Martha Stuart I am not.

Yet every so often I’m infused with a strange surge of creative energy that’s part HGTV, part Molly Mormon—you know that perfect woman who makes every meal from scratch, knits all the socks for her family, and has a house of order? Usually these creative juices start flowing in conjunction with my husband going out of town. Which makes absolutely no sense at all, considering a couple of basic math formulas all mothers know.

2 Parents – 1 parent = 1 parent left to do all the homework, driving, feeding, and cleaning up after all offspring.

And

1 mom divided by 4 children (nearly 5 the way the one I’m carrying around is making his presence known latetly) = a cranky, frazzled, overworked, sleep-deprived woman.

In other words, a weekend when my husband is away is not the perfect time to take on a boatload of projects. Nevertheless, as I waved goodbye to my husband and his buddies Friday morning as they headed south for the St. George Marathon, the Molly in me kicked into high gear.

I was going to craft! I was going to sew! I was going to bake! I was going to organize!

I was insane.

First on the agenda was some festive decorating. My eight-year-old puts great stock in these things, so right away she and I headed for the garden to harvest the pumpkins and relocate them to the front porch (I use porch in the loosest of terms. In reality we have a stoop.) But alas, pumpkins were not all that was waiting for us in the garden. To my great dismay (and I mean dismay–never has a woman been more sorrowful upon entering her garden)there were easily over 100 red, ripe tomatoes waiting to be picked . . . and washed, skinned, chopped up, seasoned, simmered, and canned. UGH! Normally I love tomatoes, and I love the homemade marinara sauce I make each year, but I’ve been making it since August, and it’s October now. I am tired of tomatoes.

But I couldn’t just let them go to waste. Ditto for the green beans hanging off the vines. Nevermind that each time I open my freezer, baggies of frozen green beans drop on my toes. In this economy, waste not want not. Fortunately, my daughter is a good sport. She went after the green beans while I tackled the tomatoes.

And it was a bit of a tackle position, as our garden (the garden that is approximately 1/4 of our large backyard) has morphed into a jungle of sorts. If I wanted those tomatoes (maybe want isn’t really the right word) I was going to have to get down and dirty.

This I did, leaning over, bending, stretching as much as my pregnant body would let me. I have problems enough these days, just standing, as my hand-me-down maternity pants don’t like to stay up where they belong. But my problems multiplied when I leaned over, reaching across the tangle of tomato plants to get to the ripest fruit—inevitably in the middle of the bunch. Keeping my jeans up became the minor issue. Getting me back up became a serious problem. And to any neighbors who happened to be watching and having a laugh at my expense, may I remind you which neighbor—in the event of a food crisis—would be able to feed your family lassagna for approximately six months!

My daughter was no help. When I called to her, she sort of rolled her eyes (hanging around her teenage sister too much), and said, “just get up Mom.” Ha! Easy for her to say. When you’re forty-five pounds you can get anywhere.

In the end, “harvesting” took an additional hour, and I was a scratched up, muddy mess. With three full bags of tomatoes by the back door, My daughter and I set about decorating the front. She arranged the pumpkins, while I hung the wreath (newly-purchased, as the one from the last several years has vanished somewhere in the depths of our garage), arranged the cornstalks, and attempted to string the spider webs. In the past, our now-twelve-year-old daughter has been in charge of the webbage on the front of the house. And she’s done an admirable job of it. But now she’s moved on to to more important things like going to the mall and having sleepovers, so the sppoky stuff was left up to me. After twenty minutes, I had fuzzy, sticky gauze all over me (in addition to the garden dirt), and the house looked like it had been attacked by cotton balls. Apparently my web-stretching skills leave something to be desired.

About now I was more than ready to be done (and all the work of those darn tomatoes was still looming), but my eight-year-old had other ideas—like creating a graveyard in the front flowerbed. I tried pointing out to her that we already had a graveyard there with all the dead flowers (I gave up on watering sometime last month), but she was already jumping up and down, describing her ideas. These ideas involved large cardboard boxes and paint—two things she loves. And of course I couldn’t quash that kind of creativity. So I spent another forty minutes (again bending over) ripping out dead flowers in preparation for our spooky graveyard.

By now I was tired and cranky (you see the formula coming to pass already), so it was a good time to give the Martha in me a break. Unfortunately that “break” involved driving children all over the valley for an hour and a half. By the time I returned home, my mood had not improved.

With everyone temporarily out of the house, I decided to ignore the tomatoes a while longer and get working on my sister’s birthday present—an awesome jean quilt that I’ve been working on since she was about five (she’s turning 30). I’d decided this was the weekend to finish it, as her birthday is coming up quickly on the 10th. And I’d done much of the tedious stuff—cutting squares, sewing them together etc. All I had to do now, before quilting, was to snip all the seams every quarter inch, so the blanket would have that cool, “frayed” look. I settled in front of the TV with my scissors and a mountain of jean. Thirty minutes later, I had formed two blisters and had hand cramps. What the heck was I thinking to make a quilt like this?! Just because my sister is young and hip does not mean she needs fraying on her jean blanket. If only I’d sewn the seams on the inside like a normal blanket—a normal person.

But I was already 84 squares (and about that many years) into this project; it was too late to turn back now. I set the quilt top aside and took some time to read Junie B. Jones with my daughter.

Much later when everyone was in bed—or in their rooms at least—I turned on that evil HGTV channel and started yet another project (the quilt and tomatoes were just too depressing). This one seemed simple and quick. I was cutting out flannel burp cloths, so that tomorrow, during conference, I could crochet the edges. My neighbor had promised me this was easy and fun to do. I was a little skeptical, as my only memories of crocheting are when my grandmother’s attempts to teach me drove her to swearing and throwing things.

Good thing my neighbor has more patience. It only took her an hour and fifteen minutes Saturday morning to teach me the most basic of all crochet stitches (by then we’d both given up on the fancier ones her beautiful burp cloths, bibs, and baby blankets are edged with). Armed with my new skill, I crocheted my way through afternoon conference, covering approximately five inches in the two hours! Thus far, this was my biggest accomplishment of the weekend, and I was practically glowing.

With this renewed sense of homemakerism, I decided to get going on the marinara sauce, so that when my husand returned home, he would have the delicious home-cooked aroma to greet him. Again, my youngest stepped in to help and I let her, as cooking and peeling three bags worth of tomatoes (wet, muddy bags, as I’d left them out in the rain) is a big job. While she found great delight in popping the skins off (and popping several tomatoes all over the recently-mopped kitchen floor), I got busy blending and mixing. It only took us three and a half hours and we had an overflowing pot of marinara started. Somehow I summoned the energy to mop the floor, wash the jars, and make our traditional conference cinnamon rolls.

About this time my husband returned home. He was stiff and sore from running his 26.2earlier in the day (and then driving four hours home and sitting another two hours in Priesthood session) and was ready for a back, leg, and foot massage. I, on the other hand, had been on my feet most of the weekend and had bent, stretched and lifted much more than I should have. Everything from my little toe to my ankles and calves were retaining water, and I was beyond exhausted. But since my most of my domestic plans hadn’t worked out, I decided the least I could do was be a good wife. He got his massage. And I spent another hour that night on my last big project of the weekend, de-junking my fifteen-year-old’s room. With her out of town at the Shakespeare festival, it was just too good an opportunity to miss.

However, by the time I’d removed many garbage bags from her room, I definitely fit the formula. Exhausted, cranky, over-worked, frazzled, frustrated . . . you name it.

Sunday was peaceful. The cinnamon rolls were delicious, and I crocheted my way around 3/4 of the burp cloth. My girls worked on their samplers during conference; the marinara simmered and thickened all day.

But things were bad this morning when I woke up to the “after conference mess.” The sink was piled high with dishes, pillows and blankets were scatterd all over the family room. I was behind on laundry, as all my other projects had taken precedence over the weekend. There was plenty to be depressed about at 6:15 Monday morning. But the worst . . . my marinara. Having simmered over 24 hours, it was ready to be bottled. Easily I had another eight to ten quarts, except . . . the handles had fallen off my big pot. They lay on either side of the stove, red sauce oozing out the holes where they had been. I was mystified. A lot of things have broken around here lately—both cars, our computer, our printer, the vacuum etc. But my pot?! Whoever heard of a pot breaking? Not me, unless it involved a child attempting to cook macaroni and cheese without adding any liquid (then your pot breaks and you have a small fire).

I summoned my husband who concluded that the acidity of the tomatoes had somehow worn through the metal, causing the handles to fall off. He also concluded that the sauce was likely now tainted with metal and should, therefore, be thrown out. I about lost it at this point. THROWN OUT?! Three days of work down the drain? I wasn’t sure whether to scream or cry or crawl back in bed and throw the covers over my head. Instead I faced my messy house, the disaster on my stove, and carpool.

And so the results of my domestic weekend . . .
-Zero jars of marinara sauce, a very sticky stove, and a lifetime warranty pot in the garbage (guess it was a short lifetime)
-One frayed-edges jean quilt at about the same stage it was three days ago, two new blisters
-One burp cloth nearly finished (only another five inches), and three more cut out
-One teenager’ss room as messy as it was when she left (she brought home twice as much as she left with and dumped it all on the floor)
-Wet, globby, fallen over Halloween decor

But hey, it was still worth it. Last night I got a fantastic foot massage, and today, when my husband came home for lunch, he finally noticed the flower bed had been weeded. And even more good news—the contract for my latest book with Covenant arrived in the mail. It looks like they’ve changed the title, and it won’t be out until next summer, but any money I make I plan to use toward purchasing store-bought marinara and a nice birthday present for my sister.