Trip pictures: my parents' house

[cimorene]

I'm back, alive! After leaving home at 7:30 Saturday (3 pm Finnish time), 8 hours shy of 3 days later I finally arrived home. That was because when the airline bumped the flight forward, they couldn't "contact" Orbitz, the ticket vendor responsible for notifying me. So I never was notified: Mom and I drove the three and a half hours to Atlanta Saturday morning only to discover my flight had been moved AN ENTIRE DAY. The airline discounted a hotel room (though not by much), but my whole trip was delayed a day and Wax had to make me a completely new ferry boat reservation, since it wasn't refundable and I missed the original one (total cost of delay $80+ to my mom and €35 to Wax). So the trip back went approximately like,

• First twenty-four hours: driving, standing at the airline counter, changing out of plane clothes in the car, lunch-shopping-coffee-shopping-dinner-shopping with Mom; damp hotel room, crappy airconditioning, crappy hotel soap and shampoo; airport. 


• Next twelve hours: flight delayed, they lost my fucking vegetarian request and all I could get was pasta in the red sauce that I'm allergic to, uneasy sleep, starving, inedible solid sugar thing for breakfast. 


• Next twenty-four hours: starving, bus to downtown Stockholm, starving, get lost and finally sit down in a café only to order pasta with fucking red sauce by mistake, royal palace & science fiction bookstore even though it was REALLY cold so I had to stop and buy a scarf and hat. Finished it off with my favourite coffee shop. Total time STANDING and waiting involved in getting to ferry terminal, onto ferry and into room while hands develop luggage blisters was at least an hour and a half. Ferry smelled suspicious and was disappointingly small, but I slept all right.

Here are a lot of pictures of my parents' house. I was responsible for a number of decorating decisions here, mainly in the livingroom and dining room (the guest room I did is not pictured), but my designs were more minimal and my mother's natural taste has added a lot of sparkle and tchotchkes. I love my parents' house desperately. It's a shotgun-style farmhouse a little more than a hundred years old with lots of heavy wooden doors, painted wooden floors, huge wooden trim, hand-blown glass windows, & ten foot ceilings, with four bedrooms down one side of the hall and the kitchen, dining room, livingroom, and library down the other. It's filled with colour, artwork, antiques, and eccentric sparkle, sort of like the Anthropologie shop I saw in Atlanta the other day but cooler, IMO, since we did most of it.

August 2007 visit, front entryway roof support



August 2007 visit, hall from front entry



August 2007 visit, livingroom mantel



August 2007 visit, livingroom



August 2007 visit, dining room & art by Steve



August 2007 visit, dining room



August 2007 visit, dining room



August 2007 visit, dining room shelves



August 2007 visit, dining room



August 2007 visit, dining room



August 2007 visit, kitchen



August 2007 visit, kitchen and dining room floor



August 2007 visit, kitchen, blue chicken by Mom



August 2007 visit, back entryway



August 2007 visit, back entryway



August 2007 visit, Dad in front garden



August 2007 visit, side garden



August 2007 visit, backyard



August 2007 visit, hall



August 2007 visit, kitchen



August 2007 visit, Dad in kitchen



August 2007 visit, Orpheus in dining room & art by Steve



August 2007 visit, dining room shelves



August 2007 visit, dining room, Rupert the Chinese dragon



August 2007 visit, dining room shelves & owl by Steve



August 2007 visit, dining room shelves



August 2007 visit, Mom in livingroom

Comments

[thelionforreal.livejournal.com]

omg it has been forever since i saw a picture of your sister, but a) OMG SHE IS SO FUCKING GROWN UP SINCE THE LAST ONE I SAW and b) she's looking more like you than she used to, i think.

house so awesome.

still so sad i didn't see you in it.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

11-15 makes a big difference! I think she kind of looks less like me, though. They changed the shape of her jaw in that oral surgery. OTOH her adult face in other respects might look more similar, but people have always thought we looked quite alike.

[isilya]

God, what a fucking mess with the airline! I had similar experiences all over the US, but I hoped they'd have managed to pick up their socks a bit by now.

The picture of you and your sister is really gorgeous, and your home looks so eclectic and colourful!

I'm glad you got home safely. I bet Perry and Wax and the kitties were happy to see you!

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I said I hoped Expedia wasn't as bad as Orbitz since it would be nice to have someone you can trust to order tickets from and the woman said, "You wouldn't believe some of the things Expedia does." NICE. I love the picture of me & Lil too. And ahahhahaha, Perry was too excited to cuddle or anything for like ten minutes, he just kept running around and crying. It was kind of super adorable. Wax says he's lost weight from SADNESS.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Awww, your mum and dad! *waves at them*

I love their house to bits, it's gorgeous. The colours of the walls are beautiful - and the birds! Hee.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of really bummed about the whole fact that they've been collecting and making one-of-a-kind art for more than twenty years to reach that point and my house is destined to be a whole let less cool. :(

[hollsh.livejournal.com]

Ahhh! Lillian looks so grown up!! I love your family's house!

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Her feet are actually slightly LONGER than mine but she's still only 5'5". I wonder if she will stay short foreva or what. Personally I think 9 is a good shoe size because it's pretty easy to get shoes, still, whereas if you're an 8 which is the most popular size, the popular ones are pretty much guaranteed to be sold out. Probably 7 would be slightly better but still, it's almost ideal. She angsts about it though cause she's a teenie.

The shoe tantrum encompassed how she has three pairs of flipflops but none of them were "right" for her black eyelet miniskirt, and she couldn't wear sneakers (even though it was styled like denim with huge buttons and basically extremely casual) because she needed to wear dressy shoes with it. FOR THE PICTURES THEY WOULDN'T SHOW UP IN. So the next day she made Lena take her to the mall and blew all the rest of her spending money on a pair of expensive hemp flip-flops, BROWN, AND THEREFORE NOT MATCHING THE SKIRT. Then she tried to whine Mom into buying her a hardback book that she's wanted for a month since all her spending money is gone (a period of time in which she has bought like 80 bucks worth of shoes even though she owes my parents like a hundred).

[hollsh.livejournal.com]

Mine are size 10, I hate them :(

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my mom's too. It's the worst size to shop for as far as I can tell! We went in several stores in Atl the other day that didn't even CARRY it. Mom says men's shoes aren't as good in terms of fit for her foot shape too which sucks.

[pierydys.livejournal.com]

I love pictures of people's houses. Your parents' is so colorful, happy and occupant-friendly that I can't help but imagine you having a frolicky childhood with lots of spattered paint and elaborately imagined fantasy worlds. :-)

Bummer about the flights, though -- seems that everybody who's tried to travel lately has been reporting the same thing. If flights aren't being screwed all to hell, then baggage is being sent to the ends of the earth. How do they manage to do this and still keep raising prices? *boggles*

[cimness.livejournal.com]

God, I hope some airlines are better than others. We completely spaced on checking the flights were still OK the day before, though, which would have avoided the problem even though it was totally their fault. It's ridiculous that they would just do that. I mean, you'd think some mechanism would be in place regarding notifying people that their flights are at a different time, since it's kind of completely NECESSARY. Especially when it's an entire DAY.

[elfiepike.livejournal.com]

travelling woes are just, ugh. i'm glad you made it back in one piece!

your parents' house is totally cool-looking, like. it seems like it must be very relaxing and excellent to be there. your family members are adorable. i think my favorite part with the cheap things to do with your mom list. XD amazing! ♥

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's hard being without more colour sometimes. But our house wasn't this colourful (at least, not on the walls) for most of y childhood, so at least I don't miss it horribly.

[perhael.livejournal.com]

Cim cim cim *glomps* welcome home! Your parents' house looks completely fabulous, one of those places where you just feel at home even if you've never been there before.

I'm glad you had a good time (despite the traveling frustrations). And also, I missed you. ♥

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Hiiiiii! I don't think I saw you at all while I was gone. The timezones were out of sync so not a big surprise. Still on hiatus? Perhaps we can catch up soon.