"He'll be there between 3:00 and 6:00". He is the refrigerator repair man. One of these days I will write about my refrigerator. The lemon.
Anyway, the hands of the clock edged closer and closer to 6:00. And once again, the waiting window served its purpose.
Remember my post about the waiting window? I wrote it over two years ago and in my last sentence I lamented the need for some new wallpaper. Well, here’s the waiting window today. I love the riot of scarlet and crimson in the paper. I wasn’t exactly looking for wallpaper when I found this, but when I saw it, I knew I must have it.
I seem to throw sidebars into most of my posts. Here’s today’s. We bought this house 40 years ago and I wallpapered the dining room twice before. The first time was in the seventies. Avocado green and yellow floral stripes. Well, I told you it was the seventies. It was actually rather attractive, though I was too inexperienced to realize that when you have an old house, the walls tend to be crooked and broad stripes are not the way to go. This paper was followed in the late eighties with the teal paper in the earlier photograph. Both times I did the entire job by myself. The first time I had a slew of small children running around, the second I was working full time. But I don’t seem to remember the job seeming onerous.
Flash forward to 2009. My plan was to do it all again. When Kate offered to help me, I was delighted. You guessed it. She did it all, while I stood around tired and clueless. I can't thank her enough. It was difficult paper to work with, but it is done and I will never wall paper that room again.
We still have to agree on a rug and I will have to reupholster the chairs, but I smile every morning when I catch sight of this cheerful paper. I still wait by the window once in a while, even if it is just to remember waiting for a husband to make it home from work and for children to creep home in the wee small hours.
I need to lose a little weight. Quite a bit of weight, actually. A lot of weight. If I decide to get serious, I know where to start. I must reactivate my gym membership and spend a few hours on the bicycle, the rowing machine and the treadmill. And I need to watch what I stuff in my mouth. I am pretty sure it is not what I eat, but how much that is the problem. Portion control will be my new mantra.
One thing I will not do is eat this disgusting looking food. I cannot for the life of me see how a person could lose weight—let alone keep diabetes in check—by eating pancakes and syrup, lasagne, chicken salad with mayonnaise, and brownies. Nary a green leaf in sight (except for a ruff of lettuce and a pickle or two) and these foods are being held up as objects of desire!
Perhaps you think this company’s advertising couldn’t get much worse. You are wrong. Here comes the sidebar. Ernie graduated from John Carroll with Don Shula. They were on the track team together, and that association caused us to follow Don’s immensely successful career as a football coach avidly.
He’s been retired for a while, but he suddenly popped up and informed us that a steady diet this food caused him to lose 32 lbs. Mrs. Shula got in on the act, losing 23 lbs. Why am I so upset? The lovely Mrs. Shula doesn’t refer to her husband as “Don” (“Donny?”), but proclaims (click on image), “It’s really important for Coach and me to enjoy our life and our family." Coach! Does she go around saying, “Coach, here’s your breakfast” or, “Coach, it’s time for the party.”
Too much Decadent Fudge Brownie is not a good thing.
I hope I will get a photo of Evelyn in the Dorothy dress I wrote about the other day. Until then, here are some old favorites:
Over the years I've made a number of Halloween costumes. 
There is quite a wardrobe to pass around, so I only made one this year. This one will start its journey around the cousins with Evelyn. Let me show you the pattern. It's a Simplicity pattern and it comes in sizes 3,4,5,6,7, and 8. I made a size 7. Cute little model, isn't she? She's poking at her dimple a la Shirley Temple.There was another pattern starting at a size 8. I did not see fit to buy it and this photo is a bit blurry and shiny—I had to creep into JoAnns with my camera and commit sartorial espionage.
The question for today: compare and contrast these two models and their
dresses and decide which one you would send your daughter to elementary school in.
I enjoy the occasional present: fun when it is something I have expressed a desire for, even nicer when it is a surprise. Several years ago Andrew presented me with a surprise—a book entitled Educating Women, A Pictorial History of Bedford College, University of London 1849-1985. I got my Bachelor’s degree at Bedford and I had always surmised that the names of various buildings and Scholarships were derived from founders of the college and the book proved that to be true, while it traced the history of the college from the beginning, through the war years, through the addition of (gasp) male students to the eventual merger in 1985 with Royal Holloway.
I was thumbing through it yesterday. I am afraid I had not paid much attention to the history of the college while I was attending it. I should have, because the women who supported it financially and with hard work in those early days were fighting for an unpopular cause—the education of women. There were photos of them, most the kind of women we would have uncharitably called old battle-axes. I came across a photograph of the first Principal, Miss Emily Penrose. Here she stands erect and imposing in her pleated shirtwaist. The book is vague about her own degrees—remember it was not until 1878 that the University of London allowed women to take degree examinations, and not until the 1920’s that they were allowed to do so at Oxford, thanks the diplomatic skills of Miss Penrose, who had left Bedford for Somerville College. I do know that she taught Ancient History. 
Why did I notice Miss Penrose's photo? Yesterday the Wall Street Journal interviewed a trio of experts on the reasons why America lags behind in Math and Science. I wasn’t going to read the article, but this photo of a radiant blond caught my eye. Who is she? Amy Gutman, president of the University of Pennsylvania.
What a difference a century makes.
Surely gold is gold is gold is gold . . . That being the case, why does it matter who I buy gold from? I really don't get it.
It goes without saying I wouldn't buy it from some guy who was last heard of breaking into an office suite in the Watergate.
