DIY Schmuck

So tired. Tried to refinish our front door for the past few days. Was peeling and splitting. Not good. But project bigger than I suspected. What else is new? In-over-my-head is my middle name.

Sanded my arm off. (Okay, I borrowed a power sander, but still.) Bought wrong color stain, which looked like dog poop. Now, must re-sand and stain threshold. Have 3 coats of stain to do, 5 coats of polyurethane. Each one supposed to dry for about a month.

Right now, the handle is off, the door is naked wood which makes it look like our house is going into foreclosure or something. Drop cloths and paint cans are all over the place. And have my sisters, a cousin, a niece and nephew coming to visit tomorrow.

Why am I suddenly so concerned about the front door, you ask? I have no idea. I do this sort of thing every few months. (Kind of like the garden and the truck-load of mulch back in April. That didn't turn out so great either, come to think of it.) Well, too late to back out now.

Must go rest up for tomorrow. Got me some staining to do.

Random Acts of Sibling Kindness

For some strange, inexplicable reason, QB has been extra nice to his sister lately. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. During the first week of school, QB had library class while Mopsy didn't. Now, checking out books is one of QB's greatest pleasures, but he felt sorry for Mopsy's literary loss. Instead of getting a book for himself, he found one that he thought she would like -- a Chinese version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf -- and checked it out for her.

That night, he sat down with her on the couch and read it to her. She was smitten.

The next one's even weirder. A week or so later, they convinced me to take them to Toys 'R Us. QB has been saving up his allowance for some Lego set or another and wanted to go pick one out. Now, Mopsy's savings were running a little dry. She'd just spent her whole piggie bank -- $6 -- the week before on some nonsense from Claire's. (Clip-on earrings, I think. They broke the first day.) QB -- who counts the minutes until his next allowance distribution each Friday afternoon -- sympathized with Mopsy's plight. He offered to give her his allowance for that week so she wouldn't feel left out on the shopping expedition.

I was dumb-struck.

Whatever magical cloud has blown over our house, I just hope it hangs around for a while.

More than a Foot Fault

I'm a huge women's tennis fan. And people often ask me why I don't always, automatically pull for the Williams sisters, who are undoubtedly the best American players -- if not the best players, period. Last night illustrates exactly why.

Serena was wrong six ways to Sunday. It was embarrassing and shocking to watch. I was ashamed for her -- and for the United States.

I'm confused as to why there's any discussion about whether the point penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct was appropriate. Of course it was. Her behavior was atrocious. It crossed the line about four different times. Shaking her racket at the line judge she said, "If I could, I'd take this ball and shove it down your f***ing throat." And so on, and so on. Is this venom what we expect from our most celebrated ladies champions?

Sure, McEnroe and Connors used to do this and worse. (McEnroe was noticeably lacking in commentary during the flare-up last night.) But it's no excuse. That's not behavior to emulate. And, to be honest, we expect more from the women.

This is the reason I love Clijsters and Henin and Davenport: they're all spectacular players and they are gracious as well. They kick ass on the court and let their performance do the talking for them. They don't talk trash about their opponents or make offensive comments, as Serena once did when she referred to the Russian players en masse as "the -ovas." They don't scream and grandstand obnoxiously after most big points like Serena does. Of course she's a spectacular player. Her speed and strength and pure skill are often breathtaking. But she's never been a very good sport.

After the match was called, Serena gave a press conference that was almost as damning as her verbal assault. She didn't take responsibility for her behavior. She didn't admit she was wrong. She claimed -- unconvincingly -- that she didn't even remember what she'd said. When asked if she wished she had handled herself differently, she answered: no. She prefers to live in the moment, she explained, and not to look back. just 20 minutes later, she'd already let the entire matter go. (I bet the shaking linesperson hadn't.) She also implied that other players have done worse and gotten away with it. For some reason, the officials are always tougher on her.

Oh, and she admitted she probably did foot fault after all. Her bad.

Finally, when asked if she would apologize to the line judge she bitched out, she said, "An apology for? From me?"

So, no, Serena wasn't robbed. Clijsters -- who wasn't able to enjoy winning that final point and celebrating a pure, honest and spectacular win to cap her comeback streak -- is the one who was robbed. Yesterday, I would've been proud to have been a Belgian.

Chatter

Here's what Mopsy asked me on the way home from school:

"Mommy, does God live in the trees?"

Not a bad thought.

Rotten Tomatoes

Okay. Fine. So the backyard vegetable garden was pretty much a complete bust. Yeah, I know I was all excited about it. Cocky even. This was how the conversation with the husband went last Spring:

JARVIS: Why are you spending so much time and money on the garden? Last year all you did was feed the rabbit and deer. We didn't even get a tomato out of it.

ME: That's not true! We got lots of tomatoes. And this year, I'm adding the deer fence. Plus, with this amazing mulch I got, we're going to have so many vegetables, I probably won't have to go to the grocery store for weeks on end.

JARVIS: Sure. It worked out to about $32 a carrot last year. How much was all that mulch anyway? I really don't understand why you had to buy all of that.

ME: (Impervious to his small-mindedness, I ignored him. He doesn't appreciate the value of working your own land, of teaching your children where their food comes from, of tasting juicy tomatoes that weren't shipped from Chili and coated with who-know-what sort of pesticides.)

So, fine. He was right, dammit. All of you women out there (or at least the three who are reading this) must know how much it pains me to put that in writing.

It probably did average about $32 a carrot this year, too. Well, it would have if I'd even grown carrots. Instead we had, yes, a single, enormous zucchini (too tough to eat), a few eggplants (which I'm not sure what to do with) and many, many rotten tomatoes. I don't really think it was my fault, exactly. My fellow local gardeners were all complaining of the same thing. It was all the blasted rain in June. And I have a sneaking suspicion that the deer were still getting in. Something was eating all the zucchini blossoms.

I did, however, grow a fair amount of arugula and basil. Can't complain about that. Every time I used an herb over the summer, I waved it in front of Jarv's face and reminded him that they're $3 a bunch at the store. Probably even $4.50 at Whole Foods! He was pleased as punch. At this rate, I'll have amortized down the cost of the garden by.... August, 2011.

But, hey, I've already bounced back. Can't get one lousy crop get me down. Here's Plan B: I'm ripping out all of the dead vegetable plants and filling the plot with hundreds of bulbs to make a nice little cutting garden in the spring. It will be spectacular! The house will be filled with daffodils and tulips. I'm sure Jarv will understand it's a very worthwhile investment. Foolproof. I'm confident it won't average out to more than $12 a flower.

$20 at the most.

Funny of the Day

Mopsy was very introspective this afternoon as we sat out on the front lawn, playing a few (dozen) games of Uno, our new favorite game. Some neighbors walked by -- an impressive single mom with a set of 6-year-old triplets.

Mopsy said gravely, "One mom and three kids. That's a lot of work!"

You said it, kiddo.