Emotional Blackmail (What Marriage is All About)

I'm still not entirely sure how this happened.  It may be easier to explain it in pictures. 

So here. Just watch this. 

*sigh*

More Tales From Legit Matrimonyland

It seems that when you get married, a Kitchen Aid magically appears. 

It doesn't matter if you have been cohabiting in lustful sin for years and years, spawning shameful illegitimate degenerates (hi kids!) and inciting wanton behavior in all who observe...

When you become a legit wife, the Kitchen Aid fairies know that it's time to leave a motorized dough hook under your pillow.  Perhaps the Kitchen Aid fairy is an old fashioned prudish twit and thinks that only legitimate families deserve wholesome homemade food. 

Behold.

What? Why, yes! That is a bottle of Godiva vodka next to my Kitchen Aid! You don't bake with the assistance of liquid happiness? WELL YOU SHOULD.

Technically, the K.A. was under the Christmas tree.  And technically, this is not the one the fairy brought.  The fairy brought a black one.  Also, the fairy's name is Carl. 

I was actually pretty cheesed when I opened this on Christmas morning.  Carl and I had agreed (seriously for real I promise) not to get each other any real gifts, as we were already experiencing this money drought in December, and barely had enough to scrape together a few things for the kids.  I stuck to this promise.  On Christmas morning, Carl had exactly one bar of hippie stink patchouli soap in his stocking and one set of thermal underwear from Target under the tree.  Both of these items were picked up back in November, when there was still money.  I headed into Christmas morning guilt-free, because I KNEW there was no money, and I KNEW that I wouldn't have anything good to open either.  We would just be content to share the morning holding hands, full of the virtuous nobility of our decision, Charlie  Brown thoughts about the true meaning of Christmas, and NO GIFTS.

But then.  THEN.

Kitchen Aid.

This was not a gift.  He had done this.  DONE this...this...Kitchen Aid.  I was pretty sure that this was entirely engineered to mess with me.

I am about as good at saying thank you for unexpected extravagance as I am at saying "sorry."  As in, not good.  Especially when someone has dropped a flaming KITCHEN AID bomb into my Christmas morning, when I was expecting a steaming slice of truemeaning pie.  I didn't even open it.  Instead, there was resentful sniffing in the direction of the unopened box, and careful avoidance of all related topics. For Days.

Until Carl broke down and told me that his mom had helped him out with it and that it was mostly her idea anyway, and recast the Kitchen Aid as less a Christmas present, and more in the way of a wedding present.  For us.  Then everything was fine, because Carl's mom is an angel of kindness who can do no wrong. And if it is for us...

Then he showed me online that there were all of these other colors to pick from....and I was sold.  We exchanged it for the "pear" colored one in the pic and it's been true love ever since.

The first thing that I made was homemade whipped cream, which contains two ingredients, and takes less than three minutes.

The first thing Carl made was bread.  Which includes chemistry and two or three hours of waiting and uncertain results and, while very sensible, is kind of a pain in the ass.

Both of these things turned out delicious.  I feel that our choices probably say a lot about us, respectively.

What's the moral here? Never break the lets-not-get-presents promise.  Unless it is a Kitchen Aid or similar and you can blame it on someone else. Then it's totally okay.

February of Someday

Someday, it will be February, and instead of being poor, we will be having fun in the snow.  Or sleet.  Whatever.  We will be having sleetball fights, because we are so carefree and NOT POOR. 

We will be like "Tra la! It is sleeting, but who cares, because we were smart this year! Let us make sleet angels and then skip inside and make hot chocolate and be happy! This day is not miserable and treacherous like the foggy-gray queasy anxiety crawling up our throats. No, it is a perfect day for snuggling inside with each other, and we can! You don't have to venture out into terrible conditions to do terrible jobs far beneath your skills, because this year we looked ahead, and our bills are paid! Our bills are paid, our bills are paid, tra la tra lee, our bills are paid!"

Someday we will actually be working for ourselves, and not just working to survive the week.  We will be looking for somewhere fun to go on a Saturday instead of looking for stuff to sell on ebay.  We will have a plan, and not a desperate scramble to make sure the mortgage isn't late (it hasn't been yet-talk to me in a few days). 

We will spend more time loving our house, instead of resenting it.  We will spend these money dry spells having fun with our kids instead of bouncing off the walls and staring at the worry lines growing deeper on each others faces, wondering how we got here AGAIN.  Like we do EVERY year. We are both intelligent adults, each with a good work ethic. We can do this. Go team!

The pressure will not suddenly lift, as if by magic or by winning the lottery that we don't play.  Go team go team go TEAM!  It can be a mantra.  Someday can be today.  We can stop living the definition of insanity. We can come up with new answers...we can take the time to find a new way... As soon as we get a little money.  Then we can put turnips in our root cellar, so the next time we circle back to this place, we will actually be somewhere else, and not still wondering if Someday will ever come.

We Celebrate With Lard!

Steph and Ryans 8th anual Faschnaghtapallooza took place today, and it was indeed grand!

For those of you folks not from PA or of pasty pale central European ancestry, a faschnaght is a kind of donut type thing, made with potato flour and fried in lard, then rolled in sugar.  Its the way the Pennsylvania Dutch celebrate before Lent.

Thats right.  Some people show their boobies and throw beads around, some people confess allof thier sins and celebrate thier Shriven souls with mass sugared lard consumption. To each his own, that's what I say.

Especially because Ryan shoves oreos and peanut butter cups in his faschnaghts, and I get to eat them.  I haven't gone for the past two years, so I was kind of determined to go this year.

I even pried Carl out of the house and to the -pallooza.  At some point (before he ate too many, while he was still in his fried dough happy place), he turned to me with gleaming eyes, and asked, "why don't WE do this???"

Continuing a Thought. Not Too Political. Really.

My friend Bethany sent this article to me on facebook, entitled "Farmers Markets and Home Births Are So Progressive, They're Conservative," By Emily Matchar.  

The first bit includes this:
The current cultural mania for DIY domesticity—backyard chickens, urban knitting circles, the rise of homeschooling, the sudden ubiquity of homemade jam—shows no sign of abating. Across the country, progressives are embracing home and hearth with new vigor under the guise of environmental sustainability, anti-consumerism, and better health.

The movement has made for some very odd attitudes, especially when it comes to gender. The terms "liberal" and "conservative" barely seem to apply. The new progressive morality about food sometimes feels as retro and conservative as anything dreamed up during the 1950s. In many well-educated, well-heeled quarters, what you cook determines your worth as a mother (Is it organic? Local? BPA-free?), laziness in the kitchen is understood to doom your children to lives of obesity and menial labor, and the very idea of convenience is slatternly and shameful. In this culture, we have Berkeley heroes like Michael Pollan writing scoldingly about how feminism killed home cooking. Michelle Obama, every Democrat's favorite organic gardener, has been criticized for saying she doesn't like to cook.

This is a great article.  It has me written all over it, and kind of articulates something that I have been puzzling over, in an abstract kind of way.  I generally think its funny watch people try to categorize other people like this, scratching their heads in confusion when they can't, except that I totally do it too. I go to these events -OMG, I am AT the farmers markets of which they speak-and meet all these other women doing the same attatched parenting organic jam jarring quinoa eating home business things that I do.  I will have these lovely conversations with these people that I know are JUST LIKE ME! Yay! Maybe we can be friends and start a co-op together! We can grow organic broccoli and raise organic chickens and then I am completely FLOORED when they drop stuff into conversation like "the lord will show me the way through this Obamacare nightmare" and "I wish the gays wouldn't drag their issues into important politics, gah," and "well, you know-the lamestream media..."

My head kind of does that record scratching scrriiiiiiiiiizzt thing.  I am pretty sure that it shows on my face too.  My face that is suddenly all open mouth, twitching lip, and one crossed eye.

Preconceived notions=domolished. 
Absolute certainty that I am an open-minded and keep my prejudices well examined/in check=over.

I am a SAHM with an education, a stalled professional career and an Etsy business. I was in the Vagina Monologues twice, AND I am in love with my Kitchen Aid. Its okay. I don't need to scramble my brain trying to justify this.  I live in an era where I can be many things.

I feel a lot better about life when I stop worrying about what "kind" of woman I am "supposed" to be, and just worry about what is best for me as a person and for my kids. I think that most of these women that the article describes are just trying to make good choices for themselves and their families-regardless of the lables that they profess or are given.

When I manage to put my face back in order and reassemble my world view, I realize that I like how the lines are blurred.  I can be friends with them, even if their political ideas are totally wrong.

Let us hold hands, eat some granola, and sing about it.

While You Were Away

1/27/2013
Dear Carl,

You have been away for a week.  Though I appreciate what it says about you that you would go stay in New Jersey to do a roof in 10 degree weather so that we can pay the mortgage...lets not do this again.

Some notable things about this week:

1. Wendy lost her first tooth!  To be more precise, she and I agreed that enough was enough, this thing had been hanging on by a thread for days, just taunting us, lets yank it out with some floss!  WHOO! GO TEAM! After much flinching and false starts and slipping of the floss, out it came.  It made a sound like slurk.  She wrote a nice note to the Tooth Fairy that asked her to please come back later, because she'd really like to show the tooth to her Daddy before it was taken away forever. This note had disappeared from under Wendy's pillow by morning, so we are pretty sure she got the message.

2. You would have enjoyed this pie that I ate.  You would have enjoyed this pie that was a) Pumpkin cheese pie b) half price c) from the Landis bakery, but I ate it.  After we realized that you were going to be a few more days than expected, I quit pretending that I was saving some for you.  I just left the fork on top of the plastic container, and ate it right out of the tin every time it happened to catch my eye. I did think of you, though.

3. Everything is fine.  Your fish are still alive.  I only left the keys hanging out of the front door once.  I've kept the fire going in the stove pretty well. However, we have GOT to stack the firewood on the porch. I can be a tough girl prairie farm wife all I want, but when it is 58 degrees inside and 7 degrees outside, this sucks:

4. Our kids are awesome. And helpful. And fun. And brilliant. And really great company. When they want to be. I guess. 



No really, they are.  That Liam has become really iffy on naps and how that has pretty much blown a hole in my sewing production and set it on fire does not diminish his awesomeness.  He is very huggy this week, perhaps noticing the lack of a man in my life and trying to comfort me.  We are going to have fun evicting them back to their own beds, because the three of us have been puppy piled in our bed since you left.  

 



 5. Being the only adult in the house creeps me out at night. I am not used to it. All of those sounds?  We do have old floors and four cats and a dog to explain them away.  But.  Well....there are a lot of sounds, and I read a lot, so thus my brain is riddled with delightful ideas about what happens to people home alone directly after they ignore things that go snick or rustle or creak.  I am slightly embarrassed about this, but I really miss having you here to stomp around in the dark all manly like when the dog starts barking, ready to totally kick that innocent deer in the yard's ass for freaking us all out.  Oh. There were some deer in the yard.  They were pretty.

6. This is last, because it is the reason that I am writing. All of these other things are important too (okay, maybe not the pie), but really, I'm just working my way to this.  On Monday, I got word that a guy that I know had died in his sleep, very suddenly, aged 32.  I went to his funeral services on Friday.  This was a guy that was a best friend of my best friend-this funny, smart person that I've known since middle school.  In fact, he and his best friend were prodded into going with me and my best friend to our ninth grade dance.  There is an awkward picture and everything.  Anyway.  On Friday, I went to this difficult funeral, and watched his wife stand in front of everyone amidst what was surely one of the most terrible moments in her life and speak to us about gratitude. 

She told us about how often they said "I love you," and how she knew with every fiber of her being that she was loved.  She was grateful that they had been absolutely living the life that they wanted, together, and that he knew that he was loved too.  Her cup, she said, was so full, because they loved each other.  His death was not okay, but she was genuinely grateful that she had this beautiful thing in her life.  I kept my shit together there (because that is what you do), and through the luncheon (which I found to be bizarre), but pretty much lost it the entire way home (because that is what I do).  

We are not this love-at-first-sight inseparable fairy tale couple, and that is okay.  But...sometimes the anxiety and stress are the ruling forces in our house, and I tell you that I love you, but I don't know if you know how much I love our life together.  Right now, I need to tell you, and I need you to know, because...because shit.  SHIT. You are in another state, and it turns out that 32 year olds are mortal.  

I love that nothing is ever boring with us.  I love that we have so much to do and to look forward to.  I love knowing that you are here, regardless of frustrations and setbacks.  I love that we love the same pie, and that our kids look like both of us, and that we are imperfect, but perfect for each other. I am exactly where I want to be, with you, and with our kids, and I am grateful.

Now come home, damnit.



This is the Way We Get it Done

If I had resolutions they would be...

...all of the good stuff from last year, but bigger! Better! More!

I do have more specific goals, particularly re: taking my adorable little hobby business and making it into something that brings in a viable second income.  All I have to do is what I did last year, but double. No big deal. I can totally do that.  I totally have twice the time and energy that I had last year to pull out of my...hat. (You know, the hat that I keep in my butt.)

For feats of this magnitude, you need a plan, and as part of my plan, I turn to the wisdom of 1950s housewives, who did crazy things like cook a hundred meals at a time, and stick them in the freezer to save thier future selves lots and lots of time slaving over hot stoves.

Did I say crazy? I meant awesome.

My friend Steph and I are doing this together.  Her maternity leave is about to end, so her future self is also on a dog-tired, hollow-eyed trudge toward dinner time, desperately hoping that someone-anyone-cut her a break.  Enter us! Past Self Crazy Awesome Bitchez!

Now all we need are some heels and frilly aprons. And possibly super hero names.

Waiting...

...for the wrappingpapergeddon to begin.

Merry Christmas Eve!

And Melt With You

On this day, December 21, 2012, on the last day of the world, and the longest night of the year...we were married.

We did this in our living room, with our kids in attendance and our moms as official witnesses.   We did this in front of our Christmas tree, with no officiant, just ourselves, self-uniting.

"We have been together for a while, choosing to be together every single day. We don't need anyone else to tell us that we belong together, or to give us permission.  We only need to know it ourselves-that we choose to love and be a family together."

"I can't imagine my life without her."

"I choose you."

"I choose you."

And then kissing, and signing, and eating cupcakes.

Oh my gosh! See my ring? I've been wearing it for six years.  Carl gave it to me for my birthday right before Wendy was born.  I love this ring.  It is pretty, it is special, and it wards off sticky advances from creepy guys with bad breath and chest stubble.

(But now that I'm a real wife, it's not a dirty, whorey lie!)

Why now?

because we are anyway, just not on paper

because my daughter desperately wants us to

because of totally unromantic tax reasons

because he asked me, and I said yes

because life is too damn short.

Obviously, mostly because of the potential for cake.

(chocolate chip red velvet with cream cheese frosting)

I even wore white. Cheers!

My Heart. It Hurts.

It hurts so much.

Human beings have such an amazing capacity to shut out the things that they'd rather not know. Horrible things going on far away, scary things that happen to people right next door, totally unexpected things that could happen to them at any moment, anywhere, at any time.  You have to shut it out, because otherwise, you'd never be able to get on with your day. You have to get dressed and feed the dog and put gas in the car and get milk on your way home...you have to live your life, even though in the back of your mind you know that there are all these...things.

And then you become a parent. 

Wendy started Kindergarten this year. She is totally in love with it. She has a great teacher, and new friends, and this week, she started a "Pony Club," for people who love playing ponies (still unclear if they are pretending to be ponies or pretending that they have ponies).  We made certificates for the sustaining members of Pony Club, and everything, so it's totally official.

And today, the day after the elementary school shooting in Connecticut, I watch her pushing her static-y hair out of her face while she colors her official Pony Club certificates with sparkly crayons...and I want to lock the door, unplug the TV, and shut out the world for real.  I want to tell the world to Go Eff Itself, it cannot have these kids, thank you very much, I prefer to keep them.  I will join the Pony Club myself, and we will have lots and lots of fun by ourselves.

Once upon a time, I didn't have kids.  I distinctly remember having feelings.  At least a few.   But once I did have kids, every foul and corrupted thing on the news suddenly became very... personal. 

You can grow this cynical shell of self preservation all your life, and go around saying things like "yeah, life's a bitch, right? oh well, let's get a drink."  You can paste together your favorite fortune cookie fortunes into philosophies that help you rationalize and believe and maintain basic sanity.  Then, you have kids who are so beautiful and perfect, and you find that those carefully established blinders and defenses and fail safe platitudes against the griminess of human existence...those things may protect you from reality enough to get through your day, but they will not protect your children from reality itself.

Days like today, I question how I could have ever, even for a moment, tricked myself into believing in a rational world.  I do not want to have this fear. 

I am sorry that this is dark.  I know that I was able to tuck my kids in last night, and eat breakfast with them this morning, and there are twenty families in Connecticut who cannot say the same. In light of what happened yesterday, I should focus on loving them and being present with them, and I am (see: making Pony Club certificates)  But in the pit of my stomach, right where it feels like I was punched, I cannot rid myself of this hurt.  I don't know any of the people involved, but it still feels personal.

I do not have a good way to end this post.  I have a six year old.  On Monday, I must take her to school and drop her off at the curb and drive away.   There is no fortune cookie to help me do that.   But maybe...maybe she will.