Something magical happened today. I slept in. When I got up, the Chaplain left with the five middle kids for the strawberry fields. Our oldest was already at school taking a test, and I was left with the baby.
The baby and I read a story over and over (Tickle, Tickle, by Helen Oxenbury), then he described the pictures to me. (He pointed to one baby’s butt and said the longest string of intelligible words I’ve ever heard from him: “Poop diaper yuck sorry.”) After storytime, he played happily by himself and stayed out of trouble so I could sew.
When the truck pulled in later in the morning and everyone poured out of it, arms full of clementine boxes brimming with strawberries, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to set aside my sewing to start jam.
It turns out I didn’t have to.
I like to throw a little YA/Middle Grade lit into my reading diet every so often, and The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl, by Stacy McAnulty, fit the bill.
My twelve year old daughter actually got to the book first. She said “it was interesting. It was a good story.” Which isn’t very enthusiastic, but I interrupted her from doing something else to ask. She’ll tell me if she didn’t like a book.
I started it weeks after she’d finished it, when I was out of renewals at the library and was afraid I’d have to return it without reading it like I had to do with two other books sitting on my reading pile this month.
Appropriately, I read the first third sitting in a middle school/high school auditorium at one of my daughters’ stage rehearsals for a dance recital.
For my first attempt at making pants for myself, I made Arenite Pants from Meg of Sew Liberated. The pants have a ton of ease and lots of options in terms of style and fabric choice, so the five pairs I made from the same pattern and size feel very different from each other.
The image shows the paperback version of Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, by Jon Kabat-Zinn, but I actually ended up listening to the audiobook. The Chaplain recommended this book to me a little while ago. He didn’t say much about it. I just remember him telling me, “you should read it.” Since he doesn’t recommend many books to me and our reading interests don’t intersect much, I took him seriously.
If you follow me on Insta, you know that I participated in something called #memademay this year. This is an optional motivational tool and fun adventure for sewists who make their own clothes to wear what they’ve made and feature it on social media.
I don’t think most of my friends sew, so while I hope they didn’t get sick of seeing my face in May, there was also the bigger thing of maybe no one caring that I make my own clothes. And the sticky issue of who, exactly, our social media accounts are for.
Us?
Our friends?
Attention for us, from our friends?
*cringe*
