Mondegreens and other idle thoughts

I learned a new word--mondegreen.

According to Wikipedia:
A mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase, typically a standardized phrase such as a line in a poem or a lyric in a song, due to near homophony, in a way that yields a new meaning to the phrase.

Um, that's a mouthful, but we've all done it. You hear a song and not quite understanding what the words are, your brain makes something up. One of our children, bless her, came up with "from the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white befoam" in the song "God Bless America." Another thought the words to Annie's famous song were "Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow. You're only a day awake."

But we adults do it too. My fave, that we still use in our family, was the puzzling song from "The Phantom of the Opera" which I thought was "Awesome Day" but, in fact, is "Masquerade." But I like "Awesome Day" better.

And so, without further ado, I'd like to wish an awesome day to my last-born, not baby. How little he looks like a baby today at almost six feet tall. I had a great chat with him today and he's going to spend the evening with his sister. They are both really fun people so I am sure they will have a good time.My son thought that sushi might play a role in the festivities.

And our darling V had her fourth birthday in Prague yesterday and I got to see her open her present on Skype.What a doll!

I really don't like living so far away from my family. It's a lovely sunshiney day in Wilkes-Barre, PA today. But I would much rather be in the rather dreary weather in Denton, Texas today making a big dinner and probably cheesecake for Z's birthday. Our children always got to pick their birthday dinner. And type of cake (or dessert), of course. One child picks lemon meringue pie which works just fine for me. One son-in-law has the dessert first and then the dinner. How clever of him to know what's really important.

I'm missing a lot of awesome days with my family. Which means I just have to make the most of every minute I get to spend with them. So I'm off to take a walk in the sunshine which we don't get a lot of. It will make up somewhat for the birthdays I've missed this week.

Art Freak

I can't imagine a better day than walking through an art museum. Of course, I like some art museums more than others. I well remember a trip to the Indianapolis Museum of Art when we were first married. They had evidently sunk their whole budget into a glorious new building. But there wasn't any art. Not kidding. A few paintings and some Chinese vases. I'm sure they have some now.

Sometimes the art is great and the location is not. The Kunsthistoriche Museum in Vienna has one of the most glorious paintings of all time stuck in a crowded corner room. The portrait of the Infantin Margarita Teresa by Velásquez  is one of the most gorgeous things I've ever seen. But the only way to appreciate that blue velvet dress is to take a few steps back from the painting. Which you can't do because the room is too small.

Sometimes the location is great but the art is something I just don't get. Witness The Winged Victory of Samothrace in The Louvre. The location is superb. It took me a while to appreciate the statue. If you haven't seen Funny Face with Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire, the statue makes an important appearance in it.

Which brings us to the Philadelphia Museum of Art that we visited on Saturday. The huge Calder mobile is dramatic in that huge space between the staircases. It becomes more dramatic when you learn that you can see sculptures by Calder's father and grandfather by looking through the windows behind you. Who knew? Pas moi.

The Philadelphia has a very comprehensive collection. This rainy Van Gogh is breathtaking. And we went to this small town on our thirty-fifth anniversary trip.

There are a few artists I always look for in a big art museum and I wasn't disappointed.

Here is the Elisabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun portrait of Madame du Barry. She's one of my favorite artists. I love her paintings and the story of her life which you can read online

They also have a Caillebotte. Not many people have those as Caillebotte was wealthy and sold very few of  his paintings. His heirs sold many of them in the 1950s. He loved to play around with perspective and there is so often a strong diagonal line in his paintings. The Wikipedia article on his life is worth a read. It's pitiful how a big part of his collection ended up in Pennsylvania when it should have been left in France.




So it was a grand trip. And we'll be going back. We certainly didn't see it all. And now we have some new favorites which we will want to visit again and again.

Photographs: Michael and Susan Denney. All rights reserved.

Success!

Success! We made it! Thirty nine years being happily married. Okay, so the picture's not the greatest. But we didn't take it, did we?

It was freezing cold. Even so, there was a constant stream of folks who had to get their picture made with Rocky. The lady who took this had us take her and her friend's picture too. We just beat a whole busload of folks to the statue.

Believe it or not (and I really couldn't believe it until I saw it), this statue is at the base of the staircase of the grand and venerable Philadelphia Museum of Art. I can only imagine the lengthy discussions among the richissimo art patrons who had to vote on whether or not to allow this statue on the museum grounds.

The museum itself is a wonder. So many gorgeous things in it.  And the night before we had visited the King of Prussia mall. Truly the King of malls. We looked through the windows at Tiffany's, gawked at the red dresses in the Jessica McClintock store and had some very good gelato. Romantically, we bought new towels for our anniversary. (Michael had said that the state of our unmatching towels made him feel poor. How pitiful his tale!)

More pix tomorrow. Just wanted the world to know that we have reached our Jack Benny anniversary. Whether or not the number ever gets higher is completely up to us. I'm thinking we will go on to 40. But lingering at 39 wouldn't be terrible. As it is, I have to tell folks that I got married when I was three.

Facebook Friends

When I knew that I wasn't going to be the French teacher at Denton High School any more, I scanned in all the photos I could find in my classroom. Good times!

I have many mixed feelings looking at this photo. I'm really glad I got rid of that jacket for starters. For some reason, many members of this group have found me on Facebook. I have this labeled as the 1998-9 French Club at Denton High School. Some noticeable absences--my two children who should have been in the photo, one as a senior and one as a freshman. I was probably pretty ticked about that at the time. They probably didn't hear the announcement in whatever classroom they were in. Getting club photos done for the  yearbook was a zoo parade that I would never want to go back to. In fact, I don't see any of my 4APs at all. And that was the rowdiest and most memorable bunch I ever taught. But there are enough here to see why I loved teaching during those years. It got pretty grim at the end of my teaching career (mostly because of me), but 1998-9 was a glorious year when I had many talented students.

It's really nice that these young adults who are getting married, starting families and starting careers have let me be their friend. I love being able to keep in contact with them. I think this is probably one of the greatest perks of being a teacher.

Sprinkles and Pins

We have already established that this is land o' sprinkles, I think. They must sell more ice cream sprinkles here per capita than anywhere else in the world. So natch, I had to take a picture of this ice cream store.                                                              

Now the other photo is my brilliant idea for fitting a pattern. You can't even afford muslin these days and since I'm twenty pounds heavier since the last time I did a lot of sewing for myself, I decided I'd better make a "muslin" of a blouse pattern I'm making.

So in lieu of muslin, I used one of my son-in-law's shirts. Sounds awful until you know that it had a rip in it and was unusable. My daughter had left it here last summer and I've not been able to throw it away. Such gorgeous fabric. But it worked great as a substitute for muslin since I was cutting out a shirt. My pattern was smaller than his shirt, so the pieces almost fit perfectly. (The pocket on one of the back pieces is kinda weird.)

The funny part comes after I baste the thing together in just a few minutes. (Wow, sewing goes fast if you can just baste everything and you don't have to finish seams or tie off darts! ) In order for Michael to have an easier time pinning me in the blouse, I stitch in a dark color the seam lines for the zipper on the back of the blouse. All he has to do is pin the lines together and I can test the fit. It was really cute. He asked me why I didn't just sew the back seam. I explained that I would have no way of getting into the blouse then.

So the pinning begins. The first thing that happened is that he stuck himself with a pin. I expected that. But then he struggled to pin me in and I kept trying to help him. So I wiggled and he told me to stop. And I tried to help him again. I wiggled and he told me to stop. This happened about three times. It brought back such vivid memories of me pinning patterns on my girls. I was much more impatient than the girls ever were. No wonder the girls had trouble standing still while I pinned a hem. It is BORING.

Come to find out, most of his problems were because I had cut the thing too small. When he got to the bottom pin around my hips, he just said "No way!" and he was right. I will be adjusting the pattern.

But he sure had a struggle with me. I was the worst mannequin ever. Girls, I apologize if I ever fussed at you for wiggling.

I am a writer too

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I got a letter a day ago from folks asking for my social. And I gladly send it to them. You know you're going to be published when you get the IRS form. Pretty exciting.

I've rethought a few projects and I'm thinking of a book that I think the grandkids might like reading. Michael and I discussed it last night and he thought it might fly. It goes with my original plan to write about time travel but simplifies it quite a lot. And it has twin heroes. I've done a lot of writing about twins--wonder why? (For those not in the know, I have only two sibs and they are identical twins.) I have not given up on my Louisiana novel though. Those characters are starting to live in my brain.

The pattern? I just had to share. This has got to be the penultimate 80s pattern. It's got almost everything--knit fabric, ruffles, bias, the big hair and Brooke Shields. The only thing it hasn't got is the big shoulder pads but I don't think they'd work with this outfit. This makes it penultimate rather than ultimate. What a hoot! So many patterns I've got are bland and I just shove them in a box not knowing what to do with them. But the wowza patterns like this I have to put out there in the marketplace.

Tomorrow I promise I'll share the story of Michael helping me fit a pattern last night. I hope I can make you laugh because it was truly funny.

Branching Out

I noticed that my little Peach had opened up another Puking Pastilles shop. (The photo is from Christmas visit to the Reading Market in Philly--Maybe there's a puking pastille in there somewhere). I guess great minds think alike. I opened an Ecrater store yesterday. There's not much in it and I have no idea how you get people to visit it, but the price is right (free!). I'll give it a try. If you want to see my really pitiful efforts at creating a banner, you can visit it at Coconut Pie.

In other news, I am making progress on my middle grade novel. My little hero is a real trooper. I've decided to make one of the characters in the book a seamstress. It was a pretty common profession for a single woman in the 50s. They didn't have a lot of options. That way all this time I'm spending with patterns these days isn't wasted.

I mailed off "the dress" to my girl in Czech today. This is the pattern I had made for her when she was a little girl. It had triangle pockets and rickrack trim. Adorable. I made tons of dresses for girls but this one was my favorite. I think it came out well, but no photos today as it might be used as a birthday present. I'll post a photo when I get the go-ahead from the Czech Republic.

Photo copyright: Michael Denney