The Countess, Rustic?

The Countess cracks me up, too. We have been discussing the location of a birthday celebration during Halloween weekend, and she asked me to check out the space of a nearby hotel which advertised a "garden" available. I went by today and thought it interesting because it is one of those small, Deco hotels and obviously it was no le Tuleries; but I can be forgiving sometimes and was amused by it's sort of Charles Addams feeling. (With the brains, money, and panache of this group, The Sudan could be turned into The Hanging Gardens of Babylon.) I felt an odd charm to it and immediately emailed The Countess who was holed up at Castle Bedelia in Trannsylchusetts, putting the finishing touches on her costume.

I reported that the space was "rough around the edges" and then made the mistake to write that it had a certain "rustic" charm (I should have said Addams Family charm, but I was too busy whipping the houseboy for smudging my malachite pencil box to be clever).

"Rustic??? I don't do rustic!!!!" was her immediate reply. I KNOW she doesn't do "Rustic", do I? She's a countess and the closest she gets to rustic is the same as my experience: the wafting fumes of a nearby peasant village being burnt to the ground.


And then I assured her that even if she DID want to pull some Marie Antionette farm village fantasy, I could not easily come up with a cow. An alligator, certainly, a fat racoon, perhaps, but I'd have to truck a cow down from some redneck county in central Florida and, it isn't pretty there (not that I know from experience, but I did fly over it on the way to Disney World, the ONLY time I've every been further north than Palm Beach in this state). I won't be handing you some cow and a pail, Countess; you can be assured of that. (And by the way, one of the last times I saw you, you were stomping grass into the ground and trying to avoid the pony poo-poo, so don't get uppity with me.)