Eulogy In D Minor

I have come to see myself so differently than I used to that I forget sometimes about the magic of adornment. I forget to wear lipstick. I forget to put on jewels and bangles. I can't wear the clothes that suit me as well as my own skin because they won't fit over my skin anymore. One day several weeks ago now I received a package from Alice of Futuregirl with two wonderful bracelets she made in it. They are all at once bold and delicate, lightness in thread and yet somehow more than that. I put them where I could see them. Often. Like I do all my pretty things now. They fit as perfectly as a couture glove. Yet I felt that to put them on would somehow muddle their charge.

I'm treading carefully with words to try and tell you something that has come to me in code. Thoughts that aren't thoughts and yet stand in for them. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves to stop hiding behind our own nakedness. Common wisdom is that we hide in our make up, our clothes, our adornment, as though we are never real until we strip down to what we were wearing when we arrived in this world.

I vehemently disagree.

Adornment isn't in itself a vanity. Adornment is a celebration of what we arrived in, of what we found when we got here, and what's left when we leave. Our breasts will go south, our teeth will darken, ear hairs will sprout, balls will shrivel, all of us in our wonderful skin of every color will change. At every stop there is call for celebration. For wearing your favorite fancy golf pants, or your diamonds, your Bakelite bangles, or your finest threads. I've forgotten this. Too wrapped up in wondering how people will judge me for not being what I used to be.

That is the ultimate vanity.

I am reminded of my eulogy. I have been writing my own eulogy since I was ten years old. I don't trust anyone else to write it. If I die and leave behind me silence, someone is going to fill it with tripe and I can't bear to leave in a smoky veil of lies. So I keep on writing it. As I somehow keep surviving I have to revise and make amendments to the text constantly. There are people who would consider this a morbid past time (mother), but I don't want anyone stealing the truth of my life just to appease themselves (or me) in my death. You can't ameliorate the pain of life by saying it aint so.

If for some reason this becomes the great work I leave unfinished, it's important to me that everyone I know is aware that there are some things you must not say when I die. If you say them I will poltergeist your ass.

• You must not say I died too soon or too young. I will stick my finger in my ghosty throat and I will retch up slime all over your lies. To say this is tantamount to a sacrilege in my peculiar worship of the truth as I see it. Whenever I go, however I am relieved of this body, I can guarantee you it was the right time. People don't die at the wrong time, they don't die "too young" or "too soon". We all die exactly when we are through with this world and no one on earth can possibly know that it was too soon.

• If anyone makes vapid generalizations such as "Everyone loved her!" I will smite the whole funeral party and make all the cubed cheese curdle in your mouths. I know for a fact that this isn't true. Erin Fry hated me. Or else she was a lesbian unable to show me how much she loved me and so tortured me with her bullying instead from third grade through sixth grade. I know there are a lot of people I've pissed off. I don't doubt there are plenty of people who I haven't yet met who won't like me.

• If anyone suggests that I am in heaven with God I will not smite them because it would be rude since they obviously believe in the pearly gates (a very fragile type of belief relying largely on your ability to believe that people sprout wings), but I will feel disrespected. I don't want anyone talking about me and my "relationship" with god. I believe I will be evaporating, liquefying, and rising up through the prairie grasses, into the bellies of birds, and out again onto the caps of unwary tourists. I will be everywhere there is air, I will be your next breath, I will be the dirt you're collecting on your shoe. If you must imagine that I've become an angel in death, as I never was in life, then you should keep that close to your chest, quiet like.

I want to remembered for being human. Being imperfect. I want never to be raised on that familiar pedestal of the dead. I don't do that to others. I think it disrespects who we've all really been. How can we remember a person, honor them, and truly appreciate what they brought to our lives if we're too busy trying to say only nice things when they've left us with their dust?

I write letters to my dead all the time. I think I may have to write them down soon. I was full of them while I was picking the most perfect green beans I've ever seen. Out there in the light and the blustery fall air, the dead were all around me and I only spoke truths with them and my love of them is not less for it.

Mostly I want people to remember that no matter how thin or how fat I have been or will become, no matter what age I have the privilege to reach, I want people to remember that I celebrated this world by putting it's jewels on my person, keeping the ocean close, the mountains closer. I want people to remember that I eventually learned not to take myself so damn seriously.

If you want people to remember anything you have to remind them. So I am going to wear what few diamonds I own, I am going to drape myself in my pretty buttons, and I'm going to wear lipstick most days again. Not to be something I'm not, but rather, to be what I've always been.

The Big Tease

This is the only detail I plan to show of the apron project I've been working on for Lark Books. Although I've been given permission to show it completely as long as I don't tell you how to make it, I feel somehow that showing you the design will ruin the punchline and possibly jinx me in this rather large moment of my small life. However, I want to commemorate this wonderful day (the day I send out the apron, instructions, and all necessary paperwork) with a peek. Just a tiny detail of what is to come.

This is a detail of the project I submitted which has now undergone significant fabric changes and a few minor design changes. This won't ruin your surprise, I promise. I share this picture because whenever I see it I want to eat those buttons or somehow inhale the fabric. This picture reminds me of the feverish two days I spent in the last days of my shop studio before being packed up; draping, drafting, sketching, and redrafting, to come up with something I felt really good about. During the hours I spent designing this apron I was in my element, doing the only other thing (besides writing) that I know for a fact I was born to do. Designing and drafting is as natural and as invigorating to me as breathing. I want to do more of it.

Here is one of the most exciting packages I have ever put together. It isn't a book I've written, it isn't a bundle of poetry, nor is it filled with articles for submission, which is perhaps what I imagined would be my first taste of being published. I really never imagined that the first thing of mine to be officially published would be one of my patterns. Isn't it funny how the lines of my two passions have been crossed?

I remember back when I was the shipping manager at Weston Wear Apparel daydreaming about the day I would get my break as a pattern drafter. I applied for jobs at Joe Boxer, at Jessica McClintock, and probably ten other design labels and never got my break. Then I finally got work as a design assistant at Mulberry Neckwear which turned into a job as the swatcher. A job I loved immensely. Yet, still I hadn't gone quite in the direction I had been sure I should be headed when I was seven years old, planning my life. I drafted custom costumes but custom work is tedious (usually) and no one wants to pay you for doing 14 hours of hand stitching on Victorian corsets.

So here I am. Jobless, except for my evolving company which is not paying the bills as of yet, and I am sending off my first pattern for publication. I just wanted to stop and enjoy this moment. You can be poor and be facing penury in the worst way, staring down the mountain of debt and uncertainty, yet still have a triumph in which you achieve something you've always hoped to achieve.

I'm really excited! The Universe is a lot less omniscient than I thought if it doesn't know how deeply thankful I am for all my good fortune.

Sunshine and button love

Between the buttons I got at Schoolhouse antiques and the lovely collection sent to me by my blog friend at Zanthan Gardens, I have been able to indulge in button love for the first time in a long time. I realize that it sounds kind of kinky, but you wouldn't let your dirty mind think things like that if you knew just how boringly unkinky I am.* I have been dumping out my collection in moments when I'm feeling dull and stressed and laying them all out to be examined. I find it soothing and uplifting. Buttons are the ultimate in functional objects that double as decoration.

I realized that I need to scour the earth for more of these treasures before they become so collectible that I can't afford to buy any more at all; before the rest of you amazing crafters out there gather them all up for yourselves. So I returned to Schoolhouse Antiques and bought the second smaller bottle of buttons and looked around a little harder for other button treasures.

Look what I found!! About thirty carded buttons. They aren't necessarily really exciting examples of button design, but there are some great colors, some really sweet tiny buttons, and a few really interesting ones. They weren't exactly cheap, but they were less expensive per card than most buttons you can buy at JoAnne's. What a score!

Yesterday, while walking the dog, I tripped and fell in front of some people. I didn't just stumble. I sprawled myself out on the pavement at which point my dog got very confused and excited and made it almost impossible for me to get up again because she was tangling her leash up around herself (and me) and kept knocking me back down. I don't actually think of myself as being particularly klutzy. I know I don't walk this earth with great grace, but I'm not always bumping into things or falling all over myself. But the last time I fell down I broke my hip.

So you can imagine that on top of my humiliation at having been laid out for all to see in a mess of dog chain and sidewalk, I kind of felt like maybe I should just stay inside where it's relatively safe and never go out walking again. I didn't break anything. I did scrape up one of my knees though like a 37 year old kid.

This kind of stuff doesn't happen to people wearing Armani. I think we need to make enough money so that I can wear some Alexander McQueen outfits. I wouldn't ever scrape my knee or break my hip wearing clothes like that, right? Don't clothes like that impart a certain grace that prevents these little public demonstrations of humor?

By the way, in case anyone was asking themselves "I wonder what Angelina thinks of Karl Lagerfeld?" I'll tell you: I think he's a living skinny scab of a human being who not only doesn't design anything I like, but has been quoted as saying "You can never be too rich or too thin" which is not only not very original for a poncy gay man** to say, but also shows that he's one of those awful people perpetuating the idea that skeletal is somehow desirable. I think he looked way better before he lost so much weight and started wearing skin-tight black jeans. He now has a head so big in proportion to his body that he reminds me of a jack-o-lantern in really stupid sunglasses.

I am going to take a moment now to say something I've been meaning to say on this subject: one of the reasons why it's so attractive for designers to perpetuate the whole stick thin phenomenon is because it is much easier to draft clothes for people with no breasts, hips, or asses than it is to design attractive clothes on a person who is curvy. So a lot of designers out there would find their work much more challenging if it became popular again to have a figure with something to grab onto. All the skill is in the curves. Donna Karan, though I don't always love her style, is one of the few designers who is already known for her ability to design clothes that look good on a curvier body. She designs for women, not for prepubescent teens.

Which is why I hate the fact that she hires such bean poles for her ad campaigns just like all the other designers do.

Until I see all runways with size twelve models on them, I will not be impressed with our current line-up of designers. This is the litmus test for good design, in my opinion: if you can send a size 12 model down the cat walk looking sexy and smashing, then you have skill. After all, a size twelve isn't particularly large.

It's getting warm out so I had better haul myself out to the garden to water my plants. I tried to find sun screen at Safeway yesterday but they didn't have any from less toxic companies than Coppertone, so I'll have to check in at the Health Food store to see what they have on offer. Last year I used Aveeno sunscreen and was very happy with it. Since I go out there in the sun unarmed, I suppose I better be wearing my hat at least.

I just had the most uncomfortable thought- have any women out there who like to bake themselves in the nude ever gotten a bad boob burn? Yikes!

On that happy note, I hope you all have a great Tuesday!

*I am very happy being sexually unexperimental, just so you know. I like sex without accouterments or role playing, or humiliation to either party. I like it just fine without being turned into a circus act. That is more than anyone needed to know, but I just wanted to set the record straight right now. But don't worry, I mostly don't judge you for enjoying a little "French Maid" outfit every now and then.

**Just to be clear-I have no objections to anyone being gay, but I do object to them being scabs who are insufferable and so full of themselves and so stupid that they could actually believe that saying things like "you can never be too rich or too thin" makes them fabulous, especially when the person who says it happens to be both too rich and too thin.

Buttons, babies, and business

Can you believe that M. Sinclair Stevens of Zanthan Gardens sent me her collection of vintage buttons? This is now more special than the ones I bought at the antique store! Getting this package yesterday was like being in one of the good dreams I have where I have just happened upon a forgotten box of old hats and clothes that all fit me!! Thank you so much M.S.S.!

Now I feel rich in buttons and can play with them. (Not in a dirty way you nutty people!) My mind is whirling around the possibilities. I think a household project that showcases some pretty buttons would be great. I was just thinking I don't want to put them on anything I might make to wear (though that is what I'd like best) until I'm not so large, but here's the wonderful thing about buttons: you can remove them from garments you can't wear any longer and recycle them!

Truitt was a very thoughtful baby and made his entrance into this dark world two weeks early. This allowed him to travel the birth canal at a reasonable size (under seven pounds) which spared his mother the kind of hoo-ha ripping trauma that eleven pound babies can't help but cause. It also means that he is smaller than the average newborn and fits best into preemie clothes and hats. Dominique was unhappy with the hats the hospital gave her for his downy head and was going to go on a search for hats that would fit Truitt and also stay on. This is not something you want to do with a four day old baby in tow.

I cannot be the kind of help to parents of newborns that I would like to be right now. I can barely keep enough food in our own fridge so I can't make meals for these guys, I can, however, make a couple of hats. So I did. I used a very soft cotton/lycra fabric with good stretch. I measured Truitt's head and made him two hats. This is one of them. It makes me want to gobble him up.

It fit perfectly and stayed put. Plus, it had the cutest little pom poms sewn on the top! I'd wear one myself if it wouldn't make me look completely infantile. Here is Dominique with her husband Stephen (and the father of the baby, in case you weren't sure) and their ultimate collaboration.

I don't know if you can see the blood shot "whites" of Stephen's eyes, but like all new Daddies, he's finding out just how tired he can be. Stephen is a very surprising person. Don't be fooled by his Wisconsin-bred wholesome appearance- because he is a total smart ass. Which is one of the things I enjoy the most about hanging out with him. I also enjoy the fact that he's a Capricorn, like me, and was born the day after me (though he's three years older than me). The way I figure it is that if Stephen is so cool and so funny, maybe I can be too. Because we're practically twins. (I have milk-fed Wisconsin cousins, see, yet another connection.)

Yesterday was a great day. I love having those. I am working on a project that I'm not going to talk about yet. (Every crafty blog person has some secret project they're working on. I just hope mine results in riches. I decided to work on a secret project so that I could feel as cool as everyone else. How unoriginal could I possibly get?)

Speaking of riches...we aren't rolling in them. If you are, tell me how you did it please. We have exactly two months to find more of an income so that we can keep the store going. Actually, I guess we have three because if I have to, I will sell my Vespa to pay the bills. It isn't my first choice. I love my trusty Vespa. What I'm wondering is, does anyone actually make a living with their Etsy shop? Spill the info duderinos!! I'm seriously considering opening one to sell my hand made items in. Our website gets very little action (although, thanks to all the wonderful supportive bloggers who've shopped there recently-it's starting to feel like a happening place-thanks ladies!!) and there seems to be so much going on in the Etsy world. I'm just wondering if anyone is actually making any money at all?

Philip has been doing some free-lance work which helps. But he's still looking for a full time job. The nice thing about that is that if he got a full time good paying job I could stop worrying about money for the first time in two years. We have been in a non-stop worry about income since Philip was laid off of his job two years ago. We have been living off of money from the house we sold in California and the equity in the house we're living in right now. Although we have more equity, because we're almost as smart as Donald Trumpette, we would have to sell this house to access it. More loans are out of the question. Thanks to the forces at work, interest rates are awful right now. Especially for those of us without a steady reportable income.

Thanks Government!

The one thing that really bums me out about the idea of having to sell this house is that I love my garden. If you've been hanging around here lately that is no surprise. Now that it's really shaping up I'm starting to get attached. Something I told myself I wouldn't do because our situation is precarious. I'm kind of looking for work too but there doesn't seem to be much out there for me. Especially since I don't drive which means I am limited to getting a job here in town which pretty much means working at JoAnne's Fabrics. To fit in there I'm going to need to let my teeth go.

I feeling the need to go back to therapy but what with our money being almost gone, I don't think I can afford going because I'd have to meet my deductible first.

Thanks American health care system!

Here's the thing: the store is starting to take off. That's the thing. Right there in a nutshell. I keep thinking that maybe I should start begging my relatives to loan us money. But even if any of them had any money to loan, a loan is not what we need right now. We are in deep enough already. What we really need is for a fairy godmother to come along with her benevolent wand and sprinkle some miracle cash down on our heads.

I have a book in mind to submit to a few publishers, and while there may be a teeny tiny chance that someone will get excited (I said teeny tiny, you don't need to get all caustic on me, I know how much competition is out there. Shit, some of the people reading this right now are competition!) writing books is notorious for not making people rich. I'd probably get offered an advance big enough to buy next month's beer supply. Then I'd spend the next six months writing the thing while working the evening shift at JoAnne's and then it would be another eighteen months before the book was published and I started getting my share of the sales which would maybe buy us a dinner out.

Because, let's face it, I'm not Elizabeth George.

And that's where all my problems began. By not being Elizabeth George. Or Laurie Notaro. Or Anne Lamott.

What's in a name? A lot if you're not Elizabeth George. Let me ask you, is Angelina Williamson the name of a mogul? Is Angelina Williamson the name of a famous writer? Now, if my name was Sosie Philips, or Madison Powell*... you'd be thinking to yourself "where have I heard that name before?" because those are the kind of names that sound like you should already know who they are.

This is the part in our story when some amazing twist of fate happens to change our luck. It's unlikely we'll find oil in our back yard, so maybe we'll meet an editor who will read my stuff and make me into a star. Or maybe Philip will get the dream job of his life? Maybe I should start posing naked for dirty magazines and websites where fat is the fetish? (Does that pay well?)

(Hairiness would also have to be a fetish because I don't go in for making my pubes look hairlessly adolescent. Sorry if you love your Brazilian-it just weirds me out that any man would prefer a prepubescent hoo-ha to a grown up one. But that's not the real reason I don't go in for all that waxing of my privates, it's more about the excruciating pain of the hair removal and also having to expose my lady bits to another human being who isn't my husband.)

Oops, I just killed the dream. I can't bare my privates to other people, so true. Darn, and that's the only thing I can think of that might rake in a lot of cash

Well, speaking of jobs...it's time for me to get myself down to the store.


*Let's be clear about something right now: you are not allowed to steal either of those two names for yourself because I may need them for pen names for the romance novel I'll start writing when we're living in a trailer on the outskirts of civilization and it turns out that the only thing I'm good for is writing soft porn. You don't even know what an irony that would be and I'm not going to fill you in.

Nothin' But Eye Candy

At one point in time I had a tin that was full of antique, vintage, and random buttons that my mom gave to me. I think her mom must have given it to her. In that tin were some gorgeous jet buttons from my great grandmother. One day they all melted in 1200 degree flames in my attic. All those buttons saved by me, my mom, my grandma, and my great grandma melted away, probably leaving toxic fumes all over my neighborhood too. I used to love looking through that tin in a kind of ritual treasure hunt.

Since then I have found it inconvenient to be without my wonderful tin of buttons for practical reasons. Whenever I needed a random button I could find the perfect one in my collection. Whenever I needed a pretty button for a special craft or sewing project, I always found something pretty in that tin. Now when I need a button I kind of hang around all my craft drawers and boxes like a mourner at grave side. I know I'm not going to find a secret stash of buttons. I know my old tin is gone and will never materialize again. But I miss it.

When my mom and I went to Schoolhouse Antiques in Lafayette a month ago, the place where I got all the vintage hankies, I found a jar full of buttons for sale. It was not cheap. But I just couldn't stand not having a collection of buttons any longer. So I paid $20.00 for a jar full of buttons. Some of them are gorgeous, some are vintage, some are so worn out you wouldn't put them on anything or use them unless you absolutely had to, like if you had to live through the dust bowl depression of the thirties again. One button in there is jet, or fake jet, and looks like some of the buttons I've lost.

I love my jar of buttons. I want more. Buttons are like food in the pantry, having extras on hand makes me feel more secure.

Another sachet. These are all lavender, by the way. But I would like to do some rose scented ones and also lemon verbena. As much as I love lavender, not everyone wants it. Some people are tired of it. The reason why lavender is so widely used in sachets is because it is one of those flowers whose scent actually drives moths away. Rose oil is much too warm and sweet to do that, but I want to smell roses in my own drawers. I just bought a few very expensive scents to add to our bath section. These scents will cost more than the other ones because I couldn't even afford to get more than .5 oz at a time. Yes, they are that expensive.

Rose absolut is one of them. I can't wait to smell it, but am also a little afraid of being disappointed. I also got ylang ylang, sandalwood, and I think I also got vetiver. For those who want to do a very fancy bath I want to make their wishes come true. I could have just bought synthetic fragrances, which would have been very inexpensive, but I just don't want to do synthetics. Not all synthetics are bad for the environment, or for people, but I just feel like that's not what Dustpan Alley is about.

What do you think of the mushroom detail? Pretty good, huh? I love this one!

Here's the last one I made yesterday. I do love making these sachets. I hope people will buy them. I wish I could carry everything a woman should have in her trousseau. Obviously I'm not going to carry lingerie, but what about heirloom quality linens and these gorgeous sachets?

It's time for me to take a shower and go to work. I wanted to finish this post before I leave so I can knuckle down and get lots done at work. So much to do! Then I'm really hoping to can some rhubarb jam today.

Oh yeah, and my friend Dominique is in the middle of having a baby right now. Right now. Ouch. Actually, her water broke last night so it's conceivable that she'll turn out to be one of those ultra lucky women who dilates, like, in two seconds, and then pushes that kid out with almost no effort and so has already had the baby. I will call her when I get to work. How exciting for her and her husband Stephen. So here's a shout to Dominique-if you haven't already got little Truitt out: keep it up, you can do it!

Note: Dominique had Truitt at around 7:50am. The whole labor was around 9 hours. Congratulations Dominique and Stephen!!