pink pajama mama

I’m so glad I married the male Martha Stewart. The other night we were decorating a tiny little Christmas tree. I had bought all these beautiful ornaments that looked like candy. I thought the kids would love making a candy tree. We decorated it, and it looked pretty pitiful. But then my Martha Stewart in shining armor swooped in to save the day. Armed with twinkly lights and a couple of little elves, he created an adorable masterpiece. “Do we have any fabric to put under the three as a tree skirt?” he asked me. I padded to the sunroom and returned with a torn piece of forest green felt, a look of chagrin on my face. He smiled as he folded it in just the right way to hide the tears and make it look sumptuous, placing it under the tree and putting the little elves on it. Wow. Instant transformation.And so my pathetic tree has turned into a twinkly delight thanks to my 75 inches of decorating love.We’re quite a team together. He’s the male Martha Stewart and I’m the female Oscar from the Odd Couple. No, I’m not that bad. But I can create quite a few disasters in my wake. I’m kind of like an absent minded professor, except I’m not a professor, but I do have the absent-minded part down. And I’m kind of cute in a rumpled, messy-haired way. But I’ll be the first to acknowledge my absent mindedness can be a real pain in the toukas–like the time I accidentally threw away our passports and birth certificates because they were in a wrinkled envelope. Now, that went over like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest (as my father used to say). Or the time we got up at 4am in San Francisco to rush to the Oakland airport for our Christmas flight only to get to the desk and find out our tickets were from the San Francisco airport. To Martha’s credit, he quietly races to the terminal next door dragging all our luggage and our kids and spent $1,000 buying us four new tickets to New Hampshire. And then there was the time I sauntered into the Los Angeles airport for my flight to Nairobi thinking I was two hours early ( I had been killing time buying little bottles of shampoo) only to find out I was two hours late and the plane was long gone. But that was before I met Martha.Ah the adventures…And while a lesser man might run out of patience cute craziness, Martha says things like, “I love your mind. You have so many creative ideas running around in there. Your imagination amazes me.” Granted this is after a couple of margaritas when everyone’s minds seems pretty brilliant, but I cherish these moments. And yes, sometimes he does get exasperated, but most of the time he just shakes his head and marches on when he not waxing poetic about my amazing mind.And I have to say, he is a wizard, turning the wacky into the wondrous, the pathetic into the pleasing, the messes into magnificence.  

George called me from work today. “Oh, you just got a box from Brooks Brotehrs,” I told him.”Did you see my Prince of Wales walking coat?” he asked.”What?” I replied.”My Prince of Wales walking coat,” he continued.”What the hell are you talking about?” I asked. ”Did you open the box?” he asked.”No, why? Did you order a Prince of Wales walking coat?” I finally started to understand what he was saying, but I was a little surprised he was asking me since he had just put a moratorium on spending besides groceries and diapers.”Open it.” No one can ever accuse George of no being succinct.I opened it. “Wooo,” I whistled. “Very hot. A houndstooth plaid lined in chocolate. Very gorgeous.” It better be with a $600 price tag. My man of “simple tastes,” or so he’s always telling me.”Do you like it?” he asks in his husky sexy voice.”I love it. I can just picture you walking, no loping over the moors wearing it, your hounds by your side. You just need some knee high wellies to go with it.”George is kind of like a gay man in a straight man’s body. He loves fine wine, intellectual discussions of said wine, high art, Hermes loafers that look like ballet slippers, and Louis Vuitton duffel bags. Sometimes I worry he’s going to come out of the closet, but sexually, he seems quite straight to me. At least so far. But there’s no denying. He’s a fop, a dandy, a fashion lover who has nailed down the incredibly sexy absent minded professor look (albeit in Hugo Boss suits ala Cary Grant in North by Northwest). Even when he’s dressed casually dressed in his slouchy but perfectly fitted sweaters and jeans, he looks perfectly turned out.”Why do you always look so perfect?” I ask him from the realm of not having combed my hair for a few days in my pink sweats stained with oatmeal from Henry’s breakfast, mud smeared across my chest from carrying babies with dirty hands.”I have perfected my look of casual insouciance,” he tells me. Even his wild unruly mussed hair looks perfect.I sigh. With exasperation, with despair, with amusement, and always, always, with desire. 

I LOVE holidays!! Thanksgiving is not my favorite as I feel so bad for the turkeys and I’m not a football fan, but, I love the energy and excitement of people getting off work and spending time with their families.
George, my little gourmand, has been like a kid in a candy store. He ordered a truffle from Italy and it arrived this morning on ice. He came into the bedroom where the kids and I were playing holding a little sheer red bag tied with a ribbon, his eyes glowing with delight. Inside the littel bag–one tiny $50 truffle dug up by an italian pig. he gave it to us to smell–nasty–but he’s very excited to make truffle pasta for us vegetarians tomorrow. All day his little gourmet devices have been arriving–pasta maker, pasta dryer, truffle shaver, etc. He and Annabelle made some of his incredible homemade bread this morning. It’s still rising on top of the refrigerator right now.
Annabelle is very excited over all the happenings. We made lanterns while Henry was sleeping. I took some of the watercolors we’ve been doing on heavy paper and we cut little shapes (stars ,moons, etc.) out of it and Annabelle taped tissue paper over them. I rolled the paper into a cylinder and stapled it together, folding the bottom and cutting ltitle slits so it all folded together. We glued the bottoms, stapled on aanother watercolor paper strip for a handle, and voila! A lantern!
We had a lantern walk tonight, adding little votive candles into the bottom of the lanterns. Both kids were very careful. When we did lantern walks in November on the Vineyard, we would walk around this amazing farm. All you could see were tiny glowing lanterns under the stars. It smelled like fire and cold air and we’d sing some sweet song.
It’s not safe enough here in New Orleans to even walk around our neighborhood after dark, so we had a lantern walk around the billiards room. We sang–Annabelle made up songs– and I told Annabelle that the sunlight is growing shorter every day, so the little candles help to remind us that we can light our own candles inside ourselves to get through any amount of darkness. At the end, we said three things we were thankful for and blew out the candles.
We all loved it. And I just want to say what I’m thankful for: George, Henry, and Annabelle, my dear family, my loving friends, the magic of New Orleans, the magic of the Vineyard, the flowers blooming on my balcony (especially the nightblooming jasmine which intoxicated me every night as it fills the living room), the teeming life here–spanish moss, beautifully gnarled oak trees, second line parades, mardi gras indians, and people who can create a festival around a sandwich (we attended the packed po boy festival this weekend, a po boy being a New Orleans sandwich.), the fabulous sultry sensuality of belly dancing, bare feet, red toes, bubble baths, stawberries and champagne, red silk slipping off my shoulders, fairy lights in the trees, the stunning moon, well, I could go on and on.
Suffice to say, I have so much to be grateful for.

Well, we were walking yesterday among the wild animals at Swamp Fest (is there anything more terrifying than an alligator oozing out of the water?) and I was telling George how I wanted to take the kids on safari, how amazing to see the animals in their natural habitat with no enclosures. “Doesn’t that sound incredible?” I asked him, imagining monkeys eating out of our hands, me in an adorable pith helmet and khaki suit, Annabelle and Henry dancing to the drums at sunset on Mount Kilimanjaro.
George said “No. That doesn’t sound great. I’m not going.”
He does love to rain on my parade.
A little later, we had lunch at the country club on the golf course. It’s a lovely place, but not my favorite, but I tolerate the elevator music and fried food because I know he loves it, even though he’s neer even played golf. After lunch he said, “Don’t you want to retire on a golf course? It’s so peaceful and beautiful here. We could learn to play gin rummy, learn to play golf…”
“No,” I answered. “I absolutely never want to live on a golf course.”
But that about sums up our relationship.
I feel most comfortable on adventures with wild animals; George feels most comfortable among civilized human beings playing gin rummy on a golf course.
I suppose that’s why we’re so good together–Senorita Spicy, untamed, wild; and Mr. Martini, civilized, sitting with his legs crossed talking about high art.
How is the world did we come together? What jokester created this attraction between opposites, an endless fracas where we can never see eye to eye?
And yet, I’m completely, madly, utterly in love with him–the sexiest, hottest, smartest, most handsome curmudgeon I’ve ever had the good fortune to know.
Bring it on Baby!

I awakened completely furious with George after my third night of no sleep due to Henry and no help from my significant other. For the second time in three years, I put the pillow over my head and didn’t get up with the monkeys at the break of dawn, hoping George would take the hint and give me a break.

I heard him say, “Henry, don’t play with that.” I knew Henry had gotten a hold of the alarm clock with the hanging face and exposed wires. I also knew Henry wasn’t listening as he doesn’t understand what “don’t play with that means.”(Or maybe he does and just ignores us.)
In a fit of sleep-deprived fury, I lifted my head, took the alarm clock and threw it across the room. I then launched into a tirade that sounded something like this:
“You can’t just say don’t play with that and then do nothing! You have to get up and do something. I can’t do this twenty four hours a day with no help… blah blah blah.”
His response was, “I was up all night too. I’m tired too. blahblahblah…”
“What were you doing up all night? Lying there being no help? blahblahblah…”

A few minutes later I was up and cooking chocolate chip pancakes for the boos and George came in to give “goodbye I love you” kisses to us. I thought he’d skip me after the morning’s craziness, but he came to me, kissed me on the forehead, and pressed his lips against my ear. “I love you,” he said in that deep booming voice that just melts me every time. Add the buzz of his lips against my ear and my knees buckled, my body covered in goose bumps, (boose gumps as Annabelle says) and I shrieked with laughter. When he saw my reaction, he did it again, causing an even more extreme bout of laughter. Over and over, he dissolved my anger with laughter.
Completely brilliant.

A small box arrived in the mail from a Tuscan store. I thought this was bizarre as I hadn’t ordered anything.
Things got even stranger when I opened it.
The numbers 007 were printed discreetly on the outside.
I carefully unfolded the top, and inside was the nastiest smelling candle I’ve ever smelled. I hadn’t ordered it, George had to have ordered it, which now sent things spinning into the twilight zone. George HATES scented candles and never misses an opportunity to complain about the ones I have strategically placed around the house. I looked at the receipt. $40.00!! The man who hates scented candles spent $40.00 on one!! I feel guilty if I spend more than $10.00 on one. I looked at the description and it all made sense. This nasty smelling candle was advertised as smelling like “the inside of an Aston Martin and a martini.” It was called the James Bond candle. That’s my lovey, living in his Martini-swilling Aston Martin James Bond world. While I sit here in my warm vanilla chocolate chip cookie dough world. It’s quite a mixing of fantasy lands here in New Orleans. (See wedding photo above)

Underneath the crest of Harvard there is one word: veritas. I could guess it’s meaning, but I wanted to know it’s exact definition. I asked George. No one loves a good word more than George. He dropped out of Brown one course shy of receiving his Master’s in Literature, completing it years later. He adores unusual words, walking through the jungle of wild words, and give him a new word he can use in everyday conversation that befuddles people but is used correctly, he’s in heaven. “I think it means truth,” he said.
I could see the wheels in his head turning.
The next day I asked him his thoughts on my sister coming to visit.
“The veritas of the situation is that it would be great if she came out.”
I let it slide because I”m starry-eyed in love with him.
But when he tried to use it again to me later in the day, I couldn’t let it happen.
“Sweetie, how amazing would it be if we had a female president?”
“The veritas…”
I slowly turn my head to look at him. I could see the inexpressible joy under his features at using such a word.
“Sweetie, you can’t use the word veritas to me twice in the same day. I’m the one who brought the word to you, I know where you got it, you can’t just incorporate an ancient latin word into your eveyday speech.
He laughed. We both laughed.
And I’m sad to say, he hasn’t used it since.

To be totally honest, I don’t really like Star Wars. In fact, I’ve never even seen it. Robots and light sabers not being very appealing to me. George however, loves it. And he has taken great delight in putting a photo of the main character on my cell phone-C3PO, R2D2, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, Luke–you get the idea. On top of that, he turned my phone ring into the sound of shooting asteroids, promptly followed by C3PO shouting something about being attacked by asteroids. People were terrified every time my phone rang in public. Not being technologically savvy, I was stuck with this horror, and it so delighted George every time he looked at my phone, I kept it for more than a year. After much begging, he finally changed it–into a photo of a hideous monster named Darth Mal. Annabelle and I were more than horrified. After having nightmares about it, George finally changed it. Now my screen has a photo of George and the babies, and my ring sounds like fairy dance music. Much nicer. But George is still laughing about it. I can only say, that it brought up terrible memories for me of third grade when Laura Sudweeks would fix her hair in bun braids every day and get to be Princess Leia at recess while I was relegated to stormtrooper. I don’t think so. Me, pink princess, told to be a stormtrooper. And all because her mother fixed her damn hair like Princess Leia’s every day. Life is so unfair sometimes.