Random February Post.
Last week was stressful, kind of blurry, and made me wish I was a shire hobbit — no contact with the outside world, plenty of time to loom my own homespun linen, cheerful disposition, abundant moss for decorating projects.
I should have dealt with everything by being proactive and organized, but instead I spent all my free time making a sparkly-unicorn-collage representing my family.
It was surprisingly time-consuming.
But also incredibly important because when things are chaotic, I cope by expending huge amounts of energy to ignore whatever is on fire… It is a subcategory of my ability to avoid doing anything of actual value with my life.
Example:
I also bought a ticket to Haven — a weekend-long, DIY-home-blog conference in Georgia. (The state, not Russia.) This means I will have to leave my house and stay in a hotel… A direct violation of every principle of my comfort zone.
Comfort zone principles:
1 – there’s no place like home.
2 – hotels are disgusting pits of other people’s sloughed skin and insomnia and canned air that dries your skin out five-seconds after check-in. (The Hotel duPont where we had our wedding reception is magically exempt.)
What I most object to is the water in hotel showers. My theory is that they treat it with equal parts slime and chlorine, (to counteract the slime). So that when you get out of the shower you feel coated with a thin film of something sticky (slime), but you dry SUPERFAST (chlorine).
Whatever time I am forced to spend on earth after taking a hotel shower is a test of my sanity… I might LOOK like I am listening to you, or going to a funeral/wedding, but what I am ACTUALLY doing is thinking about how if I start itching, I will not be able to stop.
Fortunately, it is months and months away, so I can fool myself into thinking it won’t be that bad. Because, who knows? Maybe I will get a personality transplant by then.
Then, on top of the actual stress I was having, my Pinterest account got hacked… I had the most courteous hacker ever, (or maybe they actually value ideas for turning old windows into cabinets, and DIY kitchen-islands, who knows).
Either way, they did not pin anything of their own. They just locked me out of my account and changed my bio to their info… To make it up to me, they put my location as Paris.
Anyway, it is unlikely that you care about any of this but it’s all I have to offer, so now I am going to tell you about the sparkly-unicorn-Barnes-family-portrait.
I have two brothers. Matthew is much younger – I was 13 when he was born, so I experienced his life at an age when I was old enough to appreciate him. He turned 23 this month, and that math does not seem remotely possible.
Matthew is inheriting my old computer now that I upgraded… And I wanted to be sure that he was SURPRISED when he turned it on.
I knew I wanted it to be very sparkly surprise. With unicorns and other things a 23-year-old man would be excited to have on his desktop. From there, it spiraled out of control. I feel it may be my finest work yet.
This is his desktop picture.
When Matthew was little, he had two favorite things in the world – singing songs from The Jungle Book, and Barney the purple dinosaur.
His most prized possession in the entire world was a pair of Barney tube socks. They were white, and came almost to his knees and they were printed with a giant Barney. He wore them all the time.
At some point, he outgrew Barney. And he must have been sort of traumatized by the realization that his dinosaur friends weren’t real; compounded by a painful awareness of how uncool his attachment had been… and you could not even MENTION to him how much he had liked Barney without him having a complete meltdown.
So periodically Chris would say to Matt, in this super-slow, drawn-out voice – Matthew, are you wearing your Barney socks? And Matthew would turn this alarming shade of red and scream – I am not wearing my Barney socks.
It was like just the suggestion of Barney made him insane with rage.
Obviously, this was hysterical.
I will explain the finer points, so that you can appreciate the nuance.
- Unicorn-Chris is wearing his Indiana Jones hat, (his equivalent of Barney socks).
- Schmoo, (the cat) and Gretchen, (the dog) are proving the existence of an afterlife.
- Unicorn-Matthew is accompanied by Buddy the cat. (My dad walked by an abandoned, boarded-up house, and heard a cat crying. We don’t know how long Buddy was in there with no food or water.) Buddy loves my dad, but he loves Matthew even more.
- My mom is wearing her hair in a bun — it’s the same hairstyle she has had for her entire mom-life. (This sounds frumpy, but it works for her.)
- “I love you, you love me, we’re a happy family.” Is the Barney theme song.
- My father is trying to discuss the principles of morality and missing out on all the fun.
- I doubt Elvis and I require explanation.
- And, of course, Matthew is wearing his Barney socks.
March 5, 2014 @ 12:04 pm
Your brother may be living a dual life as my brother Tom. Does he have brown hair and blue eyes? Is he in his 40’s? Perhaps he’s found a way to time travel back and forth between whereever he lives and Illinois (thus explaining the fact that we both appear to have a brother who is the same person). Thanks for the unicorn photo…and the barney song which will now be stuck in my head for the rest of the day….it’s such a nice break from the “Happy” song which has been stuck there since the Oscars on Sunday…I was getting tired of dancing every time I stood up. 🙂
March 5, 2014 @ 12:06 pm
Not too ashamed to admit that when I was a 19 y.o. nanny I became addicted to Barney. Even now, way more than a decade (but how much more I can’t reveal), on Saturday mornings, I annoy the heck out of my husband singing the Barney-Clean-Up Song. Of course, it is only to encourage him to help with the cleaning (which never works – he removes himself to the office). Please-oh-please do a follow up with Matthew’s reaction to your Kingdom-Mirror-of-Awesomeness-Screensaver!!!
March 5, 2014 @ 12:07 pm
Aren’t much-younger siblings just the best? My sister is 12 years younger and I absolutely adore her, more than anyone else except my husband. Of course that does not mean that I don’t give her grief about her childhood obsessions, particularly New Kids on the Block. That was an especially effective form of torture when she became a rather goth-y teenager.
March 5, 2014 @ 12:13 pm
You really need to check out VRBO.com or Flipkey. Staying in someone else’s vacation home–while the someone in not there, so you don’t have to be polite and unobtrusive–is the *only* way to travel. I stayed in someone’s vacation condo, with TWO balconies, in the French Quarter a couple weeks ago. When I sat out on the balcony, people walked by and were actively jealous at my fantastic life. I’ve done this several times and never once had an icky, dirty place. On the other hand, I stayed at a Comfort Suites a week ago and my skin is *still* dry and itchy.
March 5, 2014 @ 12:34 pm
Dahling,
Something you need to know – there is an entirely famous (have been written up in USA today, slate, the guardian,etc.) ‘have their own annual convention’ category of
“boys who love my little pony”
(grown up boys, many of them straight). You may not be aware but the ponies have a strong resemblance to this image. These guys are called “brony(s)”
How do I know this? One of my lovely barely adult sons (still in college and on the payroll) IS a brony. In fact, he writes brony fan fiction that is dark, adult and somewhat racy (for grownups) that many followers read. I do not, as, like most mothers, I would prefer that my sons knowledge of racy things stays hidden to me. But I do take this as proof that we did not scar him with too many manly requirements.
So, perhaps your brother too is a brony, or perhaps he would be appalled to discover that his screen saver has brony overtones. Or perhaps he would like to find the fan fiction written by Idylia and become a fan.
We must be related.Or if we aren’t we should be. Family and humor must go together for us to continue to perpetuate the species.
Eye
p.s. princess mom is right. Bed and Breakfasts are also usually immaculate and walkable – try something new and have a great time.
March 6, 2014 @ 3:13 pm
And just so you can all enjoy it, here is the trailer for the Bronies Documentary!
March 5, 2014 @ 12:35 pm
Oh my- Our family trip from Virginia to Seattle, Washington and back in 21 days involved a hellish number of motel stays and meals in -gag-restaurants without a GPS and no real pre-planned itinerary- so A Nightmare! The worst was a room so dirty we called the front desk and demanded a room change. This is after checking in @ 2:30 am…..for some weird reason I decided to check under the TV stand before departing dirt central and spied a large deposit of petrified dog crap-how a huge! Dog got its butt under there is beyond me unless the housekeeper just kicked it under there? We walked out without even asking for a refund. I honestly was afraid I would throw up if I didn’t get into fresh air. We kept driving till we found a very expensive place-we needed( 2 rooms) slept for 9 hours straight- missed the free breakfast. The reason for this dumbness? I am terrified of flying, but thinking back a quick death would have been less painful than this trip.
March 5, 2014 @ 12:41 pm
I too had my Pinterest hacked. Pinterest contacted me to suggest that this had happened and that therefore I needed to reset my password. Skeptical as I am I did not click the link in the email, cuz, you know. I logged directly into Pinterest and they said the same thing. So I reset my password and found that they had added a suspicious URL to my bio and set my location to Paris. I *almost* left the last one in place.
I think this came about due to the Apple iOS security issue. If you guys haven’t yet, please go look for and install the update. But backup your iDevice first as occasionally it “bricks” the device–happened to a new iPhone 5S–but you can google how to reset it. And if you have Macs please update your OS there too. Google it, this is a real thing.
March 5, 2014 @ 12:54 pm
I am saddened by this, because for the life of me, I don’t understand why unicorns are funny. I sent a screen shot of this to my daughter who thought it was HulLLLARIOUS!!! and she was completely delighted. I guess I’m just old. SIGH. OTHERWISE, I love everything you do.
March 5, 2014 @ 12:57 pm
Love the family collage ! Totally agree with you on the whole hotel shower thing . I have travel all over the world and do you know what I look like in all the photographs ? 10 years older with a pony tail. I bring mountains of products a outrageously expensive hair dryer and straighten iron, bought in Europe ,and every day frizz and fine lines. I sound a bit high maintenance in this comment and I am…. Us at the tail end of honeymoon, I am decided if I should cut my hair or it grow out “how do you like my hair best?” Husband in a flat sarcasitc voice” A pony tail”.
March 5, 2014 @ 1:33 pm
Your brother will feel the love, after he gets over his embarrassment perhaps! :o) Don’t count on him leaving the screensaver up forever however!
March 5, 2014 @ 2:20 pm
HA! This is totally something I would do to my brother…and sisters. We routinely snatch each other’s tablets/iPads and take random ugly photos and set them as the background.
Ah, sibling love… *sigh*
If Matthew doesn’t leave that brilliant image as his background he doesn’t deserve the computer…lol
March 5, 2014 @ 2:56 pm
I have a little brother years apart too. He loved the Smurfs. I have one of his Smurf characters in my office desk drawer that I refuse to return to him. Hotels…then there is all the dead skin cells from previous guests lying everywhere to think about. I now understand Howie Mandel after staying in hotels.
March 5, 2014 @ 3:24 pm
#1: I just bought my ticket to Haven today. I wasn’t going to go – travel anxiety, social anxiety, money stuff – and then I clicked “purchase” before I could talk myself out of it. I am thrilled and also slightly freaking out because of the whole road trip across the country and meet strangers thing… Thankfully I am at least not disturbed by the the grossness of hotels 😉
#2: My Pinterest account got hacked too! I didn’t have the foresight to grab a screenshot though. They changed my location to Paris as well.
#3: Your unicorn picture is amazing. I love the attention to detail 🙂 I hope you print it on canvas and give it to your family members as a Christmas present and then guilt them into displaying it on their walls!
March 5, 2014 @ 3:46 pm
Another reason why I love you- unicorns! I just recently got a large gold unicorn head that is on my wall- in it’s awesome glory. Unfortunately I have had to explain my art/vision to many. People have deer heads, what is the big deal about a paper mâché unicorn head?!
March 5, 2014 @ 4:45 pm
Love the site but wonder if the non progression into the much anticipated kitchen might be causing a drop in membership. Kitchen, kitchen, kichen.
Even more ideas about the kitchen, are good. Would you and hub treat yourselves to a contractor and team? Sure earned it.
March 5, 2014 @ 7:35 pm
I’ve been telling everyone for years that my little brother is actually the older sibling. It helps that he’s starting to lose his hair. As long as I can get away with that, I will, especially since he’s electronically-challenged and does not have a computer screen for me to play with. But oh, the fun I would have!
March 5, 2014 @ 10:20 pm
I laughed so hard when I read this post! My daughter LOVED Barney when she was little, I can still sing the theme song. She also went through the Lisa Frank stage, (and I with her, I love all things glittery, pink, and stickered) and I agree wholeheartedly that your brother’s screen saver would make Lisa proud. It’s amazing. I love your pets with halos :).
March 5, 2014 @ 11:23 pm
I love that I’m not the only one from a wacky family. I was in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago with my daughters (aged 21 and 18) and I woke up at 3.00 am thinking I was having a terrible nightmare. Turns out it was just my tipsy daughters who’d decided to watch the movie “Anastasia” and have a bit of a singalong!!
March 6, 2014 @ 10:27 am
I think every brother, from the beginning of time, has loved tormenting his sister(s)! When I was a teenager, I got a beautiful new bra that was lacy and gorgeous. It wasn’t until I had been wearing it for a while that I realized that lovely lace was stiff and scratchy. I was trying to discreetly scratch, when my brother noticed and asked, in his loudest voice, if I had an itch? Luckily, this took place at home but I come from a large family so it was still very embarrassing.
Knowing my mom had just loaded this same brothers gym bag with his clean football gear for the football game the next day, I made some adjustments to his jock strap. And yes, I sewed lace all over that thing and stuck it back in his bag with all his gear! He didn’t speak to me for a very long time. Let’s just say I’m lucky to be alive to tell this story!
March 6, 2014 @ 11:56 am
Oh, I was almost rolling on the floor laughing about the Barney socks. It is amazing how ones siblings will never let something like that die and go away and you know you are going to get the same response every time you pull it out of the hat.
As much as I enjoy your saga’s acquiring the best that Craig’s List has to offer this was over the top funny.