Category Archives: Obsessions

Gnomes I’ve Known

Musings, Obsessions,

I don’t know the carrying capacity of gnomes in the average suburban house, but I think we’ve reached or exceeded it in ours. I’d always liked gnomes — at least since college, but never had one (that I remembered) until a few years ago when Clare and I went to the beach with a friend and her daughter. There we bought a plaster garden gnome. I think I’d recently seen Amélie and thought a garden gnome would be perfect in our garden. He’s since disappeared. I suspect foul play.

After that gnome, I wanted a “real” one. I wanted a ceramic one made in a foreign land. I requested one for Christmas and my wish was granted. Although this gnome was made in the USA, his design is Old World according to the website from which he was purchased. The bottom of his foot says his name is Sedgewick.

Sedgewick loves to watch over plants and looks very smug when he is doing his job. I’ve noticed he looks a little unhappy when he has no plant to guard, but I’ve been told that is just plain crazy.  Here is a close-up of his face as he stands on the fireplace mantle in the dead of winter nowhere near a plant.  I think he is sneering. What do you think?

Close-up of Sedgewick

A few years ago I found a box of items I’d had since my Jeremy days and one of the items was a gnome he’d made from resin. When he gave it to me, back in the 1970’s, I’m not sure I even knew what it was — and didn’t necessarily like it a lot. Now I do and have it sitting on a window frame in my office.

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The next two gnomes were bought because I have little self-control when standing in long lines at Barnes and Noble. These guys were in tiny boxes on a swivel shelf near the check-out. They each came with background photos you could change at your whim to make it seem as if they were either in front of a cottage or in an exotic location.   I sent one of these to my mom’s friend, Larry, when he was in the hospital. He liked it and was a good sport about being told he resembled one.

Gnome in front of his house
Gnome abroad

While shopping at Plow and Hearth last year, I found a sitting gnome and, of course, picked him up because I didn’t have a sitting gnome. He sat next to the antique clock on the fireplace mantle until the clock broke and was taken to the repair shop. Now he sits on a high shelf next to the Whistle Wizard and another sitting gnome that my neighbor and friend, Bob, gave me for Christmas this year. Bob didn’t know I liked gnomes, but did know I liked birds — and the gnome is holding a cardinal.

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The last gnome is one that my daughter made me in art class when she was in middle school. It is my only female gnome and the only other one besides the Plow and Heart one that resembles the gnomes from the Gnomes book by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet. I have a copy of Gnomes, but never really liked that style of gnome for some reason. (But Clare, I love yours!)

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Actually we do have one more gnome in the house. Clare bought it for Andrew for Christmas. I didn’t take a photo of it, because it doesn’t belong to me, but here’s a picture from another blog. Can you tell what team he follows?

I don’t know for sure what started me collecting gnomes in the first place — probably the Gnomes book, but there’s sure been a population explosion in recent years. I think I need to stop. I won’t throw any away, but I won’t acquire any more.

At least I say that now…

Secret Garden

Musings, Obsessions

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You know about me and fairies, don’t you? How I really believe they exist and all? So much that I use improper grammar when blogging about them?

Well, a few years ago I bought a fairy garden for Clare. She liked it. It grew. It died and then Dean threw away all the stuff that went with it.

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Recently Clare’s been thinking about that fairy garden. I saw a version of it, but it wasn’t the same — it had no house. Then, one day at an art store (of course) we found the identical fairy garden from her past and bought it, even though it was the same price as a huge canvas she needed for school (which, by the way is STILL in my trunk). (Don’t encourage your kids to get into art — it’s expensive! And messy!)

Clare planted the garden that evening and we thought it would be fun to do a time-lapse film of it growing.

It grew fast. And I think the fairies have settled in…

Vampires I have loved

Obsessions
Barnabas Collins

In sixth grade my friend, Eugenia, introduced me to Dark Shadows, a soap opera that was on television from 3:00 – 3:30 in our hometown. We’d rush out of school and run to her house which was a few blocks closer to school than mine was. She’d switch on the TV and we’d be immersed in the lives of the Collins family of Collinwood in Collinsport, Maine. This wasn’t any normal soap opera. Not only was it very Gothic, it also featured vampires, ghosts, werewolves, and a slew of other preternatural creatures. Time travel was also involved.

I loved this series and thanks to it, developed an obsession for vampires. Barnabas Collins, the main vampire of the series, was such a likable character, it made vampires seem like simply misunderstood entities. I’d always had a fear of things that went bump in the night, but after getting to know Barnabas I felt that my affinity towards him would protect me from any nighttime creatures that were out to harm me.

I did, however, lose a couple of opportunities because of my Dark Shadows obsession. Girl Scouts met after school once a week and I never went after I began watching Dark Shadows. I heard that the troop was going camping and wanted to go, but was told that since I never showed up for a meeting, I was not allowed to go camping. It would have been my first camping trip. I also missed having my sixth grade teacher write something on an award my last day of class. I handed her my only award — a certificate of my involvement in the school safety patrol — and she began writing on it, but was distracted. I couldn’t wait for her to finish her note, so grabbed my award and ran home to watch Dark Shadows.

I read a couple of books and saw the two movies based on the series, and I read one or two trash novels about vampires. I bought a 45 of some music from the series. Side A was #1 at the Blue Whale. I’d forgotten what side B was, but I found it on YouTube — Quentin’s Theme. I carved a symbol I’d created on an upper limb of my climbing tree and on the dryer vent of my parent’s house. To this day, my father reminds me of that symbol and claims it is still there, etched into the metal. I’ll have to check it next time I’m in Elgin.

After a while, I graduated to more literate and cinematic references of vampires. I read Dracula in the 7th grade (my first real grown-up novel) and watched the old, classic vampire (and other creature) films on the late, late show while babysitting.

I finally grew out of my vampire craze, but — as with all strong obsessions — I never completely lost the interest. It remained there, in the back of my head (or heart) and would occasionally surface. I watched a few episodes of the ill-fated remake of Dark Shadows in the  For a while the Sci-Fi Channel showed the original Dark Shadows series, which I watched when I remembered, which was not often. I read a few of the Anne Rice vampire books, and found them interesting.

Recently, however, there have been a few things that have made me recall my “vampire years”. The first was having heard about a series of young adult novels about a girl in love with a vampire in Washington State. I bought the first book, Twilight, and read a few chapters. I found it interesting and fun. Then Clare picked it up, began reading it, and declared it poorly written with a typical “Mary Sue” protagonist. It kind of put me off the book, so I never finished it, nor was interested in seeing the movie based on it.

Then I heard about True Blood. At first I thought, it couldn’t be that interesting. I never got into the Buffy the Vampire slayer camp (of course — vampires were the bad guys!) But when I learned that Alan Ball was behind the series, I had to try it. I loved Six Feet Under and American Beauty

So, I watched the pilot. I liked the idea of vampires “coming out of the coffin” and demanding civil rights. I didn’t like the graphic and sometimes violent sex scenes. Then I watched the second episode and was hooked. The sex scenes were less violent and there were fewer of them, but the story really interested me. I liked the characters of Sookie and her grandmother. I like the awkwardness of vampire Bill. I even like the character of Sookie’s bad-boy brother Jason. Sookie’s friend, Tara makes me laugh and who cannot love Layfayette?

So, it’s back to watching vampires on television. I’ve even put some Dark Shadows DVDs on my Netflix list and am counting the days until the Tim Burton Dark Shadows (starring Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins) project is relased in 2010. I’ve come full circle, except this time I don’t have to miss Girl Scouts to watch it.

Dark Shadows on YouTube.