Aileen Jeffries

I have a great ambivalence toward all things craft. On the one hand, Martha Stewart is personal idol of mine and one of my life goals is to become the family matriarch. I genuinely enjoy the “feminine arts” of cooking, sewing, decorating and gardening. A wave of pleasure washes over me when I get something “just so” – like when I found the perfect brocade duvet cover for the antique iron bedframe we have in the guest bedroom.

On the other hand, the craft store Michaels gives me the creeps. The overwhelming potpourri smell, the aisles of fake flowers, the bedazzling and scrap booking paraphernalia. The 20 minutes spent waiting in line at the framing counter behind an overly tanned, Juicy Couture sweatpants wearing, fake nails sporting trophy wife framing poster-sized portraits of her pudgy and sullen future-criminal children. The fear that perhaps I am one of them; that any moment now I’ll don a “kittens with balls of yarn” holiday sweater and get out my glue gun and just give up.

Tangentially, there’s a whole field of popular art that seems to accompany the dark side of crafting. Thomas Kinkade and Anne Geddes come to mind here. Once, I had a dream about photographing in the style of Anne Geddes except instead of babies with cabbage leaves on their heads, my subject matter was baby animals nestled in piles of foods made from the same animal. Fluffy little chicks in a nest of scrambled eggs. Piglets positioned in bacon bouquets.

Part of my crafting trepidation comes from my naturally snobbish nature. I am a designer. I have a degree in Design. I’m really good at differentiating colors. So when I craft, it’s art, right?

Except Sunday’s project involved the cheesy crafting trifecta: felt, a kitten motif and a trip to loathsome JoAnn’s Fabrics, emporium of disaffected employees, ADA violations and unreasonably long lines. I fully embraced my inner kindergarten teacher and I emerged satisfied with the result. Kea now has a Christmas stocking, featuring our kitten, Neiman. It matches Kes’ squirrel stocking and my chick-a-dee.

Now, where did I put that glue gun?

Our cat, Saks, spends most of the day outside, but come nightfall, we lock him inside to keep him safe from the zombies coyotes. Around 5:00am, he gets a little antsy and starts lobbying to be let out. If I’m lucky enough to be sleeping at this hour (which happens less often than I’d like) I’m surely not getting up to open the door for him.

So, naturally, Saks spends the pre-dawn hours roaming the house looking for items to destroy as some sort of petty revenge for his imprisonment.

This morning he found the beginnings of a mobile I was making for Kea. Of course, Kea’s nearly four months old now, so the time when her mind could actually be expanded by watching objects float about in the breezes above her crib has probably come and gone. My vision was grandiose: a flock of Western Tanagers made from colorful scraps of cloth and batting, suspended by filaments from a well-chosen branch. I made exactly one tanager before abandoning the project, which really, when I think of it, is an apt metaphor for the gap between my parental aspirations (I will sew her adorable yet comfortable baby clothes! I will teach her sign language! I will learn lullabies and sing her to sleep!) and reality (Hey look! She stops screaming when I turn on the TV!).

So, Saks found the lone cloth tanager this morning and rendered it asunder. Wings on the stairway, the body in the foyer, tail hanging on by a thread. Which is exactly what he does to actual birds when he finds one dumb enough to be caught by a cat as impatient and loud as he. I have to wonder if he was disappointed this one didn’t have nice crunchy bones.

I am too old for:

• shoes by Jessica Simpson. The shoe to the left is cute, no? Too bad I won’t be able to get them. I’m simply too old for anything “designed” by Jessica Simpson, or really, celebrity-endorsed products in general, although I’d make an exception for a really cool, unexpected celebrity product line. Cormac McCarthy Survival Gear, I’d be all over that.
• the Ugg & Mini Skirt combo I see the kids at Wilson HS sporting. In January. This is so impractical. It speaks of a pampered existence; of overheated suburban McMansions and chauffeur/parents. In my day, I would have frozen to death around mile six on my uphill trudge to school if I’d worn this. I have to suppress the urge to yell at them to get off my lawn even though I don’t even have a lawn, they’re no where near my house, and they’d probably just wonder why the middle-aged lady is yelling at them from her middle-aged person’s car.

Things I’m too old for, but do anyway:

• Mykonos. Great for week-long bachelorette parties. Good for mommies? Probably not. In a concession to my advanced age, I’ll be sure to stay on the family end of Super Paradise beach during my next visit, avoiding the clothing-optional meat market on the other end.
• Shopping at American Eagle, Brass Plum, Urban Outfitters, etc.

Things I’m too young for, but do anyway:

• Timeshare condo ownership. Even more embarrassing, it is in Palm Springs, a community in California that has actually managed to alter the local weather patterns by building so many golf courses (and watering them) in a desert.
• Martha Stewart. Her perfectionism and focus on domestic trivialities used to bother me, but now I find her aspirational. Hand-lettered place cards? Dedicating a room to present wrapping? Raising your own turkeys? Bring it. I feel confident that emulating this woman will bring me closer to my life goal of ascending to the position of Family Matriarch.

Things I will never be old enough for:

• Having a “case of the Mondays” and/or relating to Cathy cartoons.
• Comic Sans type face. Unacceptable. Usually arriving in my Inbox in the form of a “humorous” forward about the differences between men and women.

Going by skin tone alone, the answer is easy. In the winter I approach translucence, in the summer I may appear tan from a distance but closer inspection reveals that is just an illusion created by excessive freckling. It doesn’t help that Kes can achieve a golden brown glow by so little as walking past a window, so by comparison I look positively spectral.

But, there’s naught to be done about my complexion so I might as well revel in the advantages. For example, I am highly efficient at synthesizing vitamin D. No rickets for me!

I’m actually more concerned about my cultural whiteness. Like most people, I’d like to think that my preferences, interests and hobbies are what make me a special little snowflake, unique and extraordinary. It would be disheartening to know that my status as a liberal, educated white person predetermines what I like and what I do for fun.

Happily, there’s a blog devoted to stuff white people like that can tell me just how white I am. Scanning the list, I see that I like 64 of 105 things that I should like based on my yuppiedom. It’s true that I simply can’t wait to vote for Barack Obama come November. I love sushi, wine and coffee. I enjoy browsing through the Design Within Reach catalog, drooling over the various pieces of modernist furniture that are mass-produced out of inexpensive materials but are still somehow so expensive they are No Where Near Within My Reach.

Other stuff on the list is less appealing to me. I don’t like most dogs – something about their neediness and oblivious adoration. That, and their saliva, of which there is always too much, makes me itch. Nor do I like girls with bangs. I tried bangs last summer only to discover there’s about a two-minute window when bangs are the perfect length. So, girls with bangs just irk me because they’re succeeding where I failed.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it is time to go shopping for some organic food at my neighborhood farmer’s market. I’m planning a dinner party around what’s seasonally available.

I worry sometimes what motherhood will reduce me to. Will I shut out the world and think only of feeding schedules and matching onesies to tiny little socks? Will night after night of 4 or 5 hours of sleep cause me to abandon all intellectual pursuits?

Then Kes sends me this and I find that I really don’t care if my brain is reduced to oxytocin-sodden mush. Nom, nom, nom. Toes.