KFAMH is on the Air

Tall Husband: Annie, no one will be able to see the antenna...I'm hiding it behind the guest house.

Annie: I see that!

Annie: I definitely can see it.

Annie: So why is the blasted thing in plain view of everybody and their dog?!

Scooter: Mom, if you want to take romantic shots of the old well, you better brush up on your Photo Shop skills...Grrrr! 

Note: Tall Husband recently returned to his old hobby of amateur radio, which explains the thirty-eight foot radio antenna smack in the back garden....grrr!

Seriously Dreamy Daybed Delivered Today!

Don't you just love it, when you dream about having something...well, let's be honest here, this was serious lusting, verging on pathological obsession...then you finally get it?

Gotta love that patina!

What's not to love about French Empire?

They still do make them like that...Napoleon Bonaparte, eat your heart out, 'cause Restoration Hardware has made your daybed, but only better.

Even the little French pony thinks he's gone back in time.  Perhaps his tail is under the daybed?

Things We Learn

 

Antique French Chapel Chair & Antique Dutch School Desk

Doris Lessing the writer said of learning, "That is what learning is.  You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way."  She could have been talking about DNA...a personal DNA report. You have known something is quite wrong with your health and that you do not feel as if you really belong anywhere, then you learn from that genetics report that you were right about what you understood.

Several posts back, I wrote that I had sent away a saliva sample to the consumer DNA company 23andMe.  As the sequencing is now completed, I have Internet access to numerous health reports, traits, carrier status, my raw data, plus a list of people who are genetically related to me.

As a child, I always knew I was royalty...don't we all have those fantasies?  As it turns out, I am genetically a distant relation to Marie Antoinette, Queen of France; to Prince Philip, the Queen of England's  husband and her second cousin; to Napoleon Bonaparte  and to Saint Luke.  Before you are overly impressed, you should know that if your ancestors were European, you are probably related to the same gang.

While being related to royalty, however distant, is cool, it explains something not so cool...why I have a rare blood disorder called porphyria, the "royal disease."  I also learned that I am a hemochromatosis carrier and that I also have another metabolic disorder called methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase or MTHFR for short.  Go ahead, insert some vowels into the last disorder...I have!

As the information about health and the short cuts around the genetic mutations were life saving, I sent a 23andMe kit to my younger sister.  Then...OOPS.  On our mother's birthday, on the day the Pope resigned, on the day lightening struck the Vatican, my sister pops up on my 23andMe Relative Finder as my half-sister.  No wonder I was the only blue-eyed blond in a large family.  That explains why I never felt as if I really belonged.

I suddenly understand something I had understood all my life, but in a new way.  Doris Lessing is right. At least that's what learning is late in life.

What Does Not Belong?

Remember those workbook problems in kindergarten...the ones with a picture that showed incongruent situations?  So, here's one for you:

What does not belong in this picture?

Correct!  The flowers do not belong.  Everyone knows that a cute dog belongs on the dining room table.  Silly to put flowers there.

Tous à l'abri!

Don't you just love it when something is not only chic, but also functional?  Misha, my daughter, sent me this wonderful French umbrella.  Its case fits over your body like a shoulder bag, leaving your hands free.

So, you carry it thus.

Tous à l'abri!

Oh, la, la...those French!

Maggie, my vintage mannequin, waits for the rain.

Skipper & Scooter Change the Linens

What?  Time to change the linens...again?  We just did that yesterday.   Oh, the muddy paw prints from our walk this morning.  Right!

Yep, those corners are straight enough.




Ahhhh....fresh linens.  Thanks for the help, Mom.

Somethings Just Make You Giggle

Misha's Slippers

Photo by Misha

When I saw these house slippers in a catalog, I just had to order, not one pair, but two.  A pair for me and a pair for my daughter, Misha...it's a mother-daughter bonding thing.  So, when she flew in from Madrid, we sat around the Bungalow wearing our matching slippers with flowers on our toes...and we giggled.  We both loved that a group of enterprising women in Kathmandu had made these charming slippers.  Thank you ladies of Kathmandu for the glorious giggles.