Dreams About the After

                 It's very spring-like around here this week.  I should take advantage of the sun and get some walks in.  It's hard to believe that we've been doing this for a whole year now.  It feels like a few weeks ago and also a lifetime ago that we were socializing and taking trips to the grocery store for basically no reason.  Some days, I wonder if I might have caused part of it.  After all, my journal entries from the first half of March last year are full of feeling overwhelmed and hoping for a true break once the shows open.  I got what I asked for, to a point, and now it's time for something new.

                Kiddo goes back to school after spring break, a few days before Fuzzy and I get our second shots.  It's only a few hours a day, so I'm currently debating my best plan of action to prevent spending all my time driving around.  My newest plot is to bring Tiny's breakfast with us for a morning picnic, followed by taking a leisurely walk and enjoying the park next to the school.  It all depends on how many other parents get the same idea.

                The playgrounds have been reopening around here, and Tiny has been reveling in the new playtime options.  She was just getting big enough to play on the equipment when everything started to shut down, so this is all so new to her and she loves it.

                I admit that I have been fantasizing about some of the things I will feel more comfortable doing once our vaccinations have taken effect.  There were a lot of things that were put on hold last year, back when we thought we'd be back to normal by the end of the summer.  I'm going to go to the ophthalmologist and get my eyes checked out.  Then, I'm going to order some new glasses.  It's going to be fantastic.  After that, I'm going to get my hair cut, as it's now past my waist, even in a braid.  I'm also getting myself a dental appointment, because it's definitely been a while since I had a regular exam. 

                After all the self care stuff, I am also going to set up estimate appointments for the improvements we want to do to the house.  The sliding glass doors are original to the house, and they are not happy about opening anymore.  It's time for them to go.  There are a whole bunch of little projects floating around, too, that need an expert.

                It's all terribly noble.  The less-noble part of me wants to go the thrift store again.  I miss the thrift store.  It's not like I need anything--it's just fun.  I miss shopping.  I miss wandering around the store to see what's new and to stay abreast of what stores have which things for shows.  It was one of my superpowers in my previous career incarnation--knowing which stores had plain rainboots and which spot had the cheap camisoles and what canvas sneakers would cost in three different discount department stores.  I've always assumed that everyone did that, so it was a surprise when I discovered that most people don't cruise through the sock department at Target once a month to see what's new.  Whoops.

                I'm hopeful for our next chapter.  I'm hopeful that Kiddo will be back in regular school in the fall, and that I will have the option of putting Tiny into day care once in a while to give myself a day off.  I'm hopeful that we can start having weekly Sunday dinner at Fuzzy's mother's house soon, and that we can have the girls over there to swim in the pool without worrying.  I'm hopeful that I will get to put Tiny into the child watch at the gym, so she can see other kids and I can work out again.  I want Kiddo to get to have sleepovers again, and to go to the library on a whim.  Soon.  Soon.

Grown-up Movies for Children

                 My vaccination appointment is today.  For once, I am benefitting from having the kind of body that inspires people to bring up vegetables like they're copies of The Watchtower.  Fuzzy scored his shot on Thursday, qualifying for his job.  I'm relieved and hopeful.  As I encouraged my financial advisor to do, go to myturn.ca and register for a notification when it's time for your appointment.  I received a text at 2:55 on Wednesday, as did Fuzzy, and we were registered and ready to go by 3:00.  If you're not in California, see if your state has something similar.  It's an easy way to make the whole affair less stressful.

                I've been showing Kiddo various kid-friendly grown-up movies lately, mostly to widen her horizons beyond a fifteenth viewing of Disney Channel kid sitcom reruns.  There's a style of acting in all of those shows that sets my teeth on edge, so she watches a lot of it on her own.  We're always on the lookout for things to watch together, though. 

                Fuzzy has been trying to make all the movies he loved as a kid happen, with varying degrees of success.  Kiddo loves Jackie Chan and superheroes and Star Wars and The Goonies, but some of the other stuff has been just a bit too intense.  It also irks her to no end how few real female roles there are--she wants to see more women with agency in these things.  I figure we're only about a year or two away from introducing her to Buffy.  Kiddo wandered in when I was watching Practical Magic the other day, and I thought that it was fine, until I remembered what the rest of the plot was.  Luckily, she felt the movie was too intense when Sally wouldn't get out of bed after her husband died, so I didn't have to explain abusive partners or black magic.

                Fuzzy and I have been debating showing Kiddo some more Golden Age musicals to broaden her cultural horizons, since we have a lot of them on DVD.  He was all for Oklahoma! at first, but I'm reticent due to the murder in Act II.  Once we actually started discussing titles, we realized how much death there really is in those old musicals--South Pacific, Carousel, West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, and Into the Woods all have body counts, after all.  I might see if I can get her into My Fair Lady--it should win, due to the female heroine, lavish costumes, and good songs.  We shall see, I guess.

                The movie of the day on Thursday was 13 Going on 30.  It wasn't what she expected, as the title is also a lyric of Catherine Howard's song in Six.  The movie came first by a decade, so the lyric is a reference to the movie, but Kiddo met the show first.  It's a phenomenon we are going to meet a lot more nowadays, since we now have a generation with more immediate access to pop culture of multiple eras.  The concept of waiting more than a week to resolve a cliffhanger has been a bitter pill for Kiddo to swallow.

                Back to the movie.  Three-quarters of the way through, Jenna is going through a rough time in a sequence set to Billy Joel's "Vienna."  Can we talk about the wonder that is this song?  I first met this song in 2001, when I discovered it on the fourth disc of the box set I bought from Columbia House (I can talk about Columbia House, because unlike just about everyone else from my generation, I don't owe them any money.).  The fourth disc includes some of the discussions from his Q and A concerts, followed by live versions of the songs discussed.  His discussion of "Vienna" is wonderful.  He was inspired by his trip to find his father, who had originally left Europe during the reign of Hitler, and his realization that he didn't have to fear ageing.  I fell hard for this song, and it's one of my musical security blankets.

                I really appreciate that they chose to have the whole song in the movie.  It wouldn't withstand cuts or alterations well, and it was ideal.  Now, I'm on a Billy Joel kick, only two weeks after my Elton John kick.  I know Billy Joel is sometimes middle-aged Dad rock, but there are days that can only be improved by "Only the Good Die Young," "Uptown Girl," and "For the Longest Time."  Plus, introducing the kid to "We Didn't Start the Fire" was wonderful.  She hasn't started asking about the events, but she likes the song.  It's a start.  It's also startling to remember that he wrote the song as an exercise to wrap his head around turning forty.  I first heard him say that when I was twenty.  Forty seemed to be a million years away.  I'm forty now, and I feel so behind.

                I guess I need to remember that Vienna waits for me.

The Zipper Foot I Love and the Secret to All Good Sewing

                My siblings and I regularly receive large flat-rate boxes from my mother filled with the "non-negotiables," which is her and my aunt's loving nickname for the stuff they've decided we need to consider owning from my other aunt's collection.  Some of these boxes are filled with truly interesting things.  Some of them I keep, and some are passed along to friends who could use them.  Other times, the boxes can best be described as non-consensual clutter.  I did not request it, and I don't want any of it, but it is in my house.  Those end up headed to the thrift store, because some of the stuff is still useable, even if it isn't my style or is in a category that is already overflowing at our house.  If there are any broad categories of stuff you wish would come to your house, let me know.  I assure you that there is most likely something from that category in the collection of stuff that is being rehomed by my mother and her sister. 

                I sent out a few well-packed flat rate boxes myself this week.  Two contained the quilt that was redone about a month and a half ago and a set of cushion covers my sister had hit a wall creating.  She thinks I'm magical.  I think even the oddest-shaped seat cushion is easier to fit than a body.  I have no doubt she will be impressed by the cording on the covers, as that was something she had planned to skip over entirely, and by the zippers she had planned to bypass with the clever use of buttons.  She thinks I'm magically skilled.  I think I have the zipper foot that doesn't suck.

                About twenty years ago, the good folks at Bernina redesigned the accessories setup for their classic workhorse domestic machine, the 1008.  Rather than full-size feet that were clamped into the machine, they offered clip-on feet that would attach to the shaft.  It makes good sense until you get to the #4--the zipper foot. 

                I hate the clip-on zipper foot with a fiery passion.  I have been known to sneak my own zipper foot into work situations that only have the clip-on feet.  It just doesn't work for the situations for which costuming regularly requires a zipper foot.  The cording gets awkwardly shifted at a crucial moment, leaving you with ugly work.  The zippers are not as nice.  You will tear my "zipper-foot-that-doesn't-suck" from my cold, dead hands.

                Frankly, there is little mystique to what I do for a living.  It's all practice, the right fabric, and the proper equipment.  I thread a needle more often than most people tie their shoes, so of course I can do it quickly with less concentration.  I also own several dozen needles with various sizes of eyes and styles of points, so I also have the option of pulling out something with an eye that will accommodate the thread in question.  Most people have installed a couple zippers in their lives, either in a class or in a blind panic before dressing for work one day.  For me, zippers have been a constant companion, and my installation count is probably somewhere in the hundreds.  Some of those zippers looked terrible.  Some of those zippers were placed with more care than the figurines on a wedding cake.  One of those zippers was replaced over a fifteen minute intermission like my hair was on fire, causing a lifelong distrust of invisible zippers (as if the day I had to sew a friend into her dress didn't do that).

                Be patient with yourself when it comes to sewing.  I assure you that the fifteenth time you do something is a lot easier than the first.  I also assure you that every sewing artist has a few skill sets that have to be relearned every time they are required.  One friend has the hook and eye tape page in her sewing manual marked for her annual review before delving into Dickens bodices.  Another politely avoided vintage costuming for years to avoid zipper placement.  No matter how many times I do it, I still look up just about every sleeve variation I pattern, convinced I am doing it wrong. 

                In conclusion, if you ever hear me request to take a piece home to install the zipper, know that the machine I have with me has a crappy zipper foot, and I am concerned that I will do bad work for you.  Let me take it home to revel in the zipper foot that doesn't suck.  It's worth it.

The Old-Timey Racist Card Games of Not-Really Cancel Culture

                 Several years ago, Fuzzy's parents were downsizing their stuff in anticipation of selling their house.  Their house is unusual in a lot of ways, and one of those ways is the amount of hidden storage in the place.  There are closets and cabinets and storage rooms all over the place, which allowed them to hold onto anything they chose.  This meant that the downsizing process was indeed a bit of a process.  I think Fuzzy's father started to dread opening closet doors, because he knew they needed to find a new home for most of what lay behind them.

                They would put categories out to the family regularly.  Did anyone need dishware or pans?  Did anyone need more holiday decorations?  Was everyone good for extension cords/coolers/luggage/etc.?  In some cases, they simply did not know how much they had until they put everything from one category together in one place.  In other cases, having a lot of space meant that they simply did not get rid of things, because someone in the family might need them someday.  Fuzzy's father fairly danced a jig when we would come to them requesting a piece of furniture from the storage room in the basement.  They had worked so hard to find all those pieces that they didn't want to let them go, but they could happily go to one of the children or (even better) one of the grandchildren.

                Fuzzy had fond memories of a few of the board games from his childhood, and so when the games shelf was being cleared, he mentioned this to his parents.  He planned to swing by and pick out a few goodies on his way home from something in his empty car.  His father seized on the opportunity, and Fuzzy came home with four big moving boxes full of every game his family had ever owned.  The boxes took up residence in the empty spot in our garage while I stared agog. 

                Apparently, Fuzzy's family was even less skilled than my family at keeping track of all the little pieces from games, so, just like my parents, they had just thrown all the pieces they found into a box on the game shelf, intending to do a sort at some point.  We now had a bunch of boxes that contained only a game board and a found-object-artist's wildest fantasy in the bottom of one of the boxes.  We also had a couple dozen mostly-complete decks of cards.  Apparently, every time they travelled, they bought playing cards and brought them home.  To be fair, we did have some games that were complete, too, or just missing a piece or two.

                A few nights later, after Kiddo had gone to bed, we started going through the boxes.  Fuzzy shot down my idea of selling the loose pieces on eBay, and I shot down his idea of donating everything to the thrift store and getting ice cream on the way home.  We reunited pieces to the games he cared about and started bagging up things we knew we didn't need.  It turned out that there were games going back to the 1950s, so we figured Fuzzy's father had learned the "load it all in your kid's car when he's not looking!" trick from his mother.  Some games are pretty much the same, whether you get a 1936 edition, a 1989 edition, or a 2020 edition.  Scrabble, for instance.  Other games do not age well, though.

                At its heart, Old Maid is a simple game.  You can just pull one of the queens from an ordinary deck to play it, but there have been special-printed decks for decades now.  Sometimes you match couples, and sometimes you match duplicates of the same character.  The characters are usually clichéd caricatures of occupations and such nowadays.  There was a really old Old Maid deck in the mix.  It wasn't thick enough to be remotely complete, so I quickly flipped through to see if there was anything fun that related to us, like a seamstress or a tailor that could be framed and displayed in the sewing room. 

                There were some things that were accepted a great deal more openly in the 1950s than they are now.  Fuzzy's father's family is not racist from what I can see.  Fuzzy's father and aunts were first-generation Americans because their parents had to leave their homes in Europe because of their religion.  There are reasons that most of the white people who joined the Freedom Riders and other groups in the civil rights movement were Jewish.  That being said, depictions of minorities and other nationalities were considered fair game for parodies and caricatures.  In addition to ballet dancers and artists, there was Squanto.  And the Squaw Maiden.  And more insulting depictions of Black people, Irish people, Asian people, and so forth.

                We ended up passing the cowboy cards on to one of Fuzzy's aunts, who decorates with western themes, and threw away the rest, rather than making the thrift store do so.  Kiddo has had a few Old Maid decks through the years, and none of them has had any of those hurtful images.  Can we call it cancel culture that tastes have changed, and we have less tolerance for these images?

                We have a lot of past to clean up in our culture.  Some of the people who are outraged right now about political correctness forget that the Irish were depicted as apes in the nineteenth century, right beside the former slaves.  Entire ships of European refugees were turned away at American shores before and during World War II, just like the people who are being confronted at our borders today.  The dominant culture of this country is made up of a lot of people who were the wretched refuse teeming from other shores.  It's just that we got here earlier and had more weaponry.

                And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street is one of Fuzzy's favorite books from his childhood.  We bought a copy for Kiddo years ago, and because I was always busy keeping the words going, I hadn't looked at the illustrations much.  Looking at them now, I can see the alterations that were done after the protests of previous decades, but there's still problems.  We plan to discuss the book with the kids the same way that we did with the Little House series.  This is how people who were different from us were depicted back then.  It wasn't right then, but it's how some people thought.  We know better now, and we do better now.

                The Dr. Suess company made the call.  There are a lot of books that are out of print nowadays for various reasons.  These are not the first books to be pulled by a parent company because times have changed.  We are always moving forward as a culture, and we have the right and the responsibility as a society to recognize where we've been is not where we are going.

                Also, if my mother-in-law asks if you want anything from her house, consider it.  She has nice stuff.  Set boundaries, though.