Two creatures were stirring, one was sleeping in her parents’ bed since earlier the baby was keeping her awake in her own room, another was sleeping downstairs on the couch because Christmas excitement was giving him insomnia, and three more were nestled all snug in their beds.
Meanwhile, a jolly old elf has paid us a visit.
Unrelatedly, Dean and I are exhausted.
I can’t even tell you the crass “deep thought” I shared with my kids last night* (see? I do have my limits) but some of my other attempts at humor included recycling some miser jokes (at least I didn’t tell them as Scottish jokes) such as, “How do you get copper foil? Give a penny to a miser. How do you get copper wire? Give a penny to two misers and tell them they have to share it.” It turned out my kids hadn’t hear the term “pinching pennies,” but they were appreciative once I explained it. And this next one was all my own:
Why did the guy who meant to go dancing end up standing in the dark?
He tripped the light fuse fantastic.
You would think having to explain fuses and uncommon expressions to my kids would have ruined that one for me, but not with the holiday spirit upon me.
And here’s what happened to me in Ross today. I was returning something, (it was an avocado slicer, if you must know; after I bought it Dean noticed it had little holes that would make it hard to clean, and he offered to use epoxy to fill in the holes, but I opted to return it) so I had the avocado slicer in a Ross bag sticking out of my purse, and I decided to do a quick tour of the store and look for a cheap bra to cut apart and sew into a swimsuit I want to make. [Cutting up a bra and sewing it into a homemade swimsuit, by the way, is one of the best sewing tips I've ever gotten, because I prefer swimsuits with bras, but, while I did want to learn to sew swimsuits, I didn't want to learn to sew bras.] I found a suitable (get it? suitable?) black bra and then wished I’d gotten a shopping cart or shopping basket, because I felt conspicuous walking around the store holding a black bra. I saw a display with baskets and thought I’d borrow one to use as a shopping basket until I got to the registers. I reached to take one of the baskets–and realized it was a red, heart-shaped basket. So I put it back. THEN (and I’m not even making this up) a store security guy tailed me for about four aisles before I got to the registers and he gave up on me.
Finally, when I got back to my car, there was a dog in the car parked next to mine, and although it was a tiny dog, a dog that was smaller than a breadbox, small enough even to be carried easily in a little heart-shaped basket, that tiny little dog barked its itty-bitty toy-like head off at me. And the whole sunny bright day-before-Christmas world just seemed too, too funny.
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*Actually I guess I don’t have limits. Here’s my deep thought: What thing that people eat creates the heaviest human waste? Answer: Lead BBs.
I should start this by admitting that I’m probably as rude a driver as anyone. I do mean to be polite and patient, but I can be distracted and unobservant sometimes. But I also think the stereotype about rude Utah drivers (other than myself) has some truth to it. Sometime I wonder if it comes from people being used to having lots of space, so as the population’s grown and people have had to share space, they don’t know how to go about it. Or it’s just cultural; my Mom grew up in Washington State and she says drivers (and sales clerks, and people in general) are just more polite there, and on my visits there, that’s seemed true to me. I tend to think drivers’ rudeness in Utah is usually more from bad habits than from malice; people just haven’t ever learned there’s a better way to do things. (At least, that’s what I think when I’m not blinded by road rage.)
A couple of weeks ago I was driving home from Stake Conference. Stake Conference is a church meeting where several LDS congregations meet together, which in our densely-LDS town means most of our neighbors are going the same place as us at the same time. After listening to wonderful, inspired talks on Gospel living and true discipleship of Jesus Christ, I drove home by an alternate route from the prevailing traffic. (I’d been late to the conference and Dean had gone ahead with the kids, so he was in the van and I’d taken his car.) I found myself at an unmarked intersection trying to make a left turn. About twelve of my fellow Christians passed by without letting me in or even glancing my way, until I managed to find a natural break in the traffic. I guess they were just really absorbed thinking about the wonderful talks they’d just heard. And I think any one of them would give me the shirt off his or her back if I were in need–but that’s somehow different from noticing that I could use a space in the flow of traffic.
Trying to use the carpool lane at my kids’ elementary school has always vexed me. There’s a right lane with a red curb for drop-off and pick up, and a left lane that’s meant to be a through lane. I’ve constantly seen people stop in the through lane, double-park in the drop-off lane, park far enough away from another car as to take up maximum space without leaving space for another driver to park between them, and park in the crosswalk. Then, one day a few weeks ago, the drop-off lane was full of parked cars with no drivers in them. I was baffled until I remembered it was Grandparents’ visiting day at the school. My next thought was, “And these are the parents of the people I usually have to interact with in the carpool lane–the ones who taught them to drive.”
Then, last night I was at crowded Costco and drove to the very far end of a row of parking spaces before I found the one remaining space, but just as I was about to pull into it, another car pulled into it from the other side. I thought, “Well, I’ll just have to go around,” and was about to, when the car’s driver, seeing my plight, backed up to park in the empty space on the other side of the row, leaving me the space I’d wanted. I thought, “Hey, I found a polite Utah driver!” I glanced at the car’s license plate–and saw that it was from Washington State.
We have some little three-dimensional foam puzzle cubes called Happy Cubes that we bought on our Europe trip (four years ago) to help keep the kids entertained. I remember, back on our trip, spending a lot of time figuring out all the cubes, and finally solving them. Henry is lately a great fan of puzzles, and he can put all the pieces in place on our big wooden United States puzzle without help, but the cubes are a bit beyond him. Still, he’s fascinated, so as a gift to him I’ve just been sitting here trying vainly to get the purple puzzle together. I started thinking maybe he had picked the hardest one, and sure enough he had:
(The red stars indicate difficulty.)
I think the above image also shows the solution, though, so I need to have him bring that puzzle back. (He gave up on me and took the pieces back.)
Yup, that did the trick. Merry Christmas Henry! With love from Mommy.
Give her the same name as a Disney princess. Then let her watch this:
(From minute 2:00 on.)
[Note: As you may have noticed, the "Play" buttons on the above two images are merely decorative, not functional.]
Update: Dean reminded me that Sleeping Beauty’s Princess name is Aurora, and that Briar Rose is her “incognito” name. No wonder I was surprised to hear the ghostly voices calling out “Rose” over and over when the sounds from the DVD wafted down to my sewing room.
2nd update: Sunday morning, Rose told me that she had a dream that the big dragon from Sleeping Beauty was trying to kill her, but then the dragon died and she married the prince, so it ended okay, “and that’s why I didn’t have to come get you.”
I have some cheap silver plate and sterling silver jewelery that’s become very tarnished, and in the past I had searched online for how to polish it. I had seen an at-home recipe for an electrolytic solution, but was afraid it would damage my jewelery by removing some of the silver. Today after researching it some more, I learned that paste silver polish also removes some of the silver, and of course it’s very hard to get into the tiny cracks of detailed jewelery with paste polish, so I decided the immersion recipe would be easier and I had nothing to lose.
I can’t remember which site I used for my instructions, but you can find many by searching “recipe for cleaning silver jewelery” or similar searches. For most, you either use an aluminum pie dish, or line any dish with aluminum foil, put some salt and baking soda in the dish, pour in very hot water, and immerse your jewelery. Just now (after the fact) I found one recipe that has you line a pot with aluminum foil and cook the jewelery at a (very) low boil, later straining it all through a sieve so as not to lose your jewelery, and I think if I did it again I would do it that way, because my process seemed to stop working as soon as the water cooled. Since the water cooled very quickly, I kept having to boil more water and add new foil and ingredients. I was boiling the water in a 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup in the microwave, so it only took a few minutes, but that still adds up when you’re having to do it many times.
Here’s a photo of the whole thing mid-process:
Apparently what happens ( I’ll have Dean check my science later to see if I’ve got this right) is that the tarnish on your jewelery is a silver sulfate, and when you create the electrolytic solution with the hot water, salt, and baking soda, the aluminum bonds to the sulfate, removing it from your jewelery. I decided that I could see the reaction happening when very tiny bubbles would rise off of the jewelery. Some sites say that your jewelery will get cleaner the longer you leave it in the bath, but I don’t think that’s true, or anyway it looked to me like the reaction slowed down to almost a standstill as soon as the water cooled. When I called Dean to tell him what I was doing, he asked me if the aluminum became pitted, so I checked, and sure enough, it was covered with tiny pockmarks. Also, as the reaction works, the solution gives off a strong sulfur smell (like rotten eggs).
If you squint at this photo you might see tiny bubbles rising off the chain
Since my jewelery was very tarnished, I repeated the process several times (until I got bored, and Hazel woke up from her nap). I added fresh foil, baking soda, and salt each time, although I don’t know whether that helped or whether just adding fresh boiling water would have had the same result. If I try the boiling method next time, I might try just adding strips of foil to the mixture, which is another idea I discovered too late to try it. It also seemed to help when I dumped extra baking soda right on top of the jewelery right after adding fresh boiling water.
Overall, I was happy with the results. My cheapest jewelery did worst, and I think that some of the discoloration I couldn’t remove was where the silver plating had already been rubbed away. It turns out I’m no better at photographing jewelery than other subjects, so these photos don’t really do justice to the transformation. A couple of my favorite necklaces that had been almost completely black now look almost new again, so it was worth the time to try this.
Update: I forgot to say that if your jewelery has intentional oxidation for an antiqued look, this process could remove the antiquing.
[Warning: If I would just wait a day or two to write posts about my sewing projects, they'd be much briefer and more concise. I didn't wait.]
The four hours of free time I didn’t have today doesn’t even count the half-hour (at least) that it’s going to take me to clean up my sewing room. It might even take more time to clean up, because Rose and Henry kept testing out sewing notions they’d been advised (yelled at) not to touch. They added more bends and metal fatigue and stickiness to my favorite telescoping magnet thingy (great for picking up pins and needles without getting down on my hands and knees) and Rose even managed to disassemble a rotary cutter (she’s unscathed, other than the damage to her eardrums following my reaction.) Anyway, I’m tentatively going to say that this project was still worth it. Mabel, at least, is ecstatic with the outcome.
A long time ago–at least a year ago–Rose cut off the hair and cut the clothing of Mabel’s favorite dollhouse doll, and it’s been sitting in my sewing room awaiting repair ever since. It’s so small that it just didn’t draw my attention when I was mending things. It would have been easier (and not terribly expensive) just to replace the doll, but when you buy them online you don’t get to choose exactly what their hair and clothing will look like, and Mabel was very attached to this particular doll. Also, I was feeling creative and magnanimous.
Here’s the doll’s previous shirt, which was the only pattern I had to work with:
I wanted the doll’s replacement clothing to be able work as a dress or a nightgown. Here’s the new dress:
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For those of you who are interested in these kinds of things (which I’m assuming you to be if you’re still reading this) the fabric is Swiss broadcloth, and I got the ribbon at Britex in San Francisco several years ago.
Designing things is usually not my strong suit, but I’m happy with how this turned out except for that it’s pretty wide in the waist. I also wanted to put tiny buttons on the dress (the placket was going to be in the front) but I was having trouble with the buttonholes so I gave up and sewed in little metal snaps instead. (That took forever, so next time I might just resign myself to Velcro, even though I think closures other than Velcro are prettier.) I did sew a tiny strip of Velcro hoops onto the back of the hairbow to help it stay on, and it works fairly well.
Mabel just saw me writing and says she likes the dress wide in the waist like it is. And she’s very, very happy about the new dress.
It’s fun to whine, but in the spirit of balance I maybe should occasionally post about my cheerful days. I’m not sure exactly why I’m cheerful today, but I think the following are all contributing factors:
-I didn’t have unpleasant dreams this morning.
-It’s a gorgeous, warm day.
-None of my kids is noticeably sick (if I don’t count Rose’s cavity and toothache) (and I’m choosing not to).
-I’ve been doing some Santa tasks this morning, and am about to work on one that involves a little bit of sewing and that will make Mabel happy.
-I discovered that I can wear one of my shirts that no longer fits me if I wear it unbuttoned over a white t-shirt, so it’s almost like having new clothes.
-Denial. No, wait: remembering that I am a daughter of a loving Heavenly Father.
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I just did a quick search for my camera and didn’t find it (I don’t think it’s lost, but I’d have to go upstairs to find it) so I’m not going to try to take a photo of the sunshine to show you. Hopefully there’s some outside your own window.
This morning Rose said that since Santa’s belly shakes when he says “Ho, ho, ho,” maybe it’s his belly shaking that makes him sound that way. She said, “Do something funny.” I tried to comply by pulling a silly face, and she shook her torso. Her courtesy laugh came out sounding much closer to “Ha ha ha” than “Ho ho ho.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t work. I guess real people can’t laugh like Santa.”
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Like a bowl full of . . .
Dean left for work late this morning [see tangent anecdote, below] allowing me to sleep in, which would have been wonderful if I hadn’t had this dream:
I had a new carpool with two other families, and at least one of the other moms and a whole bunch of little kids were with me in our huge white van driving to school when I saw that a fabric store was having a going out of business sale, and I begged them to stop and let me run in quickly. The setting was a fairly large and sunny city a lot like Berkeley, California, and there wasn’t much parking (so, definitely Berkeley) so they had to park about a block away and I ran in. I chose some five-inch-wide semi-transparent gold ruffled trim, a newly invented sewing notion that was a few inches across and looked like a shiny, flat, wide white Christmas tree, and a couple of cuts of fabric. I waited in line for a while before a lady who worked there rang up my items and ran my credit card, but when she finished she didn’t hand me the bag with my things in it. I asked for her to give it to me and she said she had set it under the counter for a minute, but when she looked, it wasn’t there. She said she would look in the back room. I waited a long time for her to come back. Finally I asked the women helping the other customers where my bag was. They didn’t know. I asked where the woman who’d been helping me had gone, and they went to look in the back room and couldn’t find her. I realized I didn’t have the cell phone numbers for the other moms in the carpool. School was supposed to start at 9 AM and it was now well past that. I stepped out the door and squinted down the street to see if my carpool group was still there and thought I saw a white van but wasn’t sure. I asked the shop employees if I could just get duplicates of the things I’d purchased, but they said I only could if I could show proof of purchase, and of course my receipt had been in the bag with my purchases. I threatened to call the police, but they said they didn’t care since they were going out of business anyway. I asked if I could just come get my stuff later, but again they said they wouldn’t give me anything without proof of purchase. By now I was yelling, and I demanded to search under their counter, but I couldn’t find my bag of purchases under there.
Finally, in desperation, I searched my purse one last time, and found the bag and my purchases in it.
Mortified, I left the store. The white van had indeed left and I hoped that meant the children hadn’t been too late to school. Then I remembered that I was also starting a new job that day. Two jobs, actually, and one of them was supposed to start at 9 AM, but I couldn’t remember which one, nor where either of the jobs was located. I called my mom and she commiserated with me but didn’t know where the jobs were located, either. I started wandering around downtown on foot, hoping I would remember where the job was supposed to be, and hoping my carpool group would forgive me. Walking past a building, I saw a man asleep on a bench and realized it was my brother Spencer. “Oh yeah, I forgot he’s homeless right now.” He woke up and commiserated with me a little (but also didn’t know where I was supposed to have been at 9 AM).
Finally I woke up, unemployed and friendless, and lay there for 20 minutes trying to convince myself that it was just a dream, and I’m not actually a wreck of a human being.
This is a tricky dream to interpret [sarcasm] but here are my best guesses:
1. I’ll never be able to buy the time I crave for sewing and creativity without the rest of my life falling apart.
2. I’m a wreck of a human being.
3. Spencer is self-sufficient about finding places to sleep.
4. There shall be seven years of famine.
5. I will write a best-selling, world-famous series of books, which will be made into blockbuster movies starring young actors who don’t wear shirts.
Arthur Reginald’s 1894 painting of Jacob Black confronting the Volturi
Tangent anecdote: Sunday evening my brother Andy loaned me his copy of “The Hunger Games,” and I let Dean start reading it since I was busy crocheting dishcloths and reading blogs. At 1 AM that night, seeing that Dean was halfway through the book, I persuaded him to stop reading (when he finished the chapter) and go to bed. He got up early and finished the book by about 10 AM. Monday afternoon Isaac was helping me fold laundry and I told him, “I’ll bet you anything Daddy will bring home the sequel to the Hunger Games.” Isaac laughed and agreed that that would be “just like Dad,” so we couldn’t actually place bets against each other, but we figured if Dean did bring home the book, he would owe us something.
Dean did bring home the second book (as well as another book from the BYU Bookstore we’d wanted to get for Mabel). He finished it around 10 AM today, which is why I was able to sleep in this morning, which I guess pays off the debt Isaac and I had assigned him in absentia–if only I’d had a nicer dream. We also caught Isaac reading the first book in bed around 10:30 PM last night, and this morning Ike asked me if he could take the book to school with him to read during “flex time” (free time at his Junior High) and I let him. From where he had his thumb in the book, it looked like he was pretty close to finishing it. Since I have so many chores to do and I’m pretty compulsive once I start reading a book, I’m thinking I might just take a friend’s suggestion and wait until September when the last book in the series comes out, and read all three in one go. That kind of patience baffles my husband and son. But I’ll be prepared in case there’s a book famine in September.
Easter 2009
April 2009
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