Pillow and Basket Case

Come. Have a seat. I saved this tiny little portion of my couch where you can rest one butt cheek.

I have put all of my throw pillows on this one little couch to dramatize my utter disdain for throw pillows. Why do I have so many? How can I get them away from me? When did Pottery Barn throw up all over my sofa? And these are pillows that are somewhat meaningful. One of them we carried home from Nepal. Two others are made from Syrian silk that we got in the Arab market in Jerusalem. Another was handmade by a Bedouin woman. But I still want them gone. You see we are in the process of selling our futon to make room for the MURPHY (yah baby) bed in our office/guest room/studio which is part of a larger project to make the studio more efficient and more inspirational. Currently it is neither of those things. It is covered in throw pillows. Ones that used to be on the floor in the living room as a kind of pull up a pillow and smoke a hooka corner. That corner now has toys in it. So the pillows are in here on the futon. Other pillows have migrated to the attic. Still more pillows are currently on the living room couch. I am done with pillows.

And you know what else I'm done with? Baskets. Sick and tired of crap in baskets. I'd just as soon throw out the crap and the baskets along with it. At first it was a nice way to hide the crap. But then you have a house full of baskets you even need a basket to hold all of your extra baskets. But I need places to keep toys and supplies and chingaderas. And I can't afford furniture that might hold all of that stuff. But it can't just be out in the world. Free. Loose. Multiplying. I shudder.

Anything in your house driving you bananas? Do tell...

Getting to Real Simple

Last week I was in spring cleaning mode mostly in an effort to forge my way through our tiny workshop to get to my paper cutter. We don't have a garage because we converted it into two thirds spare room and studio and one third teeny workshop with table saw. Anyway, it ends up where we also hang our wet bathing suits, store our camping gear, throw boxes that need to be recycled and put muddy shoes. It's also where I cut paper, when I can get to the paper cutter, which is seldom. Because of the stuff.

But I became fed up, as does happen every few months, and I cleaned up the whole place. Recycled what I could, tossed what I couldn't and put away the rest. And it felt so great that I started working on other clutter hubs in my house and made a snap decision to recycle my collection of Real Simple magazines. You know, the magazine where they spend 200 pages explaining ways to simplify your life by buying a zillion new things. I subscribe. And I also keep the magazines. I have seven years worth now.  That's a crap load of magazines. I went through the first few and grabbed some marinade recipes that I will likely never use and then decided that I don't need anything else - not lettering for any future collages since I don't even do collage. Not the recipes. Not the tips. I don't need ideas about how to redecorate a room for less than a hundred dollars since I can't be bothered. And I sure as hell don't need them in my house anymore. So I recycled the lot. And if any of you editors are reading this and you need some editorial for your next edition, I suggest a tip, something to the effect of recycle this magazine immediately after use. Real simple.

Dear Home,

I don't know how to bring this up without sounding overly sensitive or confrontational. So I'll just put it out there. Are you mad at me? Did I offend you in some way? Are you not happy with the rain gutters or the color we painted the kitchen door? I'm only asking because I can't figure out why you keep taking my stuff and hiding it. Like my keys this morning. I took the keys to open my trunk and get the kids' lunchboxes still sitting there from yesterday so the Mr. could make their lunches and I could leave for work. I brought the lunches in, grabbed my purse and then couldn't find the keys. So I spent the next ten minutes looking all around the house and they were no where. What gives? And this isn't the first time you've taken our keys. What about when our daughter was born and you lifted both my set and my husband's set within a one week span? Do you know how much those goddamn electronic keys cost? Like $150 smacks. So for the next year we measured everything in VW keys. The plane ticket was two VW keys...And then what about my badge for work? I've been there less than two weeks and I already need to ask for a replacement? So I need that back. And also my favorite scarf. The one I've slept with every night since I bought it in on the street in Chile in 1996. The one my kids call softie because it has reached a level of softness unparalleled in the garment manufacturing industry. We can talk about why a 36 year old sleeps with a scarf later. After I get the scarf back. And as long as I have you on the horn, I'm not thrilled with the ants. Or that nail that keeps coming up in the dining room floor, that I have snagged my big toe on seven hundred and twenty-one times, even though I bang it back in every four months. And the way you've started piling up little stacks of papers and legos and cars and small socks and magnets in every corner of you. Every friggin' corner! It's enough already! Put your crap back where it belongs! Including the etch-a-sketch that's on my bedside table. And then give me back the keys.

Sincerely,
Susie

Spoinky

Lord, where have I been? I haven't written in a fortnight as it were. I'm such a loser blogger. It's that no time thing. And then I get to a place where the house is such a mess and I can't do anything because our stuff is all over the place. I know this sounds ridiculous but it really renders me incapacitated. I come home and I just stop being able to function in my normal octopus manner. And two arms just doesn't cut it when you're trying to feed a baby who shrieks if she's not fed exactly what she wants and at a pace that would make her a contender for that world championship hot dog eating contest. All the while making dinner for the rest of my family, entertaining my son, and doing the dishes.  

So why is our crap everywhere this time? We took the kids up to Lake Tahoe for a snow weekend (this is already a week ago - that's how behind I am) with my brother's family and now we're having a bad case of the luggage creep. But it was worth it because I finally got to see my son play with other kids. Three days, four adults and four kids aged four, three, two and one. What a hoot. I mean nothing beats tiny people dressed up in puffy clothes. We took them sledding and went searching for icicles and they built forts and spent entire days in their long underwear. It was fabulous. The best part of the whole trip, besides the two mornings that my sister-in-law and I went cross-country skiing by ourselves, was that my son actually played with his cousins. They made up a game called Spoinky where one player takes the green tentacled rubber ball (the spoinky) and flings it at another player. I am not kidding you they played this game for like six hours every day. Up and down the two sets of stairs, in the bathroom, under the fort they built in the living room. Everywhere. 

My brother and I had to laugh because when we were kids our parents took us skiing for a week every year with three other families. And every year we'd play a game that called "Billy" which entailed rolling up a sock and hurling it as hard as you could at someone else. When we were a little older we called it "William." Someone invariably got smacked in the face and cried. Usually me, come to think of it. But we all have fond memories of Billy.

It's so nice to see our kids creating those same memories. So much has changed since we were kids - no one walks to school, kids don't play by themselves in the street after school, 8 year olds have cell phones - but I'm happy to see that it's still fun to throw soft objects at your friends and relatives.