Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Pet Portraits & Mask Info

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I’m late posting these beauties to the blog as they came during the period in which I didn’t have a computer and I wanted to give them their own post. My longtime blogging friend, Grace, is a wonderful artist. She painted a beautiful picture of Scout a while back, which I have hanging over my desk.

Grace recently did portraits of all our dogs. She posted them on Instagram and soon, they were winging their way from Canada to my post office box. I was stunned when I opened the package – stunned not only by their beauty, but by their generous size. They are extraordinarily beautiful.

They made me cry.

Winston, our first baby, with his favorite ball.

Scout, pouncing, with a twinkle in her eye.

Sweet Riley. I believe he was looking up at me from the porch.

Aren’t they beautiful? I don’t know how Grace does it. There is such detail. I can ‘feel’ Riley’s coat, remember exactly how it felt under my fingers. The same with Winston and Scout.

Oh, how I miss them all.

Thank you, dear Grace, for these priceless remembrances of our babies. You’ve given us such joy. For more on Grace and her beautiful pet portraits, visit her on Instagram at this link.

One more thing for today. Don is overdue for his next visit to the eye doctor, partly because his original appointment was canceled as the doctor had a family emergency. He’s been trying to reschedule but there was no answer at the office. Well, that’s because there was someone in the office – patient or staff, I don’t know – who tested positive for COVID. The office is closed until the middle of this week. He received an update on their protocol from them today: Only medical grade masks because cloth masks do not work on this variant.

I thought I should pass this information on to all of you. We use cloth masks, sometimes double masking. But I just ordered some N95 masks because we’re not going to mess around with this virus.

And what is happening in Afghanistan is breaking my heart.

Stay safe.

Happy Sunday.

A Miniature Beauty

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Let’s just stop and take a gander at this miniature that arrived in yesterday’s mail – all the way from England.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful.

This was made by Emma of Croft House Miniatures. She has an IG account that I follow. One day, she posted this piece, along with a smaller loveseat and an big ottoman, all upholstered in this vintage fabric that she’d had in her stash for years. I happened to go on IG right after she posted a photo of the pieces and I was stunned. I went right to the link for her Etsy shop and threw caution to the winds and purchased this piece. I knew I would regret it if I didn’t.

It’s a good thing I did, because the ottoman had already sold and this piece and the loveseat went, according to Emma, within seconds of each other. Fast forward only a week and it arrived in my mailbox yesterday.

It is beautifully made, solid and with heft, just like the June Clinkscales pink toile chair that I  have in Dove Cottage. The upholstery is impeccably done. I have it on the table next to my blogging chair and I can’t stop looking at it and holding it! It’s a true collector’s piece.

My goodness!

This is earmarked for the future Beacon Hill, which, unless something changes, we’ll probably retrieve on Tuesday. I tend to go with one signature piece in each room and then let the room evolve around it. This will definitely be the signature piece in the living room.

This is the link to Emma’s shop. My heavens, she’s talented!

Don and I had a long talk about the state of the world and our feelings of despair and anger and everything in between. We had to force ourselves to come back to gratitude. And we did. Quite frankly, all I want to do is retreat from the world here in our cottage, spend time with my husband, be creative, read, and start rehabbing that Beacon Hill. Of course, I have a few things to finish in Dove Cottage, but all of the major things are done. I can work on both at the same time.

I admit it: I’m not so crazy about people nowadays (present company excepted.) I’d rather be here. I need to work and when I do have work, I’ll venture out in the world. But in the meantime, I’m here.

I waited to write this until Meredith wrote about it on her blog. My nephew, Mere’s middle child, who is 24 and vaccinated, had a breakthrough case of COVID. He’s better now, but it lasted for two weeks. He was quite ill and lost his sense of taste and smell. He had now tested negative, but his taste and smell are coming back very slowly. Thank God he was vaccinated.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but, if you haven’t, get vaccinated. Now. And wear a mask.

Stay safe.

Happy Saturday.

 

 

Self-Taping

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Thought I’d share what a self-tape session looks like nowadays. You can see the screen we purchased behind Don, and the ring light in front of him. Adjusting the light takes a long time, let me tell you. Don’s iPhone is used for taping and it sits in a holder within the ring light, and everything is hooked up to Don’s laptop.

When the set-up looks right (it never looks perfect, believe me!) we go through the lines together, because I read all of the lines in the script other than Don’s. We usually do about 4 takes because something goes wrong; I flub a line, Don gets the word order wrong, that kind of thing. There have been times in the past where we kept flubbing it and got a huge case of the giggles.

After we’re done, all of this gets folded up, put in boxes, and stored up in our office. Self-taping was already becoming a viable option for auditions before the pandemic hit – sometimes actors are working out of town and can’t audition in person. Our friend Guy, who works a lot, now lives full time in the house in Illinois that his father owned. He self-tapes. As you can imagine, nothing happened during the pandemic for a while, but once things slowly started up, everyone self-taped. It’s handy for us because we save the yearly chunk of money we used to have to pay for bus/train travel to and from NYC. Don also saves time. Traveling into the city for an audition takes up most of a day. Now, we can tape for about an hour, then Don edits the tape, and then he sends it to his agent.

The unbearable heat continues for one more day. The lawn is more than overdue for a mowing but we are not foolish enough to try it in this weather. Remember how I said the oppressive heat was enervating? Yesterday, I fell asleep in the middle of the day for over an hour and that never happens unless I’m ill. It felt like I was drugged. Don did the same thing in the office. Cannot wait for this to end!

Stay safe.

Happy Friday.

 

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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