D’oh!Mestic

The schizophrenic nature of my wants has a nasty habit of rising up and chomping hold of my posterior, which means that I’ve spent another particularly blustery Saturday surfing other domesticated/crafty blogs where the women seem blissed out, the children are adorable scamps, the crafts are pastel dreams, the houses are immaculate-yet-lived in, and everything’s shot with a 1.8 50mm lens attached to a slightly-more-awesome-than-mine camera.

And I want that.

But here’s the thing. As much as I want the lime green studio/writing room with the oversized wing chair-slash-jewel liberated for a song from a rummage sale, as much as I covet the perfectly coordinated shabby chic house, and the purple-glazed pot for my bamboo knitting needles, and the sundry brick-a-brack which constitutes the Nigella Lawson-meet-Martha Stewart crafty porn, I do usually force myself to face facts and try to get a better bead on things.

For instance — we do not live in Maine. For whatever reason, the most awesome of the crafty porn blogs seem to come out of Maine, and from what I can tell, Maine is a land of rambling old houses not constructed out of mud, deciduous trees and friendly, LL Bean-clad people, a land where the lobster is heralded with the same vigor a New Mexican has for the green chile. And while it’s true that we have said to one another, “How ’bout Bangor?” over the last several months, I would hate for you to think that my sole inspiration in moving to Maine would be to tap into the crafting vibe the way suburbanites move to Taos for the hum.

And until we decide that yes, we’re hearty enough to face the cruel winter, we will remain in Albuquerque, in a tract house situated on a postage stamp’s worth of mesa on the west side, where “character” and “charm” were replaced with strip malls and Bumper Nutz.

[Unless the price on my super secret dream home comes down another fifty grand (and I get a raise and we can sell this white elephant), and we move downtown instead. I'm voting downtown -- I don't think the Capt'n could give up the steady chile supply.]

Another thing — I am just not that single-minded. My previous job was a creative job, and one that I was good at . . . when I put the hammer down, popped on the iPod and forced myself to be the disciplined artist. Otherwise, it was a half-assed endeavor of earning a paycheck and giving it just enough effort as to not get hauled in front of the managing editor for an attitude adjustment. It takes the will of a god to keep my focus long enough to finish simple projects; there’s a reason I tend to knit socks instead of complicated cardigans. To transform the house from tract to cozy would require months of focus, and I know myself well enough to anticipate getting distracted in the middle of a painting project, leaving one wall lime green and the rest royal blue.

And then there’s the material aspect of it — finding those perfect second hand pieces to furnish a crafty porn blog requires days and weeks of sorting through jumble sales, yard sales, estate sales and thrift shops, which I can do in very small doses, but it’s time and it’s money, and the Capt’n — who jealously guards our weekends — would be a willing participant for about ten minutes before he’d get itchy, and then think to himself “Golly, I wonder how much of this stuff was owned by dead people,” which would creep him out just enough to start the “I want to go home” dance.

It mostly involves a lot of foot nudging and elbowing.

And the last thing which stands in my way of domestic nirvana is my inability to get the details right. As a modern woman, I can’t seem to pull myself together — the right clothes and shoes and jewelry and handbag and makeup and hair is impossible, for instance. If my clothes are right, my shoes are wrong. If from the neck down, I’m together, from the neck up, I’m a frizzy-haired, clown-faced wreck. Details escape me. And I’m getting the feeling that a lot of this crafty porn comes down to details — women who have the inspiration and the focus to transfer lotion from plastic containers to ribbon-wrapped crystal jars.

That’s just not me. I’m knitting a sock based off of a cartoon character, I wear tattered Chuck Taylors and I will always have frizzy hair.

That’s why it’s called “D’oh!Mestic.” I’m going to get it wrong. Really wrong. But it’s mine, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll start to get it right. Maybe someday, I’ll live in the craftsman bungalow with a writing room perfectly color-coordinated, a kitchen full of beautiful, mismatched settings, a garden, flowers in every room and a better understanding of what it takes.

But not today. And that’s okay.

Cliché!