Trouble Spots

Today is Philip's 40th birthday. I keep asking him if he's going to sell our kid to get a red sports car and a nubile blond girlfriend with giant fake boobs. While I am obviously joking, I'm not really because these are the classic things men acquire in their mid-life awakening. What separates men like that from mine?

So then I was walking through the hazelnut orchard feeling kind of depressed because I recently saw some pictures of old friends who are only slightly less close to forty than I am and look about twenty. Then I was feeling my face, like I do sometimes suddenly when I realize I'm a person in a body that's currently in motion and it surprises me every time. I feel the way I'm wearing my face, which I normally don't and there it is: me frowning. I've been doing it my whole life. The only difference between my look of deep serious concentration between now and when I was a kid is that I no longer allow my tongue to hang out like a cartoon kid.

Max asks me all the time "How come you're so mad mama?" and I come out of whatever hole my thoughts have been accumulating in and with surprise say "But I'm not mad at all Max! Why would you think I'm mad?" And he points out that it was my mad expression that gave me away. I tell him how I don't realize I'm frowning and I try not to but it's just the face I wear when I'm not thinking about what face I should be wearing. He informs me that I should change that face. So true.

So this face above is one of my serious faces that I constantly wear. The other one I got pictures of but they made me look much worse than I really look and if I really look that way I hardly want to acknowledge it so this one will do. Then I had fun in photoshop using tools I have no inkling how to use well and pointed out why I'm not supposed to be wearing this face.

I'm not actually concerned with the wrinkles much. What DOES concern me quite a lot is the sudden development of a couple of dark mustache hairs. I have never in my life had a dark mustache hair in spite of being liberally covered in dark-ish hair everywhere else. What's up with that? Thank god they aren't stiff and wiry like my chin hairs which could seriously put someone in critical condition if I didn't stay on top of plucking them!

Philip says he's not worried about being forty years old. This is why I married him. I'm not really worried about turning forty either. I turn thirty nine in a little less than a month and that doesn't phase me any more than turning thirty did which was not at all.

I have a resolution for the new year that I don't think I'm going to tell anyone about.

I do hate my hair again. Having bad hair is much worse than having wrinkles. You can quote me on that if you want.

Well, I better go do some cooking and preparing for the kid to get home. We're going to go celebrate at Hotel Oregon. Where there will hopefully be no carolers. It's hard to get up when I have a sweet cat purring in my lap.

I'm feeling frustrated with my photography efforts. All of a sudden I can't seem to take any sharply focused pictures. I really want to be a better photographer. Taking good pictures is so satisfying that once you've taken one or two it makes all the mediocre ones intolerable.

Oh well.

I'll be posting again today so I better stop playing around here. Hope you're all having a great Thursday.


Happy Birthday Philip!!!!

Packages from far away places

You know how sometimes when you are admiring something someone has made and you find out it's for sale you think to yourself "I could buy that. It could be mine. Those fine lines, the cut I can't imitate, the arrangement of color that I want to consume...they are all for SALE!" And then somehow, without meaning to (because when you have no income you shouldn't) you find that when you weren't looking your fingers did the walking?

This never happens to me.* I have a will of iron.** I never buy things that aren't necessary.*** Except for the other day when I was visiting Plump Pudding's site and saw her little corsages. I don't know what happened, but it came in the mail two days ago. I love mail. Especially when it brings little pretty packages from far away places.

I think I may have mentioned this before, back when no one was visiting my blog, that there are really only two good dreams I ever have: that I have just returned home to my old house in Ashland and found the mailbox stuffed with letters from friends over the past twenty years I've been away, and dreams in which I discover stores full of hats that fit and clothes from the thirties and forties-but new-like the store closed in the forties and reopened just for me! Oh wait, there's one more: the dreams in which I visit a "junk" shop and dig through boxes and find the most amazing treasures.

This is what I bought. Lovely little corsage. What amazes me is that I could afford to buy it and pay for shipping. Plus, it came in about two days. How is that even possible?

I periodically read "Dooce" and am amazed at the number of people who tell Heather Armstrong to stop posting so many pictures of her dog Chuck. Actually, I am amazed at the amount of mail she gets, and how much of it is hate mail. I love reading the posts where she publishes and responds to them in the same mature fashion in which I would probably respond to them. I guess when you have thirty thousand people reading your blog every frickin' day, this kind of stuff happens.

Dooce is what I read when I get overwhelmed by the niceness of lovely sites like Posy Gets Cozy. I need a healthy dose of cutting sarcasm and opinionated discussions in which Mormons are frequently bashed. Not to mention her self deprecating personal stories which make me feel much more normal than I am. You know Alicia Paulson never gets hate mail. Wouldn't you be shocked to your bones if that happened?

My blood work came back negative for whatever the doctor was looking for. I'm not skilled at reading the abbreviations on those slips of paper they send you, not being a medical student of any kind. I also can't read my doctor's handwriting. So I'm not quite sure what her comment said, but I'm pretty sure the gist was something like: "You're probably not going to die this week" Of course I'm glad that I don't have thyroid problems or blood sugar off the charts. But here I am, day two of an aching back. I'm starting to think my expensive mattress has got a hand in all these problems of mine. I wake up with an aching back. How does that happen?

I had a long discussion with my sister and mother last night about yoga stretches (recommended to me by Violette Crumble). My sister showed me how to do the "sun salutation" and it really felt good. I'm so tired of being in pain all the time. Really tired. Plus, I'm supposed to be feeling at my most powerful prime, now that your thirties is the new twenties.

By the way, I wish people would stop trying to fool themselves about age by making each age the new younger age. Shit, I have no desire to relive any aspect of my twenties. It's not that my twenties were bad, it's just that I'm a person who enjoys moving forward in life. I'm perfectly happy to be 37 years old. Except for the 85 year old body I'm apparently living in. I keep having flashes of myself losing body parts as I go about my daily business. Oops, lost another finger, damn! Dang it, my knee just fell down to my ankle again... it's so inconvenient to keep dropping my joints and bones everywhere. Now I will need to carry a basket around with me to pick up the pieces.

So, just because I wrote a post today doesn't mean you should ignore yesterday's post, so if you haven't already seen it, take a look (the post just beneath this one), leave a comment to enter the drawing for:

The Cutest Easter Basket EVER!

Now, if you would like to actually buy one, you can do so at our web store here:

Dustpan Alley Store

Note: I have been informed that Posy Gets Cozy does, in fact, get hate mail. As I predicted, I am shocked. Why? Because usually people who keep craft blogs in which they are expressing their thoughts in a gentle manner don't tend to elicit hate from people. Alicia's topics tend not to be controversial. People with blogs like Dooce do tend to get strong responses from people because they are employing a lot of strong opinions, taking a lot of risks with their writing, and are generally also making a satire out of their own lives which inevitably involves other people besides themselves.

But having found out that she does, I want to make it clear that a) I never sent her any nor have I ever wished to, and b) I also never imagined (or suggested, to my knowledge) that people with huge readerships stop being human like the rest of us, or that they don't feel bad when they get nasty mail. Though I do enjoy how Heather Armstrong takes the hate and throws it right back out there. I think she's got a strong constitution, which I admire.

Anyway, I feel that maybe I have left gaps in my writing which have maybe made people think I don't like Posy Gets Cozy. Which is completely not true. I'm not really sure what I can do to convince anyone of that. I'm not even sure why I need to? I don't worship Posy Gets Cozy, but I think it's a great website with beautiful crafts. I think I have always acknowledged that any envy I've felt, or insecurities I feel when spending time there are my own damn deal and I would never hold it against someone that they are so much cooler than me.

How much more clear can I make it that I think Alicia Paulson ROCKS?!

Here I will observe a brief moment of silence to replace the further comments I was tempted to make but have decided not to....

*This is a lie.
**Patent lying.
***Again, with the lying!