Riots and sewing

The world is ablaze with earthquakes and volcanoes and riots, and I feel a bit self-conscious about skipping along with my own activities. Things are rainy and quiet and fine here, but by the third day of the uprising in Baltimore, my very white relatives started getting tired of the topic and began to say stupid, racist shit on facebook. Look, family - nobody wants to be the bad guy, but if your best defense is "well then, stop making us beat you to death", you might want to stop for a second and check the emblem on your hat. 

So there's that.

I did some sewing, because Leif was home sick.

These things don't come with seam allowance, so instead of adding my own, I just made a size 4.

 

Happy Homemade: Sew Chic Kids

And it was way, way too big.

Great.

Well, at least she'll have one thing to wear when she's 6. 

expelliarmouse

The mouse got into my co-worker's gourmet chocolate bar, and that was the last straw. She tossed the candy out and stalked off to find the glue traps. I skidded over to the garbage, fished out the chocolate, snapped off a piece for bait, and put the trap on the floor next to the door. If this mouse was going to have any chance, it was going to have to be caught with its face full. As I sat down at the computer to look up mouse-in-glue-trap rescue tips, someone hollered, "HE'S IN THERE." Leaped back into the room - "Nope, he's gone already." WHAT. I put more chocolate in the trap, set it back down in exactly the same spot, and we all stared at it. One of our patrons came over to see what we were peering at, and suggested letting corn snakes loose in the library. Within 30 seconds, a whiskery nose snuffled around the little ramp. I snatched up the cage and ran. Everyone ran after us. We stampeded outside, and made it halfway across the driveway before the mouse made a flying leap out of the trap and shot into the bushes. We turned as a flock and stuffed back inside and slammed the door shut.

VICTORY.

I think there is a lot to be said for library snakes, though.

Sweeney Todd

REDOUBLE MY EFFORTS, I hollered.

RECOVER WHAT I'VE LOST, my mother hollered back.

I think my motto is a bit more attainable, seeing as my mother decided on hers after having an appendectomy.

We were doing a lot of hollering because we were late to the opera. I tore through her closet and grabbed a dress from a few years ago, because opera gowns aren't in the home renovation budget. We flailed around with tiny binoculars and posed for hasty pictures and then shoved each other into the car without eating dinner, at which point my mother checked the tickets and realized the opera started an hour later than we thought. I yanked the car over into the Burger King parking lot and we ate chicken sandwiches in velvet shawls with our pinkies up.

 

fancy-hands pose

The usual crowd of men in nice jackets and ladies in poofy skirts was peppered with youths in steampunk formalwear and rockabilly victory rolls. My favorite ensemble was the woman in the naval-plunge dress who painted her eyebrows in like Frida Kahlo to confuse people as to where to look. There was also a man in an iridescent green and gold velvet jacket, and another man in a formal suit with his hair up in a bun, wearing a dozen giant silver necklaces. Truly fantastic. But we didn't see any crocs this year.

My mother made me pick a drink while we waited for curtain call, so while everyone was swanning around with wine glasses, I spent 15 minutes trying to hide a Bud Light with a paper napkin.

 

I added graphics through an app, and now our faces are glamorously blurry. 

YOU'RE WELCOME.

Sweeney Todd is a lot of fun, not least of all because the chorus goes, "There's a hole in London and it's filled with SHIT," and old ladies huffed out mid-performance clutching fistfuls of pearls when Mrs. Lovett sang about pussy pies. The set designer had to make a barber chair that swung around, collapsed into a slide, and dumped the actors down a hole in the floor. The extras could barely contain whoops as their corpses flew out of view. It was beautiful.

And that is the first recreational outing I've had since last year. Cussing, blood, cannibalism, and giant dancing rats.

SPEAKING OF WHICH.

While typing this on my lunch break, there was a rattling next to my elbow, and the wizard mouse busted out of the trap. Right in front of me. In broad daylight. I scrabbled to catch it, but it escaped down a crack. Irritated, I finished my banana, then went to my cupboard to find a tea bag, and the wizard mouse flew out of my bag, past my face, and around the desk.

This mouse.

BEHOLD THE MAJESTY

Latent gardening powers SURGING.

BLOSSOMING, even. UNFURLING.

I am the MOTHER OF ROSES.

Only, you know - 

on a very

very  

small 

scale.

Actually, what happened is my bush became distressed in the cardboard box they shipped it in from Portland, and it blew a blossom early.

There are also hops planted in that dirt, but they might have died under there somewhere, and I can't buy more seedlings until next pay period. Gardening is not as immediately gratifying as laying floor tile or knitting a sock or ripping up a shitty drawing.

stupid thought zombies

My sleeping brain has been rummaging these past few nights, pulling up terrible things to set creeping into dreams.

Oh, you are missing your son while he stays the week at his grandmother's? Maybe he is really gone because you killed him.

This was the worst thing I have ever dreamed.

Oh, is this torch still burning? Let's see how that flame fares if he's gained 80lbs. 

Nice try, brain. Torches don't give a damn. But I could have done without that particular reminder.

Where is the baby? Is the baby still in the bed? Has she fallen down the crack and smothered?

Woke up groping around blindly in the bed for the baby, who had been sleeping until I pawed her face. GODAMMIT BRAIN.

I blame my phone, with its news articles and social media distresses. I have started calling it "Riddle's Diary", and frisbeeing it away if it appears in my hand again.

Stinks.

Another sewed thing

Another Japanese pattern book. I've ordered about 4 more from the library. This no-zipper thing is the very best.

The purse strings are tight with the new mortgage/bills/childcare/food adjustments, and the girl keeps growing upward, so I've been rummaging my sewing trunk for bits of fabric. This yellow print isn't something I would have bought on my own, but my aunt left it when she went back to Indiana, and it looks pretty good as a kid's shirt. Am happy with it. Beggars and choosers and horses and steaks, as the sayings go.

Inordinately excited about these pattern books. At least I'm off of doilies for now.

Letting most of the cat out. Tails don't always make it.

"Cat? Where are youuuu? Come out, come out, wherever you are!" She is bad at hide and seek.

In background: my majestic rose garden. Gardening is really slow, people.

Shots with good camera:

Edit: AND ANOTHER.

It is raining. The kids are constructing Lego worlds and I'm letting my tea go cold while working on my dowager's hump at the sewing machine.

This one has ridiculous sleeves. I should sew epaulet fringe on those things and get her ready for battle.

Time to bake some things.

Today in the mouse trap

I caught a mouse-sized cockroach. This is getting worse.

peer pressure

My co-worker is very fit and athletic. I am trying to copy her eating habits, which has resulted in smoothies for breakfast, protein bars for lunch, and energetic hoe-wielding in my garden. It's not a perfect system, though.

We have a staff brunch coming up.
"Get the omelette!" says my co-worker. "Bacon is paleo!"
Co-worker #2 pokes her head in the office. "I put pastries in the staff room."
I went and got half a donut. Co-worker trotted away and came back with a plate of roast chicken.

At the staff meeting, boss brought pie. We dished up slices, and co-worker sat happily peeling a boiled egg.

Paleo pie

I don't know how she turns her pastries into meat and eggs, but she has muscles and I have wind socks for arms. 

I ordered the bacon omelette. FITNESS FTW.

Disagreeable animagus

MOUSE. I AM TRYING TO SAVE YOU, MOUSE.

As head of the Rodent Removal Squad, I am in charge of baiting the little cages and releasing the library mice in a humane and sanitary manner. My co-workers are perfectly happy to let me scrub mouse poop out of the traps every day and not have to throw away the struggling little quivering-eyed beasties in glue traps, so this hasn't been a hard sell, but NOW one of the mice has learned how to escape from the traps. For the third day in a row, I'm washing out the poop and trying to hide the fact that Algernon has learned to operate the one-way ramp, because as soon as my system is proven a failure they will be back to slipping glue traps behind the shelves. Maybe if I just stuff the damn thing with cheese and peanut butter, the mouse will spend so long glutting itself that it'll still be in there by the time we open the building. Or I will breed a generation of gargantuan, super-intelligent mice.

Worth a shot, either way.

"If it doesn't look handmade, what's the point?"

My favorite argument for whenever something comes out very badly, coming from a library patron who refused to learn advanced craft skills.

Something was wrong with my feed dogs. My nap time sewing schedule doesn't generally include time for machine diagnostics, so I forced my way through anyway. After mangling the dress and caroming my topstitching all over the damn place, I took one minute to scrutinize the machine thoughtfully and realized that there is a pressure button on the side of the machine. I pushed it down. My feed dogs worked again. So I sewed an entire dress very badly for nothing.

ANYWAY.

Another project from Linen, Wool, Cotton Kids. This one has pockets. And still no zippers!

Also, I planted things. Four gardenia bushes, and a passion fruit vine along the fencepost. Also (not pictured), two English rose bushes, which are tiny and cute and came in a cardboard box from Oregon. I'll have to plant some native Hawaiian plants to make up for introducing the invasive species. Guilt and furtiveness.

Aaaaaah, topstitching like someone hydroplaning.

Toddler hair.

It's ok, despite my horrible sewing machine diagnostic ability.

Not a post about Easter

I haven't been a fan of Easter for some years now. I know I should take the rabbit by its horns and shake as much festivity out of it as I can, but I lack the proper rabbit-throttling enthusiasm. I will note that there was more flat ham, which was fantastic, and roast lamb, which was amazing, and the children were really great. So that's all fine. MOVING ON.

Am getting into minor flame wars on social media over the Mauna Kea telescope. Which I support. Because there's already a telescope up there. And nobody lives there. And there are no endangered species at risk. And it'll be amazing. But Jason Momoa took his shirt off, so EVERYONE UP TO THE SUMMIT TO HUG HIM AND GET ARRESTED. HAWAIIAN BLOOD FOREVAH. You know who also loves pure blood? Voldemort. Expect him up there any time, folks. And hope he keeps his shirt on.

This week I gave a 13 year-old a medal for putting his fist in a cardboard box. He won the storytelling competition with the extra points we gave him for comedic sarcasm.

Week #2 of having no functioning bathtub and having to wash my hair in the laundry sink was made more exciting by having the water shut off completely. We have since resolved the situation, and Leif was disappointed that he still wasn't allowed to catapult around splashing water all over the floor. WHAT GOOD IS A NEW TUB EVEN.

Earlier in the week, for reasons perhaps easy to intuit (hint: free showers), I took the kids to the public pool. We paddled around in three feet of water while hovered over by two surprisingly-vigilant lifeguards. Zenny, who will stand grimly and refuse to sit or play while in the bath, suddenly becomes part-otter in the pool, leaping and splashing and... cracking mollusks. Handles on baby suits, I tell you.

Incidentally, I just searched for "baby swimsuit with handles", just to see if they've been invented yet, and found this thing:

Clearly no further advancements in swimwear are necessary.

Xebo died

1996-2015

We found Xebo when I was 16, on Molokai. He was the very best, up until the cancer made him confused and angry and thrashing at people in pain. He went gently in my mother's arms at the age of almost-20.

Greatest hits:

As a kitten, he stole all our used corn cobs and made a pile under the table, where he sat growling and gnawing until they were nubs.

After we plunked half a frozen chicken into a pot of boiling water to make soup, he jumped up onto the counter while we were not looking, reached into the boiling water, and hooked the chicken out with his claws, and made a daring escape with a piece of meat as large as himself. We wrestled it away from him, rinsed it off, and put it back in the pot. Because we are gross cat lovers.

While my aunt was cleaning the big fish tank, Xebo failed to notice the lid was off, jumped from the dining table, and kangaroo-leaped through the tank, traumatizing all the fish.

"No Xebo, you can't go outside, it's raining." So he went into the bathroom and systematically pulled out all the bathroom louvers like a raccoon.

"No Xebo, you can't come in the bathroom to watch me pee." So he learned to turn doorknobs.

Any time we had guests, there were shrieks from the bathroom, because Xebo HAD to see what was making the noise, and there was a gap between your bottom and the back of the toilet to poke his head down.

Gavin learned to walk by dandling a stick while Xebo tumbled and gnawed on the end of it.

Leif learned to walk by dandling a stick while Xebo hissed and batted at it.

Zenny learned to walk by trying to get away from Xebo before he scratched her. (He was getting old.)


Am sad today.

I sewed a thing

From a library book. A really good one, if you're into simple, timeless/vintage style and NO ZIPPERS YAAAY.

You have to trace out the pattern yourself - the different pieces are drafted over one another like lines on a topographic map, printed in different colors. Not too hard to trace out, except that the spread-out sheets of tissue and pattern paper summon every cat within a 30-foot range.

Japanese batik print linen, with overlapping tie-back and slightly gathered waist.

3 hours, start to finish, excluding time spent slinging cats.

I win, Easter deadline!

The dancing meth addict

"There is a big guy with no shirt on, dancing on the sidewalk."
"Is he still there? He's been doing that since last night."
"He is dancing with his hands down his shorts."
"Oh, dear."

The large semi-naked man was asked to please dance a bit farther away from the walkway.
"I'm hungry," he said.
"You can get food at the gas station," we suggested.
He moon-walked around the corner. Peeking from the back door, we could see him execute some tight spins and an energetic bit of air guitar near the bus stop. Part of his imaginary guitar appeared to be stuffed down the front of his pants.

Some time later, there was the distant sound of sirens. One of our police officers trotted in. "A big naked meth addict was just taken off to the hospital for a heart attack by the gas station!"

Yikes. I hope he got his sandwich first.