let's be creative

the baron is always and forever trying to think up interesting and stylish ways to showcase the children's artwork.  this is her latest - and favorite - display.

sleepy time conversation

the husband: how much money do you think the romance novel industry makes per year?

the baron: i don't remember, but i read that article too.

the husband: $1 billion!

the baron: so, uh, can we write a romance novel?

the husband: right, there's a woman, her husband dies, then she goes to visit her cousin...

the baron: right, okay. there's a woman, she lives in maryland, her husband works for the state department and dies tragically. so she goes to california to visit her cousin-

the husband: no, she can't go to california. she has to go somewhere less glamorous than that.

the baron: what, like utah? colorado? i can only write about things that i know, and i know maryland and california. ok, what if her husband dies a tragic death in california and she comes to maryland?

the husband: not depressing enough. there has to be a fish out of water element, and an everywoman element. you have to juxtapose the glamorous with the banal.

the baron: alright. her husband dies and-

the husband: she becomes a secretary?! we can call it 'love in the secretary pool"!

the baron: oh, god. not a secretary. she goes to colorado to... see her cousin... and, uh, to work with dogs?

the husband: and we call it 'love on the dog trails'!!

the baron: oh, god.

see this

the baron and the husband do not often go to the movie theater, and not exactly for lack of want. sometimes a film piques their interest (or her interest; the husband is very kind to humor her) enough that they will make the effort get out of the house and into a megaplex movie house (for instance, this and this and this), but this happens very infrequently. more typically, she spots a commercial on television or an interesting looking review online and makes a note to add it to the netflix queue(for example this one, and this one, and this one).

however.

2009 looks to be a year that the baron might see 3 movies IN THE THEATER, which is kind of amazing. see what's in store for us all, below:


'star trek', release date may 8, 2009




'harry potter and the half blood prince', release date july 17, 2009




'where the wild things are', release date october 16, 2009

the first quilt

reader, you may remember that the baron had recently been working on a quilt (one she began calling the-quilt-of-no-completion, given the amount of time it took to finish). well, happy days are here now (!), because that quilt is DONE!!

here's a long shot of the quilt, on the baron's bed... the quilt does a really nice job of keeping her and the husband warm at night.

here's a closeup of some of the squares, and a little peek of the backside. the baron's blog seems chronically afflicted with 'low light-itis', and these photos are no exception... apologies.

here's the baron's signature and the date of completion... more than one person recommended she sign and date her quilt and, with the help of a fabric pen (one of the best inventions ever), she did. because the final product is so PRETTY, and because the memory of her impatience with the-quilt-of-no-completion is receding with the passage of time, the baron is now optimistically thinking of this one as 'the first quilt'.

two years, thirty-six years

recently, very recently, the baron and the husband had a two-fold celebration: their second wedding anniversary and the husband's 36th birthday. both events come on the same day - the husband's thought process being that, if they married on his birthday, the odds of his forgetting their anniversary were pretty slim. so far, this plan is working. below are two gifts from the baron to her man.


above, monsieur tofu has a lock on mr. bacon; everyone loves a barrel chest.

above is something the baron and the husband have long talked of adding to their outdoor living space - to the seating area they call "fern valley". the baron was delighted by the cost and the make of the buddha (it was nicely priced, and is made of cement rather than some kind of fiberglass), and the husband - who has long held a fascination with all things asian - was glad to incorporate this symbol of serenity into his garden.

it was a successful and happy day all around.

penguin, by ryan

the husband works with a woman - a petite, southern woman with a knack for fashion and interior design. this woman's boyfriend is, occasionally, an artist; evidence of his talent is displayed on the walls of their two story row house. (it's worth noting that the boyfriend is a renaissance man: he tells a good story, can cook, plays drums, and - along with the woman - is renovating their row house. what the baron likes most about him is that he humors the husband.)

the baron and the husband, impressed by his artwork, asked that he paint something for them. the resulting painting, 'penguin', is above. charming, isn't it? 'penguin' will shortly be framed, then will take up residence in the baron's dining room.

our baby

the baron knows the photo above is a poor one - shot in light too low and out of focus to boot. what really gets her, though, is that the husband took the picture at all.

it's a potato, one that stayed in the basket too long. (the baron keeps a basket in the kitchen for onions, garlic and, occasionally, potatoes. right now, there are also sunflower seeds in this basket, kept there for the baron when she works her way through all 9 seasons of the x-files.) the baron can't really remember why she bought but did not use this potato - maybe to thicken up a soup, or to add to an indian dish? actually, she can't even remember WHEN she bought it. she does remember seeing it from time to time in the basket, grabbing it accidentally when she was groping for an onion, and thinking, 'ah! that potato! better use it soon before its eyes sprout'. ahem.

she does not remember seeing the slow progression of those spindly growths, of that she is sure. so, when the husband finally the pulled the potato out of the basket, the baron was VERY SURPRISED indeed at the state of it.

even more surprising was the shape of it, the way those off-shoots look like nascent arms and legs. and, with a little imagination, that white blooming thing at the top? maybe like a small fancy hat, or the beginnings of a face? on the sofa there, leaning just so against the cushions, that potato looks very much like a baby. a creepy baby, but a baby nonetheless. don't you think?

music in the night

today the baron is thinking about... well, really the baron is thinking about speculums, but she's trying to let that particular train of thought conclude. she'll take a moment and shake it off.

ahem. the baron is now thinking of r.e.m., specifically about how much she likes them, and about how some of their songs are deeply a part of her history.

for instance, she remembers "out of time" and the first time she saw the cassette of it, the day of her junior high graduation. it was a gift, given to the baron's friend jenny by jenny's parents and the baron recalls mild curiousity followed by keen understanding ("ah! that 'radio song'! this band sings it!"). the only other thing she remembers about that day is the dress she was wearing - black with large flowers (pinks and yellows and reds with green leaves) with a boat neck. since then, 'near wild heaven' has become one of her favorite songs, and if she can hear it on her way to the end of it all, she'd be just fine. (also, the baron has a long harbored a crush on mike mills.)

she remembers "automatic for the people", which she first discovered in high school, in the back of a friend's parent's car, on the way to swim practice. for her, it recalls those early morning summertime swim sessions, when they were into the pool and warmed up before the sun even broke the sky. the car, and the baron and her friend, smelled of chlorine and sunblock. those were the scents that hovered all season. jessica (the friend in whose parent's car they travelled) and the baron would sing along to 'nightswimming', thrilled about the melody and michael stipe's voice and the idea of swimming naked. (the baron would mention here that 'ignoreland' and 'man on the moon' are also good sing-along songs from this album.) "automatic for the people" also reminds the baron of her neighborhood in california, one of her favorite places in the whole world, a place where - even in july - light mist rolls through the streets and between the houses, and the odd coyote or two can appear under a streetlight just as the natural light is failing. for her, it's a near perfect album (the only draw back being 'everybody hurts', which makes her cringe EVERY TIME. the video makes her want to claw her eyes out.), evocative of all those good southern california things. was there ever a more beautiful song than 'find the river'?

she found "new adventures in hi-fi" in college maybe, or perhaps the first year of graduate school? for her, it's a fair album, notable for 'electrolite' (that jangly piano? those lyrics, those california-specific lyrics, are delicious.). wherever, whenever she came to this album is gone - those memories aren't banked in her head. 'be mine' is mostly what she remembers of this album now, and how the lyrics are trite and meaningful all at the same time. how it's a perfect and ironic love song, saved from sap by its edge.

in recent years, the baron has fallen away from r.e.m. - though she still would think of them fondly. the newer albums, particularly after "up", didn't much impress her, though the husband - an ardent r.e.m. fan himself - continued to buy them, from habit or loyalty. r.e.m. is currently touring in support of their new album, "accelerate"; the baron and the husband were gifted tickets to the band's maryland show. they played some old songs, they played some new songs, and the baron and the husband found themselves pleasantly surprised by the quality of it all. it turned out to be one more memory for her to add to the r.e.m. file, a good memory of that time they saw r.e.m. together.

read a book lately?

the baron noticed this book shelf the other day - well, in truth, it's not a "shelf" as much as it's a "table top". this is because the baron and the husband have more books than shelf space. in fact, many of their books are still in boxes, never unpacked from the move to maryland from arizona.

anyway, the baron was looking at this table top assortment of books recently, and realized just how many of them there are among her favorites - it seemed an uncanny coincidence that these favorite books were clumped together. 'smoke and mirrors', for example, is by neil gaiman, among her favorite authors (and author of her favorite short story, called 'baby cakes'). that slim green one, to the left of 'the dogs who found me', is called 'ex libris: confessions of a common reader', by anne fadiman. it's a collection of short essays all about reading, and the baron would read anything fadiman wrote (in fact, she is now reading a collection of essays edited by fadiman called 'rereadings'). this one, 'ex libris', she takes on planes so the husband will know she was reading something good - as opposed to skymall - if the plane goes down. that thick spine - 'the one and only anastasia'? it's actually 4 books in a set; they're from her early teenage years, a gift from her grandmother. it's a series of books about a young girl living in massachusetts, and represent the baron's first exposure to white liberalism. (it is worth mentioning, maybe, that both the baron's parents were politically conservative, so anastastia and her family were very exciting.) she reads them now and again, and their sophistication surprises and delights her still.

maybe her favorite book ever, of ALL TIME, is also on that table top. it's the tatty looking brown one to the right of 'the dogs who found me', the one with the damaged spine (the baron's 13 year old self thought the spine of 'the westing game' could sub in for a hammer, as she had a picture to hang... it turns out, not so much). it's a children's book, a mystery, and it's wonderful, so wonderful that she reads it every year (it's also one of those take-for-plane-travel books), so wonderful that when the husband and the baron were a-courtin' she read it to him over a few weeks time, when they were in her quiet basement apartment on her single bed. on that first reading, the husband liked 'the westing game', and his appreciation of the book enriched her appreciation of him. it is, the baron thinks, a very important book indeed.

tilting, tilting

this is a lithograph that hangs on the wall of the baron's dining room. the husband found it at a thrift store, in a broken frame that hardly detracted from the beauty of the print. it's by a spanish artist called augustin ubeda, and - though it doesn't explicitly reference cervantes in any way - the husband and the baron are convinced that there's a quixote-esque overtone to it, don't you think?

anyway, it's signed and numbered by the artist and the baron and the husband love it.