It's really hard to start a new book. I spend weeks thinking about it, scribbling down ideas, consulting with my editor and my agent. I've known for months now that my next book would be about a woman starting over in life. I knew she would be moving to a small town in Georgia, and struggling with change. I knew I wanted the book to be a "fish out of water" story.

When I start a new book I almost always decide on the title first. Many times I have a title before I know what the book will be about. That's the way it worked with HISSY FIT. I was literally taking a bubble-bath, pouting about some injustice that had been visited upon me. I vowed that I would just have to "pitch a hissy fit." And as soon as the thought ocurred, I knew I had a book title. All I needed was a plot to go with the title.

This time around I started with a concept. I've always been fascinated with the idea of "flipping" a house. Of course, flipping is all the rage these days. I've got to believe that Bravo-TV's Flipping Out got huge ratings. I know I watched every episode at least once. And every yuppie with a Home Depot credit card and a power drill thinks they can buy a house on the cheap, slap a coat of paint and some new tile on it, and make thousands in profits. My own mother, who sold real estate in St. Pete for more than thirty years, flipped houses before her death, and she absolutely loved the process.

So the new book is called THE FIXER-UPPER. It's about a young woman named Dempsey. And I don't want to give away too much of the plot yet--mostly because I haven't really started writing yet. Last week I visited the town that will be the inspiration for the small town where Dempsey starts her life over again. On the map it's called Griffin, Georgia. I went down to Griffin, which is about an hour south of Atlanta, last week. A friend of a friend drove me around, showed me the town's high and low points, and filled me in on the local hot gossip. Griffin, like Madison, where I set HISSY FIT, has the feeling I need. But Dempsey's town will probably have a fictitious name, because I intend to have all kinds of stuff happening there, that could not, and would not happen in the real Griffin. Besides, I don't want to piss off my new friend's neighbors if I decide to say something unkind or unflattering about Dempsey's new home. Don't want Irate Irene getting on my case again!

While driving around my friend took me past a house that will do nicely as a stand-in for the house Dempsey intends to flip. In my mind, Dempsey's family's old homeplace is called BirdSong. Here's a photo of the house in Griffin.


So there you have it. A peek into the creative process of an extremely disturbed mind. Probably what my kids call TMI--Too Much Information.

Wow--ten days since I've blogged. So, here's what I've been doing.
1. Junking. A lot of junking. More on that later.
2. Kitchen retrofit. The good news is that the new cabinets are in, and the cabinet boxes have been painted and glazed. The bad news is that Mr. Mary Kay hates the glaze. Sigh. So, they've got to be re-painted.
The new stove has been semi-installed, and the buyers of the old stove and microwave happily carted them off last week, so I no longer have a stove sitting on my side porch. Here's a photo of Bob the Builder at work.




The junking has been excellent lately. In fact, I'm embarrassed to admit that I junked four days in a row this week. On Wednesday, Jinxie and I went to a charity tag sale to benefit Atlanta Pet Rescue. Wowsers! We totally rocked that sale. Jinx got a beautiful antique cherry--or maybe pine? three-drawer chest that would have cost $400 or more at the Scott Antique Market, for $175. I got a great antique round pine drop-leaf table for $85. Plus three mulberry transfer-ware plates for $5, an antique round oak-frame mirror for $25, a partial bolt of designer red and white check fabric (think kitchen curtains) for $15, and an amazing vintage leather armchair with oak frame for $25. The seat cushion on the chair has to be replaced.




I'm thinking a great tapestry fabric will work for that. Also four or five roles of Thibaut black and cream toile wallpaper for two bucks apiece. Two of the rolls are triple rolls, and I think this stuff sells for about $75 a single roll, so major score there. My friend Susie is the recipient of the wallpaper. Thursday we went to an estate sale where I picked up six vintage "undersea" prints for $20. An Ebay search revealed that the prints were '50s or '60s era menu covers for an Italian cruise ship line. The owner of the house where the sale was held had been an artist. I bought two of her pastel drawings for $20 apiece. Re-matted and framed they'll go in my master bath. Friday was an estate sale in Marietta, run by Vicki. Vicki always has great sales, and her prices are usually pretty fair. I picked up an oil painting of daffodils for $18, a wooden tole-painted tray for $5, and some other stuff.





Saturday was the neighborhood-wide yard sale extravaganza in Druid Hills. This is the neighborhood where Driving Miss Daisy was filmed. Also the site of the memorable oriental rug-on-the-curb coup from a couple months ago. Got a great oil painting of zinnias for $5, and four wonderful rusty scrolly iron chairs for $25. Not to mention a pair of '50s crewel-work parrot pictures for $6 and a great black-painted oak piano stool for $8. Score! I also actually got some real writing/research work done this week. Fill you in later on that.

There is a lot to love about our new old house--but the kitchen isn't one of my favorites. The previous owners turned a former bedroom at the front of the house into a kitchen, because the existing kitchen was a tiny space at the back of the house. So the window placement is a little wonky. And it opens directly into the dining room, which I don't love because we're messy cooks around here, and we entertain a lot. And the previous owners were in the restaurant business, so I don't think they did a lot of home cooking. All of which means--remodel. But not a big remodel. No. More like a retrofit. I must have been doing something right when we moved into the house, because I found Bob the Builder. Bob is heaven-sent. He works alone. He does everything--carpentry, plumbing, wiring, tiling. He's sweet and neat, and reliable. Totally husband material, except he's already married, and so am I. Anyway, here's the deal. We've removed the existing upper cabinets, which did not go all the way to the ceiling--meaning I had a serious storage situation. Bob has built lovely sturdy, roomy new upper cabinets, and Roz the painter--also amazing--she and Bob work together all the time, is painting the new cabinets, and the old lower cabinets, a shade called Timid White, and they will have an umber glaze. Then, next week, if the Gods are with us, the new stove will arrive. Mr. Mary Kay demanded a stove with bigger burners, and who was I to keep him from stove destiny? So the new Dacor should be in next week. And if I'm still living right, Mark the Marble Guy will come back and install black granite countertops. And then Bob the Builder will return to install a tile backsplash. And hopefully build us a cabinet around the huge shelving unit which exposes my sloppy cookbooks, glassware, ect. We're hoping for a cupboard which looks antique and slightly Welsh cupboard-ish. In the meantime, we'll be living on rotisserie chicken and bag-o'salad off paper plates. But it will all be worth it--right? I'll keep you posted with pics of our progress.

Labels: Home Improvement

Ever since we moved into our new old house last November and filled up the entire ginormous basement with stuff,Mr. Mary Kay has been issuing dire threats--like no new junk unless the old junk goes away. So today, we did it. The Junk Queens' First Ever yard sale extravaganza.

In otherwords, my big fat sell-off--conducted with a few choice friends/accomplices. For weeks now, we've been sorting and pricing the stuff down in the basement. The good news was that I was able to empty lots of boxes that never got unpacked from our first move four years ago. I found stuff I've been hunting for all these years. Like the cookbook Katie and I made together when she was in high school. We put it in a looseleaf notebook and called it TASTES LIKE CHICKEN, because when she was a picky toddler,we'd always promise her that anything new tasted just like chicken. I also found Andy's baby book--which was so fitting, since today was his 21st birthday. Yes--boomerang boy is 21! He and his buddies have had a day-long boy fling--golf all day, then tonight it's off to a brewery and yes, gawd forbid, strip clubs. I do NOT approve of titty bars.

Andy and his two oldest buddies

But it's apparently some stupid rite of passage. Fortunately, they are being driven around by an older--non-drinking cousin.
But, back to the yard sale preparations. It was back-breaking work. I brought in the big guns to make it happen--namely Katie, who is the queen of organization. She walked around all day clapping her hands and making pronouncements. "We are moving product!" she'd say, slashing my prices. And we did. Not enough product, of course. The old dining room rug went back to the basement. The dining room furniture, including the dining table that would not die--the movers dropped it five feet off the back of the truck and it still didn't break--finally went to The Salvation Army.
Altogether, I cleared about $600. The Junk Queens and I had lots of laughs, and now the basement is mostly cleared out--and ready for new treasures.

The Junk Queens


The Big Sale
Can I tell you about the most annoying people in the FREE WORLD? A family of smug vegans, who stomped around amongst our stuff for over an hour, picking out a few books, allowing their super-smart super-smug kids to romp amongst my priceless junk. How did we know they were vegans? Because they had a long boring conversation about veganism with another troll-like couple of granola-heads who wandered in.By the time they finally parted with their paltry five bucks worth of stuff we were ready to pelt them with bacon and organ meats.
Another hateful couple spent an agonizing amount of time debating their purchases. Then, when they'd finally made up their pea-like minds, after insulting all of us in one way or another they wanted to NEGOTIATE one price for the treasures of five queens. The woman went so far as to comment that we'd come up with a "shrewd marketing ploy." Shrewd? SHREWD?? We'd all been up since 5 a.m. We were hot and tired and cranky and in serious chocolate deficit. And she's suggesting that we're some kind of cabal of robber-baron masterminds? She's lucky we'd already sold all the sharp implements.
Sorry for the rant, but really people. Here are the basics of junk etiquette.
1. Hire a freaking sitter. Or if you must take your children along for the hunt, keep them under control. Do not allow your darling three year old to take a vintage hat and stomp it into the mud, and then try to bargain the price down.
2. No returns! Today some goof-ball bought Queen Nancy's vintage cherry drop-leaf table, carted it off, and then returned it an hour later, saying he'd changed his mind. NO NO NO! Nancy could have sold the table twice during that hour.
3. This ain't Haverty's. Yes, the table has scratches. That's why you're getting a 70-year-old solid mahogany piece for $200.
4. If I tell you I'd prefer cash, and suggest that you visit the ATM half a mile away, this is a strong indication that I don't know you from Jack, and am not in a mood to cut you some slack.
5. Play nice. You'll get along a lot better with me, and the rest of the junking world.