Browsing Archives for May 2008

And that is how this picture of chaos happened.  After making the cake from scratch, I was far too exhausted to even think about making the accompanying fudge frosting.  So I decided to whip up some whipped cream.  Except I was also grilling some steaks, and chatting with my sister… and shucking some corn… and slicing some watermelon… and fretting over my cakes… and ordering my kids around… and trying to tidy things up a bit and… well… um… 

Dear Martha,

Hello. Wow! Thanks so much for personally picking me to be in your contest! That really means the world to me. I have been a big fan of yours for a long time.  Well… okay… I used to be a big fan of yours. Back when I was younger and had a LOT more energy.  Back when I had crazy ideas about making curtains for the laundry room  with four hundred pleats per square inch and hem stitching my own handmade leather crafted photo albums with silk thread imported from the barrier reef and decorating my homemade sugar cookies with exact replications of all the oil paintings in the Louvre using only your very own very special royal icing recipe.  Then suddenly… out of nowhere… things changed.

And that’s when I decided to cancel my subscription to Martha Stewart Living.  

But I did buy a LOT of your paint.  And I used to buy a bunch of your stuff at K-Mart until well… I am not sure what is going on with K-Mart anymore, but somehow, it just got too depressing to go there.  How long can a store have 200% off everything and still keep the doors open?

I do still buy the garden issue of your magazine.  Not for myself…  I buy it for the Country Doctor.  He loves to look at pictures of trees and he does not mind occasionally being sidetracked by pictures of shrubs, flowers, retaining walls, hoity toity patios, Grecian urns, pebbled pathways, and stunning vistas overlooking a pool which overlooks a mountain, which overlooks a dessert, which overlooks the ocean, which overlooks the other ocean.

So yeah, I think it is safe to say that you and I, Martha (can I call you Martha?)  that we have a lot in common.  Did you know that my mom’s name is Martha?  If I had ever had a little girl, I might have named her Martha.  I love girl’s names that are kind of stern and frumpy and old fashioned like… Martha.  Not that you are stern and old fashioned and… frumpy.  It is just that you are kind of… well… okay maybe a little stern.  Or at least you are perceived as stern.  I am sure that in real life you are as sweet as a baby kitty cat.

Moving on!  

This is supposed to be about my dreams.  Ah yes, my dreams.  My first dream was to be a princess… followed rapidly by ballerina… then by a figure skater… then by an  Olympic gymnast… back to princess… to ballerina… to figure skater… to Olympic gymnast…  

Then I wanted to be the next Carolyn Keene – you know the lady who writes the Nancy Drew books?  I wanted to write Nancy Drew books.  Then I decided that I wanted to be Nancy Drew. Then as I grew older and wiser I decided that I just wanted to live in Nancy Drew’s fabulous colonial mansion in Riverside, with her cook Hannah, her rich accommodating lawyer-dad Carson and her cute college boyfriend Ned.  

Then I decided to be a folk rock star.  

Ah yes, the Folk Rock Star era of my life.  That was an interesting time…  But I think it would probably be better if we just glazed over it briefly. 

 Okay… done.  

Then I decided to build a house.

The Country Doctor was not very excited about building a house.  Not very excited at all.    He basically became catatonic whenever I brought up the idea of building a house.  I found that the only way to get him out of this catatonic state, was to cry, lament, cover my body in sackcloth and ashes, pull the suitcase out of the closet and start throwing clothes in it, slam doors, rant, rave, refuse to speak to him repeat… repeat… repeat….  After about six consecutive days of this emotional storming around he might slowly blink one eyelid in acknowledgement of my pain.

It was a slow process.

Eventually we did build a house.  And that is one dream that really came true.  And as much as I love our home, I have discovered that it does not make me a complete, total, full, satisfied, human being.  In fact, it makes me feel kind of empty sometimes because I miss having the dream of building a house.  I miss the planning and the deciding, and the sketching out of the rooms on paper, and the ability to erase the location of the rooms and move them around with only a bit of india rubber and some pencil lead.  It is much harder to move the rooms around now.   

So I need a new dream.  I have been mulling a few over, but all in all, I think that life is not really about fulfilling your dreams, it is about having dreams.  People really need them.  You know, it is what keeps us going.  Facing one more day.   Getting out of bed one more time. Schlepping through the day again.  Opening one more box of macaroni and cheese.  We do all this because of our dreams. 

Lately my dreams are much simpler.  I have a dream of keeping my entire house clean for more than thirty seconds at a time.  I have a dream of my children actually putting away their own laundry.  I have a dream of wallpapering the hall.  I have a dream of planting an oak leaf hydrangea.  I have a dream of soaking up every last second of my boys’ childhoods as they seem to be skyrocketing through them.  I have a dream of someday actually hanging up all the pictures that are leaning against the walls.  And I have a dream of finding a truly magical family vacation spot.  

So those are my dreams Martha. At least a few of them.  I also wanted to let you know that the whole “prison thing” for lying about cheating about stealing is well… I don’t want to say okay with me… but I don’t hold it against you either.  We all make mistakes sometimes.  Once when I was six, I stole a pack of Chiclets from the grocery store.  My sister told on me.  My mom drug my petrified carcass back into the store and made me apologize to the store manager.  It was very embarrassing.  Then a few weeks later I stole a butterscotch disc from the Brach’s display at the grocery store.  Once again, my sister told on me and my mom again drug my petrified carcass to the manager to make me apologize.  He was not so smiley and kind the second time.  That was the end of my career as a thief.  We all have to learn that it is wrong to steal.  It just took you a little longer that is all.  

Thanks again for asking me to enter your contest.  I hope I win!

Rechelle

“The Country Doctor’s Wife”

	TELL US HOW YOU TURNED YOUR PASSION INTO REALITY AND WIN $10,000, PLUS VACATIONS OF A LIFETIME WITH WYNDHAM VACATION OWNERSHIP.
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Dreamers into Doers is an annual program honoring women who have turned their favorite hobby into a business or nonprofit organization. “I was so touched and inspired by the women we honored with last year’s Dreamers into Doers Awards program,” says Martha Stewart. “I’m thrilled to once again be celebrating the accomplishments of women who have worked hard to realize a dream, and I look forward to learning about all the wonderful ways in which this year’s entrants have turned their passion into a reality.”

I have to blame Jean over at Renovation Therapy for my obsession with Grey Gardens. Several months ago she wrote something on her blog about Grey Gardens and it was compelling enough to make me want to know more.   Eventually, I had the presence of mind to place both of the Grey Gardens documentaires in my NetFlicks queue.   A few weeks later, the two Grey Gardens films arrived.   I made a cup of tea, sat down to watch them and sat mesmerized through both films.  

Firstly, Grey Gardens is about two crazy women… a mother and daughter… relatives of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, living in squalor in a crumbling shingle style house on some of the most expensive real estate in the United States. Secondly, Grey Gardens is about the house and the gardens and I can’t ever resist a movie about a great old house surrounded by a overgrown, abandoned garden.

On my way home from work a few days ago…

Because I was distracted by the sight of a strange man appearing out of what seems like mist, but it is not mist, it is actually just a very poor photo…

And here is another very poor photo…

But back to that strange man who was wearing shredded clothing and sporting a bad haircut.  

Who appeared to be painting my barn!

I had grown so accustomed to the “Bleeding Kansas Barn” that I was speechless!

No one seemed to mind that I was rendered speechless, especially the strange man with the shredded, stained clothing and the poor haircut.

A few days later, I took some more photos of our new red barn.

And then I took some more…

And yes sorry, just a few more…

When I saw that truck, I threw some clothes on and rushed downstairs to snap a few photos.  I had to take the photos quickly,  because I was not going to be able to hound them all day long with my camera as I now have a job.  When I told our builder, Dennis and his crew that I would not be able to take pictures of them working on the house all day long, they just sat down on the grass and started sobbing.  

Anyway… what I mean to say is that they spent Wednesday installing the screens on our screen porch and giving the front porch one final coat of paint.  It was so nice to see them.  I am so glad that Dennis and Jordan built our home.  Even if I did torment them the entire year they were building it, by being a constant nuisance with my camera, and my changes, and my questions.  

I think that counts as a hand raising. Yes… I think it does.

We ordered several cabinets in our house in paint grade poplar in an attempt to hold costs down.

Ha ha ha heee hee ah ha ha ha ho ho hee hee hee ho ho ho har har har har.

What?

Huh?

Where was I?

Oh yes… saving money.

Can I just say that this tiny little cost saving measure in no way compensates for the thousands of “surprise costs” and “last minute changes” and “hidden expenses” and YOU BOUGHT WHAT!?!?! and HOW MUCH DID YOU SAY THAT EXTRA STEP ON THE SIDE PORCH COSTS???!!!???

So getting the paint grade cabinets was not only a very minor savings, in the grand scheme of things, it also gave us one more task to do ourselves which I have just been too weak and shaky to even think about…

UNTIL NOW!!!

The Country Doctor took all the boys on a camping trip last weekend. I decided to use that precious, golden, holy, sacred, blissful, gift of time alone to paint the stinking… not cost effective… not saving us any money… %$*#*#%^& mudroom cabinets.

No mom, I did not use the magnetic/chalkboard paint. I could not find any magnetic/chalkboard in my small town hardware store and I was not about to drive 20 miles to the bigger town just for a can of magnetic/chalkboard paint. My family is just going to have to suffer and subsist on chalkboard only cabinets! How will they ever face another dawn?

Here is where I started to paint the mudroom cabinets in the high gloss Killim Red paint that I bought right before Thanksgiving in order to have the mudroom cabinets painted by Christmas.

Ha ha ha ha ha hoo hoo hee hee hee ho ho ho har har har heh heh ho ho hee har ho.

Here is where I started to have serious misgivings about that high gloss Killim Red paint on my mudroom cabinets. Here is where I started to think that my mudroom cabinets were beginning to look like they were painted with left over fingernail polish from the Dollar store. Here is where I started to wonder if I was completely cracked out on cranberry sauce when I bought that high gloss Killim Red paint.

Here is where I thought about toning the cracked out glossy red paint down with a pale yellow interior on the inside of the cubbies.

Here is where I considered repainting the cabinets in Ralph Lauren Sun Washed Blue.

Here is where I received the sign and went ahead and finished off the cabinets in Killim Red.

I am giving away one $60.00 gift certificate for a custom made sign for your own garish glossy mudroom…. or for any other room in your house. Your sign can say whatever you like! Cindy at Cindy’s Signs and Such will make it for you and I will ship it out.

Just tell me what your custom made sign would say in the comments. I will have a random drawing on Saturday to find the winner. Contest ends at noon CST on Saturday. Thanks for dropping by!

OH MY GOSH!  I am having so much fun reading your birth stories!  They are wonderful and warm and funny and HOW AM I EVER GOING TO CHOOSE!