Month 9 of the Year 30

                This month as my “first” was clothes-related, I thought I’d open with one of my earliest clothes memories.

                When I was at my kindergarten graduation, I remember squatting on the stage with my fellow graduates for group pictures. I can still recall looking out into the audience, smiling proudly and holding up my certificate. I can also recall the smiling, laughing sea of faces. When I got home, my family informed me what the cause of some of the laughter was. That day I was rocking a soft yellow knee-length jumper with a floral print and accessorizing with a headband. I was also rocking the un-ladylike pose of a squat on a raised stage and my underwear was showing for all the world to see. I would have long forgotten this little faux-pas except for the photos that memorialize it and which family members continue to erupt with laughter at.

                I could tell another embarrassing kindergarten story of how I conceived that it would be a fun idea to wear no underwear at all to school one day—might not have been a problem except that I was wearing the aforementioned yellow jumper. I could tell that story but then it would seem I have some weird obsession with undergarments (given the pair I wore on my head last month) so I best let it lie there.

                Well, this month my dedication to the Year 30 was severely tested. I have been swamped, stressed, overloaded, overwhelmed—did I mention busy?—with work, full-time graduate classes, and student teaching (and a knee injury that has temporarily halted my running). But I’ve remained committed to seeing this year’s adventures through, even if my hair turns completely gray by the end of the semester.

                For three Friday nights this month (and two Saturday mornings) I left my hectic life and entered a haven of calm that is my friends’ Leah and Sarah’s house. You see, they had offered to teach me how to S.E.W. and as these are my initials (no joke), I imagined it would come fairly naturally.

                Leah and Sarah (sisters) bravely took me on as their pupil. The first Friday night we went to a fabric store and selected a pattern and a fabric. Sarah mentioned that an easy pattern would have an elastic waist and no frills. But of course the pattern I liked most was for a flouncy skirt with a waistband, a zipper, and two pockets with cute bows. The girls and I agreed that we might as well go big or go home. I selected a light blue twill fabric that would be appropriate in any season. At this point, we were all still optimistic and bright, not letting the fact that the fabric store didn’t have twill tape on hand deter us. We were confident, ready. I thought I would have a skirt by the next morning, though Leah cautioned against chrono-optimism.

               

Reality set in, though, when we unfurled the directions, which were written in Greek. “Press 5/8” top seam on the front left side. Baste.” And there were like 29 steps written like this! It was actually more like 42 steps but the sewing experts know that 42 steps would discourage novices so they bundle several steps into one. I occasionally asked, after hours of intensive labor, what step we were on and invariably we were still on step 2 or 3.

                Needless to say, it was a lot of work but I learned a lot of cool things. Like that basting is not just something you do in the kitchen. I really liked pinning the pattern to the cloth; it would take awhile and we had to take the pins right out again, but it was still fun. I also enjoyed working the sewing machine; I think it would be fun to work the pedal and make stitches even if you were just sewing your thumbs together.

                I marveled at Leah and Sarah’s patience as they watched me slowly pin, iron, stitch—for hours—and on five different occasions. Sarah told me to include in this blog that I asked them if I had correct “sewing form” – which I thought a valid question at the time. I think that at the moment I asked that question, one arm was sticking through the interior part of the machine and the other arm around the outer part so that I was hunched over the sewing machine kind of bear-hugging it. I think I needed some guidance as to form at that moment.

                The first weekend we worked on cutting the pieces and making these elaborate pockets with bows. Every time I made a mistake, and the girls said we needed to rip the seam and do it again, my response was that no one would notice that little mistake. Thankfully, they did make me re-do those mistakes because all told, the mistakes would have finally become noticeable.

                Probably my biggest mistake that first weekend (we usually had one big one every weekend) was cutting the fabric for a much longer skirt than I had wanted—but that was easily rectified.

                The second weekend the skirt really came together and the whole process started to make more sense to me. Mom Gillian stepped in to help us with installing a zipper, which was actually kind of harrowing. The largest mistake that weekend was that I put the zipper on the wrong side of the skirt. Did not know: women’s zippers are supposed to be on the left side of the body. Mine is going to be on the right side. Please don’t judge.

                I dashed over the third Friday night of September around 8:45 to see the project through to completion. We had like four steps left (in sewers’ terms, like 12 steps). We worked awhile, somewhat delirious with tiredness, yet trying to make the September deadline. It came time to try the zipper and pull the waistband together—and it came together, sort of. It was actually funny—the two sides of my skirt didn’t match up at all. One side was higher than the other and the zipper was askew.

Leah broke the news that this was, in fact, a major setback that would take hours to rectify…and it was already close to 11 p.m. So I bailed—yes, it’s true. Leah and Sarah offered me a lifeline and I took it; they are planning to rip the top of the skirt apart and put it back together correctly for me.

                So let me conclude with a few reflections on sewing:

1.       Sewing takes a lot of time and work. Did I find myself saying “I could buy a skirt at ROSS for $25 or less and be out of the store in 20 minutes, as opposed to 25 hours of sewing?” I confess the thought crossed my mind. But ROSS couldn’t give me the learning experience, which was what it was all about, after all.

2.       I am not writing off sewing. I’m fascinated by the handwork, the precision required, the different side of my brain I got to exercise. When I had to measure cloth with a ruler, I was a bit flummoxed as I haven’t really measured since elementary school.

3.       Sewing is best done with friends who make it more of a social event. It would be really scary to see what I would have done with a sewing machine and blue twill fabric if I had been on my own. I once tried crocheting and I just crocheted a dome shape that most resembled an alien’s hatwear. That was the last time I used crocheting needles. Hopefully the same will not be true of sewing.

Thanks, Sarah and Leah!! Can’t wait to try on the new skirt!

ADDENDUM

Several days have passed since I drafted the above. Yesterday I arrived home around 10 p.m. after a long, rough day to be greeted by a large package. Inside was my completed (corrected) skirt!!! Thanks so much, girls J

Month 8 of the Year 30

         When I decided that one of my “firsts” was going to be taking a spontaneous, uncharted roadtrip with a friend, I instantly knew who that friend would be.

          My friend Julia is a lifelong friend who I’ve literally known since birth, though we didn’t become close until our late teens. Julia is my opposite; she is very laid-back, go-with-the-flow and spontaneous, whereas I am tightly wound, and very plan- and schedule-oriented. Julia will accompany a friend on a midnight shopping trip to Walmart at the drop of a hat. Any “friend” who called me up at midnight for a Walmart run might not get the most Christian response. (You see, I hadn’t planned that Walmart trip and I would calculate how much sleep I’d lose and how tired I’d feel the next day, etc.)

          So if I wanted to take a daytrip filled with spontaneous fun, it would have to be with Julia. It also had to be with Julia because we needed desperately to redeem ourselves. On one of our last trips together (many years ago actually), we traveled to the North Carolina mountains. On our return home, we set out on our 1 ½ hour drive home, singing to music and chatting, not noticing that we had missed our early turn off. We drove and drove (for hours) without paying attention to where we were going, not noticing that nothing looked familiar—until finally we saw a sign for Augusta, Georgia! We were mortified. Turns out, we were nearer to Columbia than Augusta, but our 1 ½ hour trip home extended into a five hour trip by the time it was over.

          This roadtrip then was made for us—no schedule and no rules. I wanted to drive with no destination, turning left and right as the mood hit me, embracing spontaneity. Now to be honest, we did plan to drive towards the North Carolina mountains to ensure we’d end up somewhere interesting, so we sort of cheated, I guess.

          To also ensure that we had adventures along the way, I crafted an extensive “Checklist of Fun” filled with items for us to attempt to complete throughout the day. Some items on the list that we did not do but I wish we had: taking a photo with roadkill, finding 30 of something, and working a nonsense word multiple times into a conversation with a stranger. We did manage to pull off other funny things, as you will see…

          1. Dance in parking lot. Okay, this one we actually added to the checklist after we did it just so we could check it off. We pulled away from my house around 9:15 a.m. on a Saturday and headed through Cherryville and beyond towards Morganton. (We went through a lot of small towns like Morganton, Rutherfordton, Marion, Old Fort, Black Mountain, and Montreat). Our first bit of fun was dancing the electric slide in a parking lot in full view of the road.

          2. Wear outrageous clothing item. This may be the thing I get the most flack for but it was also the funniest. Now early on it was necessary that we set the tone for our trip—did we have chutzpah enough to fulfill this checklist or did we not? Were we men or were we mice? We drove past a yard sale stationed outside of a small business and hosted by several vendors. Before turning around to drive back, we affixed a pair of underwear to my head like a bandana, rolling the waistband under and sort of pulling it back with a claw clip. We drove back to the yard sale. It was kind of hard, let me tell you, to approach people with a smile on my face and act like I wasn’t wearing underwear on my head. Julia kept trying hard not to laugh because according to her, my headdress looked pretty ridiculous in the box. I don’t think anyone at the yard sale even noticed or perhaps they thought we were introducing a new style. We shot this photo before leaving. After this, we knew we were equal to almost anything.

          3. Carry/use a prop. Our next stop was at a really cute country store. We donned hats and I carried a fan and fanned myself like a Southern belle. The proprietor greeted us with a blunt: “What’s up with the hats?” Julia’s had crazy black and white feathers on the front of it so it was hard to ignore. The proprietor’s dog began barking at us soon after we entered, and the proprietor deduced that her dog was just barking at our hats. A little later, while perusing the store’s shelves, Julia overheard a male customer telling the proprietor that when he saw Julia’s hat, he thought it was a skunk and almost went to get his gun. Somehow I don’t doubt that this man’s gun was ever very far from his person.

         

          4. Play Chinese red light.

          5. Crazy car dancing.

          6. Sing loud and off-key at stoplight. Yes, we did these things but there’s not much to say about them…

          As I mentioned earlier, our goal was to drive into the mountains. For awhile, it seemed we were circling the mountain or that the mountains were moving as we tried to drive toward them. Finally, we saw a sign for Lake Lure and we followed the winding road up. By now it had taken us over three hours to meander up the mountain and we were hungry.

          7. We stopped and ate at a beautiful Italian restaurant overlooking the lake.

Here was opportunity for a little further fun. I pretended that I could only speak French. This meant that Julia did all of the ordering and speaking for us. I had trouble thinking of French phrases quickly enough but I do remember saying “Merci” a lot to the waitress. Since we never actually told the waitress that I didn’t speak English, I think she just thought there was something wrong with me. So when I would look up at her and smile sweetly, she would cut her eyes at me but then awkwardly turn to confer only with Julia. So I’m not sure if she thought that I didn’t speak English or that I had problems, but either way, I made her very uncomfortable.

          8. At Chimney Rock, we dipped our feet in a body of water which was on the list.

What was not on the list was my walking in on a father and son using the bathroom side by side. We were at a business that only had one outdoor restroom for both sexes. I opened the door wide and started to enter when I noticed that there was a man and his young son standing inside with their backs toward me. I said I was sorry and hurried away. When they emerged, the man was angry, not at me per se, but at his wife who apparently was supposed to be guarding the door (because it was too hard to latch it??). NOT on my list.

          As the afternoon wore on, we continued up the mountain, went back down, went back up again, followed signs that looked interesting, drove in and out of rainstorms.

          9. Walk with a limp. Yes, I’m strange but I had perfected a really funny limp where I kind of dragged one leg behind me in a ridiculously exaggerated way. When I say dragged, I mean I used both arms to pull the leg after me. When we made a bathroom stop at Hardees (indoor restrooms for both sexes there), I dragged my leg behind me to the door, then inside to the restroom, and back out again. It was not the Hardees rush hour so there weren’t many people around, but those who did notice weren’t impressed. I’ll need to practice it some more, I guess.

          10. Pretend to work somewhere along the way. We had ratcheted up our courage a good bit by now so we pulled over to a Dollar General and pretended (one at a time) to be greeters. So when a customer walked up (I was standing outside the door), I welcomed him or her cordially to Dollar General. After only the second customer, Julia hurriedly called me over. “I think that person you just welcomed works here.” It made sense--she was wearing a yellow shirt and she kind of laughed when I greeted her. Not long after, we were on the road again.

          11-14. We ended our adventures in Asheville and tried to knock out as many items on the checklist as we could: Take photo with a stranger. Take photo with something purple. Find interesting graffiti. Try a new food or drink.

 

where I met the "stranger" I took the photo with



          We ate at a very cool Mediterranean place where we sat on cushions on the floor.

I tried some new foods, like falafel. At this restaurant a belly dancer was making her rounds between the two rooms. Whenever she’d come dancing in, she’d have a different prop—some candles, a sword, a tip basket. It was one of those awkward situations where you don’t really know how to act or where to look, but above all you want to appear nonchalant and sophisticated. Here’s this woman dancing suggestively over your table and you don’t know whether to ignore her, smile and nod at her, or what. So I just filmed Julia looking awkward. (Sorry, Jules; you’ll notice I didn’t post the video clip J)

          15. Probably the most gutsy thing we did do in Asheville was that I pretended to be a caricaturist. We sat in a busy town square where lots of people were passing by and I opened my big notebook, which looked somewhat like a sketch pad. I spoke to Julia like she was a customer while I drew a head shot of her. Of course, if you know me, you know I’m a terrible artist and that was the point. People walked by, saw a caricaturist drawing someone, and did what was natural—looked over my shoulder (according to Julia). What they saw was a child-like rendering of something that looked nothing like Julia. And they kept on walking. I’m proud of that one.

          So, all in all, it was a successful roadtrip. Thirteen hours on the road, we didn’t get terribly lost, we finally found the mountains, and we stretched our normally shy, retiring selves in at least fifteen ways.

         

(Shout-out to Julia who is approaching her 30^th in a month!)