wifercize wednesday: the new domesticity

One of the blogs I follow, Pacing the Panic Room, recently featured a few guest posts by the author's wife, Cole, here and here.  I've been in love with this blog ever since Ryan (a photographer) began posting shots of his wife's pregnancy and I've been hooked ever since.

Although I usually scan the blog for pictures I found myself reading each. and. every. word. of Cole's Q&A session because a) she's cool, b) I think we could be friends in another life, and c) she has a wicked sense of humour.

One of the questions a fan sent in was:

Dear Cole, Where do you turn to for inspiration? Favorite books/magazines/websites/movies/pop culture?

Cole answered that she recently read Radical Homemakers and Made From Scratch - which, incidentally, are two books on my Amazon.ca Wishlist in case you're interested and you should be because my birthday is coming up next week - and this only heightened my fictitious BFF status with her even more.

I've written about homemaking before and, since taking a work-from-home position with the church, I've found myself thinking about it more and more.  What does it mean to be a homemaker?  How much of a homemaker can I be if I buy everything ready-made?  How can I express my creativity in-home and make our house an expression of who we are and what is important to us?

One of the main draws of books like Made From Scratch is that people, like myself, are feeling a draw back to making things ourselves.  Not picking them up, prefabricated, from a Big Box Store and displaying them as if they were our own creations.  There's a "new domesticity" (a term coined and explained further here) that is more than just hipsterism.

We want to be a part of making things.  It's what humans were created to do: create!  And, yes, it cuts costs and impresses people and gets you hipster status as well.

I encourage you (wifes, husbands, singles, anybody!) to begin your adventure into the new domesticity.  It'll be messy, because the instructions won't come with the packaging, but you'll learn something about life, and yourself, along the way.  I promise.

A good place to start would be looking up DIY projects online the next time you run into a household problem, search creative blogs for ideas to yoink (I like yoinking from ApartmentTherapy, Design*Sponge, Piewacket, Remodelista, and DesireToInspire, to name a few), check out The New Domesticity's group Flickr account, read books like the ones mentioned above (also Domestic Bliss by Rita Konig is another one), go to yard sales ("One man's trash is another man's treasure"), keep your eyes open for curbside adoption options, have clothing swaps with your friends, live a sustainable lifestyle, recycle, sew, build, cook, and get your hands dirty.

Here's a video I stole from my brother's Facebook page to get you all inspired-like.  Don't forget to let me know what projects you get up to!

Makers: Mini Maker Faire Toronto from Ryan Varga on Vimeo.

mama monday: ok already

Over the past weekend, three separate people kindly reminded me of the state of my blog.  Principally: not updated.  Shout out to Helen, Rebecca, and that wonderful girl that Andrew bumped into at a Starbucks near Orangeville.

Since last we met, Baby Gaz and I graduated Week 13:

And Week 14: 

Week 14 is here represented by a 3.5 inch jalapeño pepper which, trust you me, I am not in the habit of eating.  In fact, anything spicy has been so far off limits for me since I end up feel it dance around my esophagus a few minutes after eating.  Like a spicy Cuban rumba party in my throat.  And the kind of party that you wish you hadn't spent the $15 cover charge to get in for because the guy to girl ratio is 1:10, the drinks taste like Drano, and the walls are perspiring.

In other news, I believe I can say that I've received my first piece of fan mail.  Mid-last-week, a package came to the door which Andrew accepted and then asked aloud, to no one in particular, if anyone had been purchasing more shoes online.  I swore I hadn't.  Then checked recent memory to make sure it was true.  

Within the oversized bubble envelope was a beautifully crocheted (really? that can't possibly be the way to spell something so wonderfully handmade: CROCH-et-ed?) baby quilt in a perfectly chosen dark teal suitable for Baby Gaz no matter if Baby Gaz turns out to be a Miss or Mister.

The gift was sent, along with a beautiful card, from a friend I know from camp - eons ago - named Charis.  AND SINCE CHARIS READS MY BLOG I CAN CONSIDER THIS FAN MAIL.  Thanks so much, Charis!  You completely made my week!  The blanket is now proudly displayed in the not-even-remotely-ready room set aside for Baby Gaz.

Speaking of Baby Gaz's nursery, one of the sure signs that I had passed over into the promised land of Second Trimester was that three weeks ago I woke up and instead of feeling like human slime putty or gagging while I brushed my teeth, I took a look at our two upstairs spare bedrooms and decided: I need to move all this furniture.

All of it. 

None of it can stay as it is.

I'm moving it all.

Now.

And I did.  I slowly and awkwardly moved a secretary desk, a dresser, a filing cabinet, an ironing board, a rocking chair, a desk chair, an oversized upholstered armchair, two large bookshelves, two small book shelves, a few boxes, and a single bed to rearrange both rooms.  One room is now our guest room slash studio room where Andrew's keyboard can reside and I can write (HA! who are we kidding? I write on my lap on the couch in the living room, more often in my pajamas than not), the other is the Nursery In Progress (or NIP).

And by "in progress" I mean it currently houses a single futon, a wicker chest, a dresser we may end up using as a change table, a Swiffer, and Charis' beautifully CROCH-et-ed dark teal baby blanket.  

mama monday: mormon blogs

My apologies for last week.  While Andrew and I completed a multi-ring circus week, you may have wondered what happened to my posting schedule.  I had time.  I did.  I just didn't have the inclination or inspiration.  Typical writer mumbo jumbo, but it's true.

Thank the Government of Ontario for Family Day.

So, where were we?  Mormonism?

Andrew sent me an insightful (and witty) article from Salon.com a few weeks ago entitled: Why I can't stop reading Mormon housewife blogs.  Since my hero in the wife/mom/comic/home decor/writer world is Heather Armstrong, aka: Dooce, who hails from the Church of Latter Day Saints - or LDS (she abdicated membership in her 20s although she still lives in Utah to be close to her family) - I figured I'd read into the popularization of Mormon mom blogs a little.

The author of the article, Emily Matchar, writes like a member of A.A. airing her dirty secret.  "I'm your standard-issue late-20-something childless overeducated atheist feminist," she reasons, "yet I'm completely obsessed with their blogs."

The explanation lies in a kind of backlash against the backlash against motherhood (some might consider it to be anti-feminist, but I think it's hypo-feminist: the right to choose and the respect of your choice).  Here's a quote:

It seems that a lot of popular culture wants to portray marriage and motherhood as demeaning, restrictive or simple, but in the LDS church, motherhood is a very important job, and it's treated with a lot of respect," says Natalie Holbrook, the New York-based author of the popular blog Nat the Fat Rat. "Most of my readers are non-LDS women in their late 20s and early 30s, college educated, many earning secondary degrees on the postgraduate level, and a comment I often get is, 'You are making me want kids, and I've never wanted kids!'

I'm sure feminism never meant to narrow women's freedom - well, widen it in one area for the sake of another - but that's exactly what it did.  Options were made available (educated women, women in the workplace, working moms) but, in our excitement, we may have thrown the baby-making out with the bathwater.

Why is stay-at-home mom preceded with or followed by a disclaimer, apology, or anecdote to cut the tension?

I, for one, am interested to see how feminism (in the true sense of the word) matures through this season. I'm eager to encourage the renewal of freedoms we once had: the freedom to be a wife and mother, the freedom to stay at home to raise children, the freedom to home-make.  I'm supportive of my brilliant and creative friends who are doing the same and using technology to help spread the word, like Melissa B., Ruth, Jess, and Melissa L.

And, in the meanwhile, I'll leave you with a few Mormon blogs to check out. because:

The basic messages expressed in these blogs -- family is wonderful, life is meant to be enjoyed, celebrate the small things -- are still lovely. And if they help women like me envision a life in which marriage and motherhood could potentially be something other than a miserable, soul-destroying trap, I say, "Right on."

The Rockstar Diaries

The Langs

Say Yes To Hoboken

Nat the Fat Rat

foto friday: plate tectonics

Since this is the second day of my new life, and since the weather outside looks like this:

I decided to figure out how to mount cute French plates on my wall.  As one does.

Last night, Andrew and I went to IKEA, The Most Magical Place On Earth, to pay our bi-monthly respects.  While I was there I asked a sales representative if they carried plate hangers.

Me: "Do you carry plate hangers?"
She: [blank look]
Me: "Like dish hooks.  For mounting dishes on the wall?"
She: "Um.  I think you can use, like, any kind of hook."

I didn't bother wasting any more of my precious IKEA shopping time explaining to her that, no, you can not just use, like, any kind of hook.

Today I Googled "plate hangers" and none other than Martha Stewart was there to greet me with her light teal-themed and easy to read website.  So I thought, what the heck?  Let's try to make some plate hangers.

This is the space I envisioned the plates to be hanged - in our kitchen between the back door and a window.  It's not such a drab space but...

...after finding these at a local Kitchen Stuff Plus for $14.95:

I knew I wanted to use them as decorative wall hangings.  Andrew wanted to use them as plates for Camembert.  Where do these boys get their ideas?

Ingredients: hammer and small nails, pliers*, scissors (or wire-cutters if your wire is thicker), and wire.  I just used the wire that comes with a standard picture frame mounting kit.

Cut two pieces of wire approximately 3" longer** than the diameter of the plate:

Make a loop in the middle of one piece:

And make a "V" in the middle of the other piece:

Slide the "V" piece through the loop and let it hang.  Twist once or twice.***

I have a habit of skimming instructions including owner's manuals, warning labels and, evidently, Martha Stewart's womb-like website.  As you can see here, I distinctly ignored her advice to "position the wires on the plate so the top of the loop hits the edge of the plate's base" and instead put it smack in the middle.  No harm done but my plates lean a little further forward than I had expected - almost as if they're staring down at me from the wall.  Friendly-like.

Once the pieces are stretched tight across the back of the plate, bend the ends over the lip and make a little loop (cutting off any excess wire on the back).  These "claws" should be long enough to hold the weight of the plate but small enough that they don't take over the visual appeal.

Ta-da!  Cute French plates on the wall!

And, since I only used 2 of the available 4 plates, Andrew can still use a few to serve actual Camembert. Although I was pleased with the final outcome I still had to submit it to the critics.

Solomon gave it an A+.

Oberon gave it a D.  He was repulsed by it at first, then ran to hide under this chair where he acted disinterested long enough for me to take a picture.  He gave no comment.

* This whole project would have been 34% easier if I had (or could find our) needle-nosed pliers.  Instead, I used the honking pliers you see in the photo.  I would recommend needle-nosed.

** HEED MARTHA'S ADVICE!  I eyeballed my second hanger and cut one piece too short.  After approximately 20 minutes, and assorted expletives, I had to cut a new piece - this time, approximately 3" longer than the diameter of the plate.

*** I also muddled this: I twisted an average of 6-7 times to ensure maximum strength and prevention of my pretty plates slipping from their nails and smashing all over the kitchen floor while Solomon licks the shards and I scream at him and weep.  It made the loop a little bulky behind the plate but, otherwise, I'm satisfied.

wifercize wednesday: double time

The question remains: what will I do with my time after next Wednesday at 5:00 p.m.?  (Not that I'm counting the seven days, two hours, and thirty-eight minutes until then.)

As with most of my dramatic decisions, no matter how spontaneous they appear, I put a ridiculous amount of time, energy and contemplation into resigning from my job.  Keep in mind I have been a faithful soldier in the army of corporate administration for a decade.  I can answer phones, coordinate schedules, book appointments, edit correspondence, order supplies, photocopy files, file photocopies, and Brother P-Touch™ label like a champion.  Sometime simultaneously.

Once I'm off the grid, however, where will I find definition?  CBC radio recently reported on the influx of baby boomers hitting retirement age.  The first wave of them have celebrated their 65th birthday but many are loathe to leave their places of employment: for 20, 30, sometimes 40 years they have defined themselves through career.  Once they're out the door, they face the question that a job has answered for them for more than half their life - what do I do?

Practically, I've worked out that I'll be pastoring part-time with Catch the Fire (Andrew and I have been pastoring youth and young adults for seven and four years, respectively) while Andrew continues to teach high school at YDSB.  But that won't define me.

I hope that the tension between who I am and what I do will dissolve and blend in wonderfully nebulous titles: wife, mother, pastor, sister, writer, daughter, homemaker, friend.  I hope that I will live up to these titles in ways I previously have not.  I hope to diffuse the arguments such as:

"Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at the same time she manages to be a good wife, a good mother, good-looking, good-tempered, well-dressed, well-groomed, and unaggressive."  (Marya Mannes)

And I hope to do this by way of example.  I might be frustrated and challenged along the way, I may end up Brother P-Touch™ labeling everything in sight for an afternoon out of habit, I may find myself fearing my self-imposed retirement, but I also may discover that who I am and what I do are not mutually exclusive but mutually comprehensive.

wifercize wednesday: suzie home-maker

It hit me like a sneeze.  At first, a slight tingle - an itch, really - barely perceptible and mostly ignorable.  I think it began when my mom gave us a subscription to House & Home for our one-year anniversary.  No harm done.  Just a magazine.  But then the tickle grew, the eyes began to twitch, and the mouth formed a turned-down crescent.  I began to bake (a foreign tradition to me, as my mother was more of a cook than a baker).  I discovered I liked baking.  And Andrew liked my baking.  I tried my hand at gardening.  I requested patio furniture.  For my birthday.  Now, the urge is irresistible.  No amount of superstitious preventative measures could possibly stop this impulse.  I weekly check home decor blogs such as Covet Garden, Remodelista, and Design*Sponge.  We ordered two matching grown-up couches.  I revel in doing laundry, cleaning dishes, and Swiffering.

Eyes squeezed tight, face distorted and stretched, a large gasp of breath, held, and...

I've caught the home-making bug.

As surprised as I am to have been struck with this contagion, I largely blame my married status, my home ownership, the influence of my wife-friends, and my biological clock - which once I assumed was digital, but has now morphed into a city hall clock tower.

Don McKay, a Canadian poet Andrew introduced me to when we were dating (the story is a little more romantic than that: we were at Starbucks on a date, one of those Starbucks attached to a Chapters, when he grabbed my hand, pulled me into the poetry section, selected McKay's Camber from the shelf, and read selections to me out loud, such as: "I want to spread the shed years on us as a mulch"...I know...I win - and others which I posted a few months later) wrote in his book Vis-à-Vis: Field Notes on Poetry & Wilderness:

"Home, we may say, is the action of the inner life finding outer form; it is the settling of self into the world."

I love that sentiment.  Our home, our little house nestled in what otherwise would be a strictly Portuguese neighbourhood, with its butter-yellow stucco exterior, its heating/cooling issues, its dark bamboo flooring, its seamless blend from living room to dining room to kitchen, its two matching grown-up couches, and its tiny patio furniture on its tiny patio is an expression of Andrew and myself.  The bamboo floors are scratched because we love our chocolate lab, Solomon.  The dish rack is nearly always full because we love to feed our friends.  We have three 6.5-foot bookshelves, all full, organized into fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and reference, by author's last name, because we both graduated with English degrees and love literature...and we're anal retentive.

It's our little plot of land.  A little plot of land that speaks of who we are on the inside.

What McKay continues with explained my current fancy with home-making:

"To make a home is to establish identity with a primordial grasp, yes; but it is also, in some measure, to give it away with an extended palm.  We might try to sum up the paradox of home-making by saying that inner life takes place: it both claims place and acts to become a place among others.  It turns wilderness into an interior and presents interiority to the wilderness."

I've been pondering what a funny thing home-making is. Its a dusty concept, buried behind suffragettes, feminists, and mommy wars.  It makes me think of Betty Draper, coiffed and at home, preparing meals, keeping house, and gossiping with neighbours over cocktails.  But if home, as McKay puts it, is weighty enough to warrant the definition "inner life finding outer form" why should a the role of home-maker be so drôle? 

I'd like to think that the movements begun on our behalf by women who we will never meet were to give us the freedom of selection.  When home-making was the only entrée on the menu, our choice was limited, and social norms cruelly kept us there.  Likewise, if being a career mom with children in daycare were the only widely accepted option for women, the equation would still be unbalanced. 

I watched the movie Mona Lisa Smile when it first came out, and one speech in particular stuck with me all these years:

Joan Brandwyn: You stand in class and tell us to look beyond the image, but you don't. To you a housewife is someone who sold her soul for a center hall colonial. She has no depth, no intellect, no interests. You're the one who said I could do anything I wanted. This is what I want.

I'm eager to experience for myself what home-making will offer.  I'm eager to see what my particular brand of home-making will incorporate.  I'm eager to turn wilderness into an interior and present interiority to the wilderness.

---

She looks over a field and buys it,
   then, with money she's put aside, plants a garden.
First thing in the morning, she dresses for work,
   rolls up her sleeves, eager to get started.
She senses the worth of her work,
   is in no hurry to call it quits for the day.
She's skilled in the crafts of home and hearth,
   diligent in homemaking.

(Proverbs 31 woman)