Adventures at The Bunny Manse

  Get you a man who, when he gets home from rehab and sees the ice cream parlour chairs you bought off an artist downsizing her studio while he was in rehab and says, huh, I guess chairs make you happy.  They DO make me happy. Madeline and I washed and scrubbed and primed and painted them while Harris was away in '16. They...lasted a season before the painted started peeling off in sheets. Harris insisted for all of 2017 that he would have nothing to do with those chairs thankyouverymuch.  Around 2017-2018 I bought vinyl and cushioning when Hancoks was liquidated by vultures. It sat in the closet and the chairs sat outside, still peeling paint for another year. We have a big house and lots of stuff going on.  Until, one day driving back from the thrift store, I saw them. The most beautiful chairs you've ever seen just sitting covered in 40 years of rust and plant life on the side of the road. I told Harris over dinner about them. He counted to ...

Cause if you say Aunt properly it sounds like Ain't. Ruby was my grandmother. She was one of several middle siblings (9 total) who every Christmas converged on my Aunt Susan's home. At least 100 people would show up and eat, talk, cackle, and swap presents. It was only as an adult I came to realize how odd the whole thing was. Women my age have grandkids which means my mother's cousins have great great grandkids.  My Aunt Susan's house is nice, but 100 people meant half in the yard, men out in the shop, and tripping over kids. As a child I most remember that there were only two bathrooms and I wasn't really supposed to use Aunt Susan's and Uncle Jim's. No clue if that was an official rule or something I came up with in my own mind; I came up with and self imposed a lot of arbitrary rules on myself as a kid. Anyway, one of Barbara Ann (Virginia's daughter and hence my mother's double cousin)'s girl folk loved Christmas because she got to eat A...