What's Up With The Crunchiness?

It's Saturday and things are a bit crunchy around here.

There's a nice gentleman named Hugo in the dining room right now, fixing our chandelier. It has been hanging over our heirloom dining table by a single screw for, let's see, four years now. (What can I say? I have a very long to-do list and, I'm sorry, but "buy sassy fall shoes" edges out "get chandelier fixed" every time.) This is, as they say in hushed Olympic tones, Hugo's second attempt. The first attempt was about a month ago and it ended, after a valiant effort on Hugo's part, in a draw. But he's back...and this time it's personal.

My office is directly above the dining room. More specifically, my right sneaker is directly above the drill bit that keeps giving Hugo a violent kick back each time he fires up his power tool. I fully expect my shoe to be permanently bolted to the carpet under my desk before the afternoon's out. Hey, if it holds up the dang chandelier, I'm all for it.

In other Saturday crunchiness, the shower knob came off in my hand, one of our lawn chairs tried to consume the husband whole, our cockapoo has a double ear infection and there's something growing inside my right cheek that, frankly, scares me.

You see the kind of day we're having here. Not a bad day, exactly. Just crunchy.

Contrast this with last Saturday, when we were all in Palm Springs, chillaxin' on a little family getaway. Oh, man, it was great. We got a wild hair and rented Twin Palms, Frank Sinatra's former home out in the desert, for a long weekend.

(Background note: in deference to our two puppies, we skipped our regular summer vacation this year, opting instead to hang out at home. This gave us more time to ply them with offerings like expensive throw rugs and sheepskin snuggle beds that we welcomed them to destroy if it would please them and, in turn, STOP THE BARKING. They cleverly sniffed and accepted our gifts, then learned how to jump on the table and steal food the minute we turned our backs.)

Built in 1947, Twin Palms was one of the pioneering homes in mid-century modern style. Frank lived there with his wife Nancy and their children toward the end of their rocky marriage, then with Ava Gardner during their even rockier subsequent marriage.



[That's Frank's original sound system, still intact.]






For someone (like me) who loves mid-century architecture, the desert (specifically Palm Springs), Frank, his friends and his era...it was the perfect storm. The whole time we were there, the same kinds of thoughts kept running through my head. I'm sitting in Frank Sinatra's piano-shaped pool. I'm sitting in Frank Sinatra's (kind of weird-shaped) bathtub. I'm sitting on Frank Sinatra's circular driveway. (I do a lot of sitting on vacation.) I told our daughter with great excitement that she was likely showering in Sammy Davis, Jr.'s shower. "Who's that?" she asked. Geez, where do I start?

So I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that we're all suffering from PPD (Post-Party Depression) after a great getaway. At least we're not jet-lagged, right?

Oops, sounds like things have reached a crisis point downstairs. Time for me to slip out of my shoe and go see if Hugo needs back-up.