Unwind Your Life

unwind June 9th, 2009

Remember way back in March…when I wrote about my love for violets?  I thought I’d give you a little update on how mine are doing so far…a visual update of course!  Now you know how I like to float them with candles in a lovely bowls!   Well, I’ve been dong plenty of that…with plenty of bowls around the house!  LOVE it! It’s sooooooooooo The Fragrance of Her Name-ish!

There are probably pansies and violets pressed beneath or in nearly every heavy book I own, too!  The other day, I opened up an old book (I had discovered I had two of the same edition of Alfred Noyes Poetry and was thinking I really only needed one…), when…voila!  A lovely little bleeding heart blossom was pressed there in the pages!  I haven’t had bleeding hearts (much to my heartache) since we left Washington!  It was way fun to find it there!

So…just for fun…here are a few of the hundreds and hundreds of violets photos I’ve taken (and need to sort through) this spring!  I just pulled a couple out of my file!  But aren’t they adorable?  What are you doing with your own?

• Ambiance of Serenity , Details in Decor
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unwind June 6th, 2009

I am sooooooooo behind on everything!  Will I ever catch up?  For now…as far as the winner for the little contest this week…I chose Christine J….because even though nobody who entered answered the third question spot on…Christine guessed my second choice to cast as Saphyre Snow…Kristin Kreuk (Who…ironically…played Snow White in a really bad movie version of Snow White a few years back)!

I have to be honest with you…I would cast Megan Fox as Saphyre Snow!  The first time I ever saw Megan Fox I thought, “She looks just like Saphyre!”  I always have my characters in my mind…like memories of real people…and Megan Fox stunned me with her similarity to Saphyre Snow!  I will tell you that the majority of the contest entries chose Emmy Rossum as who I would cast!  How fun!  Still, Megan Fox is my choice!  What do you think?

• This and That
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unwind June 2nd, 2009

….I thought I’d just go ahead and pop up my Just For Fun contest of the week!  I should be back on track tomorrow…but for now…here’s the contest!  Instead of posting your answers to the trivia questions here…go ahead and e-mail them to me at marcialmcclure@cs.com!  The groovy chick (or dude) who offers the most thorough answers will win a copy of a fun little book I read recently…”To Catch a Pirate!”  Have fun!

1.  How well do you know me?  Name the 2 letters of the alphabet I seem to (subconsciously) like the most when it comes to naming heroes!

2.  In 1857 a biography of Charlotte Bronte was published…written by her dear friend.  Who was the author, and what other wonderful book (also a 2004 movie) did the author see published in 1854?

3.  Based on appearance alone…who would I cast as “Saphyre Snow” if the book were ever made into a movie?

a. Emmy Rossum   b. Megan Fox  c. Kate Beckinsale  d.  Kristin Kreuk

Have fun!  See you tomorrow!

• This and That
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unwind May 29th, 2009

As you know…I’m on a real writing roll today!  Have been for a few…thus my rotten lack of posting!  However, I came across something a few years ago…an unusual treasure from my childhood!  I remember watching this as a little girl…on TV…probably only a few times!  However, it stuck with me forever and when I saw it available on DVD a couple of years ago…I HAD to have it!  So what if you have to read the subtitles!  I LOVE it!  Originally entitled “Three Nuts for Cinderella,” this Czech version of the story just settled in my young mind!  The DVD title is “Three Wishes for Cinderella” and I adore watching it!

The first video here is a music montage…a summary of the movie!  The second is the ending without the subtitles!  Just for fun…here’s a treasure from my childhood! (If you love it enough…Amazon does have it!)

• A Life Like Anne's , Cherish the Past , Movies and TV , Tradition
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unwind May 25th, 2009

Thank a Veteran today!  Thank any Veteran you see to day…any Veteran you have the chance to!  Although I try to thank our Veteran’s as often as I can…I really try to express my appreciation extra extra extra on Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day.  Freedom is a gift we share here in this country…a gift that is being taken very much for granted.  Americans have forgotten history…forgotten why we enjoy the freedoms we do.  The sacrifices made by others to provide the kind of freedom we enjoy is not understood, nor felt…nor fathomed by recent generations.  Thus, my husband and I have always endeavored to teach our children the history of profound sacrifice in this country.

One thing we did with our children, was to take them to a cemetery on Memorial Day.  Toting miniature flags and flowers, the kids would search the cemetery for the neglected graves of Veterans.  There they would plant their little flags and lay their little flowers…stand over the tombstone or marker and think about the person resting there…the sacrifices they had made to secure our freedom.  This little family tradition helped to instill a sense of appreciation in my children.  If they see a man or woman wearing a Veteran hat…they tear up…their hearts are touched.  They own a wisdom and gratitude that seems to be rare these days.

I’m so grateful to have been blessed with such wonderful, empathetic children.  Their hearts are tender and humble.   And today I know where their thoughts and hearts are lingering…where my own are lingering….where all thoughts and hearts should linger today.

My personal thanks to all those brave men and women who have made the great sacrifices necessary…the sacrifices that enable me and my family to live in such full freedom!

• Tradition
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unwind May 20th, 2009

You know how I love these little “Just for Fun” contests!  So…here’s another one!  The winner receives a copy of “Scarlet Moon,” a YA retelling of a fairy tale that I just think is darling!  Just be the first to post the correct answers to the three questions below in the comment box and you’ll win!  If you aren’t the first to post correctly and win…post anyway and I’ll plop your name in my hat for future prizes!  Here goes!

1.  How well do you know me?  Who played Mr. Rochester in my favorite movie version of Jane Eyre?

2.  How did the author of “Gone with the Wind” meet her early death and where?

3.  (I know this one is a wild guess…but it’s just for fun!)  Who would I most likely cast as Lochlan Rockrimmon if The Highwayman of Tanglewood was going to be made into a movie!?

a.  David Boreanaz      b.  Gerard Butler     c.  Hugh Jackman    d.  Christian Bale

• Fragrance
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unwind May 19th, 2009

I LOVE old books!  There’s just something about old books…the tattered pages…the vintage illustrations…an inscription penned by a loving hand.  I just love them!

Years ago I began collecting old books.  My mom loved old books, too!  She’s the one who really introduced me to the beauty and wonder of old books.  She used to work in downtown Albuquerque…near the main public library.  The main library had a little used bookstore downstairs.  Run by “Friends of the Library,” the store sold used books that had been donated from estates, etc.  This is where my mom first started finding old books.  Furthermore, this was years ago before all the antique dealers jumped on the “old books” bandwagon, too.  Mom would visit the little bookstore every few days on her lunch hour…searching for treasure in the form of books for my kids, herself, and/or gifts.  Many of the estate-donated books “old books.”  Mom would find real treasure among these older books!  Things like a 1903 copy of “The Merchant of Venice” by Shakespeare, a rare 1940’s edition of Jane Eyre…things like that.  Just wonderful little books that secreted far more interesting tales than the stories printed on their weathered pages.

Anyway, every year, the “Friends of the Library,” held an enormous used book sale…and I do mean ENORMOUS!  It was held at “The Pit,” which is the University of New Mexico basketball arena!  It seats…oh, I think 20,000.  The “Friends of the Library” would line the floor of The Pit, as well as the level walkways, with tables and tables and tables of used books!  A reader’s paradise, let me tell you!  AND there was always a little section of old books.  Off in one corner there would be just a few tables piled with these old books…forgotten treasures that no one appreciated.

Naturally, my mom and I hit the sale every year!  We’d head straight for the old books section and you never saw two more excited or motivated treasure hunters!  Oh, the booty we found!  Books from the 1870’s through the 1880’s were my favorite!  I always found several wonderful little treasures…and here’s the kicker…the books were priced anywhere from .25 cents to $2.00!  It was incredible!  Poetry books are among my favorite and to find an 1880 collection of Tennyson, Woodsworth…or even “Favorite Poets” was just the most wonderful thrill!  Looking back, I can’t believe the stuff we found!  I paid .50 cents for a book of poetry published in 1812…one dollar for an pristine copy of Longfellow’s “Evangeline!”  It was wonderful!  I’ve got a copy of “The Lady of The Lake” that I purchased for one dollar…I saw the same edition in worse shape on e-bay the other day for $269.00!  It was wonderful!  And we didn’t care how much the books were really worth…we just loved them, treasured them…liked to sit around and imagine where they’d been,who had loved them and read them!  It was fantastic!

Well, naturally, the antique dealers began to get wind of the old books at the yearly sale.  I remember one year we went…having arrived pretty early and standing in line for an hour waiting for the doors to open…only to find that the antique dealers were there as well.  They snatched up everything!  Didn’t wait to browse…didn’t care what the titles were…just snatched up all the old books so they could resell them in their stores.  This led to another consequence…that being the “Friends of the Library” realizing how monetarily valuable the old books were…thus, they started pricing the books closer to their true monetary value.  Alas, the fun was gone and Mom and I stopped going to the sale.

However, that did NOT stop me from searching the dark, dusty corners of antique stores for treasure!  Though I’ve never found treasure for the ridiculously low prices the old “Friends of the Library” sales used to offer…I have found a few things to add to my collection.  It’s much harder and I’m much more selective…still, I LOVE old books!  There scattered here and there throughout my house.  At any given time you can easily pick up a book of Tennyson’s work and linger over “The Lady of Shalott,” or leaf through vintage pages of an Alfred Noyes collection and ride away with “The Highwayman.”   Maybe an inscription would catch your eye…“Merry Christmas, 1885,” or “Joe Hennessee, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, 1903,” or (one of my favorites) “As a prize for an essay written on St. Patrick, 1921.”  I just love them!

I realized (while writing this blog) that old books need help in photography well…obviously!  I need to catalog my collection…for myself and my kids!  So I will take the time to take some beautiful photos of them…try to preserve they’re wonder as best I can….for they are beautiful!

So many things of beauty are being lost!  Old books are one of them!  Pick up an old copy of Tennyson somewhere…for just $3.00-$5.00…carefully leaf through the weathered pages…read the penciled notes in the margins written by a student 100 years ago!  It sharpens your perspective and appreciation of the past.  I just LOVE old books!

• A Life Like Anne's , Cherish the Past
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unwind May 15th, 2009

Sorry to have been so quiet this past little while!  I was out of town!  But…I’m back now…so I’ll see you soon!

• Fragrance
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unwind May 5th, 2009

I was going through some old files today…and…remember how we were talking about writing “snippets” yesterday?  Well, I found this…and even though I don’t know if this really counts…I thought I’d share it with you!  Warning…it’s silly!  Just right for unwinding today!

Cleaning the Bathroom
Otherwise Known As: The Flaming Heads of Housework

Bathroom cleaning is not my activity of choice. Still, it has to be done. And so, a couple of years ago, there I was…cleaning the upstairs bathroom, the one adjoining my bedroom…just a cleaning away. Soft Scrubbing until my little heart was content. (Actually, I was grumbling and complaining the entire time.) Anyway, there was a little, footed, heart-shaped, ceramic candle holder, complete with a lovely, scented, two-wicked candle within, sitting on a white doily, on a forest green towel (doubling as a tank cover), on my toilet tank. Well, as candles do, this little candle had accumulated a bit of dust and as I was carefully dusting it, I broke off one of the tender wicks. Now, as any scented candle-lover knows, once you’ve broken a wick, it’s murder trying to get the candle to stay lit afterward. But I loved this little candle! Therefore, I lit the wicks and set it back on the toilet tank (so that I could re-light it as needed) while I finished up the joyous, ‘cleaning of the bathroom’.
There I was, whistling while I worked, scrubbing the counters, the toilet bowl, etc. And then it was time for the floor. As I was bent over the toilet seat, scrubbing the small piece of floor between the wall and the toilet bottom, an odd, “sizzle, crackle, sizzle,” noise, followed shortly by the undeniably familiar scent (rather stench) of burning hair.  It was the same scent I’d smelled a few years earlier when I had risen early one winter’s morn, having forgotten to turn the thermostat up prior to retiring the night before, to a chilly house. Well, we all know, no matter what the instructions on your gas stove read…i.e. ‘Do not use stove as an alternate heating source,’ your first inclination when you’ve let the house get too cold, is to turn on the gas stove burners and stand before it, warming your hands over the open flames while the waiting for the furnace to fire up. So, there I stood, rubbing my hands together over the stove flames, when suddenly the all too familiar stench of burning hair reached by nostrils.

“Hmm,” I thought. “I wonder where that all too familiar stench of burning hair is coming from.”

Suddenly, I noticed the strange, “sizzle, crackle, sizzle,” noise coming from the vicinity of my arms. Sure enough, the tiny hairs on my arms were pretty much gone, except for a few valiant ones, which had curled tightly into tiny, seared knots of what was once a hair.)

Thus, as I continued to clean the bathroom floor, I could hear the sizzling, smell the foul stench of burning hair . Finally, I stood up and glanced down at the candle still burning on the toilet tank. It seemed fine and I couldn’t fathom where the smell and noise were coming from. Everything seemed in order. Until the sizzling got louder. I turned to look in the mirror. As I caught site of my reflection in the mirror (looking a bit like Michael Jackson during the infamous Pepsi-commercial-hair-caught-on-fire incident of the 1980’s) I thought simply, “Ahhhhh! My hair’s on fire!” Oh, it wasn’t a flaming inferno, by any means. Just a wee breath of a fire. Still, “Stop, drop and roll,” was driven completely from my mind and all I could do was hop around the very clean bathroom, smacking myself on the head, an occasional yelp emanating from my voice box, until the sizzling stopped and the stench of burning hair dissipated.
You know…it’s funny how people (specifically hair stylists) expect there to be some dramatic explanation to the charred condition of your hair when you go in the next day to have the burnt area trimmed. Well, sure I’d only been in for a hair cut three days before….but obviously I had been cleaning my bathrooms since then. Hello?

• Fragrance
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unwind May 4th, 2009

I’ve been a little bogged down this week…12 hour work days…leaving not a lot of time to unwind.  I’ve also been lamenting that fact that I’ve never kept a journal!  How I wish I’d written things down…little experiences, big events, just thoughts and feelings, etc.  Do you ever feel that way?  I’m certain those of you who are fabulous journalers do not…but maybe even you do sometimes.  So…I thought I’d start a little project…just writing snippets!  I mean, snippets are better than nothing, right?  Just little things like…you know…about bees. Remember just laying in the grass as kid…the blue sky over head…the scent of summer…and the soft, low hum a  bee buzzing nearby?  When I was a kid it seemed bees were everywhere!  I wasn’t really fond of bees…one stung me in the middle of my forehead when I was really little and traumatized me for life!  I always found bees somewhat irritating…you know…they’d buzz around and alight on your root bear can at a picnic…just as you were ready to take a sip…even crawl inside it sometimes!  Flowers were always buzzing with bees…which made it hard for me to find the courage to pick them.  However, now that I look back…now that I so very rarely even see a bee anymore…I kind of miss them. I never in my whole life thought that bees would be a thing of the past…but it seems they are.  Seriously…when was the last time you saw one?  My own children don’t even have memories of bees.  Thus, I think I need to write a snippet…so that when my grandchildren read my snippets…bees will be something they miss…even if they’ve never seen them.

My mother was a faithful journaler for many years…and a wonderful writer of snippets!  Here are a few lovely examples…she wrote:

1.  “Thus, at a very impressionable age, I was transported to the vicinity of my beloved Westcliff and Sangre de Cristo Mountains–land of spaciousness, towering mountains, green verdant meadows, pure white diamond-studded snow; crystal clear streams and lakes; crisp, clean, fresh air; lingering twilights; beautiful wildflowers (especially the  blue columbine, my favorite, and Colorado’s state flower); and the ever quivering tall, slender, white-trunked quakies (Aspen).”

And her thoughts of winter:

2.  “Winter was beautiful with snow, ice, and frost.  Clear, crisp nights when, as the sun set, the sky would go through every shade of blue, from pale blue to sky blue to royal blue to dark blue to black blue, with the last rays of the sun at the sky blue and royal blue states turning the clouds from white to gold to light pink to darker pink to gray.  The stars would appear one by one, silvery, crisp, distinct.  The Milky Way could be seen stretching across the Heavens, and then a crescent or full moon would appear to light up the frost forming in the air and settling on the ground or the frost diamonds resting on the snow of a few days before.”

“Darkness would have set before I got off the bus at night.  I sometimes would walk from the bust stop to home on the snowplowed road with the moonlight glistening on the snow on both sides.  Before I would reach the driveway, I would smell fresh baked bread, the cinnamon of fresh baked sweet rolls, and pinto beans cooking. Ahh!   There’s not a person on earth who ever ate so well on a cold wintry night.”

There is also a paper with just a list of some of my mom’s favorite things:

“Misty days, heavy with clouds…bushel baskets–They remind me of days past when fruits, vegetables, and grains were measured by the bushel, half bushel, or peck. “

Thus, I’m going to start writing snippets…something to help me remember my life, as well as something to pass on to my children!  What do you think?

• Cherish the Past
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