Little Things

Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think there are no little things.

~ Bruce Barton

(Chalk this post up to a big anniversary and a big birthday this month - it seemed a reasonable time for some reflection and reminiscing...)  

Almost five years ago, a friend introduced me to a young woman from Mexico named Ana, who wanted to learn how to sew.  Just one little wrinkle - Ana didn't speak English and I didn't speak Spanish.

I struggled for several days with the question of whether or not to offer her sewing lessons.  I kept thinking that it would be crazy -  my life was busy, I had never taught anyone to sew, we couldn't even speak the same language...  and the list went on.

But something kept calling to me, and I finally decided to give it a try - my "logic" was three-fold:

1. I figured that I could probably accomplish a lot just by showing her things - it wouldn't rely completely on being able to communicate through words, 
2. I didn't have to be great - all I had to do was be better than nothing (!), and 
3. it wasn't exactly a life time commitment - if it didn't work, I could stop.  

(You can read about our adventures sewing together on my old blog - for example, here, here, here, here and here...)

And that little decision - to reach out to someone new and try to give her a hand - has changed my life profoundly in ways I never could have anticipated...  

We became friends.  

I started learning some Spanish.

She talked me into volunteering to be an aide in her church's ESL program.

We grew closer.

I learned more Spanish.  

She brought a number of other families into my life -  people I never would have met otherwise.  

And now, almost five years later, I am into my third year of teaching ESL at that church and we are having those children over every month for pool parties and I am learning how to write video games along with one of those kids... 

And Ana has moved into my heart permanently and become the daughter that I never had...  

All because I took a tiny step and made a decision to try something, rather than turn my back and walk away.  

Bruce Barton (see quote above) may be on to something...  ;)

Through Others' Eyes

The most precious gift that you can give to someone you love is to steadfastly fix your gaze upon the very best of that person and never let it falter.

~ Gwendolyn Campbell

Well, it happened.

I turned 50.

Amazingly enough, the world didn't come to an end.  ;)

Although, now that I think about it, the date is relatively close to the "end of the world" supposedly predicted by the Mayans...

Okay, I know what you are thinking - that's not until December.  But still, I'm within 4 months of the end of a 5,125 year cycle...  That's within 0.007%!  I'd call that close...  

Anyways, while there are some signs of my mind slipping (see above Mayan digression), the transition to a new decade was relatively uncataclysmic.

I most decidedly did not want a big fuss and, going into it, was hoping that we could all just ignore it and pretend that it didn't happen.  But my husband, Ana and my friends wouldn't let that happen.

Instead, they found a way to take the sting out of the day and make me feel very loved and very, very lucky to be surrounded by such wonderful people in my life!

Ana, with some help from a friend, made a 3 1/2 minute YouTube video, full of photos of me and special times in my life, set to music.  :)

My friends put together a gift basket filled with my favorite snacks (Fritos and dark chocolates) and gift cards to my favorite places (including, of course, Joann's!).  But the most wonderful thing they did was to create a scrapbook for me - and they included 50 colorful index cards, each inscribed with something specific that they love about me.  :)

It turns out that my husband had a very similar idea (independently) and he wrote me a three-page letter that started with these words:

To Gwen, on the occasion of our 30th anniversary and your 50th birthday     Five Things I Really Love About You     Dear Gwen: It occurs to me that the cards I give you on these occasions often only have a very small, generic message from me followed by “Love, Scott”. Mostly this is because I reckon that I already have said to you most of the things I would write and I’m afraid of being a bore by repeating myself. But I’ve been thinking lately that, at least once, I should put into words all the things that are in my mind when I sign “Love, Scott”. And being a year where both our anniversary and your birthday are nice round numbers, this is probably as good a time as any. So here are five things I really love about you:

Everyone wrote about how they see me.  And I did recognize some bits of myself - I do love to tell stories, I love to laugh, it's the people in my life who give me joy and I love starting a brand new pad of paper at work!  (Even if I haven't finished the old one...)

But some of the other things were said - it seemed like they were describing some amazing woman that I would love to get to meet some day...  

And it occurred to me that one of the most amazing and wonderful things about all these people in my life is that, despite knowing me for years and having been exposed to all of my flaws and warts, they still see the good things in me and believe in me.  

And they think those things are more important than my flaws and warts.  

And that makes me want to try to live up to their vision of me...  

And it makes me one very, very, very lucky woman.  :)

Lunch Time (in Style) (with Robots!!!!)

It's more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long difficult words, 

but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch?"

~ Winnie the Pooh

A while ago my store-bought, cheaply-made insulated lunch tote finally fell apart.  Ever since, I've been buying my lunch in the cafeteria (or hitting a nearby fast food place), using the argument that I wasn't going to run out and buy a new one, because I wanted to sew my own.  

In fact, I had the pattern all picked out - a freebie from "Sew, Mama, Sew!" (here).  

Not only did I like the style, I LOVED the pink and yellow robots!  ;)

So much so, I ordered that fabric.  And the pattern and robot fabric have been languishing in my sewing room ever since...  :(

This weekend, I decided that the money-sucking black hole of eating out every day had to stop and I was going to make my own, insulated lunch tote.  

First, I had to pick a coordinating fabric (like the dark pink in the sample tote above).  Slight speed bump here - I found 2 options that I loved and couldn't choose between:  

I got them both and, after a bunch of flip-flopping (and possibly some husband-pestering), decided to use the yellow for the lining.  The pattern called for a heavy-weight fabric like canvas as a lining - my yellow fabric was a lighter weight cotton, so I doubled it.

The pattern was supposedly introducing french seams to people for the first time - I didn't think this was an ideal opportunity to learn this technique, because you are sewing 3 sides of a box and then turning it inside out - french seams aren't perfect for those corners.

It also has you square off the bottom of the tote on the outside.

At first I was confused - why have some of the seams on the inside and others on the outside?  Then I realized that it was because part of the lining is hidden inside the outer, insulated layer - but part of it isn't and shows.  So, after thinking it through a little bit, I realized this is actually a nice way to handle the seams in the lining sack.

And that pink fabric?  Well, I couldn't let that go - so I decided to combine it with the robot fabric in a kind of faux patchwork style:

(Faux patchwork, because I'm not good at real patchwork!  Plus, I had already cut the robot fabric and doing real patchwork would have required [slightly] larger pieces OR would have created a slightly smaller sack.)

This outer layer is insulated - luckily I had about 7 yards of insul-brite left over from last year's Christmas presents (doh!)...

The pattern calls for official (1 inch wide) strapping to make the handles, but I decided to use more of the robot fabric.  Given that it is a uni-directional print, I cut the (2.5 inch wide) strips of fabric in half and then sewed them back together such that, if you hang it from the middle, the robots are right side up on each half.

I also interfaced the straps for increased strength.

Finally, I folded each strip in half length-wise (right sides together), stitched and then turned them right side out.  I top-stitched along each edge - partly for looks and partly for reinforcement.  

(My one worry was that the fabric straps wouldn't be strong enough to hold the weight of frozen food and bottles of liquid.)

And without further ado - introducing my new insulated lunch sack - ta da!

I was a little bit worried about the circular opening that doesn't go away when I pull the drawstring tight (and I was even trying to figure out if there was some way to add an inner flap that closed up the hole) - but my husband reminded me that hot air rises and cold air tends to stay low, so he doesn't think this will hugely reduce the effectiveness of the sack at keeping my lunch cold.  

Here it is with the top open:  

One of the things that I like about this pattern is that the sack is a pretty decent size - it easily holds a boxed, frozen meal and two, 20 fluid ounce bottles of something cold to drink.  

(Now, how do I collect for product placement again?)  ;)

I think it's a relatively well-designed pattern - although I always think it's odd how patterns like these are treated as "easy" and "good for beginners", when I find it a bit of a challenge to end up with 2 equally sized sacks that fit together perfectly...  

Bottom line: I really like my robot lunch sack and it felt so good to be in the sewing room and actually get something done!  

I hope you had a great sewing weekend!  :)

ESL Class Prep - with a Little Help...

There is no chance, no destiny, no fate that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.

~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I can't help but notice that she didn't include "kittens" in her list of things that can't hinder us...

Coincidence?  I think not...  ;)

Well, the summer is over and, once again, I volunteered to teach English as a Second Language (ESL) at a local church - another of Ana's legacies living on through me...  

This is my third year, so it's much easier for me.  I'm mostly tweaking things that I've done during the past two years - not creating things from scratch.  Phew!  ;)

Although I do still have to assemble all of the materials that I pass out to my students on the first day of class: a spiral ring notebook, the syllabus, a CD with our songs for the semester and all of the lyrics to those songs, index cards and 300 stickers with the vocabulary words to be learned (so that they can assemble their own flash cards), handouts for the first day and a Spanish-English dictionary.  

This year I purchased a bunch of those 99 cent shopping bags and filled one per anticipated student:  

All in all, I assembled 30 bags.  

Now, where do kittens come into this story? 

Well, of course Popeye and Oliver weren't going to let me do all that work by myself!  ;)

Awww...  After all that work helping me prepare the bags for my students, Popeye is exhausted and has to take a nap amid the debris...

Am I lucky to have such enthusiastic helpers, or what?  ;)

Baby Steps

Although no one can go back and make a brand new start, 
anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.  

~ Carl Bard

There have been a lot of changes this year and I feel like I am trying to establish an equilibrium again and get my life back on a good track.  One baby step that makes me very happy - I squeezed in some sewing last weekend!

Well, okay, not sewing - but cutting out...  

Yay!  I cut out all of the pieces from the fabric I got in Wales to make a raincoat for a son of a friend from work.  :)

The only bummer is that I had hoped to have enough fabric to make 2 small raincoats (I bought ALL of the fabric that was left) - but it turned out that I didn't.  :(

So, this is going to be my first lined jacket - any advice?  

------------------------------------------------

Another thing that I am trying to maintain is a connection with the children who were special in Ana's life here in the U.S.  (Ana returned to her family in Mexico last June.)  Obviously, we are still having our monthly pool parties!  That's an easy one!  :)

This summer, I also set it up so that some of the children could go to a local museum's art camp for a couple of weeks. I was so happy when one of Mariana's pieces (a 3D police car) was selected to be in the museum's exhibit.  We went last Saturday for the ceremony, where she got a certificate and I got this picture:  

Brandon and Carolyn have different dreams.  Carolyn wants to be a singer and Brandon wants to design video games.  

It was relatively easy to find a professional voice instructor who teaches children and Carolyn had her "try out" last Saturday (making sure she didn't have a tin ear, I guess?).  Everything went fine and she starts with her first real lesson next Saturday.  :)

Brandon, however, was a bit more difficult.  While I did discover a relevant summer camp for next year, I couldn't seem to come up with an "official" option for now.  

So, guess who is going to learn how to write video games?  ;)

Yup, you guessed it.  I found some software (GameMaker) and a book (The Game Maker's Apprentice) and Brandon and I will be game designing our way through it...  

Last week it was bouncing fruit - next week it will be saving baby dragons and shooting fireballs at flying demons inside a cave.  ;)

And now you know why I changed the name of my blog to: "In Over My Head"  :)

Introducing the New Furball

They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription.  

I say, "Can he name a kitten?"  

~ Samuel Butler

Two weeks before Ana returned to her family in Mexico, she and I found a tiny bedraggled kitten by the side of a road, ferociously warning all comers not to mess with him.  I couldn't resist scooping him up and bringing him home.

While Ana grew up on a farm, with lots and lots of animals, she never had a pet in the American sense - you know, an animal that lived in the house with her, slept and played with her, etc.  And she had never named an animal.  So I let her name the kitten.  

Introducing: Popeye

I took him to the vet the next day, and he weighed all of ONE pound!  Can you believe it?

He was terrified of us at first.  We kept him in the bathroom, thinking that would be "safe"...  But he managed to wiggle his way in under the cabinets and up into a space where we couldn't reach him.  He stayed there for SIX hours - only by opening a can of tuna fish were we able to finally lure him out.

Happily, it only took him a day or so to adjust and soon he was playing happily with us and with his "toys" (i.e., everything in the entire world!)

Or, sleeping in our laps!  :)

As for the other two cats...  

Well, Oliver really wanted to play with Popeye - but it took a few days of false starts and scares before they felt comfortable playing with each other.  

And Sammy just tried to pretend that Popeye didn't exist.  ;)

And so now our furball family has 3 members and I have an extra "helper" when it's time to prepare papers for my ESL class or pay bills or work on the computer or sew...  How lucky can one gal get?  ;)

30 Years

Our wedding was many years ago.  

The celebration continues to this day.

~ Gene Perret

To celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary, we went on a dinner and dance cruise out of Clearwater, Florida.  We unveiled - or is that "unleashed" ? - our mad dancing skills on the unsuspecting public - luckily, everyone lived to tell about it.  ;)

Here are some photos:

But this is still my favorite picture:

Happy Anniversary, Scott!  :)

I don't know how I got so lucky to have you in my life, 

but I'm NEVER letting go!  :)