Nom de Plume

In the mid-80s, we lived in Bucharest. My mother was the director of the American Library, a part of the U.S. Information Agency. One day, an American man and his wife waltzed into her office. “My name is Sidney Sheldon,” he said, “and I’m writing a book. Can I take you out to dinner and get some information on how embassies work?”

Now there are two things you have to understand. The first is that my mother’s idea of light reading is the latest installment of the Chronicle of Higher Education, which means that she’d never heard of Sidney Sheldon. The second is that this was Romania under Ceausescu, and there were virtually no places to go out to dinner and actually get something edible. And thus, she blithely did what she always does: invited them to dinner.

We were still living in the diplomat apartment complex at the time, a hulking gray paean to the worst of monolithic socialist architecture. It was before heat became such a problem that the embassy moved all its employees to houses so it could ship in heating oil from Vienna (but I do remember how the elevators always got stuck between floors; fun for a 11-year old who always relied on the–very cute–armed guard to get her out). The apartment was quite modest and very cold; when they arrived, we gathered three space heaters in the dining room to point at our feet. My mother and Sidney Sheldon discussed Embassy hierarchy, while I chattered away to his wife, who grew roses and liked making perfume. When the evening ended, they thanked us and said, “The next time you’re in L.A., you must look us up.”

The next summer, we were on our way to San Diego and we flew through LAX. We had a day to kill, which we were to spend with Father de Souza, a Jesuit priest who had been the president of St. Xavier’s college when my father taught there. “Oh!” exclaimed my mother. “We should call the Sheldons!” She riffled through her address book at a pay phone. They invited us for tea.

Father de Souza pulled up in the monastery’s station wagon, an old, rusted boat of a car. He threw our suitcases in the trunk, tying the hatch down with a length of chord. Armed with directions, we clattered onto the wide, quiet streets of Beverly Hills. The security gate was made of wrought iron with three cameras and a buzzer. Slowly, the gates swung open and we climbed up a winding drive to the biggest house I had every seen.

We drank tea–hot chocolate for me–and ate cookies on cream silk sofas, looking out at the gardens through French doors. Mrs. Sheldon not only gave me a tour of her roses, but also cut a huge bunch for me. I clutched them the rest of the day, and through the hour flight down to San Diego.

A couple of years later, Windmills of the Gods came out. My mother splurged on the hardback, reading it on the plane. And she was outraged. “This is wrong,” she kept saying. “This is beyond wrong!” I tried reading it a couple years after that, and was bored to tears. The writing … well, it was popular fiction, after all.

But I will never forget just how gracious the Sheldons were.

I despise patchouli. Or at least, I always thought I did. But when combined with other scents, it can actually be quite nice. So this is without the lime and spruce of Dave’s soap.

204g oo
218g coil
211g crisco
20g rosehip
27g cocoa butter

1 tb patchouli
1 tb bergamot
1 tb rosewood
2 tb lavender

It’s been a week since I made this, and while the scent seems to be fading, I think it’s going to be a very smooth-feeling soap.

All my essential oils are stored in an old file cabinet in the office, which doubles as a guest room. Dave was here when my new order came in. And every time we went out, Dave riffled through my supplies looking for something that smelled good. “Where’s the patchouli?” he’d ask. Or “Wow, rosewood smells good.” Then he’d dab himself behind the ears. When I said I was making soap, he thrust the spruce and lime at me. “These’ll smell good together.” And thus, a new soap was born.

280g oo
252g palm
252g coil

114g lye
197-295 water

I added some other stuff to the lime/spruce combo, so:

2 tb rosewood
1 tb lime
1 tb bergamot
1 tb spruce
2 tb lavender

It smells divine.

I saw this at the bookstore, and despite having given up on the Bartimaeus Trilogy, thought it sounded interesting. On my hold list at the library it went, and when it came, I found myself riveted. For about three chapters. Basically, one of two orphaned brothers who live with their short-tempered sister in a small English village, falls asleep on a hill and wakes up with dragon vision in which he can see the souls of people. He takes his brother up there, so he can also get a taste of the vision. Then it turns out that there are other dangerous people in the village who have partaken, and the plot heats up. Only not enough to sustain my interest. Like his other novels, the concept was great, the writing fine, and the execution somewhat less than dazzling. Abandoned.

It’s the future and we’re running out of natural resources. Never to fear: scientists have discovered to go back in time to a slightly different dimension. The place in question is the Scottish border in the 16th century, peopled by a fierce group of warriors called the Sterkarms. Treaties abound; the Sterkarms are still untrustworthy. Andrea Mitchell is an anthropologist hired to mingle with the Sterkarm and report back to headquarters. She falls in love with one, and must manage her allegiences. Despite the fact that this had a gazillion more battles than I wanted to read, and went on (and on and on), it was not without charm.

Here’ s a little reminder of what the bathroom looked like when we moved in:

This is it now:

The tub, in which I have been spending most of my free time:

We bought the mirror at an antique store about a year ago. The corner cabinet was that unfinished furniture stuff. I’ve stained it, still have to varnish. Steve hates it in the bathroom; he says it looks hulking. Personally, I rather like it, but am thinking about just painting it white. The stain looks amateurish. Which isn’t a surprise because I did it.

And this is the marble thingie separating the hall and the bathroom. There’s another matching piece that’s going in the window as a sill/shelf.

We still need to get hooks/towel racks/other sundry storage, and finish the trim around the door. But for the most part, this is done.

And it feels a little anticlimactic. Sigh.

Otherwise known as what we in my family call girding one’s loins, in fond memory of someone who once got his tongue a little twisted with very amusing results. The bathroom? It’s DONE. I’ve painted. There’s still some minor trim work, but it looks fab. And now, I’m loining my girdle in preparation for Steve’s insistence that we’re adding a second story.

In preparation, he climbed the roof to take pictures of what the views would look like. They start at the southeast and move north, west, and south in order.

And here’s looking down into the backyard:

Aza is 15 and tremendously ugly. But her voice–in a magical kingdom where song is the most important thing of all–soars above the rest. When she is taken to court, she discovers that the new queen has the voice of a toad. On discovering that Aza can throw her voice too, the queen blackmails her into an arrangement whereby Aza sings for her, tricking her people. But the queen also has some darker, more sinister powers–including a mirror that has made her beautiful. How can Aza resist the temptation of being made beautiful–especially with a growing friendship with the prince? This was a nice refreshing tale in which our heroine discovers that beauty is not all.

I can’t remember where I got this author reference. All I can say is that I keep trying to read adult fantasy, and keep going back to the kiddie stuff. This was fine, it was okay, but the prose was so self-consciously dense and it could have ended about 100 pages before it really did. I finished it, and then picked up another one of her novels that came in the same pile from the library. But I didn’t have the strength; I tossed it down 30 pages in.

I’ve been hearing what a great children’s writer Lois Lowry is for a long time, but somehow had confused her with Lois Duncan, a writer I loved when I was a kid. Her novels were creepy, thrumming with tales of possession and the channeling of dead spirits. My particular favorite was a novel about two twin sisters separated at birth where the evil twin astral projects into the good twin’s life. That led to countless nights trying to project my soul up at the ceiling. Alas, I usually just fell asleep.

In any case, I am now the wiser: Lois Lowry is NOT Lois Duncan. However, The Giver was just as creepy–it’s just less Stephen King and more Aldous Huxley. Jonas lives in a Utopian society in which everyone has a role, lives are strictly regimented, and everyone is happy. But at the age of 12, when people find out what they are going to be when they grow up, Jonas is elected the new keeper of memories. And when he starts his course of training–receiving these memories from the previous keeper–he starts to question his own existence and realizes that while his world has gotten rid of flaws, it has also gotten rid of love and meaning. If you have a kid, and he or she hasn’t already read this, run out and get it. This is children’s literature at its finest.