Tag Archives: cottage

Cottage Industry

Cottage industry: (n) any small-scale, loosely organized industry.

Here’s the ideal:

Making cottage cheese in my cottage to establish a cottage industry.

I don’t know whether it would work, but it certainly has appeal. A great sales line, don’t you think?funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

“Where did you make that cottage cheese?”

“Well, darn tootin’! I made it right there in my cottage.”

“Well—that gives you quite a cottage industry.”

It would be so simple. Of course, there would have to be a large market for cottage cheese, and you would have to compete with the Big Barons of Cottage Cheese—whoever that would be.

But if you were actually able to sell enough cottage cheese from your cottage to have a cottage industry, you could go back to your cottage every night and do cottage things, knowing that all the bills for your cottage were paid, and settle into your cottage for a good night of sleep, while your tummy digested your meal of cottage cheese.

It’s a perfect story.

Maybe that’s why it doesn’t work.


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Backyard

Backyard: (n) a yard behind a house or other building, typically surrounded by a fence.Dictionary B

One of the most startling events in one’s life is to return to your childhood home as an adult and discover the obvious shrinkage.

As a kid, I thought we lived on a property that was at least twenty acres. I used to roam our backyard, and would literally become exhausted by walking from one end to the other and back again, due to the fact that it had a slight downward slope, which insisted on being upward on the return.

But many years later I stood and stared at our house, which was more like a cottage, with a backyard that barely exceeded the definition of postage stamp.

By the way, it was now overgrown with trees which had been mere saplings, and seemed cramped, due to the fact that the new landowners had placed a swing-set in the yard, creating obvious clutter.

I tried to close my eyes and envision it as I saw it as a boy of ten, but the minute my peepers were open again, I was startled with disappointment.

It does grant hope.

For those parents who are concerned that their children do not have enough yard to play in, and move to the suburbs to accommodate the lacking, I will tell you: if you give a kid six square feet of grass, he will be convinced he’s on a football field.

 

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Adirondack Chair

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Adirondack chair: (n.) an outdoor wooden armchair constructed of wide slats. The seat typically slants downward toward the sloping back.

If anyone asks you, Panama City Beach is very sunny in the first two weeks of March, but icy cold if you decide to sit anywhere near the ocean. (Just a little travel tip from the well-seasoned vagabond.)

The reason I can share this is that I rented a cottage near the Gulf one year, to spend a few days writing on my first novel. It sounded so romantic and exciting, with a bit of wild abandon thrown in for good measure.

This was before computers and word processors were portable and could be taken out into a thatched-hut cabana for creative purposes, so I was using an old manual Royal typewriter. The little machine was quite quirky, having a nasty disposition which caused it to occasionally refuse to register the “e” key. I didn’t care. I was a writer–and I was near the beach, transforming my thoughts into storyline.

Three things immediately came to the forefront:

1. Manual typewriters were invented in hell, to the devil’s glee–especially when you’re sitting out in a cabana with the cold wind blowing through, icing your fingertips. Now, I might agree that a certain amount of pain is necessary to stoke the furnace of composition, but I draw the line at frostbite.

2. The second problem was that my cottage was much warmer than my workplace, so my mind kept floating back to the grocery provisions stocked in my refrigerator, the television set sitting idly by, awaiting my return, and the room heater that took away the chill and made me toasty. So to keep from going back to being the non-creative lump considering the virtues of daytime TV, I would frequently step out of my cabana into the sunshine and perch myself to thaw out in one of those Adirondack chairs which peppered the surrounding sand. Thus, my third problem.

3. The first time I sat in the chair I was fine, because I didn’t allow myself to get comfortable. But the second time, the sun was so warm and glowing that I leaned back into the chair, sliding into that slope described in the definition, and I dozed off. When I awoke, I tried to rise to my feet to go back to my writing, and I realized that my posterior region seemed to be a perfect fit into the slat at the bottom of the back of the chair. I had wedged myself there–seemingly, permanently.

I and the chair were one.

At first I laughed, thinking that if I just wiggled or squirmed, I would be able to free myself. But no. In a matter of moments, terror gripped my soul. Try as I may, I was unable to unplug myself from the chair. Should I scream for help, only to be emotionally damaged for the rest of my life if someone actually had to uncork me? Should I stay there, hoping that after a few days, weight loss would trim my backside?

For some reason, it occurred to me to do the twist. Remember that dance? You wiggle your hips back and forth like working a hula hoop. It took about fifteen minutes, but finally my left cheek freed itself, and then, by brute force, I was able to rise to my feet.

I have never sat in one of those chairs again.

I’m sure for normal people, who do not have a rear end that parks quite so well, they are absolutely comfortable and adorable.

For me, they are ... the quicksand of furniture.