Toby Thirty

This is Toby. I met him in high school and we were married when we were both nineteen, still kids, really. This picture says a lot about him. He's not afraid to wear an apron and make biscuits and use indecent amounts of butter. He has a spectacular and twisted sense of humor. And did I mention he's pretty dang hot and knows it? Toby turned thirty last Thursday, so Happy Birthday from your older woman.

In other news, I did some extracurricular sewing....for fun. I get sort of obsessive about things sometimes and if you read my last post you can probably guess what it is. I've been dying to make some Regency-era clothes for the fam, especially since I think Toby would be uber-sexy in a tail-coat and top hat and empire waisted dresses are made for busty girls like me. I started with the Sense and Sensibility Regency girl's dress pattern and made this for Liv. The fabric is so NOT period, but it is SO her:Pardon the crappy picture. I learned that the S&S girl's pattern runs small. I measured Liv and she was exactly the size eight on the envelope. However, it was so tight around her shoulders and chest that I couldn't put buttons on it and had to grommet the back so it will lace up. Then I had to add a modesty panel behind it so her back doesn't show.

Amiable?

Happiness is...curling up with my husband Friday night, with a long productive day behind us and watching Pride and Prejudice while eating homemade pizza. He liked it enough that Saturday night we stayed up until two watching all the rest of the movie. By the way, I had to look for a while to find a picture that wasn't huge Colin Firth, tiny everyone else. Not that I mind, but I liked this one better...

I've just been a fan of Jane Austen books and movies for the past two or three years. I thought they were romantic fluff for fluffy girls. This movie is won me over completely, and I've been just a tad bit obsessive in the last year, especially with Hen Day encouragement and Masterpiece Theater's excellent Austen-fest. The appeal is...well, the characters are so real and engaging. Elizabeth has a sense of humor about almost everything, Darcy is really a decent guy despite his arrogance. I love how Mr. Bennett maintains a steady laugh about all going on around him, from his silly wife to his shady son-in-law.

I've always had some difficulty accepting that the highest praise of character in Jane Austen novels is amiability. It compliments a sort of dull-witted, cow-like contentment in my mind. Of being too nice to cause any trouble. But I've been thinking about happiness a lot lately, because I think I am. Toby and I spend all day every day together, working at making corsets for Damsel In This Dress. And we're far from having nothing to talk about even though we don't have the conversations about how the day was spend at the end of it. Life is not easy or slow-paced. We've been putting in long days for the past month or two. Ivy is in that belligerent stage where amiability suddenly seems like a very desirable trait. And maybe some Regency dresses and tailcoats on the side!

Great carpet...

More Ivy again. The berber carpet in the kids' room is a darkish mix of gray, red, blue and green. I found this morning, after Ivy dropped her diaper...and several other...shall we say, "packages." I knew that I had not found all the mess, but it was so well hidden by the carpet. I found them by stepping in them, no less than SIX times.

Ivy-line

We've had quite the crazy week here. Toby and I have been scrambling to make extra money to pay our house payment, and get more materials, and re-establish our savings depleted during vacation. We've also been making a pile of Wench Corsets to send to Michelle and Tyler for their Fall Renaissance Fair season, so that they can concentrate on making the higher-dollar items.

I'm ashamed to say that the kids have been somewhat at their own devices quite frequently. We're not neglectful per se, just distracted. Mom and Dad came to see me on my birthday, and after letting themselves in, just started laughing. This is what they saw:Ivy had climbed onto the table and smeared a whole stick of softened butter all over herself and her little mushroom jacket. She was not very happy about it. For all she's a kid who loves to make a mess, she certainly hates to be messy...or dirty...or especially GREASY.

Today, Toby made macaroni and cheese for the herd for lunch. Inicientally, we had to substitute oil and buttermilk for the butter, which is all gone due to the butter body paining done earlier. It must wear her out to be a little beast all morning, since this is what happened when she sat down to eat it:

She's still asleep as we speak, and probably dreaming of mayhem.

Tagged!

THE RULES:
1. link the person who tagged you
2. post the rules
3. tell 6 unspectacular quirks of yours
4. tag 6 fellow bloggers by linking them

Rebecca at Marvelous Pigs in Satin tagged me on this one. My first!

2. Look up!

3. I freak out when I think people know what I'm thinking. Like I just chased Toby out of the room, because he might read this while I type it. I know communication is a good thing, but GET OUT OF MY HEAD! Oh, yeah, I guess a blog is somewhere for people to see inside my noggin, isn't it? And he also promised me he'd read it later anyway.

4. I try to only get out of bed when the clock stands at a multiple of five. Just another form of the snooze self-deception. It's just so warm and snuggly, and the house has been cool in the mornings lately.

5. I don't know enough people with blogs well enough to send links to this. Rebecca tagged me, and two of the others I know. So the chain ends with me, sadly. I observe, I don't interact.

6. I like to have a book within reach at all times. I love breast-feeding in part because there's not a whole lot else I can do, so I might as well read while I feed the baby. It's been a bit difficult to keep up with my reading, because I can't do it while sewing, but we've been listening to books on CD while we work. Right now we're finishing the last Harry Potter book.

7. I love a good bath. At least an hour, with a book and a snack and the door locked, so no kid can bother me. And hot enough to make me look like a lobster, even in summertime. Yes, it is massively selfish.

8. Ah, Gwen. Remember the Subway Pizza subs with pickles, olives, mayonnaise and mustard? Occasionally, I'll still eat one and think of you (not the calorie count or the sodium count or the shame). A happy and strangely delicious accident.

Ten Years Gone

Today is the day before my thirtieth birthday. I have the predictable mixed feelings. Ten years ago, my PaPa died. At twenty years old, I lost a grandpa who was more like another father to me. Six months later, I was pregnant with Olivia. It's the point in my life where I stopped being a child, and became an adult. The point where I stepped off the career track and onto the family track.

My family moved from Kansas to Missouri when I was seven. My parents placed a double-wide trailer onto an acre Grandma and PaPa gave them, right behind the garden. We could walk between houses in less than a minute. We shared a driveway and more good and bad experiences with them than I can relate here. It was like having another set of parents that lived right next door. I often remark that I was "raised by the elderly."

They came to our school functions with Mom, took us fishing, took us to church, and didn't stint on the constructive criticism when we needed it. PaPa was a retired farmer who'd had two boys for ten and twelve years before my mother was born. He often forgot and called her "son," and he'd do the same with us. He helped teach me to drive, with an exasperating combination of patience and confidence that his way was the ONLY way to do things. I learned to drive the riding lawn mower first, then the tractor, then the old 1981 Chevy Impala.

These last two pictures are from my wedding. Grandma was too sick to come, but PaPa was there, and he always did love a crowd. He loved to tell stories and gab with anyone he met. I can hear his voice in my head, proudly stating that he had "eight grandkids and eight great-grandkids." He was always so proud of his grandkids. I think the total is now: eight grandkids and fifteen great-grandkids.

My Hollis' middle name is Garland, after PaPa. He does remind me of him in some ways. He inherited the Huffman ears. He also has a way of giving you a shy but conspiritorial smile, the way PaPa would do when you'd catch him eating the dry bread Grandma had stashed away for making meatloaf or hamburgers. I don't know why he liked eating it so much. He was a young man during the Depression, and maybe that influenced his tastes somewhat.

Somehow turning thirty pales in comparison to having lived one third of my live without him.