Not if the Nipper Knapps can stop you!

It's not like I don't do ANY parenting around here. I mean sure, I spend a good deal of time holed up in the my pink cocoon, sewing, and editing, and concocting new ways to expend psychotic amounts of energy on creative endeavors. But most people go to work all day. I'm at least an intermittent influence on the kid. We are totally working on teaching Jack the fundamentals, the good stuff, all the things he'll need to get by from pre-school and beyond.

Of course we haven't actually enrolled him in pre-school which has caused several outraged looks, a few head shakes, and one friend to shout "NOOOOOOOO" to Nipper when he mentioned we thought we'd keep him home until he was 4. You'd think he'd told them that we were thinking of giving him up for adoption, as opposed to saying that we thought maybe since we're both at home, and he has a loving, intelligent nanny, and he goes to every child edifying (read: soul crushingly boring for mommy) toddler class including, music, swimming, and FRENCH, that Jack's doing just fine. I'm sure I'm wrong. I'm sure all this love and attention is destroying my kid. But it's my plan and I'm sticking to it.

Here's what he learned this week:

How to fake cry. He's pretty good too. He makes a little whimper sound at the beginning that's pretty convincing. But then he sells himself short by saying "I'm fake crying boo hoo hoo hoo". If he can lose the urge to show and not tell, I see James Lipton giving him the Proust Questionnaire in his future

How to pick up trash with a hydraulic side-loader. The department of sanitation (Jack's favorite municipal service) had a family fun fair on Saturday. I know! Kids and trash. Yippee! Jack was one of the last kids there, which is good, because we're not much for crowds around here. It was also good because he got to sit in each truck for 10 or 15 minutes while the guy hauled an empty can up and down and honked the horn. Did I mention it was in the main truck yard that we drive by on our way home all time. When we get close to it on the freeway Jack asks us to roll down the window, and then we all wave like maniacs, and shout "HI DUDES" as we pass. SO yeah, he got to go there. To top it all off, when the garbage man came on Tuesday, he happened to have been one of the guys who was there Saturday. He pulled up in front of our house, and shouted "Hey! I know that kid!" Then he honked his horn a bunch of times, and said I'll see you next year!" Then Jack swooned, because this guy is basically Jesus, John, and Elvis, (thanks D.S.) and now he KNOWS Jack.

The last thing he learned this week, is, I'm guessing the skill he'll find the most useful. Nipper taught him to say "Yeah, see" just like Edward G. Robinson.  I thought, "why stop there?" So now we're working on getting him to say "Not if the Nipper Knapps can stop you" like an old timey gangster, any time someone is about to do something mischievous. This is proving more difficult because it's a mouthful with the accent, sort of coming out all mumbly like Burgess Merideth as the penguin. And at 2 3/4 he's not the best judge of when someone is about to get themselves into deep doo doo. He doesn't even know when he's about to pee yet.

Oh also, this is his uncle Dick. He's a super talented musician. He wrote this song, and I think maybe I've posted it here before because I love it so much. He's just one of the many incredible people our little sprout has in his posse. I think he's gonna be just fine. But please, if you see me in public, feel free to avert your gaze, and mutter "that poor child". 

Excuse me while I kiss the sky

Oh Orson Welles, I can only hope to someday match your talent and girth

You ever drink so much coffee that you think maybe you're having a heart attack, or an acid trip, or a REALLY bad day? You're speeding along in your mind, making careful note of every minor slight and irritation that crosses your path. You tell your spouse, or significant other, or coworker that you really can't work with all these interruptions when they deign to LOOK at you. And it's not until the next day, or maybe after your first glass of petite syrah, that you realize, WHOOPSIE TOOTSIE, I drank too many soy latte's this afternoon and now I'm crazier than McMurphy.


No? Just me?

Lots of progress on the Lady Gaga video. I've got 3 minutes and 4 seconds edited. I can't believe how obsessive and particular the editing process is. A good friend of our Lady Gaga is a professional editor. She was kind enough to come over today and spend a few hours showing me some tricks, and helping me shape the video. So amazing the things she was able to pick out to shift around, to make it so much better, so quickly. Have I mentioned that besides our VERY supportive husbands, this whole thing has been girl powered, start to finish? Yup. Four moms, one twenty something hipster, and a partridge in a pear tree. I know women, who know how to do all kinds of amazing stuff. And they are usually doing it with a kid on their hip. My girlfriends kick ass. My primary evidence will be when you see what they were willing to do for this video. I'm pretty shameless, but these ladies are graceful, and dignified, and wise, and all I can say is, they must love me.

Kit Kat Gaga Tacky Tan

I don't know if it seems like my posting has been erratic, but it's felt erratic. I'm just sort of treading water to keep my little nose from filling up with the floodwaters. It's been a raining and a raining round here. Sorry, I'm watching Treme. Which btw is the best show on tv, hands down, and makes other tv shows look silly. We were planning to cancel our cable, but then Treme started, and you can't watch it on Hulu or HBO.com or anything, and so we are basically paying $100 a month to watch Treme. Great financial planning. Ok back to this episode of morning becomes eclectic. 

Are you totally excited ? I am. 

I'm working on editing the Lady Gaga parody video. Should be done in a week (if I don't sleep) or two (if I do). I think it's going to be great, and the photocinenews guys are going to do a 24 hour exclusive premier on their site once it's done. I feel like I'm learning so much so fast. It's like finals week, and I'm cramming an entire semester into my brain in 72 hours. Last night I was editing in my sleep. I was having dreams that I was editing live conversations I was having in my kitchen with Nipper and Jack. It's going to be so good. I swear you're going to laugh at least twice. 

In the meantime, I managed to get a little bit of work done around the house. Some spring cleaning, some planting, some laundry. I booked a commercial that I didn't audition for. Not too shabby. I cleaned the fridge. Like CLEANED it. I found this clock that I'm 99% sure my grandmother had in her kitchen, or maybe in the little room off her kitchen where she did her sewing. The same company has been making these Kit Kat clocks for over 70 years. The eyes and the tail go back and forth, and Jack has named it Fiona, Lightning McQueen, and Doc Hudson. Did your grandma have one? I feel like almost everyone had one of these clocks in their childhood, and now so will Jack. 

The Parker Palm Springs. My ideal lawn and garden, and I my ideal place to get a tan.

Oh and I got a spray tan. What? I know. I'm have a secret trashy side. I only reveal it when very tired or you know every summer, when my urge to have a deep dark hawaiian tropic tan, and a lush green grass yard in the middle of the desert. I know that's akin to saying that I feed my child bisphenol for breakfast, but I can't help it. I love tan skin, and I love green grass. Sue me. So I tried to go to this French salon in West Hollywood where I went years ago. It was quick, painless, not messy, and I looked tan for a week! This is something I don't experience in the real world. In the real world I am pasty, pink and freckled. 

The lovely front desk at Point Du Vue where bad things don't happen to good people. (minus the time a girl who was trying to fix my bad home dye job, dyed my hair cherry red by mistake, and then stripped it until it was cantaloupe colored, not very practical for playing tv mom) 

I tried to go there, but they don't do it anymore. Maybe because they realized it wasn't French to be fake tan. Did I give up? No ma'am . I looked up airbrush tans near me, and found a place that won some kind of "best of" award. I arrived at the place which was a little further from my house than I hoped. I don't mean to malign strip malls, because a lot of good stuff can be found in them, (fact) but this was in a pretty tacky one, in the middle of nowhere. Did I leave? No. I needed to get well, and this place was the only place with the cure. 


I went inside, and found no one at the desk. There were two old men speaking Armenian and fixing something in one of the tanning rooms. I waited 3 minutes, until girl who looked like she moved here from Ohio three weeks ago came out from the back carrying towels. She was extremely tan, minus her moonpie face which was a pale pinky bisque color. All Maybelline. Her blond hair had been teased into an incredible high ponytail. If there wasn't a bumpit under all that hair I'm a monkeys uncle. It was her first day, and she as being trained by a teeny tiny Armenian girl, also tan, who was all business. She said she'd be with me in minute.  I ducked into the bathroom which was filthy, and smelled disgusting. I'm sure you thought, that's when I left right? No, I did not. I'm not a quitter. 

The images you are about to see, are going to blow your mind. Looking at them now, I can't believe I was there. I don't know why I didn't run. I don't know why I sat through every freaky thing after another. Midwestern politesse? Morbid curiosity? Here's the room where she took me to do my spray tan:

ick

It was more Bolivian prison than tanning salon

You see the hair dryer in the picture above? After the girl airbrushed my nakedness to roughly the color of a mighty oak, she informed me that I needed to dry. Huh? She turned on two fans, and handed me the hair dryer. She told me I should focus it on my face and chest and she'd be back in ten. Did I mention the door didn't close properly and we had to push a chair up against it to keep it (mostly) shut. Did I mention her old Armenian dad and his friend were now (of course) hovering around outside it. 

So there I am, naked, sticky, BROWN, wearing a shower cap, drying myself with a hair dryer in a dirty room in the back of a strip mall in Pasadena. Oh how the mighty have fallen. After nearly 20 minutes (the girl never came back), I got dressed and left. 

Here's the thing though, after the shower, it looked awesome. I mean, just natural normal tan. I was supposed to leave it on for 8 hours, but I was so skeeved out by the place I took a shower as soon as I got home. So it was on for maybe an hour total. Maybe if I'd left it on, I'd be an ebony princess. The world may never know. I'll never know. 


Ok, I'm going to lay down now. 

Someone please explain German people to me

And while you're at it, explain the Playmobil Advent Calendar Police Toy. Police? Advent? Calendar? Toy? Vas da vas?

wow, that's pretty

Today, I had an audition to play a business lady who is mistaken for a hooker by a 20 something guy who is running a casino out of his loft so he and his friends can "live like kings". I've never understood, why it is that in commercials I almost only play moms, while when auditioning for tv and movie roles, it's always prostitutes. Sadie says I should be happy because it means I'm still considered "attractive". Ain't love grand.

So I spent two hours working on editing the Lady Gaga parody, and then hopped in my car in my Marc Jacobs glitter shoes, and some tight pants. I stopped at the bank on the way to the audition, and while I was talking to the teller, my back started to hurt. It started to hurt like that awful little pull you feel right before you get a muscle spasm, except it was my entire lower back. After the hell week I had two months, ago, I'm determined to never experience my back going out again. I hurried through my transaction, and raced down the block to the only place I knew could help me. Le Pain Quotidien.

I walked in, breezed past the pain a l'ancienne, past the pain au chocolate, and barely glanced at the madelaines. I went straight to the bathroom, locked the door, dropped my bag, and laid down on the floor. Now those of you who know me, know that I have serious issues with germs. I wash my hands ALL the time. I don't allow shoes in the house. I secretly hate when people want to shake hands with me, and try not to wipe my hand on my pants while they are still looking. I try not to touch doorknobs and when say all these things out loud, I realize I have a problem. So when I tell you I laid on a public bathroom floor, even if it was in a fancy french bakery, I can assure you I was scared. Once I was down there, the smell of pee was distinctive, and I kept thinking about how I should probably cut off all my hair because no amount of shampoo was going clean me now.

I did the whole routine of stretches that my physical therapist had taught me. I sent Nipper a text. I got up washed my hands, put a few paper towels down on the floor, did a few more stretches, someone jiggled the doorknob and so I finished up my stretch, washed my hands again, and left. I went to the counter, bought a chocolate croissant and and orange juice, and popped a 600mg ibuprofen that I found in the bottom of my wallet (Hallelujah).

I walked with mincey little steps back to my car, drove to Hollywood boulevard, took of my Toms, put on my blue glitter heels, did my 2 minute audition (4 lines, 3 producers, 1 writer, 1 casting director, 10 other hooker/business ladies in waiting) got back in my car and drove straight to the Chinese chair massage place. I can't say anything more about that place because I've been sworn to secrecy. But let's just say there is a place in LA, where you can get a full body massage for $25. And it's not skeevy, or dirty, or weird at all. Years ago, I went to a cheap massage place someone recommended where it was clear that everyone who worked there was sad, sad, sad. After my massage at that sad, sad, place, I got in my car and sobbed. My Chinese chair massage place isn't like that at all. But I can't tell you anything else about it. Except maybe that I almost always fall asleep when they rub my feet. I Love you Chinese chair massage!

SO long story short, my back is fine. I worked it out. But I think I'm going to have to do all the rest of my editing sitting on the exercise ball we bought for when I was pregnant. That aeron chair says it's all ergonomic and stuff, but clearly it lies. It's pretty, but no good for you at all. Kind of like me in my 20's.

This is not me (duh) I borrowed this pic of someone's flickr page. Also I want a pink excercise ball. Someone please send me one. 

So it's just me and ball from here on out. I never used it when I had Jack. Like I was going to be rolling around in the hospital on a big green ball. Nope, not me. When I was in labor at home I was crawling around on the floor saying "Am I in labor?" and "Huh, do you think this is labor?" It really hurt, but I thought maybe it was a stomach ache or something. By the time we got to the hospital I was all "drugs please". Thanks. Then I couldn't feel my legs, and for like 5 minutes straight, I made Nipper say "YOUR LEGS ARE FINE" like three inches from my face, over and over. Then I pushed twice (no joke) and Jack was born. I probably cursed myself to 732 hours in labor with our next kid by telling that story but it's true.

Wait, what was I talking about?

Do your (grand)mama proud

Grandma Mary was all sassafras

The chairs before being reupholstered

threadbare arms

The chairs came back from the upholsterer (last weekend, sue me). They are PERFECT! My grandmother, who was a working class fashion maven, would have been dismayed to see how run down I had let them get. But I was attached to that old fabric because it was hers. I had so many memories of her and my grandfather sitting in them. But my grandmother never would have had something so shabby in her living room, and I learned from my parents that the old fabric was actually something that grandma had them recovered in, sometime in the mid-70s. SO it wasn't the original fabric anyhow. So nice to have something that my grandmother picked for it's good bones. Maybe my grandchildren will be recovering them 50 years from now.

Amy Butler Coreopsis in green

Amy Butler Coreopsis in aqua

Grandpa and Grandma's chairs after being reupholstered

I had a hard time choosing the fabric. It was between three different fabrics from Amy Butler's August Fields collection. The Coreopsis fabric seemed to be a modern version of the fabric that was on the chairs. After draping them in the one yard samples I ordered, I finally decided to do them in two different colors of the same pattern. The set is actually two different chairs (I call the short one grandma's chair, and the tall grandpa's). It looked very anthropologie-ey to me, and tied together all the colors in the pillows and the jadite, franciscan, and murano glass dishes in the fireplace cabinets. Yahooee!

Now about that rug... Sadie and I both bought this stupid rug before we had kids. Before we had people who would lose cheerios, mac and peas, and boogers deep down inside it's wooly pile. I had it cleaned in December, but it's already disgusting. It really needs to be in a bedroom, where it's softness can be appreciated. SO, here are some options I've looked at. They're both from Anthropologie (quelle suprise). I want something colorful, and HUGE to go under the entire area. 

I love LA. Deal with it.

I'm sitting in my office wearing a cashmere sweater with fingerless gloves and a hooded jacket. I'm wearing a wool monkey hat, and uggs. It's 61 degrees. Christmas weather. I think I am officially a southern Californian. It sprinkled this morning. More of  mist really, and the sky is grey, and from the moment I woke up, I've had the strong urge to drink coffee and write beat poetry, whilst contemplating world events, and suicide. So THIS is why people in other places are so creative and hard working! The weather is terrible! Or at least not perfect. Perfect weather makes it very difficult to take things seriously.

just any old January day in Southern California

Yesterday Nipper took Jack to a carnival at the local public school. I knew I was going to have three solid hours to edit my video and get stuff done. But the sun was shining, and everything I don't know about using final cut pro, combined with the beautiful weather, sent me into a minor tremor. I looked at the monitor, checked my iphone, tried to stream a movie on netflix on the laptop, while editing on the imac, checked my phone again, updated facebook 4 times, and then when it really felt like I was about to have a seizure, I got up and walked away.

as cold as it's gonna get

Emerging into the sunshine, my blood pressure immediately dropping, my heart rate slowing, my eyes finally able to lock and focus, I decided that cleaning cat poop off the patio was a much more pleasant way to spend my afternoon that editing. THAT'S how beautiful the weather is. I would rather stand in my yard scooping cat turds out of the decomposed granite than sit in my pretty pink office and work on my own music video. It's a miracle ANYTHING ever gets made around here, much less documented on this blog. I'm about 10 projects behind. So many things to write about, but I can't get myself to come inside, sit down, and write. It's really really nice here!

Our jacaranda is like something the lorax made up

If I'm ever to be a serious anything, we are just going to have to move. Between the sunshine, and the jacaranda blossoms, and the night jasmine, this place is like eden, and anyone who says different has never lived in Michigan in February. Longest month of your life.

hello shoes!

bunny shoes!

Uhm, if you have a daughter, or a friend with a daughter, or really cute feet of your own, you need to see this etsy shop. It's called Hello Shoes and the shop owner has a four year old daughter named Clover, which basically makes me love her and want to be her best friend. I'm fixin to get a pair for Jack's little friend Cleo who will be 3 in a few weeks. But how to choose?! I mean what little girl wouldn't like a pair of Marie Antoinette cupcake shoes? But the bunny shoes are sort of the greatest thing ever. Also I think if you could say a three year old has her own style, the green ice cream cones are right up Cleo's alley. 

Marie Antoinette cupcake shoes

I wish I could wear these cheery rainbow ice cream cone slippers

I mean seriously. I want to put a tiny pair of feet in these and eat them!

lady luggage

Nipper got his James Bond man bag for his birthday so it's only fair that I get this beautiful baby. We may never leave the house with them because they're so fancy. We might just pack them up and leave them by the front door. The anticipation of travel! If I keep planting night blooming jasmine and pink flowers around the house, and I squint really hard, I might be able to convince myself that we're in Bali. Maybe I can get Jack to bring me chilled washcloths doused in ylang ylang on particularly hot days...

In honor of my hermit like, troll under a bridge lifestyle, here is one of my favorite poems. 

Questions of Travel

by Elizabeth Bishop

There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams 
hurry too rapidly down to the sea, 
and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops 
makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion, 
turning to waterfalls under our very eyes. 
--For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains, 
aren't waterfalls yet, 
in a quick age or so, as ages go here, 
they probably will be. 
But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling, 
the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships, 
slime-hung and barnacled. 

Think of the long trip home. 
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? 
Where should we be today? 
Is it right to be watching strangers in a play 
in this strangest of theatres? 
What childishness is it that while there's a breath of life 
in our bodies, we are determined to rush 
to see the sun the other way around? 
The tiniest green hummingbird in the world? 
To stare at some inexplicable old stonework, 
inexplicable and impenetrable, 
at any view, 
instantly seen and always, always delightful? 
Oh, must we dream our dreams 
and have them, too? 
And have we room 
for one more folded sunset, still quite warm? 

But surely it would have been a pity 
not to have seen the trees along this road, 
really exaggerated in their beauty, 
not to have seen them gesturing 
like noble pantomimists, robed in pink. 
--Not to have had to stop for gas and heard 
the sad, two-noted, wooden tune 
of disparate wooden clogs 
carelessly clacking over 
a grease-stained filling-station floor. 
(In another country the clogs would all be tested. 
Each pair there would have identical pitch.) 
--A pity not to have heard 
the other, less primitive music of the fat brown bird 
who sings above the broken gasoline pump 
in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque: 
three towers, five silver crosses. 
--Yes, a pity not to have pondered, 
blurr'dly and inconclusively, 
on what connection can exist for centuries 
between the crudest wooden footwear 
and, careful and finicky, 
the whittled fantasies of wooden footwear 
and, careful and finicky, 
the whittled fantasies of wooden cages. 
--Never to have studied history in 
the weak calligraphy of songbirds' cages. 
--And never to have had to listen to rain 
so much like politicians' speeches: 
two hours of unrelenting oratory 
and then a sudden golden silence 
in which the traveller takes a notebook, writes: 

"Is it lack of imagination that makes us come 
to imagined places, not just stay at home? 
Or could Pascal have been not entirely right 
about just sitting quietly in one's room? 

Continent, city, country, society: 
the choice is never wide and never free. 
And here, or there . . . No. Should we have stayed at home, 
wherever that may be?

Bob Dylan plays harmonica, but daddy is not Bob Dylan

I stumbled onto this book in a book store the other day, and was standing in the children's section trying not to be the crazy mom who cries in public. Fail.

I bought it and brought it home and tried to read it to Jack without being the crazy mom who cries when she does mundane things like read books to her kid. Fail. Big time.

I got through two whole pages until my voice got all strangled and I had to stutter out the words "may you always-know-the-truth, And-see-the...........lights-surrounding......you........may-you-be..........................................................foreveryoung... Sob...

Jack didn't seem to notice, but Nipper was laughing at me from the toy room. "Haha, mommy is a softy!"

The illustrations are so beautiful, with the first page being Woody Guthrie and his fascist killing guitar, playing, as a little boy looks on. On the next page, Guthrie hands the guitar over to the little boy, and we watch him and the guitar grow up and move on. The words, the original words to the song "Forever Young" by Bob Dylan are so evocative of everything you feel about having a kid. On the back of the book there is a quote from Dylan about writing the song: " I wrote it thinking about one of my boys and not wanting to be too sentimental." sob sob sob.

Here is the little video of the song with some of the illustrations from the book. SOBBY SOB SOB SOB.

Lady Gaga returns!

Getting Gaga ready for her video shoot

I spent my Mother's Day with two of my most talented, beautiful, and amazingly generous friends, their kids, and spouses. We finished shooting the Lady Gaga parody video! I've been trying all night to figure out how to embed the song here for it's Mother's Day debut. But my brain is fried, and I've run out of minutes my body will allow me to be awake today. If any of you dearies out there in blog-topia know how to put a song of your own onto a blogger blog. Please share! In the meantime Happy Mother's Day to all you mamas out there who miss your hips when they were sleek, your breasts when they were high, and your time when it was your own. I know you wouldn't trade them back. Kiss your babies good night. I'm grateful to all the moms in my life.

Happy Mother's Day

Or as Madame Amina taught us today en francais "Bonne Fete de Mere!" Which when asked to repeat "en Francais s'il vous plait", Jack gave Amina a big raspberry. That went over well with all the moms who thought it was cute, and laughed, and I'm afraid may now be his only response "en Francais".

les ouefs

Today was filled with birthday parties for 3 and 4 year olds. We played with light sabers, smashed piñatas, ate cupcakes, ate pizza, double fisted lollipops, lolled in a ball pit for the better part of an hour, sang happy birthday out of key, drove home and collapsed.

We're filming the rest of our Lady Gaga parody video tomorrow, (yahooey!) which should be fun. I get to spend mother's day with some of my best girlfriends, and their kids, dressed in spandex, and pink wig. Who could ask for anything more.

Last night Nipper surprised me with my annual mother's day video a few days early. Every year he makes a 15-20 minute video of all the previous years pictures and videos and puts it to music. Last year it was to "Wake Up" by Arcade fire. This year, he used "Prodigal Son" by the Rolling Stones" and "All These Things I've Done" by The Killers. Oh, and a pretty song by Dick Siegel called "Little Things", that makes me cry and cry, and is the perfect song about love and family. Every year we sit and watch it and laugh and cry, and exclaim that we can't believe how little Jack was, and now how big he is, and what a nice life he has. It's amazing to see a whole year condensed into a few minutes.

We've been struggling with some choices about pre-school, and nanny stuff lately. trying to figure out what is the best thing for Jack, and for our family. It's made for more than a few days filled with self doubt, and frustration. But seeing the video I was reminded that it's what happens here at home, it's the little things that will make up the the sum of Jack's life. So, regardless of where he ends up in school (or doesn't) I'll remember that every day, I'm his mom, and we get to dance (at least for now), and sing, and name our toots "Ashgadodo".

I think we'll call her Bessie

Nipper also surprised me with a salad spinner. I know! It's been an ongoing joke that I've been suffering under the tenure of our previous salad spinner. It was one of those pull string dealies, that was never quite right. It was like trying to wash your salad with a cheap yo-yo. It always unraveled and made this unbelievably loud wrenching noise that never failed to make me curse, and shout "I CAN'T LIVE LIKE THIS ANYMORE".

upholstery mania!

I don't really want word to get out on my upholstery guy, but I have to crow a little bit. I'm not sure how he is making a living wage with what he charges, but until he realizes that he is a national treasure and starts charging accordingly, I'm having everything under the sun re-upholstered.

It started with the kitchen curtains which he made for $200. What?! I know! Ridiculous! 

Then my neighbor put this perfectly good 1950s swivel chair out on the curb, and my mom brought it home. It was in rough shape, but had good bones. I didn't take before pictures because I am a bad blogger, but look at it after, and imagine a pumpkin being turned into a gilded carriage. It was that bad. 

The arm cover rubbed raw on Grandma's chair. Shame...

Nikki's Anthropologie chair that her dog ruined. Boo...

When he dropped off the little chair, I had him pick up my grandmother's chairs, and my friend Nikki's chair. It's like I'm a clearing house for disabled furniture. Nikki was over here last week, shooting her scenes in our pilot, and saw the extra fabric I had from my crazed nocturnal internet shopping spree.  She had a chair that she got at Anthropologie that her dog ruined, but she can't bear to throw away, so she's going to use the extra fabric for her chair. Maybe that's why I ordered it. Somewhere out there I knew an Anthropologie chair needed rescuing.

Amy Butler Full Bloom in Orange

I tried to give him our pouf chair to recover in this fabric, but he thought it would look like crazy town, and encouraged me to find a solid color I like. I demurred because he's a kind old man who transforms furniture for what seems like peanuts, and I didn't want to cross him. But after he left, I thought "crazy town" is exactly the look you are going for dumb dumb. "Crazy town" is what you're all about. So I'm going to take the pouf and the fabric to his shop, and tell him that I know it goes against all good sense to do it that way, but I'm not a well woman, and it's my dying wish... or something like that.

I'm not telling what fabric I chose for Grandma's chairs. It's a big freakin secret. You'll just have to wait for them to be done. Which should be any day now. I asked him to please finish them before my dad visits next week. Otherwise, we'll all be getting very cozy together on the couch.

Oh and also, apparently my second favorite color is orange. I had no idea...