per another blogger.

What in the samhill does ELF stand for? Go read. Then come back here.

I am very proud to say that as of today, it has been one month since I visited Starbucks and I’m five pounds down.

ELF that, baby.

(I mean that in a good way. I think the ELF diet plan sounds smart and simple and I think the blogger is onto something and that all she needs is a handy-dandy numbered list and she’s got herself a get-rich-quick diet plan!)

All I feed my kids = crap food. For example:

COOKU!

CUPCAAAAAKE!

(as opposed to cake-cake, which = rice cake)

Note that the boychild, like his sister, is really into the icing part and not so much into the cake part. The dogs think this is a wonderful development.

Kindergarten, day one!

I have found what beats pregnant insomnia’s ass, hands down: kindergarten project-due-in-four-hours insomnia. Friday morning (after Thursday evening’s riding lesson, a late dinner and late to bed for all), I woke at 4 a.m. with a bit of Miss Clavell’s “something is not right” in my brain and remembered that McPantses’ photo album page for her class friends book was due that day. I gathered up pictures she’d colored, printed out a few things on the computer (a list of her favorite activities and what she wants to be when she grows up: ballerina/artist/baker and sometimes veternarian/pediatrician, but not always) and trimmed a few pictures and left everything out for when we all got up.

McPantses was very tired when I tickled her awake two plus hours later and pitched a sobbing fit when she found out that she wasn’t doing her page all by herself, but after we taped things together, she was pleased. The front of her album page was her watercolor painting (very simple and beautiful) and the back page was her oil pastel drawring of the entire family at her May ballet recital. We stuck some pictures over the whole thing and taped on her computer printed dealies and it was good. to. go. I was worried that it might not be right, somehow.

She was the only kid out of 15 in her class who used her own artwork on her page. The 4 a.m. insomnia totally rocks, to use her KimPossible vocab. Not only was her page right–it was totally her.

We like KP (so not the dramah), but I much prefer the gentle giggles that we get when we watch Charlie and Lola, snuggled together on the couch. Friday night, we watched the “It Wasn’t Me/Boo! Made You Jump!” duo and we paused to get a good look at Lola’s mermaid doll and McP said, “Can you make me one of those?”

Why, yes, yes I can.

She’s a bit thick around the edges right now, but she will slim up when I stitch her together. Gotta have something to do in the carpool line, you know.

(I’m embroidering hair and then adding yarn braids over it. We didn’t want any naked muslin dollhead to show under the yarn. It was a group decision.)

Do I even need tell you how it makes me feel to have my daughter say, “Can you make that?” and then sit down, draw a pattern, cut some fabric (note the Repro Depot fabric I bought for the Weekender bag is serving as the mermaid’s taily parts–fortunately, I bought 4 yards of the stuff in a hoardy fit, so there’s plenty to spare) and get started on it? We’re discussing a merman for the boychild next.

Pictures of recently received goodies coming next. I shall have to work some cross country mind meld to winnow even a bit of Sally’s photographic talent.

Hey, in closing tonight, thank you so much for the wonderful commentary on my last post. The Husband and I have talked a lot about our “one day is today” life in the past few days and some of the things y’all said inspired conversation. Honestly, some of you posted bits that I think would make good master rules for my Anti-Darla list, too, but I won’t swipe them from you.

I just read a great yahoo article about keeping up with the Joneses and how trying to do so makes you spend more.

Somehow, I am mostly surrounded by the Joneses.

It’s taken me until just last year to figure that out. I am surrounded by some debt-free genuinely well-off people, but I think I know more people who are what my new friend calls “thirty thousand dollar millionaires,” meaning they bring home $30k and live like meeeelionaires.

Realizing that has taken a weight off of my jealous shoulders.

I had a stressful year last year. It wasn’t grandly tragic in the truest sense, but it was a gut punch for me and it involved changing life plans that were set in my head. I think I got a nice reward in exchange for my tears, though. I learned to stop worrying about everyone else and focus on myself and my family and what goes on inside the walls of my own abode. I get to enjoy the boychild and his sister and the Husband and all the damned hairy beasties who live with us.

There is a beautiful girl here who says that she and her husband joke that her epitaph will read “one day,” as in “one day when we build the next house it’ll be our dream house.” “One day my ring will be bigger and my clothes will all be Versace and Prada and not just this belt or that bag or these shoes.” She laughs about the whole “one day” thing and I did, too, when she first told me.

Then I started thinking about it. I’ve been waiting for “one day” since before McPantses was born. My “one day” is different than hers, but I still carried around a notion in my head for a long time. One day. I think I am starting to give it up, though, because dragging this “one day” around behind me like a wagon is not so much fun anymore. Instead, I have today, this day, when I am at work most of the day, when I will fetch McPantses in a couple of hours, when we will eat leftover chicken for dinner (made into chix salad with curry powder, mayo, mustard and green onions). Today, I will read to the Crabcake and stitch something lovely and drink a bourbon after dinner. Today I will enjoy my husband and my family and my life.

Why do we do this “one day” thing? Does television do it to us? Advertising? The freaking Joneses? Does everyone do it? Just moms? A few dads? The Husband’s “one day” is very tongue-in-cheek and it involves a large television and leather couches and being able to smoke a ceegar in the house in his private manroom after playing golf at the club all day. He readily acknowledges that it probably won’t happen til he’s sixty.

(I don’t like to tell him that it’ll be a cold day in hell before he smokes in my house–no reason for me to squelch his “one day” entirely. That’d just be cruel.)

Part of my living in the moment “plan” includes becoming the anti-Darla. I’ve been keeping a short list of Rules for Angsty Moms; I want to start my own cult of personality. Think about it: all those financial planners who are world-famous and wealthy beyond compare deliver the exact same message. They just present themselves well and suck crowds in, somehow, like carnies.

Here’s a teaser from the Angsty Moms’ Guide to Calming Down, Relaxing and Enjoying Life for you:

1. Don’t bother trying to keep up with the Jones. They can’t keep up with you, either. They can’t. They may not ever tell you about what you do that they wish they could do or what you have that they wish they could have, but I promise, it’s there.

2. The only mommy war that matters is the one within yourself. The only people you have to answer to are the ones who reside in your home and the ones you run over in the road trying to get home (kidding). Make yourself and your family happy. Pay the mortgage and feed your kids and do what you have to do to be able to sleep easily at night.

3. You cannot be the mother to the free world. Again, take care of what’s going on in inside your four walls and then, if and when you have extra resources (time, energy, money), give back. Don’t give to the detriment of your own family. I know people who do that–I think it’s middle class guilt paired with the zeal of the convert and whatever it is, I am selfish enough to not be possessed of it.

4. Apologize. You do not get to be an asshole without consequences. I hate apologizing more than I hate scraping ear wax out of the boychild’s waxy ears, but it must be done. Failing to do so, especially if you need to do so often, which may be the case if you have a big mouth **coughcough** devalues your words and your actions in everything else you do. Here’s a hard thing to remember: you also do not get to be an asshole just because someone else was an asshole to you. It’s not fun, but it’s the way things work.

5. Never care more about someone else’s problems than they do. That’s another hard one for me, but as I think about it more, it’s becoming easier to let other people’s stuff just go.

My friends who have helped me come up with the first five of my eventual ten important life lessons know who they are and they are, as always, thanked from the bottom of my heart. Things seem to boil down to my big lesson from 2005, which is “shut the hell up, take care of yourself and enjoy the moment,” but the cult of personalities these days have taught me that you really have to lay out numbered steps, so there you go. Can you see me through the computer, tappity tap tap-dancing and humming “there’s trouble in River City?”

Now, I’m back to the bloggers. Over the past year, one thing that has truly made a difference in my life (aside from my children and my family blah blah blah), as far as imagination and minor mental health is the cadre of crafty bloggers who enjoy simple lives, who create things out beauty from scraps and bits and bobs and who give of themselves as they see fit.

They help me live in the moment and shed that useless “one day” thinking that gets me nothing but angst.

What helps you?

I owe one thousand and eleventy zillion pictures, but I have been damned busy in the last seven days. Yesterday I spent the only two unbusy hours I’ve had doing something that shames me, but only mildly. I went to see the movie Material Girls, by myself, and cried twice (when the maid said she was their mother, and at the end when the maid’s daughters were telling her goodnight).

Yeah. I’m that person now. Geeze. In my defense, let me explain that I make my Saturday afternoon movie choices based on what’s showing ten minutes from now, where “now” equals when the crabcake settles in for a nap, not usually on what I’m desperate to see. I usually choose based on what seems least like a total waste. I did see Pulse last Saturday, but it’s got Ian Somerhalder and new neighhbor mancandy is a dead ringer, so I considered the movie research of a sort.

Two school meetings last week. One evening with no power. Worked two nights and a bit today to make up for lost hours–the beauty and wonder of having two children somehow equals never enough leave time for me. I can’t remember where else I’ve been in the past week, but it has involved no daylight hours for decent pictures.

Right now we’re watching the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom dvd that my friend sent last year when Charlie was born and I swear, it’s like we’ve got The Ring of kiddie videos. Last time I turned it on, a little story we’ve never seen before was on there, and we’ve watched the video at least a dozen times now (I love the Chicka Chicka song).

Seriously–it’s there out of the blue. We know the stories before and after this freaky new tale well, but the drug-induced bullfrog song is new to all of us. And, now that we’ve seen it and we’ve told you about it and you’ve read this, well. Who knows…

Things I have learned this week:

If you give gorgeous new neighbor boy a dinner gift certificate and good beer, he will come to your door and thank you for it, thereby providing you the opportunity to say to your husband, “See, I told you he was mancandy.” Your husband, like mine, may or may not appreciate this fact. I like to treat the neighbor boys well, giftwise, when they move in because they are the people I expect to rush over like the calvary with firearms and night scopes to kill midnight intruders if the Husband is out of town.

I also learned that if the Red Cross stands you up, they will call you two nights later and ask why you missed your appointment. What the hell? YOU FIGURE IT OUT, PEOPLE, JUST QUIT CALLING ME! Then don’t call me two more times and leave me messages directing me to “find out who made my appointment and call you back” because I will be Finked, Rat Finked, I say, before I do that.

However, I will walk over to the other side of the building to donate during a blood drive in a week. Does that work for y’all? After that I will check with local hospitals and see how the donation process works and the Red Cross can continue to kiss my ass.

I learned that the carpool line is like a crazy water ballet of women in SUVs and that even though school isn’t out until 3:10, someone is getting there before 2:45 because when I get there, I’m way on back in the line. Being way on back stresses me out. I am getting lots of stitchery done in the carpool line lately.

I owe a package to Tammie Loves Candy (link tomorrow when I can find it at work) and it’s going out in a priority mailer tomorrow. Ballet class tomorrow afternoon. Church choir Wednesday. Horses on Thursday. I have to work more this week at night, too. I am thinking I should just haul my photograph-worthy stuff to work and take advantage of the daylight there. I mean, I have vintage buttons, Tim Tams and a Clapotis that no one outside my house has seen yet! Argh!

Finally, I learned that when a thunderstorm takes out the power for 2+ hours and it’s sweltering in my house and it’s getting dark, darker, darkest, the boychild will find the entire experience, especially the candles, terrifying and screamworthy. I swear, Charlie sobbed like someone was pinching him for two solid hours.

Wait, no. finally finally, I learned that my daughter is fearless and walks into her new school with a straight back and her chin out and, according to her, that kindergarten rocks.

Despite our disagreement last year, you and I have maintained a great blood donor/vampire charity relationship for over ten years. I imagine that you have siphoned off gallons of my blood by now. I visit you every six weeks on the nose for two reasons: because I feel like it’s my civic duty and because you hunt me down and hound me until I do it.

I understand that’s how it works when you’re a universal blood type. That’s fine. I embrace it and happily spread my good blood throughout the state as needed.

[Seriously, how gross is this getting?]

When you make my appointment for 3:30 p.m. on a Friday, send me a postcard to remind me and then call me the day before and leave a phone message to remind me again, I will make specific plans to close up shop (including requesting and making sure leave is approved) and head across town in time for the bloodletting.

When I get there and the blood center is closed, I am going to pitch a polite fit at the front desk. You called me, remember? Do not ask me to find out exactly who called me and call you back so you can “get to the bottom of this.” I’m not going to help you get to the bottom of why you are incompentent. I, remember, am the one whose blood you desire. I am also the one who spent 40 minutes driving across town and back for an appointment you screwed up.

Don’t figure out what’s going on and call me back. In fact, I am breaking up with you, Red Cross, so don’t call me at all. You can’t have any more of my universal blood. I might go to the scary plasma center near my office building (and frighteningly near a decrepit apartment building that lists to one side) instead, but I am done with you.

Before you shrug your vampire shoulders at me, let me remind you that this is Alabama we’re talking about. People here lose more blood, on average, I suspect, what with shotguns and ATVs and strange family disagreements involving knives and chickens and scary dogs. You need my blood. So there.

Question: One of my cardigans (thin but full-coverage) now has a hole in the elbow, along with significant unraveling in that area. It’s 85% silk, 15% cashmere, black. Will it felt if I wash it properly? I am going to cut it up and do something with it, but I’m not sure about the felting part. What to do?

Question: If one needed patterns to make crib bedding (bumper pad, etc), where might one find such a pattern? I just measured and cut for McPantses’ bumper and curtains and she never had a crib skirt. The boy’s crib skirt is red/white gingham, thankyouverymuch Pottery Barn Kids.

Project: All the cool girls with the cool hemstitchy sewing machines around here turn out crochet-edged baby blankets like they’re kleenex and I want to make some for gifts. I am going to take a cool girl with a cool hemstitchy sewing maching captive and force her to hemstitch some fabrics for me around the borders and then I will follow the instructions on this Mormon chic (swear, that’s what it’s called) page for crochet blanket trim.

Answers:

1. Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy–if I could have gotten away with it, we would have a child named Harriet and not Frances McPantses.

2. Heathers, a movie I have on VHS.

3. L.L. Cool J., Goin’ Back to Cali, which was on the Less than Zero movie soundtrack. The movie was based on Bret Easton Ellis’ book with the same title and the movie plot takes a tiny snippet of a side plot from the book and runs with it. The book is pretty much unrelated to the movie.

4. Hippos Go Berserk is our current favorite Sandra Boynton book, but I think the boy is going to eat it. He seems more keen on destroying books than his sister was.

5. I love Prufrock.

6. Horatio Spofford wrote It is well with my soul after “two ma­jor trau­mas in [his] life. The first was the great Chi­ca­go Fire of Oc­to­ber 1871, which ru­ined him fi­nan­cial­ly (he had been a weal­thy bus­i­ness­man). Short­ly af­ter, while cross­ing the At­lan­tic, all four of Spaf­ford’s daugh­ters died in a col­li­sion with an­o­ther ship. Spaf­ford’s wife Anna sur­vived and sent him the now fa­mous tel­e­gram, “Saved alone.” Sev­er­al weeks lat­er, as Spaf­ford’s own ship passed near the spot where his daugh­ters died, the Ho­ly Spir­it in­spired these words. They speak to the eter­nal hope that all be­liev­ers have, no mat­ter what pain and grief be­fall them on earth.”

It’s my favorite hymn and it’s one that I will ask (if I ever get around to planning such a thing) to have played at my funeral. It acknowledges grief, sin and failure and finally, triumph.

7. Is Caddyshack one of the most quotable movies ever, besides The Godfather? “Spalding, you’ll get nothing and like it!”

8. The bigger plush Madeline doll at our house is usually naked, along with Pepito and Miss Clavel in a shocking doll display, but recently, she’s worn an itchy plaid school uniform that exactly matches McPantses’ new itchy red plaid school uniform.

9. No one guessed Nina Simone’s Forbidden Fruit! It’s a great song that always makes me smile.

10. I guess this one was really obscure–it’s from Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, which people either love or hate. There doesn’t seem to be any in-between.

11. I am scared to let the boychild play with my Jabberwocky pop-up book because I know he will shred it. We also have a Bantock pop-up book of Kubla Kahn. The two books were part of McP’s bedtime routine for a while.

12. Scarlet, to Ashley, about Melly.

13. Ain’t no one said it better than Jane Austen, in Pride and Prejudice, sentence one.

Well, damn and blast, I had seven things on my list typed out when I accidentally closed the window. Note to self: save.

Borne from my shower thoughts this morning is a list of quotes from movies, poems, books and songs. Trust me, it’s not a difficult list at all. The first person to correctly guess seven or more of the quotes wins my Fast Friday Freebie. I have one paper-covered notebook left and I will pair it with a flour sack towel with something to embroider ironed onto it. I think I’ll draw something out and use my new Sulky transfer pens to make an iron-on pattern. I will also send out a silver tin (think naked Altoids tin) with embroidery thread and needles in it for the project. Sound good?

Got your cultcha/pop cultcha thinking cap on?

1. IF LAURA PETERS DOESN’T STOP SMILING AT ME IN THAT WISHY-WASHY WAY OF HERS I’M GOING TO GIVE HER A GOOD KICK.

2. You were nothing before you met me. You were playing Barbies with Betty Finn. You were a Bluebird. You were a Brownie. You were a Girl Scout Cookie. Transfer to Washington. Transfer to Jefferson. No one at Westerberg is going to let you play their reindeer games.

3. This is the only one that I think might stump someone, so I will tell you that it’s a line from a song from a great movie soundtrack from 1987; the movie script is from a book that has almost nothing to do with the movie.

Bikini: small. Heels: tall. She said she loved the ocean.

4. All through the hippo night, hippos played with great delight. But at the hippo break of day, the hippos all must go away.

5. For the Husband, who is thinning on top:

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]

6. This is on my mind this morning:

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say…

7. On a slightly more cheerful note:

So I said, ‘Hey lama. How about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.’ and he said, ‘There will be no money, but on your death bed you will receive total consciousness.’ So I got that going for me . . . which is nice.

8. In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines lived twelve little girls in two straight lines. They left the house at half-past nine in two straight lines, in rain or shine.

9. One of my favorite songs:

Eve and Adam had a garden;
everything was great til one day a boy says:
“Pardon, miss, my name is snake.
See that apple over yonder? If you’ll take a bite,
you and Adam both are bound to have some fun tonight.”

10. Consider even bluff old Bunny, if you would. Not a childhood of reefer coats and dancing lessons, any more than mine was. But an American childhood. Son of a Clemson football star turned banker. Four brothers, no sisters, in a big noisy house in the suburbs, with sailboats and tennis rackets and golden retrievers at their disposal; summers on Cape Cod, boarding schools near Boston and tailgate picnics during football season; an upbringing vitally present in Bunny in every respect, from the way he shook your hand to the way he told a joke.

11. McPantses has loved this since she was a tiny baby. We have a Nick Bantock pop-up book of it:

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought –
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

12. You’d rather live with that silly little fool who can’t open her mouth except to say “yes” or “no” and raise a passel of mealy-mouthed brats just like her.

13. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

I stayed home for the first two days of the week, along with stomach bug boychild, so I’m all out of sorts in my office today. I cleaned off my desk and got rid of a lot of junk mail and filed some paperwork and delivered other parcels of paperwork where they belong, but somehow, my desk is a complete mess, despite the effort.

I need to post pictures because I have some. I mailed away my Vintage Button Swap package last Friday (only several days late) and received a wonderful package from Apron Thrift Girl that I cannot wait to show you.

I finished my Clapotis shawl last night, minus the five stitches I need to finish unraveling. Blue Sky Cotton? Gorgeous, luxurious stuff, but the dropped stitches need coaxing every step of the way. Instead of finishing that and weaving in ends like a good girl, I chose to start on Clapotis II, the Real Deal.

But now, I have another crafty interest in my head, for the next few nights. After a very long telephone call today, where I learned more than I ever thought I would need to know about children and horseback riding, I am going to stitch a little something to give to McPantses as we surprise her with riding lessons in a couple of weeks. It turns out that the cost of a private lesson every other week is less than the two classes we’re giving up as we move from daycare to elementary school and the riding instructor/stables owner sent me to a website where we can purchase her entire riding kit (jodhpurs, paddock boots, hard hat and required gloves) for $80. I imagined the boots alone would cost more than that.

For now, once every two weeks, McPantses will change into her riding gear at work with me* and we will pick up the boychild from school and zip off down the interstate to the stables for a private lesson that will last at least 75 minutes. I am free to wander with the boy, who will “definitely want to get dirty” says the instructor.

I can’t wait. I am, like the overeager stage mother, getting to give my daughter my childhood dream (and, apparently, my mother’s childhood dream, too–the Grandmother wants to come along!). Don’t worry, though. I’m not forcing McPantses into the horsey world. She’s asked for riding lessons for as long as she’s realized such a thing exists.

I thought I’d surprise her with a flour sack towel with a bit of horsey embroidery on it and drive out to the stables this weekend. I’m going to wade through a stack of Dover coloring books and then order the Pattern Bee pattern if I can’t find what I want to embroider at home. The towel will probably become a doll blanket. Towels and unfolded cloth diapers are hot commodities at my house, and are used for every purpose under the sun, so we always have a tall stack of them in the pantry.

* It’s another year where I don’t get to work part-time. Did I already write about that? I asked six months ago and was promptly denied, but I managed not to cry in front of anyone through a very useful technique that my friend Kristen taught me. If you pinch the inside of your thigh as hard as you possibly can, you will shock yourself out of any tears. Useful for employment situations and, for me, infant baptisms at church, which always make me snivel.

I did get thrown a bone, though. Instead of keeping McPantses at school until 5 – 6 p.m. every night, I will abandon my lunch hour, which I spent nursing kids for two years and which I now usually spend running errands anyway, and pick up the girlchild from school every day at 3 whatever p.m. and bring her back to my office for the rest of the afternoon.

She could have stayed in aftercare, where she would be able to take the art class we’re giving up, but the Husband and I decided that she’d be better off winding down with me for a couple of hours every day. The monetary savings is minimal, but it’s something.

For right now, me and my part-time dreams will just motor on. I have mentally promised myself two more years here, max, or an indeterminate amount of time at a potential new job, as long as I enjoy it and it’s as wonderful as it appears, from this grass-is-greener end, to be. Who knows.