Drama Queen

The Beelzebub of Bobbinhood

/ wvfurandroot / 5 Comments

Shudder.

Today was a beautiful, sunny day and after cleaning the kitchen windows – the better to enjoy the sun – I felt a compulsion rise up and overtake me.

Usually, if I eat something with a lot of garlic or shout “Out, out!” I can defeat the compulsion. Today, however, there was no stopping the Evil Demon of Fabric Manipulation.

I had decided to sew.

I’ve been down this road before. It never ends well. Well, once it did – surprising my wildest imagination, but I think that was because it was for a good cause.

 

Ain't he cute?

[Since Chef Boy ‘R Mine was going to be the cutest ring bearer in the history of rings, it was only fittin’ that I have a Mother of the Ring Bearer Dress befitting his glory.]

I tried to resist today, but The Domestic Arts Demon took over.

Lamenting the misery sure to ensue, I began the task.

So much time had passed between uses that I had to clean The Thing before I could use it. As I dusted, wiped, disinfected, I cogitated on why it is, exactly, that I have four sewing machines. I used to have five, but The Ex took one of the antique ones.

I have my great-grandmother’s treadle machine. I have the portable one my mother used to sew my first clothes (and my Barbie’s clothes). I have the one a friend of mine just before she died of breast cancer. And, finally, I have the one I bought at the flea market for me to use.

I know, I know. . .it doesn't look evil.

I had delusions I was going to master The Beast and learn, once and for all, how to sew without ending up in the emergency room, the psych ward, or in an alley sipping Mad Dog. My mother says it has a sweet stitch. I just roll my eyes at her and look for a crucifix to hang from the thread holder.

Other than the Ring Bearer dress, I have spent more time screaming at this machine than all of the computers I’ve fixed combined. (That’s a lot of ‘puters – many of them running Windows 98.)

After cleaning the Cantankerous Clothing Constructor, I got out my fabric – yards and yards of a blue I bought years ago that I intended to be a dress, but came to my senses before making the first cut. Today’s project was a simple, no frills, feather bed cover.

For those of you playing along at home, you will need:

  • Sewing (shudder) Machine
  • Fabric
  • Scissors
  • Thread
  • Feather Bed (Badly stained by coffee not required.)
  • Aspirin
  • Jim Beam

Pay no attention to the coffee stains.

Luckily, the fabric was exactly the right width. It was a little too long, but I decided to deal with that problem at the end since I had no idea how I expected to fasten the thing.

The plan was simple – fold in half, sew two sides, stuff the feather bed in there, figure out later how to button it or zip it or velcro it. What could go wrong?

Well. It took me 45 minutes to thread the machine. [I have GOT to get my eyes checked.]

After that, I took the aspirin to ward off the coming concussion and splashed the liquor in my coffee to settle my nerves. Sure enough. The Damned Thing wouldn’t go. It hummed and buzzed and carried on like any good demon, but the presser foot would not advance – the needle wouldn’t move. Since I’ve never had a manual, I’m flying blind. I dial knobs around and flip switches and curse like a Marine just out of Boot Camp when finally it decided to play my silly game and let me sew.

I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.

I did one whole side without a problem. I gaped in astonishment. Almost always, the bobbin gets the evil vapors and tangles, breaks, snaps needles, etc. Nothing. Quietly, I said to myself, “Maybe it doesn’t know it’s me on the foot pedal.”

I started the second side. Things went amazingly well, until. . .

When I was six inches from the end, the bobbin roared curses of damnation and I spent more time sewing that last six inches than it would have taken to hand sew, but it was the principle of the thing. You know?

I took the cover and, with much grunting and groaning (king-sized feather beds are heavy), I pushed, pulled, shoved and willed it into the case.

Damn, I’m good. It looked like I had wanted it to. (I don’t have high standards when it comes to my sewing.)

I'm ready for Three Dog Nights now!

Still having no idea how to fasten the ends so I can get the cover on and off for laundering, I dragged it downstairs to drape over the back of the sofa. Since painting this room, the family room is now my favorite.

After three days without heat, I had resolved that I would never be driven from this room by cold again.  Four inches of goose down and three puppies ought to keep me warm, don’t you think?

Well. I didn’t think this plan through. (Ha! Like that’s news.) The big, bulky feather bed did not look aesthetically pleasing on the back of the sofa.

It looked right stupid.

Plan B

I folded it in half, placed it in front of the atrium door where the dogs lay, wallowed on it (oh it’s wonderful – feather beds are a treasure) and hollered for puppies. The little beasties now have the Cadillac of dog beds. They’re well pleased with their surprise.

The Cadillac of Dog Beds

And I suppose should I lose heat again, the dogs and I can drag that thing onto the sofa and all wallow together. I’ll have to remember to wash that cover often – at least until spring.

The good news? I’m just tucking the ends under. If it’s a dog bed cover now, I’m going to have to wash it twice a week – it’ll save time if I can get that sucker out of there fast.

The other good news? I bested The Beelzebub of Bobbinhood. Let’s hope I don’t develop a sense of false competence and push my luck.

A symphony in praise of central heat.

/ wvfurandroot / 3 Comments

Hah! Would my furnace room be so clean!

Bliss.

I have heat.

If I had the know-how and the talent, I’d write a symphony in praise of central heat. With parts for a chorus. Perhaps a movement involving nothing but percussion to celebrate the sound of a furnace kicking on.

Central heat must be on the list of all-time greatest inventions. If the discovery of fire and how to make it was monumental, isn’t it just as monumental to discover how to heat our caves without fear of catching our furs on fire?

I’ve been three days without central heat. The kerosene heater scares me to death, so I only run it if I can be in this room to watch it like a daddy watches that boy who shows up to take his sweet, baby girl out on her first date. Like that dad, I know what’s going on in the head of that flame swain.

No. No. And No. Maybe for a week with good friends and champagne. Some lobster boiling over those open flames, but otherwise no.

I don’t ‘need any furs at W. Va. Fur and Root smoldering, singeing or smoking much less flaming like a Drag Queen at the pinnacle of her career.

All the electrical work is not done – in fact, it’s barely started, but with consideration of this weekend’s forecast (snow storm and bitter cold temperatures), Electric Dude figured out a way to get the furnace to work until the job can be completed.

Connie and the Electrician Dude

I’ve stuffed financial prudence under the door to help with drafts and cranked the furnace to 80. I’m up to 65.3 degrees now. I started the day at 38.1. At least for a few months, I will not complain about how I have to keep my house at 60 degrees so as to insure Appalachian Electric Power doesn’t get all of my money. 60 feels right balmy about now. At 80, I may run through the house naked just because I can.

[I’m talking about degrees. At the age of 80, I may well run through the house naked, but it will be for different reasons. Of course, it’s more likely that I’ll traverse the house naked with a walker rather than run, but at 80 it may seem like a sprint.]

Yeah, right.

My hands are still cold. I’m pretty sure washing dishes in lukewarm water I heated on top of the kerosene heater has something to do with that. I’ll be heating water for a bit longer. I don’t mind washing dishes by hand, but I certainly mind doing so without hot water. The water heater is another of those truly great inventions.

And the washing machine. The washer works fine and I’m going to celebrate heat by tackling the mountain of laundry and celebrate that I’m not beating it against rocks.

The (predicted) snowstorm is due in later tonight. I’d wear a poncho made of old blankets before I’d go beat laundry by the side of the creek at the bottom of the hill in a snowstorm. I will go out in it though. Tomorrow.

Accumulation is supposed to be pretty big and I’m kind of excited about it now that I know I won’t die of hypothermia. With any luck, I’ll find the fortitude to go out in it tomorrow and take some photos. From everything I’ve heard, dawn will show us Ma Nature being especially photogenic.

Happy snowstorm, y’all.

Convergence and Amalgamation

/ wvfurandroot / 4 Comments
Wishing and hoping and praying. . .

I marvel, at times, how my life is one big goofy convergence of conversations and events that shouldn’t amalgamate, but do.

I’ve been dealing with domestic and personal chaos. Such chaos is better described as a nightmare, but I’m not in a fetal position, I’m not drinking (much), and I’m still laughing.

On Facebook, I was bemoaning the electrical aspects of the nightmare I’m living. A friend made an offhand quip to the effect of “You don’t have a squirrel living in your walls do you?”

Well. As a matter of fact, I do have something living between the ceiling drywall and the roof. There’s only a few inches between the two (barn, you know, never intended to be a house). I hear the creature rustling around most mornings and most evenings. My coming and going seems to annoy it. During the day, I sometimes hear it galump across the roof, the galumping loud enough to be reminiscent of the thunder of baby elephants charging.

Live and let live. Besides. I have no idea how to evict the varmint short of tearing out the ceiling or tearing off the roof. Ain’t gonna happen.

Today, after a morning of working at home and dealing with non-electrical crises, I go tearing out the door late for a meeting. Rolling down the hill, I catch out of the corner of my eye – something. I turn to look. There’s this huge ball of something wrapped around the main power line where it conjoins with the house wiring.

I’m late. I grab the cell, ask Dad to check it out, and laugh, remembering the squirrel conversation. I make up my mind. All this chaos is the result of some big bird roosting in my roof. Won’t this make a good story, I thought.

The disparate, the faux, the natural, the sublime.

No such luck. Dad removed the nest (and a dandy it is). Still lots of problems. Relocating the nest to my living room didn’t solve a thing aside from a decorating dilemma.

After the meeting, I rush back to the house to meet with the electrician. I’m late. He’s later. Good.

I admire the nest and try to figure out where to put it which leads me to remember a Facebook conversation I had just this morning with that same friend. The topic was: So, Connie, How Many Bowls, Trinket Boxes, Shelves, Etc. Do You Have Filled With Rocks, Shells, Dried Flowers, and Other Natural Stuff?

Dried flowers, a bowl full of rocks and shells, and a whiskey barrel - what's not to love?

My answer was lots. I don’t buy t-shirts for souvenirs; I collect Ma Nature’s leavings. [Okay. Once in awhile, I get a t-shirt.]

I have stuff everywhere. I even have a piece of driftwood that sits on the dash of my car.

These things please me.

And they’re cheap.

And they seem to fit in the unlikeliest places.

Ostrich feathers in the frame.

I have birds’ nests in the living room, rocks in the bookcase, seashells in the inkwell, pinecones in Spanish glass, and feathers tucked into a frame. Wishbones and sliced geodes hang from the kitchen window. There are dried flowers and seedpods throughout. I have tree branches in the umbrella holder (which looks suspiciously like a milk can).

Most of my houseplants are souvenirs of sorts – grown from cuttings friends gave me or delivered for one event or another.

Copper and glass and porcelain

Probably the strangest thing – and stretching the natural definition – are the copper wires sticking out of a water pitcher in the kitchen. When they rewired Old Main at Marshall, the electricians left these end pieces of wire littering the basement floor. After walking past them several times one day, I began picking them up. They were bright, shiny copper and pretty. It seemed wrong to let them end up in the trash. At present, they need dusting, cleaning and polishing, but years later I still like them.

The bird’s nest found this morning which I hoped would end the nightmare is now a souvenir of sorts. An emotional one. I’m surviving this round of insanity without needing a strait jacket. It now lives on the mantle of the faux fireplace (a giant candle holder of sorts).

The electrician just called. It’s a Big Ugly Number to fix what ails the electricity. I’m looking at the bird’s nest and smiling. I’ll remember always this day – the day I was lucky enough that my problems were such that money could solve them. Nevermind that I have no money, but how awful it is to have problems that money can’t solve. Those are the tough ones.

The nest now sits on a silk table runner I grew up with.

I have no heat except for the kerosene heater I bought yesterday. I have no hot water on the first floor. But I do have a dandy new bird’s nest, a seemingly competent and highly recommended electrician who can fix the heat and water, and a big number with a $ symbol that will get solved one way or another.

It’s all good. Or will be.

Adventures in Home Improvement (no doubt to be continued ad nauseam)

/ wvfurandroot / 4 Comments

Lao Tzu might say Don't Sweat the Small Stuff. It's all Small Stuff. It is. It is.

If not for enjoying the pleasure of how well the blue paint for the family room turned out, I would be in a fetal position.  Today’s meditation is Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.

I’ve mentioned that all efforts in the barn are one step forward, two steps back. Sure, it’s a cliché, but clichés exist for a reason. [Go ahead, ask me about the time the freak tornado landed in Cabell County when the roofing crew was installing the barn’s first real roof. And two of the roofers crashed through the only room of the house with a finished ceiling.]

The craziness started just before the holidays. Circuits kept blowing – either the furnace circuit or the electrical outlet next to this desk (which, by the way, looks absolutely fabulous after a thorough cleaning and set against the blue).

The ancient furnace when it was only 10 years old - now roughly 22 years.

I didn’t think too much of the problem. We were in the midst of that bitter cold and the furnace was cranking nonstop. It’s an old furnace which is on the list of things that need to be replaced and replaced soon.

Then I discovered water in the plumbing closet – dripping from pipes and bathing my walls in a fine mist with significant splashes, and a waterfall now and again. [I believe I’ve effected a fix, temporary, to deal with the problem. Knock on wood.]

And then the dishwasher circuit blew. I’ve already talked about the dishwasher along with the sparks emitted from the top of the hot water heater. Ancient burial ground, I’m telling you.

Grrrrrrr.

Yesterday, I loaded the dishwasher with the blue porcelain and other objets d’art to wash, in cold water. I duly discovered the dishwasher soap to be frozen. Since I do, in fact, store the dishwasher soap INSIDE the house, this was a puzzlement. It’s not been cold enough, by a long shot, for stuff to freeze inside a cupboard inside the barn, with a furnace that does, albeit temperamentally, run.

The furnace circuit tripped just after I’d started the dishwasher to wash. I reset the furnace only to have the dishwasher (and light in the laundry room) go out again.

It seems I can run the dishwasher OR the furnace, but not both. (Guess which one I’m going to pick.) I cannot run the dishwasher under any circumstances with hot water.

In the midst of this chaos, I’m on the phone dealing with a Significant Personal Problem and attending to work tasks (the paid employment type) so as to not have to burn more annual leave to deal with domestic crises.

Good riddance despite the cause.

While on hold with the crisis and waiting for work stuff to scan, I dust the banker’s lamp that USED to sit just to the left of the laptop. The lightbulb exploded and, yup you guessed it, sparks flew and the circuit tripped.

It was, to borrow a phrase and mangle it, an Awful, Horrible, No Good, Rotten, Stinking Very, Very, Very Bad Day.

Mmmmmmmmm.

The ray of sunshine in all of this is the fact that this room looks great. And I’m not even done (damn the dishwasher).

My benchmark for decorating success is if it looks like it always should have been thus said decorating is a Great Success. The family room was born to be blue and it’s a pity it took so many years to uncover that fact.

[And losing the ugly lamp on this desk and replacing it with a much loved Tiffany reproduction was a stroke of serendipity – I’ve been looking for the right place for this lamp to live.]

I have a thing for Matisse - I'll probably explain it in another post someday.

After a night’s sleep which included some really bizarre and amusing dreams, I feel enough of my wa has been restored that I can hum Onward Christian Soldiers and deal with matters at hand – all of them including the predicted winter storm that will find me walking the hill again. [Provisions will be acquired today with the time-honored Appalachian Snow Panic Method.].

For the moment, until the ancient spirits get playful and/or vindictive again, I am hopeful that I can maneuver through all this with grace and style. [Famous last words, perhaps.]

Futilely, the puppies waited for heat from the vent. I moved the space heater over there to fulfill hopes and dreams. Kerosene heater is on the list of provisioons to purchase today.

Ommm.

[Sigh. The furnace just tripped again and now the circuit won’t reset. Plus the circuit is hot. This can’t be good. I knew the above was famous last words. I jinxed myself. 

It’s all small stuff.  It’s all small stuff.  It’s all small stuff.  Today’s meditation is It’s All  Small Stuff.]

It’s all small stuff.  Truly.