I Love This Dresser

In fact, I love the entire Ikea Hemnes series.

 

Do I trust the Ikea Hemnes series? I have a love/hate relationship with this furniture. I love the crisp look (and loved it even more in yellow, which is no longer offered). Ikea furniture doesn't have dove tailed drawers and whatnot, but it's largely cute and functional.

Unfortunately, as the owner of a Hemnes chest (eight drawer), I can tell you that the drawers require periodic repair to the tune of about once a month. My husband gallantly swoops in and glues something together and voila! We're back to business. Disappointing, but not a game changer if the piece is used in a low traffic area, like in an entry where you're not opening the drawers daily. In my son's bedroom - perhaps not such a good idea in hindsight.

But I love me some Hemnes. They always catch my eye. Maybe one day they'll have one in robin's egg blue....

Count Your Blessings

In the grocery store on Sunday, I was overcome with a feeling of thankfulness. I was thankful that I was able to be in a grocery store; I didn't have to worry about where I would go to find food. I was grateful that I had the means to buy the food. I didn't have to prioritize quantity over quality; I didn't have to hope that what was in my cart qualified for the food stamp or WIC program. I was able to walk in the store, pick up food, and buy it freely.

So many people can't do that.

Visit Feeding America and find a food bank in your area to donate to today, if you're as fortunate as I am.

That is all.

My Two Hundred Cents

In line at the drugstore yesterday, I found myself behind a woman who was being rude to the cashier. The cashier was a twenty year old guy - I recognized him as a friend of my oldest son's. He'd been in my basement several times, noshing on snacks, playing XBOX games and watching crude potty humor cartoons. In that "takes a village" sense, it kind of felt like she was yelling at one of my kids.

First, let me point out that she probably couldn't help herself. Anyone who is not Laura Ingalls but still chooses to wear mid-calf length boots with just below the knee skirts obviously has poor decision making skills, and I shouldn't judge. Nonetheless, I found myself judging this woman who decided to make a scene with a teenager over a two dollar coupon.

I realize two dollar coupons in a drugstore are on the higher end savings wise, but in the end: it's two dollars. I'm pretty sure my screaming threshold is no lower than a thousand dollars. Several hundred at worst. The loss of two dollars might not make me happy, but it isn't going to make me send verbal nastygrams to a cashier.

But I digress.

The cashier kept his voice calm and avoided eye contact in that way that barely post adolescent boys have perfected. He called his manager (at the Little House on the Prairie woman's snippy suggestion), who swooped in and told the woman that this glitch had been occurring all day and they would not charge her two dollars extra. The manager then pointedly looked at the cashier and said, "Don't worry, this is not your fault."

The customer said nothing else. What could she say? "I'm sorry I reacted as if this young man was willfully withholding two dollars from me based on my ugly boots, when it turns out he was just doing his job?"

Mean people suck. Especially when they're in less than desirable footwear.

And Here I Thought I Knew You

We were recently told that our dog, who we have loved and described for seven years as a mutt, is actually probably not a mutt.

She is more likely a Cur, which is a term that used to mean mutt, but when paired with other terms means not a mutt, or not in the sense of mutt that most people are used to hearing about. With me so far?

We'd suspected it after seeing a photo of a dog that looked identical to ours and finding out it was a Mountain Cur, and then it was confirmed by a new doctor at our veterinary office, who took one look at her and pronounced, "Oh! She's a Blackmouth Cur."

Curs, whether they be Mountain Curs or Blackmouth Curs or InsertDescriptionHere Curs are apparently dogs that were bred by people who didn't have the inclination or means to breed other well known breeds, and our pup, according to the vet, is almost assuredly a Blackmouth Cur. A check of her mouth and looking at a couple of web photos of Blackmouth Curs that look startlingly like her drove the idea home.

Our dog:

Blackmouthed Cur:

Here is the "sales" photo of our dog - the one that was listed on the adoption site:

And here is the Mountain Cur photo that started it all, the one that looks so much like our dog:

Huh.

Finding this out is a little like having your grandmother's old doily covered table handed down to you, and then you have a dinner party and a guest informs you that actually, the table is an antique Stickley. Or more accurately, an antique middle-of-the-road-breed, like Pottery Barn in one hundred years.

Huh.

We told all this to our dog, and she raised her snout knowingly and walked off with a bit of a huff. While this behavior also may have been because it was time to feed her dinner, I really think it was her way of saying, "Of course. I've listened to you describe me as a mutt for seven years and I still loved you, but really: did you think I was without breeding? Of all of us in this house, you thought I was the one without papers? Interesting."

There really was no need for her to get snooty about it. The place we adopted her from had also asserted that she was half Labrador Retriever, and if there was a dog further away from possession of any Lab DNA I have yet to meet it. So we were only working with what we were told.

So. We are the proud parents of, apparently, a Blackmouth Cur, who acts remarkably like a mutt and never bit us in stuck up frustration or otherwise gave us pause to think she was anything but. I think my husband, who is all about the value brand, may be a bit out of sorts over it. I can imagine our trip to adopt our next dog, with my husband asking for written reassurance that the dog of our choice has no elitest value whatsoever, and pondering whether or not Lands' End offers any sort of puppy that we might want to consider.

I will remind him that Curs are working dogs. Bred by working people. Very middle of the road. Barely an entry on Wikipedia. Nothing to panic about.

And often mistaken for mutts.

Mission To Mars

If you want proof that men are different from women (because you've been sitting around waiting for it - just go with me here): consider my husband's libido.

His sex drive is like the post office motto. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor... there is nothing that counts as a potential downer. No pun intended. His libido is a completely separate entity, undeterred by such human fallacies as... well, any human fallacies.

Case in point. We watch a movie of such disturbing content I make him hold my hand from the living room to the bedroom after it's over, because I am certain something might get me on my way up the stairs if he does not. I cower under the covers, traumatized, in need of post traumatic stress therapy at the least and quite possibly a strong sedative so I don't lie awake in fear for the remainder of the decade (it's only 2012, you know).

And he's got The Look. You know, that Look, the one that immediately precedes The Hand. You know, The Hand that reaches across the bed to offer seemingly innocent things like a massage, only two minutes in you recall that your husband doesn't really offer massages, ever. THAT Hand.

Me: Seriously, dude?
Him: What? (massage continues)
Me: I'm a little concerned that you could have watched what we just watched and still arrived where you are right now. You're like, a BMW, with the zero to sixty in two point five seconds and all. Did you not SEE that movie?
Him: What? I'm not thinking about the movie.
Me: So you are able to process all that in the time it takes to brush our teeth?
Him (with uncertainty): Yes?

Really, if I admit it, I'm just jealous. For me, foreplay can literally be tied to actions that occurred three years ago. I'm just now remembering that in 2009 you didn't tell your mother to pepper her roasted potatoes when you KNOW I prefer roasted potatoes to have pepper, and therefore what I need is to talk about how you're not meeting my needs before I can give myself to you.

For him, foreplay begins the instant someone begins undressing, for whatever purpose they might be undressing. In fairness, and in his defense, my husband cooks and cleans and brings me glasses of wine and rubs my feet and does all those other things that a guy should do if he wants to get lucky later. Problem is, I tend to think that horrific movies and bad news over the telephone or, you know, a mild flu, negates these actions and puts us back to square one.

My husband does not return to square one. In fact, I am pretty sure he hasn't been at square one, or first base, for decades. He lives with the assumption of and the desire for a home run. What happened before he gets into bed is irrelevant.

And even as I give him the stink eye and wonder if he should talk to a good psychologist, I admit it: being go for launch at any given moment would be a neat problem to have.

Except when you're the launch pad five minutes after wishing you could rip your eyes out from a movie. I'm just saying.

Drill, Baby, Drill!

Reading through my recent posts, it occurs to me that I've been about as much fun as filling out a tax form. It's fairly easy for me to be rainy and soggy on any given day; give me actual, valid reasons for sadness and I'm the favored thoroughbred outside the gates of the Preakness: off to the races.

But I'm not a sad person. I'm a person who easily becomes sad. I run on happy. Happy is my fuel, my motivation. Others make changes and strides to pull themselves out of a less than desirable situation. I move in this direction or change to that one in pursuit of more of something I like. A good time leaves me soaring far above anything that might be described as dank or gray below.

I use up a lot of happy as I go along, though. I am to happiness what a Hummer is to petro: a gas guzzler. I suck it out of a room in big deep gulps, I gather it in buckets and pour it over my head. I don't save it. I don't ration it. I don't schedule it. Among the saddest thing I ever read is the end time printed on party invitations. An open ended party time seems so promising, so optimistic. Even though we'll probably all be asleep by eleven, how refreshing and cool and happy to think we might have such a good time that we just keep going?

I use my happy so intensely that often, my well runs dry. I deplete my reserves and walk around, ghost like, on empty. And then when I'm faced with something sad, whether it be tiny (why must the grocery store insist on discontinuing every product I like?) or monstrous, I regularly find myself without the fuel to weather it well. I start to sputter and smoke and act like an engine that needs an oil change and fill up at the Exxon. My dust coats everything and everyone around me. It's unpretty.

I don't want to learn to manage my happy more carefully, so I have lots left over. I do not want to be a well behaved, or particularly balanced, person. I want to be that person who slides into the grave sideways, glass of champagne in one hand... you know how the rest goes.

But perhaps I do need to carve out a tiny little reserve tank. Just to hold a few ounces that I can pull out when needed. An infinitesimal container with a sign that instructs me to Break Glass In Case Of Emergency.

So I'm looking for tools to help create that reserve tank (Pinterest helps. Ha.). And I'm working on the blueprint for it. And I'll build it, so when I need it and it's otherwise not appearing, I can go and drill, baby, drill for some happiness.

Pretty In Pink

Last night, my daughter didn't fall asleep until nearly midnight, wound up after a rainy and inactive day. Her late bedtime was not, however, what struck me most about the evening.

I sat in a chair across from her bed, listening to her dissect her day and muse about the following one. Sometimes, conversation frustrates her. She wants to be able to describe things in detail, and she only has a four year old's vocabulary. During one of those frustrating moments she sighed, giggled, then flipped the bedcovers back, her little feet and legs peeking out from under her pink nightgown.

I once read an article (or blog entry? Who can remember?) that mentioned how you could look at your children all day, and then suddenly would come a moment when you really saw them. And sitting among her colorful blankets, her face glowing with happiness simply because she was talking with me (to me of all people. In the four year old sphere, I am clearly a scintillating conversationalist): I saw her.

She was perfect. All unruly curls and moist little lips, pinch worthy cheeks and melted chocolate brown eyes - she couldn't have been more splendid than if all the masters of all the paintings of all time had collaborated to create her, this rosy cheeked creature of pure light and love.

And I thought: how did I arrive here? How did I come to be sitting in front of this darling little soul? How did that baby we brought home turn into the girl in that bed?

And I felt: joy.