First Big Hugs to All, especially Gramma. I know I haven't called you enough but I really am having serious hearing issues. I am seeing a doctor about it but I can't get an appointment until February. Because of the surgery on my ears a few years ago scar tissue has built up. (Or it could be the loud music but I think it's the scar tissue.) Leaving the radio on the car at gangster volume could be a symptom of the war but I'll tell you about that in a minute. Let me just first say that I am sitting here imagining big Gramma hugs and I hope you had a wonderful Birthday.
Well I know I've been bad about keeping in touch and I do apologize. I don't have a good reasons. I've just been so busy lately that I keep meaning to sit down and write and there always seems to be something coming up. I'm so sorry.
It's funny because with me not working right now; you'd think I'd have more time or even that it would be ultra important things that would keep us busy. It really is just little things, getting ready for the holidays, rediscovering the living room floor, selling some costumes and catching up with friends.
Oh yeah....and the Great Wars in the house. Forget WWI and WWII, It's "the Big Ugly-Butt Brown Chair War with the Coffee Table Battle," and "The War of the Smurfette Blue Hair," topped off by the fact that I seem to be turning into the "Monster in Law of the Year." (I'll have to send the history of the Monster in Law award in another letter.)
Let's start with the "War of the Ugly Butt Brown Chair."
Now that the kids have kind of grown up, I finally reached every Mother's dream. I have (had) a matching cream living room. I have white bookcases, bureau and desk. I wanted a white coffee table and was saving for an amazing one at IKEA that I've had my eye on for years. It was very expensive, 325.00 but it was one of those "One of these days when we can afford it," items. My living room was finally bright, light and co-ordinated. Breyan often commented to his friends, "if you have a small space and you want it to feel big and airy, get my Mum to decorate it." Yes I take great pride in that.
Like any war this started out as a small battle. I wanted a coffee table and the Mountain Man (otherwise known as Hubby) didn't. Our living room is very small, 8 x 12. The Mountain Man likes the clean open concept. He won't even agree to a rug. I think he just likes being able to cross the living room without being ambushed by guerilla furniture sneaking into the middle of the floor at night.
I did want a coffee table and we bickered for months. I think everyone needs a coffee table. We can't have end tables, there isn't enough room.
My reasons.
Reason 1. You have to have a place to put your tea or coffee or for grandgirls to colour on. Putting tea on the floor involves a lot of bending (which I am now old enough to avoid doing at every chance and often end up with my back out, looking like one of those cheerleaders that spell out words at home games--- without the cute skirt.)
Hubby's answer: He bought a set of those TV tables that you see in fifties TV shows. They set up on a frame? I admit he bought nice ones, they are pine. There is a set of four and they go on a nice holder that sits in the corner and doesn't take up much space.
My counter answer: I broke my stupid finger when I caught it in the stupid frame when I was putting it away because SOMEONE left them set up all over the living room!!!!!
If you don't mind leaving those table up all the time, then why can't we have a coffee table?
Reason 2
If you don't have a coffee table to put your feet up, the kids will put their feet up on the couch. Teenage feet not only leave unsightly marks on the white sofa that I earned after years of couches that didn't show the peanut butter, marker, crayon stains, or the dog hair that would mysteriously show in the morning--- they also have teenage feet smell. I don't care what anyone says; teen feet smell should be classifed as bio-warfare. No matter what you do; the smell just lingers.
Hubby's answer: Febreeze it to death. Bleach the slipcover.
My counter answer: Too much Febreeze or bleach is like sitting next to the kid on the bus who overdosed on Axe. I actually had an asthma attack from him soaking the couch in Febreeze. And by the way Mountain Man, just because something is cream coloured, it does not mean it can be bleached! How is it men do not know this? Why do they not know that bleach can break down the stain repellent. It's fourth grade science.
(Yet oddly they know that a kid can put his babytooth in a glass of Coke and it will break down in two days? They know that if you drop a Mentos in a bottle of pop and put the lid on, it becomes a bomb?)'
And last but not least,
Reason 3: Storage. If you don't have a coffee table, ideally one with a shelf, then where do you put down your book and glasses when you go to make a cup of tea?
Hubby's Answer: The floor--- it's only going to be a minute or two.
My Answer: What is that noise? Oh yeah, that was my glasses under your foot Mountain Man.
So you can see that there is every reason for us to have a coffee table. These reasons are valid enough that hubby went and bought me a little IKEA kitchen cupboard and put wheels on it. This is not a coffee table: this is a box on wheels.
The thing that turned this into a war? A big ugly butt, Archie Bunker, 1970's brown corduroy lazy-boy chair.
Mountain Man's father called Hubby one day and asked if he'd like the old Lazy Boy Chair. I will admit that it is in good condition. There was only one problem; it's brown---1970's plush corduroy brown. The Mountain Man knew my answer if he asked if I wanted it so he just brought it home as a 'fait accompli.'
The problem for me was first: Brown. It doesn't match anything in the room. My walls are robin's egg blue, my furniture is white and cream with blue throws, pillows and accents.
Second; A lazy boy takes a lot of room. You can't put it against the wall, it needs room to open and lean back. Our living room doesn't have the space.
Third; It's brown. A colour I personally find draining. Some people call chocolate brown cozy. I find a room full of brown furniture makes me feel like I'm buried, which at my age is not something I personally want to be reminded of.
Well, Caitlin and the MM love this chair. It sits awkwardly in the corner, dominating the room like a big 'ol quarterback having tea in china cups with a room full of little old Japanese ladies. Worse, Caitlin will often leave it locked open. I have to manouver past the foot jutting out and sit in it to put the lever up and reset the position every morning.
After months of bickering and downright arguing I felt I had two options; Either accidently burn the chair or recover the furniture. (Mountain Man says he has plans to buy a leather couch and loveseat that is more co-ordinated but since I've wanted a simple Ikea coffee table for seven years, I knew the living room set was a pipe dream.)
I couldn't think of a way to burn the chair "accidently" without burning down the rest of the house so I finally convinced myself to recover the furniture. The cream couch was looking really beat up and stained so I went with slipcovers. Do you know how hard it is to find a slipcover that fits a ten year old IKEA couch? Almost impossible. Even shopping online, a slipcover is very expensive. (I didn't want a throw cover because experience has taught me that it will get bunched up, slip down the back or one of my kids will use it as a blanket. I think a stretchy cover looks tidier.)
I decided I would have to make one. There are three steps. Make a pattern. Fit the material. Sew it together. It's a little time consuming, takes about a full work day. For me it took four days.
Day One: Make a pattern. This should be easy. I bought dust cover material. It is really cheap and you can reuse any excess for covering plants in the winter, packing, as a cheap interfacing or even leave it on the couch as a lining.
So I bought 12 metres of dust cover material and brought it home. Where Evil Kitty was delighted to discover he'd found a new scratching post.
Back to Fabricland. Got new dustcover material. Hid it from the cat in a closet. A closet that Evil Kitty somehow magically found a way to get into and he sprayed it.
(Evil Kitty is a cat that Caitlin offered to look after for her friend for a month . That was two years ago. Evil Kitty is not fixed, not declawed and has a rabid disposition and got away with everything up until he sprayed and peed and pooped all over Caitlin's room which even she found too much to handle. Since she's not working, she couldn't afford to fix, spay or get shots for him and has agreed to give Evil Kitty a new home prompting the Blue Smurfette Hair war but I'll get to that later.)
Back to Fabricland. I wonder what they think I'm doing with all this dust cover material?
I finally was able to get the material home and keep it safe. So we are up to about 60 dollars for material that would normally be 15.00.
Day Two: I needed to make the pattern. The easiest way is to pull out the couch and pin the fabric to it. Then you just baste and cut it. Instant pattern. Sounds simple? Not if there is a big ugly-butt brown chair dominating the living room. So I wrestled the stupid chair out of the way and squeezed around the couch which involved new yoga positions, and I made the pattern. This went well. Had it done in about an hour.
Decided I deserved a break with the bending and stretching and all. Went and had a cup of tea, caught up on my mail; only to return to find Mischeif had sneaked up on the couch and left dog hair all over the pattern.
Went and got the lint roller and spent two hours getting dog hair out of the pattern.
Day Two: Went to Fabricland and spent three hours looking for a light coloured material that would match ugly-butt brown and cream love seat colour.
Spent the trip over there with Mountain Man questioning whether we can afford to buy 12 metres of material and bitching at the traffic and hinting that we were spending more in gas running back and forth to Fabricland than it would cost to buy the couch. Be proud of me. I didn't hit him.
Spent three hours listening to Hubby sigh with boredom and answering all my requests for his input about material colour and texture with, "Whatever you want is fine with me." (Then after I found something he would complain it was too expensive or maybe didn't go perfectly with the other funiture.)
Did the Snoopy Dance of Joy when I found a stretch fabric, in a champagne colour that was 2.00/metre.
Spent the trip home with the Mountain Man being very very quiet because I let him know loud and clear that if he was going to bitch about cost, gas, traffic, or boredom the answer was very simple. Get rid of the chair.
Day Three: Wrestled the furniture back into place, cleared and washed the floor to cut the material.
Spent two hours looking for my sewing scissors that even though they have a huge sticker on them that clearly says, "Mum's Sewing Scissors: Do not use for milk," were covered with dried milk stains. Scrubbed the scissors.
Laid out the material, cut the material. Dog was still hiding under the dining room table and Hubby was hiding in the dining room.
I admit I did use a few words Gramma would call "sailor talk" because cutting out a six foot pattern in an 8 x 12 ft living room full of furniture required at one point, that I was cutting while crouching under the desk.
By this time my back was screaming, my patience was at it's end and I just gave up.
Then Hubby came down and inquired, "Did you make dinner?"
Be very proud of me. He's alive. For now.
Day Four: Getting out my sewing stuff. Now when Breyan moved out I was upset, my little boy was grown up and moving out with his own family. A tramautic time for any mother which impact should not be lessened by the fact I had a measuring tape in my back pocket and that five minutes after he left I was measuring his old bedroom for my sewing room.
I had great plans for that room. A sewing desk, a cutting table, maybe some nice checkered curtains.
Somehow, over the last three years it's become less of my sewing room and more of Mountain Man and Caitlin's extra closet.
First we had to put in a guest bed because Keegan, Caitlin's boyfriend was spending quite a few nights sleeping over. And yes, it also became the Snoring room. Mountain Man has this ambush snore. He'll snore and I'll hit him and he'll stop. Until just as I'm slipping back into sleep, he'll belt out a snore that makes the bed vibrate and makes me become a parody of Sylvester the cat with his claws in the ceiling.
I will tell him to "Please stop snoring, he's making the bed vibrate," and he'll sleepily ask me to give him a quarter. After months of sleepless nights, not even those earplugs they make for shooting guns could block out this sonorous snoring, I got up the courage to kick him out when the snoring gets to be too much.
Breyan came over one day and asked where Dad was. I said he was sleeping. Breyan answered that he checked our room and Dad wasn't there. When I informed him he was sleeping in the spare room Breyan turned to me with tears in his eyes, gave me a hug and said, "Is it so bad you guys have seperate rooms? I'm so sorry Mum. Are you getting a divorce?"
Which of course leaves me to wonder exactly why my son thinks MM and I are on the brink of divorce????
So I had had to take my cutting table out of the room but I still had a sewing desk. Then Caitlin got a job, bought a slew of electronics for her bedroom and decided she needed to put her dresser in the spare room to make space for the game system and huge TV in hers.
To compromise, since I was working at the time and didn't have much sewing time, I decided to put a cabinet in the living room and store my sewing machine and paraphenalia in it. I would take it out and set it up on the living room desk when I needed it.
I thought this was a good compromise until I had to spend a few days sewing and realized that each night I needed to pack it all up because if I leave a sewing project it magically transforms itself into a food, dog hair and Evil Kitty magnet.
So I hauled out the serger, the cutting mat, the sewing machine, pioneered into the basement over mountains of "stuff that builds up in the basement" to get my sewing box with thread, needles etc....
I finally got everything set up prepared to sew the cover. This went pretty well with the exception that Evil Kitty thought we were playing a catch and release game with the fabric going through the machine, resulting in me locking him in Catie's room and him retaliating by spraying, pooping and peeing all over Caitlin's bed, even though there was litter box in the room.
But I now have a champagne coloured couch with some nice pillows that I reworked. The furniture matches now, though I still have to repaint some of the picture frames, get throw blankets and accessories that match the new furniture colour. (This brown is not the kind that goes well with blue.)
I feel like I've played the entire Hamilton Tiger Cats and I can barely move but I have a nice matching set of furniture again. I'm happy, Sort of; I still need a coffee table.
I know this is long but this has been months of irritation and I felt I had to fully explain the War of the Ugly-butt Brown Chair.
The other major war is between Caitlin and I. Caitlin had to quit her job to go back to school to get her last credit for Grade 12 graduation. ( Last year when she caught the swine[I hate using H1N1 it looks like I'm writing hiney] flu she was in hospital during exams. Because she was an honour student all of her teachers but one gave her a pass. The one teacher that wouldn't pass her? Her sewing teacher.)
The relocating of Evil Kitty has stirred some resentment. Yes I did lock him in her room. Yes I am very allergic to him and I think I've shown Goddess like patience over the past two years. She was the one who decided Evil Kitty would be better off in a good home that was not ours. She and the Mountain Man were the ones who lied their little faces off telling the new owner that he was a lovable, sweet little kitty but we just couldn't afford proper care for it.
For some reason, Caitlin resents me demanding the removal of Evil Kitty.
She doesn't say it outright but I can see it in her behaviour. It's a passive aggressive type thing.
Examples:
She conviently forgets to call me when she's staying at a friends house until about 2 am when she will email me that she's not going to be home. Meanwhile I'm sitting by the phone chewing my nails and waiting for the cops to call and trying to convince her Dad that driving around in the middle of the night looking for his daughter is a bad idea and that tying up the phone calling every hospital and morgue in town might not be a good idea since the cops might be trying to call us. (He hasn't figured out how to use the call waiting feature.)
I told the kids I really wanted a new family picture that included the grandgirls and she went and dyed her hair Smurfette blue.
I planned for three weeks an afternoon tea party for my birthday. I emailed her, I reminded her on facebook, I wrote it on the family calendar but an hour into it she came and advised me that she needed to meet up with her friends for Xmas shopping because she had forgot the date of the tea party and had made plans with her friends. Besides, I had so many people there that she was sure I wouldn't miss her.
She leaves carpets of wet clothes and towels in the bathroom and manages to stain the counter and the fresh painted walls with make up and blue hair dye.
She leaves the ugly-butt chair out in the middle of the living room floor wide open and locked into position.
All inquiries into how school, friends or job hunt are going are met with one word answers.
I have tried talking to her. I've asked what I've done to upset her but she opens up those big blue eyes and says she has no idea what I'm talking about?
I've finally resorted to the Jewish Mother school of guilt. I spent my birthday money on getting her this really expensive perfume she's been craving for Christmas. I sigh and yes I know this is low but on some occassions I actually go silent. (Though I'm not quite sure on whether this is harder on me or her.)
It's like cold war with Blue Hair.
Finally to top it all off. Mountain Man's best fishing buddy from across the street has moved to Quebec. This is killing me. I swear my hubby has become a fourteen year old girl who has lost her first boyfriend. Every time the phone rings he runs hoping it's Joe. (Joe calls at least once a day.) Hubby mopes around the house. He wonders what Joe is up to. If Joe does invite him over he's elated for days. When the doorbell rings the MM practically runs to the door hoping it's Joe stopping by. He wonders what Joe would think about every damn fishing item in the stores.
Worse I HAVE TO GO TO FISHING STORES with the Mountain Man now.
I swear I want to put a personal ad in the local paper for a new best buddy for Doug.
So you can see, the holidays are going to be rough but I will get through,
I wish I was spending them with you!
Big Hugs
Kimberley
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