Beach House in the Burbs

At storytelling festivals that's the only way Miz Windham wants to be introduced: her name and where she's from. But I want to tell a little more about her, in case you don't know who she is. Because I got to spend much of last weekend with her and enjoyed every minute of it. Sometimes when you meet someone you’ve admired, you find you don’t admire her as much anymore. Their humanity shows, with all of its warts and blemishes, leaving you feeling a little disappointed. Kathryn Tucker Windham, a storyteller, writer and photographer from Selma, Alabama, who (whom?, I never know) I have admired for years, wasn't like that. I came away from the weekend not only not disappointed, but inspired to write more, tell stories more and find ways to be a better person. Pretty powerful stuff to pick up from a woman who will be 90 in June. She was one of the featured storytellers at a storytelling festival in Huntsville, Ala. My parents and I were assigned the enviable task of driving...

No, the addition to our family isn't of the two-legged variety, but he does cry an awful lot, is very needy, has the other "kids" jealous, and, I'm afraid, is going to require that we do some home remodeling that we never intended. Dusty is a tom cat who appeared in our yard back in the fall. He was scrawny and mean. So, as Chris says, we treated him like a wild bird, putting food out for him but not even trying to pet him. Gradually he became friendlier, it's amazing what a little food will do for your attitude, and when it began to get cold (even in Georgia it can get cold) we decided he had become our cat and we needed to figure out how to incorporate him in the family. We already have a very scaredy, indoor cat named Miss Kitty and a pomeranian who is small, but in charge. We (the royal "we," it was actually Chris) wrangled Dusty into a crate and took him to the vet to be checked out before bringing him in the house with the other animals. They prono...

When your beach house is in the ’burbs, rather than at the beach, sometimes you have to hit the coast for some inspiration. While the house I’m staying in on St. George Island, Florida, offers little in the way of home décor inspiration, the view more than makes up for the serviceable but unremarkable place. From the comfort of a screen porch (an essential for any beach house, whether in the ’burbs or not) overlooking the beach, I have watched storms roar through, enjoyed the perfect beach day (yesterday, it was breezy, sunny, low 80s, the Gulf was like glass) and nearly been blown to Timbuktu. St. George Island is off the coast of Florida, east of Panama City. I first came here as a Florida State student. It’s about an hour and a half from Tallahassee. The island is long and narrow, with a state park taking up about a third of the east end. The rest of the island is houses, a few shops and restaurants and a couple of inns and motels—all low-rise. It looks like the Myrtle Beach I remem...

One of the best things about getting most of the remodeling work done on your house is that you can finally invite people over. We went for 5 years without an oven, 7 years without floor covering in the living room, dining room and kitchen, and more years than I can count with exposed studs and crumbling drywall. Now, most of those things are taken care of (There's still one room with no floor covering, just the subflooring, but it's looking really nice with the magic-marker drawings on it.) So this past weekend we had a party. About 40 people, lots of good food--we do pot luck here, we may have an oven now, that doesn't mean I know how to use it--great music and interesting conversation. We even got lucky on the weather. It rained all morning, but quit about 1 p.m. and didn't rain again until just before dark. Long after people stopped getting in the pool. So, how's this related to remodeling, you might ask? Well, it's one of the things to keep in mind when you...

My mother-in-law called recently and asked Chris if he'd travel to west Alabama to pick up a family heirloom--for lack of a better word--that one of her cousins has had custody of for years. The cousin's moving and doesn't have room for it in the new house. And it needs to stay in the family, Chris's mother said. That's how we became the proud, but concerned, owners of something that may or may not be illegal to own. I don't know. When Chris was very young (back in the late 1960s) his family traveled from Alabama to the Petrified Forest in Arizona. And brought back a 600-pound souvenir in the form of a petrified log. Said log is probably a couple of feet long and a foot or so in diameter. As I was trying to find room for the dog--a Pomeranian, for heaven's sake, not a Great Dane or anything--in the back of the Exploder (I mean Explorer) I thought I'd just slide the log over a couple of inches to make room for Princess Prissy Pants. But I couldn't bud...

Pets add so much joy to your life! Especially when you have a dog door. It is the portal through which all manner of surprises can come enter one's life. We have a very large Pomeranian, as Pomeranians go, the 10-pound Princess Prissy Pants, who is quite as prissy as her name implies. But don't let that sleek, elegant, black (with coy touches of white on her chin and legs) fool you. She's a hunter. We don't always leave the dog door open. We also have a cat who brought in a live, tail-less chipmunk (The tail was on the floor by the refridgerator; obviously Kitty was saving it for a snack later.), a dead mole and a dead baby bird one day when Chris was out of town. But that's another story. But because of Kitty, we only leave the dog door open when we have visiting dogs because Kitty is a scaredy-cat and won't come out when Leroy, my parent's killer shitz tzu, is visiting. So, there I sat at my desk, writing a magazine article, when my precious little Prissy ...

All that's left of the chicken room, our room above the detached garage where Chris once raised chickens on the shag carpet, is a picture drawn on the floor in black Sharpie that says "Welcome: The Chicken Room." All wildlife, except my husband, has been evicted. The wall is repaired where the bees lived for a couple of years. No signs of the chickens remain, thank goodness! The room is supposed to be my husband's office. He's a remodeling contractor. But you see the pictures. It's every little boys dream office with musical instruments and musicians, (Chris is playing the drums) a couch, and a floor that nobody cares about. (We'll get floor covering one day, but given that it took seven years from the time the carpet came up in the main part of the house until the new flooring went down, I'm not holding my breath.) I'm afraid to ask how much work he's getting done up there. He moved his desk in last week. Then this weekend we moved a couple of...