Unstyled Life

My unstyled life isn’t messy or clean or ugly or stunning. Instead, my goal is to create a home that reflects back the spirit and personality of our family. It’s a work in progress. Sometimes the beauty in my life is by accident, other times it’s intentional. It’s there, either way, because when I remember to fill my home with what I love–person, place, or thing–odds are it will be beautiful. Maybe not always appreciated, but always beautiful. If you feel the same, you are welcome to share a link to your own unstyled life in the comments.

I didn’t plan to continue this series into the new year, but I couldn’t resist posting this picture, even though uploading it crashed my computer and left me with a black screen for three hours.

Speaking of unstyled lives, you can’t go into the weekend without reading this. Reading it prompted me to reconsider the end of this weekly series.

Doña Petrona

Doña Petrona (June 28, 1896 – February 6, 1992) was Argentina’s answer to Julia Child and Martha Stewart. From the 20s to the 80s, she was the domestic expert in the eyes of millions. To this day, her massive cookbook entitled El Libro de Doña Petrona remains #3 on Argentina’s bestsellers list five decades after its initial publication. As a newlywed, my mom bought me edition No. 81. I think the publisher is on edition No. 102.

My first brush with La Doña came not from the T.V., an old family cookbook, or from research. It came, appropriately enough, from an insult 28 years ago in my mother’s kitchen. Like Child and Stewart, Doña Petrona had a bit of a personality. She had a commanding presence, one never more evident than in her cooking shows, where all of Argentina watched her lord over her poor assistant, Juanita Bordoy. I may have been ten years old and trying my hand at a pancakes recipe. I may have been bossing my mom around, asking her to fetch me this and that. I may have moved not a muscle to help her fetch said this and that.

She may have dropped a bag of flour on the counter, somewhat roughly, and said, “I AM NOT YOUR JUANITA!”

She may, to this day, call me La Doña when I am in the kitchen.

I may be very, very bossy in and out of the kitchen.

But I will neither confirm nor deny.

When my mom gave me my 81st edition of the book, I decided I would prepare all the recipes. Then I realized it was in Spanish and used metric measurements. All of a sudden, the idea of a decorative cookbook sounded fabulous. I decided to wait for the English version. It’s been 11 years. Sixty years if you count the original publication date. Something tells me an English translation isn’t going to happen. (If I am wrong, and I would love to be wrong, please let me know!)

This means I have no choice but to crack this beast open and cook. I’ll translate the recipes and post them here with standard measure, even though I am now a fan of metric. I’m shooting for one recipe a week, and because the cookbook is the size of a door stop, I’m keeping it to recipes I can afford to make and am willing to eat. Sell aspic somewhere else, Doña. I have my Spanish-English dictionary from college (also decades old–I think it was my mom’s college dictionary), an apron, and family willing to eat anything homemade. All I need is a beleaguered domestic servant and I am good to go! Better call my mom and see what she’s doing on Thursday.

I couldn’t resist. Here are some excerpts from Doña Petrona’s T.V. show. Some moments of awesome to note:

1. The way she makes the Pan Ducle (Pannettone) completely by hand like it’s nothing.
2. The way the announcer breaks in and gives the recipe in the second video. Life before internet! There is no downloading of recipes. You sit your butt in front of the T.V. with a steno pad, a pencil, and a quick hand.
3. The 1960s typeface.
4. Juanita Bordoy’s patience. Or subservience. Yes, it is indicative of pervasive elitist attitude and a clearly defined class structure unfortunately quite common in Latin American countries, but damn. I don’t know how Juanita doesn’t dump a bowl of flour on Doña Petrona’s head.
5. Can you hear the difference in Spanish spoken in Argentina? Listen to to “y” and “ll.” It sounds like a zzh. Instead of “yo me llamo” it’s “zzho me zzhamo.”
6. I’m fascinated by the way Doña Petrona refers to her audience as “Señora” and uses the formal Usted. It’s as if she is talking to the housewives personally, but with respect and formality. This isn’t chit-chat among friends today, but her show was heralded for it’s “folksy” and approachable tone in the 50s and 60s.

Color Stories

Happy New Year! Are you ready to resume life as usual on this first (rainy and cold) Monday of 2011? I am not. I’m having to prod myself into working, as is always the case when I take a break from this space. I’m sure in a week or two I will be back in the swing of posting regularly. Until then, I think I will devote much of this week to sharing my plans for the blog this year. My hope is that once I am done writing about what I am going to write about, I will have something to write about. Zing!

Last year I dabbled briefly in what I called color stories, or monthly pictorials of the Inland Empire grouped by color. It was a short-lived project, one I put to the side once I stopped writing for Inland Empire Family. Although the decision to leave Inland Empire Family was sound (I am open to writing for other websites if it is a paid position or comes with tangible benefits), I found myself missing my monthly pictures. I’m bringing them back with a few changes.

I’ll still be summing up the month by color. This time, I plan to inject personality into the post by including a brief summary of our month as a family. My motivation is completely selfish. I’m not a very good parenting blogger. I’m a good storyteller, and I like to think I am creative, but when it comes to journaling the everyday, I hover at mediocre or, more accurate, insecure and unsure. I have a hard time believing anyone would be interested in our family history (baseball sign ups! homework! visiting family!) when everyone is busy creating a history of their own. My hope is that I will be able to compose a snapshot of our specific family history that I will enjoy years from now in a format that is accessible and interesting. That has always been my hope with my blog: to tell stories specific to our family that reflect the universal themes we all experience. Here’s hoping it doesn’t suck.

To reduce the odds of suckage, I made sure to plan out the year’s color stories as best I could. That’s the secret, you know, to starting and finishing a blogger series. Organization, organization, organization. If I have learned anything, it’s that editorial calendars aren’t just for magazines. If you are a blogger planning a series, do yourself a favor and plan it out through the project’s duration. Don’t assume you will have time to figure out what you are writing about three months from now. Assume you won’t. Assume your life will continue as it is now: busy, hectic, and full of good intentions. I didn’t plan out my color stories last year, and I found myself struggling later on in the year. Several times I found a color that would have been perfect for one month had already been used, and since I wanted each month to have a different color, I was stuck. It was a problem I could have easily avoided by planning out the series ahead of time. A dumb mistake, but I learn quickly.

Here is my color story calendar for the year. Is it anticlimactic to lay it all out beforehand? I haven’t decided. At the very least, it should be fun to see how well I was able to predict the themes and colors for each month. If you follow me on Twitter, you know I spent several hours last night agonizing over all the colors. Decisions aren’t really my thing, you see. I eventually figured it out, and a reader named Andrea took pity on me on my Facebook page and gave my colors fancy names. (Thanks, Andrea!)

2011 Color Stories

January | Wool
The grays and creams of the first month of the year. The weather is making this one easy, as you can see.

February | Scarlet
Reds of all sorts seemed like a good fit for a month most often associated with romance.

March | Daffodil
The first flower of the year usually pokes its yellow head out of the ground this month, although I can’t imagine anything yellow with all this cold we are having.

April | Grass
Surely it will be warm by April. I hope to see plenty of greenery and at least one picnic. Also, if green would like to appear in the shape of money, I would have no objections.

May | Jacaranda
California’s famous(ish) Jacaranda season is starting up. I expect purples, lavenders, and everything in between.

June | Peacock
Pretty blues to mark the beginning of summer.

July | Silver
Ray Bans, men’s watches, and casual jewelry against a California tan.

August | Cotton
School starts again. Pressed oxford shirts, fresh paper, and the bright white of new shoelaces.

September | Russet
Here come the orangey reds of fall…but not in California. This is our hottest month of the year. The only thing orangey-red around here will be the sun, which will feel like it’s suspended 3 inches from our noses.

October | Cauldron
Halloween! Ghouls, ghosts, and the beginning of early nights lend to a month shrouded in black.

November | Cider
Topaz, caramel, and the brown of loamy earth. Maybe? Here’s hoping. It’s California, after all.

December | Gold
Our church uses gold and green Christmas decorations. It is always so beautiful, and this year only compounded my obsession for brass and gold.

Well, that’s it. What do you think? If you live in the Inland Empire and can think of a locale that fits in, let me know. There are a pair of royal blue doors downtown that I am dying to photograph, and I can’t believe I have to wait until June to do it.

Unstyled Life

My unstyled life isn’t messy or clean or ugly or stunning. Instead, my goal is to create a home that reflects back the spirit and personality of our family. It’s a work in progress. Sometimes the beauty in my life is by accident, other times it’s intentional. It’s there, either way, because when I remember to fill my home with what I love–person, place, or thing–odds are it will be beautiful. Maybe not always appreciated, but always beautiful. If you feel the same, you are welcome to share a link to your own unstyled life in the comments.

My gallery wall is progressing slowly, hampered as I am by a small budget, a large wall, and a fixed streak of indecisiveness. Part of the problem lies in the scads of design blogs I read, each one better than the next. I read Trina of A Country Farmhouse, and I want white and sparse. Then I’ll see an interesting collection of art and I am back to square one.

I may be all over the place, but I know I am framing Nico’s painting and adding it to the maybe temporary gallery wall. I exclaimed my love for it the second he pulled it, roughly, out of his cubby. Right then, I promised to frame it and hang it up with the rest of my special art. The mom next to me looked at me and said, “Wow. You are a nice mom, aren’t you?”

Maybe. Or maybe this first school painting will hang on our walls and serve as a reminder of an attitude I hope to adopt. Creativity reigns. Feelings matter. And the passion and courage of youth shouldn’t fade.

p.s. You’ll have to excuse my poor corn plant. Two of the three are dead thanks to last spring’s vacation to Florida. It normally sits between the picture windows and I think the sun cooked it. The tallest one is doing fine, and actually has new growth. I need to re-pot it, but I don’t know if I should (or can) buy two smaller, individual stalks to keep him company. I know they like to be a bit root bound, so some friends might cheer him up.

Unstyled Life

I’m looking forward to the break next week will bring.

Last Thursday started at 3:30am with a sick Nicholas. His stomach was upset, repeatedly, until 3:30 that afternoon. Then came the fever and all that other stuff. He was better by Sunday. This bug is really going around. I’m sure many of you have gone through the same thing.

On Saturday I had to come up with a post idea for Windows Phone 7. And, as silly as it seems, I can’t even describe how stressed I was about it. I wanted it to be something that could stand alone, and after 4 weeks of tossing around ideas I still had nothing to write about. It ended up working out, thank goodness. I had more fun writing and photographing that post than any other here on the blog, even if some people didn’t get it.

But as fun as it was, I also threw out my back. I should have used a tripod for a few of those images (like the sculling one) but I didn’t. Instead, I positioned myself awkwardly and bent using my waist instead of my knees. Stupid.

Tuesday brought my usual “morning after stressful event” migraine.

On Wednesday the school called me to pick up a pukey Mikey. As these things usually go, there was a life lesson wrapped up in a mundane event. At Mikey’s school the kindergartners and first graders have assigned partners from the seventh and eighth grades. These partners act like guides and mentors throughout the year and babysitters during mass. Mikey has had the same partner for two years. He reveres him. Eighth graders look impossibly important to someone under four feet.

Mikey ran to the bathroom, but didn’t quite make it. The teacher’s aide found him outside the bathroom, embarrassed and confused, and had him sit down on a bench while she had the front office contact me. Mikey was sitting there contemplating life when his partner walked by on the way to the bathroom.

“Hey, Mikey, did you throw up?”

“Yes. My mom is coming to get me.”

“Aw, man. That’s too bad. I hope you feel better, okay?” And he patted Mikey on his little shoulder.

This is the story how Mikey told it to me. I wish I was a strong enough storyteller to describe Mikey’s face during the retelling. His pale little lips wrapping around each word slowly, like he was committing to memory what was, to him, an important event. The way he paused after he was done, like he was once again replaying the events in his head, and the way he looked up at me with weepy eyes after the “I hope you feel better” part and pinched his lips together like it was all too much.

“When he said that, mama, it made me feel good, like I was important.”

Heart. Melting. I forget that they are little humans with emotions just like my own. Sometimes they aggravate me, sometimes they make me proud, and sometimes I am overwhelmed by everything I want for them. I do a poor job remembering that they feel all the same things, too. They suffer from pride and revel in accomplishment; feel shame and take comfort in affection; get angry, then forgive. Amazing. I felt lucky for the opportunity to realize something that should have been obvious.

On Thursday my luck ran out. I threw out my back again, although I’m not sure how. Checking email? Buttering bread? Pressing the automatic lock button in my car? My day-to-day is fraught with peril. There’s no telling what did it.

Today, Friday, I have a funeral and a pizza party.

I’m really looking forward to the break next week will bring. I might have already said that.