Wise Men Say: Proverbs and Platitudes

I saw a version of this recently that made me laugh all day thinking about it. I decided my time could best be used by making one for myself, because apparently I am willing to go pretty far for a joke. About halfway through I grew bored with it, but on the whole I still think it’s a much better use of cross-stitch than “Love makes a house a home” or “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” or “If in need, the devil eats flies” (Okay, so I have never seen that one and don’t really knowwhat it means, but it is tons of fun to say).

At the very least, this is much more applicable to my life.

Folding a Fitted Sheet is Fun and Easy!

Years ago, when I got the Martha Stewart Living magazine, I saw a page about how to fold a fitted sheet. Of course, it was awesome and perfect, because it was in Martha Stewart’s magazine. Unfortunately, I found way too much of her ideas thoroughly impractical. Even if I wanted to make the fancy, gold-foil encrusted Easter eggs, I couldn’t spare the $1200 and forty-seven hours it would take to make it.

And so it was with the fitted sheet. Now, I don’t say this often, but I have a better method than Martha’s.

Step 1: Hopefully you actually got through the washer/dryer phase of laundry. Sort through to locate the fitted sheet.

Step 2: Congratulations! Try and see if you can find a corner of it.

Step 3: Is that it? Did we do it? Can we do it again? We can try. Try and get two consecutive corners matched up.

Step 4: Hey! I’m so impressed with me! But next comes the hardest part. You’re going to. . . fold. In a way that makes sense when you start, but the logic may elude you when you end up with this:

Step 5: Well, it doesn’t look like Martha’s. But unlike her, this stage didn’t stump me; I have a solution.

Step 6:

Estimated time: 45 seconds. And it required no black magic at all. By not doing it Martha’s way I have saved myself an estimated six hours a week, which is much more time to enjoy the History channel, crochet, and play with my kids. Martha Stewart can cry herself to sleep tonight!

Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That……

With my daughter, I hesitate to tell her too often how pretty she is. I guess a part of me just doesn’t want her to ever think that’s all she is, or necessarily something she has to be.  I mentioned this to my mother, who laughed and said, “you’ll have to tell her she’s smart, too!” This is more in the vein of what I wanted, but didn’t quite fit the bill. Instead, I find myself (a truly guilty, self-critical person) telling her over and over all day that she is a good girl. If a person can just be good, everything else is a bonus.

Anyway, today my older son–who is dead set on becoming a chemist–was telling Fae how pretty she is. Which is fine; it’s not his job to do anything but show affection in his own way, except that he then looked up and said, “Hey! She could grow up and go to beauty school!”

Well, I wasn’t sure how to answer that without a) discouraging him from saying nice things to his sister b) having to make a long speech, the nature of which would have highly annoyed me and c) making it sound like anyone going to beauty school is a bad thing. After about three seconds I finally came up with, “Hey! You could, too!”

I hope I made my point with him without sounding didactic.

At any rate, whenever I think of beauty school I always think of this:

Shut Up, Kids.

I know a ton of moms who have had as much offspring-related joy they can handle. To all those moms, here’s a “children’s” book I wrote just for you.

That Venn Thing

In which our heroine ventures into the usefulness of diagrams in defining a life.

Not too long ago, I saw a license plate frame—pink with hearts on it—that said “Devon’s New Bride”. I played out a mildly cartoonish double-take to make sure I’d read it right. Then my mind threw out a couple of questions. 1) Does Devon have an old bride? And 2) Is that seriously the most interesting thing about this woman? That she managed to snag a husband (about whom the only things I know are that this is his choice of woman, and that he may or may not make enough money to pay for a Volkswagen bug)?

Then a friend shared that she once found out that a woman’s email address was Tylersmom@whateverwhatever.com. (Don’t click that. It won’t take you anywhere.) You know, I’ve been a new mom before and I get the excitement of having a whole, fresh-made human being as the center of your world. I do get that. What I don’t get is when that child becomes your definition of yourself as a human being.

While I’m not some hardcore feminist thinker or anything, I definitely resent subtle societal constructs that attribute meaning to a woman’s family situation. For instance, the “Mrs./Miss./Ms.” thing. Outside of the dating world, this designation is utterly useless.

So I started to think about Venn Diagrams. I think the general assumption is that any man who were to make a Venn Diagram of his life would make one that looked something like this:

See, there’s overlap there, but Brad is still existing outside of all these things. So when a woman defines herself as the other person to everyone she meets, is her Venn Diagram
looking like this?

Or

And then comes the ultimate question that I’m always asking: am I supposed to be doing that?

Because I’m not. And I’m starting to resent the fact that a lot of people assume that I am.

Recently, my husband and I had a conference with one of our son’s school-affiliated-persons. And weirdly (considering what we were actually there to discuss) she kept us there for 45
minutes grilling me about my mothering. Now, as I have mentioned before, I am a stay at home mom. This is a choice that I have made, true. But I never thought that making that choice meant that I signed a contract decreeing that I ceased to exist as a human being. Yet, in between all the questions about what I do with our children over the summer
break, how I handle homework issues, what I feed them, and sibling rivalry, I noticed that my husband wasn’t answering any parenting questions at all. And
the only time this lady said anything about my husband at all was when she said to me “I mean, because he could end up as CEO. Can’t you just see him as CEO of a major company?” I couldn’t exactly do anything other than agree, obviously, but I do think it quite bizarre that she heard what he does and within 45 minutes of meeting him is imagining a grandiose future. But once she heard I stayed home full-time she began to define me as nothing more than that.

Neverminding the fact that her interrogation of me was uncalled for and deeply rude. I’m not sure what she was after, but I should have ended the questioning much sooner. If she’d been a man acting that way I would have laughed in his face for being so presumptuous, (but I have an easier time standing up to men. It’s bossy women who can really make me squirm.)

Aside from all that, this complete stranger didn’t bother to find out that I play a few musical instruments with varying degrees of ability. She didn’t bother to find out that I actually had a college diploma long before my husband did. She didn’t ask about what I majored or minored in. Or what I read. She didn’t say anything to my husband about what grandiose things I
might be doing in the future.

Could be that this woman is extremely old-fashioned. Could be that she was judging me based on what she knew of my son. Could be that I was doing something wrong and not giving her any impression that I might be more than just a mommy. But her attitude stung me deeply, and I’m taking this opportunity to go my own Venn way.