Change is good!

So I wanted to let you know that I have begun a new blogging experiment. By which I mean that I have actually started blogging again. And as part of that change I have moved my activity over to a new hosting platform. So if you are interested in checking it out, I would love to have visitors!

From now on you can find me over at Squarespace, where I have created a nice little spot. I hope you like it as much as I do!

Here's my new address:

21st Century Housewife

Come on over!

"The Elfin Wars" OR "Once More Into the Breach"

I read this article in The Huffington Post, and it really got my knickers in a knot.  The key quote: "If you feel like a bad mother for not buying into the Elf on the Shelf, that's on you." Well. Can I just say that I feel like a bad mother multiple, multiple times in any given day, but never once has it had to do with an Elf -- shelved or free-range.

Here is the comment I left at the end of the article:

"The problem with "that's on you" is that YOUR kids are coming to school telling all the other kids that they got tickets to "The Nutcracker" from their elf. YOU are hosting parties for your elf, and staying up all night getting your elf up to cute capers and shenanigans, and nodding knowingly and disdainfully to other Elf-Lovers at the class Christmas party when a frazzled fellow mom expresses her angst about how much she still has to do before the grandparents arrive, and how the dog chewed the family elf, and how she wishes she could just once get her shit together. Most anti-elf mommies are not actually Grinchy about Christmas -- or even about the Elf. We do object to the Elf on the Shelf as a competitive sport. 

If you want to tear apart your house in the middle of the night every single night in the lead up to Christmas, that's on you. If you want to wrap a gift for every child in your house to be delivered every single day between Thanksgiving and Christmas, that's on you. But when you post it on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, the Huffington Post, you are dumping it on me. When your kids make other kids cry because their families got "lame" elves, that's dumping it on them -- and by extension on me.  

By all means -- let's all parent our own kids. And let's support each other in our frailties, insecurities, and mistakes. But mommies competing with each other in the Elfin Wars (like the Hunger Games but with more powdered sugar) is one more reason why I will continue to speak up. 

[Interestingly the whole notion of Advent as a time of spiritual preparation for the birth of Jesus never seems to come up when mommies are flinging Elf anger back and forth at each other this time of year.]"

Harrumph, is what I really meant to say.  But the good news is that according to the article's title, I am [finally] a "cool mom." So that's something.

+++++++

Advent book!

An Amish Christmas is a great book that introduces the Amish customs of the Christmas season. Even without Santa or twinkling lights on the Christmas tree, these children see the wonder of Christmas -- and have lots of wintery Christmas fun, too!

Small pleasures: Merry Christmas Wreath!

Well, so I have become one of those people. I have hung a Merry Christmas wreath on my car.

I know, right?

I first saw this phenomenon when I was working at Lafayette College in the 1980s. A student that I worked with and loved, the perky R.A. Sarah, had a wreath on her sporty little car, and I both loved and hated her for it, because I'm that kind of person.

I mean, it wasn't that I hated wreaths or Christmas or Sarah or cars -- and I loved the idea of a Merry Christmas wreath tied to the front of my own fun little red car. But I could never gather the wherewithal and motivation to get up off my ass to do something about it.  It never occurred to me to ask Sarah where she got her wreath or how she had attached it to her car -- or maybe even just to ask her to help me do it (translated = do it for me).

Over the years, my lazy ways hardened into a kind of Grinchiness that mocked the festive cars sporting their tidings of the season. Well, maybe I wasn't displaying full-on Grinch symptoms, but a definite crankiness crept into my attitude. I think part of it has been that whenever I saw a car with a wreath, I thought, "Dang it! Another year and I haven't gotten my wreath act together."

Well, not this year! I got me a wreath, and I got me some florist's wire, and I figured it out, maybe. I have no idea how long my handiwork will last. But as long as it does, my car will be fa-la-la-la-la-ing all over town!

+++++++

Here's a sweet little book that evokes memories of old-fashioned Christmas anticipation. Christmas in the Country, written by Cynthia Rylant, describes the winters of her childhood, when she and her grandparents prepared for Christmas as the snow gathered in their mountain home.  The decorations, the shared cocoa by the fire, the baking -- all are described in loving detail. It's a great reminder that some of the joy of the Advent season lies in the waiting, and in the preparation itself.

An Ode (or Whatever) to Pinterest

          O Pinterest! Dost thou know that I
          Covet those pins that catch'st mine eye?
          Verily, 'tis true that every pin
          Causes mine heart to leap with chagrin.
          I say chagrin -- for I cannot muster
          The moxie to create my own feather duster
          Or re-tile my kitchen with hand-painted ceramic
          Or bake a souffle (the thought makes me panic).
          [And yes -- I know that those words don't rhyme.
          Get off my back, Pinterest; I don't have time
          To hone my craft and polish my meter.]
          But I adore Constant Pinner and do long to greet her.
          She takes perfect photos; she wears perfect clothes;
          She know just what polish I should put on my toes.

                    Her house, her garden, her baby, her life
                    Are perfection. And if a teen gives her some wee bit of strife
                    I never will know.
                    Dog puke on the carpet? A burnt apple crisp?
                    A babe who says, "Fuck!" in an adorable lisp?
                    I never will know.

          But I say to Constant Pinner, "Bring it on, bitch!"
          I do love her photos! They give me an itch
          To craft, to re-finish, to weed, e'en to blog!
          And what are these pins after all, in this slog
          We call daily life, but a chance to dream
          And to vow to ourselves, though mad it doth seem,
          That we too might make curtains, or jelly, or quilts;
          That we might even make some DIY stilts.
          It could happen! Especially if my ways I mend . . .
          Oh, who am I kidding? So here I must end.

+++++++

Well, so here we are, approaching the season of Christmas once again.  I have found some terrific books for the Advent calendar again this year; I look forward to sharing them with you! The link will take you in most cases to Amazon, which will not benefit me in any way.

On this first day of December, here is a fun and fabulous book -- especially for a family with a fancy girl of their own! Fancy Nancy: Splendiferous Christmas is adorable and sparkly and fun to read. The illustrations are part of the fun, as Nancy prepares for a fancy Christmas, complete with decorations and a tree and gifts that she will prepare her very own self. When things go awry, trust Nancy to find a way to make Christmas festively fancy!

You be the judge

Who can tell me what's hilarious about this picture? No, It's not that my Christmas wrapping paper is still at the ready as we all turn to face the sun, wearing our traditional and festive Vernal Equinox garb. That's just sad.

But look a little more closely. As I was shoving a pile of laundry out of the way so the vacuum could have a path, I glanced down at the cover story of this magazine (which I think was slipped into my bags as I was leaving the fabulous mother-in-law's place one night -- because she is never one to drop a hint when she can roll it up in a magazine and swat your behind with it).  People, I almost fell over laughing.  Or maybe it was crying.  I can't remember which.

Elf on the Shelf: the horror continues

 

So here we go again with that freaking elf on the shelf.

People, I just don't know if I want to live in a world where all the mommies are required to creep around their own homes night after night, in the middle of the holy-hell-I-am-so-tired, making big-assed messes to fool the urchins into thinking that elves have gotten up to festive and naughty capers while the family sleeps. And then, of course, the mommies get to clean up the messes while the urchins frolic adorably and drink hot chocolate (made by the mommies, or made by the daddies so the mommies get to clean up that mess, too).

But apparently for some mommies, even this marathon of torture isn't enough work.  Now, it seems, it will not do merely to pull the bedraggled elf out of the storage room (if you can find him, because all the Christmas crap was hurriedly stuffed into the laundry room by mistake right before Grandma and the fabulous neighbors arrived for Easter dinner . . . oh.  Is that just me?).

This party idea comes from a perky, perky blog called Giggles Galore.  I'm not even kidding.

Now, I gather one must host a party to welcome the elf.

A party.  Do you believe that shit?

The blogger at Swish Designs does this kind of thing professionally, so I was ready to cut her a break -- until I read that the elf on her shelf arrives at the "Welcome, Elf!" celebration with gifts for the children of the home. GIFTS!

People, I weep. I mean really, I weep at the prospect of hosting a party for a doll.  This just can't be right, can it?  My fellow mommies must have been hypnotized into a frosting-covered, jingle-bells-ringing, tinsel-throwing trance.  I blame that stupid "Christmas Shoes" song.

Sisters!  I call upon you!  Rise up!  Rise up against the tyranny of the elf on the shelf!  You have nothing to lose but your red and green construction paper chains!

+ + + + + + +

Today's Advent book is The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree, by Gloria Houston.  It is 1918, and Ruthie's father has not yet returned from the War.  So Ruthie and her mother work together to harvest and transport the town's Christmas tree -- their family's responsibility for many years.  Through Ruthie's eyes, we see how heroic and hard-working her mother is, and we learn about the values of the Appalachian community that is their home.

Book Lovers' Advent Calendar -- Day Six: The Feast of St. Nicholas

Today, even though it is the Feast of St. Nicholas, I cannot bring myself to eat a corned beef sandwich in honor of the pickled boys that St. Nicholas miraculously revived (sorry, Susan).  I did have a bagel for breakfast, so I am going to say that was in honor of the wheat that the good saint miraculously provided for his starving city -- although actually, I just really wanted a bagel.  And St. Nicholas did secretly throw gold coins into the stockings of three young girls in his town, thus saving them from prostitution and slavery.  So in honor of St. Nicholas I shall have gold foil-covered chocolate coins for lunch.  

I will wash down my chocolate coins with a Coke. Because I mean, come on!

+ + + + + + +

Here is a great book that has recently been re-published, Kersti and Saint Nicholas, by Hilda van Stockum.  Kersti is a naughty girl (though she is also brave and generous), and a good case could be made that she should get nothing but coal in her clogs on December 6 .  But St. Nicholas (Sinterklaas in Dutch), accompanied by his Moorish assistant, Pieterbaas, sees something more in Kersti -- and we do, too!

Here's the original cover, from when the book was first published in 1940.  When van Stockum was criticized for glorifying such a naughty girl in her story, here's her hilarious response:  "I claim no responsibility for [Kersti's] actions. I had a lovely, sweet, good little story for nice little children and Kersti just came and played havoc with it. She ruined the moral, shocked Pieterbaas, had a very bad influence on St. Nicholas and did not deserve a present at the end. I wash my hands of her."

Cause and effect

Once upon a time I had hostas in all of my flower beds.  They're the perfect plant for me to cultivate because the work involved goes like this:

ME:  Hmmm -- looks like the hostas are thriving all on their own for yet another summer.  Well.  Time for more coffee!

But for whatever reason, just in the past couple of years the deer have really taken a liking to the delicious, salad-like goodness of the hostas that are planted all over my yard -- along with any other delicious garden treats they can lay their delicate muzzles on.  This little lady has just bitten the tops off of all the remaining daylilies in my side bed (a palate cleanser), and now she is preparing to jump the neighbors' fence.  Their squash and zucchini blossoms look so tasty!  So --

-- this is what my hostas look like now.  Not quite the desired effect, is it?

 Looks like someone just discovered the (up until now) pristine plant at the base of the mailbox.  The blossoms are now history; any bets as to how much longer those leaves will last?

Snapshot: then and now

So some of you may remember that I mentioned once a long time ago that we had a hole in our carport ceiling from when the tall boy fell through it.  Here's how it happened:

The young tall boy (he was twelve) was fetching camping gear from the carport attic, in preparation for a Boy Scout adventure, when he stepped in the wrong place.  He crashed through the drywall ceiling of the carport, bounced off the top of the minivan, and landed flat on his back on the cement floor, right next to the trash dumpster.  Inside the house, the husband and I heard the crash, and seriously -- one of us said to the other, "Huh.  I wonder what that noise was."  Then we both picked up our coffee mugs and went back to whatever we were reading. 

And people, I swear that's exactly what happened.  When you think I'm exaggerating, or making something up for comic effect -- that is when I am telling the precise truth.  The stuff I make up cannot hold a candle to the shit that really happens to me.

Well -- after a spit take as we both realized that our beloved child was in the carport attic -- and the noise had come from the carport attic! -- we put down our coffee and strolled outside to see what all the racket was about.

Actually, I did make that part up.  Once we realized that the noise and our boy were probably connected, we did bolt out the door pretty quickly.  We're morons, but caring morons.

There was the tall boy, splayed like Wile E. Coyote after he chased the Roadrunner off a cliff.  The husband said, "Can you move, buddy?"  And the tall boy said, "Uh, no . . . ."

Insert all your own worst nightmares here.  They will be an accurate representation of the thoughts that ran through my head in slow motion.

While I was imagining my new life as the parent of a paralyzed child, and looking around for a discreet place to throw up, the husband responded to the horizontal tall boy:  "Listen.  Is it that you can't move, or that you're afraid to move?"  And the tall boy shot his father a pitying look.  "Dad.  I just got the First Aid merit badge.  You're not supposed to move a back injury."  And the world bounced back into place.

After determining that our boy could in fact move his fingers and toes, his arms and his legs, the husband got him up off the ground and dusted him off.  "What do you say we head on over to the hospital and see if you're brain-damaged?"

The tall boy laughed dismissively.  "No way, Dad!  We're going camping!"

And that was the end of that.

* * *

Well, so the hole in the carport ceiling was huge, and needed repairing in the worst way.  But somehow we never quite got around to it.  I have joked that we are lazy, and it is true -- but we're not that lazy.  In the ten years since the hole appeared, we have painted almost every room in our home, replaced flooring, renovated our kitchen, built a lovely fireplace mantel, gutted, designed, and restored one whole floor of our house, replaced a deck, and put up a split rail fence.  Some of these chores were accomplished by hiring professionals, but many of them were done by us, our own lazy selves.

And yet the hole in the carport ceiling lingered.  Why?  What was the weird dysfunctional thing going on that would not allow us to get rid of this unsightly and dangerous and embarrassing open wound?

I have no answer.

But it's gone now!  Our long national regional local pathetic nightmare is over!

And somebody needs to slap me, because I did actually say out loud to the husband, "You know, if we wait just a little longer, we can have a tenth anniversary party for the hole . . . "

Snapshot: Lazy Easter Bunny

The Easter Bunny is usually exhausted by the time he makes it to our house. He hides the eggs only in the most ceremonial sense of the word. It's true that he does sneak inside the house -- he knows that my bed-loving children would never bother to go outside first thing in the morning to look for eggs and risk getting the fuzzy socks wet. But the eggs are usually left in pretty blatant spots.

I sometimes imagine the Easter Bunny standing in my living room, smoking a cigarette and swaying with exhaustion (he drank too much Scotch at that party after the Easter Vigil Mass), flinging hard-boiled eggs without looking to see where they land.  Good thing, too -- because the teenaged urchins are way more interested in the candy he also leaves behind -- and in getting themselves wrapped around a mug of coffee.

The Elf on the Shelf can kiss my . . .

People, I hate that freaking Elf on a Shelf.  I know I am not alone in this because I have spent way too much time reading crap on the internet about the loathing other people feel for the phenomenon -- like this blog post, or this one, or even this newspaper article (which worries me because I think the author might not be entirely joking).  But none of these writers hits on the real reason why the Elf on the Shelf sucks.  They all wax philosophically about how we shouldn't lie to our kids, and how they don't like to promote the idea of tattling, and how it "diminishes parental authority."  And how it's creepy as shit.

Actually I'm with them there; it is creepy as shit.

But the real reason that every mom in the world should rise up in rage at the mere thought of the Elf on the Shelf is because WHAT THE HELL?!  Do I not have enough damned stuff to do?  Or to feel guilty about not doing?  The Elf on the Stinkin' Shelf is mean to moms.  I would say dads, too -- but we all know that moms are the Christmas beasts of burden.  Shopping, wrapping, decorating, begging someone to find our outside lights and put them up, baking superfluous sweets, making sure the teacher gifts are appropriate and clever, helping out with class parties or seasonal fundraisers and celebrations for school or church or scouts . . . .  I seriously spend most of my December hyperventilating because I am so very behind.  Y'all, it's December 23 and my tree is not decorated yet.

So do not even think about Elfing my Shelf, if you know what's good for you -- or I'll deck your halls.

+++++

Today behind the door of the Advent calendar, we find a fabulous new book that I suspect will become a classic.  It's beautiful, and full of love and mystery and Santa!  The Lost Christmas Gift presents itself as a package that the adult narrator receives after it has been missing for years.  The storytelling is multi-layered, as we read the letters that the narrator should have received from his dad when he was a boy, along with his father's drawings depicting their adventure.  We also read the adult narrator's musings about his memories of that adventure.  It's wonderful!

It's beginning to look a lot like . . . oh, who am I kidding?

Ask me if I'm ready for Christmas.  Go ahead -- I dare ya.

I do have a Merry Christmas wreath, but this is only because the fabulous neighbor sent her Boy Scout son over to sell me one; she knows me and figured this would be the only way I would get one.  She was right.

Meanwhile, the sunny girl's Halloween hat looks great, stashed in the corner of my dining room, right where a Nativity should go. 

 

The autumnal garden flag got put out just before Thanksgiving, so I feel like I haven't gotten a full season's work out of it.  At this rate the Christmas flag will go out the day after Valentine's Day.

Here we gaze across a vista of laundry that needs folding, to the mantel where our stockings should be hung.  By the chimney.  With care.  But first I have to find them.  And put away the Easter bunny.

Note the lack of a Christmas tree.  It's looking bleak, y'all.

+++++

Today,  the Advent calendar shows us a book that my family has loved forever.  The Cranberry books tell about the small town adventures of a group of friends who live in Cranberry, Maine.  In Cranberry Christmas, the friends are worried that they will not be able to ice skate on Christmas Day -- one of their favorite traditions.  Thank goodness, Mr. Whiskers finds an unexpected way!  When the urchins were little we had all the Cranberry books, plus Old Black Witch -- a favorite from my own childhood, also written by the Devlins.

I'm drowning in twelves -- and I can't stop singing about it!

Well, I mean -- what kind of Advent book selection did you expect on the twelfth day of the twelfth month of the twelfth year?

You all know, of course, that the twelve days of Christmas are actually the days from December 25 to January 6, when the western church celebrates Epiphany or Three Kings Day.

But those freaking twelves have been calling to me all day.  

And just for fun and because I have done nothing to get ready for Christmas, where nothing equals not one damned thing -- and because I am getting just the teensiest little smidge of a bit angsty about it -- here is a festive little Merry Christmas song that the fabulous Woodbridge Singers used to wow 'em with.  This twenty-first century choir does a swell job, too:

This is as crafty as it's going to get.

OK, so I am not a crafter.  I am not crafty at all, because hello -- when you're quilting or learning how to take pictures that are actually in focus or embroidering or re-finishing furniture or scrapping or developing your own film or designing jewelry, you are not reading.

I am a reader.  I am not a crafter.  But I did see some totally cute ideas for graduation gifts on Pinterest.

(Oh, my sweet Aunt Pat.  Pinterest.  I need to fan myself.  And I don't even have an Aunt Pat, but you know what I mean.)

And the crafty tasks looked somewhat do-able, if only because the writers made the [accurate] assumption that I am a crafting moron, so they talked me through the whole thing like they were kindergarten teachers.  Thank the Lord.

Well, so we have a friend who is off to Virginia Tech in the fall -- and she is so happy to be a Hokie which I don't get because  a hokie is a castrated turkey, but whatever.  Go, Hokies.

So I made her this ribbon board for her dorm room (and somewhere right now I just made a Residence Life professional cry into her gin, because they're not dorms.  They're residence halls.  I got a freaking master's degree in Student Affairs, and the one definitive take away I got from all that edifying was that they're not called dorms.  And no.  You can't have a ferret.)

The instructions for how to make the ribbon board came from a great yet demoralizing blog, 7 Layer Studio.  Shelley tricks you into thinking that she's just like you, and dang, isn't crafting hard for all us knuckleheads?  But take a look around her lovely blog, and you'll see that she's an artist.  And not in the hyperbolic way we talk about pretty blogs -- she's an artist artist.   Like, she makes art.  AND she redecorates her entire home for every holiday season.  I'm leaving out the part where she has three young children and she designs and makes all their clothes, and her husband is military, so they moved three times in the two hours that I was hypnotized into her blog.  It's exhausting just to look at the pictures, y'all.  When I got to the post where she laid a new slate and rock terracing system in her back yard -- moving all the stone herself -- I seriously had to decide whether I should just shoot myself because I suck so bad or go get another cup of coffee.  I picked the coffee.

And then I made the damned ribbon board thingy.

 

 

 

 

The other school organizer thingy I made came from Diane Henkler, a clever, clever DIY contributor to Momtastic.  This is a thing I will make again for myself -- and the girl in charge wants one for her dorm residence hall room, too.  It really is clever and just my speed -- because the secret ingredient is duct tape.  It anchors each of the layers of ribbon (as you attach them from the top down).  Brilliant!  I was too tired from reading Shelley's blog to take pictures of this project.  When I make it again I'll capture the moment or maybe not.

But I did torment myself a little bit more by going back to Shelley's 7 Layer Studio to follow this tutorial, which showed me how to make a festive as all get-out frou-frou bow to jazz up the organizer thingy.

 

I won't show you the step-by-step, because you can follow it on Shelley's blog just like I did (I literally sat in front of my computer, squinting anxiously at the screen to make sure I was doing it right).  She's pretty confident that I'm a moron, for which I'm grateful.

Still.  They're cute, aren't they? 

UPDATE:  Hey!  check this post out at: