Kitchen Redo Ideas

“I can’t wait to redo this kitchen,” I said eying the room over my morning tea.

“Yes,” Mr. Wonderful said buttering his toast.

“And get rid of this faded blue-green paint.”

“Yes.”

“And the ugly copper handles.”

He nodded.  “By the way, what do you want to replace them with?”

“Oh…” I sucked in my breath.  “I have no idea.”

Leave it to Mr. Wonderful to teach me something new.  Again. 

Lesson 1: The easiest part of redoing a kitchen is deciding to: Redo the kitchen.  The hardest part is: Planning the new one. 

This is our house,” he said.  “We can do whatever we want to the kitchen: put in an island, swap the sink with the oven’s position, rip out walls—”

Suddenly with all these new, limitless possibilities I started to feel less confident about this remodel.  What should go in a kitchen?  What should go in my new kitchen?  Of course I needed the basic appliances but did I also want an island?  A wine refrigerator?  A double oven?  What type of kitchen should we install in its place—Country French, Minimalist Cube, Mid Century Modern. Retro-Metro?  I hadn’t a clue.

I needed ideas.  I needed inspiration.  When the mountain doesn’t come to moi, moi goes to the mountain.  At my computer I went to Google and typed in “kitchen remodel”.  In .004 seconds I got over 15 million results.  I scanned the first 57 screen pages.  Then right when my left eye was crossing my right eye from screen fatigue, much like the transit of Venus, I clicked my browser closed.  I hadn’t gone to the mountain of ideas, I’d gone to their universe.  I was overwhelmed.  If I wanted to make any headway, I needed to narrow the idea field.   

I drove to Ikea.  I got my modular Swedish on and meandered through the maze of display rooms.  I looked at every single enkdorp, luftig, akurum room and loved over half of them.  Which meant now I was more lost than when I’d entered the blue and yellow box store the size of eighty-two football fields.  Ikea still had too many trygg and jokkmokk choices that I had to leave the store immediately or risk having my brain go bjursta.  Somehow I escaped while still managing to buy $100 worth of un-kitchen items.  I scratched my head.  How did Ikea get you to buy when you didn’t even know what you wanted?  Clearly what I needed was someone to speak my language.

 

I went to the bookstore and snatched up a stack of kitchen redo magazines as well as the house porn magazines like Traditional Home, Metropolitan Home and Farm and Home, basically I bought anything with “home”, “shelter” or “cave” in the title.  Then I ripped out the pages I liked.  I ripped out Southern, suburban, urban and Amish Country House styles, of which the latter is actually an oxymoron since Amish houses are always in the “country”.  The question remained: what kitchen style was I—and “Scattered” didn’t count.

The tearing sound of slick magazine paper triggered a memory in my brain.  I’d been tearing up magazines... for years.  At home I went to my filing cabinet and dug out a hanging file two inches thick.  Inside were page after page of magazine, newspaper and advertisement clippings of living rooms, bathrooms and—lo and behold—kitchens (!) that I’d seen and liked during the years that we’d rented and I’d longed to buy a house.  Obviously I liked these clippings enough to keep them when we’d moved.  These clippings were the ideas I needed to remind myself who I was, what kitchen style I liked and what I wanted in a kitchen. 

I made a cup of tea and started paging through the file’s clippings.  I felt strongly that my kitchen was among these pages.  Turning the pages, I knew I’d find it.  In the meantime I got to re-live my dreams of kitchens.  These were just the ideas I’d wanted; the ones I'd already had. 

Old Blue Kitchen

A blue color by any other name would be as attractive.  Or would it?  

Here are photos of our kitchen BEFORE the redo.  The copper hinges and drawer pulls are original and very Betty Draper's kitchen a la 1950s.  I love the throwback style of Mad Men but those hinges and pulls have to go.

Notice the green paint appearing beneath the blue.

Also notice this country kitchen’s wavy flourish to the cabinets.  I love the solid wood cabinets but that wavy line.  Not at all.

It's exciting to think about what we can keep, what we can replace and what we'll buy new.  

Kitchen redo--bring it!

Kitchen Opinions

Ah!  Saturday morning!  Mr. Wonderful was called into the studio for finishing touches on a commercial so I had a whole day to work on the house without any distractions.  I made myself an espresso, opened the kitchen doors to the springtime air and started taking pictures of the space because the time had come—to Redo.  The.  Kitchen.

We had bought the house fully aware that the kitchen would have to be redone because 1) It looked dated; 2) It didn’t have any appliances; and 3) It was painted blue.  We both thought blue belonged in a bathroom, not a kitchen.  In addition this blue was not an attractive blue but a ratty, two-tone, faded shade with blotches of green randomly appearing amid the blue as if the previous owners had run out of paint before finishing the job.

 

“Who would paint a kitchen this or any other blue?” Mr. Wonderful had said just that morning over breakfast. 

“Colorblind people,” I said.

In addition the wooden cabinets were trimmed with a wavy flourish that softened their line in an old-fashioned, Hee-Haw, country kitchen kind of way, especially if “country” were spelled with a  “k”.  Further, the cupboards’ copper handles and hinges looked like those found in Betty Draper’s knotty pine kitchen in Mad Men, which only added to the dated, run-down, country feel of ours.

“You’re not ripping out the kitchen, are you?” our nosy neighbor said peering inside the open door from his side of the fence.

“We’re going to redo it, Harold.”

“Just so you know, the wooden cabinets are real.”

“They feel solid.”

“The wood paneling on the walls is real, too.”

“It feels solid.”

“My in-laws had them all custom-made specifically for the house.”

“The kitchen hasn’t been updated since 1953?”

“Except for the ugly blue paint.  That was added later.  Hey!” he said as if an electrical current had just struck him.  “I think it’d be nice if you returned the kitchen to the way it used to be—sand down the paint to get to the plain brown wood.”

It wasn’t surprising that Harold had an opinion about our kitchen—after all the house used to belong to his in-laws and solid wood cabinets were appealing—but I wasn’t going to change it back to the way it was.  I couldn’t tell him face-to-face there way no way I’d sand down five coats of paint to reveal wood paneling on the walls.  Wood paneling was not my thing and luckily Mr. Wonderful agreed with me.

Instead I said, “Thanks for letting me know how it used to be, Harold,” and politely half closed the door to photograph behind it.

“Morning, neighbor!” a cheery feminine voice said while knocking on the half-closed door, which in turn bonked my head. 

“Hi, Mary,” I said rubbing my crown as she bounded into our kitchen wearing her sneakers and looking around like a kid in a candy store.

“I really like your kitchen.”

“You’re the second neighbor who does,” I said.

“I like it because it reminds me of the summer cabin in the mountains that we went when I was a girl,” Mary said with a far way look in her eye.  “It was old, musty and oh, so country.”

Old, musty, country kitchens were not my thing and luckily Mr. Wonderful agreed with me.

“I wouldn’t change a thing in your kitchen,” Mary said.  “Except the terrible blue paint.  I’d cover that immediately.  Speaking of I have to pick up my daughter’s green paint at the store.  Imagine, we’ll both be painting rooms at the same time!”  She kissed my cheek and bounded outside as quickly as she’d arrived.

It’s not surprising that Mary had an opinion about our kitchen.  After all she did the cooking in their home so she was entitled to an opinion about what worked and what didn’t in a kitchen.  But I couldn’t tell her face-to-face that I didn’t want to keep the old, musty, country flair of this kitchen, as appealing as it may have been in her cabin.

“What’s all the noise?” Matt said shuffling into the kitchen at 11 AM.  My cousin’s kid liked his sleep.

“The neighbors like our kitchen but not the blue,” I said turning on the hot water pot for his tea.

“’Cause this blue is ugly,” he said reaching for some bread and cheese still on the table.

“You don’t like blue either.”

“Blue’s cool but not in a kitchen,” he said with a yawn.  “BT dubs, when are you gutting the whole kitchen for the redo?  And do I need to find a new place to stay?”

It wasn’t surprising that Matt had an opinion about our kitchen, because he was a twenty-three year-old college graduate and twenty-three year-old college grads always had opinions, which they shared... liberally. 

But why did I have to listen to everyone else’s opinion?  It was my kitchen, shouldn’t they listen to my opinions about it?

For example how about my opinion that I agreed with Matt, Mary, Harold and Mr. Wonderful: this two-tone blue was ugly.

Or my opinion that I liked how the cabinets were made of solid wood.  So why would I rip out the wooden cabinets just to replace them with new pressed-wood or plastic ones?

Or my opinion that a kitchen redo is not about gutting everything for a brand new, cookie-cutter kitchen that’ll look just like the neighbor’s.  I liked our 1950s house and wanted to keep some elements from the 1950s in it.   Otherwise—Hello?—I would have bought a brand new house. 

Or my opinion that living in this house now meant retaining the best style of the mid 20^th century paired with the latest, most efficient 21^st century appliances.

Or my opinion that when I moved into this house, I held a theory that blue belonged in the bathroom not the kitchen.  But then a funny thing had happened while we’d been living in this house, cooking in this kitchen and eating in this space.  I fell in love with the reality of a blue kitchen. 

Several hours later Mr. Wonderful returned home.  I told him my new opinions about fixing up the kitchen and repainting it blue.

“Blue?!  But 12 hours ago you hated the blue, too.”

“True,” I said but opinions can change when he left me alone on a Saturday morning without any distractions.  Especially when he left me alone on a Saturday morning without any distractions.

Puke Green or Reptile Green?

All greens are not created equal.  Or are they?

Here’s the Puke Green color we discussed with the neighbors:

Here’s the Reptile Green our room was painted in when we first moved in.  The effect was achieved by applying a light green over a dark green with—wait for it!—a sponge:

The question is: Which is uglier? 

In small doses I think the Puke Green could work as an accent color; for example as pillows, picture frames or an ashtray in a non-smoking house.  

Meanwhile, Reptile Green--sponged on--never works.  Therefore I've decided: our formerly Reptile Green color is uglier!

What do you think?

Balance of Green

“Hello!  We’re here!” A cheery, feminine voice called out from the driveway.

“Are we expecting anyone?” Mr. Wonderful said as we stood in dirt up to our knees in the back yard. 

“No,” I said pausing with the shovel.

“Then what are that woman and man doing in our kitchen?”

Indeed.  A blond woman and a graying man had entered the house and were standing in our kitchen.  Rarely have I reacted—or sprinted—so fast.

“Can I help you?”  I said rushing into the house hoisting the garden shovel, prepared to use it as a weapon.

“We’re the neighbors.  Next door.  On the other side of the fence,” the blond woman said smiling. 

“We’re Mary and Mike,” the graying-haired man said.

“Here’s a cake I bought.  I hope you like pistachios.” 

“Ohhh!  So nice to meet you,” I said smiling at them.  “And thank you.” 

Mr. Wonderful had circled around and through the house and now appeared behind them with his arms raised holding a hacksaw.

“No, Honey!” I cried out.  “These are the neighbors.  They brought us cake!”  Mr. Wonderful lowered the hacksaw and shook their hands. 

And what delightful neighbors!  They were a 50-something couple—Mary and Mike—who had two careers and three kids, and all of them lived next door. 

“We’ve been watching you young people do work on this house.  It needed a lot of work,” Mary said. 

“A whole lot of work,” Michael added.

“Thanks…?” I said setting the cake on the table.  “Actually most of the work we’ve done so far has been painting.”

“You’ve inspired us.  We’re going to paint our daughter’s room,” Mary said digging in her purse.   

“Is there any color you would recommend to paint a girl’s room?” Michael asked.

“I don’t know your daughter,” I said.  “But my only advice is don’t paint any room green.  When we moved in we had a green room that was so ugly it took three coats of paint to cover it up.  Let me say it was an enormous effort but the world is now rid of an ugly space.”

“Here’s what I want to paint her room,” Mary said fishing a paint card out of her purse. 

It was green.  Puke green.  As ugly as the green we’d first had on our walls.  

“What do you think?” Mike asked.

“If it makes her happy, that’s all... that matters,” I said.

“You’re right.  She's going to love it,” Mary said as she and Mike admired the green card smiling.  I exchanged a look with Mr. Wonderful. 

“Good save,” he mouthed to me.

Color is such a personal preference.  

That afternoon I developed a theory: in the world, there must be a balance of color.  If one green is removed, another green is added.  It keeps the sides of work-done and work-to-be-done equal.  All while keeping paint stores in business. 

The green room is dead!  Long live the green room!

House Photos THEN and NOW

“Morning,” Harold said lifting hand weights in his front yard.

“Hi, Harold,” Mr. Wonderful and I said in unison going to our cars parked in the driveway.

“It’s going to be a scorcher today.”

“Yes,” I said getting into my car. 

“Yes,” Mr. Wonderful said getting into his car. 

“High double digits.  Close to a hun—”

“Harold, leave them be!” said his wife, Norma, as she burst out of their house and scurried down the front walk, her tight white curls bobbing in the morning's gentle breeze.  “Can’t you see they’re trying to get to work?”

“We always have time to say hi to our neighbors,” Mr. Wonderful said tossing her a smile.

“In that case, go get them.” 

Harold ducked into the house and returned with a couple photos. 

“Norma thought you’d like to see the house in the old days.”

The photos were black and white with a white border and four jagged edges. 

“These pictures must be 50 years old,” I said in awe.

“Try 60,” Norma said.  

"Actually, 59 years," Harold said.  Norma rolled her eyes.

“My parents took these pictures right after they built their house and moved in.”

“Wow,” I said touching them carefully.  “I’ll scan them and return them to you.”

“Keep them,” Norma said shrugging.  “It’s your house now.” 

What a treat to see a snapshot of our house from the past.  A picture does tell a thousand words about fashion, lifestyle and personal preference and how life has changed in the past 60 years.  Give or take a year.

Here’s a view of the pool from 1953.  The bricks around the pool are original.

  

Here’s a view of the pool in 2012.  A planter now lines the length of one side of the pool.

Here’s a view of the back of the house in 1953.  The doors look dark.

Here’s a view of the back of the house in 2012.  Our newly skinned palm trees add a Palm Springs flair.

All in all, I think the house has aged well!  I feel so fortunate to have these images of our house's history.  Thank you, Harold and Norma!

Palm Trees BEFORE, DURING and AFTER

Here are our Mexican Fan and Queen Palm trees BEFORE we had them trimmed:

DURING the trimming the professional tree trimmer wore a face mask to protect his mouth and nose from the dust and debris found in the dead, hanging palm fronds.

Even with the bucket truck, some trees were too tall to reach the top of.  So the trimmer put on shoe spikes and a harness and climbed the rest of the way up.  Seeing him so high up there made me dizzy!

Again a comparison:  The picture below is BEFORE trimming.

And the picture below is a few weeks AFTER trimming.  Without all the dead fronds you can actually see the trees.  And they are stunning!  

Nothing says "Los Angeles" more than palm trees.  And I love ours.

Palm Tree Friends

The bucket truck arrived at 7:00 AM, the hard-hatted workers 7:30 and by 9 AM the shredder was chewing up tree trunks and spitting them out in a whirlwind of wood chips and dust.

“Our neighbors are going to hate us!” Mr. Wonderful shouted over the machine’s buzz saw whir.

“We had to do it!” I shrugged.

“But on Sunday morning?”

He did have a point.  If I were the neighbors, I’d hate us.  Especially if I were Charles and Stephen because on a windy day their yard already received most of our dead palm fronds, plus they worked long hours and now their bedroom windows were just a few feet from the busy wood chipper.  Waking anyone—especially them—from precious weekend slumber with this incessant, high-pitched noise wasn’t the way to ingratiate ourselves with our neighbors.  But with both Mr. Wonderful and I working six-day weeks, Sunday was the only time we could oversee this massive job. 

The “job” was our front yard.  Or more appropriately, making our front yard look less like a FEMA-declared, tropical disaster zone.  Currently it was a collection of overgrown palms: including shaggy Mexican Fan Palms, each topping out at 70 feet high; and sloppy Queen Palms in various states of living, half-living and totally dead states.

To trim, chop and remove the dead arboreal debris, the bucket truck lifted and lowered—Beep!  Beep!  Beeping!—with every movement.  Chainsaws whirred and the shredder decimated tree parts spewing them on the street in what looked like a sand storm in the Sahara.  At 10 AM I spotted Charles, our bearded neighbor from across the street, and his pit bull.  Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Charles looked at the machines and hard-hatted workers charging about our yard like a famished ant colony at a summer picnic.

“I’m sorry, Charles,” I said backing away from his dog as it bared its teeth.  “Sorry for the noise and mess!”

“You planning the next invasion of Normandy?”

“Just trimming our trees to get rid of the dead palm fronds.”

Charles lifted his arms as if to strangle me.  Then he put his hands together and clapped, clapped and clapped.  “You’ve just endeared yourself to everyone on the block, not to mention improved all our property values.  Thank you!”

Other neighbors—Stephen, Harold and Harold’s wife, Norma, whom we’d never met—gathered on our driveway to watch the production.  They smiled, shook our hands and said;

“Bravo.” 

“So glad you’re doing this.”

“Nice to meet you.  Welcome to the neighborhood.” 

“Here’s our contact information.  Call if you need anything.”

Rudely we’d taken away their Sunday morning and in return, they gave us their friendship.

How To Skin a Palm

Palm trees, like people, are created equal.  Every tropical and subtropical palm variety is green, luscious and beautiful.  What varies is the palm’s upkeep and grooming methods, which can run the gamut from: 1) Never doing anything to it; to 2) Fertilizing it once; to 3) Hacking back its unruly, overactive growing parts until it looks half-way decent.  Which is sort of how grooming works with people, too. 

I’ve never been the gal who could pull an all-nighter, sleep for 12 minutes, then roll out of bed looking fresh and beautiful without a lick of make-up.  I’ve always needed lots of sleep, vitamins and a daily, six-hour beauty regimen with expensive creams, sprays and high-impact cardio exercise to look presentable enough not to scare small children. 

Unfortunately I bought a yard full of palms just like me—they have costly, time-consuming, labor-intensive grooming needs.  Darn it.

Why couldn’t we have Desert Palm (Washingtonia filifera) trees?  These medium-sized trees, native to California and the southwest, line the streets of Palm Springs giving that oasis town a stately air.  They also require minimal upkeep since the dead palm leaves, or palm “fronds”, are left hanging on the tree where they form a grass skirt.  And as everyone knows, anything in a grass skirt is beautiful. 

 

Nope, in our small front yard we had a dozen palms of the Mexican Fan Palm (Washingtonia robusta) and Queen Palm (Syagrus romanzoffiana) varieties and all of them—every single one—needed to be skinned.  Palm “skinning” is the costliest trimming technique that removes every five-foot long, dead palm frond once it hangs flush with the trunk; in effect, cutting off its “grass skirt”.  But in the case of our tall palm trees, the grass skirt never made the tree a thing of beauty, it made it look like a giant man in drag. 

But I digress.  Back to skinning: the palm frond is cut off at its base, right next to the trunk, which leaves the trunk with a smooth appearance reminiscent of the gray “skin” of an elephant.  I’m not sure if this is where the “skinning” term came from but I’m sticking with it.

If Mr. Wonderful and I decided not to skin our Mexican Fan and Queen palms, then we would continue to find a dozen five-foot long, dead palm fronds littering our front yard, driveway and street every time the wind blew, which was more than annoying.  Picking up dead palm fronds is difficult because each one is lined with rows of sharp teeth, and being five feet long, each one needs to be sawed in half just so I can fit them into the green yard-waste recyclable bin.

But our palms were equal opportunity frond polluters.  After any slight breeze, five-foot long, dead brown palm fronds would blow into our neighbors’ yards, too.  Since no neighbor, except Harold, had spoken to us since we’d moved in, we thought there might be a connection between them disliking our palms and disliking us.

Therefore for the good of ourselves and to promote neighborly love, it was a no brainer.  We had to get our trees skinned even though we’d be fleeced in the expensive process. 


The things you do for neighborly love.

Palm Tree Mystery

“Don't chop the palm trees down!” Harold bellowed from his front yard as the third tree specialist of the week drove off.

“We’re having them trimmed.”

“Just get on the roof and do it yourself.  That’s what I did,” he said hoisting an American flag on its pole.
I scanned his deserted front yard.  "Harold you don’t have any palm trees to trim.”

“I trimmed yours, from your roof.”

Now I was new to suburban living in Los Angeles but this struck me as weird.  Yes, Harold was our nosy next-door neighbor and a retired engineer but no amount of nosiness or engineering, control-freak behavior could explain why he would have trimmed our trees before we moved in.

Unless of course: 1) He cared about our neighborhood’s neat esthetic.  2) He was concerned about his own property’s value being brought down by a vacant home’s sloppy garden.  Or 3) He was a crazy thrill seeker.

“Harold, what do you mean you trimmed our trees?”

“I climbed on the roof and used a pole trimmer to cut the leaves off the Queen Palms,” he said pointing to two brown trunks along the front walk.  “Although maybe I trimmed them too much because they look… dead.”

“They’re definitely dead.  But why did you trim our trees?”  

“She wanted me to.”

“She?  Your wife?”

“My mother-in-law.  She loved palms and she made me trim them—”

“Wait,” I gasped.  “These palms—and our house—they belonged to your mother-in-law?”

“And father-in-law.  They built the house in the 1950s.  He tolerated palms but she adored them because they were so California—”

“What!  Your in-laws built and lived in our house and you lived next door to them?”

“For 30 years,” he said scratching his forehead.  “Why else would I be trimming the trees in your yard?  I’m not a crazy thrill seeker, for Pete’s sake.”

“No,” I shook my head.  “Of course not.” 

What a revelation!   Harold knew—and was related—to the people who built our house.  Which made him an oral historian of the development and establishment of our house and the lives of the people who’d lived in it.  This piece of information explained so much about him and his strong, nosy interest in us and our home.  It gave me a new appreciation for him.  It made me want to hear his stories about the house, the trees, his in-laws and family.

“Harold, you want to come over for a cup of coffee and chat about the house’s early days?”  He looked at me with surprise.  

“Why talk about the past?  I’ve got too much to do now,” he said straightening his baseball cap and climbing into the car.  Before he drove off he put the window down and called out.  “She’d be glad you’re not cutting her trees down.”  

I was glad, too.  In a world of disposable things, these trees—his mother-in-law’s palms—stood as a testament to the power and beauty of Los Angeles both yesterday and today.

The Front Yard aka The Disaster Zone

“We’ll start at the top and go down.”

“But they’re 70 feet high,” I said.

“We’ll use spikes.”

I shook my head.  “No one’s nailing my stuff.” 

I was speaking to the third tree specialist of the week to get a quote to trim our yard’s overgrown palm trees.  Trimming palms is one of the most expensive and dangerous jobs in a California garden; dangerous for the trimmer and the tree.  Traditionally tree maintenance companies employ men who wear a harness and spiked shoes to literally scale up and down the tree using machetes to cut off the brown skirt of dead palm leaves or “fronds”.  The shoe spikes puncture the trunk to give the trimmer a foothold on the tree.  Unfortunately even with the harness the spiked shoes system is not foolproof for the man and accidents have happened.

Neither are spikes ideal for the tree.  Once a palm trunk is punctured by a spiked shoe, it never heals. The hole remains and every time spiked shoes are used to climb the tree, more holes are created making the tree look like it has a case of reverse chicken pox or worse, horrible acne scars.  Several years ago Los Angeles officials noticed palm trees citywide were dying en masse.  Eventually they traced the high arboreal death rate to several factors including spiked shoes.  Spikes that had been used to trim a diseased tree were then used on healthy palms, which spread the infection.  

That night over dinner I explained my palm findings to Mr. Wonderful. 

“It sounds expensive,” he said sliding into a chair.

“Safety is more important than money.  And it seems safer for everyone not to use spikes to trim our 11 palms.” 

“But then how do they trim a 70 foot palm tree?”

“With a bucket truck,” I said.  “Which they’ll drive onto the front yard.”

“What about our lawn?”

“It’s just for a couple hours,” I said handing him a plate of hot pasta. 

“Two hours?”

“Uh, ten.”

"That'll ruin it--" I set a bowl of steaming hot pasta on the table.  He turned his attention back to the palms.  "We're going to have to reseed the whole lawn--" I set a bowl of shrimp and lemon pasta sauce next to his plate and dished him up a helping.  "It'll be..."  I grabbed a wedge of hard Parmesan-Reggiano.

"Grated cheese?"

He nodded.  His palm tree questioning would have continued but he was hungry and he loves my shrimp and lemon pasta.  

"Delicious," he said spinning the pasta around his fork.  "So… what were we talking about?"

Unlike the palm trees, the way to work with Mr. Wonderful was to start with his belly and go up to his heart and head.

"A Cat in the House"

Jackson was a very sad cat.  As the days passed with him in our home he slept a lot, never purred and refused to be picked up.  Every morning he woke me at 5:30 with his insistent meows begging for breakfast.  As I opened the pantry door to get his food, he’d rub up against my leg, thrilled at the thought of being fed.  I'm sure this was the highlight of his day. 

By 7:30 AM he was curled up behind the bedroom door alone, sleeping again.  He was a very sad cat.  I thought about his life before he came to us: 1) Locked out of a house when he was just a kitten; 2) Rescued by a big-hearted woman, Peggy, who brought him home and adopted him; 3) Abandoned by her when she got sick with cancer, went to the hospital and passed away.  He never had the chance to say good-bye. 4) Then living alone for months in her empty condo.

I found a poem by a female Polish poet called  “A Cat in the House”

Die—you can’t do that to a cat.

Since what can a cat do

In an empty apartment?

Climb the walls?

Rub up against the furniture?

Nothing seems different here,

But nothing is the same.

Nothing has been moved,

But there’s more space.

And at nighttime no lamps are lit.

--Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012)

Being left alone in a house must be miserable for a pet, especially when every day his surrogate mother never returns home.  Jackson’s grief over losing Peggy was something he needed to work through and I wanted to help. 

The next day after I fed him he slunk back behind the door to sleep.  I followed and sat on the floor next to him.  I stroked his coat with my hand; softly petting him.  He turned away from me.  When I continued to pet him he rotated his head back to me, his eyes filled with hesitation.  I gently pet him on his head, under his neck, across his back, over and over.  Then deep in his throat, my finger felt movement.  

I felt him purr.

Cat Love: Unrequited

“You adopted a kitten?” asked the woman behind the cash register.

“He’s five years old so technically he’s not a kitten anymore—”

“You adopted an adult male cat?” she gasped peering at me over her reading glasses. 

“Yes and my husband thinks I’m stupid for—”

“Bless you, woman!”

I was at the local bookstore buying a gift for my friend when, before I knew it, I was knee deep in a cat discussion with the bookseller.  She had rescued four cats of her own and insisted they—like all rescues—were happy just to have been adopted into a good home. 

“It makes rescue cats want to be cuddled.” 

“Not mine,” I said.

“Give him what they love and he’ll love you,” she said nodding vigorously, which seemed to contradict her theory of cats being happy just to have been rescued. 

But, then, what did I know?  I wasn’t a born cat lover like her.  She jotted down the names of the cat litter, food and toys she swore by and pressed the slip of paper into my palm.  Since adopting Jackson was still such a new thing, I was thankful to get advice from any enthusiastic, successful cat owner.  I thanked her warmly and on my way home, took a detour. 

Pet stores have a distinct smell I can only equate with “zoo”.  Scanning the shelves I noticed all the brands the bookseller had recommended contained the words “royal”, “majesty” and “your highness”.  Even the cat food labels were purple—the color of Old World, moneyed royalty.  In fact there was a direct correlation between the more purple on the label, the more green I had to spend to buy it.  But if the bookseller was right, this chi-chi food might be the way to Jackson’s heart and help him cuddle up to Mr. Wonderful and me.  I scooped up all the suggested cat items and charged them to my credit card.

At home I spooned the can of moist food into his bowl.  I refilled his domed litter box with clumping, lavender scents.  I lay the catnip-filled toy on the kitchen floor beside the scratch lounger.  Then I made a pot of tea and waited.  

Sometime after nine PM Jackson slunk out from behind our bedroom door and into the kitchen.  He skirted the table where I sat with Mr. Wonderful, then sniffed his food and ate a few bites.  Then avoiding us, he slunk back to our bedroom.

Following him I found he’d resumed his spot sitting in the small corner behind the door.  I whispered to him, I stroked his fur.  I treated him like the royal prince the food company told me he was.  In response he looked at me with a blank stare. 

Then I realized this cat was different.  His love wasn't for sale. 

Wine Group 2

It's wine time!  This month's outing was about not feeling stupid while wine tasting.  It's called "Lost Wine Tasting" and you can find it here:

http://centralcoastfoodie.com/2012/04/lost-wine-tasting

Enjoy and Cheers!

Fig and Apricot Trees

How does your garden grow?  Here's how the fig and apricot trees are growing in my garden. 

http://www.kcet.org/socal/food/the-nosh/the-home-orchardist-the-black-jack-fig.html

Enjoy!

Hummingbirds Part 2

Working at my computer I noticed an email from my nosy neighbor Harold.  As if it wasn’t enough having the retired next door neighbor commenting on my life face-to-face, now he’s emailing me, too? 

I clicked on the email and noticed an attachment.  Unbelievable: Harold is 86 years old and he’s attaching files to his emails.  My 60 year-old mother-in-law could learn something from him.

I double clicked on the attachment and saw an image that didn’t need much explaining.

“Ready to fly”, he wrote.

"Beautiful," I wrote.  "They sure grow up fast.  Congratulations, Harold."

Then I clicked, "send".  Some things you just can't express face-to-face.

Wine Group 1

It's that time of the month--my All Girl Wine Group meeting!  This time it was about tasting wine without looking at the label, otherwise know as "Wine Tasting Blind".  

centralcoastfoodie.com Wine Tasting Blind

Enjoy and Cheers!

 

Cats and Hummingbirds

“Keep your cat away from my yard,” our neighbor, Harold, bellowed at me from his driveway.  For an 86 year-old he had a booming voice. 

“Sure,” I said flipping though the mail.  “Wait a minute--”  I paused.  Jackson was an indoor cat who came to our house in a carrier and was so scared he’d spent the first two weeks hiding under the bed.  “How did you know we got a cat?”

“I run the Neighborhood Watch,” Harold said puffing out his chest.  “I know everything.”

I thought this information about neighbors looking out for neighbors was supposed to make me feel safer but instead I just felt… exposed, violated and in the market for even thicker curtains.

“Harold, you keep an eye on… whatever you look at and I’ll keep an eye on Jackson.”

“In that case,” he said straightening his baseball cap.  “Follow me.  Use the side gate.”  I’d never been through Harold’s side gate not to mention his backyard, which is where he led me.  In the yard grew soft blades of grass, ropes of ivy and along the west wall, a row of cypress trees.

“What do you think of those guys?” he said pointing to an exposed branch, which held a miniature nest with two baby hummingbirds snuggled inside.  The nest was the size of my woman’s fist and the birds just bigger than my thumbs.  With their striped brown and white plumage they would have been perfectly camouflaged if their nest had not been so exposed.

“Wow,” I whispered.

  

One bird opened his beak, no doubt hungry.  They were both so tiny and precious.  I understood Harold’s concern.  One swipe from a cat and they would be history.  However, if we left them alone maybe they’d grow up and in three weeks be buzzing through our garden pollinating flowers.  

On second thought, maybe it wasn't a bad thing having a nosy neighbor and a scared cat.  Together they would give nature’s newest kids on the block a fighting chance.

Cat Hell

“Make him stop,” Mr. Wonderful said yanking the duvet over his head.  “Please.”

It was 2:30 AM and our new cat, Jackson, had jumped on the bed, thwacked his tail against Mr. Wonderful’s forehead and was kneading my pillow with his paws.  Forget serial killers and clowns, nothing’s scarier than opening your eyes to sharp, hooked claws two inches from your peepers.  And, nothing’s more annoying.

I dumped Jackson to the floor but he leapt up for three repeat performances before the alarm clock sounded. 

We’d only had him two weeks and already this five year-old male had taught me a lot about his species.  1) Cats sleep all day.  2) Cats sleep all evening.  3) Cats keep you up all night. 

In other words, cats are jerks.

Since Jackson was still adjusting to us and our home, we’d followed the advice of the Kitten Rescue volunteers and kept him in one room closed off from the rest of the house so as not to overwhelm him.  Unfortunately with my cousin’s kid, Matt, still bunking in the guest room, the only space available for the cat was our bedroom.  Jackson and our chronic lack of sleep were driving Mr. Wonderful and I toward a career in serial killing--each other.

Just when I’d decided to save my marriage and sleep on the sofa, my sister arrived. 

She surveyed the situation and announced, “Your cat has a problem.”

“Yeah, he’s not a dog,” Mr. Wonderful said with a yawn.
I valued my sister’s diagnosis because she knew cats—she owned eight felines, six of which lived outdoors controlling her farm’s mice population.  She continued, “The problem is Jackson makes his own schedule.”

“Because that’s how cats are.  They’re independent,” I said.

“Then why did you get a cat?”

“My question exactly,” Mr. Wonderful said boring his eyes into me over the rim of his third espresso.

“Jackson’s doing everything on his time,” my sister said.  “If you want him to be part of your family, you have to get him on your schedule.  When you eat, he should eat.  When you’re awake, he should be awake.  For at least some of the time.”

“I can’t do that.  I can’t even get him out from under the bed.”

“Follow me,” she said.

First we collected every picture frame I hadn’t hung and stacked them like Legos, one on top of the other.  We slid them under the bed, filling every square inch of space, which forced an unhappy Jackson out into the open.  Then we swung open the bedroom door to freedom.  Instead of going out to explore the rest of the house, the cat slunk to the opposite side of the room and crouched beside his litter box. 

“We need to force him to leave this room,” she said.  I lugged his litter box and food and water bowls to the kitchen.  Still all day, he remained in our bedroom.  That night when we slipped into bed Jackson disappeared into the living room and didn’t bother our sleep for eight hours.  Eight heavenly hours!   

The next morning my sister, Mr. Wonderful and I sat at the table eating crepes when our laughter was punctured by the sound of chewing kibbles.  On the floor next to our table, we saw Jackson hunched over his newly placed food bowl.  He was out of the bedroom. He was eating while we were eating.  He was with us.

My sister, Mr. Wonderful and I exchanged smiles.  For the first time since moving in I felt like our house was full of family.

Meet Jackson

Name:                          Jackson Cat

Age:                             5 years old

Favorite location:         Hiding under the bed

Favorite activity:          Hiding under the bed

Most annoying habit:   Hiding under the bed

Jack Bauer's Cat

“I don’t want to freak Jackson out,” Carrie said setting the cat carrier in the middle of our bedroom floor.  I closed the door to the rest of the house to shrink this new space for him.  Carrie swung open the carrier and out slunk a long, full-grown white cat with a black saddle patch.  He crouched so low to the ground his legs looked like stubs.  His eyes, wide yellow orbs, darted about taking in the room, Carrie, Mr. Wonderful and me. 

“Hi Jackson,” I said gently petting his shedding coat.  “Welcome to your new home.”  He twitched with fear under my hand then stretched his nose to the bed and sniffed it. 

 

“He likes beds,” Carrie said.  “The past five months, since Peggy’s… passing, he’s spent hiding under the bed.  I think it’s depression.”  I understood how the cat felt.  We all missed Peggy. 

“We’ll cure him of that,” I said looking at Carrie.  “Our bed is only four inches off the ground he won’t fit under it.” 

“Think again,” Mr. Wonderful said as we watched Jackson flatten to the floor and wiggle under the bed.  And there he stayed while we gave Carrie a tour of the house, shared a bottle of wine, discussed home ownership, debated the slate of new TV shows, chatted about her volunteer work with cat rescue, sung the praises of clumping cat litter, filled the domed litter box, loaded her car and she drove off. 

That evening Mr. Wonderful and I tried coaxing Jackson out from under the bed.  “Come out, kitty-cat,” I said shaking some kibble in my hand.  Sandwiched between the bed springs and floor he remained frozen in that uncomfortable position while looking around with fear.

“We should rename him,” Mr. Wonderful announced.   “I don’t like ‘Jackson’.”

“He lost everything he’s ever known," I said, "and now you want him to lose his name, too?  No way.  Besides Jackson is part of his origin story.”  Mr. Wonderful kinked an eyebrow at me. 

I explained how I’d met Peggy, the cat lover, while we were both working on “24”, the TV show starring Kiefer Sutherland.  As one of our Emmy-winning Casting Directors, Peggy was responsible for finding the next bad guy for Jack to chase or the new female love interest for Jack to pine for but not kiss.  Although “24” was a Fox production we didn’t shoot on the studio lot but in Chatsworth, a remote part of the San Fernando Valley not far from where, in the golden days of Hollywood, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz had a sprawling weekend ranch looking out over the Valley’s lush acres of citrus groves.  These days Chatsworth was known as the center of the porn filming industry and, for a couple years in the aughts, as the home to “24”.

The “24” studio consisted of a former pencil factory that our Production Designer transformed into Jack Bauer’s Los Angeles, the CTU and innumerable safehouses.  The show’s construction crew had cut a two-story high doorway into the wall complete with a barn-sized sliding door to facilitate building and tearing down sets.  Often during the 9-16 hour workday, this huge door was left open.  Entering through it one morning Peggy heard a soft mewing.  Crouched among the set decorations she found a lone black and white kitten so tiny she could hold him in the palm of her hand.  Clearly hungry she set out a bowl of milk hoping to tide him over until his mother returned.  When after two weeks the mother cat still hadn’t appeared, Peggy brought the kitten home for the weekend and the rest was history.  She said it took the kitten about 20 minutes to adapt to her cozy condo in West Hollywood where she spoiled him along with two other cats. 

Not wanting to forget she’d found him on Jack Bauer’s set, she named him Jack’s son. 

“So we can’t change his name,” I said.  “Jackson is all he knows, right Jackson?”

Still crouching under the bed, the cat turned his head toward me, his yellow eyes locked on mine.  Nope, he hadn’t forgotten his name.

Getting a Pet

Pets and new houses go together like fleas and flea dipping.  After years of living in apartments with “no pet” policies, part of the appeal of owning a house in Los Angeles was that finally we could have a dog.  I looked forward to the day when Mr. Wonderful and I could join the hordes of Angelinos walking their pooches in the park, on the beach and down the aisles of Petco.

In this world there are dog people and there are cat people.  My husband and I belong to the dogs.  I grew up with a friendly German Shepherd and when Mr. Wonderful was a boy he had a lovable mutt who was his constant companion.  Both were sweet, tail-wagging pets who filled our childhoods with countless hours of fetch and happiness.  After we moved into our fixer upper house I revealed my canine wish.
    
“You don’t need a pet to come home to,” Mr. Wonderful said plastering a wall. “You have a house needing work to come home to.”  And there was the truth: A) He didn’t want a dog; B) because we needed to focus on the house; C) A house that required 10 years of fixing, give or take a decade.

The next day my colleague, Carrie, cornered me at an after work event.
“Your house needs a pet.  And I have the cat for you,” she said poking the lime wedge in her Diet Coke with a straw.  I don’t like cats.  They’re egotistical, suffer from superiority complexes and are frustratingly independent.  I’ve known prisoners in San Quentin nicer than cats.  I shook my head, “No can do.”
“I work for the local Cat Rescue,” she said flashing a business card with her email address and a smiling cat logo.  I don’t know where she found a smiling cat logo because cats don’t smile.  Their facial expressions range from sleeping to pouting to more sleeping.  She continued, “I have a cat in need of a family.”
“My husband and I are dog people,” I said pressing my back against the wall and sliding away.  She pursued.
“He’s five years-old and neutered.”
 I don’t care.  Cats are selfish animals!  I wanted to shout.  Instead I slid along the wall until I hit the corner of the room.  Trapped.  Carrie’s face got so close to mine I smelled the lime on her breath.
“Adopt him,” she said.
“My husband dislikes cats.  A lot—”
“Peggy found him when he was just a kitten.  She raised him and he lived with her until…” 

Carrie and I exchanged a look.  Despite her pushiness even she couldn’t bear to say it.  Our dear friend and devoted cat fancier, Peggy, had passed away five months earlier due to a short, painful bout with cancer.  Two of her cats were immediately adopted by her family, which left this one cat to place. 
    
“Don’t adopt him for me,” Carrie said with big brown eyes.  “Do it… for Peggy”.

We hugged.  We cried.  I agreed to a Sunday drop off, which gave me exactly 36 hours to break the news to Mr. Wonderful: We were now cat owners.

Lavender

A car full of lavender.

New Year's Superstition

“Look what I found,” Mr. Wonderful said dropping a small plastic statue in my lap as I knelt in a mound of earth.  We’d spent two days digging out the prickly, ragged, 50 year-old holly bushes from the front yard and now on a sunny day in late December, we were replanting the bed in a dozen lavender bushes. 

The statue, just three inches tall, depicted a man in robes holding a jug in his right hand and a tool in his left.  “It’s St. Joseph,” I said.  “Jesus’ step-father.”

Growing up Catholic in the Midwest the gardens of my mother, grandmother and their friends all contained saint statues.  St. Francis for the animals, the Blessed Virgin Mary for suffering mothers with teenage daughters and Jesus for everything, especially suffering mothers with teenage daughters.  The only saint statue not visible in a Catholic woman’s garden was St. Joseph because he was buried in it.

A carpenter by trade, St. Joseph was said to protect homes (not just the wooden ones) and their inhabitants.  If a resident sank a St. Joe statue outside the house he’d provide them protection and luck as long as they lived in it.

This tiny statue had been in the garden when we bought the house, moved into it and for the past few months had lived in it.  And up ‘til now we’d been safe and happy.  The statue wasn’t hurting anything and—just maybe—was protecting us. 

“Bury him again,” I said handing St. Joseph to Mr. Wonderful.

“You’re superstitious,” Mr. Wonderful said raising an eyebrow.

“Am not,” I said, Catholic guilt washing over me. 

“Gardens are for plants,” he said decisively and tossed the saint into a bucket of rocks.

Then it started.  The next day I couldn’t find my keys (the only set!) to the laundry room.  Then my beloved Steel Casey desk chair broke.  On New Year’s Day, the harbinger of what’s to come for the next 12 months, I walked out the front door and stepped into a pile of cat vomit.  Not my pet’s vomit but the sickly pink and yellow chunks of a feral cat I didn’t know. 

“Where is he?” I asked, my voice cracking with fear.  “Where’s St. Joseph?” 

“I thought you weren’t superstitious—”

“I’m not.  I’m just tired of my life falling apart!”

Rushing out to the garage I dumped out the green garbage bin and at the bottom found his white plastic form.

Beside a blooming lavender plant in the front yard I dug a hole and placed St. Joseph in it, carefully covering his pristine whiteness with fresh dark soil.  I even watered the spot so he could put down roots.

That evening dressing for a sushi dinner with friends, I slipped on a black blazer and in the left pocket my hand curled around the cold metal of the laundry room keys.  The next day, I schlepped my broken writing chair to Rose Upholstery in Hollywood, where they reaffixed the chair to its base and recovered it in a beautiful light cream vinyl making it look better than it had before the break.  Then arriving home from work I noticed dozens of feral cat footprints among our newly planted lavenders.  But no poop or vomit. 

Now St. Joseph’s roots to our house and my roots to the house were intertwined.  Thankfully, our home and garden were once again under his protection.  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  

If you don’t believe me, I dare you to try living without him yourself. 

Garden Goods in December

It’s December and incredibly (!) our tiny vegetable garden is still producing cherry tomatoes and zucchini!  Ahhh, the value of choosing a sunny spot for a garden plot.

Here’s the bounty I collected on Christmas Day.

Here are the veggies the day after, whipped up into a delicious chicken and veggie dinner.  Nothing tastes better that a homegrown tomato.  Even in December.

Merry Christmas!

Christmastime means sugar cookies, stockings and sitting by a crackling fire!

This fireplace contains a Heatilator (the four vents), which is a vent system designed to redirect more heat from the fireplace back into the room.  Having sat in front of it several times this month, I attest the Heatilator works.  

Fireplaces

Our House has two fireplaces; a traditional brick one in the living room with a low hearth where you can sit and soak up the fire’s heat.

And in the kitchen a raised contraption that looks more like an Italian restaurant’s pizza oven than a fireplace. 

In the heat of August having a fireplace, not to mention two, seemed over the top for our mild Southern California climate.  But now in the grip of December’s chilly desert evenings, I’m glad we have both of them. 

Note to Self: before the return of August’s triple digit temperatures, I want to make a pizza in the “pizza oven”.