The Age of Aquarium: A Warm-Weather Clothes Story (Only Partly True)

Part One: First Try

No, she's not an oceanographer or a photographer. She just happens to love art glass, like millefiori paperweights, and particularly pieces shaped like turtles. 

So when this purse decorated with mosaic-patterned sea turtles appeared at the thrift store, she snapped it up. (Turtle joke.)

Bflairs PU leather purse

She's read that there's an amazing glass paperweight collection at the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass in Neenah, Wisconsin. And, coincidentally, she sees on their website that they will be having a Glass Festival this August. So she talks her two best friends, who happen to be her parents, into driving to Wisconsin with her. 

But first she has to pull out her box of summer clothes; and if she needs to think out a travelling wardrobe, she might as well stretch it out for the rest of the warm weather. 

Read the rest of the page here.

Wednesday Hodgepodge: Turtles all the way down

Here are the questions to this week's Wednesday Hodgepodge. Answer on your own blog, then hop back to From This Side of the Pond (click the graphic) to add your link to the party.

1. What's something you wish you had spent more time doing when you were younger? Explain. 

Oh, a lot of things.

Learning how to drive.

Talking to the older people in the family and asking them questions that I will never get the answers to now.

2. Who inspires you to be better? Tell us how. 

To be a better person all-round, or just to be better at something or other? I could say some of my friends who are much better at very serious reading (like actually finishing the books) than I am, but that would be making comparisons.

3. Share a money saving tip with us. 

Don't stew for a week about a purse you saw at the thrift store with turtles on it, that might still be there if you took the trouble to go back and hunt for it. Because you absolutely do not need a purse with turtles on it.

4. It's National Garlic Day...are you a fan? Your favorite dish that includes garlic? 

Garlic's good. Around here we are very fond of store-brand canned stewed tomatoes with onion and garlic. They're very useful for making both spaghetti sauce and chicken paprikash..

5. Would you describe yourself as decisive or indecisive. Elaborate. 

You're asking someone who couldn't decide about a purse with turtles on it?

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

Purses with turtles.

UPDATE:

Linked from The Wednesday Hodgepodge at From This Side of the Pond.

Five Things I've Learned Recently

That 1960's maternity wards didn't want to see babies leaving without a name, so they suggested a few defaults. Darlene, Dawn, Debra, Jenny...yep, sounds like my 1970's class list. (We won't even discuss what they did to my name.)

  

That William Morris disapproved of Wagner's turning the Northern Epics into opera--he thought that was entirely too flippant.

"Many thanks for your letter and the translation of Wagner : I have not had time to read it yet : nor to say the truth am I much interested in anything Wagner does, as his theories on musical matters seem to me as an artist and non-musical man perfectly abhominable :  besides I look upon it as nothing short of desecration to bring such a tremendous and world-wide subject: under the gaslights of an opera : the most rococo and degraded of all forms of art the idea of a sandy-haired German tenor tweedledeeing over the unspeakable woes of Sigurd, which even the simplest words are not typical enough to express ! Excuse my heat : but I wish to see Wagner uprooted, however clever he may be, and I don't doubt he is : but he is anti-artistic, don't doubt it."

That you can make Cream of Wheat in the microwave. The directions are on the package. Not that that makes Cream of Wheat taste any better, because it doesn't, but at least you don't have to clean the pot afterwards.

That Charlotte Mason didn't hate Herbart's methods and musings as much as we would like to give her credit for; in fact, she practically pushed them as far as they would go within her educational reality, leaving them behind only when it came to something Herbart never had the chance to hear about, the physiology of habit. One might imagine a leisurely afterlife conversation between them, with Miss Mason explaining to Herbart that he had only known the "baptism of John" in these matters.

That belts are measured from the point where the strap meets the buckle to the middle hole of the belt. Or, if you want to know your belt size, generally add two inches to your waist measurement or pants waistband size. So I feel better about passing up a great 38" purple and teal belt.

And now you know these things too.

In Which I Am Determined to Complete a Wednesday Hodgepodge

Because of various distractions, I keep starting to answer Wednesday Hodgepodges and then not finishing them. I literally have several weeks' worth sitting in my draft file.

Sometimes the questions themselves have hit too close to home. No fault of the Hodgepodge.

But today I'm determined to get through this one and post it before the morning is done.

1. What puts a spring in your step these days? 

Warm weather...lessening of those things that have made life difficult the past two years...homemade pizza...my new book...and new finds from the antiques market and the thrift store.

2. April 2nd was National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day. Did you celebrate? Do you like PB and J? If so how do you like yours? What's your favorite kind of jelly? 

I had no idea, honestly.

Just jelly, not jam? Um...grape, I guess. 

3. What's a memory you associate with spring flowers?

Planting a garden in the back yard.

4. Three things on your spring bucket list? Do you have a spring bucket list? If not pretend you do. 

1. Completing a Wednesday Hodgepodge.

2. Going to the outdoor flea market when it starts up at the end of this month.

3. Taking walks on the trails around this neighbourhood. They've been too icy/muddy/whatever for the last while. Or it's just been too freaking cold to want to. But I want to go out and find some trilliums to take pictures of.

5. One place you will travel this spring? (It might be Europe or it might be the grocery store)

No specific plans, beyond the grocery store. Maybe the southern end of Lake Huron, for a day or two.

Linked from The Wednesday Hodgepodge at From This Side of the Pond.