To Where Does Cool Move?

My friend Stef is putting her condo up for sale which she did not consult me about, rendering me embittered, sulky, and tying a POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS around her building so no one will want to buy her unit and she and her adorable fam will have to be my neighbor forever. But I'm happy for her, especially because I know she's moving to a more junior town for all the right reasons. "We're not saving anything living here," she said, "And it would be so cool to be able to be saving, to be able to explore Montessori [for her daughter Mbel]."

It really would be cool. Would it be cooler than cool?

As I look around our place with the spiral staircase which Baby Girl is inevitably going to take a skate down since I myself who has mastered steps over 28 years have already skated down...As I consider the attributes of our home's location: Close to the T, within walking distance to everything you could want, a 10 minute drive to the airport, I begin to consider all those attributes as part of our Cool Urban Life. I love the life we have cultivated here, but the priorities are shifting, sometimes rapidly, sometimes as slow but large glaciers roving over the peninsulas of my twentysomething desires.

We have no plans to move any time soon, but I feel its imminence in a way, and I'm okay with it, I have to be okay with it. I've got a cool girl to be providing for, and she's worth the sacrifice of a spiral staircase.

Even if she is not a genius...

she's a cute little Easter egg, isn't she?

Martha of My Domain

I've been feeling very satisfied about my roles as desperate housewife and baby wrangler this week. I wish I could tell you it is because I had been reflecting on the call of Titus 2 to be a keeper of my home, or that I've retrofitted a jacuzzi into my bathroom, or that Baby Girl is walking all because of my patient lead. But the real reason is because I was reading the gospel according to Martha while I was in Michigan. And now Martha is all up in my head.

Martha is not someone that I suspect many of us look at and think, "Well, if Martha can do that, then surely so can I!" We all know that she operates with a team of elf people prepping her kitchen and tilling her farm in the Hamptons and making sure she has full bottles of toner to keep her Botoxy forehead looking all smooth and supple. Rather, I imagine that most of you all are like I am and look at her and wonder: If I had what she has, would I still do it like she does?

Or would I sit back in my yoga pants clearing out the DVR while eating Twizzlers for lunch and still have traces of yesterday's mascara smudged around my eyes?

I'd like to think that I would at least attempt to live upright like Martha, if I had all that help. But since I don't, I try to steal germs of what I believe to be her lifestyle. At least the life that she purports to live, BECAUSE MAGAZINES DON'T LIE, YOUNG.

I was really inspired by how clean she tries to keep her office(s). So this week I've been cleaning up the kitchen before I endeavor to do any other shenanigans. I cleaned out the science experiments in the fridge. I've tried to have the kitchen table cleared before Lovey Loverpants get home. I've also really tried to live out the "no time like the present" with my other chores. And you know what? I don't have as much dread about all that I have to do, because I've been kissing all the ugly frogs first and then the rest of the details all look like handsome princes.

I know this sounds so fundamental, so big fat DUH to many of you, but I've been stuck for a couple months on what I esteem to be my duties and what I feel are things that eventually someone will get to, at some point. When a black guy becomes president. Oh snap that's NOW!

I'm amazed that something like an article in a magazine for hypermanic domestics could help me to refocus my priorities and realize that it's not all about me. I want a clean home so that I and everyone else I love that lives in it or visits it will feel at ease. It's so basic, but yet so hard to realize internally and then to master.

If you'll excuse me now. I need to see if we have any Twizzlers for lunch.

Without a Trace

My salutes to all of you cookie factories that are shelling out peanut blossoms like you've taken up residence at the Keebler Elf Tree and can't leave until you've produced enough bakery to get us through until Inauguration Day. Here at Chez Loverpants, I've tried a new messipe and an old favorite and, upon purchasing some cute little red lunch sacks from Tarjay, was prepared last evening to bag 'em up for our pastor and some other VIPs. But Lovey Loverpants missed that ESP message. And I did my share to decimate the supply, as well. In fact, I have just been Hoovering chocolate these days. It's a vice of mine. Once I start I just can't stop. Which is why I thought I'd be safe making these cookies because they aren't all ooey gooey chocolate. Instead, they are ooey gooey caramel. And by jove, that's practically carrot sticks to a chocoholic, right? Ermhem, yeah. They are more aptly called Death Row Caramel Cookies, with a generous portion of chocolate infused, make no mistake. If I'm on my way to the electric chair, these are what I'm ordering up.

I share them with you here, per the request of my good mate Regan, who approved of them and requested the messipe for her own purposes.

Nary a trace of cookie goodness left in Chez Loverpants....