Had my first beating at the church job today.  No, not me!  Some poor girl on the way to school - dating an abusive male of indeterminate age - guess he just doesn't want her to leave the house.

Oh, and it turns out she is fifteen.  FIFTEEN.  

Keeping her in the office till the cops come.  Hm, it'll be nice to see cops do something constructive for a change.  Sorry to anyone who is in law enforcement - I just really truly have never in my own personal experience seen cops do anything but hurt people, or (more often) threaten to hurt people.

What a morning.

Bah.

Of course, if the potential new place doesn't want me as I actually am, then I certainly don't want to be there.

Hm.  I tend to present myself a little bit more conservatively (to my mind) first, and then later break out the skulls and colored glitter and stuff.  Perhaps, though, the distinction I make there isn't one that communicates.  Maybe I look the same to other people, whether I wear grownup jewelry & toned-down lipstick, or full-bore skulls and stripes and petticoats.

That is a very interesting thought.  I'm not fooling anybody?  I'm not hiding a damn thing?  I'm not easing anyone into anything about me?  I am, in fact, an eye-blinking phenomenon (hopefully not an eyesore!!) from the very outset?

I don't mind that.  As long as I am still, at the outset, along with the joyous muppety stuff, also presenting worthwhile and intelligent characteristics.  I *would* prefer to be taken seriously-ish.

I believe I am rambling.  Y'all got any thoughts on this subject?

This entry is for my mama.

Mama, remember Ray?  The seven-year-old towheaded bruiser who lived down the block from us when we still lived in West Texas?  He couldn't read terribly well, as I recall, but he sure could read the numbers on playing cards.

You got him playing Go Fish.  He'd show up at the glass door any summer afternoon with a smile I think he meant to be charming, and ask to play cards with you.  And he always, always wanted to win.  Well, of course he did.  He was a male in West Texas growing up with a hard-drinking dad who drove a very large, highly polished pickup truck and a more-or-less stay-at-home mom who was alternately quiet and shriekey.  And there was a baby brother too.  Not a lot of room for Ray in this picture.

You've never just let kids win, though.  You are kind and you teach them game strategy and you never gloat, but you don't let them win.  The world doesn't work that way ... and you like to win, a lot, your own self.  So.

You won one day early on in y'all's everlasting Go Fish tournament, and Ray frowned and hollered and threw himself about a little.  He wanted to be so mad that he lost.  And you said, Now Ray, and then you said it several more times until he calmed himself down.  You said, Now Ray, when someone else wins, here's what you say: Well, I'm glad for you, but I'm sad for me.

The two of you practiced that together a few times.  And he used it ever after.

I have no idea what happened to Ray.  I hope he's well, and in the Lord's hands.  He'll be a handful even for God.

And this experience with Ray was only the last lesson in a long series of - what?  Not sportsmanship, exactly.  Learning how to have a mixed bag of emotions.  How to be glad for someone else's success, even when you hadn't had any yet.  

I have found in the subsequent years that "Glad for you, sad for me" is, shall we say, not highly prevalent in our capitalist miniworld.  Employees rise up in furor if another employee comes in a few minutes late.  Someone wins a few dollars off a scratch-off lottery card in the convenience store and everyone's faces fall.  People's hearts twinge when another darling couple gets engaged.

It's natural to wish for success.  But we are in this boat together.  We can be for one another.  Your train was late?  Bless your heart, I hate it when that happens.  You won the lottery?  That's wonderful, someone should, I wish it was me but I'm glad it was you!  

Generosity of spirit. Maybe that's the term I'm looking for.  It's a choice, every day, and I learned it from my mama.

You're Watership Down!

by Richard Adams

Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you're
actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their
assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they
build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You'd
be recognized as such if you weren't always talking about talking rabbits.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

From http://www.politicalcompass.org/test, with thanks to priestlygoth!

The Political Compass:
Economic Left/Right: -5.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.28

Browse

If you would prefer, you can browse a specific decade (pre-1900, 1900's, 1910's, 1920's, 1930's, 1940's, 1950's), or browse by category:

• dressmaking
• school textbook
• sewing course
• pattern design (drafting, draping, etc.)
• tailoring
• glovemaking
• millinery
• laundry/dry cleaning

Amazing, no??!!??

Bloomers and Drawers (Illustrations 29-4 and 5)

Bloomers and drawers!  My goodness!  What is the difference, I wonder??

The caption is from a lesson in 1926—The New-Way Course in Fashionable Clothes-Making: Lesson 29—Pretty Underthings.

Such fun!  I'm making a hot-pink-and-black vinyl bridesmaid's dress for a wee gothic friend, and the bride has just notified us that she'd like a crinoline underneath, please.  So I've been poking around the Intarwubs looking for a $12-or-so black tulle crinoline ... and not finding one.  Bah.



I saw them at a costume shop in L.A. last time I was there.  Pooh intarwubs.

So I'll be making her one.  And me, too, probably.  And other people.  Anyone??

Anyway, in looking around, bloomers came up too.  So there ya go.

Tripp is posting about solitude.  Henri Nouwen cites three disciplines in/through which we can find God: solitude, community, and ministry.  I interpret that as meaning: being alone; being with others; being for or to others.

I wonder: is it a problem that my solitude is almost exclusively alone-while-stitching?  That my solitude is almost never simply sitting still, possibly with God, possibly meditating?

I find it has become appallingly difficult for me to sit still without at least a seam to unpick or something to darn or embroider.  I find it equally difficult to sit still in other people's houses - I start missing my sewing machines!

Am I becoming addicted to work?  or creating?  And is that a bad thing, or just a necessary thing?

HEY EVERYONE.

I STILL HAVE THE DRACO TRILOGY.

And I'm happy to send it along to anyone who asks!  Just comment here with your email address and I'll gladly forward it to you.  (Kisses and cookies accepted. :-))  I estimate that I send it to fifteen people weekly, even now.

Just doin' my small part to encourage the spread of Good Fiction in the world!

I must tell you about this stuff.

Some of you have seen my hot pink-magenta-fuchsia Doc Marten boots.  Larry bought them for me for Christmas a few years ago, at which time the pinkest Docs he could find were a pale silvery pink - an elven pink, really.

Such a good gift!  (Such a wonderful partner....)

But, y'all know, I'm not very elven - more to the point, I love bright cold neon colors like FUCHSIA, and so I stripped and dyed and refinished my boots one sultry summer Chicago afternoon on the back porch.  Awesome.  Hot pink boots.  Which, in the subsequent years, have gotten scratched and beat up by the Chicago winters.

And finding hot pink shoe polish ... well, I didn't think it existed (in a retail form).

UNTIL NOW.
Presenting ... TARRAGO SHOE CREAM.  
Imported from Europe by Tarrago USA at http://stores.ebay.com/Tarrago-USA.


$6.95 plus $2 shipping for TWO JARS (50 ml. each) of this stuff!!!!!  
And it comes in 64 colors, including shades like yellow and sky blue.

You can also buy it at www.tarrago.us for the same price but slightly steeper shipping.

W00T!!!!!!!!!!!