Ah Maria, A Girl Takes The Throne
The struggles of Marie Antoinette’s mother, Queen Maria Theresa, included a shaky start.
“I do not think anyone would deny that history hardly knows of a crowned head who started his rule under circumstances more grievous than those that attended my accession.” Maria Theresa wrote this many years after the fact, but she was hardly exaggerating. The ministers surrounding her were the men who served her father and even her grandfather.
They were old, old men who had grown adept at flattering the emperor and doing just enough to hold onto their jobs. According to one historian; “It’s members appeared to be embalmed.” To compound her problems her chancellor, Count Sinzendorf, was not only very old, but crooked as a dogs hind leg and, her Majesty strongly suspected, a traitor.
He had been taking money from the Spanish for years. He took money from the Duchy of Lorraine to advance Francis Stephen as the perfect hubby for Maria. And while these things had at least the fig leaf of respectability, Did not Spain used to be a Hapsburg possession? Her Majesty loved her husband, didn’t she? The same could not be said for Sinzendorf’s suspected dealings with Frederick of Prussia, Maria Theresa’s deadliest enemy.
184/365 Vacation
I am ready for a vacation. How about you?
The weather did improve. The river has mostly melted again. I’ll try to get a shot or two of it later so I can post it tomorrow. The sun came out, but we’ve still had a lot of fog, particularly for around here.
How’s your weather?
Happy 101 Award
Emily of Marvelous Recipes gave me this award. The rules are to list ten things that make me happy and to pass it on to ten people who make me happy.
Things:
1. Getting to the end of a really good book, to a point where the hero and heroine (Yes, I’m talking Romances) are on the brink of despair when everything clicks into place and they triumph big time.
2. When someone leaves comments on my blog. I love that.
3. When someone says they like my writing.
4. When I’m petting a kitty and he struggles up to my ear, bites my hair, and purrs really loudly. Hey! Who are you calling weird?
5. When there are just enough clouds at sunset to make the whole sky light up for ages, going from pink to orange to red to purple with the sun all golden the whole time. I particularly like it over mountains and/or water.
6. When someone who has been lurking suddenly comments, especially on Suzie’s House.
7. When someone give me one of these internet awards. I’m well aware of the hokey factor and I really don’t care. To me, it’s a compliment.
8. Looking at my adgenda at the end of the day and seeing a whole bunch of stuff checked off, especially when I could normally expect only one or two things to go well.
9. The A’s on my kid’s report cards.
10. When Mr. Al tells me he loves me.
People (willfully and somewhat randomly picked from people whose names make me smile on sight):
Mama Zen
Susan Anderson
Renee Lynn Scott
Brighid
kaye
Heather
Mr. Knowitall
RJ Flamingo
Mrs. Mecomber
Mariposa
Thoughtful
Jill: (through the door) Are you sitting around again? Jack, you’ll never stop jiggling if you don’t get up and move around more. Come on. Don’t you want to exercise with me?
Jack: Trust me, Darling. This time you want me to jiggle.
Today’s theme is jiggle
Previously in Jack and Jill Without Doing a Lick of Work
Saturday photo scavenger hunt
The rules for Photohunt can be found here.
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Suzie’s House 147: Nervous
“Gene, cut it out.” Ben took the ice cube from Gene’s hand. “She doesn’t like it.”
“So what? I do like it.” Gene tried to take the ice cube back, but Ben kept just out of reach. Not that Gene was really trying anyway. It wasn’t like he cared all that much. He grabbed for it again anyway.
“I said cut it out!” Ben actually looked serious.
“What are you two talking about?” Diane glanced nervously at them right before sliding the last batch of cookies into the oven.
180/365 Down Stream
It was a foggy day. Kind of gave the view a stark beauty, even if The Boy says it’s just boring.
Western Roads
“Oh. You’re really going somewhere with this.” She looked from the map to the highway stretching endlessly before them.
“Of course I am. I may take a few detours, but I’ve always had a place in mind. Only, it’s very far away.”
“How far?”
“The other side of the Grand Canyon. Speaking of which…”
The challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write a story in exactly 55 words.
This is actually an allegory for the way I write Suzie’s House. I often have no idea what scene I’m going to write when I sit down, but have a very good idea where I want the characters to end up.
179/365 Frozen River
It’s fairly rare that the river freezes over, but this year we’ve come close twice.
13 Icy Days
I’m used to snow. Ice? Not so much. So the weather we’ve been having lately is starting to get to me. I don’t know if it’s really been 13 days, but here are at least 13 interactions with icy days:
1. The river has almost frozen over. (See Thursday’s and Friday’s 365 posts) It’s beautiful, but you know if that much running water can freeze it’s been too cold for too long.
2. Tuesday the school called for a 2 hour delay in starting due to icy roads.
3. I tried to walk to the river to get pictures of the pretty ice, but the sidewalks were so slippery I ended up ice skating in my sneakers. Good thing they delayed school for two hours.
4. Too bad they didn’t bother to send the busses around to pick up the kids two hours later, so all those parents ended up on the ice-rink roads taking their kids to school.
5. Monday I drove the kids to school because we woke up late. (My fault. I blew off my alarm clock and they use me instead of their own alarm clocks even though they’ve had their own alarm clocks for years now.) I discovered how icy the roads were when my anti-lock breaks kicked in at the first intersection. I’m thinking the stupid anti-locks are more dangerous than regular breaks, cause we slid right into the intersection anyway. Good thing no cars were coming.
6. All the ice makes for some pretty windshields.
7. Unless you’re driving.
8. Which I did again Wednesday morning when The Boy overslept and missed the bus. This time I almost slid completely off the road. Luckily it was a back street with little traffic and the yard I landed in was a good spot for it. Spinning my tires getting out wasn’t so much fun, but at least I didn’t need a push.
9. The ice is doing funny things. For instance, it made my wooden porch steps treacherous.
10. Much like last Thursday when I tried to go for a walk and get some exercise and discovered it was safer to walk on those sidewalks that hadn’t been cleared than the ones that had.
11. Why? Because the ice on the snow merely crunches under foot, but the ice directly on the sidewalk will send you flying.
12. Earlier last week the roads developed fascinating sheets of ice. No, really. They were all lumpy, like a lava flow. My sidewalk developed footprints of ice.
13. This is because it snowed, the snow turned to slush, people walked and drove on the roads etc, then in the course of a few hours everything froze solid. And has stayed that way ever since.
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Ah Maria, What Did Daddy Do?
The story of Marie Antoinette’s mother:
If Maria Theresa was unschooled in the finer points of empire management she was not unprepared. Although her father, Charles VI, had excluded her from public affairs he could not prevent her from observing them. She was also very conscious of something her father chose to willfully and unrealistically ignore for years; the fact that mom would never bear a male child. Maria Theresa knew she would one day be queen. If not as an iron clad fact, then at least as a firmly held belief.
She was very distressed by what she saw. Although she loved her father, it was clear that dad was running the empire into the ground. He considered himself a savvy player on the European diplomatic scene. He was nothing of the sort. Neither were his ministers. Not even the ones who were treating with the enemy for personal gain.
