Illustration by Jan A. Igoe
The Hub and I were enjoying a leisurely weekend drive when the irresistible little beauties beckoned to me from the trees just off the highway.
“STOP! Stop this car right now,” I shrieked at the top of my impressive lungs. Luckily, his “Don’t-throw-up-until-I-pull-over!” daddy-reflexes never fail him, so he hit the brakes.
But there weren’t any kids in the car. The only thing in his rear-view mirror was his wife’s rear view (also impressive), already crawling around collecting grounds for divorce: irreconcilable pine cones.
Hey, you never know when you might need a wreath.
I confess, as a recovering craft-aholic, this isn’t the first time I’ve tried to get off the hot glue and glitter. But Rome wasn’t scrapbooked in a day, as they say.
For some of us female types, art supplies are right up there with oxygen. They’re essential to survival. We are biologically compelled to stockpile beads, paint, clay, stamps, wire, baskets, flowers, fabric and, yes, pine cones—because … because … well, if someone ever needs a Beaded Clay Stamped Flower Basket Thingie, we want to be ready.
Meanwhile, Hubby is still adjusting to life with someone who hasn’t thrown anything out since 1973. He would have been the ideal mate for a CPA, mechanical engineer or computer chip inspector. But somehow, he got stuck on an artsy writer (probably with craft glue).
HIM: You already have 16 bags of those things under the house and more in the garage. Back away from the pine cones.
ME: But these are perfect.
HIM: That’s what you said about the other 6,873.
ME: Those were last year’s models.
HIM: No more pine cones until you do something with the ones you have! (He’s so cute when he snorts and stomps his feet.)
ME: You know I’d love to sit here and argue, but you should really move the car. The way you’re parked, you could cause an accident.
If Hubby ruled the world, nothing would ever be late, messy or unpredictable—including wives. Any pine cone attempting to fall off a tree would be arrested on impact. And every craft store would become a bait-and-tackle superstore.
Until then, Hubby lives in constant danger. A trusting creature by nature, he assumes that anything found in the kitchen should be edible. This includes clay masterpieces that bake in our household oven. If it’s warm and crunchy and sitting on a cookie sheet, he reasons that the object must be a cookie. Even if it’s purple.
Of course, no one ever becomes a world-famous artist when her significant other keeps eating her most significant work. The term “starving artist” probably has its roots in this very scenario. The aspiring artist, having no uneaten masterpieces to sell, starves. Her mate, meanwhile—the gourmet with the badly chipped teeth—spends whatever money they can scrounge on dentists.
If Picasso had to deal with this, the art world would still be wondering, “Pablo who?” He’d be the guy on the side of the road painting pine cone wreaths.
Jan A. Igoe is a wife, mother, newspaper editor, humorist and illustrator. She lives in Horry County.