Do 6,032 PB&J sandwiches count?

Ah, Saturday, how I love you. Mostly because you let me sleep in and you are full of possibilities and funtimes. You would think I would plan for some relaxation for today after the whirlwind of this week, but Rhi is here for one more day: we have to make the most of it. Doesn’t matter that we’ve been go-go-going. Thursday night we got rained out from our picnic at the park with the girls, so we used our last night with the girls to have a Pokeno party (gambling with M&Ms=mucho fun! says the girls). Last night, Crisanna met us for dinner at Rhi’s favorite local Italian dive, where I bet Crisanna $20 to ask the hott waiter out for coffee. Then we stayed up late laughing and giggling and having half-serious conversations about religion and faith and the general state of the world. And because we were up late, my eyes popped wide open at 7:30 a.m. There had better be lots of caffeine and sugar involved in today’s massive shopping trip.

But what does that have to do with PB&J sandwiches? Oh, you with your clever questions. That’s because I was planning to dash off a quick Saturday List before we got going for the day. So what is today’s list all about? (Drumroll please…)

List the things you’ve made or built by hand:

• Oooh…a tough one if I take it literally. Have I built anything? My cousin Jonathan and I built a birdhouse from wood scraps once when we were, what – three and six? Four and seven? I remember that my dad built it with us, which is a little weird, because my dad didn’t do very much with us. He took out some scraps of wood from the basement; I remember multi-colored pieces of 2×4 and some small planks and half-painted, really scratched up pieces of something else. I remember being dubious about the whole thing because they very clearly were not meant to fit together lickety-split. Somehow, despite my dad’s snipping at us, we managed to pull it off. We built a shoebox-sized rectangle frame, with a roof, and low walls that would hold the birdseed in but still let the birds fly in and out. It was decidedly ragtag, but it lasted a season or two before it fell and “broke” – or at least that’s what we were told happened to it.
• I don’t build much by hand anymore. I assemble by hand, if that counts. I put my kitchen table together after I lost my old one in the divorce. I put together my old microwave stand and the glass hutch that I got when I first moved out. I thought they were so chic! and grown-up! because they had glass doors. Really, they are oh-so-Walmart in an obviously-particle-board type way. Still – I put them together and they never collapsed. So, win!
• I’ve stitched baby blankets by hand for my friends’ babies. Each one takes me the entire length of their pregnancy to finish, so go ahead and tell me that doesn’t count! Thousands and thousands of stitches and hopes and wishes are poured into them. (And I totally get to watch TV while I work on them.)
• I scrapbook. Yeah, it might sound sort of silly and kitschy, but really – I’m very good (and modest). I have a baby book for each of the girls and a scrapbook of each year as a family. (I’m currently only…oh…11 months behind.) My mom’s generation seems to have broken the curse, but in her family a lot of people have died very, very young. I started scrapping because if anything happened to me, I wanted my children to know how much they were loved. Morbid, but very cathartic. And all done by hand.
• Halloween costumes! Yes, my costumes are legendary. At least one essential part of the girls’ costumes needs to be made by hand, it’s a house rule. Last year, I even followed an official pattern for Gracie’s costume. Sort of. Mostly.

I can’t think of anything else that I can say I made by hand…unless you can count millions of dinners, lunches, breakfasts, snacks, and elaborate birthday cakes. It’s kind of crazy, if you think about it. Society has moved so far away from relying on themselves to make things and build things they need. I wonder how much trouble we’d be in if we had to rely on ourselves. I know for sure that I’d be finding an apocalypse buddy because unless my shelter came with clear instructions and an allen wrench, I’d be so totally screwed.

In any case, there you go. My list. A little Saturday gift while I go clean out half of Old Navy and Kohls. God bless Memorial Day sales!

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Tags: lists, vacation