PaperGirl Blog by Mary Fons

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27 Dec 2015

Last Pop Quiz of 2015, Administered By Pendennis.

by Mary | posted in: Pendennis | 1

Pendennis has nowhere to go but up. Illustration: Me

1. What am I doing New Year’s Eve?
a) going to bed
b) going to a wedding
c) going to a party where I don’t know anyone
d) going to get wasted
e) b, then later a

2. What were my goals for 2015?
a) make at least $100,000 and put it all into an attractive mutual fund
b) stay in one geographical location for more than five months
c) not buy more clothes until I have holes in the clothes I have now, seriously, like holes in them because I wear them that much that they have to be replaced
d) finish Middlemarch
e) avoid writing an end-of-year pop quiz that gives me the uncomfortable feeling I’m pulling some Bridget Jones’s Diary thing by accident

3. Essay
If Bridget Jones’s Diary had been written just a few years later than it was, would it have been Bridget Jones’s Blog and if so, would it have been as popular and if so, would that have just been Sex In The City?

4. If Pendennis could eat one thing for every meal for the rest of his life, he would eat:
a) candy corn pumpkins
b) linguine with clam sauce
c) just sheets and sheets and sheets of nori
d) cotton balls
e) a and d but not b

5. What are you doing New Year’s Eve?
a) “Oh, right. I forgot. What night is New Year’s?”
b) having some friends over for games (e.g., Catchphrase, Twister “After-Dark” Version, etc.)
c) coming to that wedding with me (it’s going to be super fun)
d) taking a pop quiz

Answers: b, d, too tired to write it out but no and yes, e, c.

25 Dec 2015

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

by Mary | posted in: Chicago, Family | 1

Jimmy Carter and his family, Christmas Day, 1978. Photo: Wikipedia

Merry Christmas!

I’m at my younger sister and brother-in-law’s home in Old Town, Chicago. It smells like ham in here — not all the time, just right now.

I have eaten popcorn, sausage, peanut butter cups and a big chocolate-dipped marshmallow with red and green sprinkles — that last item was on a stick. I made dinner at my house the other night and that went off well. My mother is presently putting together a puzzle with my step dad. We all saw Star Wars the other day, and it rocked. We had tickets to A Christmas Carol at the Goodman yesterday; my good friend plays Belle in the show and she was great. Some of us may go ice skating or pay a visit to the Field Museum tomorrow — we’ll see. I might have a bellyache because I plan to eat at least one more decadent food item off a stick if I have to stick it on myself.

It sounds perfect. But there are wrinkles. Deep breaths are taken from time to time by this person or that one because someone is loud or someone says something wrong (usually me, lately.) I got sick yesterday in the Goodman bathroom; still not sure what that was about. Every day that passes means Claus is one day closer to going back to Germany. So really, this is a perfect holiday. Because this is the way it always is; it fits perfectly into the story of the end-of-year holidays that we tell every year.

Thank you for reading my blog. I love to write it. Merry Christmas, everyone.

23 Dec 2015

Reporting From Inside THE HOLIDAY ZONE.

by Mary | posted in: Day In The Life, Family, Tips | 0

HOLIDAY ZONE! Photo: Marcus Quigmire; Wikipedia.

These are the days inside THE HOLIDAY ZONE.

Oh, we’ve been doing shopping. We roughly know what’s happening when: brother and sister-in-law arrive around 2pm Thursday, everyone is meeting at Lou Malnati’s at 6pm on Saturday, the cake needs to be picked up before the store closes on Christmas Eve, etc. But now it’s real. The kin have come. The chicken needs a’trussin’. You forgot the extra bottle of red wine; also you forgot the breadcrumbs. The children are freaking out (not about the breadcrumbs; you don’t know what they’re freaking out about but they are loud.) Your brother is doing that thing. And you still need stocking treats. The HOLIDAY ZONE is hard enough, but what’s really insulting is that now you must admit you are that rather frazzled person hustling up State Street with a furrowed brow. Lame.

People enter THE HOLIDAY ZONE at different times; you may have begun earlier in the week, you may be starting on Christmas Day and going into the days following. Whatever your particular schedule, if you’re not 100% sure you’ve entered THE HOLIDAY ZONE, here are clues:

1. You look at your email and most of it is last-minute sale offers from stores/companies you thought you filtered into your spam folder and there are barely any emails related to work or commitments with clubs/affiliations/personal trainers. This version of your email box is a feeling of relief mixed with a bizarre, vague disappointment. It’s nice to get emails that show you’re relevant.

2. Stomachaches. Frosting-related.

3. You leave a room and sigh. Then someone calls your name. You sigh again and go back to the room you just came from. And what were you going in there for? You cannot remember. It’ll come to you when you try to take the potatoes out of the oven and you realize you were trying to find the oven mitts. (They’re in the bathroom.)

4. You switch to a liquor drink instead of wine and later, you realize why you don’t do that. #spinning

5. You pull that dusty copy of Being and Time off the shelf and decide you will read it in the bathroom for awhile. The potholders are in there, anyway.

There are more signs. But if any of those symptoms resonate, you’re probably in THE HOLIDAY ZONE and you should find shelter. The good thing about THE HOLIDAY ZONE is that we’re all in it. Get along with each other: THE HOLIDAY ZONE is way easier with a pal. And heed some of the best advice I have ever gotten, ever: “Just when you’re going fast, trying to speed up, trying to hurry — that’s when you need to slow down.”

20 Dec 2015

How to Make a Fabric n’ Paint Chip Ornament!

by Mary | posted in: Small Wonders, Tips | 0

I know I'm a little biased, but the Small Wonders icons could not be better for this project. Photo: Me — I know I’m a little biased, but the Small Wonders icons could not be better for this project. Photo: Me

I made stuff! And I’d like to share the idea with you.

Christmas prep is underway; my family will descend upon the (marvelous) city and we’ve got a great cruise director in my younger sister Rebecca. She’s made the dinner reservations, the time we’ll go see Star Wars and various other activities. What’s fantastic about holiday time in my family is that it is chill. It wasn’t always that way; we used to feel pressure to do every activity together, to press all these activities (ice skating, lunch, museum) into a short time and it was stressful. A few years ago we were like, “Hey, if you want to skip the museum and just hang out and eat cookies, great!” There is no guilt about declining an outing. Do your thing. And the result is that more often than not, we actually do All The Things because we don’t want to miss out on being together.

Anywhoodle, I am trimming the tree I got the other day. The nice boy at the Ace Hardware around the corner was brawny and offered to carry it on his shoulder all the way to my elevator! He braved the cold and surely got sap on his shoulder, but I was a damsel in distress. Thanks, guy.

While I was in the Ace Hardware, I had an idea. That huge wall of paint sample cards drew me in a tractor beam. I pulled a whole bunch of Christmas-colored chips (is that word acceptable here?) and I could put pieces of fabric on them and hang them all over the tree. Of course — and I mean this, though I have a particular affinity for this fabric — the Small Wonders icons are perfect for this. You gonna cut a 4” flower and try to stick it on a paint chip? Naw, naw. So here are directions for a darling ornament that is half-free, half-from your stash. Because you have gotten the Small Wonders fabrics. I know a lot of you have because a major fabric store was out of it when the ladies in Florida went to buy it. Thanks, Santa!

How To Make a Paint Chip + Fabric Ornament

Get paint chips from the hardware store
Cut a small piece of background fabric
Cut a smaller piece of fabric with a central image
Glue the background down
Glue the “foreground” small-icon image fabric on that
Stick an ornament hook through the paint chip
Hang on a pine tree (not just any pine tree — go for the one currently in your living room)

Have fun!

18 Dec 2015

The Monadnock Building (It’s a Wonderful Life.)

by Mary | posted in: Chicago | 1

They are looking at the arcade. Photo: Wikipedia

The Monadnock Building on Jackson and Dearborn is my favorite building in Chicago (outside the building where I live, of course.) When it was finished in 1893, it was the world’s largest office building, and some say modern architecture was kicked off when the Monadnock was complete. It was a Burnham and Root building, which says all needs be said for those who know what that means; for those who don’t, this means it is one of the most important buildings in the city, historically, aesthetically. There are three-hundred offices within. A winding staircase. Big windows on all sides. I had a writing job for a company on the fourth floor a few years back. I had a Mary Tyler Moore moment the day I walked into that office. Six feet tall that day.

The best part of the building — the building experience, you could say — for me is the old school arcade of shops on the ground floor. You can enter the Monadnock on Jackson and walk straight through to the other side of the building to the Van Buren side. On a freezing day in winter, you can escape the pain and get south (or north, depending) for a full block, wrapped in the gold warmth of the gas lamps that run on either side of the corridor. The tile is tiny, mosaic. It feels like another time, except you’re listening to Beyonce on your headphones. Potentially.

There are shops on either side of the arcade hall, including a barbershop that is always full, the best florist shop in the city (really), a really good tailor, a milliner (do you call a shop that makes men’s hats a millier? or a hat shop?), an Intelligensia coffee bar (also best in city), a shoe-repair shop where I take all my shoes, a woman’s clothing and accessory boutique, and a diner that serves a great, inexpensive grilled ham and cheese. It’s all oak and glass in there; you can see the activity of the people and shopkeepers inside.

I’m still floating, being back home in Chicago. I walked through the arcade the other day and I felt like grabbing people and saying, “Do you know how wonderful this is? We get to walk here! We get to walk through the Monadnock anytime we want! It’s free! We get to have this! Do you realize how lucky we are?”

Tomorrow, I have errands that include: get flowers, take shoes in, get sandwich, get coffee, look at hats. Lucky me.

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