Rich and I registered today at Bed, Bath, & Beyond.  The beyond is where they really get you.  They could stick just about anything in that store and it would make sense because of the "beyond."

Anyway, we picked all of our kitchen stuff that we can think of.  We picked a set of everyday dinnerware and a set of fancy, but not too fancy dinnerware.  I actually really like both sets.  Accordingly, we picked proper flatware for each set.  What I'm not too sure about is registering for things like bedding.  We don't have a bed yet.  We don't know what size it will be.  The same goes for the bathroom.  I picked towels, but we don't know where we're going to live, so it's hard for me to envision towels in a bathroom I've never seen.  I guess I just need to pick a color theme and go with it.

As for living room?  We need furniture, not registry type stuff, so I guess that's taken care of.  I didn't even know that people COULD register at Bed, Bath, & Beyond until last Sunday.  I always assumed I would register at Macy's, or something like that.  However, BB&B has a lot of stuff that I like and the prices are better.  They also give those 20% off coupons so people can save money.  I've been infatuated with the store for years anyway, it's perfect!

I gotta go to sleep.  It was a long day.  Registering is fun, but it's also exhausting and somewhat overwhelming.  I've always wanted to scan items, now I've done it!  I can also do it every time I go to Stop & Shop, soo..... it's not as special as it used to be, but..... it was still fun.

Off to work in the morning!  Sleepy time!

I took a walk today through Forest Hills.  I through the Gardens taking pictures mostly of flowers.  My aim was to take landscape photos, I guess for the most part I succeeded.  Now I just have to get back into  portrait photography.  I am starting to get used to my digital camera, but not the lens.  I need a netter lens, I cannot focus manually with it, maybe it's just my vision, I'm not sure.  When I was shooting black and white photography I had little problem focusing, I really loved the lens I was using.  I  only had problems  focusing with night photography, something I haven't tried with the digital camera yet.  I will one day, hopefully when it's a little nicer outside.  I can't believe it's almost the end of April and it's still so cold out.  Oh well, the wonders of global warming.

I know I am missing most of the person in this shot, but I find it interesting none the less.  I like the angles.

A lemonade stand.  I don't think I've actually seen one of these in quite some time.

As seen through a mesh screen

Texture

        

Memories

A girl finds herself outside her grandparents old house.  A house they sold when they started having trouble getting around, trouble going up and down the stairs.  They sold the house about 12 years ago.  The girl’s last remaining grandparent, passed away  about a year ago, and she cannot reconcile the fact that she no longer possesses any link to her past.  There is so much she just doesn’t know about where she came from, so much she doesn’t know about where her family is from.  She already comes from a broken home, a happily divorced family.  

She finds herself staring at this old colonial house for hours every day, long enough so that the owners come outside and ask her what her business there is.  She explains that she doesn’t have any business, that the house used to belong to her grandparents.  The wife doesn’t want to invite the girl inside, but the husband sees a sadness in her that maybe he recognizes a little of in himself.  He invites her inside the house for lunch and to look around, see the same things that she had seen as a young girl.

Even walking into the front of the house brings back memories.  She remembers that as a child she had only ever walked through the front door a handful of times.  The front door was not easy to get to.  It was in the middle of the long winding driveway, off the driveway to be specific.  Since the girl was always driven to the house either by one of her parents or her grandfather, she was always taken all the way up the driveway and she always, ALWAYS, went through the back door.

She remembers when her parents had just separated.  Her mother was sitting on the back steps by the door smoking.  Her grandmother, seeing her daughter sliding down a path she would rather her not, came outside and smacked her mother on the back of the head.  She never saw her mother pick up another cigarette again.

Walking through the house from the backdoor makes the house look so cold and uninviting.  The first thing you see is a coat closet, closed of course.  The girl remembers that only the fancy coats were ever kept in that closet.  She was staying with her grandparents one day when they were getting ready to go to the opera.  She remembers right before they left her grandfather pulled a mink coat from the closet for her grandmother to wear.  She had never seen anything like that before.  She went over to her grandmother to pet the jacket.  She had never felt anything so soft in her life.

Passing the closet she can see the door leading to the staircase upstairs.  When her grandparents had lived there is was almost always open, now it was shut tight.  Everything in its place.  The closet next to the staircase was closed also, at least that was the same.  To the left there was the dining room, to the right the living room.  All the furniture looked ultra modern now.  There were no rugs, no carpeting.  The table in the dining room was metal, it looked like a table you would see in a medical examiners office.  Very cold.  She could not imagine anyone enjoying eating a meal on it.  While it was metal, it was also fancy.  The legs were a twisted wrought iron.  It didn’t really match the plain table top.  The whole thing looked out of place in the traditional architecture of the house.  The chairs were a metallic leather, armless, very stiff.  The girl had never seen anything quite so ugly before, but of course she wouldn’t say anything.  The walls, which had been a cream color were now bright red and there were glass things holding fancy plates and other cutlery.

The living room was not much better.  There was no piano on the right side of the room, instead there was a metal harp, she couldn’t imagine anyone actually played it, or that it could even be played.  Instead of the nice oversized chairs which had been there when her grandparents owned the place, there was a long hard wooden slat bench.  It didn’t go with anything in the room.  It looked like it belonged in a backyard rather than inside a house.  The couch they had was stark white.  It looked comfortable, but it was so white that she would be afraid to sit on it, she wouldn’t want to make it dirty accidentally and thrown out of the house.  

While her grandparents had beautiful persian rugs on the ground, these owners had ripped out the hard wood floors and installed ceramic tile on the ground.  Ceramic tile could be nice, but it usually worked best in a bright sunny room.  The living room was dark to begin with and there were now heavy velvet curtains hanging on all the windows.  All in all the living room looked like a somehow modern mortuary.

She remembers the sun room off of the living room.  There had been beautiful french doors separating the sun room from the living room, yet somehow the two rooms seemed to belong to each other.  The sun room was basically where the plants had lived.  The room always smelled like a greenhouse.  It was high in humidity, it’s where the spiders were.  It’s where the girl remembered looking through her grandparents art books and learning about Matisse, Manet, Monet, Rembrandt, Chagall, etc…  She remembers the Tibetan bells that hung near the door.  They clanged every time someone had walked into the room.  The bells had gone with her grandparents when they moved.  It was also the only room in the house that had been fully carpeted, with red carpeting.  It was a cozy room.  A place she would have appreciated if she had been older.  Still, it had been one of her favorite rooms, and it was gone.  It was like a surgeon had come along and sliced the room off the side of the house. You might not notice there was something wrong if you hadn’t known there was something there before, but if did…  It just looked like the room ended suddenly, like it was missing an appendage.

The girl wasn’t taken into the kitchen, the hub of activity, before.  She was taken into the living room.  She didn’t know where to sit.

******

“What are you doing out here?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll leave.”

“I just want to know why you’ve been sitting here watching my house all week.  I’ve seen you out here.”

“Well…  This used to be my grandparents house.  I’ve just sort of been missing it I guess.  I’ll go away.”

“This was your grandparents house?”

“Yes.”

“Well, why are you coming by now, my family’s been living here for just about 12 years.”

“I know.  What happened to the sun room?  I can see it’s not there anymore.”

“Oh.  Yeah, I really liked it, but my wife thought it was too dirty to clean.  I’m not sure what that means actually.  She thought it was an eyesore I guess.”

“She had it removed?!”

“Yes, I’m sorry.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, it’s not my house.  It never was I guess.  Did she change anything else inside the house?”

“Mostly just cosmetic things, paint color, stuff like that.  She had the basement made into a den.”

“The whole basement?”

“Well… most of it.  There was one room I wouldn’t let her touch.  I mean she changed the door, but she left the room alone.  I would bring you inside, but she’s on her way home with our son.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I’m not sure I want to go in anyway.  I think I want to remember it the way it was.”

“I understand.  How are your grandparents by the way?  I think I only met your grandfather when we were buying the house.”

“They’re both dead.”

******

The girl rolled up her window and went home.  She didn’t want to talk about her grandparents so casually.  Especially her grandfather.  I mean he had basically just died.  It’s not like she had been close to him, she had been much closer with her grandmother actually.  She couldn’t really understand why she was so upset by his death.  The suddenness of being alone.  She could only remember a handful of times she had been alone with him.  She thought that might be part of the problem.  She never knew him and now she never would.

I am currently in the middle of writing three separate and very different stories.  I have a mystery story with a cat detective (which will most likely be for adults), a story about a woman and her day, and am now working on a story about memories and grandparents.  So far I have the most hope for the story about the grandparents.  I have more ideas for that story, and a character with.... character.

My other fictionalized people have personalities as well... but, I guess, the new story is more... me.  It's not a true story by any stretch of the imagination, but it has elements from my life.  I find my most successful stories to have some sort of basis in reality.  I know the sounds cliche, write what you know.  In my case anyway, it seems to be at least partially true.  I guess for any writer, their own personality sneaks in their somewhere.

So question of the day is: What are the merits of an e-reader versus a book?  Which do you prefer?  I know I don't usually poll people, but maybe I should start.  Personally, I think e-readers are interesting and good for carrying around I guess, but I still prefer the feeling of paper between my fingers.  Maybe I'm just a purist.  I can't imagine living somewhere without being surrounded by books, e-books do not count.  I know they save paper, and I know they save room... but I don't think I will ever get used to it.

I know I am a geek, and probably talk about Star Trek too much, but even in the 24th century Captain Picard was always reading a book, a real book, even though he could have been reading off a pad.  Actually, the pads they had were very similar to the ipad.  Isn't it wonderful how science fiction becomes reality if we wait long enough?  I am waiting for the transporter.  As for the shuttelcrafts... I still want a car first.