In Which Jeremy Paints the Garage Doors

In 1977, shortly before he was to head back to England, my then boyfriend Jeremy, painted a North Woods scene on our garage doors in Elgin. It was his interpretation of the scene out the window of our vacation home in Hazelhurst, Wisconsin. The local paper even picked it up and for weeks people would slowly drive by the house to get a peek at the garage doors.

I’m not entirely sure the house was even built when Jeremy painted the garage doors — this might have been how he imaged it would look from inside the house. A fun follow-up is that Jeremy recently recreated the garage door images on a much smaller scale as a gift for my brother who now lives in the house. He even included portraits of our Mom and Dad on each door. I’m grateful we still have a connection with Jeremy. The paintings he made are priceless.

The article below, is not completely true. Jeremy did have a place in mind when he painted the image. It’s definately the view from the property.

It’s hard to see the bunny in the lower left corner on any of the photos of the complete door, but when Mom eventually had the doors painted over (we neglected to put any kind of weatherproofing on the painting) she left the bunny. Here it is with a real live bunny and a detail from the painting Jeremy made for Kevin.

Here are the paintings Jeremy created for Kevin.

That time Mom, Dad, and the Pasholks were on a nude beach

I’ve finally gotten back to going through stuff in the attic. Today I looked at a small book of photos that came from Mom’s house.

This contained mostly photos of women at a beach wearing nothing above the waist, and sometimes nothing below it either. There were a few of Jack and Joan and a couple of Mom. There were none of Dad — so either he was taking the photos or didn’t leave the ship.

They went on a cruise in January 1993. They were on the cruise when Andrew was born, that’s how I know the month and year. That was the cruise that pushed Dad over the edge of alcoholism. He was never the same after that.

Mom told me a story about a woman selling her some clothes that Mom didn’t really want to buy. Apparently the woman was really pushy. I think some of these photos show her. I don’t think this is what she bought though.

Mom was younger than I am now. She was just shy of 57 years old. She looks pretty good for 57.

a tangle of cords and ornaments

Christmas has left the building

I just finished putting Every. Last. Item. related to Christmas back in the knee-wall. That’s not saying the attic is presentable, it just means that the Christmas stuff is put away.

Our decorations were kept to a minimum this year. We did put up a tree and hung our (okay, my) favorite ornaments on it. We didn’t decorate the other rooms too much, although this year I did force some paperwhites to bloom during the holidays. They are still going — one bud has not opened yet. And of course we brought out the kissing Clauses. I also decorated my Monkey Puzzle Tree.

Really glad the holidays are over, but they were manageable this year. We were lucky that Clare came out for Christmas and we were able to spend some time with her even though she was not feeling 100% most of the time.