Antagonizing the Mounties, and other adventures: a photo essay

Every summer, my girlfriends and I drive for an almost infinite number of hours to visit another dear buddy of ours, who lives waaaaaay upstate on the St. Lawrence River. And I do mean directly on the river - this is the view from her porch:

And that is Canada on the other side.

In the 10 (ten!) (holy shit!) years we have been doing this, there has always been some sort of misadventure. Horrific traffic jams, late-night GPS misfires, roadwork lasting for the entire state of Pennsylvania, and so forth. This year was no different.

We thought we'd gotten our bad luck out of the way quickly, after it took us 45 minutes to go the five blocks from my office to the entrance of the Holland Tunnel. Giddy with excitement over our impending four days of bad behavior and fattening food, we decided to stop for dinner at McDonald's. And then, as we zoomed back toward the interstate, there was a regrettable incident involving a possible slight degree of over-excitement about a bag of fries, an unlucky twist of the wheel, and a diabolical concrete curb on a no-shoulder road in the very fine state of New Jersey. Our front right tire was the casualty.

Which led to this:

Artist's Impression of Four Women with Seven Post-Secondary Degrees Between Them,

All of Whom Rarely Drive, Figuring out How to Change a Tire

and also to this:

My friend Liz predicted, when we first pulled over our wounded vehicle on this deserted side street,

that the subsequent events would unfold as either a slasher flick or a porno;

I think this photo should make it clear which way things were leaning.

But a couple of hours, two stolen landscaping rocks, and one musclebound cop later, we were back on our way. With 200 miles to drive in three hours on a donut spare.

And we did it. We coined the phrase "but also, still drive," as encouragement for a flustered driver hunting with mounting urgency for the headlight switch on a rapidly darkening stretch of interstate, but we did it. And these were our rewards:

Oh, and the Mounties? Yeah, that happened. On our last night, our friend's mom took us for an amazing sunset boat ride down the river, and as she made a wide U-turn to head back toward the house, a Canadian border patrol boat flashed its lights at us and pulled up alongside. I prepared to be boarded, but they just asked us probing questions like why had we been motoring along and then all of a sudden popped a u-ey and headed the other way? (Answer: we live on the east side of the river, and after traveling south, the only way to return to the house via boat is to pop a u-ey.) And they were so relentlessly polite and Canadian about it all that we couldn't really get too grumpy with them.

But still, I wasn't bold enough to take a photo of them while we were in sight of them, lest they think I really was a terrorist casing entry points into our fair northern neighbors. So I waited till they were a safe distance away. That little blob on the horizon in the photo below, friends, is a vessel of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

And thus ended another glorious ritual of summer. I have come away happier, fatter, and confident of success in any future speed drills involving locating and dislodging the spare tire in Satan's Minivan a 2012 Dodge Grand Caravan.

Design porn - Eamon's house

 Inspiration for Eamon's house

One of those tediously binary "rules" about human nature (you're either right-brained or left-brained; you're either introverted or extroverted) is that, supposedly, people are either visual learners or verbal learners. I call bullshit; I am both. Primarily verbal, perhaps, but if my brain weren't also unavoidably drawn to visual composition and imagery, I'd never have become a quasi-art-major or an interior designer. So even when I'm writing, I think in images.

So naturally, when I was writing this book about a house renovation, I had to find an actual house to write about. Not just that--I pored over the listing photos until I could put together a reasonable facsimile of the existing floor plan, and then I drafted the new plan I wanted to create. And then I furnished it.

I mean, of course I did.

And now I want to show it to you! I promise, if you hang out with me, there will be a lot of photos of gorgeous art and house stuff. And in answer to the question I know is popping up in your mind... no, I have not met a piece of brass I didn't want to make out with. There are worse addictions.

Horchow bed

Hudson Furniture console table

Palo Samko table

detail of the table - those are watch gears embedded in the surface.

Siemon & Salazar pendant light

Homenature bunching side tables

Dowel-leg Eames chairs

Casamidy lounge chair - that's leather wrapped around the frame.

Billy Cotton chandelier

vintage Paulo Mendes da Rocha chair

sigh.

Yumtastic concrete tile!

Several of my clients recently have been craving these colorful hand-painted cement tiles. Different versions of them originated in Mexico, France, Spain and elsewhere in the Mediterranean, and they're now widely available in the US through several different makers. Words to the wise, though--as lovely as they are, you should know what you're getting into. They're brittle, so they will chip and crack easily; and they are incredibly porous, even when sealed. Which means they will stain like nobody's business. However, as long as you know that ahead of time, and you can commit to embracing the patina'ed, lived-in look that they will quickly take on, then knock yourself out! They sure are beautiful.

And PS - for lots more design and reno porn, including the images I had in mind while writing my books, check out my Pinterest page!

Massachusetts and other beautiful things

I'm neck-deep in my pre-submission edits at the moment, but last week I escaped with my buds for a long weekend in Northwest Mass, where I went to college. I had fondly pictured patio grilling and guzzling Corona in a warm summer breeze, but Massachusetts had other ideas:

MassMoCA

But that's okay. The purpose of the trip wasn't really Corona, it was research. I'm setting my second book in this lush, chilly mountain valley, and I needed to remind myself what it looked like and smelled like and sounded like. Which is, like this:

Rte 43 after the rain

In between rainstorms, I found what I wanted: a house with a story. I see story in that light that's on, and in the two open casements of those dormer windows:

Williamstown house

I also saw art, literally. In the rambling 19th-century industrial buildings of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

MassMoCA

I was an English major in college, but also a late-to-the-party art history student: after a junior year in Europe exposed me to all the wonders there, I came back and took seven art classes my senior year. I love art and architecture almost as much as I love writing, and I'm damn fortunate to have a day job in a field that makes my pulse race. Just as there will never come a time when I don't love buildings, I'll never stop loving images: creating them, analyzing them, poring over their beauty and magic.

MassMoCA

And that, most of all, is what this weekend was about for me. Digging back into art, and images, and museums, because that that's where my heart is going with this second book.

detail, Piero della Francesca, Clark Institute, Williamstown MA

Review: The Love Wars

Confession time: I love chick lit.

Why is this a confession? Well, when I dove into this mysterious, murky-bottomed pond known as The Publishing Industry and started splashing around, talking about the kind of books I most enjoy reading, I innocently thought "chick lit" was what they were called. The collective response from blogs, articles, agent bios, etc. was a solemn head-shake and the whispered words, "oh no, we don't call it that anymore, dear." Chick lit, I learned, was Dead. Stories about youngish, generally urban women with intriguing professional challenges and enticing love interests had become the Genre-That-Must-Not-Be-Named; if you were gauche enough to name it, an apparition would appear in the sky in the shape of a stiletto-heeled pump with a serpent's head popping out of the vamp.

So imagine my delight when I saw an essay by a new debut author, L. Alison Heller, in spirited defense of chick lit: its warm, relatable characters; its humor; its unapologetic attention to womens' relationships with their friends, their families, and their lovers. Alison included two of my all-time favorite novels among four of her own, so I knew I had to give her novel, The Love Wars, a whirl. And what a terrific read it is!

The main character, Molly Grant, is a matrimonial attorney for a rapacious corporate law firm. Her boss foists off an unwanted new client consultation on her, with instructions to dispatch the client, Fern, as quickly as possible: Fern's ex-husband, whom she is seeking to sue for custody of their children, is the CEO of a well-known corporation, and the last place Molly's firm wants to be is sitting across from him in a court room. However, once Molly actually meets Fern, dumping her is easier said than done--instead of an overprivileged witch like most of the wives she works for, Molly finds a burdened, desperate mother who would give anything to keep her ex-husband from continuing to turn their children against her. And after none of the other attorneys to whom Molly dutifully refers Fern are willing to return her phone calls, Molly makes the daring gamble to take on the case herself--she just has to keep her bosses from finding out.

It's a compelling plot, driven by Molly's compassion and moral outrage. And Molly herself is a deeply sympathetic heroine, struggling to live a life that makes her proud, in the face of the relentless grind to which the big-firm work culture subjects her. She's smart, and excellent at her job, which is a refreshing change from some of the ditzier heroines of chick lit lore. For that matter, the whole book is full of bright and dazzlingly accomplished women, even if some of them I didn't like very much--I didn't like them, but I respected them. And I enjoyed the fact that I respected them. But my favorite thing of all about Molly is that she's funny--as in, mischievous and witty, not ha-ha-I-tripped-over-this-Chihuahua-and-spilled-my-cocktail "funny." Humor is the thing that makes me sit up and take notice, whether in a book, or a blog, or even a new person, so I was delighted to find The Love Wars so full of it. There is a  love interest, too, which evolves organically throughout the story; ultimately, the ending of the book is satisfying because it feels earned on every level.

All in all, I loved this book, and I can't wait to read more of Alison's work!