Favorite Thing #7: Stephen Foster's "Hard Times"

As we pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears
Let us all taste the hungers of the poor.
There's a song that will linger forever in our ears:
Hard times, come again no more.

It's a song and a sigh of the weary.
Hard times, hard times, come again no more.
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door.
Hard times, come again no more.

As we seek mirth, and beauty, and music light and gay
There are frail forms fainting at the door.
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say:
Hard times, come again no more.

It's a song and a sigh of the weary.
Hard times, hard times, come again no more.
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door.
Hard times, come again no more.

It's a song that the wind blows across the troubled wave.
It's a cry that is heard along the shore.
It's the words that are whispered beside the lowly grave
When hard times will come again no more.

It's a song and a sigh of the weary.
Hard times, hard times, come again no more.
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door.
Hard times, come again no more.

And then there's this.

The Blue Room

So we have this one room, it's supposedly a breakfast room but it's not really big enough for any dining table we have and we don't eat breakfast anyway and also it's one foot from the dining room so I can't figure out why we wouldn't just eat in there in the first place. But anyway. It's always been a tricky room, just sort of a wide place in the hall. But after ten years in this house, I think we finally got it the way we want it. It originally had linoleum stuck to the floors; we scraped all that up upon moving in and had the floor refinished; I then painted it icy blue. Then for some reason, about six months later, we painted it the color of a flower pot. And it stayed that way for nine years.

Until last week when I painted it back blue. I love the way it looks like a Scandanavian ice room or something. It's where this year's Chrismas tree lives and the difficult-to-work-in Louis Ghost chairs. I love it so much.

The pictures on the wall are my #1 prized possession: paintings on paper by Barbara Page, mother of my mother's childhood best friend. When we bought this house, Mom and Dad asked us what we'd like from theirs and without missing a beat, I said "the Barbara Page paintings." There are eight in all and I wish I could figure out how to reproduce and sell them. They're incredibly fragile, painted with tempera on like grocery store bags from the fifties. The frames were made by Mr. Click of Elkin, NC, who is a little vague to me other than he has a cartoon character name.





So there you have another thrilling entry. memorize it; there might be a test.

End of September

That means: toad lilies.

My Saddest Facebook Friend

Guest Room

Okay, with the exception of painting the window and the doors, the guest room is done. We refurbished the crazy chandelier so now each guest can write or draw on a piece of paper and attach it. Beats a boring old guestbook! And Sister Meg's pocketbooks made the move downstairs. We also finished the crown moulding and freshened up some of the green wall paint. Our old dead cat Eleanor sneezed on the walls a lot.

Come visit! Call first.

Upstairs, Upstairs

Yesterday and today, Sister Meg and I moved the 2500 book library upstairs to the weird area at the top of the stairs where nothing ever worked. Here are some in-progress pics. FInished ones coming later.

Old library, partially destructed:



New library, partially, uh, structed.

Favorite Things #6

The Overlook Wodehouse series. I alphabetized them last night so I could more easily figure out what I was missing. I'm only missing nine - and four of those don't come out until later this year.