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I Think Your Trick-or-Treat Bag Would Work Just Fine
1. Every year, Dimples has to design a NEW, elaborate box for her Valentines from school.
2. Every year, she brings the box to school on the appointed day, brings it home at the end of the day, and we get to look at the assortment of cards therein – most of which no one even troubled to write her name on.
3. Every year, we argue over what to do with the box.
I mean, really, why do you need a big box covered with red hearts sitting in the middle of your closet taking up valuable space, particularly when you are never going to use it again? Because – see #1
Once more, I am proven wrong.
Dimples has been sick since last Thursday, some sort of virus the doctor is certain she will eventually kick, but seems to have developed a liking for the Firepants household and does not feel compelled to move on.
Last night, convinced for some reason that she was going to experience a miraculous recovery in 8 hours, Dimples nearly had a panic attack because she had not yet decorated a Valentine box for school.
“Geez, you can just bring any old box. No one is going to care if you have a box with hearts on it or one that’s au natural and says Tampax all over it.” (O.K. I didn’t say the last part, but you have to admit, it would be interesting to see the teacher’s face if she brought that box to school.)
“Mom, it’s for an Art grade!” Dimples admonished me.
Out of respect for her somewhat frail condition, I set aside my lecture on the disappearance of proper Art in the schools and my absolute, positive, without a doubt knowledge that a shoe box covered with scrapbook paper and glitter glue did not constitute Art.
A glimmer of an inkling of a possibility of a memory entered my brain.
“Didn’t you save your box from last year?”
Reflexively, Dimples dismissed my suggestion, as she does all others that I have not cleverly disguised as her own thoughts.
However, when I settled her down for the night, there was her last-year-somewhat-dented-Valentine Box, sitting on her duct tape school bag (which qualifies more as Art, I think, than the box) in preparation for the next day.
I think we’re even on this one. She knowingly used an idea that came out of my brain, and I implicitly admitted that her decision to store last year’s box was not completely wrong.
It’s Win-Win.
If Dimples Wasn't Sick, She Probably Would Have Made a Duct Tape Box This Year
“Wonderbutt’s Whimsy” to be Auctioned
“An artist is somebody who produces things that people don’t need to have.”Andy Warhol
Wonderbutt has made our floor his ongoing masterpiece. Andy Warhol would have approved.
Cap’n Firepants, on the other hand, has no appreciation for modern art, so he has decided that Wonderbutt’s canvas needs to go. He allowed me to take some pictures before tackling the project. When I loaded the pictures onto the computer, I realized that they didn’t really do justice to the monumental contributions Wonderbutt has made in the last year to our carpet. So, I decided to add a few labels in case you don’t happen to have a magnifying glass near your computer monitor.
This was only one portion of the carpet. If our family had ever gotten murdered in our beds, it would have taken an entire season of C.S.I. episodes to exclude Wonderbutt’s DNA evidence and isolate the killer’s. The pup even got blood all over the floor when I once cut a toenail too short. He was too busy trying to get a treat off the table to realize his hemorrhaging was creating a monochromatic Jackson Pollock painting on the carpet beneath him.
We have been talking about getting rid of the carpet ever since we moved into the house (pre-Wonderbutt), but his arrival has necessitated this happening sooner than later.
The problem is that we don’t have the money to execute the second part of the plan – lovely, polished, stained concrete floors. Kind of like this.
We had entertained the thought of doing the job ourselves – until we saw the floor awaiting us underneath the carpet.
Mrs. P.I.B. asks Cap'n Firepants if this was part of the plan.
Big improvement, right?
Apparently, the people who built our house over thirty years ago pretty much used the concrete as their own version of a drop cloth, not being able to conceive of any kind of reason that sane homeowners might want to actually expose a cement floor.
They clearly never met Wonderbutt.
So, this is what our floor looks like now and for the foreseeable future. Dimples is eager to break out the sidewalk chalk and do some of her own home improving. I am thinking we can just draw a Christmas tree in the middle of the floor and our holiday decorating will be done. And I am keeping my fingers, toes, and eyes crossed that Cap’n Firepants doesn’t decide the best improvement would be a chalk outline of Wonderbutt.
It’s Totally Normal
I had to share this with all of my fellow bloggers – and anyone who has any type of artistic ambition. This is a bonus post for today. More to come later!
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