on the cabinets, which are standard, but can be upgraded, to the third fireplace. It is impossible to make a mistake with coordinating because every thing has been chosen by Martha. 

These home were spacious with closets the size of my bedroom at home.  Naturally the furniture, Martha’s team had chosen.  Equally the landscaping.  The colors were Martha’s and lovely.  Blue the color of her Turkey Hill chicken eggs, although she has sold Turkey Hill.  I could live in one of these homes if they made it turn key, because the furniture was large to fit the spaciousness, and the pillars were tasteful.  Frankly, I could live there, but I would have to have a different husband, a richer husband, because the very thought of spending a minute house cleaning 5,000 square feet is enough to make me call up reservations for a room at the local loony bin.

March 24/ Hallelujah

We attended church yesterday at Grace Presbyterian, a very large church.  My sister tells me it is not a Mega Church, but yesterday there could have been more than one thousand attendees. The lovely library is twice the size of my church at home, as was the chapel.  A choir of fifty sang, and at the end of the service the congregation was invited to come up and join the choir, to sing the Hallelujah chorus.  At the last minute I decided to go up.  One of the reasons that held me back, is that I was dressed in urine green.  The choir was in red. The women waved me up to stand next to them and they opened a space for me. One woman came up to me and  gave me the sheet music. I forgot that I did not know how to read music, I thought we were going to sing the hymn version, and the woman next to me had to keep pointing to where we were in the piece.  I did not know whether to try to sing alto or with the men in the tenor bass section, in which case it was a lower line.  It was a lot of fun and I sang the Hallelujah chorus with all my heart.

This is my sister and brother in law.  There is a living cross decorated with flowers. 

March 23/ Driving around Houston

HAPPY EASTER

As I write this I am unable to post.  But I am sure it will happen. 

I have been driving around the city with my sister and brother in law.  I feel as if we are a cartoon of what I used to think when I saw older people touring around together.  When I was young, we called the men “square hats”, a self explanatory term. 

Yesterday I said that I wanted to go outside the city to the countryside.  Houston is flat like Los Angeles proper, only more so.  To get an elevation you have to go to a high rise or to a lesser extent, be on the top ramp of a freeway interchange.  What there is going west is commercial property. and then nothing.  Where we drove there were some scrub trees, but only a little further out there is forever flat nothing.

Houston is growing, growing, growing.  if you are an engineer, There is a terrific amount of building.  But as we know, Houston has gone through hard times before when there was a crash of the oil market.  But for where I have been, for now, buildings look new and fresh as if they were old built well after the 80’s. 

We stopped yesterday at Brookwood Community of the disabled that has a huge shop of goods that have been made by these disabled. They make plates, cards, crosses, garden pots, many more things, but also they have goods made by others.  One stall was ,men’s hats.  Primarily cowboy hats,  felt for winter, and white whatever material for summer.  I say “whatever” because the height of straws is Panama straw, but some are made out of paper from Japan. You could One hat was called “Gus”, for the Lonesome Dove character.  Others were flat prarie hats to keep off the rain.  Some where Harry Truman hats.  One was a hat our long time dead friend from Texas wore, and his memory floooded back, including our old car we sold to him.  A whole cast of characters were bought to mind, just from visiting the hat stall and trying on a few hats. 

March 21/ needlepointing

My sister is a needle pointer.  She is between projects and is a little frantic looking for the next project.  She is on the hunt.  We visited two stores, both very nice.  She found the an excellent project at our first store.  But she wanted to try another store, but for the kind of money you spend needle pointing, you do not want to make mistakes. 

At the second shop, were two late fifties Chinese women running the shop.  They were helpful, and ran to get us anything they felt we wanted.  It takes my sister a long, very long time to shop.  I shop fast.  I make more mistakes, but it is over quickly.  Susan touches everything, thinks where the finished project will be used, how will it look, will the color go with anything else under her kitchen table. 

I suggest color combinations, which in the end we purchase, and do not look very garish until we get them home.  We spend a lot of time at this shop, which is interrupted by a Chinese lunch next door.   We came to know the owner, Frances, well, or as well as you get to know someone who you have known for two hours. 

I thought how much my daughter, Margaret would love to have the store.  I said so.  Frances said that she had retired from being a dentist,  she makes no money, and she said she has no children,  but needle pointing was her life.   She said that she was from China where she had a needle and thread shoved in her hand at age four.  Her grandmother went to the factory and brought home the materials for the “cottage industry”, taught Frances to sew (I think  mittens), and she worked as a child laborer.  She said that life had come full circle for her.  She quit her job in America as a dentist fifteen years ago, bought her store where she must meet the costs, otherwise her husband supports her. Many of the new American needle pointing techniques are stitches she did when she was four.  She has a needle in her hand again.  It is love. 

March 19/Houston

Houston. This is Houston.

I am here at my sister’s apartment which is temporary quarters for her and her husband until they decide if they are going to live here, or back in the state of Washington. It is like we are all roomies in college.  However, my sister and her husband share a bed.  I am on a mattress on the floor.  This has been problematic for me.  First the mattress was not pumped up well enough; I had to roll over to the side, grasp it and hope I could roll out over the edge.  Then I had trouble standing up because the only place to put my hands was on the mattress which was rolling like a water bed.  Pretty tough when you have to go pee. 

To say my sister and I are having a great time is and understatement.  Houston is a shopping Mecca.  Years ago while I was visiting her in Alexander, Virginia, we were on a low budgets.  We went to a store called Sy Sims.  For thirty years we have recalled that visit to a discount store.  It was our first experience at discount shopping. Sy was at the cutting edge. Sy’s was  a  huge deal.  We bought and bought.  We must have bought our husbands ten shirts each for around $7.00 a piece.    Some of those shirts they wore for many years, some found their way to the bottom of the ironing basket never to be found again.  To date this excursion, the shirts were Madras.  The Madras shirts were keepers. 

Yesterday we went to Sy’s here in Houston.  We arrived with the same enthusiasm as at our first Sy’s. Even though I studied Apparel merchandising in school, I am very unconfident on my shopping now.  Sy sells mainly designer labels.  Money matters to me.  I must be careful. Now and then we come across something we could seen somewhere at an actual store, Nordies for example. We try to see ourselves as size 12, in a 2x pair of pants.  Susan reminds me that when it comes to dieting,  if you can’t lose it, decorate it. 

We are a cartoon of women on a mission.  I have made up my mind that I am not only shopping for me, I am shopping for a daughter. We get a shopping cart and throw our wonders in.  I run up and ask the manager, what is the return policy.  This is fun.  I am having a hard time remembering that it is holy week.  I am exhausted. 

In closing I would like to say something that I saw this week, “ If you can not something nice, say something vague.”

March17/St. Paddy's Day

St. Paddy’s Day is here, and our St Paddy’s party is over. Mr. Radish was not here and it was harder to carry on by ourselves. He keeps the music going, and he keeps the Irish whiskey and beer flowing. My son-in-law, Bill, stepped in to fill the barkeep shoes buying mint-chocolate chip ice cream. Then he made this vile green Midori sour cocktail. He backed up this plan with Irish beer.

Not of Irish descent, he asked what St. Patrick’s Day meant to us. It was hard to explain. We had to think. My girls said, “a party”. It is one of those things, which I would say, you had to have been there. My husband has always loved the holiday, because it meant a lot of merriment to him. But also his grandparents, or great grandparents came from Ireland. He admired his Catholic grandfather who went to church every day. He admired what the man became, by his own work. He admired that he had a group of men over to play poker every week, offered a full bar, but did not drink himself.

Last night we had baked corned beef, and roasted, quartered potatoes with rosemary. The children did not like the corned beef, and one child was dubious about the potatoes. We said, “You have to eat them, they are Irish.” He asked, “Why?”

Then we tried to tell him about the Irish being poor, and all they could grow were potatoes. And then the potatoes would not grow, and they were very hungry, and many Irish moved to the United States. It is the Irish Americans who really started the holiday. In Ireland St. Patrick’s Day was just a plain old saint day.

In addition to wearing the name Calligan, my mother’s name was Ireland although she was probably German. We think her family got to Ellis Island and the name was too hard to understand, so they probably, in an effort to push through, just said their name was Ireland. If my sister reads this, she may weigh in. We now have two grandchildren whose first or second name is Calligan, and one granddaughter whose middle name is Ireland.

The story of the Irish in America is slipping away. Next year we will have a history lesson.

Home alone

This is how different it is when your husband is gone.  Last night I forgot to eat.  Well, it was 9:30 and with my crazy crampie stomach, I realized something was missing.  Food.  This is a first, first.  I had even thought ahead and made artichoke soup.  Such is the power of a  movie DEATH AT A FUNERAL, scotch, and knitting, and I had a few Girl Scout cookies.  This confirms my thoughts about people and food.  Food is a lot more fun with people. Food needs people.  I guess, the lead in the movie,  Mathew MacFayden, who looks just like the son-in-law in Shanghai, was my dinner companion. 

March 15/ Mr. Radish goes to Shanghai

Mr. Radish goes to Shanghai. Mr. Radish arrives in Shanghai. Mr. Radish has a scotch and goes to bed in his new lair.

I dropped Mr. Radish off at the airport and drove back through Seattle. I totally scared myself, but I did it. I stopped at Barnes and Noble, had lunch at 3:00PM, drove home, punched in the chick flick NO RESERVATIONS, ate left over rice, knit to the movie, had a scotch and went to bed. I slept through the night. I lived. As my mother would have said, “now you’re a big girl”.