Saturday, September 15, 2012

I Have GOT to Learn to Stop Taking Pinterest Personally. . .

I am not a "bandwagon" type of girl. 

(That's something you should just know about me from the start.) 

I never run right out and buy the newest or most efficient gadget or device (I prefer to let others do the Beta-testing, then I'll pick one up in 6 months, when they're 50% cheaper and come in 8 different colors), and, to my knowledge, I have NEVER been on the cusp of any new trend.  As a matter of fact, 'new trends' tend to smack me rather un-gently in the face, generally several months after everyone else on the planet has become aware of them.  And it always comes as such a surprise to me!  One day I'm out grocery shopping or running errands, minding my own business, and suddenly it dawns on me that everyone ---and I do mean EVERYONE--- around me is wearing neon-yellow hoodies with purple-puffy running shoes.  And I always do a slow 360 degree turn, examining the people around me, and then there's this flash of clarity that comes, and I'm all:  "Hmph.  I guess that's what people are doing now."

The only exception that I can think of to this rule is that brief, beautiful period in the the 90's when the "grunge" look had its little fling with fashion.  I was ALL OVER IT. 
. . . You mean to tell me that I get to wear combat boots, soft, ripped jeans and flannel, and put no effort into my appearance whatsoever, and people will consider me hip?!?  WHERE DO I SIGN?  Ahh. . .  I held on to that trend with both hands for as long as I possibly could.  (Just for the record, if wearing your bathrobe or pajamas in public, or as work attire, ever becomes fashionable then you can all just write me off right then and there, because you will probably never again see me in a pair of actual pants.  And these yoga-chicks, with their soft, stretchy pants, shirts, and insanely comfortable footwear are SO CLOSESeriously ladiesYou are SO close!  Take the next step already!!!  It's called evolution!!)

Another good example of this tendency of mine to completely ignore whatever is currently taking the world by storm is facebook.  Though now it feels as if I have had a facebook account FOREVER, my husband actually had to MAKE me start one.  (I was still on Myspace.  I felt like I wasted enough time on the computer already, and really didn't feel like I was missing out on anything.  Then he starts with the peer pressure, and the "everyone's doing it". . . good thing it was just facebook and not crystal meth.  He was VERY convincing.)  So I've had a facebook account for years now.  I probably started mine right after your Mawmaw figured out "the emails", and her grandson started a facebook account for her and showed her how to use it, so she could log on and keep up with her "babies."

What I'm saying here is that I am roughly as hip as anyone out there's Mawmaw, and I always have been.  It's a character trait, and most probably a flaw.  But, as flaws go, I have much larger and more obnoxious ones to work on, so this one will probably be put on the backburner. 

Where I will probably forget about it until the day I die.

At which point I will be buried in a pine box.

(When EVERYONE knows that the most fashionable material for burial implements of the time comes in Oak.)

So when this whole "pinterest" thing hit, as I'm fairly certain you can guess by now --- I completely ignored it.

People would mention it, and I would sip my coffee and be:  Pinterest.  Hmmm. . .  Yes.  Yes, of course.  That was He-Man's home planet, was it not?  Pass the scones, please.  

(Another thing you should probably know about me is that when I am having conversations in my imagination, we are ALWAYS eating scones.  If you ever show up to my subconscious, it would just be polite to bring some.)

And I would receive those blank, mildly-amused stares that tell me when people don't know if I am joking around, or am actually less socially aware of what is going on in the world, than some child in Zimbabwe that lives in a hut with a dirt floor.  (NOT that there is anything wrong with dirt floors.  My ancestors grew up on them, and they were GENIUS in their own way.  Less to clean, you know:  Wash the walls, the counters, the kids. . . you're done!  Brilliant in its simplicity, really.)

So the pinterest thing happened and I was left in the dust, basically, and I did not care at all. 

Then. . . I start seeing people posting their Pinterest Projects on facebook. . .

And they're REALLY cute!  (Or cool, or nifty, or thrifty, or time-saving.  You get the idea.)  And I begin to think:  I HAVE Elmer's glue!  I could so totally DO THAT!!  Then my friends begin posting about ---literally--- how pinterest has changed their lives.

So. . . it's going to change my life, and it's NOT P90X (I hope I got those letters and number right, because it COULD be Z72Georgia.  I admit to only having a passing acquaintance with the system) and I can do it by using things I already have around the house?  . . . I guess. . .  why not?

'Why not,' indeed.

Seriously.  I hope you're all seeing how very much this is making Pinterest seem like crystal meth.  Am I the only one who sees this?!?  You start off with facebook, and it's your "gateway site," and then people start turning you on to OTHER sites that do more and offer more, and before you know it you're sitting on your computer all day long, repinning this or that but never actually having the time to DO ANY of it, and your ass is the size of a Jeep Cherokee.  (Also: "gateway site."  I just coined that term.  It's mine.  Don't use it.)

So.  I got on the Pinterest.

And you should probably feel more than a little intimidated by me now, because I don't mind telling you:  I know how to do EVERYTHING.

You need to paint your own furniture in charming ways, but first need to strip off the hideous finish that it came with?

I can help with that.  Let me just pull up that little pin.

Need to know how to bind your own books?

I gotcha covered.

Want to crotchet a tea-cozy for your Honda Civic, but you're unsure about about what gauge needle to use?

I'm sorry.  I never learned to crotchet.  However, I DO have a lovely instructional pin saved, and I'm sure it will show you everything you need to know in a clear, step-by-step manner.

This is not to say that ALL of my time on pinterest has been wasted.  Oh, not at all.  (I'd say probably only 84% - 85% of my time was wasted.  And that's a generous percentage.)

I HAVE had a few glowing successes.

There's the old, grubby cookie sheet that I spray-painted to look like a field, and then put all of our little dinosaur magnets on.  That turned out okay.  And the baby and Padawan LOVE playing with it.  I mean, sure, I'm giving the children pieces of rusty old metal coated in chemicals to use as play-things, but who DOESN'T do that these days??

There's the dry-erase board for "notes" that I made using just a sheet of attractive scrapbook paper, an 8 x 10 picture frame, and some dry erase markers.  IT is still hanging on our living room wall!  =)

(. . . with Michael's work-schedule from some random, but very busy, week this past July written on it, but STILL!  It's written with dry-erase markers!  I can erase it ANY time I want!!)

I DID learn how to make my own Febreeze, which has turned out to be a WONDERFUL development in my life.  I had been making my own stuff using essential oils.  Fabric softener in MUCH cheaper.  (And virtually the only reason we buy fabric softener any more.)  I go a little nuts with the stuff.  Walking around the house, spritzing everything that looks like it even MIGHT be covered in fabric. . . all the while thinking:  Sure, it smells nice.  But do I actually FEEL like I am in a fresh, windswept meadow?  Is it making me believe it?  . . .better spray some more. . .

I made what ended up being a passably cute wreath for our front door, using just some old fake flowers and a dollar store wreath, and a cardboard "T" cut from a Huggies box and covered in yarn.

I got halfway through that project before I realized that I would need to hot-glue the yarn to the cardboard to get it to stay. 

And so I did.

And with all of the warnings out there about weapons I find it hard to believe that every glue gun on the planet ISN'T stamped all over with the words:  ARE YOU SURE?  BECAUSE THIS IS GOING TO HURT.

(They say some scars never heal.  So far, the unfading dots that came from the magma-hot glue on my fingertips would seem to bare this out.)

Plus side:  If we ever have a home invasion, and roughly 3 - 5 minutes for me to heat the 'gun' up, and the invading criminal decides to attack me within 2 feet of a working electrical outlet. . . well, let me just say:  THAT perp is in TRUH-BULL.

(I'm so hard-core like that.)



But there have also been the pinterest failures, of which I am reluctant to talk about in great depth.  (The emotional, and fingertip, wounds are just too fresh.)

I guess I can give a couple examples without too much angst involved, though:

The stylish headbands made from woven strips of t-shirt fabric leaps to mind.

They were really cute.

And SO EASY to make!!

So I made four of them before I realized that my head is weirdly-shaped and looks better when my hair is long, and that there is a REASON I have not worn headbands for thirty-five years:  They make me look like a Dumbo-eared 8 year-old on a fitness kick.

But mostly, I will have to admit, the problem lies with me and not pinterest.

(I have issues with follow-through.  Or attention span.  What would you call it when you have about 20 potential craft-projects crammed into a little space beside your couch right now, and they've all been sitting there for at least a month?  I could pick up any one of them and probably have something adorable in an hour or two.  And today's Saturday, so I its the perfect time to do it.  And yet I can almost GUARANTEE that that is NEVER going to happen.)

And do you know WHY that is never going to happen?

Because books exist.

And because I am highly-distractable.

And because I like snacks.  A LOT.  And I bet even Martha Stewart couldn't eat a sausage ball while making an adorable Christmas village out of old toilet paper rolls without gluing her pants to her napkin.  (I ALWAYS use a napkin.  There's a word for that, folks, and that word is: 'fancy.')

And because, after a while, all the things that I could POSSIBLY do begin to feel like a responsibility.  And that's when the 'fun' element completely disappears.

And you know what happens when the fun is gone?

Exactly. 

You sit by my side of the couch until next Christmas, when I move you to the coat closet to make room for a guest, and then you are eventually shoved into the Rubbermaid container in the garage labelled "Craft Stuff", which I will not go through again until some time in late July when I find myself bored. 

Or in a garage sale.  You could end up in a garage sale.

So to all of those people out there that actually DO their pinterest projects instead of just THINKING about doing them:  I salute you.

I'm sure your house is adorable.

And I imagine also quite clean.

. . .

You should probably know that I am also judging you.

I am judging the hell out of you.

For being better than I am.

(Which might be one of the most backward ways of being judgemental that I even KNOW of.)

And if everything about your life seems pinterestingly-perfect, I am concocting a fictional backstory for you in my head that is really quite lurid. 

Ohhh. . .  Now I just feel sorry for you.

God, I wish you weren't such a soulless tramp.

Now please excuse me.

It's time for Saturday-Snacks.  =)

. . . .

And, for those people out there that are just as neurotic as I am. .  .

The correct answer is:  Eternia.

He-Man hails from Eternia.



                                      (You're welcome. =)











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