A Sunday Favorite
LBeau and I are wrapping up a week-long trip to Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. At a convenience store somewhere along Highway 550 in the middle of the New Mexico waste land, we discovered Power Bars. We were tired and hungry, and LBeau said that they helped Michael Phelps and the Tour 'de France bicyclists so they would probably work for us. We paid about $1.50 each for two apple-cinnamon Power Bars. It was money well-spent.
One Friday night when we were on our way to meet friends for dinner, I saw this little outfit hanging in the window of a children’s shop. With Lauren soon to be born, coupled with my loved of pigs, I made up my mind to go back and purchase it. The one hanging in the window look like a toddler size, so I was tickled to find it in a 3 month size.
Mary and Ron live in an old hotel that Ron bought in the mid-70’s in Accomac, on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. When he purchased the hotel, the grounds were covered in stuff—vines, trash that neighbors had dumped over their fences, and probably a few varmints. Cleaning up the grounds and planting wonderful and colorful things has been a labor of love, especially for Mary.
This Revolutionary War cannon, partially covered in ivy, sits on the front lawn of the hotel and points toward the Accomac County courthouse across the street. Another Revolutionary War cannon sits on the courthouse lawn and points toward the hotel, so if there’s ever a battle, I guess it’ll be a standoff. Incidentally, the courthouse for Accomac County houses the second oldest records in the United States.
Come back next week, and I’ll tell you a little about the history of the hotel.
I’ve already shown you a couple of master bathrooms that Connie and I updated, so this week I want to show you a kitchen. Charlene’s kitchen was one of the first remodels that we took down to the bare walls. Here are a few before pictures. You can’t help but notice the white cabinets, white countertops, white tile and white appliances. It positively glares at you.
The new cabinets are an off white with a chocolate glaze and bronze hardware. We added recessed lighting in the ceiling, accent lighting above the cabinets, under-cabinet lights to illuminate the work area and three pendants over the peninsula.
We chose St. Cecelia granite to compliment the cabinet color and used an antique style art glass for the display cabinets.
We even had enough room to add a narrow island for additional work and storage space.
Charlene chose stainless steel appliances, and the decorative vent hood houses a power module and has a stainless steel liner to make for easy clean up.
A local artist painted the bowl of fruit on the front of the vent hood cabinet. The decorative grape molding and the corbels on the island are from Enkeboll Designs.
(A Sunday Favorite)
Sometimes on our evening walks our conversation turns nostalgic when we recall things we did as children. I guess this is what you do when you're 60 something.
Looking at the stars last night, we lamented that we couldn't see as many as we used to. Unfortunately city lights and pollution have practically obscured the Milky Way. Larry remembered that even though his neighborhood in Newport, Arkansas, had street lights, they didn't obscure the stars because someone was always shooting out the lights with a BB gun. Here are a few of our other recollections:
Speaking of bugs, it's a wonder any of us who grew up in small towns in the South are still alive. In our neighborhood, the "fogging machine" would come around in the summer spraying for mosquitoes. This was a contraption pulled behind a pick up truck that would drive up and down the residential streets. We loved to run behind the fogging machine, but no telling how much DDT we breathed.
In Newport, they sprayed the stuff over the whole town with crop dusting planes, so you couldn't escape it if you wanted to. Larry has a classmate who still has the contract to spray Newport for mosquitoes, but I'm certain he doesn't use DDT anymore.
Back to the stars, Larry and I had the opportunity to see a beautiful night sky on our recent trip to Colorado. Driving back to Durango from Ouray one night, we pulled off the road, turned off the headlights and got out of the car. Almost immediately we saw a shooting star, and the Milky Way was magnificent.
When we're in Camden for Thanksgiving, I think I'll go out into the pasture away from the lights and have a good star gazing.
Little Miss Lauren will probably keep people waiting all her life. She was due May 7, so LBeau and I had our trip to Annapolis carefully planned. We would leave Birmingham on May 13, get in a couple of days visiting my cousin in Accomac, Virginia, move on to Annapolis to see Brent receive his master of liberal arts degree from St. John’s College, and most importantly welcome our new granddaughter.
Wrong. By Monday when it was time for us to head back to Birmingham, she had still not made her appearance. We left Annapolis at 5 a.m., planning to make the return trip in one day and knowing we needed an early start to get around Washington, D.C., without traffic delays. By mid-morning we were sight seeing along Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park when Brent called to say that they were headed to the hospital.
For more Pink Saturday posts, be sure to visit Beverly at How Sweet the Sound.
So many of you had questions about the pictures of the Cahaba lily that I posted for last week’s Wordless Wednesday that I decided a follow up with words is in order. Hymenocallis coronaria is the proper name for the plant that is commonly known as the Cahaba lily. The name comes from the Cahaba River, the longest free-flowing river in Alabama.
The Cahaba Lily Festival is celebrated each year in West Blocton, Alabama, on the last Saturday in May, which will be May 30th this year. My friend Becky and I dragged our husbands to the festival one year, where I took the pictures that I posted on Wordless Wednesday and that are posted here.
And for more Outdoor Wednesday posts, be sure to visit Susan at A Southern Daydreamer.
(Well Maybe Just a Little)
LBeau and I are in Annapolis for our son’s graduation from the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College. On the way up we stopped off in Accomac, Virginia, on the Eastern Shore for a visit with my cousin Mary and her husband Ron.
Mary and Ron live in the old Accomac Hotel, which was built in 1922. In 1990 I took my three boys to Virginia, and we spent a couple of nights in Accomac with Mary and Ron. It was June, and the Chicago Bulls were playing the Detroit Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals of the NBA Playoffs. The boys wanted to watch the game. Mary and Ron didn’t have a TV.
Not all was lost, however. Being the handy guy that he is, Ron dug an old black and white television out from somewhere, fixed the wiring, and with the help of some rabbit ears, the boys got to watch the game. The thing that they remember most, however, was not who won the game but that Ron didn’t know who Michael Jordan was.
Flash forward to 2009. When we arrived in Accomac at the hotel, I told LBeau that it didn’t look like much had changed. Mary had added some flower beds, but from the outside the old hotel looked pretty much the same. Until we walked in the back door, that is.
This week I decided it was way beyond time to take a break from blogging, reading and work to clean out my refrigerator. In fact, I am ashamed to admit that I can’t even remember the last I cleaned it out. It’s been so long that I had forgotten some of its features.
It took me a good half a day to get my refrigerator spic and span, but when I was through it looked like this.
I received an email from a friend this morning that humorously detailed the adventures of a woman in a public restroom. I had read it before, but I enjoyed revisiting it. It reminded me of some of my own observations and pet peeves about public restrooms. Here are a few:
1. My mother taught me at a very young age how to cover the toilet seat with toilet paper. This has several advantages. First, it forces you to check to see that there is indeed toilet paper in the stall. Second, it's quicker than situating the special seat covers that are sometimes found in public stalls. Third, you can then sit on the seat and not have to perform the "hover" move.
2. Whoever invented the paper toilet seat covers needs to go back to design school. These come with the center hole partially cut out, but you have to finish tearing it apart before placing it on the toilet seat. This often results in the whole thing falling completely apart, which means you have to throw that one away and start over.
If you do manage to get it separated, you are left with a flap that dangles down into the water once you place it on the toilet seat. That flap gets wet, and water wicks up onto the portion you are sitting on, resulting in a wet bottom. Why not package these things with the hole already cut out? In the meantime, just cover the seat with toilet paper.
The women's restroom at the Birmingham Airport used to have toilet seats that were covered with a plastic sleeve. The push of a button would dispense an entirely new, never used portion of plastic sleeve. I thought this was a great idea, but unfortunately the last time I was at the airport, I noticed that these seats had been removed.
3. Speaking of toilet paper, I wonder who invented the toilet paper holder that doesn't roll and only allows you to pull off one small piece of paper at a time. That person should be severely reprimanded. I'm sure the idea behind that invention is a paper saving measure. You get so frustrated trying to get enough paper that you just give up. However, I have noticed that when this type of paper holder is installed, lots of little squares of toilet paper collect on the floor. I would guess that more paper is wasted than saved. This reminds me of the "low flush" toilets that "conserve" water, but you have to flush them three or four times just to get everything to go down.
4. Why are there often hooks on the back of the door of every stall except the handicapped stall? I would think a handicapped person would appreciate a place to hang her purse just like anyone else. Some of us once had a discussion about whether we felt guilty or not if we used the handicapped stall. The consensus was that it was perfectly okay to do so if there was not a handicapped person waiting in line.
5. Paper towel dispensers in public restrooms are usually installed by men who are almost 7' tall. How do I know this? It's simple. When you walk up with wet hands to grab a towel from one of these dispensers, you have to reach up so high that water runs down your arms and gets your sleeves wet. It would be nice if paper towel dispensers were located right by the exit door. Then you could grab a towel, dry your hands, open the door with the used towel and then throw it in the trash can, which should be conveniently placed nearby.
A friend once told me that a doctor who was cautioning about the dangers of germs in public restrooms told her always to use a paper towel or other paper to open the door when exiting the restroom. He said that if there was no trashcan nearby to simply throw the paper on the floor. Maybe someone would get the hint. Of course, you could always just take the paper with you and dispose of it later.
6. One positive observation. On a recent trip to the airport in Amsterdam, Larry and Wayne confirmed that the urinals in the men's room do indeed have a fly painted in the bowl to improve a man's aim.
In spite of my complaints, I'm thankful for public restrooms when I need one. After all, I could be heading to the outhouse with my corncob or Sears catalogue or to the woods with my shovel.
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