writer, interrupted: d. i. why?

I am not a crafty person. I have always felt bad about this - as a woman, a mom, a wife. I feel like since I have a vagina I’m supposed to enjoy making things from scratch, like with glue and popsicle sticks and shit. And I did used to enjoy things like that when I was a kid. But as an adult I just don’t have the attention span or the interest to sit and assemble little projects for which I have no practical use (pinecone bird feeder, anyone?). In the back of my mind I’m always thinking of other things I could be doing with that time, like laundry or my nails or getting a frontal lobotomy. But I really want to make more of an effort with this, because my third grader Annie is very creative and I think it’s important to foster that in her. (Basically she’s a highly intelligent, emotional loose cannon with occasional b-word tendencies, and I’m hoping to parlay that into “artsy and independent” before she reaches adulthood).

Thanks to Pinterest, I am conveniently bombarded with cute little DIY projects on a daily basis. Apparently, some of my friends are actually doing this stuff. Nuts, right? So I’ve picked out a few of the cuter ideas, and I am like, totally gonna try to do some of them soon, when I get the time, cause I do work one day a week now, and of course only if Annie’s interested and we aren’t doing anything else that day. And the baby’s asleep, and the hubs is at work, and it’s a full moon. On a leap year.

Note: You’ll notice none of these projects involve glitter. Glitter is the herpes of the arts and crafts world – once you've got it, you can’t get rid of it. Just say no.