I read Miss Mustardseed, do you? And by read, I mean obsess over the beautiful pictures and soak up her incredible knowlege of design and furniture as art. Then I buy things from Goodwill and attempt to recreate her final results.

Key word there was attempt.

Let’s just say, I’m learning. It’s true, with every piece I get better and it is easier. I make different and fewer mistakes, and I can now see exactly what I want to do with some ramdom banged up coffee table that I got for 15 bucks (vintagytraintablethankyouverymuch) I’ve got three things that should be ready to show you next week including one chair that I got at an estate sale  I am attempting to reupolster. I have ZERO idea what I am doing, so it might be the funniest thing evah. 

Anyway, as I was blathering on to TOTT about Miss Mustardseed and the mythical Lucketts fair she was selling her beautiful wares at, my beloved and so on board with whatever I am into husband says “You know that’s like 30 minutes from here, we should go tomorrow”

And we did. We should have taken the van because oh my gah I wanted it ALL!!  Actually I want to know how to DO it all! We spent about an hour getting lost in the Luckett’s Antique store, every where you look was a treasure, everything was gorgeous!

I never would have thought of a yellow table, but I LOVE IT!

Finally we tore ourselves away from the store, and made our way to the fair! While TOTT and The Boss enjoyed the live music I went to find Miss Mustardseed. I am such a dork I was totally nervous! She was busy with customers so I got to look around her booth and see some off the pieces I covet. I wished again for the van, and three hundred or so bucks, because one of my favorite dressers was there…breathaking!I’m still dreaming of it. And then I saw it…the Ashtray Lamp. I was crazy utterly mad about when I saw it on her blog and my eyes just about bugged out of my head when there it was, waiting for me at Lucketts! I quickly sent TOTT over there to get the OK and he was like “Her stuff is amazing!”

no kidding, baby.

{can you hear my mother saying STAND UP STRAIGHT STEPHANIE! ugh.}

So I bought the lamp-which will not be used as an ashtray- and totes embarrassed myself by getting all fan gurl on her. Bless her -she was just a DOLL about all the oohing and aaaahing I was doing. To be truthful, she was just adorable and funny, it’s lovely when people you admire from the blogosphere turn out to be genuine and nice. Bonus? Her mom was there…I love a good mom/daughter relationship. I wanted to stay and humiliate myself with hero worshiping her, but The Boss was hungry, and it was hotter than the face of the sun so away we went.

Some idiot wore jeans. That idiot was me.

It wasn’t just all the beautiful things, and the incredible finds…{1950′s camera pen for 2 bucks? yes, thank you! TOTT has a quickly growing old camera collection that is really shaping up to be cool. I can’t wait to create a whole display for them!} It was a whole day- no computers or emails, no work. Just me, TOTT and The Boss. Live music, lemonade and fried green tomatoes.

It was fabulous.

What was fabulous in your life this week? I want to know! Link up and leave me a comment letting me know what was beautiful and fabulous for YOU!

Have you ever read a blog post that just resonates with you, stays with you, creeping back into your thoughts even days after having read it? This past week I keep hearing echos of this post by Alex of Late Enough over at the Blogger Body Calendar. Oh yeah, she had anorexia and I had bulimia, but one phrase that she wrote rocked me to the core, as I have thought it and refused it many times, silly to think I might be the only one. It was:

I want to take up space today.

Simple enough right? And yet I have tried NOT to take up space for so long, which is a tough feat for someone as LOUD and ACTORY as I.  In fact I was too loud, too funny, too obnoxious…too everything and even though I never managed to silence my voice ,I tried like crazy to physically take up no space. To dissapear.  And I failed, time and again. This phrase: TAKE UP SPACE has been spoken to me by therapists, doctors and especially acting teachers. The most amazing teacher I ever had, more than a teacher to me, passed away this week. Again, another man I thought would live forever, is gone. He always encouraged me to TAKE MY SPACE and frequently yelled at me to stop apologizing for being alive. Perhaps this blog is a fight against being invisible in such a large and quickly moving world. Since I’m not performing on a regular basis at the moment perhaps this blog is my very own barbaric yawp above the rooftops saying I am still here!

Tennessee Williams wrote a piece entitled Talk to Me Like The Rain and Let Me Listen, I’ve always wanted to perform this piece and it is rarely done but again…the resonance that I am not the only person to ever try to take up as little space as possible, longing to dissapear and float away.

“I’ll run my hands down my body and feel how amazingly light and thin I have grown. Oh, my, how thin I will be. Almost transparent. Not hardly real any more. Then I will realize, I will know, sort of dimly, that I have been staying on here in this little hotel, without any — social connections, responsibilities, anxieties or disturbances of any kind — for just about fifty years. Half a century. Practically a lifetime. I won’t even remember the names of the people I knew before I came here nor how it feels to be someone waiting for someone that — may not come … Then I will know — looking in the mirror — the first time has come for me to walk out alone once more on the esplanade with the strong wind beating on me, the white clean wind that blows from the edge of the world, from even further than that, from the cool outer edges of space, from even beyond whatever there is beyond the edges of space …  Then I’ll go out and walk on the esplanade. I’ll walk alone and be blown thinner and thinner. And thinner and thinner and thinner and thinner and thinner! Till finally I won’t have any body at all, and the wind picks me up in its cool white arms forever, and takes me away”

This morning all of our forks were in the dishwasher. I reached in the very back of the silverware drawer and pulled out something from my husband’s childhood…and mine as well. A small metal children’s fork with Snoopy on the handle. Talk about being taken back in time! I haven’t thought about that fork in forever, who thinks about a fork? But instantly I was five and eating Spaghettio’ s happily having not made the connection that food is bad and being big, in anyway, is bad. A time when celebrating your acheivements is a good thing, {As The Boss says “Yay Baby! Baby did it!”} before it is beaten out of you by mockery and shame.  I watched The Boss chomping away at his cold egg whites {gross. one day he will eat them at least warm, right} as my mother must have watched me and my mother in law watched TOTT using that very same fork and I thought I love the way he takes up space.

Yesterday I took him to Story Hour and while other children sat in the circle, my child marched right up on stage and sat next to the woman reading the story. Taking his space.

Sometimes, I think The Boss teaches me far more than I teach him.

Today, I want to take up space. How about you?

Today we were lazy. The Boss and I stayed in our pj’s until after lunch, changing into comfy shorts and T-shirts for nap. Lazy. Oh sure, I cleaned and we played together, but by and large the day was spent cuddling on the bed, watching scholastic book movies and nodding off.  Followed by a three hour nap.

Lazy.

I was drinking in all the cuddles and sweetness I could before the epic two year old monster returned. The monster must be on vacay or perhaps taking a post Emmy recoup becuase today he was sweetness and light. Perhaps we tired him out this weekend! My room has become The Boss’ favorite place to hang out, as if features three things he can’t get enough of: The Wiggles On Demand, a king sized bed for bouncing on, and of course…Fender the Supah Kitteh.

I love this kitten and will cry a thousand tears when we find him the perfect home. But my tears? Nothing compared to The Boss’. Every morning I hear his sweet mewlings over the monitor waking up slowly. Drowsily figuring out where he is. Then it never fails “Open the door! Wanna see Mommy! Open the door Mommy!” Then one of the highlights of my day: he wraps his sleepy warm self around me, burrowing his face into my neck and we rock in the chair quietly….for a few minutes before he pulls back and announces “go see Sammy! Baby have it a Baby Kitty Mo!” Then pointing and leaning towards the door he insists we go to my room where we crawl into bed and then all four of us snuggle up. The Boss cuddled close to me, Puppy Bear draped across our feet and Baby Kitty Mo (aka Supah Kitteh aka Fender) purring away smushed in the slight valley where our bodies touch. It’s heavenly. I could stay there all day.

This afternoon, around five, after The Boss had woken from his nap and had a snack I caught him singing Baby Mine to the kitten, the two of them drifting in and out.

Lazy day.

Years ago, I used to write snarky fashion recaps for my friends, I  really loved cracking my friends up, but I haven’t done it sonce we moved.  This year I thought to myself… Self, perhaps you ought to do that on the blog, even if  you am woefully out of practice.

 I mean I can’t believe someone told January Jones that if she dressed up as the NBC Peacock (or taking over for  Miss Kitty the saloon owner on Gunsmoke) she’d stand a better chance at winning.

 And Christina Hendricks’ lavendar get up nearly caused Fender the Supah Kitteh to give himself a kitteh concussion as he kept leaping at the tv for those feathers.

Courture Cat toy. {Kitteh noggin+TV screen= tiny dizzy cat.}

But more than  the fashion, I was distracted by the fact that I haven’t seen more than half of these shows! Before I had  The Boss and we moved from LA I would have known them all…and someone who was working on each one. But now I am thinking what the heck is Treme? Did Lauren Graham forget to take off her Red Lobster Bib before hitting the red carpet?

And someone feed Lea Michelle for the love of God! (The Boss will let me watch Glee)

The times they have changed for me. I’m pondering how Wow Wow Wubsy not represented in the best comedy categrory? Why was Widget overlooked for her groundbreaking portrayal of a young lesbian in a small town?

 Moose and Zee would sweep the Variety category.  Where, oh where  was Joey Fatone’s Special Guest star nomination for his gripping performance as the baseball player who had to make the heart rending choice between the big game and his son’s birthday party on The Imagination Movers?

ROBBED, I say!
I also say I need to step away from the toddler tv!

Keri Russel’s BFF was not lying when she said “you’ll totally wear this bridesmaids dress again!”

What…just WHAT IS THIS???

It’s a shame I’m not snarking, because Rita Wilson really rocked that laugh-in beaded curtain “I know we use this to separate the living room from the dining room…but I think I’ll wear it to the Emmys!”

And it was really lovely of Anna Paquin to take time out from her busy bull fighting schedule to attend.

Fer reals a lot of change has happened in Hollywood if Kelly Osborne is one of the best dressed.

{photos from cbsnews.com}

First off it’s Mumsy’s birthday! Happy birthday to my mom. The  bestest of the bestest! I love you Mom, you are the fabulousness for sure!

I am so tired you guys! Last night I shot ALL NIGHT, so I hope you’ll forgive this being up a little late! I dragged my weary self home at 5 am and The Boss thought the verysecondmyheadhitthepillow at 5:45 would be the perfect time to wake up. I coaxed him back to sleep, and when he woke an hour or so later (I don’t know. Mama was asleep.) My mother in law and husband got up with so yeah, they are the fabulousness today too!

I love being on set it is so fun, even when you have  a 10 pm call time! Anyway, I got to play a cop last night, and oh yeah you know I got my Markiska Hargitay on! I don’t usually get to play tough characters and although this was a very small part on a tv show {a reinactmet}  I am totes excited about it. The cast and crew were very nice and even when it got very late and everyone was very tired, the crew were still total professionals and I had a great time working on the show. Lots of fun!

After two years out of the game I have now auditioned for five things and booked three of them. How ya like them apples?
Yay me.

So this weeks fabulousness is WORK! And coffee. Because you cannot live through the day after night shoot without coffee. At. All.
What was fabulous in your life this week? I want to know! Leave me a comment and link up! I’m thinking of showcasing some of your favorites on mondays. Some of them are SO good, I think YOUR fabulousness is becoming my fabulous! I love reading your posts and find myself saying out loud to Fender, Puppy Bear and of course, The Boss:

Oh! That IS fabulous!

Plus now you can all say you know someone who has been on AMERICA’S MOST WANTED! {as a cop…not a suspect!}

The Boss shows a great deal of promise in the painting arena. Promise that we are both still covered in paint. 

Toddlers are strange, strange little creatures. It’s like living with a tiny scizophrenic these days and I never know which baby I am getting. Today I just hoped that when he woke up from his nap he would like me again. 

Actually first I prayed he would NAP for love  of all things holy. He did. But just barely. 

Today? In a word…it sucked. Or rather I sucked. I sucked at motherhood, and really is there anything worse to suck at? I’m not any good at this lately. It’s like the game has changed and no one told me the new rules. I am confused and sad and exhausted from saying:

 NO DO NOT EAT THAT and DO NOT STAND ON THE GUITAR! 

I heard myself sounding exasperated and mean, sounding mean while speaking to my baby. It killed me a little but really how many times do I have to tell him to hold my hand and stay on the sidewalk!? Apparently 20 million more. 

 I’m tired. And sad. Dissapointed in myself for not having a reserve of patience and kindness. I need a break. But I don’t want anyone to spell me, I don’t want to hand him off to someone else. I want to be good at this, to be kind and patient even during the tantrums.

Today I booked an acting job. I keep forgetting I am an actor. It’s small but legit. I was too harried to be too excited about it. Then  there were union problems. Somehow amidst raising a baby and moving a bunch of times some things slipped through the cracks.  Union problems that needed to be handled before I film. Tomorrow. While TOTT worked his magic to make everything work out for me and the union handled everything over the phone, The Boss dumped a package of mini wheats on the couch.

They’re still there because I just.can’t. right now.

I’m working on a footstool and a chair  now. He wanted to paint them. I let him. I couldn’t stand one more tantrum today. I am glad I did. Despite the mess and the fact that I will surely have to redo them, for ten minutes we had fun. We laughed and even though I am covered in paint, it was a small price to pay.

I’m hoping that he went to sleep tonight thinking of those moments instead of hearing my strident voice ringing out:

 SIT DOWN IN THE BATH. NO JUMPING IN THE BATH! SIT. DOWN. NOW!

 I know that’s what I’ll be hearing in my head all night.

I need a break.