Surprised myself today by dragging out the sewing machine (!!) and turning out four pillowcases for my bolster and body pillow from a couple of old sheets I'd been using as curtains in the old place. I bollixed up one by doing my usual sewing-two-pieces-together-that-don't-belong and then having to rip it out, and mismatched the opening on another, but two of them turned out just fine and one actually looks like a pillowcase someone might have purchased. I don't know why cases this size are so hard to find. Why sell body pillows and bolsters if you have to get the covers and cases for them custom made? One of life's little mysteries.
It's a major accomplishment for me to get the sewing machine out, get it threaded, make a new bobbin then actually sew something. I can usually just about manage a straight seam, and that's about it. Needles and thread and I, we just don't get along. Amazingly, nothing snarled up today, though I broke the thread once and had to refill a bobbin. Usually, all I have to do is pull out a length of any kind of yarn or thread or string and it instantly turns into the most enormous Gordian knot imaginable. I've got no idea what got into me, except that I changed the bedding from summer to fall and discovered I've really got nothing for those bolsters to match the winter duvet. I can hardly believe I've done it.
It might, just might, have been a way to keep myself from going completely ballistic after having a horrible e-mail exchange this morning with my clueless cousin, who, had she been here, I would have slapped silly. I hate having to be rude with people but since she decided my answering the phone up in Michigan (where there's no caller ID; besides, her dad was there) meant that we were now back on speaking terms again, I have not been able to get through to her that I'm not emotionally tough enough right now to discuss what's wrong with our relationship, which is primarily what's wrong with it. She wants what she wants when she wants it, regardless of what anyone else wants or needs. Her pattern is to just wait a while and then pretend there was never any fracas to begin with, which would be fine if it were just stupid little things, but it's not. It's manipulation, mostly. For instance, her way of "opening the door again" with me was to kick it down with unsolicited advice about not mentioning online that I'd inherited anything from my parents and telling me that my blog seemed to indicate that I was depressed and, gee, you know, there's this stuff called psychotherapy now, and they have drugs, too, and maybe I should try that? Now, I've done my own stint of therapy for depression and found it extremely useful before and have recommended it to her for years. Now, suddenly, she knows all about it and can see that I'd benefit from it? Thank you, Doctor. What's insulting and crazy-making is her condescension and her willingness to charge in where she's not been asked under the guise of "caring" and using that excuse to try to reopen a dialogue I've told her I'm not ready to have.
So it was fall back on mindless work or get a rocket launcher today.
As a result, I now have the cleanest kitchen in Christendom (except for the floor, which just needs to be replaced, so beyond the pale is it), a tidy linen closet, clean linens on my bed, and four new pillowcases. What I really wanted to do today was sleep in, schlep my laundry over to the nice ladies at the laundromat, and spend the rest of the day not doing much of anything. Alas, none of this happened. Instead, I engaged in a little occupational therapy, which is something I usually do when I'm really freaked about something totally out of my control: death, terrorist attacks, my cousin.
You can generally tell how my life is going by how clean my house is. The relationship of cleanliness to happiness is, oddly, inversely proportional. The happier I am, the less inclined I am to do stupid, mindless housework. No, I have other fish to fry! Books to make! Museums to go to! Margaritas to suck down! Stories to write! Dinners to go to with friends! Phooey on housework. But you will never see any shit that has hit my fan, because it is instantly wiped up in a spotless and pathologically tidy house. When things get really bad, the dust mastodons under the bed tremble in fear. Extinction by vacuum cleaner cannot be far away.
My house is pretty damn clean right now. Maybe I should at least thank her for that.
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