kattitudes

You know, I can talk a good talk, but I am sooo Jane Normal. Get up, sometimes walk around in my pajamas all day like everyone else. Look around, house is a disaster area. Just. Like. Normal. People.

Having a dinner party tomorrow. Excited? Yes. House ready?

Excuse me. I had to take a moment to recover from the peals of laughter. They crawled out from behind the boxes still hidden in the closet from when we moved into the house (THREE YEARS AGO) and tried to chew off my face. I had to fend them off with my half eaten breakfast I’m still carrying around at 4:22 pm.

Yeah. So see? We aren’t all Suzy Perfect Homemaker.

I have been getting these fabulous emails from the funniest people lately asking me how in the freaking hell do I do all this … stuff.

Um, hello. Dinner party tomorrow. Carrying breakfast around with me. 4:22. pm. That means in the afternoon which technically is well past the time for the breaking of the fast.

Now I will do the insufferable Southern Belle thang and gloat proudly that once again I am in possession of a kitchen floor that could be dined upon. However, I will balance it with a strong consideration that if I don’t get a move on, the guests might very well be eating said kitchen floor as the menu itself, which would not be such a proud accomplishment in the end.

Now see, this is something I want to deal with as we get into Christmas a little more. The deadly twins. Perfection and Procrastination.

I want things to be perfect. Oh lordy do I want things perfect. I have a perfect little image in my mind. I want my gifts perfect, my house perfect, my cookies perfect, my cakes perfect, my jewelry perfect, my webpage perfect, my relationships perfect, my everything perfect, my life perfect.

And then life happens. Because, you know, it’s life.

And it happens.

And so I procrastinate. Because, after all, as a Southern Belle, I keep thinking that if I just give it that extra little effort, maybe – just maybe – I can actually make it perfect. You know. The gifts. The cakes, the cookies, the meals, the parties, the webpage, the earth, the relationships, the life, the world, the everything (not taking much upon myself, am I?).

And then life happens again.

And someday I’m going to remember first before I procrastinate that life happens. Whether my stuff gets done or not.

I have to say that I’ve finally gotten old enough that I finally gave up – no. Strike that. Let’s be honest.

I’m in the process of giving up avoiding the procrastination part forever anymore. I still fall into the perfection trap, and sometimes I fall into that for a long time, which really sucks.

But I’m really working on the procrastination thing. I find that I passed a magic age that I figured out that it doesn’t matter if I procrastinate or not, I’m still going to die anyway. So either do it or not do it, because done or not, I’m still outta here.

What’s this have to do with crafts?

Do it or not, you are still outta here. I get emails that tell me that you can’t do it.

OK.

And when I get those, I think of that asinine self-help statement (and I hate self-help mantras, so you know this is killing me) that says “whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you are right”.

Lord, I hate that.

And who ever said that is right. If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you can’t. It really is that simple.

I really try to keep the complexity of what I show around here down. I don’t go high hog because I want it to be something that people who have some basic crafting skills can look at and say “oh my gosh, you know, I bet I can do that”.

Why is that so important to me?

I remember being a little girl, bitching to my mom. Good golly, my mom and I got along like oil and water. We still do. But I’ll give her this, Mom can craft like I do. Give her a minute to look something over and she can figure out how to do something lickity-split.

She would go into these sewing fugue states where we had to hush up and leave her alone and she would sew for 24 hours a day for two or three days straight and emerge with new outfits for everyone.

What stunk so completely and utterly about this was that her sewing room was my bedroom. I would sit up at 2 in the morning and complain “Mom, I have school tomorrow. Can’t you stop now? I want to turn out the light.” Good grief, I was ten years old. She would tell me, “Hush up and go to sleep. Put the blanket over your head”.

Oil and Water, people.

Granted, I got some bee-yoo-ti-ful clothes out of it, but who can appreciate that as an exhausted ten year old?

All I could do was complain about how much cheaper it would be to go find the damned clothes on sale.

Mom told me something I didn’t understand then, but I do now.

When you spend all day cleaning and cooking, everything gets destroyed the minute you do it. You clean something, someone comes through and messes it up again. You cook a meal, someone comes through and eats it and messes up the dishes and all you have is another mess to clean. There is never anything left over for you to sit and admire. There is never anything for you to enjoy or for anyone to appreciate the hard work you put into it. And when you make something, you have something tangible to show for all the hard work you do.

I was ten. I was tired. I was Water and I couldn’t stand my Oil.

Now, I’m a Big Girl. We’re still Oil and Water, but it stuck with me. And it stuck with me long enough to resonate and resonate until it made sense.

It made more sense after I got married and cleaned up messes and made meals and cleaned more messes and realized that I had nothing tangible to show for all the hard work I did.

But man, could I craft. Oh lordy, I could make stuff like nobody’s business. You show me something and I could whip that puppy out (or at least a close proximation) well enough to do Martha herself proud. It might not win awards, but by golly, it got the job done.

And then I got thrifty. (Or cheap, take your pick. Either works for me.) I would go into the stores and see these adorable crafty items and pick them up and think “oh my self. Why Self, I just loves me some of this thing. Self, why don’t you think about taking this home?” And then I would look at the price tag and I. would. get. offended.

I know it’s the Southern Belle part of me talking, but dang it people. Some of the prices being charged out there are just downright offensive. And that just ticks me right off. I don’t give a good god damn if I can afford it, I should not have to afford it. Not when I can walk my pissy self home, dig in my waaaay too extensive stockpile of pretty pretty craft supplies and pull out enough close matches to make something that will fill that little hole that was created when I saw the pretty pretty creation in the first place.

Plus I had the satisfaction of looking and saying, “I did that” every. time. I. looked. at. it.

Every time.

That is some powerful mojo, people.

I gotta tell you. It doesn’t matter if the bills are late, the dishes are not washed, everyone at work is fussing and the family is fighting. When you look at something you made, sitting there pretty and finished and fine, there is that little glow around your heart and you think in your head, “hey, I did that”.

It’s good mojo.

And that’s why I push making all this stuff so hard.

My house isn’t clean yet, I’m having a dinner party in less than 24 hours,my menu is half done, I’ll be baking half the night to make sure I’m done tonight rather than tomorrow and what is bothering me?

I’m bothered that I didn’t take the time to post some gift suggestions today.

It’s the perfection bug, people. One of the twins I’m trying to shake.

And why didn’t I take the time to post gift suggestions today?

Because I didn’t have the time to write up perfect little descriptions because I procrastinated on getting it all done yesterday. The other twin.

So, over the next few months (oh, who am I fooling. It’s going to be longer than that) you’re going to be reading about the twins. Perfection and Procrastination. And you’re going to be reading about the twins in terms of how they work with making our gifts for others and using our time.

I know I’m not the only one out here living with the twins; Perfection and Procrastination. If I’m the only one that is going to say it out loud, I will take one for the team without a problem.

We’ll chat about UFOs. If you make things, you know what they are. UFO = unfinished objects that we started but never got around to finishing. They are sitting around, abandoned for one reason or another (most of them very very good reasons too).

We’ll chat about why I keep saying that your gift is in the making. Because it is. When you make something for a person, something magical happens. You think about that dear person with every stitch, every teaspoon, every single bead you put together. And the love you have for that person shines through the finished product.

Anyway, the twins just attacked again. I was happily blathering along and got sidetracked. So rather than finishing my thought, I’m just going to finish this post off.

I’m off to finish the house, bake the cakes and print the menus. I have pumpkins to put out and for once, my costume is actually finished before Halloween. Good grief. That is a record. Honest to goodness record.

Tomorrow there will be a few ideas, no worries. But then, come Thursday, we are talking Christmas. Lots on my plate this year, so I have to beat back the twins and the only way to do that is focus a lot early on.

I really really want to relax in December. The only way to do that is to spend a lot of busy time in November.

Hope you are ready for it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 10:46 pm and is filed under kat chat, organization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.