Mid Mod Madness

I thought of Monica aka Monimania and her Black Olives in My Fingertips blog on my first night in Holland this past week. My quiet castle-hotel had a very posh little restaurant, and when I sat down to dinner they served me a little tapa of black and green olives. At first, because I was typing on my laptop, I didn’t eat the olives. The waiter came around and asked if I didn’t like them. I felt rude because he had been being so nice. So, I tried a few. They were delicious and they made me feel very Mediterranean healthy.

Like Monimania, I have very fond memories as a child of loading black olives on my fingertips and delightedly sucking them off. I think it was my dad who played this game with me. (Mom, is that right?) What an incredible, simple childhood joy. Like… a metaphor for how to go after life, maybe? Do people still do this with their kids?

I thought that I would also use this little story as an entrée to explaining what I actually do for a living… why I was in The Netherlands. I have worked in corporate communications for many years, including a long stint with a big global company, then with an historic home, then with a public media company, which was sold in a merger. After that I decided to shift gears a bit, and I became a consultant. Now, I work 30-40 hours a week on communications for another large global company, hence the trip to Europe for meetings. I really like the work and the people a lot.

The blogging came from…(1) my longtime interest in decorating, reaching all the way back to reading all my mom’s Family Circles, Woman’s Days and Redbooks and using the knowledge to constantly move the living room furniture around, (2) lots of hands-on decorating, then restoration, beginning about 1992 when I moved into my first married house and started to nest in earnest, and (3) a dramatic escalation in my these interests when we moved into our 1951 colonial-ranch in Massachusetts. This house needed substantial work including all-new bathrooms and kitchen. I am a fierce researcher about such decisions and accumulated tons of information to share. And at the same time, the effort lit a teeny tiny ember of interest in mid century modern into a conflagration. Oh yeah, and I like the blog because I’m in communications, a writer, into media. Hence, a propensity to use words like ‘conflagration,’ because if you can’t use them in your own blog, where can you use them?

With this blog — all of my interests seem to have come together all wrapped with a big bow.

Just like my second night eating at the castle-restaurant — when I scarfed the olives right down. Here’s one to you, Moni.