Browsing Archives for June 2009

On our recent trip to visit my sister-in-law and her family, I took my camera and walked around their sweet old neighborhood.  Their home is the stately mission style house pictured above.

I love older styles of homes and if I ever get the chance, I would love to build another house inspired by a different style of architecture.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

For instance, I would love to build the world’s sweetest brick bungalow.  

The coziness of any bungalow never fails to make my heart go pitter-pat.

Plus, the big bad wolf can huff and puff all he wants but he would never be able to blow my house down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But what about an English Tudor with a vine covered chimney?

I am afraid that I really must build an English Tudor with a vine covered chimney.

What exactly is the point of slogging through the next fifty odd years without an English Tudor with a vine covered chimney?

I will however, need a curl of smoke rising from my vine covered chimney.

…and a butler who lays a fire for me every morning.

 

 

 

 

 

Oh dear!

Perhaps the chimney should be vine-less?

Is a vine-covered chimney so necessary if there is a long shed roof dormer, a curving brick sidewalk, and a storybook slate roof?

I think I have found it.

Yes!

This will be the next house I build…

 

 

 

 

HOLD THE PHONE!

Can I really NOT CHOOSE a formidable four square replete with a prominent overhang and precisely perfectly striped awnings?

This is the one.

This is the next house of my dreams…

End of discussion…

 

 

 

 

 

Oh dear!

But what about a sweet cottage with four dormers and an entrance so welcoming that I almost walked in?

Hello?

Anyone home?

Can I have your house please?

 

 

 

 

But what if I need more color?

Maybe a mission inspired two story with fabulous windows, and massive porch columns?

This is the one.

I must go for some color next time…

 

 

 

 

UNLESS!!!

I can find the fixer upper of my dreams!

Wouldn’t this be a fun one to tackle?

Look at that wrought iron fence!  That side porch!  That beautiful second story bay window!

 

 

 

 

 

I lingered long over this one…

Imagining it in my mind…

Painting it, sanding the floors, caulking the joints, repointing the bricks, stretching new screens, repairing the plaster, stripping off mirrored wallpaper, ripping out the overgrown garden, replacing the insulation… the plumbing… the wiring… the windows…

Wrenching the house off of it’s foundation to repair the cracks…

Discovering a ghastly infestation of termites…

The roof caves in…

The house sinks into the ground…

My marriage breaks up…

My kids go to jail…

I am placed in a mental asylum where I wander the halls in a backless gown…

My hair is matted to my skull in greasy blobs.

Food is dried on my lips…

A handsome man visits me with a pretty woman and a baby and I don’t know who they are…

I escape the asylum and am found living with ferel kittens in the old house I once tried to rescue.

There is a strange old man who wears yellowing t-shirts and paint stained shorts who spends all of his time taping old game boxes back together and planting trees…

He never remembers to put half and half in my coffee…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fearing for my life, I fled the fixer-upper and found a different house…

 

 

 

 

 

 

A house with white clapboards, a green roof, a curving brick sidewalk….

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sweet gingerbready siding on the gabled exterior….

 

 

 

 

An inviting front porch.

An absurdity of windows…

Strangley comforted I thought, This is the house of my dreams…

This is what I will build…

 

 

 

 

It’s the only way to keep my sons out of prison.

The Country Doctor and I are backroad travellers, much preferring tiny towns and forgotten farmsteads to the monotony of the major routes.

 

 

 

 

On a recent trip to visit the CD’s sister in southeast Kansas, we took a backroad and happened across the fantastic sculpture of Bob Dorris.  We slowed down as we passed his house the first time, and I snapped a few photos from the road, but no one was around to ask if we could get a little closer to the dinosaurs.

However…

on the way back home….

We saw two people sitting on the front porch.

I frantically tugged at the CD’s shirt sleeve and said, “We have to stop! We have to talk to them! We have to see if they mind if I take some photos!”

“Okay.” he said as he pulled into their drive, stopped the car and then looked at me expectantly.

“No. Not me!” I stammered. “I am no good at talking to people! You go talk to them!” I hissed. “You’re the one that likes to ask all the questions!”

The Country Doctor sighed deeply and got out of our van.  He approached the two people who were so peacefully settled in on their porch in the cool of a beautiful spring evening and he broke their bubble of serenity.

“Hi… we were just driving by and noticed the dinosaurs and wondered if we could look around?” the CD asked.

The lady on the porch looked up from her book and quietly welcomed our family to explore her yard. She is the widow of the sculptor, Bob Dorris, who passed away two years ago. She watched us head off into her yard and then she went back to her book.

Here is a woman after my own heart I thought.

Bob Dorris, the sculptor of these paleolithic roadside wonders began to make these life sized recreations after he retired from his job as an Air Force engineer.

He used a lot of salvaged parts, but he also formed many of the parts himself.

He was not afraid to work on a very grand scale, his largest sculpture being 300 feet long.

My family walked amongst the dinosaurs marvelling at what Bob had wrought.

I did manage to ask his widow if Bob ever did any commercial work.

“No” she said, “he just built them for his own pleasure.”

I thought about the hours and hours that Bob spent on his wonderful work. The time and the money he must have invested. The pleasure that so many people derive from a drive past his farm or a walk across his yard.

And then I thought about the places that a passion for something… anything can take you.

And the places that it takes the people who enjoy the results.
Passion and inspiration… these two things…

Perpetual gifts…

They never stop bearing fruit.

It really pays to take a backroad once in a while.

There could be treasure that awaits.

Dear Sir or Madame,

At long last, I am putting up my old links today.  If you would like to be linked on the MSFH blogroll just say so in the comments.  I will be moving all my old links from my former blog today as well.  I really have missed keeping up with everyone.  This blog just has not felt like home and maybe it is because I don’t know when Gladys… or Marilyn… or Jean… or Toad… or  Masthead… or Jenni… or Greasy… or Dawn…or Miz Booshay… or Heidi… or Maryam… or Lady Fi… or all my old CDW blog links have a new post up.  I also hope to figure out why my new posts are not displaying properly on other folk’s blogrolls.  

I would of course request that any and all link love be returned unless you are scandalized by the content of this blog and only read in the dark of night, under your covers, with a flashlight, while simultaneously flogging your hind quarters.  I do understand.  Sometimes I scandalize myself, although I have yet to flog myself.  Still, you will have to submit a short essay as to exactly what it is about my blog that you find so objectionable if you want me to link to you without a link in return.  I reserve the right to post your essay and pick it apart with blistering antipathy.  

Also… I cannot perpetually link and perpetually post at the same time.  Any links that come in after midnight on Monday June 1 will be added to the blogroll in agonizingly slow motion.  They will be added, but it will be slowly… agonizingly slowly.  

And then you will be flogged.

 

All my love,

Rechelle