Hammock days are here again
This is what you do when the weather gets nice: You drop the preschooler at Ikea’s Småland (you know, for kids!), revel in the comparitive ease of shopping with just a tiny, containable, mute infant, and buy some patio furniture. Haul both kids and acacia wood seating home, set up shop, and start taking all your meals in the backyard.
Then you hang up the hammock, climb inside with your family, and start taking all your naps in the backyard.
Soon you will probably just dig a hole behind the compost and take EVERYthing in the backyard, knamean?
This week we have begun work on the “green room,” the room at the back of the house that gets gorgeous morning light
yet is by all other times of day cluttered and ugly as a warthog. We started priming and have picked out a paint color (Martha Stewart’s “Newsprint”, by Valspar, as reimagined by a cheaper and closer paint dealer). Soon we will decide on some sort of laminate-wood flooring and then, oh frabjous day, we will tear up (and stomp on! and dance around) the stained, dirty, ugly green carpeting and put some new flooring in.
In the meantime, the weather’s great and the backyard has never felt more hospitable.
I’m sure the children would agree.
Kids these days
Don’t let them fool you. Under those grizzly exteriors lie squishy, adorable hearts of molten gold, ready to slather you with drooly kisses or compliment you on your hooded sweatshirt (“You look cute, Mom!”).
It’s just that those loving moments never seem to happen when I have a camera in my hand. When I’m holding the camera is when they dish the sass, the sour or the sullen. Ah, children. You’re cute even when you’re scowling.
I just won the gold in Feeling Sorry For Myself
Things are kind of difficult these days. Cormac was up five times last night — 10, 11, 1, 4, 5. Screaming his adorably irritating fool head off for no discernible reason. Then my day starts and it’s pretty much child-wrangling for nine hours, at which point I change clothes and go to work in a night office (very unlike the night kitchen, understand). Then I come home and read for an hour and go to bed, praying to get a few hours’ uninterrupted sleep before waking up and doing it again tomorrow.
I can barely keep up with the laundry or the dishes. My children are woefully under-entertained. I cant’ really write about my feelings here or anything more than superficial “I went to the dentist” crap because I would like at some point to secure a new job, if we ever move to Pennsylvania, and I know I’m quite Googlable and, despite being and excellent worker and knowledgable in my field, nobody wants to hire (or insure, healthwise) a visual journalist who writes about her chronic bowel disorder or introversion or how she hates snobby rich women at J.Crew standing around blocking the aisles as she tries to maneuver her chain-store suburbo-stroller (GOD how rude). Blogging used to be a great outlet for me, but these days the drowning economy has me terrified to write anything controversial or revealing or less-than-self-complementary for fear of never getting hired again. Are all the blogging mothers out there full-time SAHM-ers? Or otherwise disconnected from the corporate world? How can this be? Perhaps I just need a college-ruled notebook and a mechanical pencil instead of the internet.
I think most (all? a lot?) of it is A.) taking care of two kids under three is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, and I have taught high school, and B.) ongoing, maddening sleep-deprivation. I feel trapped at home with the children and unable to pee in private, much less spend time working on hobbies or yoga, and — well, I’m feeling rather sorry for myself. I know that there are things I should be doing to foster my support network, but instead I have let friendships lapse or wilt because I can’t bring myself to try to have a phone conversation with two monkeys screaming in my ear. I can barely get the house tidy enough to invite our friends over. Thinking of hiring a baby-sitter makes me practically narcoleptic. There’s a church right up the street that is probably crawling with youngish moms, but then I’d have to overcome my blazing atheism and pretend to believe in the Good Book.
And to top it off, I feel like a failure at failing because my own mother did this stay-at-home mom thing six times over. Six kids. I only have two and I want to put my head in a blender.
I love the little buggers, obviously. I hear they are quite cute and entertaining from an outsider’s perspective. But nine hours a day (only nine! some moms do much more) with just a high-pitched screeching for company has me in tears every night at 2 a.m. for that last head-patting trip to the kids’ room.
I have so many things I want to do. I know I could make some really great sewn objects if I only had a half-a-tick to myself.
And this doesn’t even address the larger and more pervasive late-quarterlife crisis, in which I ponder the uselessness of humanity’s short time on earth (i.e, “What’s It All About”) and my own particular brand of uselessness in particular. It’s coming to terms with the fact that I am never going to write a book, because somebody else has already written a book. What’s the point. I do not have the Type A personality needed to translate blogging into a lucrative career. In fact, I might as well be Type Z, and that doesn’t translate into much of anything except feeling exquisitely put-upon and wishing to retire, hermetlike, with a cup of coffee and a Do Not Disturb sign on my sewing-room door.
I think that’s my curse in life. To be able to see greatness from a distance (other people’s greatness, I mean) and appreciate it and all the hard work it entails and enjoy its fruits but with the full, depressing knowledge that I could never duplicate it, either through inertia or because a certain somebody needs to have his bottom wiped AGAIN, wtf.
True Up
True Up is my new favorite blog. It’s the beautiful brainchild of Kim of Dioramarama. What it is, is: All Fabric, All The Time.
Girl knows her fabric, and her giddy joy at fabric of all kinds is very nearly palpable. You could practically slice through her joy with a good Olfa rotary cutter, all the way through the computer, it’s that strong. And that makes the blog not only entertaining and interesting but informative, too. Hell on the wallet, though — makes you want EVERYTHING.
Sayonara twitter
I think I’m going to quit Twitter. I barely come up with enough time or blodder to post here, I’m not going to waste it on Twittering.
Though if I WERE going to twitter right now it’d be this:
Am reading Bridget Jones’s Diary again (Moby Dick too whaley, gross). Keep thinking: Stop complaining, B. Look at all your free time. Am jealous.
Just need a character-counter — think that was under 140?
Morning update: I opened my feedreader to see whoorl and schnozz talking similar things. That schnozz post — man, do I get it. And I am not even as on as often as i used to be. I’m totally behind on blog posts and comments and Flickr friends and now Twitter but you know what? MEH. It’s OK because then I can, say, take my kids to the zoo and finish the laundry.
Supafine admin: Upgrading.
After a hard day wrangling two children at the beleaguered Baltimore Zoo, there’s nothing I like better than to unwind by backing up my MySQL databases and upgrading to WordPress 2.5.
If things are wonky on this site, it’s because I’m drunk. No, wait, it’s because I’m elbow-deep in chmod’ing/deleting files/scratching my head/alcohol.
Update: Success. Patting self on back. Things I like about 2.5: superly-duper easy to use the widgets now, even for me, who had a pretty customized sidebar and hated the last widget iteration. Also the admin design has been improved. Also the automatic upgrade option for plugins. So easy. Also the new toolbox on the post page.
But where’s my post preview?
Update: My post preview is right there in the big blue box on the right side of the edit-post page. On an edit page for an already-published post it says ‘View This Post’, and on a blank post page it’s an empty blue box until you start writing, then you can choose to preview. It opens in a new window, which I find annoying, though. But anyway, glad it’s still around. I find it insanely useful.
Also, am not really drunk, unless you count a high blood-casein-level as being drunk on cheese.
Hand-knit cowl
I finally finished this hand-knit cowl neckwarmer for my sister that I started ages ago, after seeing this flickr photo. I used Lambs Pride Bulky in ‘seafoam’, purchased at Spinster Yarns and Fibers on Harford Road. If I had it to do over again, I’d cast on probably a third fewer stitches (and make someone else do the modeling).
Now all’s that’s left is to mail it off to Ohio before the weather officially turns.
Plus, his smiles make the world sing
Reprinted from another, private online forum in which I was ruminating on my youngest:
breakthrough Duh moment over the weekend. We were at the grocery store, shopping, waiting in line. Iain had taken Owen to the truck to pull up and wait for Mac and I, who were waiting to pay for the groceries. Checker was all up in Mac’s face. But he was all up in hers, too — grabbing at her plastic bags, talking at her, trying to type on the keypad, trying to take things from her — no stranger danger at all, whereas his brother would have been studiously avoiding eye contact and turning red. I was reminded of an instance a week or two ago, when I was vacuuming. Mac came right up and started yelling at the vacuum. It was messing his shit up and so he got up at the vac to tell it so. Suddenly, I realized — the character traits that I had been seeing as ornery, exhausting, difficult, just plain loud, could be spun in a different way. He stands up for himself, he is assertive. Here is a kid, unlike Owen, who takes no guff from anyone — not his mama, not the vacuum, and not the checker at the grocery store. He’s exactly the way I wish I was.
For all the times I’ve sighed and called him difficult, I’m posting this, to remember that “difficult” is nothing but a transitory experience, five minutes’ confrontation between distinct personalities and objectives, and that perspective is everything.
And, just for a change of pace, Cormac was as golden, warm and fuzzy as a Retriever puppy today. He played with his brother, rode sidesaddle on my hip this afternoon, silently taking in our guests, and obligingly ate most of his dinner.
There is also this:
It’s also a good reminder to me not to judge a kid solely on his louder qualities, but on his good ones, too — he is a total dream to take places, never throws a fuss in public but stares wide-eyed at everything going on. He throws himself into me for hugs and kisses, still likes to chomp on my chin, and I even saw him today trying to wear Owen’s pirate hat [which was so cute I wanted to die]. In fact, today was such a good day that I’m trying to remember what the heck I’ve been complaining about before.
I like to joke about my little Gemini baby running hot or cold and never in between, and he does — that’s what I love about him so fiercely. He, at ten months old, has strength of character to a degree I can only dream of attaining. I’m proud he’s mine.
Spring wardrobe sewing: Wants and ideas
A.k.a. “If I could go shopping, this is what I’d buy, but I can’t, so I’ll dream about sewing it instead, but really, in the end, we all know I’ll end up wearing the same ratty Old Navy t-shirts I did last summer.”
In fact, two of those are sewing pattern images (the green coat: built by wendy; the other one a japanese sewing book [got to find the link]); the rest are from the gap, j.crew and old navy.
I have a few pretty versatile blouse patterns; that and a bolt of bleached muslin would get me most of the way to those white shirts. The pants pattern in Sew U would get me the bermudas and capris; and my own good sense and a ruler would get me the tote bag.
There’s no help for the yellow Chucks, though. Those I’m just going to have to shell out for.
Things that are lame
- bloggers who think their piddling, holier-than-thou grievances are truly worth a 500-word essay
- people who write to Miss Manners to win an argument
- people who won’t give county teachers their paltry, nominal raises
- @#$%& teething
- not having the money to do things the way I want them to be done
- a horse with a broken leg
- this list.
I saw this little meme on gwendomama’s blog and it really hit the spot today. It’s been a long, long week, Supa friends. One of those weeks when I’m actually looking forward to grocery shopping, if only for the chance to self-medicate with Pop-tarts.
recent flickr
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my sewing tutorials
See my tutorials featured on SMS' Handmade Holidays!
