No fear, sit here

I have four very old oak dining room chairs.  When I was first married and living in San Jose, about thirty years ago, my mother-in-law gave me a charming vintage oak dining room table with spiral legs and two cunning little extensions.  Someone had given it to her but she didn't want it, and I did.  Match made in heaven.  Unfortunately, when you sit at the table you can't cross your legs because it has some kind of fascia-board around the top (to hide the extensions, I suppose); but that's a small thing.  Anyway, all I had were some metal-and-vinyl chairs from the now defunct Ski's Royal Furniture in Campbell which was a delightful emporium of new, old, and peculiar items at rock-bottom prices.  But my lovely little table deserved better dinner companions, and one day we saw four chairs for sale in someone's driveway.  I'm so good at this.

Yuck.

The original chair seats were covered in leather so scrofulous that if you sat on one you'd shed brown leather flakes for the rest of the day.  I must have imagined that someday I'd have a blog where I occasionally posted my thrifty DIY projects, so I scraped off the original cotton-and-horsehair padding underneath, which, although repulsive to look at, was not terrible to sit on [when covered], and re-used it.  The seat bottoms were saggy and creaky woven slats so I convinced my husband to make four new plywood ones.  I hadn't discovered yet that he was no good at being married, but he could sure cut shapes out of plywood.

Mister Carson thinks everything in the house is just fabulous

On top of that, I stapled forest green chenille (it was 1980), which proceeded to absorb the sticky spills and greasy drips of thirty years of  dining with children.  Somewhere along the line I stopped looking at them altogether because they were so intensely gross.  The chairs, not the children.

From left: Vile seat cover; disgusting padding; serviceable seat bottom; very old cat.

On Veterans Day, JoAnn had a great 50% off sale, so I bought some bouncy new 2" foam and two yards of dark brown leatherette that we used to call Naugahyde.  It was simple to cut four seat-size foam shapes, and that lulled us into thinking the whole project would be a snap.  The old padding was mostly flat and last time I reupholstered the seats, it was almost effortless. (Or maybe it was hard and I've just forgotten.)

The easy part.

At first Lillian and I pretended that I could do this by myself.
After we stopped laughing, she held everything while I stapled.

Thank you to everyone who offered instructions on how to properly miter corners.
With all due respect, you are wrong.

Lillian and I struggled with my big staple gun which, although a useful and powerful tool, is unwieldy at best and aggressive to boot. (Hello, it's a gun.) The foam was quite springy and hard to press down enough to evenly attach the leatherette, and folding down the corners nearly made me cry,  but I did it when I was a clueless twenty-something and by God,  I would do it now. If you are wondering, I didn't use a layer of batting, since the chair seats drop into a little tray area on the chair's frame, and batting would make them too thick to fit.  For the type of seat that screws atop the frame, batting is recommended to soften the sharp edge of the plywood.  I also might drill a few holes in the plywood so that the air can poof out when someone first sits down.  The leatherette prevents poofing, so it's a bit like sitting on an exercise ball.

I'm surprised we finished all four chairs with our fingers intact.  (Well, I did get a few painful snags from all the wretched staples I pried out, but I've had a recent tetanus shot, so don't you worry about me contracting lockjaw.)  The next day my wrists were so wobbly I could barely lift my coffee cup.

Mister Carson fearlessly sitting upon a newly reupholstered chair.

I still need to refinish the table and chairs, but they look markedly better, and anyone may safely and cheerfully sit on them.  I think next we'll tackle the head-and-footboard  lurking in my garage.

Annmarie Jane

It was a cold night twenty-nine years ago, after I spent the weekend fielding Braxton-Hicks contractions every few minutes, already three centimeters dilated, ten days until my due date with my first baby. We got Chinese food down the street and went to bed early.   But in a few hours my water broke started to drool, and I sat on a towel in a rocking chair near the wood stove, rocking and timing my contractions. Before long, they were three minutes apart so I woke up my husband  and we went to the hospital, by six-thirty I was pushing, and at eight-thirty I delivered a six and a half pound girl with a headful of black curls and as hairy as a monkey.  I named her Annmarie Jane.   Don't hate me for having easy deliveries.  I'm sure you're really good at something, too.  It's not like a talent I can use too much these days.

I realize now what an easy baby Annie really was.  She nursed all the time, which was fine because I didn't have anything else to do.  Sometimes she'd spit it all up and come back for more, but I had a washing machine in my house so I didn't care.  This was the heyday of natural childbirth and no-worries childrearing.  There was no internet, no mommy bloggers, and I already had fifteen nieces and nephews.  There was practically no way to get it wrong.

Annie started talking at one year old, but was so shy in kindergarten that her teachers thought she couldn't speak.  At home, though,  she chattered like a parakeet, especially once Sam was born and she had a captive audience. She danced and acted her way through highschool [which wasn't all sunshine and lollipops], and then lit out for the bright lights of Sacramento, where she met and married my stellar son-in-law.  She gave me three perfect grandsons, about whom she frets constantly.  I was not a much of a fretter.

Because she was born on the twenty-first, her birthday will never be on Thanksgiving, and it seldom comes as close as the day before, like this year.  But I am so very thankful for this child. She changed my life forever when she made me a mother.  Those of you with children know what I mean--no matter what else happens in your life; there is before and there is after.

Happy twenty-ninth birthday, child of my heart.

Nothin' says lovin' like somethin' in the oven

So recently I ran across a new recipe for chocolate chip cookies to try.  I estimate that I've made about four hundred batches of Tollhouse Cookies over the years, and Tollhouse Cookies are pretty darn wonderful.   It was the first recipe I ever memorized (other than, say, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.)

But this one got rave reviews.  I was too lazy to copy-and-paste and I was also out of printer ink,  so I found a sheet of notebook paper and wrote it down.  I baked up a batch and they were, indeed, superb.  A few days ago I pulled out the as-yet-unmemorized recipe to whip up another batch and noticed this:

Noticed what?

This.

No, I have no idea.

Unless the cat is gaslighting me.

He does look kind of sneaky back there.