Scintilla, no. 4 | A Boho Bedroom for Little Warriors

When we were left alone in the house, those rare times our grandparents both were away from the home, things got downright post-apocalyptic.  Now, years later, after we’ve all left home, if I say to my sister, “Hey, remember that time I accidentally threw a rake at Dusty?  Remember how mad he got?,” we both dissolve into a fit of giggles.  But living those days was not fun, not funny.  Our survival without parental supervision was a very serious matter.  You see, in those first years of living with our grandparents, after Mom left us, our brother, the middle child, still in elementary school, suffered a very real and powerful form of rage, a sort of rage that we two sisters seemed very good, naturals in fact, at bringing to a boil.  It’s not fair to blame these Lord of the Flies scenes from my childhood entirely on Dusty, though.  After all, I “accidentally” threw the rake at him while purposely swinging it at him.  (The metal rake flew off the handle, hitting him in the back as he ran, and he splayed forward to the ground in a way that, to this day, as I’m typing this in fact, makes me laugh.  The afternoon it happened, however, I had not time to laugh; I had to book it inside the house and lock him out before he got me and did—what?  What was I so afraid of, exactly?  I was bigger than him, and I knew from experience that I could throw a mean punch.)

Generally, we weren’t allowed to spend too much time in our rooms.  My grandma called it “sulking”, regardless of our attitude at any given time.  If we had free time on our hands, we were expected to spend it in the kitchen with the rest of the family, playing card games, or doodling, or helping with dinner, or just jabbering nonsensically at each other, which we did a lot of.  But, when Grandma and Grandpa weren’t home, Sierra Dawn and I spent most of our time locked in our bedroom, with Dusty occasionally beating at the door and shouting threats.  Our snoody Great-Aunt Tricia called the room a “toy store”; clearly, she thought it was decadent beyond belief.  As years went by, we collected—toys, yes (mostly dolls and doll accessories), but also strange things, like Christmas tree garlands which we wrapped around the posts of our beds, and silk scarves which we hung from the ceiling.  We somehow accumulated a collection of poster board dioramas of cityscapes and pastoral landscapes—Brazil at Carnival, a Japanese villa, the Amazon river rolling through jungle—which we tacked on our ceiling.  Fairy lights abounded, as well as several bead curtains, and some feathered masquerade masks on the wall.  We even had a wooden cat with wings dangling from one corner and crystals refracting rainbows throughout the room.  When we were still small enough, we shared a queen size bed, covered in stuffed animals and lace throw pillows.  It was our gypsy paradise, really, and a shame we were hardly ever there except when frantically considering how to reinforce the door against our manic brother.  Much like my three favorite movies when I was six are my three favorite movies to this day, minus the creepy doll collection, my decorating style has not changed much.  The more color, the more beads and crystals and scarves, the better.

Out to dinner with some girlfriends not too long ago, I told the rake story.  And while two of my gal pals stared blankly at me in disbelief, my friend Siobhan answered, “That ain’t nothing!” and told, much to my relief, the story about her sister chasing her through her house with a softball bat while their parents were gone.  I remember Siobhan’s bedroom, vaguely, but I’m sure she, to this day, has every detail of those Dragon Ball Z banners that hung on her bedroom wall memorized, and the every habit of her terrarium frogs, long dried up and dead.

Scintilla Project

Been Thrifting, no. 3 | of Monsters & Flowers

This month so far has yielded two pretty sweet thrifting trips.  Last weekend, we headed out to the Raleigh Flea Market--the warm weather brought out a huge crowd, and though I'm neither a fan of large groups of people, nor warm sunny days (I am Vampire), warm weather does also mean more vendors, and more stuff.  We came home with a spiffy Ronson lighter/cigarette holder for Wolfman, a wall tapestry for me, and a book of Horror for our coffee table, something for both of us to geek over.

This lighter is typical for the sorts of things Wolfman keeps an eye out for on our Flea Market and thrifting outings--the sorts of things which add to his Gentleman Adventurer mien.  Also, Wolfman has lately taken on a new hobby in the form of cigar aficianadodom (is there some fantastically obscure word for this?  I tried googling to no avail), and, as a result, has started a small collection of pouches, lighters, and other paraphernalia.  The lighter is not in perfect working order, but Wolfman has been tinkering with it--always with the projects.  

I am positive we paid too much for this book (the binding is broken, after all), but neither of us can resist the Call of Creatures & Creature Features.  A Pictorial History of Horror Movies, by Denis Gifford, first published in 1973 by Hamlyn Publishing Group.  Our edition is 1983, published by Exeter books.  The book spans everything from Nosferatu to the original Friday the 13th.  My only point of contention is that Denis Gifford is not a fan of The Shining.  Not a fan of The Shining?  Really?  Look, I'm no Stanley Kubrick fan, right, but The Shining is one of the greatest horror films of all time.

And finally, there's this wall hanging, which caught my eye from across several vendors' displays at the market.  My shoddy camera work fails to capture the brilliance of these colors.  After a few formative years of my childhood spent in the Pacific Northwest, I've always been sort of week in the knees for totem-like imagery.  I haven't found a proper place for this yet, but right now it's brightening up my foyer.

Early in the month, we stopped by the Goodwill here in Apex.  Rarely do I find anything of interest at the Apex Goodwill--my Goodwill of choice is in Cary near my grandmother's house (I never fail to find something mind-blowing at the Cary Goodwill).  In fact, so humdrum do I find the Apex Goodwill, that we didn't even have any cash with us when we arrived.  Which means, of course, that within moments of walking in the door, Wolfman found a beautiful dresser for me (not pictured--because I have big plans to paint it some wild combination of colors).  So, while he drove off to an ATM, I stayed behind guarding the dresser, and while I was waiting found a couple "silk" scarves for an upcoming project and a beautiful little book.

A Year in a Victorian Garden by Henry A. Bright, first appeared as a monthly garden diary in the Gardener's Chronicle of 1874, then published as a book in 1879.  This edition is a 1991 reprint.

EDIT!: I almost forgot.  Our landlord owns an antique shop on the quaint little main street in down town Apex, and while paying rent at the beginning of the month, we couldn't help but buy the following:

What you see before you is a espresso mug for Wolfman (originally a cream server which came with a set; because the set was sold, our landlord gave us this cup for free!).  Wolfman sewed the leather sleeve you see on it, to keep from burning his hands.  And, my glorious spoon rest.  Yes, it has a chip.  But, I would've chipped it anyways (I chip everything; you should see the state of my dishes).  And, I was desperately in need of a spoon rest (Wolfman kept griping at me for putting dirty spoons on our stove burners, and then later smoking up the kitchen), and though I decline from buying sweaters with cats on them, or deer knick knacks, I do like things shaped like mushrooms, or things with mushrooms painted on them, so.

Scintilla, no. 3 | Get on the Grind like Clockwork

The Year of the Hip Hop Vampires is how I refer to it. My brief life with those girls, M, H, K, & T. Back then, those girls were both thrilled by and afraid of the prospect of me writing our story, or, as they thought of it, their story. M would say, “Girl, you better be writing this shit down.” K would say, “You’re not going to write about this are you?” Would I write about that time K, drunk, wearing pink gym shorts and white socks pulled up to her shins, bent forward on the spaghetti-o stained sofa and threatened to fart in M’s face. Or when M and K, Jewish and Korean respectively, told me I would never understand Mary J. Blige’s music until I fell in love with a black man. Or the time H picked up a branch off of Glenwood Ave. and carried it around all evening declaring, “I’m from Neptune!” Or the time the five of us, sometime in the early morning, did the tootsie roll and other like dances in the living room, without speaking or laughing, with the most serious of intentions, music blasting out the open window into the cold night air, as if hypnotized. (This really happened.)

I sometimes tell my husband stories that make us both laugh, sort of bemused-like. He refers to a picture of me from that time, sitting on the counter in our dorm kitchenette, with K & M, all of us dressed in black with accents of red and white, matching the colors of the Scarface poster behind us, black stilettos, tight jeans, and all of us with that same look on our faces; Wolfman calls it, with a slight upward tip of his chin, “What.” He thinks it’s sexy.

I threw up three times at Club Oxygen, once in a garbage can off the dance floor, and then twice in the bathroom, and woke suddenly with M hovering over me, laughing, helping me to my feet and out the door. I threw up again on the sidewalk and then at a red light opened the car door to vomit in the street. The car of boys next to us shouting at M, “Yo, is your girl alright?”

And then other nights ended with us walking home, to be followed by a morning of muddled, hungover slouching and lurching through the warehouse district looking for M’s car. We wore huge sunglasses that year, sunglasses that covered half the surface area of our faces. And we carried towering plastic bottles of water from Whole Foods, and carried airplane bottles of liquor in our back packs. I wore three inch heels every single day that year, usually with worn boot cut jeans and t-shirts of semi-obscure bands tight across my chest.

We ate salads for lunch and dinner, sitting together for our meals, the five of us, The Fam, trying to piece together the events of the previous night. Usually, H had kissed somebody, some stranger, and spent meal times guiltily professing her love for her fiancé. And, if H hadn’t kissed somebody, she’d peed in somebody’s car. When she drank, H used to say she was a “leaker”; there would be tears, often vomit, sometimes pee.

And I cried that one time, wearing that pink hoodie my brother ended up stealing from me, zipped up to my neck, the hood over my head, at the Ale House with M. Mommy Issues, you know. M’s idea of cheering me up was to take me to her brother’s girlfriend’s brother’s house, where I fell asleep in one of the bedrooms with my arms around a pit bull, and then off again to Krispy Kreme for blueberry cake donuts—free donuts, of course, because this sort of thing was M’s specialty—free donuts when we pulled up in the back of the shop to chat with a driver loading boxes for grocery store deliveries. The driver, at M’s request, actually went inside to snatch a blueberry donut for me, my favorite.

So many disjointed memories and images—H mixing me bloody mary’s while I caught up on overdue assignments; K confessing that her new anti-depressant had caused her to go on a run that lasted hours, into neighborhoods she was not familiar with, without realizing she was tired or that she had a schedule to keep; T buying us a crab leg dinner and teaching us how to crack the shells. And so often, I was a counselor which they resented more than appreciated.

I began to feel tired sometime after Winter Break. I still rode around in M’s car at her every whim, and I helped celebrate H’s birthday—PBR’s at the Local 506, M and I pooled some money and bought her a new pretty comforter set, which H “leaked on” that night. But, I felt less inclined to agree with M when she sneered at The Domestics on the first floor of the Res., their baking smells wafting through the stairwell. One night, I finally screamed at M, “Grow the FUCK UP!” She responded, “Don’t tell me to shut the fuck up,” and I was so utterly exasperated that she had misheard and misunderstood me, so altogether burnt out—I think that is the moment I made the decision to cease and desist with all this, this taking advantage of our youth, because at 21, we weren’t exactly that young, we weren’t children. I told her as firmly and as enunciated as possible, “No, I said grow the fuck up. Grow up.” And then, I spent Spring Break working in my grandmother’s garden, and by the time the semester came to a close, I’d decided not to sign up for residency the following year. I cited hair in the shower drain as my main reason. But, the truth was that I was over it all, the bleary headaches, the hip hop, the clubs, the drama—I didn’t even like using the word “drama” to describe situations, I still refuse to use that word. So.

Scintilla Project

Scintilla, no. 2 | Growing Up, in a Series of Thank Yous

{Grandma & her puppy, Sioux Bea}

Dear 1st Ballet Teacher Who Here Shall Remain Nameless, Thank you for teaching me the basics, and for getting me into pointe shoes. Ballet was transformative for me and taught me, or began to teach me, how to be an adult—how to persevere, how to walk into a room with grace, how to stand with squared shoulders and confidence, and that often perfection is less important than style. Thank you for introducing me to the pure adrenaline-charging joy of performing on stage, of losing myself and my insecurities to a trust in my body and the knowledge that I am beautiful. Thank you for chaperoning me and my fellow students into The City (Raleigh, my first time) to the theatre to watch a professional ballet company show (my first time)—such a sophisticated, cosmopolitan day for me, wearing my black patent leather mary janes. And, finally, thank you for being dismissive and bitchy toward me when I showed signs of not idolizing you the way so many of the other girls did. In picking on me in class, you taught me that adults, even teachers and authority figures, are fallible. You taught me to trust my gut instinct, that often magnanimous gurus are just attention-seeking frauds. You taught me that I am my own person. You taught me that I should never seek out adoration from others, that I don’t need it if I just love myself. And I did. More than I cared for you.

Dear Incubus, In a high school era of Dave Matthews Band and Blink 182, thank you for being just a little bit weirder, with a sound just a little bit lusher. Thank you for opening my ears and my mind, for teaching me the bliss of music and fandom, for teaching me to seek out that which may be a little off the beaten path, a little dissident and far-out. Also, Brandon Boyd, thank you for posing shirtless in that poster I hung on my dorm room wall and being such an affront to my freshman year, uber pious roommate. That girl was such a drip.

Dear Billie Letts, Peter Benchley, & Alice Hoffman, Thank you for teaching me to read. I mean, of course growing up I knew the logistics of reading; I wasn’t illiterate—I even went through that phase in middle school where I researched the occult from books I checked out at the library, took notes and everything. (I still know more “facts” about werewolves than the average person.) But, I can count on one hand, with a couple fingers leftover, the number of books I actually read, cover to cover, between the ages of 5 and 17. No, it was you three, who I turned to out of the sheer mind-numbing boredom that was the first couple weeks of my freshman year of college, who taught me the transportive power of books and words. Thank you for Novalee Nation, for Brady, Quint, and Hooper, and for the Sisters Owens.

Dear Larah, Bree, LP, Bre, and, most of all, Kath, Thank you for appearing to me, almost magically, out of the great scary depths of the World Wide Web. You girls were vulgar and hilarious and brilliant. You taught me to be a better writer (so much better, in fact, that it almost flabbergasts me to think of where I was before I met you). And you were my friends at a time when I was very alone and lonely. You introduced me to good music, good books, good movies—cultural ephemera which has helped define and shape me, as you have helped define and shape me. And Kath, never will I be able to express how much our correspondence and your continued friendship and support mean to me, but you make me a better person, a better adult.

Dear Wolfman, I will keep this brief, as I don’t want to embarrass you should you ever read this. I only want to say thank you for returning my phone call, even though I technically stole your number and am a major creep. Thank you for also being a major creep, and thank something Big and Transcendent that you and I speak the same language. And, finally, thank you for being such a Good Man, for loving me, for keeping me safe and sound, for letting me love you and keep you safe and sound, and for pushing me when I need to be pushed, for setting such a great example of steadiness and responsibility and self-assurance, and what it truly means to be an adult.

Dear Grandma, Thank you for being a silly, funny, strong, opinionated, flirty, strange, joyous, alive, Truly Alive, woman. I always say that you are what I will be in a few years, and for that I am so thankful.

Scintilla Project

Scintilla, no. 1 | Who Am I?

1. I am Michelle Leigh "Calamity Jane Xena Ripley Joan of Arc" Bentz Vaughn, nee Shoemaker.

2. I am "quiet" say some, reserved, say I, never shy, not even quite introverted (though my Myers Briggs states Intuitive Introvert), not exactly a bitch though sometimes I am mistaken for one, not nearly dumb (actually, perhaps the opposite, in some fields), though sometimes mistaken as such, but wary of strangers and careful, even guarded, upon meeting new acquaintances.

3. But, I am strange and passionate and unafraid. Unafraid to dress vividly, to laugh loudly, to raise an eyebrow severely and disagree. I am never embarrassed, because to be embarrassed requires one to care what other people think.

4. I am a Texan, by birth, by taste buds, and by preferred style of boot.

5. I am the wife of M. Jared Vaughn, though I swore at one time that I would never introducemyself as any man's anything.

6. I am a reader of words, many, words upon words, and a collector of words as well. When I was younger, more naive, perhaps, I considered myself a writer of words. But am I now, again? Is this neurotic phase upon me again?

7. I am my grandmother's granddaughter, though not my mother's daughter. I am, in fact, in the minority of people defriended by their mothers on Facebook.

8. I am always answering the question, "What do you do?" with a question. "When?," or, "What do you mean?"

9. I am a dog person living with four cats.

10. I am a sexpot and an anti-prude. I am pro-nudity and sex positivity and, of course, love.

11. I am a lapsed ballerina with itchy feet and nostalgic muscles.

12. I am a lover of kitchen improvisation, though I read and collect so many recipes, and lately newly in love with plants, with growing, with self-reliance.

13. I am a future industrious homesteader, expert knifethrower, terrible mother.

14. I am a magical thinker. I am that little girl, still, in the woods, peering into creek beds and bushes for treasure and creature.

15. I am more than this, of course, and indefinable the way all people tend to be. Mostly, though, I am settled and proud and happy.

Scintilla Project

Domesticity Log, no. 3 | "You're feeding me like a real Southern man."

Sweet Potato Spice Loaf

3 eggs

1/2 cup buttermilk

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground allspice

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

3/4 cup butter, cut up

1 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups shredded fresh peeled sweet potato

1 clementine orange or orange

1/4 cup honey

1. Let eggs and buttermilk stand at room temperature for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly coat 9x5x3 inch baking pan with nonstick spray, or, line with aluminum foil; coat lightly with flour. Set aside. In medium bowl combine flour, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, allspice, and nutmeg; set aside.

2. Mix together sugar and butter. Add eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla. Add flour mixture; whisk until combined. Fold in sweet potato. Spoon batter into prepared pan, spreading evenly.

3. Bake 65-70 minutes or until top springs back when lightly touched and split in top appears dry. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan. Cool completely about 2 hours.

4. Meanwhile, for candied clementine peel, with vegetable peeler, remove strips of peel from orange. In small microwave-safe combine peel strips and honey. Microwave on high for 30-40 seconds until warm. Cover. Let stand while cake cools. Spoon peel strips and honey over cake.

Beans & Skillet Corn Bread

recipe via Pioneer Woman

Photo Journal, no. 15 | Wolfman Plays Common Grounds

On Saturday night, this good looking man played at Common Grounds, solo, with only Samarai Jack accompanying him, mutely, on the tv behind his head. I drank a red tea latte and fangirled, of course. He's so good.