Zoo Blog

Since July I've been slowly but surely creating a sewing room. Bought some new bookshelves for upstairs, and have been moving books from the first floor "library" (a.k.a. living room) up there. Meanwhile hunting down sacks of fabric stashed all over the house and moving them into the first floor bookshelves.

I moved The Desk (giant repro Chippendale behemoth) from the bird room to the new sewing room. Getting it out of the bird room was quite an adventure. I had to take the door off the hinges and flip the desk this way and that to try to weasel it out. It was only jammed in the doorway for a couple of hours to where I had to crawl across the top of it to exit or enter the room. (Don't believe the rumor that I was so exhausted from desk-wrestling that I stretched out on top of the desk and took a nap with my feet in the bird room and my head in the hallway.)

At one point I very nearly sawed my beloved The Desk to pieces, I was so disgusted. I don't even know how the movers ever got it through the doorway and into that room 10 years ago to begin with. (Well, for starters there wasn't an aviary in the way, and there was no door in the stairwell doorway, and there were two of them, and they were a lot stronger than me . . . )

Well anyway, persistence finally paid off and now I have the world's fanciest sewing table, in a sewing room with a decidedly "post-tornado" decor--sacks of fabric, sewing patterns, piles of mending-to-be-done, 7 sewing machines (some dismantled) all strewn about. Someday I hope to finish moving books upstairs and rent a bulldozer or something to scrape up all the stuff around the room and cram it into the vacated bookshelves.

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Last Saturday I discovered the secret to ultimate happiness.

First, take 3 trips to the dump to get rid of enough junk so that you almost have room in the house to swing a cat. (On your 2nd trip, be careful not to run over the extremely drunken homosexual couple staggering across the street holding each other up.)

Next, buy a serger. (Of course, you've checked all the reviews and have been test-driving different models for weeks.)

After setting up the serger, go boating. Take a friend, lease a kayak, and take turns with your friend kayaking and paddling an inflatable boat around on Rock Lake. Stop for lunch at Panerra along the way. You will have to use the foot pump to inflate the boat, since the battery-powered pump you bought needs considerable charging time in the car's cigarette lighter before you can use it. Gah.

Nobody on the lake will stare at your silly little inflatable boat, really.

When you're too exhausted to paddle any more, entertain the bystanders by beaching your craft, flailing and heaving yourself awkwardly out of it, and then hauling all your ridiculous equipment back up the hill. Lean the kayak against the fence to drain--laugh maniacally and exhort it to "go potty". Roll vigorously on the boat to help deflate it. C'mon, your pants aren't nearly dirty enough yet.

After completing the comedy of errors of cramming the kayak back into the car, call another friend and inform her you're bringing her pizza. Find a takeout pizza place. While waiting for pizza, get bouncy-balls from the gumball machines and invent bouncy-ball games. Laugh not quite loudly enough for the kitchen staff to call the cops. Try not to break any windows.

Arrive with pizza at friend's house before she gets home. Sit on her porch eating pizza--make sure to smear plenty on the front of your shirt. The object is to get your shirt as filthy as your pants. When she gets home, jabber about your wonderful day before passing out on her couch.

So there you have it, the secret to happiness:

1. dump
2. serger
3. boat
4. pizza

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Vacation days yesterday and today--timed to save me from the horrid commute past State Fair. Mostly a "doing chores" vacation, not a "happy fun" vacation. The chores included renewing my expired vehicle registration and expired driver's license.

The DMV I utilized was near a Goodwill with $0.49 sewing patterns. It occurred to me that amongst my vast collection of patterns, I have just about every style except for a peasant blouse. Seek at Goodwill and ye shall find. My pattern collection is now complete, and I will never ever have to buy more. Yeah, right.

Poor Mister Disraeli had to endure a butt bath, nail trim, and stinky butt gland cleaning last night.

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Yeah, it's been a while.

old news

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