All Things New — Janet Szabo

I love the first few weeks of the new year—everything is all fresh and new and exciting! My desk is clean, last year’s paperwork has been moved to the spare bedroom to be sorted for tax prep, and my new filing system is in place. I have a blank planner waiting to be filled with upcoming events, and when I am feeling particularly generous, I buy myself a new set of highlighters to go with it. (All of my planner entries are color-coded according to which part of my life they involve.)

I have to remind myself that every day, every week, every month brings with it new possibilities; there is nothing special about January 1 beyond its place on the calendar and the fact that it starts a new tax year. Otherwise, we carry on as usual. The chickens don’t know what day it is. Still, I appreciate the novelty.

Yesterday was sewing day at church. The temperatures have been hovering right around freezing, which has meant more ice than snow. I was worried no one would show up. We had a good group of 10, however, and got a lot done. Elaine and I put a comforter into the frame to tie (with the requisite amount of laughing at our awful spatial skills that makes it far more difficult than it should be):

I have a large supply of 5” squares so I am using them to play around with color combinations. As long as the combinations are not too ugly, I run with them. The goal of an MCC comforter is to keep someone warm, not be displayed in an art museum. These squares happened to land next to each other on the floor during a sorting session and they reminded me of sherbet. The backing was a serendipitous length of a gray-and-coral print purchased at Joanns for $1.13 a yard during one of their clearance sales. It matched nicely.

The other ladies worked on the quilt.

This is a quilt top that Holly bought at one of the relief sales. It was a bit wonky, though, and she had to take it apart and re-sash and reassemble it.

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I left quilting just after lunch—delicious homemade broccoli, cauliflower, and cheese soup provided by Shirley—because I had a lot of errands to run in town. One of them was a stop at the opticians. I ended up having to order myself a pair of inexpensive bifocals to wear at the computer. I am more than a bit annoyed at the eye doctor who did my exam last month. He was late to the appointment, rushed through the exam, and I don’t think he did a good assessment of what I needed or adequately explained the options. (And without knowing there were options, I didn’t know what questions to ask.) His goal was to get me out of my bifocal contacts and into progressive lenses. I love my new progressive lenses when I am out running around town. I can see to drive and see labels in stores, but they do not focus properly at the distance of my computer monitors or the music rack on the piano. I stopped in last week to talk to the optician about the problem, and he suggested a pair just to wear at the computer. They are regular lined bifocals, which are an adjustment, but at least I can see to work on the computer again (and they are nice for sewing.)

Now that I know what I need, I will be more assertive next time about making sure I get the correct glasses. I am pretty sure I could have gotten one pair that would have focused at both middle and far distance.

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My latest YouTube obsession is a BBC production called Restoration Home. This show follows people in the UK who have purchased old, run-down properties and undertaken to bring them back to their former glory. The show is a train wreck in slow motion. One of the architects interviewed astutely noted that, “Some houses just want to die.” One or two of the restorations could be considered successful—”success” being defined as the homeowners not getting a divorce and staying on budget during the project—but the rest are money pits whose work drags on for years and years and cause turmoil in relationships.

The husband has no patience for those kinds of projects. If something requires more than a nominal amount of work to make it habitable, his assessment is that it needs to be burned to the ground or bulldozed and something else built in its place. Of course, he isn’t living in a country full of centuries-old buildings. I can appreciate the need to save a medieval farmstead built in 1430. And I have learned quite a bit about English history and geography while watching these episodes. In addition to following the nuts and bolts of the restoration, historians delve into the history of the property, who built it, who owned it, and its place on the historical timeline.