The Gypsy Prom

There I was in the thrift shop today..... looking at all the shelves to find things to bring to my space at the antique shop (the shelves in my space continue to have empty spots each time I go in there, so I know things are selling...... customers are finding just that one little thing to add to their collections).

But... back to the thrift shop...... while I was looking at the old cookbooks, the ladies at the register were talking about "The Gypsy Prom" which is coming up soon. Over the weekend, they were inundated with women looking for rhinestone-studded dresses, vintage sparkling gowns, long scarves, flashy jewelry-- all to make them look like a proper gypsy.

I'd never heard of The Gypsy Prom so of course I had to ask...... it was the idea of a woman in one of the small towns around here...... they either have a live band or an endless stack of country music CDs, and everyone who comes has to be dressed up as if they're going out on the town, or to a prom. And where do mostly all over-the-top prom dresses end up? At the thrift shops..... so that's where every gypsy-wannabe was shopping this past weekend.

While I was in the thrift shop today, a woman bought a mint green tulle dress with rhinestone flowers all over the bodice and back..... the tulle dress looked like a enormous Mint Julep had exploded all over it..... the woman was thrilled because the dress fit her, and she couldn't wait to get home and try on the dress with her western boots. (I guess Texas gypsies wear cowgirl boots under their gowns?)

So during the drive back home from town, I kept thinking about this Gypsy Prom idea...... and what a great idea for a party. We could do an annual Gypsy Prom right here.... everyone would have to dress in some outlandish over-the-top rhinestone-studded dress or gown...... or any such outfit that would make a woman look and feel like a gypsy. And of course, we would need to have a crown for the best-dressed-- the Queen of the Gypsies. My mind is not going to let this go. I'll have to figure out the best time of the year to have such a party. I wouldn't want to interfere with Halloween, and that sort of party would be totally out of place during Christmas time..... I'm wondering if a Gypsy Prom Valentine's Party would be good...... or maybe keep Valentine's Day just as it is, and do the Gypsy Prom in the Spring.... the possibilities are endless. Wait till my husband hears this idea... he'll know for sure that I've lost my mind.

How many days?

Just in case anyone is interested........... as of today, there are 89 days till Christmas. (Which of course will go by in a heart-beat.)

I was talking to (eMailing) my cousin F a couple of days ago, wondering out loud why the stores are blending three holidays into one-- Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. (HallowThankMas?) She said that the retailers don't want to be keeping their holiday items in the warehouse or in the back of the store when those items could be out on the selling floor, especially for the people who receive their Christmas Club checks in early October. In September, when all the parents (mothers, mostly) are going back into the stores looking for school clothes and supplies, out will come the Halloween items.... so of course, while the parent is looking for notebooks and pencils, the kids are looking at masks and costumes.

And with such a short time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I guess the retailers feel that they may as well just get all the turkey-stuff out there with the Christmas decorations. After all, how many turkeys can one person buy anyway? In our own house, I don't really decorate for Thanksgiving..... I have a few very pretty porcelain turkeys that I use for a Thanksgiving centerpiece on the dining room table, but by the time my husband is carving the turkey on the kitchen counter, the entire house is filled with decorated trees, happy angels, smiling Santas, and jingle-belled reindeer. (In the first place, I don't think turkeys are very pretty.... and the few that I have bought over the years passed inspection because they have gentle faces and colorful feathers-- very un-turkey like, if you ask me.)

Anyway...... mark your calendar: 89 days left till Christmas.

The disappearing week....

It has been seven days since I wrote in here..... and I have no idea where the week has gone. Seems like I've been busy with one thing or another.... and there were times when I got busy with one little thing and that led to three other little things and before you know it, half of the afternoon is just gone.

We're in the midst of better weather...... not so oppressively hot.... the temperature hasn't been past 98 degrees in about two weeks now. And even these mid 90-degree days feel cool and comfortable, if you can believe that.

We're still walking every morning...... J, J, and me.... sometimes my husband comes along as well. Down our hill we go... around the bend of the next part of the road, up the hill further down, around the bends near the still-dry creek... and then we're on the flat part of the road. Walking back is best-- the uphill parts are down-hill... much nicer for walking but by then we're mostly wide awake so it really doesn't matter. From my driveway to the end of the county road and back is about three miles, so it's a fairly good walk for that time of the morning. We've been adjusting our leaving-time as the sunrise gets later. Before we know it, we'll be turning the clocks back one hour and we'll have to readjust the starting time again.

I've been spending time making Halloween cards.... love to make cards...... all these boxes of pretty papers and layered embellishments..... out they come for all the holidays, and out comes the box of double-sided tape (less messy than paste) and before I know it, I have a batch of cards to send to my cousins up north. And, of course, a card to Aunt Dolly, who got me interested in making cards before I started first grade.

Aunt Dolly saved every bit of pretty ribbons, wrapping papers and greeting cards..... into a big box they all went. On rainy days, or on too-hot-for-the-yard days, out that big box would come and she would put it on the kitchen table. She would open the lid of the box and say to me "Make something." And I would...... paper dolls, clothes for the paper dolls, tiny little books fashioned from bits of magazine ads, greeting cards, place cards, or just a little "Happy Tuesday" sign that my grandmother would put on her dresser near the little votive candle that was always there. "Keep your hands busy with beautiful things and you'll make your corner of the world more beautiful as well." I can't begin to count the number of times Aunt Dolly would say that to all of us.

I've also been getting things ready for the Halloween party..... re-arranging decorations for the umpteenth time.... making a pumpkin tree from little branches that fell from the pecan trees (tiny smiling pumpkins are now hanging from those branches).... and I've been counting out candy corn for one of the guessing games for the party (can't have a Halloween party without a vase or jar filled with candy corn).... there have just been a lot of little things that I've been busy with all week long that kept me away from typing. Then, of course, the fun stuff gets interrupted by laundry and cleaning and cooking..... who wears all these clothes and uses all these towels? And who brings all this dust into the house? And do we have to eat again? Didn't we just do that yesterday?

I put Halloween boxes together for my little cousins in Chicago.... books and games and Halloween surprises for them. I try to send a box up there every month or so... there's a holiday in every month as far as I'm concerned, so I can always find little things for the kids.... and they are just at the right age to be excited about getting a package in the mail with their names on it.

And we haven't even mentioned Christmas yet..... which is right around the corner. My 'gift closet' is filled with holiday gifts that I've been finding all year long....... I will need to get busy wrapping and boxing those gifts so they're ready to mail right after Thanksgiving. I hate to mail boxes once December starts..... the post office gets too busy, too crazy, and there's more potential for lost or damaged packages. Right after the Halloween decorations come down, up will go the Christmas decorations..... all the little 'house elves' will come out after midnight and get all of that done for me, of course. Ho, ho, ho!

How many days till Christmas? I haven't counted yet, but I'm sure the number will be less than I would guess.

Rain. Real rain.

Thunder started booming at about three o'clock this morning..... not those rolling freight-train-warning thunder sounds, but sonic-boom sort of sounds that made us jump up out of the bed. Having not heard thunder for almost a year, those loud sounds in the middle of the night sounded like the world was coming to an end.

Within minutes of the first boom of thunder, the rain starting beating against the house. Not a soft drizzling rain that has teased us every three months or so, but a real rain that you could hear crashing against the house and pouring down the rain gutters. Honest-to-goodness, someone-up-there-is-opening-the-clouds rain.

We both went downstairs...... I checked on the birds and the cats, and my husband made himself a cup of coffee (at 3:00 in the morning?) and then he went outside on the porch (at 3:00 in the morning? in the dark?) to watch the storm. (I don't sit on the porch in the dark.... who knows what could be crawling or slithering out there in the moonlight.)

Thankfully, Gatsby came inside last night when I asked him to..... he came in and sat in his favorite chair in the TV room and went to sleep. That cat would have been scared down to his whiskers if he had been outside on the porch when that thunder hit. As it was, when I went into the TV room to see if the cats were okay, Gatsby was under the sofa, Mickey was curled up on his pillow, and Sweet Pea was sitting by the window watching the lightning off in the distance.

My husband sat outside and watched the lightning, listened to the thunder and the rain, and said the best smell in the world was that of wet earth. (We're having homemade pizza for dinner tonight-- he'll be changing his mind about that wet-earth thing.)

The parakeets were huddled up in their cage, feathers touching, heads tucked into the back of their necks.... I'm sure they weren't thrilled with the early-morning weather interruption of their quiet night's sleep, but they didn't seem to be stressed out by the noise. We have a quiet house here unless we're hosting a party..... whatever pets come into this home quickly get used to peace and quiet.

At four o'clock, my husband was still out on the porch..... I looked at the clock and knew I had to be up and awake in less than two hours for the morning walk with J & J........ back upstairs I went.... but couldn't sleep because of the loud rain and even louder thunder. Out came the Halloween magazines, and I got another game idea for next month's Halloween party. I love all those Autumn issues I've saved over the years... no matter how many times I page through the articles, I can always find something new in them.

The sun came up a little later than usual this morning..... the rain cooled down the temperatures some, which made the walk very comfortable. Before mid-morning, back up went the thermometer..... it's still Summer in central Texas..... but we have had rain. Rain. RAIN.

Parakeets by the book....

What I really need to do is quit reading the book on parakeets, and stop looking on-line at cages and toys and perches and bells. Both Houdini and Bluebell are now used to me re-arranging the inside of their cage and I'm wondering if they look forward to each new day as a new opportunity for an HGTV program called "For The Birds."

According to the book, parakeets (or any caged bird) will get bored with their perches and toys..... well, I guess I would too if I were stuck in one spot for 24-hours every day. When we first found Houdini in the garden, and then bought Bluebell at PetCo so Houdini wouldn't get lonely, I hung up all the colorful plastic bird toys inside their cage. Tsk, tsk..... you're not supposed to give them all their toys at once.... they will play with everything the first couple of days, then get bored and not touch any of the toys at all. So out came all but one toy. (Funny how these parakeet toys look like those plastic baby-teething toys they sell at Kids R Us.)

Then the perches....... it's advised that you give the birds a choice between thick perches and thin perches..... this way, their little birdie-feet don't get cramped being in one position all the time. So out came one of the standard 1/2"-thick perches that came with the cage, and out I went into the yard to find small branches that had fallen from the pecan trees. Houdini and Bluebell liked the pecan branches so much that I took out the second standard perch and put in more pecan branches. When you look into their cage now, it looks like a small tree is growing inside, with branch-perches going across the width of the cage and thinner branches "growing" from the bottom of the cage towards the highest point of the roof-shaped top of the cage.

I had put a few jingle-type bells into the cage, attaching them to the plastic toys with some string. Tsk, tsk..... their beaks and their toe-nails can get caught in the little teeny openings on those jingle bells....... so out they came, and I'm still looking for bird-safe bells (little brass ones with a clapper on the inside). Until then, the parakeets are bell-less but are making up for it by having their toys alternated every couple of days. (No, these birds are not spoiled.)

The cats are still in the TV room for most of the day. In the afternoon, I put the parakeet cage out on the porch so the birds can get some air and watch the chickens, then I let the cats out of the TV room so they can explore the kitchen and breakfast room, and run up and down the back stairs. Mickey Kitty meows at the top of the stairs because the door is latched so they can't get to the front of the house or up to the second floor, and Sweet Pea meows by the back door because he knows that the birds are out on the porch and he can't get to them. The TV room isn't exactly a cat-prison...... they can look out the big screen doors in there, they have cat-sized furniture in front of the windows, countless toys and pillows..... plus they have their own private bathroom which is huge...... that wing of the house has become more of a cat play-room than a people TV-room. (No, the cats are not spoiled.)

At least three or four times a day, out comes the broom (with me attached to the handle) so I can sweep up the seeds that Bluebell spits out of the cage. The parakeet food has all sorts of seeds in the mixture, but when Bluebell gets to one he doesn't like, he spits it out-- out on the floor, not back into the dish or onto the bottom of the cage. (Picky, picky.)

According to the book, parakeets develop different personalities.... they are not all the same. With our two, Houdini is quiet and neat and inquisitive. Bluebell is forever chirping, forever grooming Houdini, trying to set a record for seed-spitting, and always trying to rearrange the pecan branches with his beak. Bluebell has successfully dislodged two of the branches..... one landing on the floor of the cage, the other one being pushed right out of the cage. Translation: he didn't (for whatever reason) like those particular branches. Result: I threw those away, found two new ones, washed and dried them both, and made a different arrangement in the cage. Bluebell seems to approve. (Shades of AngelBoy, my still-missed blue-eyed cat. Come to think of it, Bluebell is the same shade of blue that AngelBoy always loved. Coincidence or not?)

September Summer...

.... it is still over 100 degrees on most days, and we haven't yet seen any rain. Wild-fires are still burning in parts of the state, but the winds have died down some so the fire-fighters have been able to keep them more or less under control. 'More or less,' because all it takes is one little breeze hitting one tiny still-burning ember, and the flames will be reaching for the sky again.

The chickens are back to laying eggs on a regular basis... both Scarlett and PittyPat have been laying eggs every day. The weather is still too hot for Audrey to bother with laying eggs, and Prissy doesn't seem to realize that after sitting in the nesting box for an hour, there is nothing in the bottom of the nest to show for her time spent there.

Our friends J & J have had a wild turkey nesting in their garden for over a month. At last count, the turkey is sitting on ten eggs. And she's been sitting, and sitting , and sitting.... for weeks now. They close up the garden gate at night, open it up in the morning, and J & J have provided fresh water and food for that lucky turkey-mama. I was up in their garden a couple of weeks ago, taking care of the locking and unlocking of the gate while they were out of town..... and I got a little too close to the nest for the turkey's liking...... so close that she hissed at me. If I hadn't seen that turkey open her mouth and make that sound, I would have sworn there was a huge snake in that garden. I had no idea that turkeys could make that kind of sound. They don't know if those eggs are fertilized or not, but it won't be too long now till J & J find out if they're the proud grandparents of ten baby turkeys, or they're just the proud recipients of ten turkey eggs that have been sitting (and have been sat upon) in 100-plus-degree heat for 35 days.

I've been going into town once or twice every week, bringing stuff to the antique shop, and looking around the thrift and resale stores for items to buy, mark-up, and re-sell. I have also gone through cabinets and drawers and closets here.... finding all sorts of things that I collected over the years and no longer use. My little space in the antique co-op now has an eclectic display of vintage books, pretty porcelains, carved wood boxes, all sorts of collectibles that surely someone will see and then say "I've just got to have that!"

I have been paging through my pile of Halloween magazines...... I save them from year to year and 'borrow' ideas from the decorating pages. In one of the old Mary Engelbreit "Home Companion" issues (I truly miss that magazine), there was a Halloween tree made of dead branches...... well, heaven knows we always seem to have a plethora of pecan branches out on the lawn, so out I went to collect some. I washed them off first (didn't want any fire ants getting into the house) and then put them into a decorative Halloween-ish tin can with black cat lithographs all over it (a thrift shop find). I used bits of newsprint to make the branches stand up the way I wanted them, and then used shredded orange/yellow paper to not only cover the newsprint but to cascade out of the tin. Onto the tips of those branches went small plastic orange pumpkins... the ones with the happy faces that all the stores sell. The result is a cute little pumpkin-tree centerpiece that took minutes to make and just pennies in cost.

The Halloween party invitations are all written out.... I will distribute them the first week of October.... that should give everyone plenty of time to think about a costume. Or not. We've done so many Halloween parties over the years.... not everyone is comfortable dressing up, and that's just fine....... a costume isn't necessary, but it does add to the fun..... and over the years we've seen time and time again that the friends who didn't dress up would get to the party and then wish they had.

This will be our first Halloween party in this house. I'm hoping that everyone has as much fun that night as they all did for our simple neighbors-get-together potluck dinners that we hosted over the summer.

"For Our World," by Mattie Stepanek.

We need to stop.
Just stop.
Stop for a moment...
Before anybody
Says or does anything
That may hurt anyone else.

We need to be silent.
Just silent.
Silent for a moment...
Before we forever lose
The blessing of songs
That grow in our hearts.

We need to notice.
Just notice.
Notice for a moment...
Before the future slips away
Into ashes and dust of humility.

Stop, be silent, and notice...
In so many ways, we are the same.
Our differences are unique treasures.
We have, we are, a mosaic of gifts
To nurture, to offer, to accept.

We need to be.
Just be.
Be for a moment...
Kind and gentle, innocent and trusting,
Like children and lambs,
Never judging or vengeful
Like the judging or vengeful.

And now, let us pray.
Differently, yet together,
Before there is no earth, no life,
No chance for peace.

....... Written by Mattie J. T. Stepanek, September 2001.

Nine Eleven.

That's how the phrase comes to mind when I think of the date 9/11...... the month and day get spelled out in my brain, giving more importance to the significance of the date. Letters are more important somehow than numbers.... spelling something out gives it more meaning, more presence. I don't much like the trend of using abbreviations and acronyms to get a message across...... habits such as those will kill the English language.

Nine Eleven. 9/11. September 11th. No matter how you write it out, the importance of this date lives on, and will forever change the meaning of this September day. I watched part of the memorial services this morning... they read all of the names... I stood there in front of the little TV in the kitchen with the box of tissues close to me. I didn't know any of those people, but watching the heart-wrenching expressions of the readers as the names were called out.... so very sad. Ten years have passed.... it seems like it's been just ten minutes.

My cousin F in NY eMailed me this morning and told me that the Mayor of NYC decided to 'keep church and state separate' and 'not allow' any sort of prayer at the memorial services. My cousin F was livid, as I'm sure most of NY was....... as for keeping church and state 'separate'--- that fact is contradicted every time someone takes an oath of office on the steps of the Capital--- they're taking that oath while placing a hand on a Bible, not a telephone book. So much for keeping church and state separate. This country was based on a belief in a God... and we all have a right to determine just what kind of 'god' or 'God' we wish to believe or not believe in. So where in the official job description of the Mayor of NY does it say that the Mayor of NYC has the authority to determine that no prayer is allowed at a memorial service?! Give us all a blessed break. Bloomberg, you're an idiot. In my opinion.


This afternoon, we had a birthday lunch here for JD and JS.... both of their birthdays are in September.... one birthday was last week, one birthday is this week..... we invited them both, along with husbands of course, and we all had a birthday lunch today. When I called them up to ask them over, it didn't dawn on me that Sunday was Nine Eleven....... I just said Can you join us for lunch on Sunday? When I looked at the calendar, I was surprised that it was the 11th...... how did it get here so quickly?

So as I prepared foods for lunch this morning, I listened to the names being read..... and life goes on, for the families and friends of those who were lost, and for the rest of us as well. "Those who were lost." Such an odd phrase. The ones who were lost were murdered, plain and simple. And after ten years, it still amazes me that a segment of the human population of this planet can be filled with such hatred, such malice, such intent. Heaven help us all, because they're still out there.

I read a book this weekend by Mattie Stepanek.... he's the little boy who was on the "Oprah" show so many times. Mattie had muscular dystrophy for years... and the end of his life story was not a happy one. When Mattie died, Oprah gave the eulogy at the service. In the short time Mattie was on this earth, he truly grasped the meaning of life and wrote three books of poetry and essays. His writing about Sept. 11th deserves a space all its own..... I will type it out in its own entry, which it so highly deserves.

Labor Day weekend.

Here it comes.... and there it goes. I say this every year: Once Labor Day rolls around, the rest of the year just melts away like a snowball.

I'm already in a Halloween frame-of-mind here, with the house all decked out in black cats and orange pumpkins, smiling witches and purple and black Halloween trees. I do Halloween the old-fashioned way.... happy decorations, nothing dripping with blood and gore. If it isn't pleasing to the eye, then I don't want to see it. I've started wrapping up Halloween grab-bags for the party.... little gifts in cellophane bags that are slowly filling up a big basket as I find them.... our friends will be able to choose a Trick-or-Treat gift as they leave the party.

I searched eBay for 'vintage Halloween' items...... lots of stuff out there, most of it expensive, but I just like looking. When I think of all the 1950s Halloween decorations that were up in my grandmother's attic...... we all should have just marched up there and chosen what we wanted before Aunt Dolly moved to Florida. Heaven only knows the fate of those attic treasures.


Wildfires are burning again in parts of Texas.... some just 70 or 80 miles away from us. Our friend J called us after dinner tonight, telling us to look towards the west at the huge white smoke clouds that are rising above the sky in Bastrop. We've been to that little town, and even looked at property there before settling down right here three years ago. Bastrop is another Hill Country town that time has over-looked.... its streets and homes preserved from decades ago, giving you the comfortable feeling that the world (at least in Bastrop and towns like ours) hasn't gone completely modern and crazy and unpredictable. The TV news said that over 140 homes have burned, plus countless livestock have been lost. One woman was crying on the news because the fire department wouldn't let her go back to her property to search for her horse. So very sad. If that doesn't make you count your blessings, then nothing will.


We woke up to a morning that wasn't broiling hot today... clear and crisp, a great day for walking, which we did. When we came home, I turned off the air-conditioning and opened the doors so the cool breeze could come through the screens. The winds today were wicked, though, which didn't help the firemen fighting those fires around the state. No rain in sight...... all the storms churning around in the Atlantic and coming towards the Gulf aren't reaching us up here in the hills. We're as dry as can be.... walking on the grass sounds like you're crushing cornflakes beneath your feet.


Houdini and Bluebell in the birdcage.... happily sharing food and treats, and before I came upstairs just now, they were both side by side on their little swing, closing their eyes and getting ready to sleep through the night. I've discovered that our outside (sometimes mostly inside) cat Gatsby is afraid of the parakeets. If he comes into the kitchen door and the parakeets are chirping and singing, Gatsby will practically glue himself to the wall as he makes his way from the back door to the TV room. This big tough-looking cat afraid of two colorful birds that probably weigh less than two ounces each. You're a funny cat, Gatsby-Boy.


We went to College Station over the weekend...... while my husband shopped at Best Buy for computer things, I found a party store filled with all sorts of decorations, costumes, favors, whatever-you-can-think-of to toss into a party. I can see that store becoming one of our regular stops when we drive up there. What will not be a regular stop is the Italian restaurant where we had lunch that day. The only delicious thing in that restaurant was the sauce, but everything they put it on was mediocre at best, and that's pushing it. I can honestly say I'm an Italian food-snob, being from an Italian family and knowing how to cook Italian dishes...... and that little place was lower on the Italian totem pole than Olive Garden. (Sorry, Olive Garden, but there are no Italian grandmothers in your kitchens.)

Display this, decorate that...

For the past two days, I've either been working on the displays for the shop or working on the Halloween decorations in the house. Lots of work for both, but also lots of fun. And it was so blasted hot outside this afternoon that being inside with the decorations wasn't such a bad thing.

I found yards of lace at one of the thrift shops, and I had fabric remnants from last year's pillow-making adventure...... so I used both to cover and 'soften-up' the look of the wood display shelves in the space at the shop. The shelves, which started out as bare wood and very country-barn-looking, now look shabby-chic and I've been filling each with books, porcelains, decorative items and collectibles. The display shelves are going to hold more items than I originally thought, which isn't a bad thing...... it will just take a little more time to fill them up, but that's part of the fun.

As for the Halloween decorations... I knew that I would have some older decorations that I could sell in the shop, so I got those boxes out of the storage closet earlier than planned..... and while they were out, it just made sense to put up the decorations. I usually get busy with Halloween right after Labor Day, so I'm not really all that early. The house is festive and almost party-ready..... I will put up the larger decorations as it gets closer to the holiday.

One thing about living out here in the hills... we don't get trick-or-treaters..... and I miss that part of Halloween. The kids in our old neighborhood had so much fun with that, and because Houston had a curfew for trick-or-treating, the holiday was safer for the kids and less stressful for the parents because their costumed kids weren't allowed to be on the streets at all hours of the day and night.

We've told just a few of our friends here that we'll be having a Halloween party (with costumes, if they'd like)..... and the rest of our neighbors will be surprised when they find their party invitations in their mail boxes at the beginning of next month. We're hoping that everyone will get into the spirit of Halloween and decide to come in costumes.


The parakeets..... Houdini and Bluebell continue to be content in their cage.... they were grooming one another yesterday and the day before. (Bad-feather days for the birds?) I've noticed that Bluebell is not such a neat bird-- he spits out the seeds he doesn't like-- spits them out of the cage, not back into the seed dish. Houdini, on the other hand, is very neat and tidy. In "The Odd Couple" fashion of the parakeet world, Bluebell would be Oscar and Houdini would be Felix. But they're happy...... and I guess they like watching me sweep the floor around their cage three times a day.