Magic Mirror

The other day a friend of mine sent me this email:

"Another FAFSA night for Lindsey...
She is almost guaranteed to have school 100% paid for. What a shame to not use that when other kids are struggling with two jobs to pay for school (i.e. M— is graduating with 2 degrees from the U. having worked two jobs to pay for it)!"

I was not very happy to receive this email. In fact I was a little bit angry at first and then I was sad.  It's not because Lindsey is getting big enough to graduate high school and go to college. It's not because I've received a few reminders from this friend already. It's not because I've already filled out this form five times in the last four years for myself and so I didn't want to attend a FAFSA night. (This last sentence is all true, but that's not what made me unhappy about the email.)

I was cranky because I felt like my friend was telling me that if I was a good mom I would go with Lindsey and help her take care of this. I read between the lines that my friend had already told me about this kind of thing quite a few times, and why hadn't I done anything about it yet?

I wanted to reply that I already know that I am the worst schmuck of an uncaring mother, but that I could handle filling out the FAFSA without help. And what did M—'s working two jobs have to do with me or Lindsey anyway?!

But—you can breathe easy—I didn't do that.  I didn't because I can truthfully report that I knew my friend wasn't really saying or thinking those kinds of things about me. I am sure she was really just trying to be helpful. And so, after a few minutes of thinking and cooling-down time I was able to email her back and say "Thank you for the reminder," and even assure her that we'd take care of it that very day.

But I was still upset. And it didn't take me long to figure out why:

That email made me upset because it made me hold up my own mirror and look into it. The mirror that shows me that I am the worst schmuck of an uncaring mom. The mirror that says I have quit taking care of my kids and my house since I started going to school, and that I continue to put them on hold while I pursue a degree, not knowing if said degree will do me any good at all. This is the same mirror that says my friend's daughters are all beautiful, and well-dressed, and confident, while I can't even manage to get my kids new clothes or shoes more than once a year, let alone put them in dance classes or on sports teams. The mirror that says it's pretty obvious to everyone around us that I don't take care of my family. The mirror that says my kids should have more than I'm giving them or doing for them. This mirror tells me lots of things about myself that I don't like to hear.  So when I got the email my magic mirror told me that if I cared about anything more than my own self I would have helped Lindsey with the FAFSA long ago.

I hate that mirror.

I think—at least, I hope that my mirror is prone to extreme exaggeration. Like a fun-house mirror that shows you much, much fatter or thinner than you are, or with crooked legs and a pinhead. But it's not very fun, and it is very persistent in its attacks on me. I really hate that mirror.

Well, the good part of the story is that my kids happened to have that day—the day of the email—off from school and so I had already made up my mind to take the day off from sewing as well.  So while Lindsey was home we filled out the FAFSA and she will probably get all of her schooling funded, just like my friend said.

What do you think of them apples, mirror?

What's a Mom to do?

When I was a kid, maybe ten or twelve or so, Melanie and I would stand side by side washing the dishes. This was a pretty regular thing. We chatted as we worked and neither of us minded doing the work. I remember her telling me that, before my mom took a full-time job, my dad called the family together and told them they'd need to step it up with the housework, since Mom wouldn't be home all day any more. I don't remember that family council, but I do remember working with Melanie on the house, daily. When Melanie got married I took over the housework myself. I remember doing the dishes, mopping the floor on my hands and knees (because I thought it did a better job than the sponge mop), dusting and vacuuming, and just generally cleaning up  every day. Every now and then I'd complain at my older brothers and younger sister for not helping out, but I still kept working. I kept an amazingly clean house. In fact, it bothered me to not have a clean house—just as it does now.

Over the last few years, as I've struggled trying to get my kids to do even  half of what I did, I've sometimes wondered if I've been seeing myself and this part of my life with rosy superhero lenses. You know . . . "When I was your age I walked to school ten miles uphill in thigh-deep snow with bare feet." That kind of thing.

But both Bruce and Melanie have reassured me that I really did take care of the house like that. Bruce has told me (many times) that I was an exceptional kid in this house-cleaning respect. And that used to really annoy me because it meant that I couldn't get my kids to do what I did.

But I remembered a time when I was first dating Bruce:  His mom put the kids' names on the calendar, in ink, on the days they had to do the dishes. So I was at his house and we were playing a board game when Mom came in and told —whichever kid it was for that day— that it was their turn to do the dishes. And that kid argued with her. It was not his/her day, it was someone else's turn. I could hardly believe it! In the first place I would never have argued with my mom, but the glaring, obvious truth was that that kid's name was on the calendar and had been since the beginning of the month. Wow. My nineteen-year-old self was shocked.

And there's no question that my older brothers and younger sister couldn't have seemed to care less about keeping the house clean. So maybe Melanie and I were exceptional. But that doesn't make my current house-cleaning dilemma any less frustrating.

You may recall that when I was first in school, about three years ago, I went on strike. I was so busy with my school projects that I couldn't keep up with the house. And one particular day the kitchen was a total disaster and an appliance repair-man was coming over to work on my oven, and I was mortified that he should come into my kitchen where the dishes hadn't been done in days, and there was a mess everywhere, etc. So I posted a sign in the front yard and my demands on the front door. And I got a lot of support from Bruce and my friends. But it didn't solve the problem, and Bruce did tell me that some of my children were mightily offended by my actions. (Never mind that I am offended daily by having my requests, pleas, threats, bribes, etc. ignored. Or at least having my family (perhaps on some subconscious level) hope that somehow this problem will all just go away.)

I have relaxed a little bit over the intervening three years. Sort of. I still feel nervous and unhappy in a messy house. But I have accepted that the kids will never take care of the house like I would, and I often use my school breaks to get things looking and feeling they way I want them to. And the family has gotten a little better over the last three years too.

Now, three years since the infamous mom strike, I have taken leave of  housecleaning duties again. Not because I'm angry and rebelling, but because I am so freaking busy with sewing my collection. Yesterday I spent twelve hours laying out, cutting and sewing one of my easier skirts and almost got it done. I still have eight things to make, and the four I've started need finish-work done, all by the end of March. So I really don't clean house these days, and don't intend to do it any time soon. My upcoming Spring Break will be used for twelve-hour sewing days.

A couple of months ago, to make up for my impending lack of house-cleaning participation, we divvied the chores amongst the kids: two on the living room, one on the bathrooms, one on the laundry area, and three in the kitchen. They are all responsible for their own bedrooms and laundry. Unfortunately it's not going fabulously; even the living room decree (the living room must be perfectly clean every night before bed time) has fallen by the wayside. To make the situation even more exciting, the dishwasher has broken down. :-/

So, between the three kitchen cleaners, I see this:

There's Rachel, doing the dishes all by herself. There's not even another soul in the kitchen.

This is not what I intended when we assigned three people to do this job.

I've tried to tell them that it would lighten the load if at least two of them worked together like Melanie and I used to. But no. They pick one person to start, and when she decides that she's had enough she stops and gets the next person to do some dishes; when she thinks she's done she gets the next person. And when she decides she's had enough she just stops. Consequently today, Sunday morning, we still have dirty pans from Thursday night, and no clean glasses or spoons.

These dishes are waiting for the next child to come along and work on them.

The kitchen is the most obvious part of the whole predicament since there's no space to prepare and cook meals, and it's getting so that we don't have dishes to use either. But the living room pretty much gets ignored (it's not super messy, but vacuuming the new carpet might be a good idea), and the bathroom doesn't look fabulous. And it makes me unhappy. And too bad for me.

While they're not bad about getting the work done if I work with them, and sometimes they are even pretty good about doing it without me, my family isn't just going to take care of the house on their own every day, despite appeals to reason, requests, pleas, threats or bribes. The problem doesn't go away, no matter how much we'd all like it to.

What is a busy, busy, stressed-out, and exhausted mom to do?

Portfolio

In my Portfolio class we are, obviously, making portfolios. I'll have to make a business card too.  So here's what I've come up with for the intro. page to my portfolio:

And here's the beginnings of a business card:

Or do you think I need to include the lady's silhouette, so people know it's fashion design, and not . . . oh, maybe set design or something?

Oooh! Or how about this?

OR should I just scrap it all and start over?  What do you think?

>sigh< Well, I must get back to the sewing machine.

The Pianoforte Line is Coming Together

It seems like all I do any more is make seams. I certainly never write on my blog!  So I'm going to break form for a minute and write about my spiffy projects.

The fashion show, Raw Couture, is coming up on May 3, at 7:00 p.m. (location and ticket prices to be announced). Naturally I'd love all my friends to come and make up a huge cheering section for me.  So here are some sneak-peeks (not trailers, and not spoilers) into what I've been making.

You may remember that I chose Pianoforte as the theme for my designs. You may think that this is because I love the piano—which I do—but you'd be wrong. I chose that theme because time was passing swiftly and I had to come up with a theme and ten designs.  So I chose a dress I'd already designed for my first illustration class and let that dress choose my theme.

This is the dress—
which I really did design with the insides
of a grand piano in mind.

Of course that would never do; I had to tell my teacher and class that this was my inspiration:

Once I had decided to let that dress be my basis, more piano-themed dresses came to mind.  Here are a few rough sketches:

This one started out as a gown with a black and white pleated skirt and a ruched bodice (strong and soft). It's gone through a bit of change since September.

Oh my! Isn't she lovely?

And this is a short variation of the gown with
the black & white pleats. 

OK. Those are really rough sketches.

I spent all last semester trying to finalize the dresses, draft the patterns and sew and fit the mock-ups. This semester I'm working on the real thing.

Oooh! Look at me in my new sewing room!

And here's a couple really sneaky, sneak-peeks:

The insides of a bodice. Don't you just want to see how the outside looks?

Is this a skirt?  No. It is a sleeve! 

The marks I traced kept disappearing, so I had to hand-baste the lines in before I could pleat them.

And here they are, about 25 to 30 hours later, all pleated (but still not finished).

If you paid me for the hours I put into those sleeves you might also want to take out a sleeve-insurance policy. 

So there you have it, the very sneakiest of sneak peeks! Right now I've got most of two dresses done, and part of a third. While I worked I listened to my eight-hour music playlist about five times, "watched" all of my Jane Austen movies, plus The Young Victoria —about eighteen hours of movies, and developed a love for Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto (after listening to it about four times). I think a Lord of the Rings marathon is next on the list.

And now, fun as this is, I must get back to work.

Frustration!

I can't ever seem to explain myself. And this time it has cost me hours and hours, and about $30 too.

I just "get" things kind of intuitively. A lot of things anyway. I could watch my kids' karate class and know how it felt to do the moves they were practicing; I could see and feel myself doing it. I knew I could do it myself.
I understand what my very nice but very wordy Public Speaking teacher is explaining almost before he finishes (which makes it really hard to sit through three hours of class). I can see it. I get it.
And when I have an idea I can see it and I can understand it, and I know it's right and makes perfect sense. But I can't transmit it from my brain to my mouth. I try and try and try again and again to say it in a way that people will understand, but they (even Bruce!) just don't get it, and I don't know how else to tell them.

Anyway, because of my (apparently) transmitting gibberish and so getting back incorrect information, I now have to tear apart and re-do the dress that I've already spent an entire week on.

Did any of this make any sense at all?