Where were you?

Seven years ago today, I was out in my backyard office here in Atlanta, trying, as I’m trying now, to finish a book. When I have my head in a book, I deliberately try to blot out the world. No television, no lunch dates, just me and the book. I think my husband called. “Go in the house and turn on the news,” he said. So I did. And I watched–along with the rest of the world–in absolute horror. I never liked science fiction movies–too scary for me. But this was like watching a science fiction movie gone horribly, horribly, real. I didn’t write again that day. Maybe not all week. It’s impossible to write funny, flip fiction when your heart is broken. I called my editor and agent in New York, to reassure myself that they were ok. Later, I talked with other writer friends around the country. Those who lived in New York were not really ok. They couldn’t work. Certainly couldn’t write. Couldn’t laugh. Those terrorists took all that from us that day, along with all the beautiful, productive lives lost, they took our laughter, our sense that no matter what happens, something silly will come along, and we’ll forget our troubles for a little while. I remember another catastrophic day too–the day JFK was assasinated. I was out of school sick that day, and had gone with my mother to my aunt’s beauty parlor. My mom had a standing appointment every week to have her hair done–hey, it was the ’60s. Somebody turned on the radio, and we heard the news that the president had been shot in Dallas, and that he’d been rushed to a hospital. We left, and went to the A&P, and at some point, the store manager went on the loudspeaker, and announced that President Kennedy was dead. My mother was crying–and my mother never cried. She and I left the store and went to our church, where we lit candles and prayed. And cried. I was in the third grade. President Kennedy was our president. He was Irish and Catholic, like us. I still cry when I see that old photo of Jackie and Caroline and John-John–with John-John saluting his fallen father. What can we do in the face of all this evil, all the bad news we hear every morning? I don’t know about you, but I’ve decided I’ll do something good today. I’ll continue trying to finish this funny, flip book of mine, because that’s my job. Making people laugh. And when I go out to do my errands, I’ll make a mitzvah–a good deed. Just because I can.

Sneak Peek

The worst part about coming home from a buying trip is the un-loading and un-packing. The fun part is the hunt, and then the fluffing. After a 14-hour drive Friday–much of it through driving rain, Beth and I made it back to Raleigh, and then I drove another six hours to get home to Atlanta Saturday afternoon. Today I unpacked my treasures. So, here’s a sneak peek at some of the goodies. The quilt has wonderful colors and detailed quilting, but the red dyes in old fabrics frequently made the fabric weak, so the red stars have some wear. Still, the wonderful red, white and blue colors and the graphic appeal of the stars would look wonderful as a wall hanging, or even folded at the foot of a bed or in a cupboard. I fell hard for the vintage Georgia and Georgia Tech pennants, which are framed, and you can see a representative assortment of other stuff too. Not shown is the great pink and white quilt, which is being laundered with Oxy-Clean. I don’t know what’s in that stuff, but I swear, it works wonders. Two weeks ago, a friend’s son knocked over a full glass of red wine on the sisal rug in the living room. She brought over a steam cleaner to try to clean it, but it only turned the wine stains black. The next day, I gave it two applications of spray-on Oxy-clean, and voila–the stains disappeared. Also not shown is the wicker highchair, which is a work in progress. It’s Heywood-Wakefield, complete with worn label on the underside. I’m painting it Seaside Green, and then it’ll get a vintage barkcloth seat cushion. The three-panel cottage screen will also undergo a transformation, with a new paint job and some shirred fabric. I’ll try to post them when my projects are completed. As usual, I’m torn this week–between getting my Brimfield goodies priced and ready to take down to Seaside Sisters–and writing. But writing must win. Mustfinishbookmustfinishbookmustfinishbookmustfinish….

Bye-Bye Brimfield!

After three days of serious, kick-ass, hard-core junking, junk sistah Beth and I are packing up to go home. The van is full, our bank accounts near-empty, and we are, as my daughter Katie would put it, “tore up from the floor up.” But it was loads of fun. If you are a junk novice, let me just tell you that the Brimfield Antique Market is the largest antique market of its kind in the U.S. Estimates vary, but I’ve read that at least 2400 dealers from around the world set up here in these former pastures in the tiny town of Brimfield, Mass. And buyers come from around the world too, especially antique dealers, who come to re-stock their shops. I’ve bought tons of goodies for my booth at Seaside Sisters, at Tybee Island, Ga., and Beth has been buying for her business, Knick-Knack Paddywhack, in Raleigh. Fortunately, we are at the opposite ends of the spectrum in the antique world. Beth buys high-end, bona-fide antiques–much of it French or English for her customers. And me? I buy shabby chic, retro, funky junky beach house-type stuff. I love to buy original art–amateur oil paintings, water-colors or drawings. I have a weakness for forties and fifties barkcloth, and because our little shop is at the beach, I buy anything nautical. And wicker. And rattan. And McCoy pottery. And architectural salvage. So, a reader asks, what did I buy this week? Three cottagey screens which can be hinged together, with chipped white paint. A pair of fabulous barkcloth pillows in acid green with herons on them. A wicker high-chair, a pair of 1950s-era framed Georgia and Georgia Tech felt pennants, an adorable turn–of-the-century double school desk-table with cast-iron legs. Four children’s English blue willow grill plates. A pine-topped green wicker table. An old-timey bingo hopper, complete with the original bingo balls and bakelite detailing. A pair of small wooden paddles, several paintings, and some great vintage black and white beachy snapshots. For her part, Beth bought several oriental rugs, lots of blue and white English transferware, a pair of 19th century French walnut cane-bottom chairs, a gorgeous French daybed, some silver, and a slew of paintings, including a Florida Highwaymen painting which I covet in the extreme. It’s been a good, fun week. We ate at our favorite food court, New England Motel, pictured above, every day. Beth had lobster, I had pilgrim roll (turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce), and Greek food. The people-watching was great. I saw a dealer who specializes in selling Viking ships (now that’s specialized!), and another who buys full-sized robots and models of flying saucers. Lots of dealers had their dogs in their booths. I saw a huge Robert E. Lee statue. In Massachusetts, yet. Beth had a celebrity sighting–Keri Russell was buying up lots of Swedish antiques. And now? It’ time to head home and try to out-run the tropical storms and hurricanes taking aim at the South. Oh yeah. Time to go home and finish the new book before my editor comes back from vacation.

Book Fair, and Back to Brimfield

The AJC Decatur Book Festival was big fun. Friday night, my friend Jennifer and I went to hear poet Billy Collins at Agnes Scott College. He was wonderful, funny, charming, refreshing, his poems funny and sly and subversive and silly. My favorite part was when he dropped the F-bomb. I mean, the former poet laureate of the United States, and he drops the F-Bomb at a girl’s college. You gotta love it. I got to meet him afterwards, and before-hand, got to meet one of my favorite southern writers, Bailey White. If you’ve never heard her on NPR, or read SLEEPING AT THE STARLIGHT MOTEL, or MAMA MAKES UP HER MIND, you have missed a rare and wondrous treat. She’s got a new book coming out, called NOTHING WITH STRINGS, and I, for one, can’t wait. I met Rick Bragg in the author’s green room too. That’s the great thing about a book festival. One time, I was in the green room at the Miami Book Festival, and Amy Tan came in, with her two eensy-weensy purse puppies, and then Dave Barry came in, and I just took it all in.

We had a very nice crowd for the book festival. Right after my gig at the festival Saturday, I ran home and jumped in the 10-ft. cargo van and hot-footed it up to Raleigh to pick up junk sistah Beth. Sunday morning, we lit out for Brimfield, which turned out to be a 14-hour odyssey, due to traffic jams on various turnpikes. But we are here, we have done a reconaissance around the fields, and have set our alarms for—buttcrack of dawn, or as some people call it, 4 a.m. All the antique fields are supposed to be officially closed today, but I snuck in, and the first person I ran into was Bob, who sold me my bathtub and kitchen sink at Scott’s in Atlanta. The junk world really is a small place. A few years ago, on my first junking trip to England, I ran into a dealer friend from Atlanta at the antique fair in Ardingly. Tomorrow, I junk for joy!

Meet me at the Old Courthouse

In all the drama of trying to finish a book (and get a beach house rehabbed) I’ve completely fallen down on the job of SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION FOR BRAZEN HUSSIES. So, let’s pause for a moment for a message from our sponsor. (That would be me, wearing my writer hat.)

This Saturday, at 12:30 p.m. please join me and author H.N. Kilby at the Atlanta Journal Constitution Decatur Book Festival. About the festival, it’s a really fun, family-oriented book-centric outing.

Snark warning: Just between us? It always annoys me when a book festival lines up a “headliner” who isn’t actually a writer, but rather, a cosmetically-enhanced television personality. It saddens me, too, because I realize that these television personalities will always out-draw the inky wretches who scratch out a living by writing. One year, I went to a book festival with an estimated 200 authors, and yet, the promoters chose to make Andy Rooney the marquee speaker. Andy Rooney, who makes a living being a cranky old tv codger on 60 Minutes, decided after about five minutes at this festival that he was outta there, leaving a line of some 200 people scratching their heads and wondering what to do with the book they’d just purchased. The AJC Book Festival’s headliner was going to be Ty Pennington, the over-caffeinated host of Extreme Home Makeover for Poor People who are Not too Proud to Accept Free Wide-Screen TVs and Hot Tubs. Guess what? Ty has apparently had a better offer from Oprah, so he has ditched the festival. Oh children. Okay, snarkiness over.

We’ll be speaking at the Old DeKalb County Courthouse. You know it–it’s the actually attractive decomissoned courthouse on the Decatur Square, facing Ponce deLeon. I’ve had a blast doing this festival for the past two years, and this year should be no exception. I have no idea what I’ll say or do, but I’ll do my best to be entertaining. And–should you need a bribe–and really, who doesn’t want a bribe?–I’ll be handing out my coveted MaryKayAndrews funeral parlour fans. But wait! There’s more! You say you want a door prize drawing? Well, sisters, I am all about pleasing my peeps. All you have to do is fill out a puny little piece of paper giving me your email address (to be added to my MKA mailing list) and you’ll be entered in a drawing to win a $50 gift certificate to my favorite Decatur restaurant, FEAST.

Now, about that mailing list. I don’t sell it or rent it. And I have no interest in selling you the world’s smallest fishing pole, penile enhancing substances, or colon cleansing products. I only want to sell you on selling ME, Mary Kay Andrews. So come, enjoy, pick up your freebie, register for a prize, buy my books, make me rich. I’ll be signing books after the talk, and then, I’m loading up my rented cargo van and heading back to Brimfield, Mass, with my junk sistah Beth for the Brimfield Antique Market for a solid week of junking. Oh Joy!

It’s a dirty job…

But somebody had to keep my friend Beth company while she’s staying at The Cloister last week.

I motored over there Wednesday and spent the rest of the week ensconced in total luxury. Our room was the size of my living room at our modest little Tybee beach house. The grounds were lush and green and perfectly manicured, and the terrace outside our room looked out on the Black Banks River. All was serene. A hurricane may have been threatening Florida just a few miles south of there, but at the Cloister, they have staff to deal with annoyances like that. We had three lovely dinners at three different restaurants, all great in their own way. I think my favorite for the week was a place called Delaney’s.

I wrote three chapters. Maybe I could have written more, maybe not. But it was a nice break. I treated myself to a massage Thursday afternoon. And we dropped by G.J. Ford’s Books, where owner Mary Jean caught me up on the latest island gossip, and I bought a new book., HAM BISCUITS, HOSTESS GOWNS, AND OTHER SOUTHERN SPECIALTIES, by Julia Reed. I’d already read and enjoyed the author’s THE HOUSE ON FIRST STREET: MY NEW ORLEANS STORY, so I know I’ll love this one too. I fell a little short on my four-day writing goal, but on the other hand, I think this may have been my ultimate freeloading move.

Beth is staying on at the Cloister, but it was time for me to head on home Friday morning. I drove for six hours in the Fay-whipped winds and rains. Got home and discovered that Wyatt ate one of the down sofa pillows in the sunroom and Weezie ate the edges on the rattan coffee table that was going to go in the living room of the Tybee house. Bad dogs.

Back to the St. Simon’s Cottage

Okay. Spent four days on Tybee doing beach house things. And re-stocking my booth at Seaside Sisters. Thank Gawd for Susan, the Seaside Sister madam. She is a retailing genius, who can always take my crazy assortment of stuff and arrange it so that it looks luscious and appealing. I would post a photo of how yummy it looks right now, except my camera is on the fritz. If you’re in the vicinity of Tybee Island, run, don’t walk, to see the wonderfulness of it all. And buy. You should buy. Because that way, I have an excuse to go out and score more great stuff. Because I’m just a servant of the people, right? I am now down at St. Simon’s Island. People, I am here to WRITE THIS FRIGGIN’ BOOK. I am not here to junk, or to rip pages from magazines of nifty beach house ideas, or to read interior design blogs like katiedid or cote’dtexas, to name two of my favorites. September is staring me in the face, and I do not want to blow this deadline. So, here is the plan. Between tonight and tomorrow, noon, I will write 15 pages of THE FIXER-UPPER. Seriously. This is my blood oath! And if I make that goal, perhaps, I might be allowed a quick little junk fix. But then, right back to work. The goal for the week is, dare I say it? Fifty pages. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to type THE END while I’m down here. Wouldn’t that be luvverly? Stay tuned…

The one that got away…and beach house musings

My friend Sue is a very bad influence. She read my blog about the jadeite green sink and helpfully sent me a link to an ebay auction for a jadeite green glass towel bar. Of course, I had to bid, and keep bidding, even though I didn’t even KNOW I wanted a glass towel bar until she tempted me. Apparently, somebody else wanted the towel bar more than me, because I didn’t win the auction. So that’s the one that got away. I’d almost forgotten that I have, in my junk sst tash, a very cool glass towel bar and glass bathroom shelf. I got these years and years ago from an estate sale in my neighborhood. I had them in the bathroom in Raleigh, and when we moved, they came with me. Now, all I have to do is remember where I’ve hidden them.

In other news, Mr. MK and I are down at the beach doing beach house-type things. The big news is that we officially have a building permit! You have no idea how exciting this is. Now the subs, who have finished ripping out the old plywood partitions and skanky kitchen and bath fixtures, can actually start re-building. We have piles of lumber all over the inside and outside, and stacked neatly to one side is the wonderful old solid wood panelling we’ve removed from the stairhall. This will be reinstalled once the stairway is moved. We spent yesterday musing about flooring options. The downstairs of our circa-’43 house is concrete slab, with old linoleum over it. That linoleum, which I blythely assumed I could just heat-gun and scrape up, is a big fly in our ointment. The town’s building inspector dropped by last month, and when he saw the chipped and aged linoleum had himself a big ol’ hissy fit–proclaiming that he was positive it contained the dreaded A-word. Yes. Asbestos. Which, if true, would mean a certified asbestos removal team, certified asbestos disposal, certified asbestos pain in the arse! So ixnay on the scraping. We will have to have new flooring. Carpet is out. Yuck. Tile is out. I think it looks too contemporary, too normal. Wood is good. But there are all these options. We’d considered bamboo, but it’s not cheap, and again, I just think, for this house, it looks kinda Ikea-ish. Not that there’s anything wrong with Ikea. I love me some Ikea. We looked at the pre-finished stuff. Didn’t love it. I was really lusting after re-claimed heart-pine flooring. My friends Polly and Steve just put it down in their beach house, and it looks great. But it’s pretty expensive. And as I keep saying….this is a concrete block house. Putting a lot of expensive stuff in it is like putting a tutu on a pig. So I think we’re down to good old-fashioned oak. Old school–the nail-down kind.
While we’re down here, we’re staying at another great little Mermaid Cottage. This one is called Fiddler on the Creek. It’s tiny, but it has heart-pine floors, and pecky cypress panelling, and a giant stuffed marlin over the sofa, and a little dock on the creek out back. Mr. MK went fishing today, and he caught a flounder and a trout, so we’ve baited the crabtrap with the fishheads, and we’ll see what we see. In the meantime, we’ve been talking about what we want our beach cottage to have. We’ve been renting beach houses for 30 years, and we’ve stayed in everything from the ridiculous to the sublime. So here’s what’s important to us: big, squishy sofas you can stretch out and nap on–or watch a ballgame, or cuddle. A table by every chair–to give you a place for your book or your adult beverage. Lamps on both sides of the beds–what’s worse than having to get up to turn off the light when you’ve been reading in bed? Good mattresses. Excellent bed linens. My friend Diane, who runs Mermaid Cottages, always stresses the importance of high thread count, all cotton sheets. Me, my idea of heaven is bleachy-smelling white sheets. I stayed in a tiny little cottage in Florida last month, and the sheets were laughably horrid–pilled-up, threadbare leopard print. I’ve been buying sheets on clearance, at outlets, for all the beds. Now, here’s my rant–WHO THE HELL DECIDED YOU SHOULD ONLY BUY SHEETS IN SETS??? Marshalls, TJMaxx, two of my favorite shopping spots, have almost no separate packages of flat and fitted sheets. They sell them in “sets” now. I don’t want sets. I want my separate flat and fitted sheets. Guess I’ll just have to continue looking at estate sales, which are my favorite source of wonderfulness anyway. I’ve rarely been to an estate sale that didn’t have a linen closet piled high with good quality percale sheets and pillowcases. Many times there are sheets still in store packaging. Other times, the linens have been professionally starched and laundered. My all-time favorite sale was the one where I grabbed up armloads of vintage linens, all of them washed, ironed and folded–and bound up in pink satin “garters” that snapped together with satin bows. Talk about gracious living. I still have tons of those garters in my dining room sideboard, where they bind together sets of my estate sale damask dinner napkins. Okay, back to our regular programming. Good beach house living=shelves full of tempting books. I love to peruse rental house bookshelves. Fiddler on the Creek has lots of books about sailing and boating, plus some good cookbooks in the kitchen. About the kitchen. Our beach house, we have decided, will have a foodie kitchen. When we’re at the beach, we almost always cook, and it’s so frustrating to discover you don’t have a grater, or a colander, or even a wooden spoon. Okay, it’s almost time for Olympic swimming, so I’ll continue this post tomorrow.

That sinking feeling

Irushed back from the mountains last Thursday because it was early shopper day at Scott’s Antique Market–and I definitely qualify as an early shopper. As I drove into the parking lot at the South building, I spotted it–a jadeite green sink almost exactly like this one pictured. It practically screamed beach house–so I sprinted (well, ok maybe not exactly sprinted) hurried? over to check it out, and it quickly became mine for a hundred bucks. The one pictured here was one I found online at a antique salvage shop–and it sold for $750, so I’m feeling pretty smug about my green jewel. Mine came out of a beauty parlour in New Hampshire. It doesn’t have the spray attachment this one has, but it has a slot for one. Of course, now I’m jonesing for a jadeite green toilet, but have very little hope of finding one in decent condition. So I’ll probably just settle for a white toilet, with the green sink as a “statement” in the downstairs bath. That statement will be–“I was bought by a crazy woman. She is the kind of person who will pry old windows out of an 80-year-old house in hundred degree heat. She is the kind of person who trolls ebay and craigslist for hours on end when she should be writing her next book. She is the kind of person who is seriously considering a trip to Eugenia’s Antique Hardware in Chamblee, Ga.–because on their website they have a photo of a jadeite green porcelain toothbrush holder. She is the kind of person who, even now, is pining for a TURQUOISE vintage electric stove she found on Ebay. She is the kind of person who would, given any encouragement, bid on this stove, sight unseen, and then drive to Gawdknowswhere, Michigan to try to stuff it in the back of her under-sized SUV. This woman needs help!

Hey from Ellijay

I’m back in the beautiful North Ga. mountains, trying to pound out another fifty pages. It’s hard to concentrate at home, there’s always so much going on. Boomerang Boy has left the building! He’s moved into a 150-year-old farmhouse a few miles away, and I’m sending the washer and dryer with him. Let’s see if that motivates him to do his laundry. If he ever gets it all out of my house…Katie and Mark have found a house to rent a few miles away too, so they’ll be moving out at the middle of the month–I’ll miss them, because they’re both so much help, but they are more than ready to be living under their own roof. And Tybee, my grand-dog, wants his own place too. In the meantime, last weekend was bargain bonanza time. Last Thursday, I met Jinxie and two other friends at the Ballard’s Backroom Tent Sale in Alpharetta. Holy smokes! Talk about shopping frenzy. If you’ve never seen the Ballard’s Design catalog, you should check it out. The Alpharetta backroom is their catalog outlet–lots of scratch and dent and discontinued items usually. But this was the biggie. The joint was swarming with women, scratching and clawing to get at their bargains. I somehow managed to score a 9-by-12 sisal rug for $150–regularly about $450, and a pair of way cool silver metal wall sconces for Boomerang Boy’s room at the beach. I paid $30 for the pair, I think. And then….I stood in line for nearly two hours waiting to pay. Later in the weekend, Jinxie and I hit some more estate sales. I scored a great oak dresser to put in my antique booth. And by Sunday, I’d painted it a soft sea-glass green enamel, and added glass knobs and handles. Jinx and I went back to the Ballard’s backroom outpost on Howell Mill Road because we were in the neighborhood, and I made another excellent find. Fabric remnants were on clearance, and I managed to round up enough yardage, like 27 yards in all, of white cotton duck. The biggest piece was 15 yards, and the rest of the yardage was in one and two yard remnants. But that’s okay, because I’ll use the duck to have a slipcover made for my $175 Baptist yard sale sleeper sofa for the beach, and my friend Tacky Jacky, the slipcover sorceress, assured me that will be more than enough for what we need. The cost came out to be like, $2.40 a yard! And then I struck gold again, finding a 21-yard bolt of gorgeous beach-glass blue paisley cotton fabric for about the same price. My plan is to use the blue fabric for cushions for the forties rattan armchairs I’ve been hordeing for nearly two years, plus throw pillows, and maybe some window treatments. I brought a swatch of the fabric up to the mountains with me. And I like to look at it, and visualize what my beachy living room will look like. Pathetic, huh? In the meantime, I’m churning out those pages of The Fixer-Upper. Gotta reach my quota of 50 pages, because this is a Scott’s Antique Market weekend coming up. No junking for me ’til the pages are in.