The Morning After

It was about 2AM before I finally fell asleep last night, too keyed up over the day's events and wrung out with worry about a loved one a mere 3 miles from where the bomber was found. Still cannot wrap my head around the phenomenon of seeing law enforcement and Special Forces from all over Massachusetts descending on the area. The whole of greater Boston was shut down, even Gloucester was so quiet my husband closed the store and came home early.  "Shelter in place" was added to the local vocabulary.   It felt like a Bruckheimer movie nightmare.

So today I'm chillaxing. Take THAT, fearmongers!  There is no better place to dissolve stress than my sewing room. I have this lovely, big  photograph hanging over my ironing board so I have something wonderful to look at while I press quarter inch seams and iron the (occasional) blouse.  This is a detail shot:  

The Village

There is a whole world in this photograph, all kinds of little people cleaning and scrubbing and working and moving giant buttons and zippers.  It is endlessly entertaining to me and I'm almost at the point of giving the people names and writing a little story about their world.

So it's back to the drawing board with the William Morris hexagon project as the adhesive, wash-out stabilizer I marked the side quilting borders with was, I learned, not so wash-out.  The Sulky label said "spritz with water and it dissolves."  I completed one side and decided I better try out the removal before proceeding further.  I spritzed half of it and the whole thing turned to slimy glue.  I scraped off what I could and let it be, hoping it would dry and be fine. It dried - hard as a rock.  I took it downstairs to the kitchen and soaked just the border in a pot of water and let it sit there a while.  After I gently hand scrubbed the rest of it out I put it outside on the clothesline to dry in the sun.  I think it will be ok, actually, but "dissolves" should be taken off their label.  I'm not crazy about throwing it in the washing machine to let that do the work either - the piece will be fine but having that much glue in my washer and/or water lines doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling.  Maybe I'll soak the whole thing in a pot and toss that water on the weeds out back.

This is the first thing I've ever made that is entirely machine quilted. I love the stippling process, very zen, but wanted a more constructed look for the border quilting. I think it will finish up fine. I'm happy to take an afternoon and pop on a CD or book on tape and just let the world turn without me for a while.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, we already know the bomber can't get a fair trial in Boston so we're thinking of sending him to New York. 

My Night at the Opera (House)

The Boston Opera House is a magnificent theater built in 1925 and recently renovated and restored to the tune of $50 million dollars. Friend-Joe is a huge fan of theater and as Husband-Joe is not, Friend-Joe is my perfect companion for a night of musical magic. Perfect because he not only pays for everything (woo hoo!) but he has impeccable taste (dinner at Blu before, dessert after) and all I have to do is take the train in to Boston and meet him there. I don't even have to drive home - he does!   Bonus - I was on a crowded Green Line train and since he arrived at the restaurant before I did he ordered my favorite martini and had it delivered just as I sat down.  My mother was right. Every woman needs 2 husbands - a straight one for sex, and a gay one for everything else.

The Opera House was filled to capacity (or at least it was after the first late-seating interval which brought in about 75 more people) for a production of Les Miserables. I was completely dismayed to learn you could (and were encouraged) to buy drinks at the lobby bar and take them in to the theater. Seriously?  You can't watch the first act without a drink in your hand?  Worse yet I kept hearing plastic cups fall to the floor as people finished their drinks.  I realize theaters are in desperate financial straits and the revenues from liquor must be a boon, but It felt like being in a crappy movie theater.

Late arrivals kept pouring in well into the first act. I'm amazed that so many people  would spend that much money on a ticket and be 20 minutes late for the show. Whatever. The first act was wonderful. At intermission, up came the lights and the following thing happened:

If you click on the fuzzy (sorry) picture, you can see everyone obsessively punching open their phones and checking their messages and email.  Whoa. I had my iPod touch in my purse (podcasts for the train ride) and snapped a quick picture of the ocean of obsession/compulsion surrounding me.  It made me very, very sad.

Then things got worse.  Everyone returned for the 2nd act (with their beverages properly replenished) and the 12-ish year old girl sitting next to me started leaning her head on (I'm guessing) her grandmother's shoulder and complained she did not feel well.  The grandmother (who was humming along off-key with the music) did not appear to care. Bitch had that "I've waited a year for this night and NOTHING is going to budge me" look on her face. (You'll agree with the use of the "B" word - keep reading).  I tried to concentrate on the show but when the girl started sipping water...and then spitting it up on the floor.....and heaving and spitting..... I wanted to be sucked into a black hole.  I knew if one whiff of that hit my nostrils I would be joining her pronto.  The grandmother?  She just kept patting the little girl on the back and humming (serious pitch problems) along with the show.  I was flabbergasted.  I was PISSED. Not only was she a pain in the ass with her humming, but  I could not believe she wasn't going to turf that poor child out of there pronto.  Then the poor girl started dry-heaving again in earnest and I must have jumped into Friend-Joe's lap because he whispered, "Do you want to go stand in back?" and I said, "Yes!" and we were out of our seats and up the aisle in a nanosecond.  We watched the last 10 minutes of the show from there and applauded the curtain calls as a sea of douchbags -  er - people stormed the exits like there was a raging fire. Show some courtesy, people, applaud the effort and appreciate the talent - it's a LIVE PERFORMANCE for pete's sake.  Then (and only then) the B-word grandmother comes sauntering up the aisle with her still-heaving, softly crying young charge and she looked at us,  shrugged her shoulders and said, "Accidents happen!" like it was nothing at all.  I was torn between whether I should call  Child Protective Services or  just bitch slap the woman right there. What a terrible thing to do to a child.

Walking back to Blu for dessert Friend-Joe and I talked about the decline of our civilization. The Boston Opera House was absolutely stunning - elegant, opulent, dripping in class. The audience was largely the complete opposite.  I am deeply disturbed by such a culture shift.  I found the movie-theater concessions and people bolting from their seats disturbing.  I've had to abandon movie theaters because I can't deal with all the talking, the flashing smart phones, texting, feet up on the seats -  and the trashy floors.  Now I have to abandon live theater?  I feel like I'm turning in to what I used to call an "Old Fart" but now I understand why older people want to stay home and be left alone.  I'm right there. RIGHT there. Honest.

Waiting for Randot

Remember the Samuel Beckett play, Waiting for Godot? This one rhymes, but his last name does not have the "t".  I spent almost all of last  Monday at Mass General Hospital in Boston while a friend was in surgery.  I have done a lot of time in hospitals as a patient, but not as the patient advocate/support buddy.  The ensuing days were full of commuting to Lowell to work, commuting to Boston to bedside-sit, and then back home late at night. It was a remarkable week, full of insights on the human condition and a reminder of the suffering going on all around us 24/7 and 365.  Overhearing conversations in waiting rooms and hospital cafeterias should be mandated about once a month for all of us - it puts so much into perspective and  allows us to realize not all of our problems are so terrible.  It also gives us the opportunity to enrich our own  souls by praying for the health and well-being of  those lives  briefly glimpsed and overlapped with our own.

Knowing I would have a lot of  time on my hands I packed up my little cathedral window table runner blocks to bring with me,  thinking it would be a good time to finish up the project. (This picture shows it when it was a  work in progress.)  I'm more pleased that it is finished than I am with how it actually looks.  It is one of those projects that looks pretty simple on the surface, but matching those exacting intersections and seam allowances is entirely another matter. It was very therapeutic to be in a stressful situation with some hand sewing.  I found it made me calmer and - in turn - a better patient advocate. I had a few moments when I wanted to go postal and  make like Shirley Maclaine in Terms of Endearment (GIVE MY DAUGHTER  THE SHOT !!!!!) but managed much more successful methods of requesting medication and attention for my friend.  After  a  couple of trips to the nurses desk, the nurse informed me I could just use the call button and request what I needed.  ( I already knew that, but I wasn't going to tell her.)  I just smiled and said it felt good to get up and walk around a little.  While I have enormous respect for the work nurses do, I also know that things happen faster when you request nicely and face to face.  I did not bust chops,  I wasn't a pain in anyone's ass, but I'm not allowing anyone to be a pain in mine (or my friend's) either, and the previous night we politely  waited two hours for a simple  sandwich that never did show up for my very, very hungry patient. I am a reasonable person, but that is the kind of thing that makes  me change gears and ramp it up.  Aside from the fact that I could make Shirley Maclaine look like a piker by comparison, it just isn't necessary to get ugly.    I think anything we do, sew, create, cook or tend to for another person should be done with compassion and love. Judging by what I have seen and heard over the past week,  we could all make an effort to make someone else's life or job easier.  In turn, ours will, too.

Boston Gift Show Report

Well, it's over for another year.  Even though the Boston Gift Show opened today, I'm all done.  We've been going to this gift show for almost 20 years (Joe has a gift shop in Gloucester) so we know the vendors & the drill by heart.

In the past few years, it has moved from the old Bayside Expo to the new Boston  Convention Center. It has also become about 1/3 the size it used to be. We used to spend an entire exhausting day working the show - today we did it in three hours.  Honest.  It was a little surreal - vendors and sales reps we've known for years were not present.  Hoity toity vendors that would never deign to do a gift show for the great unwashed were actually present. A nationally known candle company had a tiny little booth there, and I got a taste of one of my favorite emotions - schadenfreude - as I walked past their booth.... without stopping.   I remember having to make actual appointments to see the TY rep (think Beanie Babies) and being forced to purchase a boatload of other unsaleable plush toys in order to get the 'privilege' of  buying the Beanie Babies.  They were nowhere in sight. Again with the schadenfreude. There are dark secrets in the  wholesale / retail universe. It makes you want to go somewhere and just live off the land.

I have learned an awful lot about retail over the past twenty years - I could not do it for a living.  I just do not like shopping (or selling things) that much.  I am saddened to see the lack of high quality merchandise that passes for giftware.  There were some booths with beautiful and artistically made goods, but most looked it came over on a container ship.  So much is imported (there were at least 30 booths selling imported pashmina (maybe) scarfs for $4 to $6 a pop) and just, well, schlocky.

This is a trend in giftware, soft goods and even appliances. It is why some brides no longer register for beautiful, quality china that will still be available 20 years from  now,  and instead pick out something CUTE at Pottery Barn or Restoration Hardware.  (Good luck finding a matching piece in a year or so when you break a plate.)  It's about how disposable everything has become in our current culture. I bought a toaster oven about 5 months ago and it looks like it is 10 years old.  It's cheaper to replace it - and that "disposable" mentality is why our garbage dumps are so full of things that used to last for years and years.  It is sad, really.  Or maybe I'm just getting into old-fart mode.  I have to tell you, though,  we had custom drapes made for our bedroom 21 years ago and while they were pretty spendy at the time, they still look beautiful and show some (but not much) wear.  I have no intention of replacing them. I don't need to! I registered for a very simple, bisque china with a fine gold rim over 21 years ago, and I still use them and throw them in the dishwasher.  They are made so beautifully well.  If I needed a plate, Lenox still makes them. It works for me.

Let's go out on a high note - the website for the gift show has the header I put below.  I'm pleased to point out that the picture on the far left is actually in GLOUCESTER, and I live near those houses. HAH - Nothing in Boston was so lovely, eh? Well, Boston Gift Show, you're welcome!