In short, Lucy is a dog with wanderlust.  She loves to go just about anywhere.  And though she looks the part of precious pup–

Lucy at a park in the center of Ho Chi Minh City, district 1

–my seven pound “princess,” in fact, behaves badly anywhere other than her black, backpack carrier—

Lucy at a food court in a Ho Chi Minh City mall--

Very badly!

Lucy does not possess anything remotely resembling a sweet disposition.  Her bark–loud, high-decibeled, and persistent–is her best weapon in an arsenal of ways to get what she wants.

But John Grogan, author of Marley & Me, insists that all dogs are great, and bad dogs–”the greatest of them all.”

And Lucy is indeed a great traveler—

Lucy is such a perfect companion on the road, that Sara and I have trotted the globe with her in tow—if for no other reason than she’s at her best, her most charming and well-behaved in planes, trains, and automobiles.

And on our world-wide odyssey to find canine obedience and tail-wagging good manners, our first stop with Lucy was Vietnam—a country Lucy traveled top to bottom, bottom to top.

Lucy behaved beautifully during our grueling 24 hour trans-global trip to Saigon.  Honestly, I couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome.

However, day-to-day living with Lucy in Vietnam proved more challenging, since, for the first several days, I couldn’t locate a blade of grass within a 10 block radius of our apartment.   There was a park a 15 minute walk away, but it was so far that even getting there involved rehydration stops along the way:

And once we finally arrived, it turned out dogs were not allowed on the lawn.  I kid you not!

One morning, a security a guard reprimanded me, “Not dog on grass!  Not dog on grass!”  When I showed him the pink poop bag with which I intended to pick up any excrement, pink poop bag I had brought purposefully all the way from the US—biodegradable and environmentally friendly—he seemed not the least impressed and repeated his demand with all the more irritation, “Not dog on grass!  Not dog on grass!”  But Lucy refused to pee or poop on pavement.  What was an environmentally conscious, dog-toting-to-the-Far-East American to do?

What I did was find this lonely square of grass in front of the Indonesian Consulate:

But once she adjusted to only a tiny turf, Lucy was off to places like the Reunification Palace:

She visited famous fountains:

She even participated in a student survey:

She insisted on praying at Notre-Dame Basilica:

Lucy traveled the 1,100 miles from Saigon to Hanoi by train—a nearly 30 hour trip.  She loved lounging in our compartment and mooching meals from Sara:

In Hanoi she visited the Temple of Literature by back pack:

She enjoyed Sunday brunch at the world-famous Metropole Hotel:

Lucy took us shopping in the Old Quarter:

She made friends at a model build for the Jimmy Carter Work Project:

Then Lucy insisted on having a hat of her own, and she bought the smallest conical hat in all of Southeast Asia:

Lucy continued to turn heads even when we lived in Haiti,  but she still insists no well-mannered Maltese would do Vietnam without a millinery consultation.

Hats off to Hanoi!

Note:  If you are new to my blog, you might like to know that I am writing a memoir and blogging about growing up in an organized crime family.  (This post is not part of that series.)  To read one of my mafia-related memoir posts,”Kids Make the Best Bookies,” click here.  If you are interested in reading any of my protected posts, please email me at kownroom@yahoo.com  or let me know in the comments below, and I will gladly share the password with you.

It’s because of these friends that this week is special, as Minh, one of Sara’s colleagues, is coming to visit us in Kentucky for a number of days.

The deputy national director of Habitat for Humanity in Vietnam, Minh lives with his wife and toddler son in Da Nang–the third largest city in the country, located along the coast half way between Ho Chi Minh City to the south and Hanoi in the far north.Minh’s arrival in Lexington is an opportunity for us to renew our friendship, a chance for Minh to see the work Habitat for Humanity is doing here in Kentucky, and a reason for me to revisit Vietnam in my blog–sharing today about Habitat for Humanity’s work in Rach Gia, and in the days to come to write about other projects the NGO has undertaken in a country we dearly love.

So in honor of Minh’s arrival, let me share today about a Habitat for Humanity building project I volunteered with in the far southwestern tip of Vietnam.

When Sara and I were living in what was once Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, we flew in a propeller plane even further south, where we visited a poverty housing project about an hour and a half drive into the rice patties outside of Rach Gia.

The city of Rach Gia itself is the capital of Kien Giang Province on the far southwest coast of Vietnam along the Gulf of Thailand.  Once part of Cambodia, Rach Gia has a large Khmer population which fled their homeland during the brutal Khmer Rouge Regime.  The Khmer exiled in Rach Gia live largely without political rights in Vietnam,  an especially impoverished population in this part of the country.

It was Habitat for Humanity’s work with this exiled group that took us to Rach Gia in the first place and the context in which the photos that follow were taken.

After a light breakfast of fried egg, baguette, and Vietnamese iced coffee sweetened with condensed milk,, we drove in an air-conditioned and over-sized SUV about 45 kilometers out into the rice patties so common in this part of Vietnam.

I had never before seen this kind of landscape up close and in person–the brilliant, blue sky against the living, breathing green of the rice patties themselves.  But what struck me more than this overwhelming of emerald, this bigness of blue, were the conical hats of local mothers bent under a glaring sun, tending the crop that feeds this nation of now 88 million–and the smiling faces of their children, too young to understand the implications of poverty or appreciate the inadequate shelter provided by their grass-woven homes–houses unable to stand up against the wind and water of typhoons, the breaking shaking of earthquakes common in the south Pacific ring of fire.  (Click on images to enlarge.)

Tending the rice--

Smiling toward tomorrow--

Animal augments manual labor--

A "shelter" that is grass--

Building a more substantial future--

Volunteers from Holcim Cement Company in Vietnam, Sara and I carried bricks from where we parked, to the build site—balancing on narrow paths through the rice patties—shouldering heavy sacks—so god-awful hot we sauna-ed even in the shade.

The local children carried blocks of ice along the same paths, so we foreigners could be welcomed with something cold to drink.

When we broke for lunch, we enjoyed the most amazing meal–steamed greens and spring rolls made from freshly caught shrimp.

After lunch I “encountered” my first squat toilet since Thailand–a form of sanitation the poorest local families lack.

During the hottest part of the afternoon, the cows tried to cool themselves in what minimal shade was available–which is to say, nearly none.

And, as we were leaving the build site even later that day, making our way back across the gleaming green of the rice patties, we stopped to talk to a family boiling sugar cane into syrup–a taste of sweetness amidst an otherwise bitter existence.

Before Sara and I left Rach Gia the following morning to fly back to Saigon, we walked the streets of this provincial capital, meeting old women wearing more cooling, conical hats and visiting fishing boats in the harbor–ones that had likely caught our shrimp the day before.

Sara and I may not make it back to the sweltering heat that is Vietnam any time soon, but we look forward this week to our refreshing visit with Minh, whom I hope to interview, so I can bring you updated information on the work Habitat for Humanity is doing now in his  country.  I hope to show you the faces of children whose lives are being improved by better shelter–who are given a brighter tomorrow–one based on the hope of homes we provide for them today.

And if I’m away from your blog this week, if I don’t read your newest posts, please forgive my absence.

I’ll be busy catching up on Vietnam–enjoying the face of a friend from a far away place–not only a land and a love  my blog will embrace–but the face of a nation no longer at war.

Even if you’ve never walked among the rice patties or looked a water buffalo in the eye, have you ever encountered crippling poverty?  How did it make you feel?  Did it change you in any way?

Note:  If you are new to my blog, you might like to know that I am writing a memoir and blogging about growing up in an organized crime family.  (This post is not part of that series.)  To read one of my mafia-related memoir posts,”Kids Make the Best Bookies,” click here.  If you are interested in reading any of my protected posts, please email me at kownroom@yahoo.com  or let me know in the comments below, and I will gladly share the password with you.

image via philosophyofscienceportal.com

Call this what you will.  We all have our crosses to bear, and having a few extras of everything lying around is Sara’s, I suppose.

This tendency toward more than enough may have been at its worst during the Haitian presidential elections last year, when we were living in Port-au-Prince and I felt the need to be especially well-supplied in the event of violence or political unrest.  We had plenty of fuel for the generator, batteries for emergency lighting, and a solar powered radio to hear election results.

We were so well-supplied, in fact, that Sara laughed at me, pointing out that, including the four cans of diced tomatoes I bought the day before the election, we had a grand total of thirteen, and including the two  I purchased that same morning, we had fourteen bottles of salad dressing—blue cheese, balsamic vinaigrette, and honey mustard varies all lined in lovely rows.  You see, Sara has her own issues with wanting things excessively well-ordered—tidied—so much so that before the election, for example, Sara had my fifteen two-liter bottles of Coke Zero lined up with military precision in the cupboard under the stairs—a soldiering of the surplus, so to speak.

image via adamwomann.wordpress.com

Okay, okay, I admit it—I’m obsessed.  I over-shop.  I over-stock.  It’s a sickness.

And, sure, I could have blamed this on the political climate in Haiti, the potential for civil unrest, the need to be well-supplied in the event of disaster.  But I didn’t­.  No—

—I blamed it, instead, on the DNA—

—Claiming, as my grandmother did when my aunt asked why she had so much toilet paper—a floor-to-ceiling-sized pantry full—

“I’m keeping it so all the hoarders don’t get it!”

What supplies are surplus-ed in your pantry?

Note:  If you are new to my blog, you might like to know that I am writing a memoir and blogging about growing up in an organized crime family.  (This post is not part of that series.)  To read one of my mafia-related memoir posts,”Kids Make the Best Bookies,” click here.  If you are interested in reading any of my protected posts, please email me at kownroom@yahoo.com  or let me know in the comments below, and I will gladly share the password with you.

Literally.

In 2006, Sara was still directing a major international NGO’s response to the 2004 tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands in Southeast Asia, while I was working in Lexington as an artist-in-residence, facilitating creative learning opportunities for disabled adults. These employment realities brought us together, my needing to supplement my measly artist’s income by pet sitting and Sara’s needing to travel while at the same time caring for her dog.

Sara, Kathy, and Ralph in 2006

However, I didn’t fall for Sara right away, as least not until I dreamed I was in love with her a couple of months after we met and woke up the next morning with a passion for her that has yet to wane.

Sometimes things are meant to be and lives are linked in strangely synchronistic ways.  For example, neither of us was aware of when we first met, that our mothers had been dear friends for a number of years before either of us knew anything about the other.  We never met in the context of that friendship.

But sometimes love is meant to be.  Sometimes there’s a cosmic rightness about a relationship—even about the house one lives in.

Sara and I are proud to make our home in a downtown neighborhood, rich in cultural diversity.  We live on a street where everybody knows our names, but in a house most folks of sound mind would have forsaken long ago.

Too large a task?

Yet neither Sara nor I is entirely sane, neither willing to throw up our hands and abandon any shelter as entirely hopeless.  Sara is an architect by training, schooled in developing blueprints for better tomorrows sometimes even building on a foundation of urban decay.  And together we epitomize the trash to treasure mentality, especially when it comes to housing.

Undaunted, we have made our home, even as we have built our relationship, out of the unlikely love for a dog, in the wake of natural disaster.  Admittedly, our house might be more rightly characterized as an unnatural disaster, but what we have made from that disaster, even with very limited funds, has been nothing short of miraculous.

So, to the degree that home is where the heart is, today, in honor of Valentine’s Day, we share our home with you.  We’ll include images from Sara’s Photo-a-Day Project, some from the past three weeks, as well as other photos we’ve added to supplement this post.

We hope you enjoy this photographic tour through the home so close to our hearts.

Kitchen

Colanders and garlic (12 February 2012)

Cookbooks (5 February 2012)

Downstairs Hall

Chimney sweep light fixture

Downstairs Bathroom

1 February 2012

Library

Hickory and Thai vase (4 February 2012)

Buddha (30 January 2012)

Maaster Bedroom

Kathy's drawings (6 February 2012)

Driftwood and shells inside bedroom fireplace

Chiang Mai Bedroom

Bedspread purchased in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Paint ladder as night stand

Guest Room

Kathy’s Studio

Dining Room

Tibetan prayer bowl (7 February 2012)

Living Room

Hungarian eggs (11 February 2012)

We’d like to thank Chrissy from “Silver Fin of Hope” for suggesting we do this apartment-therapy-esque post.

Does Valentine’s Day make you think of home or something else equally special?

cartoon via www.makeuseof.com

Sure, we’ve had celebrities  assign their children some strange names in recent years.  Heck, just this week Robert Downey Jr. and his wife named their son Exton Elias.  But I’m not as concerned about kids named Moxie Crimefighter or Pilot Inspektor as I am in knowing why the first names of most newly born kids in the US are ones that merely decades ago would have been nothing other than good, old-fashioned last names?

Why are we so obsessed with family names, we’ve nearly abandoned the sacred tradition—centuries, rather millennia in the making—of assigning “Christian names” to our newly hatched Madison’s and Mackenzie’s?

I know the American “family” is in decline. I know many now say America a “post-Christian” nation—(which is itself a misnomer, I might add). Does this underlie the confusion?

Seriously! What’s up?

Why is every Tom, Dick, and Harry now named Taylor, Devon, or Yale?

And what about these names with oblique, more often than not overt, allusions to the aristocrats of academia?

My own nephew, born last year, is named “Rhodes”—God bless his little, “high-IQ-ed” heart. I know his grandfather is a professor, and his aunt, yours truly, spent WAY too many years not making NEARLY enough money in academia—(thus, the high dollar move to blogging)—but that’s a lot of pressure on a little guy! How’s that for a “you-better-make-the-grade-or-else” kick-in-the-ass?

Now, I know I should keep my family out of this. I know my brother could and probably should kill me. (But he has a really great sense of humor; his name is “Tyce,” by the way, if that tells you anything about the DNA of naming in my family.)

I know, as well as you do, that a rose by any other name should smell as sweet, but what about poor “Baby Rose?”

Why has she morphed into little “Reagan?” Yes, I kid you not; she’s one of the  most popular girls’ names in the US. I love the old Gipper as much as the next left-leaning, non-Bible-toting, “doesn’t-give-a-hoot-about-Hollywood,” Democrat in America.

But—PLEASE!

Enough is enough!

My mother called me “Kathryn” for a reason. I was named after my grandmother, her first name, I might add. And there were a total of three “Kathy’s” in my kindergarten class—I was born in an era, now sadly past, when “normal” naming still happened in America—was right up there with good breeding!

Speaking of breeding—does it say anything about all that’s vogue in naming that my dogs are “Ralph” and “Lucy?”

What’s next?

I read somewhere that the name “Max” was expected to increase in popularity for little boys in the coming years, but isn’t that right up there with “Spot” as a common name for dogs in the US?

Are the sons (and daughters) of America now being named after their canine companions?

Or am I barking up the wrong tree?

(Though updated, this post is based on one I did in December 2010.)

Note:  If you are new to my blog, you might like to know that I am writing a memoir and blogging about growing up in an organized crime family.  (This post is not part of that series.)  To read one of my mafia-related memoir posts,”Kids Make the Best Bookies,” click here.  If you are interested in reading any of my protected posts, please email me at kownroom@yahoo.com  or let me know in the comments below, and I will gladly share the password with you.

Kimmy and I, around the time we began visiting Aunt Pearl together--

Aunt Pearl’s place was massive by any measure—built for her by her father, my great, great grandfather, just after World War I.  Pearl Riester was, in fact, my grandmother’s aunt, one of several daughters for whom meat-packing mogul William Zoller built houses beside his own at the corner of Evergreen Road and Dewey Avenue, what famously became known in the area as “Kraut Row.”  According to building permits from that era, Zoller spent approximately 18,000 dollars on each house—ones that were designed to epitomize style and emphasize fine finishes.  High-ceilinged and featuring dark wood paneling in the dens and up the winding front stairways, these houses loomed lavish and reeked of wealth and good taste—a smell I later came to associate more with moth balls and furniture polish.

Aunt Pearl was the last of Zoller’s daughters to remain living in these homes, an aged and ailing heiress to a family fortune of many millions.

Kimmy and I visited Aunt Pearl regularly for afternoon tea, but seeing her was extraordinary for me, at age four, because Aunt Pearl created a ritual, following our afternoon arrivals, of taking me to the towering refrigerator in the corner of kitchen, opening the big drawer at the bottom and allowing me to pick my very own orange—which I, in turn ate, while the grown-ups sipped tea from floral cups—an exercise in dainty and delicate, elegant and grand.

As a little girl, pixied and saddle-shoed, I actually had no sense that Aunt Pearl was anything out of the ordinary, though, in fact, she became both more ordinary and more eccentric as she aged, her oddities settled comfortably in the cob-webbed corners of her corniced window coverings—kept less clean and tidy as the family help also aged and moved away.

Aunt Pearl is the family member from whom I, likely, inherited the genetic inclination for mental illness, for, in fact, Aunt Pearl was famously crazy for much of her life.  I don’t know the exact form this insipid insanity took, but I do know the family had the wealth and good taste to hire a nurse, round the clock care, so Aunt Pearl didn’t suffer the disgrace of psychiatric institutions, but rather was tended to quietly at home during decades of otherwise unseemly psychosis.

Surprisingly, I don’t remember Aunt Pearl’s face—only her often ethereal physical presence. I don’t recall her ever being fully dressed—at least not in street clothes—ever.  Instead, I remember her wearing mostly long white nightgowns and smelling vaguely of lilies of the valley—her dressing gowns, eggshell and elegant, floor-length and flowing.

During each visit, however, my focus was more on the orange.  While Kimmy and Aunt Pearl perched like birds on the edges of leather sofas, while they sipped hot tea from china cups, I carefully sectioned and consumed the fancy fruit.  My four-year-old fingers dripping with sticky deliciousness, I was tutored in good taste—perhaps even developed a palette for crazy along with an insane love of sweets.

For, it turns out, Aunt Pearl passed her genetic disposition for mental illness to my grandmother, who more than once required shock treatment, and Kimmy passed the inclination like a baton of the brain directly to me.  Though Daddy had easy access to wealth, a driver at his disposal, and a prep-school education—though he, too, was raised to have good taste—he himself was never mentally ill—never developed a palette for the same insane I ultimately did—one I will forever associate with Aunt Pearl and her oranges, her elegant edge of crazy—an eccentricity epitomized in citrus.

Note:  If you are new to my blog, you might like to know that I am writing a memoir and blogging about growing up in an organized crime family.  (This post, though not about the mafia specifically, is part of that series.)  To read one of my mafia-related memoir posts,”Kids Make the Best Bookies,” click here.  If you are interested in reading any of my protected posts, please email me at kownroom@yahoo.com  or let me know in the comments below, and I will gladly share the password with you.

Night after night, I wander the same streets and have some variation of the same experience.  Inevitably, I’m lost.  Invariably, I search—always trying to find my way back to my parent’s house on the north side of town.

The reason for these dreams is obvious.  In writing a memoir, I sift.  I sort.  I wade through a slog of memories, attempting to build some sense of meaning.

Clearly, this writing isn’t easy.  In fact, it may be the hardest work I’ve ever undertaken.

Sure, psychotherapy was tough.  Bipolar disorder, an ongoing struggle.  But this?  This is a creature of another kind.

The dive is deep.  The water, cold and dark.  The journey, one I take alone.

I feel a sense of urgency to complete the project and wonder at how the story is unfolding, revealing itself, sometimes in slips and slivers, other times in larger chunks.

And sometimes this sense of wonder compounds the feeling of urgency, making me believe this writing task is one that needs doing soon—needs doing now.

My partner Sara says I put this pressure on myself—that I don’t need to finish in any particular time frame—that I can choose—that I can set my own pace.

But my experience is otherwise.

In my mind this story has a life and time-table of its own—is a being in its own right—one that wants—one that grows—one that demands my doing in the short term.

And, surprisingly, the more I write, the more the urgency grows.  It doesn’t diminish, as I’d expect.

It seems there’s an energy behind this telling—something that fuels it—something outside of me and what I want or feel.

I do its bidding.  I obey.  I write.

And still I wake up having spent the night lost on Pittsburgh streets.

Alone.

But at least the wonder keeps me company in the process.  At least I have a sense of amazement that the more I write, the more I get.  The more I remember.  I hadn’t anticipated that.

I’m surprised that this story lives and breathes in me—demanding that I tend and honor its process.

I’m surprised how it forces me to see in new ways, especially in the dark—how I’m learning to adjust my eyes to the dimming—to this inevitable loss of light.

magic marker on paper

Finding my way in the dark demands a singular way of seeing—a willingness—a steadfast commitment to accept whatever vision or version of myself the darkness itself demands, whoever it says I am—whether I like her or not.

And walking with my eyes closed is every bit as difficult as you might imagine, since in some ways the need to guess becomes a guide—the hint, the squint, a substitute for sight.

a-mazing (magic marker on paper)

But actually seeing in the dark—finding your way through the thick underbrush of who you thought you were and who you actually are?

digging in the dark (magic marker on paper)

There’s magic in that mining—magic in that miracle of making and being made, magic in memoir emerging.

Note:  If you are new to my blog, you might like to know that I am writing a memoir and blogging about growing up in an organized crime family.  (This post, though not about the mafia specifically, is part of that series.)  To read one of my mafia-related memoir posts,”Kids Make the Best Bookies,” click here.  If you are interested in reading any of my protected posts, please email me at kownroom@yahoo.com  or let me know in the comments below, and I will gladly share the password with you.

Sometimes it’s a blessing.

Other times, a curse.

In either case, a duty to be dealt with.  Winning was what mattered, after all. (Or so I’ve sometimes thought.)

This striving harder, diving deeper, never settling for second best was behavior well-established by the time I trudged, pixie-headed, into first grade—yellow rubber boots over navy Lady Janes—bundled in a nubby winter coat Kimmy’d  purchased at Kaufman’s the fall before.  (“Kimmy” was what we called my paternal grandmother.)

I was dressed for success, dressed to endure.

My teacher was Miss Peach.  Nearing retirement age, she was petite but pudgy, doughy as unbaked biscuits—short gray curls set perfectly in place.  Miss Peach was as jovial as she was full of fat and excess flesh.  She enforced few rules, so that we first graders were, as a whole, more foot lose and fancy free than straight-laced, prim and proper.

I remember loving the “Sally, Dick, and Jane” books—a perfect world I could fall into during reading groups, while the rest of the class completed “seat work” outlined on a black board.  The world Dick and Jane inhabited felt cozy and carefree—one where spilt milk and muddy feet were readily forgiven, where a kitten named Puff fluffed stories into fun.  I didn’t read well aloud, but well enough to mostly maintain my place in the top reading group and develop a love of narrative, it neatness—the predictability of pages turned, the order found in books.

However, way worse than my oral reading remained my penmanship, which was, in fact, pathetic at best.  It seemed the notion of neatness and legibility in this arena meant little if anything to me, so much so I wonder now if anyone even bothered to explain that the goal of printing was communication—that what one wrote others were meant to read and comprehend.

That is until Miss Peach held a contest of sorts.

One day in the dead of winter, Pittsburgh piled high with dirty snow, streets full of freezing slush, we arrived at our corner classroom to find Miss Peach perched atop a wooden chair in front of the black board, carefully printing a paragraph-long letter to the principal.

When we had put away our coats and hats, mittens and scarves, when we finally sat, hands folded in nearly neat rows, Miss Peach announced the competition scheduled to play out that day, a drama in our classroom smelling of wet wool and pencil shavings.  For seat work that morning, we were supposed to practice our penmanship, copying the letter looming on the board.  Whoever, reproduced it with the most perfect printing would get to carry their letter across the hall and deliver it in-person to the principal.

For me, suddenly, practice required perfection, and I decided I would win.  If it were merely a matter of copying exactly what was on the board, I determined I could do it well enough, that there was no reason not to take the trophy trip across the hall—perfect printing for the principal.

So, all that morning, I muddled at my desk, thick blue pencil clutched in cramping fingers.  I copied, erased, copied and erased some more, until finally the letters marched a military precision—parading print across the page.

Then that afternoon, following a lunch of cheese sandwich on white bread, Miss Peach, wearing an emerald polyester dress, announced what I’d expected all along—

Indeed, my letter was the best.  Indeed, I had won the printing prize.

In that moment and the moments after as I imagined dancing across the hall, the notion of writing, even in its most rudimentary form, became a goal of mine.  I fell in love with the printed word, and by implication fell in love with writing itself—the notion of imitating what I saw—whether what was on a black board or unfolding all around me.

That cold afternoon as frost formed on outside surfaces, as it crept across our classroom windows, I understood the correlation between cause and effect, the literary implications of effort and reward—a tundra of story left glinting in the glass.

Note:  If you are new to my blog, you might like to know that I am writing a memoir and blogging about growing up in an organized crime family.  (This post, though not about the mafia specifically, is part of that series.)  To read one of my mafia-related memoir posts,”Kids Make the Best Bookies,” click here.  If you are interested in reading any of my protected posts, please email me at kownroom@yahoo.com  or let me know in the comments below, and I will gladly share the password with you.

(Note:  We will update Sara’s Photo-a-Day Project in a  special post a couple of weeks from now.  We are still working out the details.)

I accepted the invitation (because that’s just the kind of blogger I am).

Yes, I know this might seem like a pathetic ploy to direct you to the other Kathy’s blog (which it totally is), but I swear (cross my blogger’s heart and hope not to die), the trip will be well-worth your click.

If you enjoy my blog, chances are you’ll like “Lake Superior Spirit” (maybe even more than mine, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take).

So to learn why (why, if you like this Kathy, you’ll likely like the other, as well), click here.

(You’ll be glad you did.)

It’s free.  It’s fun.  It’s where the action is!

Get a grip, take the trip.

Click.

(Note:  Kathy is traveling today, so comments might not be moderated till this evening, or maybe even morning, but please leave them, as I will respond to every one!)

Indeed, for more than two years, “home” was a place my partner and I occupied only periodically and usually for excruciatingly short stays.  In 2009 we didn’t even make it home for Christmas, and in 2010 Sara was back in the US for only five days during the holidays.

But being back from Haiti since last spring, we hardly know how to handle home.  Being domestically dislocated for so long has left us a little off-center—left us with an eccentricity that has made us appreciate the simple, if sometimes strange, things about being back on US soil.

Like most Americans, we enjoy the simple pleasure of cuddling on the couch in our Lexington living room, but like expats, who have lived too long in developing countries, we dance delightedly at the prospect of baking in an actual oven, one with a functioning thermostat, at that.  (To read about our oven challenges in Haiti, click here.)  In fact, we enjoy baking so much, we sit around all too often, nibbling on cakes and cookies, widening our oh-so-homey hips and broadening our happy-to-be-house-bound bellies.

But we know that home won’t last forever, especially for us globe-trotting lesbians, traipsing the planet with two white dogs in tow.  (To read about our near disasters with international, pet travel, click here.)

So, remembering that this domesticity is likely to be short-lived, Sara, this week, has photographed the things we love most about our home, accentuating sometimes our utter normalcy, at other times a bordering-on-outrageous eccentricity.

We hope you’ll walk this week with us—enjoying the photographs below—appreciating the normal and sometimes-not-so-normal indications of having been displaced and finally come home again (at least for now):

1. Appreciating family—

This week I tried to “help” my nephew with a school project but realized, almost too late, that my waning grasp on US history precluded any successful tutoring on my part.  Either dumbed-down by travel or having developed senility during the past few years, I had to have another nephew, who’s only 19 and knows way more than me, bring both of us back from the brink from academic disaster.

Bottom line—we may wonder where our intelligence has gone, but being home allows us to enjoy the ones we love in a whole new, if now cognitively challenged, way.

When nephews know more than you do— (16 January 2012, Monday)

2. Loving our walnut trees—

The weather has been weird this winter.  Having spent two years living in the tropics, I had hoped to enjoy snow this January.  Instead, on Tuesday we woke to thunder and later had another spring-like downpour.  At one point, however, mid morning, the clouds cleared and blue sky emerged behind the walnut trees in our back garden.

So, being home again, we appreciate anew the simplicity of sky—the endurance of trees—bare branches against a brilliant backdrop of blue.

Blue through the walnut trees, as seen between bouts of "winter" weather— (17 January 2012, Tuesday)

3.  Enjoying  morning coffee—

Having lived in tropical climates, we’ve also learned to appreciate the simple things about more northerly locations—like hot coffee especially on cold mornings.   Sara may mock my morning ritual of drinking Swiss mocha cappuccino alongside a can of Coke Zero, but there’s a lot to be said for drinking a double dose of caffeine on boring winter mornings.

Double-fisted morning— (18 January 2012, Wednesday)

4. Growing our own herbs—

Since we’ve been home, Sara has spent time working in her garden, and now that winter’s here, she’s growing basil and rosemary in our attic skylight—neither of which she had a time or place for when busy responding to disasters in places like Haiti.

Fresh herbs for snipping and clipping— (19 January 2012, Thursday)

5. Having an assortment of teas and spices—

Sara loves to cook, and I appreciate few things more than a hot cup of strong tea, so it’s a luxury for us to have both on hand—both within easy reach on a dark and dreary, Friday evening.

Sara savors spices and teas— (20 January 2012, Friday)

6. Understanding why we’re so well-wired—

Living far from home, we depended so often on wired ways to reconnect with friends and families, that now we don’t know how to disengage from gadgets.

Why we’re so well-wired— (21 January 2012, Saturday)

7. Loving a yellow rhinoceros—

Living abroad, we learned to appreciate accessories that are not entirely home-grown.

Sara says that I’m eccentric, yet she insists a rhino grace our hallway wall.  Whom, may I ask, is the truly off-center member of this partnership?

Sara says that I’m eccentric— (22 January 2012, Sunday)

What’s the most out-of-the-ordinary accessory you have in your house?  How is your home not like your neighbors?  Has your domesticity been displaced?

(This post updates Sara’s Photo-a-Day Project.  To see last week’s photos, click here.  Images from the first week of  January are in the margin to the right.)

Note:  If you are new to my blog, you might like to know that I am writing a memoir and blogging about growing up in an organized crime family.  (This post, however, is not part of that series.)  To read one of my memoir posts,”Kids Make the Best Bookies,” click here.  If you are interested in reading any of my protected posts, please email me at kownroom@yahoo.com  or let me know in the comments below, and I will gladly share the password with you.