FrozenSeas of Celeste
Jan. 5th, 2018 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ismoOur internet was out last night and into today, so I had to make my own fun by reading the obituaries in the daily paper, and other retro print sources.
As everyone who reads this blog is probably aware, I have an amusing obsession with self-help books. One of the writers I’ve encountered is a person named Alexandra Stoddard, who fascinates me because she’s such a WASP. She’s an interior decorator who first wrote about decorating one’s home and then moved on the art of living in general. Apparently she was perceived as quite a maverick because she was a single mother (divorced!), wore mini-skirts, and believed in using bright colors in your house! Shocking!! So I’ve been reading one of her books about arranging your house to suit your own needs. It’s all going along pretty well. Every once in awhile I scoff a bit, but mostly I’m nodding—until I get to the part where she explains that she was brought up in a very proper house, but has decided to live in a more relaxed style. Okay, that sounds good, I think. Then I find out that her idea of a relaxed style is to stop ironing the sheets. Mercy! She kind of lost me there, because I don’t think I’ve ever slept in ironed sheets my entire life. She also thinks it’s okay to have cotton sheets instead of linen ones, provided there’s a high thread count. This makes me roll my eyes because I spent the first ten or fifteen years of my married life using sheets and towels that came out of what our little cult group called “the community goods room.” They were mostly polyester and had been used and recycled multiple times. My idea of luxury was when the Sparrowhawk’s great aunt gave us a gift of money one Christmas and we bought some BRAND NEW towels that no one else had ever used.
Now we are tremendously better off, for sure, and I have my very own soft flannel sheets that I love to pieces. But I haven’t forgotten those days of old when I did my shopping at Goodwill and garage sales. I’m worried about the Nipper right now because he has been struggling to keep the water heater and furnace going in his drafty old house. He emailed the Sparrowhawk tonight to say they finally figured out what’s wrong. The gas company says they have a crack in their gas feed pipe, and it’s going to cost over a thousand dollars to fix, so he needs some help. I know other people who are struggling to stay warm, keep the car running, and such like. So the thought of ironed linen sheets is some nice luxury porn for a cold winter’s night, but not a problem I feel really compelled to be concerned with. I hope all of you out on the East Coast are surviving the Fimbulwinter!
As everyone who reads this blog is probably aware, I have an amusing obsession with self-help books. One of the writers I’ve encountered is a person named Alexandra Stoddard, who fascinates me because she’s such a WASP. She’s an interior decorator who first wrote about decorating one’s home and then moved on the art of living in general. Apparently she was perceived as quite a maverick because she was a single mother (divorced!), wore mini-skirts, and believed in using bright colors in your house! Shocking!! So I’ve been reading one of her books about arranging your house to suit your own needs. It’s all going along pretty well. Every once in awhile I scoff a bit, but mostly I’m nodding—until I get to the part where she explains that she was brought up in a very proper house, but has decided to live in a more relaxed style. Okay, that sounds good, I think. Then I find out that her idea of a relaxed style is to stop ironing the sheets. Mercy! She kind of lost me there, because I don’t think I’ve ever slept in ironed sheets my entire life. She also thinks it’s okay to have cotton sheets instead of linen ones, provided there’s a high thread count. This makes me roll my eyes because I spent the first ten or fifteen years of my married life using sheets and towels that came out of what our little cult group called “the community goods room.” They were mostly polyester and had been used and recycled multiple times. My idea of luxury was when the Sparrowhawk’s great aunt gave us a gift of money one Christmas and we bought some BRAND NEW towels that no one else had ever used.
Now we are tremendously better off, for sure, and I have my very own soft flannel sheets that I love to pieces. But I haven’t forgotten those days of old when I did my shopping at Goodwill and garage sales. I’m worried about the Nipper right now because he has been struggling to keep the water heater and furnace going in his drafty old house. He emailed the Sparrowhawk tonight to say they finally figured out what’s wrong. The gas company says they have a crack in their gas feed pipe, and it’s going to cost over a thousand dollars to fix, so he needs some help. I know other people who are struggling to stay warm, keep the car running, and such like. So the thought of ironed linen sheets is some nice luxury porn for a cold winter’s night, but not a problem I feel really compelled to be concerned with. I hope all of you out on the East Coast are surviving the Fimbulwinter!
