I am Not Alone in the Struggle

I got quite a giggle over my coffee when I read Barbara Emodi’s Sewing on the Edge blog this morning. Her post is entitled Flypaper Thoughts Illustrated From the Production Room. She nailed how it feels to be a sewist at this time of year. And the funniest part is that “in the middle of all of this,” her husband has learned to sew. He bought himself a Singer Touch and Sew machine.

I don’t think I need to worry about the husband taking up sewing. Thank goodness.

That mystery item from yesterday’s blog post was a potholder. I took four of them to church for some field testing during our fellowship meal yesterday. They were deemed suitable by all of the experts there, so I am going to stick with that design. That was as close to sewing as I came; we had our church service, then a fellowship meal, then a business meeting to approve the 2020 budget, and finally, choir practice. I didn’t get home until 3 p.m. This is a typical Sunday in December. The good news is that my small but mighty choir of 10 people (we were missing some personnel) gamely accepted the challenge I set before them. The piece we are working up for the Christmas Eve service is an acapella arrangement.

[I was selfish this year in choosing a choir piece; I never get to sing because I am the accompianist, so I chose an arrangement that doesn’t come with accompaniment. The Mennonites have a long tradition of acapella singing, so this isn’t as shocking as it might have been to another group of singers. It remains to be seen whether I will sing alto or tenor or bounce back and forth. Much depends on who else comes to practice.]

I also got the list of songs for the Christmas Eve service, so I’ll spend some time this week getting my music in order. I like to keep it all together in one binder so I’m not fumbling around with multiple books, but that requires making copies. And we have Christmas caroling scheduled for next Sunday evening.

I had sewing on the schedule for today, but something has come up and I will have to spend some time in town. I am hoping that resolving this particular issue won’t take too long.

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The husband and I went out to dinner Saturday night, and while we were waiting for our food, I attempted to explain Instagram to him. The husband makes only occasional visits to the world of social media. Much of it is foreign territory to him. I probably wouldn’t spend as much time there as I do, either, but being fluent in these areas is somewhat necessary to running a creative business. When I am feeling sorry for myself, I lament the pace at which technology is forcing us to move. I started my creative business in the heyday of print desktop publishing. A few years later, I had to morph everything to digital publishing. I’ve built websites. I could retire this week if I had a nickel for every person who told me blogging is dead. Now it seems that Instagram is where it’s at. The older I get, the less enthusiasm I am able to muster for adding these things to my life. I can do it, but there are other ways I’d rather spend my time.

[Did anyone else notice that today has been dubbed “Green Monday” by the marketing people? I’ve seen it in several places already. What is this about?]

Speaking of websites, it looks like I’ll be building one for the husband. That was the other item of discussion over dinner the other night. He hasn’t needed to advertise because all of his work is either repeat customers or word of mouth, and he has plenty to keep him busy. One of the services he offers, though, is concrete cutting. He has specialized tools for this. There is one other guy in the valley who does concrete cutting. However, this guy doesn’t answer his phone or call people back. Eventually, most customers find their way to the husband. We would like to make it easier for them to do so.

He doesn’t need a fancy website, just a couple of pages with information and a contact form. I told him that he has to write the content for me, though; I sort of know what he does but I don’t want to make a hash of it. He’ll know what he needs to communicate to potential customers.

I have no current pictures to show you, but I did run across this one from a few years ago:

This was right after Christmas—we had gotten a huge snowstorm that dumped several feet of snow in a short period of time. The husband and I had to go out with the roof rakes and pull the snow off the porch roof. The snow was deep enough that we needed snowshoes, but I was a bit of a snowshoe novice at that point. A few minutes before this picture was taken, I had been out in front of the house attempting to turn around on them when I fell over and landed on my back like a turtle. In a snowbank. (DD#2 said, “One moment you were there and then you were gone!”) The girls had to pull me up. They found me because I was laughing so hard at myself.

I think I’m a bit steadier on my feet now. We’ll see if we get another storm like that this winter.