Domestic Scary

Today I vaccumed, tidied, made mini chocolate donuts, planted a plum tree, potted geraniums, prepared a nice dinner and turned some vintage fabric I bought recently, into an A-line skirt from a pattern I made myself from a sheet of newspaper.  No, don’t refresh your browser – you have come to Laugh in the Sun, homeplace of the bad housewife.  If it’s any consolation, when I sewed the first version of the skirt and tried it on, I could have fit another half a person in there with me. 

At which point I called my sister and asked her if she would like the skirt – before you furrow your brow (or call me up and swear at me, Em) I figured that I could be bothered making the adjustments required for her to wear it, whereas I figured I would be over it and know exactly how I had cut corners and therefore never want to wear it again.  Follow me?  It’s a logic I understand anyway, so trust me, OK?  She pointed out that she had seen the fabric, and while she thought it was nice – she doesn’t really do autumnal colors.  This really doesn’t sound like my post at all, does it?  It’s all Martha Stewart and stuff. Weird.  My sister also suggested, that if I persevered, I could get the skirt to fit and end up with a pattern that was perfectly custom-made for me.  And so I did.  I know, shock horror, right?

I’m not a born sewer, nor terribly well taught and I tend to read recipe and pattern books by starting with a general understanding rather than reading the fine print.  I have never made anything without unpicking at least one seam.  This skirt was no different.  BUT – after unpicking that one seam, and applying a bit of brainpower, I ended up with a skirt that is quite nice, a perfect length, different, vintage, with a black rickrack hem.  I like it.  And as I was holding it up admiring it, Stepford Husband returned with the boys from chopping firewood.  He looked at me and the floor and the house and stuff, and I showed him the skirt.  He had one of those looks – you know, ‘who are you strange Stepford person, and what have you done with my wife?’  He wasn’t worried, you understand, possibly mildly hopeful – but certainly confused.  It was only when I modelled my hard-work skirt for him, wearing fluffy blue bed socks and with my legs as hairy as a goats, did he seem to recognise me.  His wife.  The bad housewife, in all her glory.

From the archives: Alpaca Spit

We had alpacas until recently. 

I often wondered what was so bad about alpaca spit, after all they’re grass eaters – herbivores and after the amount of vomit coming from my children as they grew from breastfed babes to fully fledged carnivores, I thought there was no possible way a bit of regurgitated grass could be that bad.

But imagine the worst halitosis in a solid form and you’re edging close to the experience.

Imagine the up close smell of the carpet in a bar on a Sunday morning.  Imagine the public toilet that time forgot.  Worse than that?  Oh indeedy, yes! It is the smell of grass brought through the very pits of Hell, collecting some more unsavoury characteristics along the way and becoming rotted and maggoty in the process. And when it is spat into the back of your hair, it tends to stick with you like white on rice until you can shower it out. I used to feel very unconcerned when an alpaca made that choking, hawking sound around me before, but you should see me wince and back up when I hear the throaty threat now.

The day we sold them, we were pushing two up into a horse float so that they could be driven to their new owners, and our family favorite “Pinky” turned around and gave Stepford Husband a goodbye gift.  Right in the face.  Like, over his nostrils and mouth. Believe me when I say that Stepford Husband used some very colorful language between gagging, that translated to: ‘Well, fellows, I’m not as sad to see you leaving as I thought I would be initially.  Have a nice life, you, er fellows!” 

I wanted to go over and give him a comforting hug – after all, the first time he was seeing his babies leave and one of them spits in his face.  But peeeeeyoooooo!! Instead I stayed way over the other side of the horse float.  I did give him a sympathetic smile.  But it may have come off more like repressed laughter.  All I’m saying is I meant well but I wasn’t getting anywhere near him or the mouths of hell that did that to him. 

Those alpacas may look pretty, but when they spit – that smell gets in your nostrils like dog pooh on a shoe and here’s the real evil: you get a strong whack up the nose of it all day.  Even after you know it’s gone.
Just so you know.

Black Thumb Guy

The Stepford Husband doesn’t garden.  He has no green thumb, and even balks at the things that I ask him to do step-by-step to help me in the garden.  Over the years I have sent him outside to collect herbs for me as I frantically cook in the kitchen and instead of the bay leaves, parsley and mint that he has been charged with, he has returned variously with lavender stalks, grass and, once, a stick.  I used to marvel at his ability to get it so wrong when we lived at our last place because flat leafed parsley had aggresively colonised the yard and it was tricky to find any grass.  And yet he did.  The parsley was all but biting him in the arse, and he still brought a bouquet of clover for me to add to the soup.  He gets this from his mother, I believe, who plucked an heirloom tomato plant from the garden while we chatted, during one of her famous visits, and threw it over her shoulder saying something about ‘nasty weeds’.  The truth is I don’t know what she actually said because I was trying to swallow my homicidal tendencies.  Killing your Mother-In-Law is such a cliche.

On the weekend Stepford husband brought my truck up to the new restaurant where I work, to clear the ancient compost heaps out the back that the previous owner had set up.  He thought I was being over the top helpful to my new boss, and didn’t understand AT ALL the value at nicking someone else’s old compost heap.  To him it was a pile of old dirt with leaves and bugs and worms and the odd spoon in it.  To me, it was free nutrients full of bugs and worms, and the odd unexpected treasure of a spoon. 

‘What are these round things?’ he wanted to know.

‘Walnuts from that big old walnut tree,’ I said excitedly.

‘What do you want me to do with all this?’ he said kicking walnuts around.

‘Take it all home and put it on the garden!’ I said batting my eyelashes.

‘What will we do if the walnuts start growing?’ he said – I think he was trying to find a loophole OUT of this mess.

‘Wouldn’t that be wonderful?  Then we’ll have walnut trees from the region!’ I said going into a mini-dream sequence.  I think I may as well have said ‘I like turtles’ for all the sense that seemed to make to him.  When I got home 3 hours later he had mulched our entire front garden bed with the compost.  Our plants peeked through a blanket of thick black leaf mulched compost.  He turned to me with his forehead all scrunched up.

‘I know.  It looks terrible! You’ll have to spread it out where you want it,’ he said.

‘This is perfect.  It looks perfect!’ 

I think he thought I was just being nice because of all his hard work, and he looked at me…and he looked at the garden.  And he gave me that look that says he thinks I’m crazy.  And that’s when I realised that he doesn’t get it – and probably never will.

Well, the man has to have a flaw somewhere.