Adieu

Goodbye my friends.

After almost four years of weekly postings, Food For Thought is closing down.  This is the last entry.  The site will be up until the end of October when it will vanish into the Great Big digital ether.   Dad, you have this much time to make sure you've printed and archived all my entries.

Oh but it's been fun!

Food For Thought has grown from just two readers (Stan and my dad) in November  2005 to several hundred of you who are currently reading through Facebook, Plaxo and LinkedIn.  In the process, I have acquired a reputation as a blogger and my family has learned to worry about what might or might not be said about them on this site.  I have been writing articles for friends and businesses.  I've submitted stories to magazines and got my first acceptance a few months ago. 

Why stop now? 

It's time to give room to new ideas and new ways of seeing.  Food For Thought has been a collection of random thoughts about daily life.   My next project will be more focused.   If all goes well, in a few months I will be starting a new web site dedicated to the talents of ordinary people: the sculptors, coral growers, letterboxers, poets, musicians, paper doll artists,  cat lovers, ikebana masters and bakers among us.  I want to write about the dentist who turned photographer and the secretary who scribbled poetry under her desk.

I am toying with catchy names for the new site, making note of potential subject matter and will publish the new site as soon as it is up.

I am also avoiding browsing through the old Food For Thought entries, at least for now.  Four years is a long time.  If I keep looking back, I'll be too heartbroken to move forward.  Onward then.

A bientot.  See you soon.

Marie-Pierre

Fan of Susan

 What is there not to like about Susan Boyle?

Not only is the woman's voice angelic; she is the embodiement of the The Great Fate Dream, the one in which Simon Cowell knocks at our door one morning, with four TV crews in tow telling us that our talent for macrame (or miniature train sets, or Baroque Opera) has finally been recognized.  We will be on television.  We won't have to show up at the office anymore.  Or worry about the light bills and the dog needing to be taken to the vet.  We've crossed over to the golden side of celebrity.

Not that I would actually compare Susan Boyle's talent to macrame. The woman is too extraordinary for that.

And the other endearing trait: her teeth are crooked.  We can't take our eyes off of her, our ears off of her, but her teeth are crooked worse than Edith Piaf's.

Which is why Susan is  the most endearing to us than any of the long string of undiscovered talents.  Not only is the woman telling us that fame can happen to any Susan, her recent transformation is demonstrating that - should one of us tumble into the limelight - she will be able to rely on a small army of hair dressers, make-up artists, fashion consultants, image consultants and marketing analysts to transform her into a pleasant-looking human being.

Never mind our carterpillar eyebrows, stardom awaits us.  Thanks for making the dream come true Susan!

Lots of dust

 Who would have thought walls could be so elusive? 

I have been patching and sanding for four nights.  Everyday after work I return to find more cracks that need to be filled, more spots that must be sanded.  How come my eyes won't see the first time?

And there was the nasty business of sanding the ceiling, with a mask over my mouth and nose, and work goggles covering my eyes.  But the goggles kept fogging up and I couldn't breathe under the mask and all the mosquitoes in Houston thought I was an all-you-can-eat French buffet. 

My shoulders hurt, that one leg of the step-ladder was definitely shorter than the other three and it was a dumb idea to bring my cell phone in case of an emergency.  The only emergency was the dust that fell in my contact lenses in spite of the goggles. But my cell phone was covered in dust, as were my keys and my hair and the inside of my nostrils. 

I know, I know: I shouldn't have removed the mask.  I just thought I was the one person on earth who was immune to dust.  It's amazing how much dust can fit inside a human nostril, by the way.  It's even more amazing how long one can sneeze.

But enough whining.  The studio is coming up.  I am on my way to Home Depot to buy a filter for the Shop Vac.  Dust be gone.  This afternoon Stan and I will apply the first coat of paint.  Next we will install shelves and find a way to truck the old couch from his house.

I haven't drawn in two weeks and hardly written a line.  Impatient to move in.

Everything must go

Hard to believe I landed in the US with a single suitcase.  Red cardboard.  No lock.  Sweaters, shirts, two pairs of jean, the dress I'd bought in Chicago the summer before and a tin box of handmade jewelry.  No books.  I had a strict limit on how much weight I was willing to carry.

That was almost twenty five years ago.  The suitcase is long gone, so is the tin box. 

And I own two cars, a house of my own, and books.  Lots and lots of books.  The books I bought for graduate school classes and the books I bought for fun.  Cookbooks.  Mysteries.  Thrillers.  Fiction.  Non-fiction.  In English, French, Spanish and Italian.  Half-price books.  Full priced books.  Slim books and fat ones.   So many books my shelves are bulging.

Time to offload.

Do you want books?  I have plenty.

Click here to see a list of titles available for the taking.  Drop me an e-mail or a comment.  Let me know what might please you and I will send it to you.

Perhaps you've been waiting to read about 'Ants at work' or you must have Charles Taylor's 'The ethics of authenticity'.  I have good books waiting for a new home and they all must go.

Up goes the studio

 Herbert and his crew sprang into action this morning ripping off the garage door and siding.  The art studio is being born this weekend.

There's a trailer in the driveway.  A pile of hardiplanks.  Mysterious-looking things wrapped in plastic.  Boxes of nails.  Extension chords, ladders, rolls of insulation, wood, glue, buckets.

Herbert's hammer looks like a sci-fi weapon the size of a watermelon.  No one messes with Herbert's hammer.  The thing hisses like one mean little creature.

Oh but the work it does!

The walls are up. 

The doors are in.

Just need a window.

And a lock.

We bought the track lights at Home Depot and the Sears salesman was nice, who helped us pick the AC unit and promised it'd be loaded into the back of our car in less than five minutes (and it was true!).

 Herbert said the place would be ready tomorrow.

I should be moving my pencils in on Monday.

Yipeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!