SOLSC March 26: Too Busy a Day

1. I wanted to go to the outdoor exercise/dance class in my neighborhood this morning — I haven’t been since the fall because it’s too cold. But during the eight-block walk, it was windy, too windy, and while it got over 60 degrees later in the day, it wasn’t there yet. I had to give up.

2. On to the farmers market, where I got my weekly supply of apples, as well as carrots and brussels sprouts — and chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.

3. Next, supplies for lunch at the Lebanese supermarket. Can of chickpeas for making beet hummus. Pitas. Eggplant and chickpea salad. Tomato and cucumber salad.

4. Home to make the beet hummus. But I can’t find the recipe. I had a printout from when I first made it, but it wasn’t among my recipes. I searched through twice, until I realized I was wasting time.

5. To the computer to search for the recipe. Had to look at three or four before I found the one I wanted, at theforkedspoon.com. (Do try this, it is delicious.)

6. But when I first opened up the computer, I saw an e-mail from a friend who’d invited me to go to the theater with her. She’d already bought her ticket online, and now she was letting me know what her seat was so I could get one near her. But I was halfway through the ordering process when the website said “Error page not found.” I had no time to call the box office for help.

7. Start the hummus, then my daughter arrived. Christie was coming for lunch and the continuation of a sewing lesson.

8. But first we were attending a Zoom session of Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon, a writing community I’ve been part of for 10 years, and Christie also came to occasionally. Because of Zoom, today’s group had women from Los Angeles, Georgia, Alabama, and Trinidad and Tobago. We talked about our plans for National Poetry Month, and I mentioned the Golden Shovel poem form<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/at-home/golden-shovel-poetry.html> using New York Times headlines as source. One of the women on the Zoom said that based on my description of this form, she’d written a Golden Shovel poem, and it was published!

9. After the featured poet reading at the Poetry Salon, we left to get on with the sewing. Christie is making a dress from a 1950s pattern that fits her body type, but she needs guidance. She’s about 75% done, and today’s sewing created a problem that required a bit of ripping out and redoing.

10. As we moved on to the next step, I began to feel the third of what might be Covid symptoms. (I’ve still not had Covid.) The home test I was about to take had expired last November. I had to get to the nearest urgent care center, and it was going to close in 45 minutes. Christie said she’d clean up. I reminded her to take half of the beet hummus. Walked to the urgent care. They gave me both a Covid and a flu test. Both negative! Whew.

11. Walked over to Riverside Park and sat on a bench, watching the sun. Now it was much warmer than it had been in the morning.

12. After dinner, it was time to do the laundry. And write this slice. End of day.

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I’m participating in the 16th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 26 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

 

My Life in 50 Objects: Sewing, part 1

[I don’t know yet whether there will be as many as 50 or more than 50. We’ll see how it develops. What I am aiming for is to describe the objects in my apartment and why I have kept them, what they mean to me, so that after I’m gone (which I don’t expect to be any time soon) my younger relatives won’t be able to say, “Why did she keep this old thing?” My mother said she would do that for her jewelry, but she never did.]

      I made this cotton pantsuit in the spring or summer of 1970. Pantsuits had just become a thing you could wear to work, and that change happened between 1967 and 1969 (I know, because I quit work to go back to school full-time to get my B.A. in August 1967, and returned to work exactly two years later. In 1967, no women could wear pants to work; if there was a snowstorm, you might wear snowpants or jeans, but you changed into a skirt in the office. In 1969, pants were acceptable, so long as they were not jeans.)

      This pantsuit has a distinction. I worked on 57th Street just west of Fifth Avenue, and sometimes was too lazy to walk from Columbus Circle, where I got off the C train. On this one day when I was wearing the pantsuit, I was stopped by an elderly woman. She identified herself as Eugenia Sheppard, who had a photo column in the New York Post every Saturday featuring women she saw on the street who looked particularly fashionable. Could she take my picture? How could I say no? When she beckoned her photographer, he turned out to be Duff Gummere, who was a friend of ours, because this was the period when Jack was a new reporter at the New York Post.

      So there I was, one of four women wearing various summer attire, in the New York Post that Saturday. Alas, I have no idea what’s happened to the clipping. Perhaps I can find it on microfilm at the library.

      I said I made this pantsuit. My mother taught me to sew when I was around 12. The first garment didn’t even need a pattern. It was a dirndl skirt, and because my mother was moderately compulsive, she had devised a way to gather the fabric into the waistband so that it would look neat, not bunched up when you followed the method I learned in my high school home ec class.

      We bought a couple of yards of blue paisley cotton, measured my waist, then added six inches where the front and back would overlap. We cut the waistband that measurement long and two and a half inches wide. We stitched the short ends of the rest of the fabric together to make a large tube. Then came the fun part.

      Fold the waistband in half, fold the tube in half. Match the ends of the waistband to the part of the tube with the seam, and match the middle of the waistband to the other end of the tube, which still be the center front of the skirt (right sides of fabric together; if you know how to sew, you’ll remember why; if you don’t, I’d need to make a diagram to show you). Then very careful fold little pleats away from the center front until all of the fabric of the skirt neatly fits the length of the waistband. Laborious, yes, but it makes a neat-looking gather.

      If you’ve gotten this far, you’ll realize that there is a lot of geometry and math involved in sewing. Neither my mother nor I was aware of that at the time, especially since my mother professed to hate math. But I loved the way a large piece of cloth could be turned into a garment with not that much effort. Of course, I used a Singer sewing machine to stitch the thing together. And I did love that blue paisley skirt; I wore it to pieces. 

     There will be more about sewing coming up.

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This year there is another essay a week challenge, 52EssaysNextWave. I am way behind, but am trying to catch up with this series. You can read some of the essays that will be linked to the Facebook page for #52EssaysNextWave.