This post is from last December.  It is still applicable.

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One day last week, Sean and I spent the afternoon putting up Christmas decorations.  I used to really enjoy decking the halls, but I have come to a point in life where it seems to be more work than fun.

As I root through box after box of stuff, I wonder if hanging fake glittery stuff on a fake tree only to be removed and boxed up again in 30 days is a good use of my time and energy, both of which seem to be in short supply these days.  Sparkle and glitter and garland is not really what the season is about after all.

But then I look at my little five-year-old boyfriend who is totally into Christmas and the decorating and how he is thrilled with each ornament, even the cruddy ones. I realize then that it’s worth it because one day too soon he will be too busy or too cool to spend an afternoon decorating for Christmas with his mama.  And oh how I will rue the day.

That thought however did not stop me from lying down on the living room floor in an attempt to stave off that spinning sensation of being overwhelmed that often comes with the holidays but this year seems to be magnified in light of the economy and world and personal events.

As I lay there on the floor trying to create some order in my mind so that I might create some order in my life, Sean wanders over and straddles me with his hands on his hips.  I feel like the worker who has been caught napping in the janitor’s closet.  He  plops down on my tummy.  He leans over and looks me square in the face.  He searches my face with a furrowed brow, lips pursed in concern.  I’m afraid that he knows, that I’ve not done a good job of keeping my adult worries and cynicism to myself.

“Mom?” he asks as he leans over me.

“Yes?” I say, bracing myself.

“Did you know that you have farkles on your face?”

He draws his face closely into mine and like a surgeon,  he ever so delicately plucks a dot of glitter from my cheek.

“See?” he says, holding his be-glittered finger one inch from my eyeball, “Farkles!”

He jumps up, ready to keep going.

“C’mon mom, let’s keep decorating!” he cries with glee as he tugs on my arm.

This boy, he is good medicine for a bad attitude.

I decide that for him, that I would do a better job of at least pretending to find joy in the fake and sparkly, that I would be careful not spoil these few precious years in his life when the world is small and uncomplicated and magical.

So for now, for the boy, my attitude shall be like my tree — fake and sparkly.  And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

My mother and father-in-law have owned a cosmetics studio and clothing boutique in downtown Tuna for the past 30 years.  In addition to selling makeup and outfitting the local church ladies, they have provided a number of other services to the locals.

Up until a few years ago, an older lady named Leona would come in every other week or so with her checkbook and hand it over to George.  Leona couldn’t read or write a lick so she brought her checkbook in and George would balance her statement and tell her how much money she had and write out whatever checks needed to be written.

Another lady came in to the store three times a week for seven years. She never bought anything, but she needed some place to be for the three hours her husband took dialysis.  She drove in from some outlying area and after she dropped her husband off at the hospital,  she would stop in at the store and hang out.  George and Cleo offered her a comfortable chair, a place to put her feet up, something to drink, some fudge if George had made some that week, but mostly they offered her some place to be.

Occasionally you’d get a crazy older lady who would come out of the dressing room asking for a bigger size wearing nothing but her bra and a pair of stretch pants.  George would duck quietly out the front door because he is a gentleman.

I’ve been thinking about Memaw’s store a lot lately and the cast of characters that have come in and out of there over the years.  Memaw is in her mid-80s and still works that store most days.  I’ve been after her to retire.  Although I don’t know what could possibly fill the void that she would leave behind on Main Street.

The following post was published in November of 2006

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Therapy With A Side Of Cold Cream

My mother-in-law, Cleo, has owned a cosmetics and clothing business on Main Street in downtown Tuna for more than 25 years. She has enjoyed a fair measure of success for a variety of reasons.

One, she can flat out sell. That woman could sell the devil a Bible and then he would order a few more for gifts. Two, Papa George stands squarely behind her, encouraging her and supporting her every step of the way. Three, she understands that she is not selling clothes and cosmetics, but hope and dreams. And four, the good people of Tuna need some place where they can get therapy and a makeover at the same time.

A bell tied to the front door, clinkles and clankles, announcing the arrival of each customer. She greets them by name. “Helloooow there! Come in!” she calls from behind the counter looking over the top of her rhinestone bifocals. She asks about their children, their grandchildren. She knows them.

Usually the first customer of the day is some old farmer wearing bib overalls. That might seem odd if you were at the mall, but no one in downtown Tuna blinks an eye to see a farmer in a boutique. His wife has sent him in with an empty powder compact that he pulls out of the pocket on the front of his overalls. Cleo knows exactly what to replace it with without even looking at it. His wife has bought the same product in the same shade for the last 25 years.

He pulls up a stool at the makeover counter to rest and chat. He leans on his cane and Cleo leans on the counter to hear the latest. His wife has cancer, but she is hanging in there he says. Cleo listens and offers him a piece of homemade fudge. There’s nothing that George’s fudge won’t make better. Cleo rings up the makeup and walks him to the door. “You hang in there now. We’re a’prayin’ for you,” she says as he makes his way out the door.

Ever so often, some young gal will come in with her head hanging low. She’ll pull up a stool at the cosmetics counter and pour out her woes all over the eye shadow counter. Like a good bartender, Cleo listens. Her husband has left her. He took the dog. Cleo gives her a piece of homemade fudge and pats her arm.

Fifteen minutes later, her woes have been replaced with a new face and a new blouse. When you’re living your life out in a country and western song, a bag of cosmetics and a new blouse will fix most all that ails you. She hugs Cleo as she leaves the store. “Keep your chin up gal!” Cleo calls to her. She has made a customer and she has made a friend.

You just can’t get that at the mall.

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The entire Tuna series can be found at the Best of Antique Mommy

“He’s cuter than he used to be.”

This was a comment that I overheard recently at a family gathering. When I realized the speaker was referring to my son, I laughed involuntarily. Not a belly laugh, but a sniff of disbelief as though I were trying to expel a gnat from my nose. Cuter than he used to be! Absurd.

Her words seeped into the spongy part of my brain that processes and analyzes. I was surprised when I started to feel a little indignant. What exactly did she mean by that? That Sean wasn’t cute to start with but was just now approaching entry level cute? She was obviously unaware that the nurse in the delivery room had pronounced him “too cute” at birth. Too cute — too, as in unbearably cute, a level of cuteness that could not be tolerated, criminally cute. A professional nurse would not lie about something as serious as that.

It was the first time that it had ever occurred to me that there might be someone on the earth who didn’t see Sean as I do – that someone might actually think that he is not cute, but just average, just so-so. I was astonished.

As conversations about cousins, weather and jobs rose and fell and floated around the room, I held the expression of someone who was listening intently. I nodded and said things like “Is that right? You don’t say” all while diagramming those six words in my head. Cuter than he used to be.

What if she were right? What if I was mistaken and Sean wasn’t catalogue cover cute? I kneaded this idea like a cat atop a velvet pillow. Silently, purposefully, obsessively pushing, pushing. Would it be so bad if my kid wasn’t cute or would it just be bad that I was so blind?

As I pondered these things, I recalled that it was just the other day that Antique Daddy and I were looking through some early photos of Sean and we both agreed, and even laughed about how deluded we were. We didn’t remember him looking so goofy. We didn’t remember that his head looked like a big bald happy toothless bowling ball attached to drunken rag doll body. We thought he was too cute.  And in our eyes,  he was too cute – so stunningly and unbearably cute that we could do little else but sit around and look at him and sigh.

It turns out that he is cuter than he used to be. And I am even more blindly in love with him than I used to be.

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This post was originally published in June of 2006.  Every season Sean is cuter than he used to be and his daddy and I are astonished at how much more in love with this child we are than we used to be. We didn’t think it was possible.

Antique Daddy was out of town one day last week. He works from home, so the three of us are together a lot. A lot. Of togetherness. All  together. At one time. In one place. Often.

So, on those rare occasions when he’s out of town, I miss him and all that, yada yada yada, but it’s also kind of nice for Sean and I to do our own free-form, free-spirited thing as that’s the kind of people Sean and I are – two zany Bohemians.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand (which I haven’t really thought of just yet but give me a minute) AD has always worked from home and for the most part, it’s a really good deal, but on those rare occasions when he is not here, it’s kind of extra special to have the little boy all to myself. Sean and I like to violate all of daddy’s rules when he’s gone like eating in the car, eating in the den and watching cartoons in mommy’s big bed, while eating. When the cat’s away the mice will eat anywhere they want and feel no remorse.

Well, it turns out I did not have a subject at hand, so here’s a post from December 2005.  Man, that was a long time ago.

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Today, on the soft fleshy party of my right hip (as if there is place on me that is not soft or fleshy) I am sporting an exact replica of South America, only bigger and with more purple and yellow. And the reason I have this bruise is because my husband works at home.

Antique Daddy is a WAHD (Work-At-Home-Dad) and I am a SAHM (Stay-At-Home-Mom) and we have a SWIFT (Sneaky-Wily-Incredibly-Fast-Toddler). WAHD + SAHM + SWIFT = boundary issues.

We have both always worked from home together and it has always worked for us. The upside to this scenario has been that we get to eat lunch together in our jammies and grope each other when we pass in the hallway – both of which are frowned upon in a regular office.

We established boundaries early on so that each of us knew that the other was working and not available for sex or help moving the furniture. The downside is that more often than not, the workday doesn’t ever really end, but working extra hours in exchange for groping your spouse in the middle of the day seemed like a fair trade.

As you know, we recently added a toddler to the staff here at AntiquesRUs and the boundaries have shifted. There is far less hallway groping these days, maybe because the hallway is now blocked off with a gate and the grope-ees are both chronically tired.

Now I know what you may be thinking when I use the term gate. You have pictured in your mind a device that prohibits the entry or exit from one location to another. Oh but you would be wrong. It’s not just a gate – it’s a baby gate, which means the only person in the house who can easily operate it or scoot under it is a baby.

Now some of you may be wondering what Antique Daddy does that he gets to work at home and the answer to this question is I don’t really know. Here’s what I know: He sits in a chair all day wearing a Borg implant and speaking in acronyms to other members of his Collective whom I think are located in a galaxy far, far away, like New Jersey.

So a few days ago, Antique Daddy informs me that he has a very important call and that he will be speaking to very important people about very important things and that it is very important that the boy not join the discussion. And because I have a college degree and he spoke very slowly making sure to enunciate the multi-syllabic word important, I understood the importance of what he was saying to me.

So then, I made sure the baby gate was securely shut and latched leaving Antique Daddy to manage in peace all things important. But soon thereafter, the boy felt it was important that he speak with his father immediately regarding an important matter. And so he brought this to my attention by rattling the gate like a gorilla and screaming DAHDEEDAHDEE which means, “Father, may I please speak with you?”

I informed Sean that Daddy was on an important blah blah blah important and that … It was then that I saw the vapor trail that lead under the gate and towards Antique Daddy’s office at the speed of light.

I knew I couldn’t unlatch the gate without the assistance of a toddler, so I hurdled it Flo Jo style and sprinted after him hoping to tackle him before he reached the end zone.

I congratulated myself on clearing the gate and managed to snag his shirt tail just before he breached security, but not before slipping on a Lego and landing squarely on my right hip with the boy on top. We both laid there on the floor for a moment, me unable to even moan in pain due to the lack of air in my lungs and the boy laughing hysterically saying “Do again Mommy! Do again!”

At this point, Antique Daddy has completed the very important call, opens the door and looks down to find the boy and me lying on the floor. “Are you just going to lie around all day?” he asks.

The next time I’m at the doctor’s office and he asks me “Is everything (doesyourhusbandabuseyou) OK at home? I’ll tell him no, everything is not OK. We are a WAHD-SAHM-SWIFT and it’s brutal. Is there a state agency for this?