Hi! You look mahvelous.

If you were giving a wedding gift to someone who was over 35 and you wanted it to be awesome, what would you give?

I have a fantastical set of Alvin & Holmes silverplate flatware in a pattern called Century (24 knives and spoons and a dozen of everything else and serving pieces) that I bought at an antique store in 2000 for $65. It would retail at a minimum of $400 or $500 today. It’s even in a great storage box.

I want to change up my silver usage ( we use great old silverplate everyday) and have bought a bit of Rogers & Williams Lincoln pattern (love the big, flat knives) and am shopping for cheap Grecian pattern. Don’t get me wrong: I haven’t been in Target since October, at the latest. I think it might even be September.

I might need to just get the Century out of the box and use it everyday. It’s a great set, tho, and an amazing wedding present. But, she might not appreciate it. I know YOU would appreciate it, but…

So, what to give?

I am afraid to give monogrammed gifts, but I am also thinking about a couple of sets of monogrammed bar glasses. We gave dinner and cocktail napkins for a shower gift (remind me to link you to the best source ever).

Pictures if my home internet ever improves. Second ball skirt coming for February!

Making: 2 knit hats, 1 knit scarf, Black Apple dolls (see the PDF and the lovely tutorial from Martha Stewart) and more kid clothes.

Life is busy and so good. I wish you well and I send you love and admiration and gibsons with vodka.

Almost…

I’m going out tonight in a fluffy silk ball (sorta) skirt that I made today all by my lonesome. It’s deep cream (cafe au lait, maybe?) and lined in a light teal. It’s a little, uhm, big. It’s fluffy. I’m wearing it with a white tee shirt (tucked in) and a black cashmere cardigan with black sequins down the front. Old school, baby. Black silk strappy shoes.

C C C C C C C C

(pushing the “C” button cccc c for the Crabcake, who is copyediting right next to me as I type–by the by, he’ll be FOUR in two months)

Please take your face off of my computer, dear boy. Thank you.

I learned to bind a quilt, so in the past two weeks, I’ve bound one exquisite quilt (seriously–it’s a work of art, covered in hand embroidery) and I’m almost done binding a big quilt for the Girlchild. It’s very simple–two big pieces of fabric on one side and a very old, very soft sheet from Goodwill on the other side. I turned the sheet over the mute the colors a bit. The quilt would probably fit a queen-sized bed. I machine-stitched big diamonds on it and I’m on the 3rd of 4 sides stitiching the binding down. So proud of myself!

I made each child a cute outfit for Christmas and have a pile of sewing to do for them. I’m about to start on very fluffy Easter outfits (gotta finish this quilt and one more needs to be quilted and bound–I am on SUCH a roll) for them that they can wear to/in a wedding next summer.

What’s on my list o’resolutions for 2009? Same as it ever was: to improve. To keep tennis and exercise at least slightly on the forefront. To cook more. To get our bathrooms redone, landscape a bit and MOVE. We turned over our guest bedroom to the kids–it’s their playroom now–and our house feels bigger, thank goodness.

Improve.

What about you?

Finally, to my kind cheese straws commenter from yesterday or recently: I’m so glad you’re still enjoying the recipe. That was my sole holiday baking desire. Didn’t cook anything wonderful, but wanted to. Sewed instead.

Read: Nelson DeMille’s The Gold Coast. Recommend. Am on the sequel now. Gotta go get dressed. Must also make more skirts for self.

Happy 2009!

Swiped this meme from Posy Gets Cosy blog, whose book is in my order hopper. It’s SO in my order hopper (the cover girl dolls and the horse that her dog ate sold me) at a local indie bookstore. I expect to like it so much that I ordered 2 copies and will give one as a gift.

One Word Meme:

Where is your mobile phone? kitchen counter
Where is your significant other? here
Your hair colour? blonde
Your mother? reclusive
Your father? ineffectual
Your favourite thing? notebooks
Your dream last night? nightmarish
Your dream goal? write
The room you’re in? dining
Your hobby? embroidery
Your fear? intrusion
Where do you want to be in 6 years? lively
Where were you last night? tennis
What you’re not? orderly
One of your wish-list items? square footage
Where you grew up? cluttered
The last thing you did? sip
What are you wearing? khakis, Brooks Bros.
Your TV? dusty
Your pets? numerous
Your computer? amazing
Your mood? introspective
Missing someone? desperately
Your car? mine
Something you’re not wearing? necklace
Favourite shop? bookstore
Your summer? magical
Love someone? many
Your favourite colour? robin’s egg blue
When is the last time you laughed? today
When is the last time you cried? today*

*it’s been an exceedingly difficult week, not for me, especially, but for all around me. I will never fear confrontation again, ever. I am a master of the same.

If I were less lazy, I would link you to brilliance all over the internet. For now, I will only say: bravo, ladies. I miss you.

So.

Hi. How are you? You’re looking so good, especially from my vantage point (my daughter’s recycled and very old iBook computer, which is picking up the current internet slack after a thunderstorm fried my own powerbook’s built in ethernet). Really: you lookin’ good.

I thought of you tonight, internets, while being publicly humiliated, because I knew someone would laugh at me and that you’d appreciate being first on my list.

I (and my daughter) have taken up tennis. I’m playing about 4x/week now, including lessons and with the girlchild. Tonight, I played in some sort of ladies rotation dealie involving wine and cheese and the rotation that threw me for a loop. See, y’all, I play with a group of gals on Thursday nights; we have a group lesson with a pro and a good workout and we occasionally get together outside of the lesson and play. Tonight, our pro is out of town, so we headed elsewhere for the wine-n-cheese chick tennis fest.

I didn’t know it was a rotation–I thought I’d be playing in my comfort zone of regular Thursday ladies, but about an hour into the night, I ended up with 3 ladies (I am working towards competitive doubles in about a year) who are in the age 65ish (older, perhaps?) range. They play all the time. At one point, as my level of play ratcheted down from my basic 2.5 level into worse-than-describable, they went into big-diamond, good-mannered, southaaaaan “bless your heart”-ed ness and were so very sweet to me that I wanted to cry. But, as it was my turn to serve, it got even worse. It went from that to halfhearted resignation on their parts. I was awful–they suggested that I deviate from the standard serve* and just bounce the ball and hit it over.

As I told my kind husband, it went from bless-yer-heart to good-fuck-what-is-she-doing-here?

That spell of awful was the longest 20 minutes of humiliation in the last three months. I ran my ass off for about 3 hours tonight and I am utterly exhausted and totally keyed up. I actually feel like I went down a level and that I wore off some sort of lessons tonight, but except for being an object of pity and the excruciating agony, I might decide to do it again one day.

* I have at least 43 different excuses for my horrible performance above and beyond my current 2.5 skill level. They are, in no particular order:

I broke my left knuckle pretty badly one Saturday night a month ago and tonight is the FIRST time since then that I have played without my brace or without my fingers taped together. Remember when Hurricane Gustav was whipping around the Gulf? Well, that Saturday night, I was convinced I heard a baby bird chirping madly outside and went to rescue it, only to slip on wet concrete at 9:20 p.m., about 20 mintues before the power went out for 12 hours, and I live 2.5 hours from the coast! I managed to wrench off my wedding rings as I got up off the ground (it nearly made me vomit to do it) and I haven’t been able to wear them since then. I wore a cast for a few days and my finger is sorta mostly almost better, except it doesn’t bend all the way and it has a freaky red knob coming off the right side of the knuckle. Also, I didn’t ever take the naprosyn the orthoped prescribed and I canceled the second appointment, but surely it’ll heal. I’ve been wearing my wedding band on a little chain around my neck. My finger only sorta looks Frankensteinish.

My very nice, spiffy new NICE tennis racket broke after I used it all of 10 times. They sent it away and got me a new one and strung it and handed it to me tonight before I played. They removed the little mufflery things from the bottom of the strings, too. So, new racket. Broken finger.

Finally, I don’t love talking about these things, but I also am several days early on something, which started just tonight before I left to play tennis.

SO.

Seriously.

Nature, my finger and my tennis racket were all working against me. What’s a girl supposed to do? Lordhavemercy.

I sincerely hope you are well, that you are operating with 10 good, working fingers, that you will never be so foolish as to leave a really good tennis racket in your car in the heat in the deep south for a week (and if you do, certainly don’t tell your pro that you think that’s why your brand new racket cracked all the way through–maybe it WAS the power you’re packin’ in your serve), that your husband supports your idea of a tequila and scrabble night and that the Manhattan Short Film Festival is coming your way tomorrow night and you get to vote on the best short film.

I am working really hard to exercise, to grow my brain back, to appreciate my life (I recently got to tell a roomful of 17 and 18 yr olds that I don’t think that I truly became an adult until I was 32 years old), to lose one pound per week (it’s working and I’m thrilled to be getting my body back), to spend wisely, to create art, to read, to sew (the Children’s Corner skort pattern is phenomenal for little girls), to plot the kids’ Halloween costumes (Red Riding Hood and the BB Wolf), and to clean house as infrequently as I did before.

Peace out. Me and my Frankenstein finger are going to bed. I am around. I am reading the internets when I have a chance. I still love you. I still deeply admire you. I miss you. I urge you to laugh at the 20 minutes tonight when I felt like a buck-toothed, eyeglass-wearin’, stringy-haired, awkward, gangly 12 yr old girl, because the spell of playing tennis with women who tolerated me took me straight back to seventh grade, and I don’t know a single girl who would repeat that, if given a chance.

p.s., in case you are wondering: I have not become one of those intolerable women who wear tennis togs all over town. I was the only person tonight (and am, thus far into this experiment) wearing running shorts and a tee shirt. I own no togs. I still feel guilty enough for buying the tennis racket.

Gosh, it’s been a little while, hasn’t it?

I even skipped my FIVE year blog anniversary. Whoda thunk I’d miss that?

First, the nefarious downloading spam bug problem in here has been deleted, finally, thanks to some moment of insight from my webperson, which makes the paltry sum I spend to keep this blog here every year 100% worth it. That said, I was a smartmouth when I asked google to remove the scarlet letter from my blog, so who knows if they’ll ever get around to taking it away.

I am busy doing one meeeelion things this summer, including completing unfinished craft projects (pillowcase nightgown for the girl, doll dress from a Molly Chicken blog pattern, knitting projects and on and on) in an effort to do several things, like uncluttering my brain, my crafts and my house. We’re cleaning out the guest bedroom to turn it into a playroom for the kids, which means we’ve had two major Goodwill trips this summer and there’s one more in the works. It also means the full-sized bed is leaving and a twin bed will enter the picture next week. It’ll go against the wall and function as a sofa, with a long bolster pillow across the couch.

Aside from some necessary clothes (bathing suits: we’re at the pool nearly every day now), I am trying to pare down this summer and to keep purchases at a minimum. There’s a humongous thrift shop in town that I really want to visit, but I refuse to go until the Goodwill business is over with. No more stuff comes in until stuff goes out. Except, on that note, I bought the girl three new books this summer (sequels to The Mysterious Benedict Society and The Penderwicks and a beautifully illustrated Wind in the Willows done by Candlewick Press. I promised her the sequels, but we got a stack of books at a library giveaway and she’s set in the reading department. I am shopping carefully, if at all, and replacing large or hideous furniture with small things, if at all. Our massive, hideous, Southwestern-style kitchen table and chairs left on a truck, and I put a small stainless steel worktable in the breakfast area instead. I sent away a bookcase, too, and didn’t replace it at all.

Giving away books has been difficult, but I’ve gotten it done. I realized that I don’t truly need to hold onto a dozen A.S. Byatt books that I wll likely never read again. I don’t need two digital cameras or an old Palm Pilot thingy. I don’t need an old bridesmaid dress or several of the business suits I used to wear every day and I shouldn’t keep them just because they were expensive. I don’t need breastfeeding or infant care books. I don’t need a Chippy Irvine book on how to sew pillows. The thing about the giveaways is weeding out the stuff that’s painful to send off, which I try to send to a good home. If I didn’t do that, I might not be able to part with the stuff and I’m tired of stuff.

So, the Madeleine dollhouse and all its furnishings went to a little girl for her second birthday. The tres cher Lee Middleton baby doll (and stroller and wicker bassinet) went to a grandmother to give to her granddaughter, but not before the girlchild spend a day playing with her. I’m going to have a crafty friend peruse the home dec books. My 1970s sewing machine is on the giveaway deck. I hate to part with it (what if I need it again? What if? What if? But that’s the thinking that makes me save things I don’t need in the first place, so, off it must go…) but it’s such a dinosaur. I’m working my way towards extra sets of golf clubs, but don’t tell anyone. I expect that parting to be painful like a weaning.

I am cooking a lot, tanner than I have been since I was a student and reading everything, including the New Yorker from cover to cover when it comes every week. There’s a swell Alice Munro story in this week’s issue. I am trying to have the kids do something arty every day, to have the boychild color his day every night in a small journal (an idea I found at the great blog called The Write Start via a kiddie blog, The Craftty Crow), but I am not able to be as sweetly austere as she is–I write about the drawing after the boychild draws it. I can’t stand not to note the two swimming pools or this or that. I want to be able to remember it and I know I won’t.

Speaking of the boy, and I know I am rambling at this point, but who knows when I will write again (tho I would like to do it regularly), I wonder if I mentioned when he bit through his mouth late last fall, preventing our Christmas card photo? He still has a scar under his bottom lip and he chipped one of his top front teeth. It turns out, I learned when the kids got their teeth cleaned yesterday (no cavities, phew), that his top front teeth were significantly damaged when he fell. The root on one is completely broken and the root on the other one is very narrow now. We are lucky that the nerves appear undamaged so far–both teeth should have turned gray at this point. I am to keep am eye on them and they hope the teeth will be fine because they have been so far, but I should expect them to fall out earlier than usual. So, who knew? I brought home the x-ray picture. It’s unbelievable, even to my untrained eyes. However, the fact that the screamy boy (who is a whole different child these days and is enjoying his summertime) even allowed the cleaning and the x-rays is unbelievable.

Happy summer. I got a new camera for my birthday and if I was a nice person, I’d put up some pictures.

We’ve been busy today, what with breakfast and gymnastics and napping and Easter shopping (clothes for Palm Sunday and Easter). The boy was napping just now and the girl was watching the Kim Possible movie* and I was looking at houses online. When the Crabcake woke up, he called us and I cracked open the door of his bedroom so I could squeeze my head through the crack and smile at him, but I was smacked with a double whammy: the stench of poop and the sight of the boy, standing in his bed, nakey from the shirt down (but still in socks!) and holding out the pull up he’d removed, for our convenience.

He’s been potty-trained for a long while, and he’s finally pooping regularly on the potty, but still, naptimes… There was poop smeared on the wall, all over the bed, all over him and on his animals and on the blanket-with-pleasant-to-the-touch-satin-ribbons-around-the-border-that-I-made-all-by-myself-although-that’s-not-legal and really, just everywhere.

The Husband came in to survey the damage and I said, “You know, I’d rather be dead, just now, than clean this up.”

But we did clean it up in pretty short order, while emphasizing that the Crabcake must just CALL US CALL US ON THE LINE YOU CAN CALL US ANYANYTIME the next time he has a sleep poop and we will clean him up right quicklike. We bathed the boy and his bedthings in the hottest water all could stand and we knew the boy was contrite when he suggested scrubbing his (still mostly bald) head and submitted willingly to the same.

And The Husband said, while Crabcake was still bathing, “See, you wouldn’t rather be dead, would you?” I said that for about 22 seconds I would have. Then I shaved the back of his neck, because I am a good wife, and poured two vodka shots because I am not. Every once in a while when we live through an annoyance, I pour two vodka shots. I will confess that I gagged when I drank it this time.

*We have cut out 98% of the television programs we used to let McPantses watch, including almost all of the Disney and Nick tween shows, for a few reasons: they’re terribly annoying, the evening commercials on Nick are inappropriate, and it’s brain-rotting to watch so much television. We agree that McP works hard at everything she does (violin is coming along swimmingly, but it still sounds like cats fighting to my untrained ears; she’s learning dressage and ready to graduate to tall boots; she’s reading The Mysterious Benedict Society, which I encourage you to check out; she’s in an art exhibit; she runs the right way and never cries at soccer, even though she’s playing with kids who are a lot bigger than she is; and she’s getting ready for a ballet recital, after which she will decide whether or not she wants to give up ballet and take gymnastics) so she deserves some sack-out time watching teevee, but we’re limiting it to Kim Possible, Hannah Montana (because, tweeny and annoying though she may be, she’s not awful and the show is tolerable) and Charlie & Lola, because it’s adorable. She’s not a tween. She’s 7. I’m pleased with our choice and more pleased with the fact that McP agreed that less television and a more limited viewing choice was in order. She’s just a good egg.

** Katie, will you please run your Norton thing here again and copy where this downloader evile bit is so I can make the webfolks take it away? They cannot find it anywhere! I would be very, very grateful for your help.

Oh: life is still good. We are happy and busy. Tonight, we (the adults) are going to hear an 80s cover band. It doesn’t start until 10 p.m. and Nana’s coming over at 9:40. I should probably go take a nap, shouldn’t I?

First, I assure you that no matter what google says, I don’t have malware on my site. My webmaster has scoured the site and removed anything remotely troubling and I checked the site through badware myself last night–nothing found. Good grief.

Tomorrow, the Crabcake will be three and he has requested a particular dinner. I imagined something like chicken and french fries, but the boy, still fighting the proteins, has dictated another meal altogether. Ready for this? Goldpish crackers, teddy grahams (chocolate only, of course, and by the way, have you ever tasted them? cardboard with cocoa powder), skittles and cupcakes. Seriously.

Naturally, that won’t be the menu.

The kids have enjoyed a bit of flu, a round of strep (the boy) and two ear infections (the boy) since December, with the flu and an ear infection in the most recent bout of illnesses. I have finally soaked up the germs myself and now have a touch of bronchitis with a fine side of walking pneumonia. Whee!

I cannot complain, though. This is the first year that I haven’t been sick the entire time since about November. Plus, I have my own nebulizer at home to snuggle up to, so that’s nice. My mother has diagnosed me with chronic bronchitis, but when I think about the fact that I’ve had a cough for ten years now, the prognosis is depressing, so I am choosing to ignore her.

We are happy and busy. The girlchild has taken up soccer and has her first game this weekend. I am keeping a sketchbook and knitting when time allows and dreaming up baby gifts for someone I love who is expecting her first child this summer, after many years of waiting and trying and disappointments. I am thinking about driving with the girlchild up to North Carolina for a few days after school is out to check out a couple of summer camps. There’s a sort of crunchy one (Gwen Valley? Gwin Valley?) that interests me in theory. The idea is that we’ll check things out this summer in order to set her up for a week next summer.

I am reading Russell Banks’ The Reserve and enjoying it. His prose is elegant. I’m digging the PBS Jane Austen Sunday nights and have had my fill of Mr. Darcy over and over again on DVR–on to the next novel, please!

Oh! On my resolutions: I do feel improved, but I could use some exercise. Otherwise, every single day feels like a gift. Silly, no?

I have one resolution. It’s to improve. I’m not sure, but that might also have been last year’s resolution, and I think I managed it, at least partly. I found new employment and didn’t resort to becoming a barista. I gained 20 happy pounds over the summer and lost most of it this fall. I officially think for a living. I have improved.

My second resolution is to consume less, but not when it comes to shoes or yarn. Can’t help those, but on that front, I am having two pairs of shoes resoled this month. I want to consume less. I’ll let you know how that works out. You’d think that because I’ve managed to compartmentalize my entire life within about three square miles (or maybe four, if you count my parents’ house), I’d buy a bike and cycle everywhere, but not so much.

My husband’s resolution is to live with health and motivation.

I wish you peace and health. I guess if you’re possessed of those, genuine contentment can’t be far behind.