Category: Home

Things are coming together, one small island of tranquility at a time.

After the big push of November and Early December, my progress with the house has slowed considerably.  Of course I am no longer the only one in residence so I can't be up banging and moving things at all hours either, but I am very happy for the company, even if the pace of change is slower.  We are still waiting for half the floors to be installed, and they are scheduled for late next month.  In the meantime I wait.

But there are still small bits of beauty and peace.  

I unearthed these rock crystal candle holders from the back of a closet, amazed that I had ever stored them away.  They are now my winter centerpiece on the dining table and they make me smile every time I see them.  It seems like the light is different every time I pass. 

Each one holds a votive candle or a tea light, and they are somewhat awkward to light, requiring long fireplace matches or spark to get them going without singing the fingers.  Their crystalline presence echoes the cold whiteness in evidence outside the windows, but at the same time when lit, they are both warm and cold, a very inviting combination of fire and ice.

Today I have started dismantling the sewing room/office in preparation for moving it and creating a new bedroom/office and separate sewing/fiber room.  As soon as I post this the computer will be taken down for the duration.  Neither room will be finished over the weekend but I do hope to have the computer and my network back up by Monday sometime.

In fact I am feeling a little overwhelmed.  Since moving the books, I have made no further progress with the future caretaker's room and there are still bookcases to be dismantled and my fabric and yarn stash to be moved.  Moved where I don't yet know, but there should be available space created in the reconfiguring of various closets and purging of unused things.  Luckily I do clean out my closets periodically.  The last time G's closet was emptied was 25 years ago, just before we were married.  It is a task I still dread.

Overall though, I am happy with what I am accomplishing.  It is probably more than was absolutely necessary, but the opportunity was here, and I have been too long tied to unfinished projects around the house to settle for put things off again.  I have put my own needs and desires second for far to long as well. I am creating a functional space for G, but also a space for me. As exhausting and daunting as the task may seem at times, I am as happy to be doing things for myself as I am to be ready to welcome my sweetie home.  Hopefully by the time I am reconnected to the world wide web, the heavy work will be done, and I will be able to relax and slow down.  I don't plan to have the new fiber room all together before G comes home, just to have enough order in our space that I can finish up in bits and pieces and still enjoy our time together.

It's been over a week since I've posted here, and even more time since I have managed to reply to comments.  I have been a hit-and-run reader of email, and all of your comments have greatly cheered me, even though I may have been too overwhelmed to respond.

In fact, I have been mostly out of touch with the world at large since before Thanksgiving, caught up as I was in a frenzy of doing.  Then, with family here, and the house full, I was caught up in a different kind of frenzy, one I had sorely missed.    Their presence filled my heart and helped me catch up on a bit of sleep too, allowed me precious time to catch up with myself and make a little peace with my place in the world.  

But now the family is gone and most of the biggest items on the "getting" list are in order.  Now I am left with the sorting and moving and reconfiguring of our lives.  In some ways this is the hardest part.  G must move to the smaller room on the other end of the house and his things must move with him.  This will require some sort of elimination and it feels strange to be sorting through his things and thereby the artifacts of his life while he is only a few miles waiting to come home.  Even though I know he will not be able to come up the few steps to get to this room; even though I now realize that his closet had become a source of great stress for  him; even as I realize that he is content with the simplicity of few choices and easy decisions; even as I think of all these things,I feel the responsibility of sorting through the remnants of a life lived and saved and the weight of making the right decisions.

And of course, sorting through G's things are only one part.  My small library will become a small bedroom for a live-in caregiver.  I had help moving the books this past weekend and they are now piled up, almost one thousand strong, on the living room floor where they will sit, one step up from the main level of the house, while new floors go in and G returns home. I am not yet sure of their fate.  Shelves will go back up in other rooms, but that will have to wait for the new year, after all the floors have been installed, but sacrifices will have to be made.   

G struggles with the loss of his view of himself as a man in control of life, a man who goes to work, a man who fixes people, a man who hopes to travel. His life now encompasses a smaller sphere, but still a sphere where there is time spent with loved ones.

I too struggle with changing images of self and yet to some extent the loss of books seems minor in comparison.  But books too are defining.  I have always seen myself as a person who has a library, who loves books, who collects books that I have read, that mean something to me and who also collects books I have not read, books full of the promise of worlds unexplored, of knowledge not yet gained. But books are not everything; I am just not yet sure of the balance point. 

The decisions seem overwhelming at times and at other times simple.  Perhaps being a person who over-thinks everything is not always an advantage. The days are short, the nights are long, the decisions are hard.  And yet the destination is clear, it is just the path that remains somewhat hidden in fog.

When I was posting photos for Mette's challenge earlier in the week I was having a great deal of trouble stating what these pieces said about me, how they defined me in any way.  My post became verbose, not at all surprising to anyone who has read my previous blogs. I will probably still be long-winded, but I hope to at least be coherent.

I am still not sure that, in my case at least, that individual pieces can be evaluated apart from their setting.  Perhaps they can.  Perhaps I have simply not yet come to terms with this.

I do think however that the setting can say much. Take this section of our living room (this photo was originally posted on my earlier blog, sewdistracted, last spring). I love this portion of this room and am inclined to think it shows you far more about me than three simple pieces ever can. You will note, however, that two pieces from Tuesday's post reside here. 

Next to the sofa is a piece of brickwork.  It is actually the matching piece to the one I showed the other day.  They are part of a pair, which fit well together to form one long piece, but also work separately as they are used now.  These pieces were part of the original Vassar Hospital Building in Poughkeepsie, and G rescued them when the building was being demolished.  They are among my favorite pieces of furniture.  I love the fact that they were once something else, and have found new life in my home.

On the far right side of the photo you see the corner of a Wassily chair by Marcel Breuer.  This is the same chair, but this time it is in its normal position.  I had to turn it in order to get a photo.  Obviously it is not original; the original models had canvas rather than leather.   I do love the shape of the chair.  I find it extremely comfortable.  I like the way it uses industrial materials (tubular steel) and leather.  And although I tend to see this chair more often with black leather, which offers a stark contast to the steel, I would not own the black version.  I find it cold and impersonal.  I like the warmth the brown leather brings to the cold steel.  This chair was a gift to me from G early in our marriage. It was a very thoughtful gift and I appreciate the effort he went to find it.  It is important to me that he bought the licensed production version with real tubular steel as opposed to the cheap chrome versions that were, and still are, available. Lastly, the positioning of the Wassily chair next to the brick work is new, and it makes me very happy.  They work well together and I sit here every day.

I find this area warm and inviting and I like the mix of new and old.  It is also one of the few areas of the house where the furnishings are truly the result of cooperative enterprise.  The house came with the husband, completely furnished.  I don't really like the paneled walls or the wall to wall carpet, although there is much to like about the house as a whole.  I did not like the original furniture, or most of it, and although most of it has slowly gone over the course of 24 years, some still remains.  Unfortunately some of the pieces I did like have also gone due to decisions or circumstances that seemed right at the time.

The brickwork was George's.  The lamps were mine.  They need new shades, and I know exactly what I want and merely need to get around to having them made. Everything else, the sofas and the tables were a cooperative enterprise, sometimes immediate and easy, sometimes difficult and protracted.  This is not surprising when two strong willed people with definite opinions about design join forces.   The paperback books on the ceiling beams were my idea, and although they are somewhat difficult to access, they make me happy up there, peering down on whoever is in the room.  The black tubing around the rim of the table is not a part of the design but is simple pipe insulation picked up at our local hardware.   G can no longer see the edges of the clear glass and over the course of the last year he has had many injuries where he simply ran into the table.  Yet he did  not want to lose the table.  This was a simple, stylish and practical accommodation to the reality of aging.

I see I haven't really addressed the yellow Panton chair.  It is part of a set of 4, two white, two yellow. They are outside on the deck at two small tables where we often sit.  They were my choice.  G hated them when he first saw them and I dreamed about them for years.  When the deck was finished a couple of years ago I bought myself two as a birthdday gift to myself.  Since then G has come to appreciate them and their comfort.  Last year he asked that we get two more.  He also asked that they not be the same color, that was "too boring".   Soon I will be taking them into storage for the winter.  I will miss them. Every spring, when I bring them up to the deck, I giggle like a schoolgirl and can't wait to sit in them. I sit there, swinging my legs like a small gleeful child, feeling the chair rock gently with me, with an enormous grin on my face. These chairs bring me great joy.

I wish that every thing in my life could bring such joy, but of course that is not the way of world.  Yet it is what I strive for everyday. 

Last week Metscan posted three pieces of furniture as part of a series called "Who Am I".  

Uncharacteristically, I shall refrain from verbiage and leave you to your own interpretations.

It has been a gray and rainy day in which I have been at the beck and call of contractors, repairmen, and service contractors.

It seemed like the perfect day for a little camera play so I thought I'd participate in Mater's meme.

1. Simple it may be, and inexpensive too, but this bit of blue brightens my spirits almost every day.

2.  A small carafe with matching cups from Israel.  A wedding gift from G's cousin.

3.  A Venetian vase.

4.  A large bowl made of many pieces of glass fused together.  I love the play of this against the soft ornate bowl with the butterfly on the same table.  Hard and soft.

5.  No discussion of blue can be complete without mentioning the blue behemoth outside the windows.  In his winter blue coat he rises and billows with winds, showing a completely different face than the summers calm cool waters.  Not lovely, but always present.