Life's Little Surprises

A surprise dinner is served at Karen's house of horrors

Pet's surprise visitor has taken up residence in her cherry tree.

Pet

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men…so the saying starts and we all know where it goes. We’re strolling along, enjoying our, albeit boring, but comfy routines when BAAAM, a surprise hits and life will never be the same. Some events are devastating…accidents, illness, even death, but there are happy ones. What could be more joyful than my almost fifty-year-old nephew about to become the first time father of twins? We did have a life changing occurrence in our farm community recently. One of the neighbors about a mile up the road got robbed. Happened during milking time so no one got hurt but we all made a few adjustments. No more open doors and casual running out for a few minutes. Everything gets locked now, even the car, truck and tractor. What a switch this turned out to be. We country bumpkins now act like city slickers.

Karen

Having had my fair share of bad surprises over the last several years, I’m thrilled that 2010 is bringing some pleasant ones. One of the things my husband made me promise when we bought out big Victorian was that he wanted it to help pay for itself. Part of the advantage to living in tinsel town is location scouts are always looking for places to shoot commercials and TV shows. So I thought no problem. I’ll post the house on a location site and we’ll be millionaires. Not. Although we had at least six or seven location scouts come to the house every year the house never got picked for anything. My lovely Victorian wasn’t even a bridesmaid. Until last month. : )

Pet

The only movie my house could be made into right now is “THE MESSY MUDDLE RETURNS” thank you Newt, the newest life changing addition to our household. Eight pounds, jet black with touches of white, the little devil likes to decorate by placing all his stuffed toys, chewies, bones, favorite shoes, shredded Kleenex tossed throughout the house. Sometimes he gets arty and adds his special touch, like unrolled toilet paper trailed through and then chewed up. At least as much as possible before the household heads catch him. Yup, probably the only occurrence more dramatic would be the arrival of a baby, and we have the impending influx of four new little ones in our family this summer. None live nearby so a happy home invasion could be right up there with major happenings. Tell us, Karen Anne.

Karen

I know what you mean about little additions causing havoc. My house has never been the same since I rescued Slick and GT. Only one thing got them to take a break from house destruction….a film crew. My hubby is a huge horror fan so he was so excited when finally after years of being odd house out, our Victorian was picked as the location for a horror film. When a horror film sets up in your house and the main plot of the movie involves a serial killer and cannibalism, my kitties ran under the bed and didn’t come out for three days! Although I was excited to finally have a movie shot at my house, the hair on my arms stood up when the crew walked in the front door carrying bottles of fake blood. I had visions of all my precious antiques splattered with blood. And when they came in carrying body parts and a enormous syringe I couldn’t help but wonder if I had nothing but nightmares in my future. : )

Pet

Can’t wait to find out if Karen’s antiques are now covered in blood. How do you know they carried the fake stuff or…Sounds like the making of a horror story. You know…film crew comes to make a movie and they’re really killing people. Turning from the gory phony yucky things we have a small surprise on our front lawn. Two of them, in fact. Ma and Pa Bluebird decided to nest in one of our cherry trees. A perfectly acceptable blue bird house sits in a large maple out back waiting for residents since everyone knows the pretty little creatures like shelter and hate noise. Go figure. The house is empty and there they are, setting up housekeeping close to the road, sharing turf with a yippy dog and listening to a noisy lawn tractor. And flitting around in front of an audience of porch sitters. Mother Nature is full of surprises.

Karen

Seems the birds like to be in the center of the action. : ) My house was the center of action during the three days of shooting. We had actors dressed as homeless people lined up in our driveway waiting to get nice bowl of body part chili! Inside the house we had a son murder his mother and in my lovely dinning room the hero of the film was served a nice plate of breast of hooker! In my parlor they shot a nice long scene where the topic of conversation was which body parts from which murdered girl would be served. It was a lot of fun to stand on the sidelines and watch the filming but I was also on the look out for stray blood and had a watchful eye on my antiques. In one parlor scene, a poor helpless damsel in distress was attacked by a 7 foot tall butler and almost knocked over my grandmother’s tea set. Thankfully one of the crew jumped in and rescued the teapot before it hit the floor. Never a dull moment in a horror movie shoot!

Pet

I truly don’t like horror movies, but this one I have to see. Keep us informed on when the flick will hit the big screen or if we have to put up with a home version on a DVD. Some of life’s little surprises suck. Example: Finding lily bed, just about to pop open with beautiful blooms of various colors and sizes, eaten! Totally devoured. Only stumps remain. Thorough investigation reveals no foot prints so I better not get my gun out and go after the deer. (Truth…Pet can’t hit the side of a barn with a shot gun. Better hide in the bushes and go after the critter with a trusty broom.) More likely the culprit is one of those adorable little cotton tail bunnies who have tons of clover to munch on so why are they eating my lilies? Inspired by your house’s horror flick, I am conjuring up a delicious rabbit stew. Hannibal the Cannibal, stand back.

Karen

Lol Pet! The side of my house looked liked someone blew the head off something as the grass was covered in blood splatters. The crew had set it up as a blood splattering staging area. The actors would get artfully splattered right before a scene. The director wanted the blood to look nice and fresh. : ) It’s funny how much of the conversation on set revolved around the blood. One brand of fake blood tasted awful but the looked the best on camera. The actors hated it. They were always trying to convince the make up person to switch to the better tasting variety. Cracked me up! I really hated to see the shooting end. My house was never so gruesome or exciting.

Pet

Here’s hoping this is just the start of a brilliant career for your house! Next time make them clean up, even plant new grass. Here in rural Tennessee the cows and the corn and the old houses would look good in many a movie, but so far Hollywood hasn’t showed up. Downtown Knoxville with many classic buildings, even Victorians, has been immortalized by film makers and recently a country B&B served as the set for a big screen movie. In the beautiful month of June, the flowers burst into bloom, winter, spring, summer, fall birds all meet and sing their heads off, the bull frogs are emoting only to be drowned out by tree frogs. So I’m sitting on my front porch, watching the humming birds and blue birds fight over territory and waiting for a director with a megaphone to appear and make us immortal. Life’s little surprises do sneak up on us you know!

Karen

Just might happen Pet! You never know when Hollywood decides your little piece of the country is the perfect spot for a major film. I had another nice surprise that was house related. Looks like my house might wind up back in a national magazine sometime in the next year. The editor came out and took a look at all my hard decorating work since the last time the house was in the magazine five years ago. I’ve been busy but still have parts of my office and the stair landing left to do. The stair landing is 18 ft so will have some major ladder work ahead of me so I’m saving the worst job for last. But now that the magazine is interested in a revisit article I see some scary ladder work in my future. : ) I love it when the planets align and happy surprises come our way. Makes plowing through all the negative surprises worthwhile. Here’s to many happy surprises coming to all our faithful readers way!