As I was prepping the pizzas (so that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be ready to pop into the oven as soon as our guests arrived), our inquisitive young son came down from the guest room (where he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been watching old Electric Company DVDs, because who doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t love Easy Reader?), saw the tub of gorgonzola crumbles on the kitchen island, and inquired as to what was in there. And when it comes to food, such questions are usually immediately followed by a request to taste whatever it is (and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not necessarily talking finished product, here; the kid has tasted baking powder, baking soda, flour, paprika, seasoned salt, buttermilk . . . Dude is not afraid\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand as much as I love that about him, I just know that one day I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to turn away for a second, and then turn back to find him licking a raw pork chop or chugging Liquid Smoke straight from the bottle). So I was ready for it\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut gorgonzola is, in my opinion, somewhat of an acquired taste, so imagine my surprise when he immediately LOVED IT and asked if he could have some in a bowl to eat. Not one to discourage adventurous tastebuds (or adventures in constipation), I fetched him a small bowl and put a couple of spoonfuls of gorgonzola crumbs into it for him. He happily wandered away with his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153treat\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n
Soon guests arrived, and the nosh-and-gabble got into full swing. The kid came down to greet our guests\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand brought with him his empty bowl, requesting more gorgonzola. At that point, since a full-on-meal was imminent, I told him he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have to wait until after brunch.<\/p>\n
Why did I think that was going to be the end of it?<\/p>\n
So anyway, we all gathered \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcround the table for eggs, bacon, stuffing-and-fake-sausage casserole, and various pastries, and the kid enjoyed his fair share. Heck, he even cleaned his plate before wandering back off to play. As the visit progressed, the discussion turned to quilting, because our friend Nancy, who was one of our brunch guests, is a quilter. This led to a discussion about the key differences between traditional and modern quilting, for the benefit of the quilt-ignorant peons among us (namely, PBD and Yours Truly). Some of it, of course, was obvious for anyone who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s taken a high school art course. Still, as I listened to Nancy talk about the tenets of traditional and modern quilting, I wondered: how would one categorize a quilt made in a traditional pattern . . . out of scraps from a thousand 1970s leisure suits?<\/p>\n
Because Baby, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got. Child, willya LOOK AT THAT THING? It is incredible merely by virtue of being so WTF!<\/p>\n It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what would happen if Mary Ingalls got it on with Huggy Bear and gave birth to bedding. Stare at it for 30 seconds, and visions of Granny Clampett doing The Hustle completely co-opt your brain.<\/p>\n How, you may wonder, does one acquire such a treasure? It was made a few decades ago by two of my great-aunts, and shortly thereafter wound up in the possession of my parents, who added a groovy orange and brown border so that it would fit their king-sized bed. Then, a handful of years ago, when my mom (temporarily) became a semi-resident of my house (so that she could provide day care for my infant son), she brought the quilt with her, to put on her bed in the guest room. And there was NO WAY I was letting her take that bad boy back home with her. I mean, come on\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwould YOU?<\/p>\n Anyway, I had to show it to Nancy, right? You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t keep this kind of magic under wraps. But here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the thing about me: as pathetic as it is, one of my major goals in life is for my house to regularly exist in such a state of cleanliness that I could welcome unexpected visitors into my home without having to apologize for anything. (As a corollary to that goal, I would also have to have unexpected visitors, which doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really happen in the age of cell phones, but honestly, it would be enough just to have a home free of clutter, dust bunnies, and crust-based mystery splatters.) However, I have two dogs, a four-year-old, a full-time job and a freelance gig on the side (in addition to a spouse who also has all of the above), so you understand that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m fighting an uphill battle against an avalanche of mountain goat poo. Lately, then, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pretty much all I can do to rid the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153visitor areas\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of our house (kitchen, living room, dining room, and half bath\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbasically the first floor, with the exception of the laundry room, because I can close that door) of the top two layers of ick before an invited<\/em> guest arrives.<\/p>\n Even more <\/em>lately, however, my son has begun taking his buddies upstairs to his room to play when they come over (which often means their parents wander upstairs to fetch or check on them), and that not only adds another room to tidy up, but also requires the closing of EVERY OTHER DOOR UPSTAIRS. (I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s obvious we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re trying to hide something\u00e2\u20ac\u201ddo you?) But since I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not blessed with Rosie the Robot, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an M.O. with which I have grown comfortable (though it did bite me in the toot once when, having found the downstairs (read: visitor-friendly) bathroom occupied, a guest blithely wandered upstairs to seek out another one\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 suffice it to say, the therapy was pricey\u00e2\u20ac\u201dMINE, not HIS, because although I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure he was traumatized by the sight of (a) the petri dish that is my shower, and (b) every flippin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 bra I own hanging from a single doorknob, I was even more<\/em> traumatized by the idea of someone finding out how I really live). But as usual, I digress.<\/p>\n Point is, I had to show Nancy this quilt. Which was on the bed in the guest room. Which had not been adequately prepared for visitors. So guess what I did.<\/p>\n I took her in there anyway.<\/p>\n I took her all the way in there, knowing that the entire chamber was in a state of Hoarders-level degeneration: there was laundry explosion (clean laundry piled high in baskets, and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153maybe-I-can-eek-one-more-wearing-out-of-these\u00e2\u20ac\u009d pants completely obliterating the antique chair), with clumps of dried dog-paw dirt decorating both dog beds and carpet, the gaping maws of recently-emptied suitcases strewn across the rest of the floor, and copious pairs of shoes treating the whole joint like a swingers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 club\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand every bit of it was blanketed with a fuzzy coating of dog hair and dust. What I did not anticipate, however, were the candy wrappers, dirty dishes, orphaned toy parts, random discarded costumes, and other chaotic flotsam that had apparently resulted from allowing a 4-year-old to spend all day in there watching Electric Company by himself.<\/p>\n And then, of course, there was the smell. As I mentioned (a long, long time ago), the entire room reeked, when we walked in, of gorgonzola. And while it was true that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d allowed the boy to enjoy a small cupful of stinky cheese upstairs before our guests arrived, at this point, that was HOURS in the past, so why would it still smell like . . . ?<\/p>\n I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll tell you why. Because somehow, while the grown folk kicked back at the dining room table discussing centuries-old handicrafts, our dear son had managed, over the course of several stealth trips to the fridge to refill his little cup, to consume the ENTIRE TUB OF GORGONZOLA (as evidenced by the empty tub I found on the kitchen island upon returning downstairs). Sure, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d used some of the cheese on the pizzas, but seriously, it was just a sprinkle, so the kid easily sucked down a good 85% of that mutha all by himself, in our guest room (and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s accounting for a coupla cheese chunks I found smeared into the pillows on the guest bed). That right there is stellar parenting. But getting back to my point:<\/p>\n I took her in there.<\/p>\n Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t realize what a huge thing that is for me. My husband does, because when I arose from the table and bade Nancy follow me to see The Quilt of Pure Polyester Winning, he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even try to hide his shock: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re taking her UPSTAIRS?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he inquired with sky-high brows. Granted, part of his surprise stemmed from his own horror at the idea of someone seeing the state of our guest room, but another part of it was because he knows how I roll, and was probably wondering at that point what kind of alien shape-shifter had inhabited his beloved wife\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s persona. Nonetheless I, with not a single drop of liquor coursing through my veins, replied, simply, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and bravely marched upstairs.<\/p>\n And here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why: because October sucked. The entire month was replete with mishaps. In the wee morning hours of the very first day, I went ass-over-teakettle on my morning run<\/a>. Apparently that was a portent of things to come, because the next morning, I fell again. The morning after that, I made it through the run (dangit, here comes Barry Manilow: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I made it throuuuuugh the ruuuuuuun . . .\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) without taking any tumbles . . . and then totaled my car that evening. Since then, ongoing issues from the car accident have made any type of physical activity into a total crap shoot (case in point: two blocks of Trick-or-Treating had me gimping for a week, and just the other day I threw my back out drying my hair).<\/p>\n So yeah. October was not exactly a special fuzzy month for me. So far, November hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been so bad, but in the process of recovering from Sucktober, I have made a few decisions, influenced in part by inspiration (I have met some really cool people lately, and am also in the middle of my second Isabel Gillies memoir, whereby I have arrived at the belief that a brain identical to mine actually lives in someone else\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s head\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and if they made TWO of these suckers, they must be worth something, right?) and in part by sheer exhaustion. And one key decision that has come out of my \u00e2\u20ac\u0153inspiraustion\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (look for it in Webster\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in about seven years, because it is totally a thing) is just to be FOR REAL. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122know? And for someone like me, who has spent her life hoping that other people never find out she farts, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not easy. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kind of a big deal. In fact, after several twitchy moments spent standing in the midst of my guest room grossness with Nancy as she checked out my Pimp on the Prairie quilt (paying no attention to the mess, bless her), I ended up scuttling her out of there as quickly as I could (without seeming anxious about it, because in addition to flatulence, anxiety is another thing I like to make people think I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have). But by golly, I took her in there. Baby steps.<\/p>\n This new lifestyle is definitely going to take some practice; I have some habits to unlearn. (I spent so many years coveting other peoples\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 lives that the second I got my first heady whiff of what it feels like to be on the other side of that fence, I began doing everything I could to encourage more of THAT\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhence \u00c2\u00a0a decades-long attempt to coat my entire life with glitter paint and candy). But I am ready to let my For Real flag fly–for real this time (I have tried it in the past, when I was young and impetuous and clueless, and what resulted was just my idea <\/em>of what it meant to be “real”… which basically amounted to needlessly insulting people by sharing unsolicited opinions ineffectively disguised as “truths”– I hope to be far less rude this time). Glennon Melton, who writes the Momastery<\/a> blog (which is my new uber-favey next to PBD), calls it \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Living in the Light.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And that is certainly quite poetic and inspirational, but for me, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more like what my son says when he takes his shoes off: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got my stinky feet in the wind!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n So get ready, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m putting my stinky feet in the wind. Or maybe \u00e2\u20ac\u0153stinky cheese\u00e2\u20ac\u009d would be more accurate. But at any rate, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m ready for people to know who I am, and yes, how I live. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m ready to stop closing doors to hide my out-of-control laundry situation (figuratively, that is; I will probably still actually close certain doors in my home when people are coming over\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll try not to need therapy if someone should open one of them). It will be good, right? Good. Bring air freshener.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The entire room reeked of gorgonzola. Luckily, that part was relatively easy to explain. However, the explanation for the smell only added to my list of imperfections: first Housekeeping, now Parenthood. But maybe I should back up a little. So we had some friends over for brunch last Sunday, mostly because we like them, but … <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.instaprincess.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/0073.jpg\" "\\"007\\"")
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