My animal spirit guide had been decomposing under the green carpet the whole time

I did not cough up the $150 to attend the paranormal conference. I thought about volunteering like you suggested, but then I realized I wanted to be able to escape if necessary.

But it was our anniversary weekend (seventh), and we celebrated by having friends over to help us tear up the remaining ancient green carpeting in the house.

Continue Reading 29 comments September 25th, 2006

Old, small houses

There is no Old, Small, Leave-It-As-Is-For-Now House movement that I can find. And there should be. It’s so disheartening to pick up a “shelter” magazine that promises gorgeous low-budget renovations inside, only to find out that their version of low-budget differs from our version of low-budget by at least $15,000.

Continue Reading 46 comments September 18th, 2006

Look! Look at my door! Look at my strange hex-faced child!

Follow every Benjamin Moore rainbow until you find your dream, baby.

Continue Reading 27 comments August 25th, 2006

You know it’s a bad moving day when

Please go over to my mom’s blog and show her some love, because the poor woman could really use some right now. Yesterday’s move is a very long and ugly story, one of those depressing tales that leave you pretty sure that people are basically terrible.

Continue Reading 17 comments August 15th, 2006

Porchlight Paintings: Take My Husband, Please

You want him. You want his oil paintings. You can have his oil paintings. You can’t have him. Welcome to Porchlight Paintings!

Continue Reading 21 comments July 31st, 2006

Being Jenny Malcontent

Ty Pennington, as you may have noticed, has not been to my home. I am Miss Cranketta McCrankypants about Ty Pennington. Some of you will be cranky that I am cranky, but you are probably the same ones who say things like “You can’t help who you fall in love with!” Well, you can’t help what makes you cranky and miserable either, so remind me how fortunate I am later in the week.

Continue Reading 63 comments July 19th, 2006

Floored, as usual

If you are an expert on antique wood floors, this would be a very, very good time to delurk. What am I looking at? Why was the carpet underlay made from pink mice?

Continue Reading 75 comments June 27th, 2006

I would have you over but God hasn’t changed our cedar shavings for a while

I bet your house smells pretty. I bet you have better legs than I do AND your house smells pretty.

Continue Reading 27 comments June 26th, 2006

I have no bloodied dead livestock to give

I am teetering on the tightrope between 35 and 36. In three weeks I will topple over onto the 36 side. Rumor has it there is a big hole in the net on the 36 side, and a sinister clown waiting under the hole trying to impale you on a big shish-kebob skewer, but I try not to believe everything I hear.

Continue Reading 47 comments June 3rd, 2006

In My Stupid Moment

This week I feel like a circus act, trying to keep my dozen spinning dinner plates up on their sticks while the Clownmobile circles closer and closer so the leering molester-clowns can honk their big fat bike horns right in my ear and pinch me on me bum. Small children in the crowd are throwing popcorn and crying, She stinks! The dinner-plate lady stinks and her bum-bum is big and stinky!

Oh. I see. Those are my children.

Not long after graduating from Grinnell, I was faced with the daunting task of filling out my first HEY GRINNELLIANS! WHATCHA BEEN UP TO? form for the alumni news section of the college magazine. I remember staring at it for a long time, then hunching over the form and writing

JENNIFER MATTERN (’92) is currently employed as a Kick-Me Clown at Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Illinois.

I sent it in. It made me feel better. I knew someone out there in the global Grinnell community would enjoy asking coworkers and friends What is a Kick-Me Clown? Did you ever see one at Six Flags? Did you ever kick one? I think I would like to kick one!

I liked college. I loved college. I was feeling pretty melancholy about the whole post-Grinnell Real World (pre-MTV meaning of the term) scenario, and after repeating it a few times out loud, Six Flags Kick-Me Clown started to sound like a not-so-bad gig, better than Administrative Assistant to the Assistant to the Provost at St. Bacitracin’s Pray-4-U-Niversity (the first post-college job offer that came my way).

My boyfriend at the time was exasperated by my Kick-Me Clown routine. Details of our Kick-Me-Clown–related conversations are pretty fuzzy now, but I think for him it was further frustrating evidence of my inability to accept As-Is circumstances without moping about the past, or lunging toward the future like a coked-up stallion.

I am still working on this temperamental trait. Traditionally, As-Is has not been my thing. I like a good hypothetical question. I like the fast-forward and fast-rewind buttons on the remote control that would control the DVD player if the DVD player had not broken last week. I stay out too late with my Past and my Future while my Present waits up at home drinking warm milk and glancing anxiously at my empty side of the bed and wondering when I’ll be back.

I am trying hard to Stay In the Moment. I tried to meditate on my bed the other day while focusing on the lovely blue-green house across the street (Hi Chris! Hedges look great! Good luck with the moss!) but then I started thinking about square footage and hardwood floors and worrying that our neighbor is growing his hedges for the sole purpose of BLOCKING OUR EYESORE OF A HOUSE FROM VIEW, so the meditation thing didn’t really pan out.

I also got invited to go to a yoga class, but then my friend told me that you have to hold your nostrils closed, one at a time, and breathe like that while keeping a straight face and chanting and pretending you don’t have Granny-underpants pantylines like ship rigging that everyone is snorting their one-nostril snorts at. I think it’s important to know your limitations.

I am juggling a lot of work and projects right now, some for money and some for character-building purposes, and that’s forcing me to be In the Moment in some respects. But now I’m having the irritating problem of being so bogged down In My Stupid Moments that I forget there is life beyond my whirling dinner plates and molester-clowns. (Not to be confused with the entirely more approachable Kick-Me Clowns.)

At least a Kick-Me Clown gets to be out in the sunshine all day. That is what I am thinking right now, In This Stupid Moment. And. You. Were. There.

26 comments April 4th, 2006