Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you. Marsha Norman
I love this site !
Our staircase i
s 32 steps to the front door (which will be replaced, just not this year). The door, not the stairs. I want a nice wood door [ainted red and a security screen door. I need a mail slot in the security door and enough room between the security a door to swing a cat in. This particular photo was taken from the mid flight landing, which is where Jackie sits all day long, waiting for Lisi to come home. 🙂
The steps are hardwood with brass treads. The wainscoting is hardwood and the plaster is real plaster, not drywall. With four dogs, the running and barking just echoes like crazy and makes ME crazy, so I have been gradually collecting pretty and ornate silver picture frames, so I can have photos of early Hanford, along with many of the artifacts we’ve found in the walls, the attic and the basement. I have one of the first Hanford phone book which is a font of information. I have not only the cheat sheet that the phone company used to connect city hall with the whorehouse (our place). I have the wall mounted buzzer where the girls could be buzzed for business.
There are a bunch of other things, as well. A lawyer, Mr. Richard Mills, lived here with is wife (Mrs. Richard Mills) and their son, Dickie Mills. I have Mrs. Mills calling cards, stationary and the brass plates she used to order more stationary, which is sort of neat because despite no running water, there were specific patterns of behavior that ladies were expected to uphold.Even in Hanford. I have her basin and pitcher she used to give herself sponge baths AND the first and only bathtub in Hanford, so despite the fact that the Mr. was a tightwad and her son Dickie was totally nothing b ut trouble, she did have a place in local society. There was a lady who had come down from the bay area with her piano to join her new husband (her name has been lost but not her style) and when she saw that Hanford was a hot dusty wide spot on the side of the road, refused to get off the train until her husband had built her a proper house He did and it is now in Lemoore, where girls who have aged out of the foster care system stay until they have finished school. This educated lady started a book club, a ladies debate club, a poetry clubs well as an organization to help women who had been abandoned by their husbands. She and her circle of friends undertook a vocational education group wherein these women learned how to read and figure first off, then to run a household, tend to the book keeping, trained as a ladies maid or a governess. Once trained by the Lemoore Ladies Aide Society, these abandoned wives could support themselves and their children in good fashion. I have Mr’s Mills’ ledgers; he owned houses and sheds and land and shacks and kept track of every living cent he spent and was owed. He was referred to as a skinflint and I think that was a more complimentary title because he was a hard man. Dickie was what politely could be called a troublesome lad. I’d call him a spoiled brat. He hid the almost daily letters from his teachers in holes in the walls so his mother didn’t know exactly what a screw up he was. When his parents had passed away, he of course inherited all of their lands and properties, including this saloon and bawdy house. He managed to gamble to all away..and the guy who owned it before us had won it from Dickie in a poker game. Dickie was what was called a wastrel back then. He had money, was educated and chose to chase women, spend money like water, drink like a fish and partake in opium, which was not known for helping one to make astute business decisions. In short, Dickie was a fuck up.
I’m not sure exactly what this will look like, but i want to put the photos and frames on the walls, along with some ornant mirrors, just because that will help keep the staircase from being so darn dark and noisy. The barking of the dogs (I have four and sometimes five. When Lisi moves out, I will have two very old dogs who are not all that interested in who all is walking past the front door,
Upstairs, there is a long hallway leading out to the veranda. I found the perfect decal of a tree with many branches and that is where all of my favorite family photos are going. No shelf because the hallway is too narrow for a piece of furniture, even one hanging on the wall.
the random family photos are going. i figure it will take a year to get the photos collected and framed; the tree put up on the hallway and the photos there all collected and framed.
I am looking for a battered clarinet and flute to frame, along with a shadow box of my mother’s violin, a piece of her music, her glasses and a picture of her two brothers (they were maybe 1st and 2nd graders), along with a howling dog. She was not amused at the boys and it shows.
I almost have the needlework cover for the piano bench finished…black background and white stitching, music and lyrics, which just aout put my eyes out. This was one of my mother’s favorite songs and I quite like the way it looks on the piano bench. Oh, I found electric candles to put on during dinner, out on the dining room talbe, the mantle pieces and atop the piano and Eastlake organ. They look so totally realistic! Mine were from Grocery Outlet and I paid 88 cents for a set of three. They give off a wavering very perfect electric glow, I am so tender. My writing friend, Rachel, found them.. They run on batteries.
This particular poster (Hylas and the Water Nymphs) is being framed at an enormous cost that cheap at twice the price. I’m .pretty sure I could feed a third world nation for what it cost. But I’ve only been wanting it for five years, so it has withstood the brief little whim of I-want-this-right-now- so-don’t-get-in-my-way. In fact, all of my giant framed photos have stood around, in the way and in the shade.
Because I don’t have even a clue what people who owned this were thinking. The floor in the bathroom is made of teeny octagonal white with the same shape except that the trim is black, so I have white and a Greek key pattern in black tiles. AND yes.. it is HARD work, crawling around, so I was uber careful, getting the white tiles just exactly right while tapping them into place.. The cupboards are white bead board and I have an old fashioned high boy that is going to be painted in “little black rain cloud”. It is so much painstaking work that I wish i had a real job so I could at least feel like all the devilish details were on the clock. At the very least!
Still have not the faintest idea for curtains in that room, mainly because I love all the light and mostly becasue we are so high up that no one can look into the windows. I’m thinking some really full lace with birds and I am hoping I can find some toile with birds on it as well. Around the jacuzzi tub (which cost almost nothing Some dot com gazillionaires ordered it and their business tanked. We have a lot of some really high end stuff that didn’t follow the dot-comers to their next business idea.
The end for today. I want to gallop and prance around like someone with NO HEADACHE!
Chloeknits 