Which one of us is Lazarus in this scenario?

My computer died last night. I mean, doornail dead. I use a MacBook--it was not turning on; the battery was not dead; it was making this strange weary-robot noise and then just going quiet. I've used Macs my whole life (my dad was an Apple guy from the early '80's) and have seen--and learned ways around--a lot of computer glitches for someone with an only moderate interest in technology. And this was new and Husband's calm but thorough internet searches (performed on his own functioning laptop) turned up suggestions that did nothing to revive my little machine.
I despaired.
I had a bad feeling about it. I thought about all the cookies my computer remembers so I don't have to. I thought about all the recipes and blogs and fabric stores I have bookmarked. I thought about the schoolwork from last year that I never backed up. Then husband mentioned photographs and I had a near-meltdown.
Then I went a little catatonic.
Then I had a glass of wine and Husband went to great lengths to cheer me up and it worked--lost data flew from my head completely for a good, good portion of the evening.
Then we watched two episodes of the Wire and during that time I managed to completely forget about the busted laptop a couple times.
Then while I was brushing my teeth I tried one last time to turn the computer on and guess what? It worked. Like the tragic-heroine operatics I performed earlier in the night had never taken place. And I am writing this on my trusty guy right now.
I learned something about myself last night: I am too attached to my computer. I was also reminded of something that I never seem to remember during those moments when it would most come in handy: I have an all-too frequent tendency to lose perspective.
I must say, I did not cry. But I did grieve, on some level. And that's worse than throwing a hissy fit, I think. Because I wasn't grieving the lost photos (Husband has our honeymoon and there is really nothing priceless in my album: mostly meals we've eaten and nights we've drunk--har har), I was grieving the lost convenience. I know it's a tired cliche, and I'm sorry that I don't have a photo to make it wink, but this thing is totally a crutch for me. I have no job! I spend hours looking at the internet every day! The loss of the laptop would create a vaccuum and I was terrified to think that I had no idea what could possibly fill it. I am terrified that a malfunctioning computer could shake me so.
Writing this, I realize also that the computer makes me feel connected to the world, of which I'm not really a part at the moment. I mean, of course I'm a part of it, but I sometimes go whole days without seeing anyone besides Husband. I thought this recent sewing jag, productive as it's been, was solving the problem of my unemployment. I thought what I hated about not having a job was the feeling that I don't contribute, financially, to our lives. I thought I would make our house look pretty without spending (much) money, and that I might even sell something I made. And I still might. That's not really the point, though.
The point is that I spend too much time looking at the computer. I felt resurrected when it came back on--it's surpassingly pathetic, but I felt a little bit like I died when the computer did. I won't be able to look myself in the eye for like a week after writing that sentence. Which only proves the point: I must step away from the laptop for a while.
I will allow myself to write these posts, because I've loved writing them, loved writing at all in the last week. But Facebook has got to be stopped lest I succomb completely to stalking people I barely knew in high school and playing Farm Town until I become a virtual millionaire farmer, the lamest accomplishment I can imagine for a thirty-two-year-old married woman of above average intelligence who boasts both sparkling conversation skills and big boobs.
I want to join the world the old fashioned way. I want to sew lots of cool-looking things and give them away to the people I know well and love now. I want to live in such a way that a dead computer bums me out but ruins nothing.
Part of that will mean less internet, part will mean an external hard drive.

Too much tell for a little show

I think one of the things that most appeals to me about sewing is the relative mystery inherent in the process. Because it contains so many variables, a sewist (I've heard people use that word; not sure how I feel about it. I will try it out here and see if I can stomach it--seamstress sounds so doddering) really doesn't know how a project will turn out until it's quite finished. I think this must be true for people who sew clothes as well; that's a frontier that still has me paralyzed with fear. It is especially true of the projects I've been making, though--while a top or skirt has maybe two fabrics, these table runners and quilt squares and pillows include five, six, sometimes nine or ten different fabrics. What if they don't go together?My confidence as a sewist (no. Can't do it--you won't see that word from me again.) is obviously quite low, and my anxiety level in unfamiliar situations is generally off the charts. But that only contributes to the pleasure I find in a finished project. The suspense nearly kills me, but when it's finished and all the threads are tucked away and the corners (mostly) squared, I feel a flush of sheer pleasure: I did this. It is finished and attractive and I can't take my eyes off of it.
It isn't only the variable of fabric choice that makes sewing suspenseful. It's also the fact that, until it's completely finished, a sewing project is utterly unfinished. It's tattered and shaggy and messy. Like a house that's undergoing a deep and thorough cleaning (I have heard of such things) or renovation, a sewing project gets messier the closer it is to being finished--at least my sewing projects do.It is an act of faith to go through with it. It takes a kind of tenacity that doesn't come naturally to me--a quality that I would do well to nurture and develop in myself. Tenacity, that is. And dedication and follow-through.
This project was my first attempt at cording on a pillow. I embroidered the flowers for a project I abandoned, and I embroidered the name when I decided this piece of patchwork was going to this particular baby pillow.
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**Disclaimer (into which I heartily put the "lame")**

I probably could have done a better job illustrating this point--with better, more tattered pictures of a work in progress. But that would have required me to take pictures of a tattered work in progress, which would have required me to make progress on another piece of work. I was thinking about this aspect of sewing and I am trying to post something every day this week, and I am trying to keep it relatively simple and get rid of some of the backlog of projects I've accumulated in my photo album.
Gosh, that sounds terribly churlish for a Friday morning, or for any morning. Maybe I'm taking too many resolutions at a time here, with blog posts and getting up early...The fact is I really love the way the embroidery came out on this pillow and I wanted to show it off.
In short, I am fronting. Isn't my pillow neat-looking?

Goodbye To All That

I don't have a job. I substitute teach sometimes, but it is rare. We moved here because Husband got a great job and we loved the idea of coming back to the small town where we both went to college (before we knew each other), and agreed that unemploying me was worth it.
And it was worth it. Husband's doing a great job, and while I've had some rocky times when I felt like a lazy bum who doesn't contribute, I've also started learning to sew and I've vastly improved my housekeeping skills. Though laundry still eludes me.
The main sticking point has been that our primary breadwinner wakes up at 6:45 every morning and his wife does no such thing. I love sleeping in. I am not suited to waking up anytime, if I'm being completely and embarrassingly honest, before 10 in the morning. I cannot tell you how lazy that makes me feel, coming as I do from a family with a rigid German work ethic on one side and a kind of fraught compulsiveness (she's Welsh, but I don't know if that has anything to do with it) on the other. My unemployment is not easy for them to understand, but coming as it does during these economic times (which are by all accounts quite bad), the joblessness is at least explicable.
I have grappled with guilt over my sleeping habits ever since I became a full-fledged adult, or more accurately, since I was old enough to be considered a real adult by everyone else. But I still slept in most days when I could, sprawling delightedly in our big bed after husband had left for work or (on weekends) heeded his internal alarm clock and retired to the living room to read the paper with Dog faithfully by his side. I snoozed, waking two or sometimes three hours after he left our bed, feeling groggy and lazy and guilty! guilty! of sloth. Actually, when he's home on weekends I don't feel so bad sleeping in. He makes me feel like a pampered princess--he says he loves letting me sleep because he knows how much I love it. So when he's home, I am content to sleep in. When he goes to work and I wake up hours later, realizing that his day is like one third over and I've been unconscious for all that time, it's a different feeling entirely. "Pampered" turns to "spoiled" and the decay in decadent really starts to show. I feel sheepish and guilty and lazy and spoiled--spoiled like rancid milk, like that brat in Willie Wonka.
But still I would sleep in. Not every day, but while we're on this embarrassingly honest train I might as well admit that most days, I slept until at least 9:00. I would wake, make some coffee and hopefully clean up last night's dishes. I would peruse the Internet aimlessly, and then frustratingly realize I'd wiled away like an hour or two and it would be late, late morning and I would shake myself and scold myself and feel like a bum.
BUT STILL, I would sleep in! What is wrong with me? Jesus.
Anyway, on Tuesday (which was like Monday this week), I think I drew the last straw. I think, I hope, that I've turned over a new leaf.
For some time now I've known that my dreams get weirder the longer I sleep. Eight a.m. dreams are a little less pleasant than middle-of-the-night-with-Husband-beside me dreams. Nine a.m. dreams are weirder still. This phenomenon has been getting more intense of late. It would seem that the rigidity and compulsiveness that are my birthright have infiltrated the deep recesses of my subconsciousness. Because Tuesday morning I had some truly fucked up dreams*--dreams I fervently hope I'll never dream again. My subconscious, it seems, is waging a full-scale war on my youthful, care-free laziness. If I want to wake up in anything other than a state of drooling, haunted, skeeved-out confusion, I will continue following this virtuous routine:
Wednesday I got up as Husband was putting on his shoes. The coffee was brewing by the time Dog and I walked him and the trash cans to the end of the driveway at 7:45. This morning I was standing at the coffee maker at 7:37, bemoaning the fact that he won't be home until 8:00 tonight, but accepting it like the total grownup I am, and kissing him goodbye as I set out to start the laundry.**

This is my new leaf:

I have turned it over.***

*The content of the dreams doesn't really matter, you know? Besides, if I tried to recount them, I would probably lose the one reader my little blog can claim: namely, me. Then there wouldn't even be a tree to fall in the forest, let alone someone around to hear it.
**That's bullshit. I did no laundry. I sat down with my coffee and read the internet. Then I wrote on it.
***I actually went outside to take this photograph. I was an English major. I know that metaphors do not need to be illustrated. Is this an unintended consequence of the internet, of the blogosphere, that everyone will think it's OK to use a cliche as long as they have some twee digital photographic essay to cleverize it? Ugh. Any sense of self-congratulatory smugness (over waking up during the virtuous seven o'clock hour) went straight out the window when I posted these photos. I leave them here as a reminder to myself: Never forget. You are sort of a douche.
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Acknowledgments

Joan Didion, whose title for a far, far superior essay I filched for the title of this dumb little act of procrastination.

sewwwwiinnngg

It takes forever for me to finish anything. the only project I can complete in less than 7,000 hours is a table runner. So table runners are pretty much all I have to show for myself. I gave this one to my mom for mother's day:Part of the reason I make so many blasted table runners is that our little rented house has a gazillion (actually, six in all) non-functioning radiators. Every room has at least one, and our nice landlord bought these pretty covers at some point. When we first moved in I thought they were really quite charming, but I soon remembered that if you give me a flat surface I will let it collect dust and other clutter/detritus. And the radiators take up precious space in this teensy little house.
So the idea for the table runner was born. This one is particularly pretty, I think. It really brightened up this particular radiator-cover corner. But then I ran out of time to make a Mother's Day gift so it got given away. (I'll be damned if that isn't one of the most yokel-tastic sentences I've ever strung together).
Anyway, I started to make another one but added another fabric or two and it just doesn't look as...what? Blue? Rich? Deep? Anyway, it's shorter too and I was going to put a binding on this one--for practice, you know. I've even sewn the binding together! But looking at this one kind of reminds me of what a pale imitation the other one will be, and I feel that familiar about-to-give-up feeling I get, with the dragging feet and the knitted brow, like someone's forcing me to tour a museum dedicated to computer code.
Have I said this? Since no one's reading I guess I can say it all I want--cooking is easy for me. Even when I'm making something I've never made before, the process is familiar enough that I feel adept--deft, even--whenever I'm in the kitchen. Husband does not. Even when he's just helping me, he fumbles more than anything (sorry, baby--he might actually read this one day). But that isn't because he's a gallump. It's because he's unfamiliar with the process. When I say "take that off the stove" he doesn't know where to put it down. When I say "pour some oil in that pan" he doesn't know how much oil. When I say "grab me the salt" he doesn't know if I mean table or kosher. He actually rather loathes cooking. And when there is a deadline, when dinner is just about to come together and timing is a major factor (the pasta has to be strained NOW), I'm ashamed to say I get impatient with him and sometimes I am snappy. Like a mean turtle.
Anyway, when faced with a new (or old) sewing project, I feel like Husband in the kitchen. I don't know how much or where or which--I fumble. And it's really frustrating. The mean turtle turns on itself.
So I stay away from the sewing machine, even though I know that the only way to stop being a fumbler is to get up there and practice.
I should think of the way I used to dice onions, or anything else that needed to be cut up for a recipe: I would lift the knife off the cutting board and hack into the food willy nilly, taking twice as long to reach a dice as was necessary, and ending up with unevenly-sized chunks. With practice, however, I've vastly improved my dicing skills. Now it feels like it comes naturally, even though I know nature has nothing to do with it. I am a clumsy girl, with next to no natural physical grace or skill. My body must learn by rote, by repeatedly performing the same tasks until they become automatic. It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway: I must learn to sew by rote, until all these little skills become automatic.
So I've really broken that down, haven't I? Been sitting here for a good thirty minutes working on that analysis. Guess what I could have been doing? Right. Procrastination is a topic for another day.

the long weekend

Friday we went out at happy hour, saw a woman we know and had several beers with her and her friends. One of those friends is a Vietnam vet who told stories and patiently explained, when prompted by curious me, the intricate workings of a mortar shell.
Then husband and I walked down the street for pizza and a pitcher of beer. We finished watching the Cavs game at home, where we were on some kind of tape delay. Lebron made a game-winning three-pointer at (literally!) the last second, and we heard the screams of fans from the bars down the hill from us before we actually saw the shot. That was fun--it's always fun when you think your team has lost and they win at the last second.
Saturday we drove to the town down the road and visited a few shops (I got lots of solid fabric in colors I regret a tiny bit--should have held out for a better selection either online or in the capital city but the lady was so nice and I'm a sucker for immediate gratification). Lunch at a little bar, walk with Dog (which walk included an invitation from friends to play euchre that night), bike ride to try out my new helmet, near-heart attack on the way home from said bike ride, showers, roasted chicken tacos for dinner, euchre & sangria at friends' house, home and in bed.
Saturday was effing great.
Sunday we made breakfast and headed out to the garden. we separated and boatload of hostas (and there is still a riot of them outside the front door!) and sweated lots. Took Dog to the park, went out for wings and beer to watch the depressing (as in: no last-second shot could save this one) Cavs game.
Husband awoke with a sore back yesterday. We had breakfast at a diner and then laid low the rest of the day. We are slowly making our way through the Wire and are currently on season 4, which lots of people I've talked to say is their favorite season. It's really good but I have the worst feeling about those corner kids--each episode makes me feel terrified for a different boy, and I know we're going to lose at least one of them by the end of the season. Even as I mourn in advance, I love the masterful manipulation those writers inflict on me: I love stories, and the Wire really socks 'em to me.
Husband's famous beer brats for dinner last night, watched some random movie snippets on TV, then an early bedtime. I read a new book ("Evidence of Things Unseen" by Marianne Wiggins) and Husband fell asleep real early.

On the bike ride this thought came to me, crystal clear-as-a-bell: "I never thought I would be this happy."