Claudia — Page 1597

At the End of the Day

August 22, 2011 at 8:17 pm by Claudia

Early evening at Mockingbird Hill Cottage.

Riley isn’t doing well at all. I thought we might lose him today. He’s hanging in there, however. He’s such a sweet, gentle boy. I hope he lives for years, but I find that I am preparing myself. I cried on the phone with my sister, cried while talking to the Vet Tech on the phone and then cried in front of the Vet. He’s home with us now and I’m praying he turns a corner.

Mom has been moved to a rehabilitation center. She’s been there before. And she’s not happy. More and more often lately, she says she wants to die.

Dad has become increasingly hard to handle. Without going into details, I will just say that he’s exhibiting some of the same behavior that made growing up very difficult for all of us.

My parents have become the children. I know so many of you have dealt with this and understand it completely.

Patience. Compassion. Understanding. Tolerance. Each of them needed every day. Some days they are readily available and easily embraced. Others? Not so easy.

How about some photos to make you (and me) smile? Miss Scout, at the end of the day, waiting for me by the side door, exasperated because I’m taking pictures.

Some Changes

August 21, 2011 at 9:03 am by Claudia

I’ve been making some changes to the blog and I wanted to take a moment to share them with you. One change is subtle. I messed around with the html codes to make the body of the blog a bit wider. I have a little more room now both in the sidebar and the main post area. Brenda and I spent some time together on the phone and, between the two of us, we figured out how to do it.

For a long while, I’ve been contemplating changing the background for the posting area. I love, love, love the background I had with the faint vintage looking script and I am not thrilled with the idea of giving it up. However, when viewing this blog on other monitors and in other browsers, it seemed to me that the script fought with the text of my blog posts. Since my sincere desire is to make this blog readable to everyone, I changed the background to white. This, after trying every gosh-darned color hex code out there. I really wanted a cream color. Could I find one? No. Everything I tried was too dark. Shouldn’t there be a cream or ecru color available somewhere?

Don’t worry, I still have the code for the original background in case I want to change it back. Also, my friend Mandy, who designed my sidebar labels, graciously re-did them with a transparent background, so that I wouldn’t be limited as to my color choice.

The last change is one that I came to after a lot of thought. You know that times are tough here at MHC. We, like so many others, are struggling financially. I’ve written before about my conflicted thoughts about advertising on blogs. Sometimes, when a blog becomes full of advertising, it can become something other than it was. By that, I mean it can lose the cozy, personal quality that it once had. On the other hand, I have seen many blogs add advertising in a less obtrusive way.

The furthest thought from my mind is to make MHC anything other than what it has always been: a cozy, welcoming chronicle of my life and loves. I won’t let that happen, trust me. I am tip-toeing into the ad world by adding two small ads. In my research, I noticed that I saw these ads on many blogs, far more than I realized. So I’m going to give it a whirl. But subtly.

I always welcome your thoughts, my friends.

My mom is in the hospital again. She has a urinary tract infection and the beginnings of pneumonia. She is being given IV antibiotics and seems to be responding. Will you keep her in your thoughts?

Edited to add: My friend Diane came to my rescue! She sent me to ColorPicker and I found a much more detailed chart there. I, of course, insisted I had been there. I hadn’t. Since this post is about subtle, I’ve chosen Ivory, a subtler form of white. I’ll try it for a while and if it doesn’t work for me, back to white it is. Thanks, Diane!

A Fantasy

August 18, 2011 at 10:24 pm by Claudia

This is my piano. Many of you have seen it before on this blog. It was my grandmother’s piano. It’s a Chickering and it has a wonderful sound. It used to have ivory keys until they became chipped and cracked. When I had it moved to San Diego, I had the keyboard replaced.

My grandmother, my mom, my brother, sisters and various aunts and uncles played on this piano. It has a wonderful history that makes it priceless to me.

So why do I have crazy desire to paint it? (My grandmother rolled over in her grave as I typed those words.) It’s mahogany. The grain of the wood is pretty, but it is so dark. My grandmother had mahogany furniture, my mom had a mahogany dining room set – I grew up with dark wood. I’m not a big fan. Our living room is fairly light and airy. And then there is the piano.

But when I see photos like these (from Pinterest):

Source

Or this one, a favorite, that has been on my desktop for a few years,

Source

I want to grab a brush and some paint and go for it. Perhaps with some of that expensive chalk paint I’ve been reading about all over the blogosphere.

Upright pianos seem to take to being painted, don’t they? Maybe spinets and consoles (like mine) don’t adapt as well.

I’ll probably never do it. But I want to. What are your thoughts? Is painting a piano unthinkable to you? Or are you someone who would say ‘Do it!’

I keep hearing the words of my grandmother and mother in my head. And they are not pretty.

The winner of a copy of Just My Type is Mercedes Scott. Congratulations! Send me an email with your address and I will forward it on to TLC Book Tours.

At the End of the Day

Some Changes

A Fantasy

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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