Sewing Clothes for Yetisaurs

I really should not be allowed around sewing machines.  I do a reasonably good job at patching things up that have been professionally manufactured, but it's sewing things from scratch that get me into big trouble.

I've always envied my mom's sewing abilities.  When we were kids, she was a single mom who worked full time, but she still somehow made time for sewing awesome things.  We had this Kenmore sewing machine in the 80s that had the super-advanced ability to embroider tiny letters and numbers.  VERY fancypants considering the time.  And Mom was a whiz with that thing.  

I remember making the world's smallest quilt on it, which consisted of nine squares of fabric sewed together.  The finished product probably measured 1 foot square.  It didn't have a backing or stuffing or anything, and wasn't even really "square" due to my sub-par fabric cutting skills, but it was my first project and I was super excited about it.  I think I also embroidered the entire alphabet and the numbers 0-9 on the edge just to make it feel more like a successful project. 

When I needed an emergency costume for Halloween, my mom drove me to the fabric store where we bought yards of blue furry fabric.  Mom had me lie down on it, eyeballed the thing, and told me to get up.  She got busy with the scissors (eeew, not like that), and whirred away at the sewing machine, and within a couple of hours, she had turned it into a Cookie Monster costume.  I glued two white ping pong balls onto the head and drew eyeballs on them, and was an instant success.

Unfortunately, I did not inherit my mother's eye for patterns.  My impression, based on her successful spontaneous costume making, was that it was easy to create all sorts of wearable clothes just by eyeballing things and having a general idea of how clothes are to be worn, e.g., where someone's arms are located on their body.  

I attempted to demonstrate this new-found knowledge by taking a T-shirt that I had mistakenly purchased eighteen sizes too large (don't ask--I don't remember why I did that), and re-sewing it as a smaller T-shirt.  In my mind, I was thinking "This is brilliant!  The larger T-shirts are the same price as the smaller ones, and I can just re-sew them into my size, and get all of this free fabric afterward!"  

Here's what I was planning: take the shirt on the left, sew along the dotted lines, and voila!  Smaller shirt!

OK, as people with normal brains will immediately point out, I'm a fucking moron.  (I was all proud of myself for figuring out that I had to remove material from BOTH sides of the shirt in order for the neck-hole to remain centered.)  For those of you who are bad at visualizing the end product, like I am, let me tell you what happened when I was done.

I did not get a magically scaled-down version of the gigantic shirt.  I did get a skinny-bodied, elbow-length-sleeved version of the shirt.  The bonus is that the shoulder seams that were in the original gargantuan shirt had migrated down my arms and were now located around my biceps.  Rad.

Undaunted by my failure at re-sizing T-shirts, I decided I would attempt to make shorts for myself.  This time, to ensure success, I used a pattern.  Cheating, I know.  But work with me here.  I bought a bunch of fabric, diligently cut out the pieces, and followed all of the instructions.  When I was done, they actually looked like a pair of shorts that a person could wear.  I was so proud.  

I immediately put them on and pranced in front of my sister Carly, who had mercilessly made fun of me for the failed T-shirt project.  "Look," I said, dancing around, "they're SHORTS!"  As if she was incapable of either seeing what I was wearing or identifying them as shorts.  

"Wow," she said, clearly unenthused.  

I was too excited to care about her lack of enthusiasm.  In fact, I think I took it as a sign that she was secretly envious, so I continued.  "I even put pockets in them!"  I jammed my hands in the pockets and discovered a major problem.  The right-hand pocket was fine.  The left-hand pocket, however, faced backward, and my hand was folded back toward my butt.  Unfortunately, having made this fashion show in front of my sister, she immediately noticed.  We both started laughing.

I tried to convince her that I had sewed the shorts like that on purpose, so if someone had accidentally put the shorts on backwards, they would always have a functioning right-hand pocket.  I don't think she bought it.  After that, I successfully sewed many pairs of shorts.  I just made them without pockets. 

Jurassic Park Ranger

This is why Kung Fu Panda and I are friends.  Actually, there are many, many reasons, but this is one clear example. SOMEHOW, my computer was searching for Tyrannosaurus Rex things on the interwebs.  I have no idea how that happened.  Anyhow, I stumbled across this listing on ebay for the magnetic door decals that were on the jeep in Jurassic Park.

I know, right?

How awesome would these look on my Venza?

I've been trying to behave lately, saving up for a vacation with the Count, and planning on doing some remodeling of my construction-zone of a bedroom.  I honestly can't remember why I was even Googling dinosaur anything, given that I have a compulsion to buy dinosaur things.   But it happened, and there I was, confronted with the eBay listing of my dreams. 

I needed someone else to tell me it was a good idea to buy them.  But who should I ask?  The Count--although he knows me well and loves me--wouldn't quite understand.  He might say no.  I know!  I'll ask Kung Fu Panda.

Kung Fu Panda and I have a running debate about dinosaurs.  Actually, we have quite a few.  (Don't get me started on Brontosaurus, which Panda loudly proclaims "will live forever in his heart.")  But one of the recurring fights we have is that Panda thinks Spinosaurus could kick T-Rex's ass in a fight.  Pssh.  Keep dreaming, pal.  His primary source of support for this idea is Jurassic Park III, that's THREE, people, in which Spinosaurus and T-Rex battle and Spinosaurus wins.  Yeah, first of all, that's like citing Beverly Hills Cop III to support an argument.  The mere fact that you had to stoop so low means you lost.  Second, NO.  Just no.  He's wrong.  But anyway, in keeping with the theme, Panda says he wants to get these door magnets, if they ever make any:

Yep, that's Derpasaurus Spinosaurus. 

 I don't care, as long as I get to drive around looking like these guys.

 Now, where did my dino hat go?

Sendoff to the Evil Old Bat; Finding Peace

I already told you that the Evil Old Bat grandma passed away in December.  (Out of respect, I will just call her "grandma" for this post.)  She had an amazing house in Laguna Beach that my grandfather built in the early 70s.  It has a funky floorplan and needs some updating, but it has gorgeous views of the ocean from the main floor, access to a private beach, and a rooftop patio with an unparalleled panoramic ocean view.

The house is being sold, and escrow is due to close in about another week.  Last week we had our last family gathering there.  My sisters and I, along with the Count and Carly's new-ish guy, went up to the roof.  There, we opened my bottle of cucumber flavored vodka and shared a little send-off toast to the house, and to grandma.

The rooftop patio is simple, just a tile deck with a wooden railing around it, surrounded by the gravel rooftop with little plumbing vent pipes poking through at random intervals.  We were sitting there admiring the view when Jewel told us that she used to toss pieces of gravel into some of the vent pipes when she was little.  "It makes a really cool sound," she said.  "And as far as I know, it hasn't ever caused a problem."

That was all it took.  Then the three of us (the men chickened out wisely abstained) began selecting the perfect rocks to throw down the vent pipes.  Jewel was right -- it did make a cool sound.

We later went back downstairs, and I played "the Entertainer" from The Sting for the last time on the piano.  Grandma and I played it together when I was little, back when she could still see well enough to play the piano.  I also took home a couple of old piano instruction books, one dating back to the 1940s and one from the 1950s.  It was a nice, mellow send-off to the house where so many of us had gathered for decades. 

A week later, I went with the Count to an A Capella competition in the L.A. area.  The Count's group won last year, so this year they were just hosting the competition.  Nearly all of the groups that performed were pretty good, and two were amazing.  One of them is Genevieve Artadi's group, Arf.  They performed a song that I think was called String Images, and it was so beautiful.  It was just the group of them sitting in a semicircle of chairs singing, their voices rising and falling at different intervals.  After listening for about a minute, if you closed your eyes, it sounded just like a group of violins.  It was so beautiful that I literally started crying.

It reminded me of a Christmas party we had at grandma's house a few years ago, where grandma hired a couple of young (high school age) violinists, one of whom was a daughter of her friend, to play for us.  There were at least a dozen of us sitting in grandma's living room, and these girls played so beautifully that my eyes started welling up.  I looked over at grandma, and she was crying, too.  We were the only ones in the room who were moved by the violin music like that.  

I realized then, at the A Capella competition, that I had just found my root with grandma, the one thing that gives me pleasant memories of her.  During her life, she had imprisoned her emotions inside and surrounded them with cold, concrete barriers.  But the one time that you could count on her true self to shine through was through music.  I think she is responsible for my love of music, and my appreciation of all sorts of music.  I never became a great singer (I'm awful, truth be told) and I'm just average on a handful of musical instruments, but I've always appreciated great music.  I close my eyes and listen to things that the Count has composed, or opera, or just about anything, and my soul is moved.

Years ago, at grandma's 80th birthday party, she asked me to sit next to her.  And, yes, she was pretty crabby and criticized what I wore (a tasteful blue button-up shirt and black pants that she complained was too business-like).  But when it got to the happy birthday song, the whole group of about 60 people sang to her.  All sorts of voices were mixed together, men and women, adult voices and squeaky little kid voices, and they sang "Happy Birthday, Dear ___" and in the blank, there was such a lovely blend of "Grandma" and "Mom" and "Martha," all at once.  Instantly, she and I both choked up.  How awesome, to have such a beautiful representation for what she was to everyone, summed up in one musical note.

After she died, I was still harboring a lot of anger and resentment for the way she treated me.  I still don't think that was unjustified.  But I do feel better having found that anchor of positivity that she was to me, and it's helping me let go of the negative feelings.  I'm thankful to grandma for introducing me to music, and I'm grateful to Arf for triggering those memories, reintroducing me to my grandma, and helping me find peace.

The Great Yeti Search

I was reading an article on Slate today, and this headline caught my eye: 

The American Government's Advice for Yeti Hunters, 1959

Obviously, there are not a lot of articles out there about Yeti, (well, there are, but usually they're written by UFO spotters or tinfoil hat wearers), so this caught my attention.  

Apparently, in 1959, the U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu issued this advisory regarding regulations in Nepal for Yeti hunters.  Among the regulations: all photographs of Yeti must be immediately turned over to the Government of Nepal.  I like this regulation.  Like my Yeti ancestors, I hate being photographed.  When someone whips out a camera, I usually disappear like a ninja.  On those few occasions where I have been unable to elude photographers, I would really like a regulation which would force them to run the photos by the Nepalese before posting them on facebook and tagging me in them.  

Anyway, here's the charming advisory, in case you're interested in reading it:

Original appears at http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/02/26/search_for_yeti_the_foreign_service_
memo_advising_yeti_hunters.html?wpisrc=obnetwork

This is Why I Don't Have Children (But Sometimes Wish I Did)

Both of my sisters have two children, and all four of those kids are amazing, each for totally separate reasons.  They generally think of me as their crazy Aunt who says weird things and makes pancakes in whatever shape they want.  I've warned both of my sisters that it's my job to mess their children up, and it's their job to straighten them back out again.  It's a good system.

One of those four awesome children is my niece, Maggy.  Maggy is my sister Carly's older child, and Carly and I joke that Maggy is the product of the two of us, instead of Carly and her ex-husband.  Maggy is...different.  She's crazy smart, both intellectually and emotionally, and she cracks weird jokes and has her own way of doing things.  And just like my sister, Carly, she is a little morbid and totally not grossed out by blood, guts, or dead animals.  

"Psst.  Let's dig over there and take out
that horse's leg!"

When Carly and I were kids, maybe 12-ish years old, we went to our grandmother's house and shot prairie dogs.  I know, sadface for the little animals.  But they're also basically rodents, they dig all sorts of holes all over the place, and my grandmother was validly concerned for the health of her horses, who might run through the field, step in a hole, and break a leg.  If you let the prairie dog population go unchecked, your entire field will come to look like swiss cheese.  Anyway, so we would go shoot prairie dogs, and my seemingly mentally ill sister Carly would yell "Let's go over there and watch him suffer!"  

Also, they wear no underwear.  This one
modestly covered its genitals for the photo.

Horrifying, I know.  Counterbalance this with the fact that my sister loves animals, she is a terrific "aunt" to my dogs, she has had a few cats, and we had frogs and turtles growing up that she lovingly cared for.  She's really not a serial killer, although that one incident kind of had me worried for a while.

Maggy is very much the same in that respect.  When she was about 4 years old, she was walking in my mom's backyard with me, and it was like a fricking scene from Snow White.  A little lizard darted out of a bush right in front of her.  Maggy walked right up to it, bent down and looked at it, and after staring back at her for a minute, the lizard slowly walked away.  She then walked up to a rosemary bush where a butterfly was perched, stuck out her finger, and no shit, the butterfly actually flew over to her finger and landed on it.  Come on.  Seriously?

Then, when Thanksgiving rolls around, Carly asks Maggy what they should do to decorate their house for the holidays.  Maggy says "well, I was thinking, we should get a couple of turkeys and hang them from the corners of the porch and slit their throats and let the blood pour down."  *WHAT?!*  And then she runs off and picks up the cat that won't allow itself to be petted by anyone but her, and she carries it around by holding the hem on the bottom of her shirt and putting the cat in it like a makeshift hammock.  The cat purrs.  

Maggy and I have running jokes.  For one, I'm always trying to convince her to drink alcohol.  She was around 6 when I started, and she just turned 10 a few months ago.  Despite my cajoling, she has still refused to take a drink.  Whenever I'm taking drink orders for other people, I always ask her "Captain on the rocks?  Maker's Mark, neat?"  Maggy wrinkles her nose and says "no way."  I keep telling her that soon she's going to be in college, and she needs to build up her tolerance so some lame frat boy won't be able to take advantage of her.  Carly backs me up and says "It's true, Maggy."  But every time, she refuses.  (I'm not a child abuser, by the way: the joke only works because there's NO WAY Maggy would actually take a drink.)

Not the actual doll, but she
has a similar facial expression.
Like, "I just murdered your
cat and you don't know it yet."

Then Maggy got this creepy doll.  I don't even know what kind of doll it is.  I just know that it has this serene, horror-movie type expression on its face, and when you lay it down like it's sleeping, it closes its eyes, *almost* all the way shut.  Fucking creepy.  I absolutely hate this doll.  And Maggy loves it.  She keeps lording it over me that I'm freaked out by the doll, and I keep thinking of ways to hide it or kill it.  Maggy thinks this is hilarious.  For every time that I put the doll face down on a chair, or put a plastic bag over its head, I turn around and Maggy has it propped up on a countertop, staring me right in the face.  At Target, she showed me the little RV/camper thing they make especially for this doll.  I said "oh, good, it has curtains inside, so you can close them and never have to see her creepy face."  Maggy laughed, and said "yeah!  And look at the oven, too!  She can cook!"  I said "hmm, what happens when you 'accidentally' leave the oven on all night while she's sleeping in there?"  Maggy matter-of-factly said "She dies.  And then in the morning she comes back to life just to freak you out again." 

Little brat.  Love her.

Vacation Planning - Kangaroo Island

The Count and I are vacation planning.  As part of his gig, he has to travel a lot, and counting only his business miles flown, he usually comes up just shy of the 100,000 mile mark.  For those of us who are not travel nerds, we shrug and wonder what the big deal is.  But for travel nerds, this is the baseline where airlines really start to be nice to you.  If you get "1k" status, you're eligible for all sorts of free upgrades, and they give you a special customer service phone number with people who actually pick up the phone and who are based in your same country and who try to actually help you.  Weird.  So, anyway, to make sure he crosses the 100,000 mile threshold, and therefore is eligible for all of those fancypants upgrades during the next year, the Count tries to take at least one big flying vacation somewhere far. 

This year, we're planning it together.  I'm pitching for Australia.  The bummer is that the trip pretty much has to be in June, and the Count is definitely a summer guy.  He's cringing at the idea of leaving our warm June weather here in California and going to a place where it is chilly and wintery.  I would sympathize with him, but I happen to love colder weather, and it's fucking AUSTRALIA, people.  I've wanted to go forever. 

The Count's first mistake is putting me in charge of preliminary travel plans.  I am the girl who gets lost promptly after backing out of her driveway.  If it weren't for GPS, I'd have ended up in Canada half a dozen times already, completely by accident.  So the travel planning is going well.  Only once have I mistakenly searched for an airport in Spain and accidentally selected the airport in the Port of Spain -- Trinidad and Tobago.  In my defense, both locations have views of the Atlantic Ocean, just from the opposite side of it.

Besides my absolute lack of a sense of geography, I am also easily distracted by things.  Like kangaroos.

Me: We should go to Kangaroo Island. 

Count: Kangaroo Island???

Me: Yes. I've wanted to go there since about 2001.*copy and paste general island information* They have a big kanga sanctuary where you can BOTTLE FEED BABY JOEYS 

Count: (facepalm) Baby joeys. These are not slippers. 

Me:      I KNOW!  THAT'S WHY IT'S SO AWESOME!  WHEN DO YOU EVER GET TO FEED A BABY JOEY?

Count:  Girls... (facepalm)

Me: I’m totally taking a kanga home with me.  *whispers to Joey* “Get in my carryon.” 

Look at this bloke.  He totally wants
to come home with me.

He could help with chores.  And he and I could box each other.  It would save me money on Muay Thai.  Seriously, though, how fucking cool would it be to have a kanga in the house?  He could hop up the stairs, no problem.  (The Count hates the stairs.  My house is a two-story.)  And the pouch -- he could carry things for you.  You could say "Shit.  Kanga, I forgot something in the upstairs bathroom.  Can you get it for me?"  And he would hop right up there and get them for you.  He would think it was FUN. 

Count: *sends an unrelated web link*

Me:  I sense you're ignoring my kangaroo proposition.

Count:  Where the hell is Kangaroo Island?

Me: South side of Australia.  Good climate.  Kind of quaint, but awesome.  An island, so you get the oceany bits, too.  Can see right whales migrating in June.  New Zealand is about the same weather.  BUT DO NOT GOOGLE THE AUSTRALIA AIRPORT.  They have a giant spider exhibit thingie.  (The Count is really, really afraid of spiders.)

Me: THEY HAVE LEAFY SEA-DRAGONS TOO.  OMG I WANNA GO NOWWWWWWWW

Leafy Sea Dragon

Count: Good lorddddd. What have I created?

After checking flights, it looks like Australia is not going to a viable option.  I sent this to the Count, saying "This is how I feel about not getting to go to Kangaroo Island."

Poor Ralph.  I know the feeling, buddy.

Carly's Super-Gullible New Guy, and My (Apparently) Super Old One

My sister Carly recently met a guy ("New Guy").  Well, honestly, she met him a little over a year ago.  She was taking a swing dancing class, and this guy saw her and really liked her, and was planning to ask her out when she next showed up to class.  She ended up not showing up the next week, or for many, many weeks afterward, because she and her two kids were hit by a car crossing the street in the crosswalk in front of the kids' school.  On Valentine's Day. 

Horrible accident.  I haven't blogged about it because it's depressing, for one, and it will prompt me to say some not-nice things about those few elderly drivers who drive far longer than they're capable of safely driving, and because I will cry a lot and hardly be able to see what I'm typing while I type it.  So let me just leave it at that for now.

In any event, they were hit by a car, hurt pretty seriously, and Carly and her son were unable to walk normally for quite a while.  Carly is now doing well, and she's been able to dance again somewhat recently, so she started going back to the swing class.  And apparently New Guy was ready for her.

He asked her out, they went on a date, and it went well.  I don't know all the details, but I know that much.  So about a week after the date, Carly was supposed to go to a concert with her two kids, our mom and stepdad, and me, to see the Count and his vocal group perform.  This wasn't a backyard performance: these were $30-per-seat tickets purchased many weeks in advance.  Carly put it on her calendar, allegedly.

So, the day of, she texts me in a panic.  Her daughter had a volleyball game at 5, and her son had a pinewood derby race at 2.  Concert starts at 3.  She ended up getting her ex-husband to take her daughter to the volleyball game, and she brought her son to the concert.  Last minute, she texts New Guy and asks if he wants to go.  He was out with some friends, so thankfully he was already showered and dressed, and agreed to go.  

So we all show up at the concert venue, and New Guy is noticing (like we all are) that there is a LOT of grey hair in the audience.  The demographic for the Count's group is chiefly composed of 65-90 year olds.  There was a big band accompanying the musical acts, including the Count's group, which closed the show.  Even the members of the big band were probably averaging 60-70 years old.

New Guy looks at me, all worried.  "Um, just how OLD is your boyfriend?  Is he like..." *waves his hand toward the audience*  Because I'm an asshole, and I like messing with people that I've known for all of 30 seconds, I play along.  

Me: "Well, kinda.  You see the piano player?" 
New Guy: "Yeah."
Me: "That's his son."
New Guy: *eyebrows raised to his hairline*  "Really?  He looks like he's about 80!"
Me: "Yeahhhh."

Poor New Guy looked so stunned I finally told him I was joking.  Thankfully, he laughed.  But I think he remained a little skeptical until he saw the Count take the stage, looking like a comparative spring chicken at the age of 42.