The weekend

We visited some wineries along the North Fork of Long Island Saturday. Good cheap fun. Free music at many places, lovely places to walk and sit and extraordinary people watching. Half the sippers looked like they were probably some kind of style editor at Glamour magazine (You know, that casual chicness that looks exhausting to achieve.) or maybe possibly someone famous but you can't quite place who.

Dita at Handmade Nest asked for a photo of my husband and me having fun on the beach. Here is a photo of my husband having fun. There is no photo of me because I was not having fun. Somehow in the middle of a heat wave, we managed to find the only spot in the entire state of New York that was covered in a chilly mist.

Gone to the beach

We are making our once a year trip to the beach, my husband's anniversary gift to me since he is not a beachy person.

We never make it there until September. But it's still hot (in the 80s) but not too hot. And the crowds are gone.

Images: Daniel Farmer; The Vamoose

Making sauce

Many Italian families in Long Island still make their own tomato sauce. Our friends do it once a year in a big blowout that starts at 7 a.m. and doesn't stop until the last tomato is boiled, mashed, salted, canned and boiled again (about 7 p.m.) by a labor force of Italians, Colombians, Ghanians, a midwesterner or two and occasional drop-ins by Paris Hilton wannabes.

All 40 bushels get a bath in the garage. Some tomatoes get sliced and jarred with basil. The majority go into four tubs in the back yard by the pool and are heated over propane burners until the skins burst. Then they are drained through old lace curtains and sent through two grinders where they are rendered into sauce. The skins go into the garden as compost.

This year no grocery store in town had enough jars, so we drank as much Coke and beer as we could so we could use the bottles.

In the end, we all get a reward for our day's work - a huge outdoor dinner featuring pasta with fresh sauce.

Refreshing

Nothing like some homegrown mint in your beverage of choice.

I got to go in an actual swimming pool this weekend. How did you stay cool?

Weekend

A beeeyoootiful 50th anniversary party. Gorgeous evening. Pretty dresses. Sailboats on Huntington Bay. Many lovely orvey dorveys. Filet mignon. This cake. And . . . the three foot chocolate fountain. Too sick full by then to dip more than five items. Sigh.

Poor girl botox and big nerd glasses

Bangs and nerd glasses look good on her.

After four years of thinking about it, I finally got bangs.

My forehead is huge. I could slap a solar panel up there and power my whole building. And then there are the furrows that arrived all at once in the mid aughts and have been displayed front and center, like dents in the hood. Lots of reasons to get some bangs.

But, of course, I was scarred by the '80s. Back then, if you touched one hair of your bang, your whole hairdo moved because it was decoupaged with hairspray. For me, a naked forehead has been a symbol of naturalness, adulthood and sophistication.

Then I got a little older and the tag of 'adulthood' wasn't so special anymore. Last week, on the spur of the moment, I got the bangs. Saturday, with a group made up of a 14-year-old and a 21-year-old, I was mistaken for a college student.

In other news, big nerd glasses are back.

My mom sent me these bifocal glasses in a bag with a bunch of other stuff. I thought they were an old pair of hers. Or belonged to someone's grandmother. Then I remembered they were mine. I wore these when I was 13 years old with a Dorothy Hamill haircut and a mouth full of braces. I looked 90 when I was 13 and 21 when I'm 42. Maybe I'll look 13 when I'm 90.

Anyone old enough to have lived through big glasses once is wise enough not to do it again. Right?

Mr. Bromeliad, of course, always rocks the look.

Words to live by

"I never go to designer showrooms. I'd much rather dig through a garage in Brooklyn."

Interior designer Ryan Korban, as quoted in Lonny

Image via The Selby

Words to live by

"I do take a special pleasure in thrift, a talent I get from my father. About this talent my mother said, 'Harry's hobby is not spending money.'"

Meryl Streep, as quoted in Glamour magazine

Words to live by

"A . . . friend told me that if you're feeling stressed, get rid of the stuff you don't need and finish the things you've started. So I finished the ice cream and vodka in the freezer and I'm feeling lots less stress."

Julia Ormond, as quoted in More magazine

In line with the above, I've decided not to keep the kitch Moroccan lanterns. It's amazing how blogging about something can crystallize your thoughts. Thank you all for your comments. Gwen, I'd send them to you in Germany but there's probably some law against international trafficking in ornate pendant lamps.

Outside it looks like someone is hurling handfuls of goosedown from heaven. If snowed in, I plan to rearrange large pieces of furniture and throw out lots of stuff.

Is it snowing where you are? Will you be doing similarly?

Caught on camera

A little story . . .

I came home from work Monday, piddled around the foyer, hung my coat, washed my hands and finally turned the light on in the kitchen. There on the counter was this camera (a Fujifilm FinePix) and a note from my honey.

The phone rings. It's my honey.

Me: "Thank you! Thank you!"

Him: "Stop scratching your butt."*

He's calling from the deck where he's been standing in the rain for at least 20 minutes waiting for me to come home so he can see me surprised.

Anyhoo, this means . . . better photos for you blog readers.

For more examples of the many ways Mr. Bromeliad surprises me, see this, this and this. Aren't unexpected gifts the best?

*For the record, I was tucking my shirt into my waistband with my back to the window.

Words to live by

"There's nothing better than another day."

Max Edward, age 4, November 13, 2009

You shall find my will on an autumn leaf

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Travel, guests, and my dear grandmother passing away at the age of 89. I talk about her here and here. In her will she quoted part of the following poem:

Last Will and Testament

by Marion Doyle

Since I was deaf to "Good Advice" -

"Toil soon and late and save"

And Providence did not knock twice,

I've little left to waive

Neither gold nor land nor roofs

To give you at my going,

But I leave you the echoes of Pegasus' hoofs -

And a debt - or two - I'm owing.

You shall find my will on an autumn leaf

(A poet's will - here's ample warning!)

Properly done, though crisp and brief,

Upon some bright blue morning;

Stating:

All former testaments

I here and now rescind

And I leave you the hawthorn trees in bloom

And the unrest of the wind.

Glam gram

While home we looked at some old pictures with my grandmother. This one's not the clearest but it did capture good times with grandma. This is on her vintage ski boat Old Woody. I'm barely 4, and she's in her 50s but could still slalom water ski. She tanned dark every summer. (Still does.) Suntan lotion, the low roar of the motor as the boat dipped and strained to yank another skier out of the lake, a dripping wet ski laid on its side to dry, little passengers wrapped in big beach towels with their hair whipping in the wind.

I never really picked up skiing, but I definitely inherited her love of water. Also a fondness for animal prints.

Mom and Dad's yard

Dear Loyal Blog Readers:

Sorry for the lack of posts over the past week. I took an unexpected trip home and I'm still catching up. In the meantime, here are some pics of my parents' back yard, lush green with spots of intense pinks and purples, wild in its late summer glory. Their deck makes mine look like a parking lot.

Country

We took a quick trip upstate for our 15th anniversary. Stayed at a friend's 'guest house' that turned out to be a wonky trailer. But it was 1) Free and 2) Spotlessly clean. My fav feature was the Brady Bunch oven, pictured below.

Five years is about how long you need to live in the city in order for the country to freak you out. I lived in the suburbs/sticks the majority of my life, but 15 years in Brooklyn makes me:

• afraid of the dark
• weirded out by silence
• avoidant of dirt
• worried about murderers (who will hear me scream?)
• frightened by bugs and
• disturbed that every person in sight qualifies for What Not to Wear. (How long until I look that bad?)

By day two, Mr. Bromeliad had dispensed with shirt, shoes and shaving, and I had handled snakes. We ate frozen pizza and sat on lawn chairs. (Answer to point 6: about 24 hours.)

See the clock on the oven? That's not digital. That's those numbers that flip like a Rolodex.

An excuse to post a picture of clouds

"Maybe it's important to make a distinction between what gets called materialism and what real materialism might be. By materialistic we usually mean one who engages in craving, hoarding, collecting, accumulating with an eye to stockpiling wealth or status.

"There might be another kind of materialism that is simply a deep pleasure in materials, in the gleam of water as well as silver, the sparkle of dew as well as diamonds, an enthusiasm for the peonies that will crumple in a week as well as the painting of peonies that will last.

"This passion for the tangible may not be so possessive, since the pleasure is so widely available, much of it is ephemeral, and some of it is cheap, or as free as clouds."

Rebecca Solnit, Inside Out

via Anna Krachey, via Me Melodia.

Not sure exactly what she's saying but think I agree.

Also dreaming about this

Between the limp hair and the killer fungus, the humidity around here has got to stop.

See what is about to shoot out of my head here.

Storm and sun and storm

We've been getting pelted with wicked bad storms lately.

Here's a bleary glimpse out our window to the deck during one of them.