POST 13 Hope You Guessed My Name

The first rendering of the new house exterior has arrived!  Our architect sent it in an email yesterday. It is a fairly simple line drawing, inspired by a particular house Barb had identified. The drawing was faithful to the model, but Barb printed it out, grabbed a magic marker and with a few quick strokes transformed it into something special. If my dream job growing up was in journalism (you can look it up in the 1968 Eugene Field School Reporter), Barb’s was surely in architecture and design. I know she is an excellent therapist, but she would have been outstanding in a more visually creative realm. The new house will be her outlet for letting it all flow.

I have noticed that I keep referring to it as “the new house”. For a few years, Barb and I had a casual acquaintance in England, Ken Somethingorother. instead of an address, his home, like so many in the UK had a lovely name, Lambourne Cottage or the like. I enjoyed writing the name out as we addressed our annual holiday greeting card. We don’t name our houses here, which may be just as well for the two of us.

We have had our ups and downs with naming things. As mentioned a few posts ago, our cat went through a new name a week for quite a while before we settled on Phoebe, a name never used when speaking to her. The notifications from the vet that she is due for her annual physical are still addressed to Cinnamon.  And our daughter was “Unnamed Female Raff” for several days after her birth, until our friend Lysie finally suggested the name Laury. The unique spelling was inadvertent, a reflection of my recollection of the pizzeria on Lawrence and Broadway in the city. Only later did  I realize the actual name of the restaurant was “Laurie’s”.

On the other hand, we have had some naming successes. When Barb was President of the Holy Family Hospital Medical Center Women’s Board the group sponsored a Roaring ’20s night formal dinner-dance. I dubbed the event “Capone and Caviar”, and was quite pleased to see it top the Sun-Times list of “Best Named Charity Events of the Year”.  I didn’t even know there was such a list! Probably the best name I ever devised has gone unused. As part of the merger mania in health care, two Catholic systems Provena and Resurrection joined forces. In my opinion, what is now known as Presence Health would have made a much bigger impact as ProRection. Perhaps they would have used the name if the head of the system was a urologist instead of a nun.

Now I have the fun and challenge of naming each of these blogs. Most of the titles are references in some way to pop culture, usually a bit of a twist on song lyrics. That is something I can claim some expertise in, as long as it is a tune they play on WXRT or The Drive.       …so if you meet me, have some courtesy…….

Speaking of names, please leave yours in the comment field. We would love to know who is reading!

Enjoy the day!