Betsy Ross was a sexy bitch

July 29, 2005 - 11:34 p.m.

I don’t know how to ease into this subject…modestly discuss important world events and why there is a book called “The O’Reilly Factor – For Kids!” and then casually bring up the Galapagos Islands, then Darwin, and then distractedly, as I leave the room to make another drink, I’ll say: “Speaking of chimps…”

“Hey – Look at the cool monkey things I made!”

I made this sock monkey with matching quilt for my friends Ginger and Ross who had their first baby in February. This is how long it took me to give it to them, because they live 2,000 miles away and I’m a terrible friend who never put up the $300 to go fly to see them. Instead, they had to pay $600 to come fetch it.

And to answer your question, uh, yes…I actually made it, as in MADE. IT. With my hands and a whole ton of string and needles and very sharp scissors. I only say this because that’s the first response I’ve gotten from everyone: “Oh, you mean you didn’t buy it, you CREATED it?”

I expected to hear this one or two times, but it’s been more like twelve times, including my own mother who said, “You made it? Couldn’t you have bought a monkey like this?”

But yes.

Ye of little faith! That Shawna Mooney cannot create such a thing, even with Amish blood coursing my veins, and carrying 8 generations of butter-churnin’, bee quiltin’ genes??

Honey, if I can make my teeth appear white in photos by using Photoshop, I sure as HAIL can sew a couplea socks together!

So many times I’ve wanted to write here about my monkey adventure, but I couldn’t because the monkey’s recipient’s Mama reads White Helmet everyday as she (presumably) mixes formula and watches the sun rise.

FINALLY.

The truth is out.

And truth be told, the monkeys were originally puppies, as Mama loves the puppies, and doesn’t everyone know that little boys are made of Frogs and Snails and Puppydog Tails?

Thank god she didn’t have a girl, since sugar and spice would make for a pretty boring quilt motif.

But it started out as puppies, and it was a beautiful thing, in my mind, but there is not a fabric on this earth that compared with the puppy images in my mind, so the puppy idea got flushed. My heart was not in it, and hell if I can force creative energy when I’m staring at puppies that totally suck ass.

And then it came to me. Monkeys! Everyone loves monkeys! And sock monkeys are even cooler, and then holy shit! I can make a monkey that goes with the quilt and Shazzam! Bananas, bananas, and monkey portraits, hell yeah!

And the icing on the fucking cake, as I was looking around on the internet to order the socks for the sock monkey, I discovered that those little fuckers were invented in mine and Ginger’s home town, and we had no idea! Whutter the odds a that?? Our hometown’s only claim to fame besides that band that sings “The Dream Police” – and there is a sock monkey museum run out of the home of some middle-aged homo who probably named them all and has tea parties and shit!

But my god, what a labor of love! It was so much harder than I had anticipated, and very often I find myself up to my eyeballs in an art project and ruin everything in 2 seconds flat. This happens for the following reasons:

1) I have no idea what the hell I am doing, and;

2) I REALLY. Have NO IDEA. What I am doing.

Thought process: “I will sit down now, and make a quilt, and it will flow from my fingertips like Rumplestiltskin spinning straw into gold, with the ethereal guidance of familial specters, my great-aunt Mary and Grandma Polly.”

The end result was a quilt so riddled with mistakes that I’d rather lie and say that I made it while drinking a fifth of Everclear during an earthquake, while riding in the back of a pickup truck going 50 mph down a Kentucky mountainside, than admit that:

I have no idea what the hell I am doing.

Blood, sweat and tears. And more tears.

I knew your distrusting ass would need some real proof, so behold:

Laboriously stuffing the monkey’s tail. Accidental panty shot, I swear.

For a moment I considered giving the monkey a vagina. It seemed to be…begging for a vagina. But alas, I did not want to scar the boy for life.

My next monkey, for myself, might have a vag or two.

That night, my boyfriend read the newspaper and watched me stuff the monkey, curious as to what the hell that stuffing was. He told me that when he was a baby, his grandma had made him a sock monkey and when he was ten years old he performed surgery on the monkey “and he was stuffed with old pantyhose.”

And then he said, “You know, someday that kid is going to cut that monkey open, so you should put something in there to surprise him.”

“You mean like a note that says ‘Aaagghh! You killed me! I thought you loved me…’?”

But again, trying to stay away from the whole childhood trauma thing.

He don’t know it yet, cuz he’s just a big beautiful baby, but someday he’s gonna open up that monkey and find a big red heart inside. Awwwwwww.

Embarrassed, and trying to explain away my shoddy quilting job to the boy’s mother, I said, “When he grows up and he asks, ‘Mom, who made me these monkey things?’ you tell him that it was Shawna Mooney.”

“But then…tell him I was 12 years old when I made them.”

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