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19454. wonkers2 - 5/23/2006 3:55:25 PM Great description of the dresser and its contents! Reminds me of Thomas Pynchon's description of an old car and its contents in "The Crying of Lot 49." 19455. arkymalarky - 5/24/2006 2:19:40 AM I'd make it the centerpiece of my house.
When my grandmother went to the nursing home I made sure we were the last to go through her house of all the family, and the things I came away with are all what I never remember not seeing, and it's very cool having them around the house. Everywhere I look I see something from my grandparents' house. My favorite item is a crochet-covered satin pin cushion that Grandmother made. She sold them during the Depression and made good money off of them, even in those hard times. 19456. Magoseph - 5/24/2006 10:46:21 AM Great description of the dresser and its contents!
Yes, Wonk, Mac's writing makes my day--I didn't post anymore yesterday because I wanted people to click on the tread seeing his name and we had a slow day, darn it.
Mac, Flexy is fine, a little sad that he has to give up all the pleasure he usually has working with bushes and dead wood in the spring. He shouldn't be driving the rest of this year because of his arm and eyes, according to the the doctors.
19457. webfeet - 5/24/2006 6:01:34 PM I am always unsure if Flexi is your cat or your husband. But, of course, cats don't drive. C'est clair! 19458. webfeet - 5/24/2006 6:05:20 PM I wonder, as I look at the mouth-wateringly luscious picture of the cake I am making with blueberry filling in Bon Appetit if the editors, a coalition of baking Queens, deliberately put nouveau cooks like myself through a kind of hazing process by omitting little tricks like adding corn starch to the filling, just so we can feel badly about ourselves.
Well fuck you biddies--I know about the corn starch trick..so you and your picture-perfect filling be damned! 19459. webfeet - 5/24/2006 6:11:25 PM The tragedy is that I am out of corn starch. 19460. judithathome - 5/24/2006 7:46:13 PM Here's one you can add to your bag of tricks, Webbie...use arrowroot instead. It makes for a glossier finish.
Of course, you have it on hand, too, to make this work. 19461. webfeet - 5/24/2006 9:36:55 PM Arrowroot? What is that? What aisle would I even find it in?
Have you ever used Dr. Oetker's 'Whip it' --I just discovered this today. It's apparently a 'stabilizer for whip cream' and I need it for a strawberry layer cake that I'm bringing to a barbecue an hour or so away.
That should hold like hairspray on the cake. Nice-n-stiff. 19462. judithathome - 5/24/2006 10:40:22 PM Arrowroot is a white powder extracted from the root of a West Indian plant, Marantha arundinacea. It looks and feels like cornstarch. You can use it the same way you would use corn starch.
You can find it in the spice section of your grocery if it is worth a damn (Spice Islands has some in nice little jars) and if not, at a local health food store that sells spices, foods and such in addition to vitamins.
I like it better than corn starch because I've never, not once, had it make lumps and corn starch? Can't claim the same for it. That could be "cook's error" but I prefer to attribute it to the superiority of arrowroot. 19463. Magoseph - 5/25/2006 10:40:43 AM I am always unsure if Flexi is your cat or your husband.
Web, Flexi is my husband and he chose the Mote ID flexiflange some years ago, the only word that came to his mind and that he heard pronounced while having his teeth cleaned. Butch is an Orphan of the Storm’s Labrador Retriever Beagle Mix who came to us already baptized.
I realize the names Flexi, Butch, and Magoseph do not describe well what we three are—the lovely, charming, oldest non-posting Motie, the ever fiercer and loving dog in the world, and yours truly at your service who, as everyone knows, never cease to talk lovingly and charmingly about herself.
19464. Magoseph - 5/25/2006 11:02:32 AM 
19465. Ms. No - 5/25/2006 4:10:00 PM Webfeet,
You might also find arrowroot in the Baby Care aisle since it's an excellent body powder. 19466. Ms. No - 5/25/2006 4:28:56 PM Mac,
Thank you for bringing my own grandmother to mind with your post about the wonderous dresser. That odd sort of pack-rattiness is a trait that I inherited from her that I didn't fully realize we shared until after she passed away.
When I went home for the services there were, of course, days of sorting through a lifetime of things she had accumulated. I would have thought such a thing would feel horrid --- here my Mamaw had died and those of us left were going through her things and divvying them up like spoils. It wasn't remotely like that, though.
As we wandered through her house --- my mother, her brother, my great-aunt, my brother, my two cousins, spouses and great grandchildren --- we kept coming across things that all of us remembered but hadn't thought of in years. Things that had belonged to my grandfather who died when I was five --- before any of the other grandchildren knew him -- they'd prompt a story from my uncle or my mother or my grandmother's sister.
We talked about people we hadn't thought of in decades as we uncovered Mamaw's keepsakes and we got teary eyed over the things she'd kept as mementos of all of us.
You couldn't leave any drawer un-searched or any box un-opened, though --- even in the kitchen. You'd go through a jumble-drawer and find a little tupperware box with some rubber bands and a band-aid and maybe a mint from a restaurant....and a pair of pearl earrings. My mother couldn't figure it out. Mamaw hadn't seemed to be getting dotty or forgetful even though she was only a week from her 90th birthday when she died.
I had to explain to my mother that those were the things that were out on the counter when Mamaw had needed to do some quick straightening up. I knew this because I do it too. I'll sweep a little clutter into a box with all the good intentions in the world of going back later when I have more time to sort through it and get rid of the things I don't actually need.
I think perhaps I'd better leave a note for my heirs, just in case. ;->
19467. arkymalarky - 5/25/2006 10:14:50 PM Nah. They'll figure it out, just like you did. If not, they don't know you well enough to be rifling through your stuff. ;-) 19468. Ms. No - 5/25/2006 11:32:36 PM I should maybe arrange with a friend to come and gather all the embarassing stuff. You know, make like a pact or something "If I should die unexpectedly before my parents please remove any incriminating evidence from my house so my mother doesn't have a heart attack when she finds the condoms in my bedside drawer." ;->
19469. judithathome - 5/25/2006 11:32:38 PM I had to explain to my mother that those were the things that were out on the counter when Mamaw had needed to do some quick straightening up. I knew this because I do it too. I'll sweep a little clutter into a box with all the good intentions in the world of going back later when I have more time to sort through it and get rid of the things I don't actually need.
Me, too!!
Someone is going to have such fun at my estate sale!
I've already given my son the name of the estate agent he shoud use for our sale; I know her; she's as compulsive as I am!
19470. Ms. No - 5/25/2006 11:58:20 PM I agree, your place is a treasure trove!! 19471. judithathome - 5/26/2006 12:24:21 AM (You've got mail, Missy!) 19472. arkymalarky - 5/26/2006 2:04:19 AM I agree, your place is a treasure trove!!
Yes it is. With Judith's house interesting details just stay in my mind, whatever room I think about. 19473. Neato - 5/26/2006 10:04:15 AM After my mother died last year I found love letters to her from my Dad. But it was my Dad who had kept both sides of the correspondance, in a box in his shed, she would not have known he had done this. Dad was hilariously romantic, her replies were, apart from a couple of lapses, very down to earth. I also found my plaits, they would be 47 years old, in a box, tied at each end with stained blue ribbon. very creepy and moving. She had probably forgotten they were there.
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