.
I think it's so cool that you all love St John so much
that you are remodeling your homes with "St John" flair.
Here's some tips on achieving authentic "St John" style around your home:
- • Brace up those stairs with cement blocks.
• Un-hook that disposal and replace it
with a PVC pipe that goes from your kitchen sink
across your yard and drains into your garden
(mine does, and where it drains tomatoes, red peppers
and cantaloupes grow even though we've never planted a single seed)
• The remedy for a broken oven is to rework your menu and
leave off any thing that has to be cooked in an oven.
If ya' gotta bake something for an event, get a bottle of rum,
a 6-pack of coke, and find a friend with an oven.
(No need to get the lime, anyone responsible enough
to have a working oven will probably have a lime.)
Both my fifteen year old nephews spent one summer with
me. They live in a gated community, in a "Mc Mansion",
in Naples Florida. I was afraid that my rag-tag island
shack would be too much for them to handle. First
night with me as I showed my first nephew around what would be
his home for the next seven days. I showed him the 2 dish tubs
in the sink, "We wash the dishes in this fisrt tub,
rinse them in the second tub. Tomorrow we use the
rinse water in tub number two as wash water. We water
the plants with the wash water from tub one. And at
night we cover both so no moths fall in an
accidentally drown." I finished by saying "That's how
we do it down here." I waited for his
acknowledgment of the instructions I had just given
him, and I worried that the dish tubs may be off putting
for a kid whose never lived in a home without a
dishwasher. It was so cool when he looked at me and
said "Aunt Cheryl, that's how
everyone
should do it."
I did manage to throw him off his game him with my ice cube trays.
He was like, "Hey Aunt Cheryl we're almost out of ice!" I was like "Use
the bottled water when you fill them." I went in the
kitchen a few minutes later and when I found him
struggling with this task I realized, he'd never used
an ice tray. All his life ice cubes came from a
dispenser in the refrigerator door.
The following year I got his brother with my phone.
I asked him to call his mom for me. As I came in the room I
saw he was looking at the handset of the phone. I said
"Oh, do you know how to use that phone?" Still looking
at it he said "I think so." then he started
pressing the
numbers, to no avail. It's a rotary dial phone. (First thing when
his mom asnwered, he says "Aunt Cheryl has a weird
phone.")
I'd like to let you know that I grew up a true prima-donna.
At fifteen my family home not only had an elevator and
a tennis court but lights on the tennis court and a
ball machine. I got my first car when I was sixteen, a
red Corvette and my own platinum Amex card at
thirteen- a point of contention since I wanted a black one.
THE ONLY REASON I mention this
little known aspect of my background, is to GIVE YOU HOPE!
If, when I describe my life now, on St John, you
think "I could never live like that." you're wrong. If
I can make the transition from living a life that was
not flying coach till I was thirty & going down Lombard Street
in a private chauffeured stretch limo the
summer I was away from my family, training with The
San Francisco Ballet... If I can learn to love living
like this, ANYONE can.
I wasn't quite Veruca Salt, but I was close...
Ooh, ooh: Another heeeelarious moment with my second
nephew was teaching him how to hang laundry. When he finished, he
told me he was a "beast on the laundry line." (I think
that was young person vernacular for "Very good at it", which he was.)
