A New Experience

I remember when we first started gardening 8 years ago. I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the whole concept. I would get confused about when to plant certain things and succession planting and the whole nine yards. It was more than I wanted to think about at times. My husband was the ever patient teacher, and soon I took over most of the gardening chores. I am now the reminder to him on things concerning the garden.



Now, I am starting a new endeavor; one that I don't have quite as much faith to turn out in the end. If I felt overwhelmed when we first started gardening, I feel doubly overwhelmed now. The only reason I am doing this is to bail my husband out with my daughter. You see...it all started on the evening we went Christmas shopping. We weren't even shopping for our daughter. We had already completed her gift list. We were heading down the aisle that had real artist pencils to purchase for our nephew. To the right of the so called pencils, my husband had an epiphany. He picked up a sewing machine and put it in our cart. "What are you doing?", I quickly asked. I am buying Hope a sewing machine for Christmas. I remind him that Hope's Christmas shopping was completed and we needed to purchase for the other children on our list. He told me that he knew she would be thrilled and he wanted to do this special thing for our daughter. "And who is going to teach her to use this new machine", was the next question out of my mouth. He assured me that he would be the one. It would be a daughter father thing. That was all well and good. He did teach her the machine. He has spent countless hours with her reading the manual doing all the things that I never learned to do.

He recently asked me to take her to a new fabric store in our area and let her choose material for her and him to make a pillow. I decided that wasn't that hard. I could drive the girl child to town and purchase material. Simple enough...well, it didn't quite work out like I had it planned. Simple is never really simple in my world. When we got to the store, the lady was so very nice and encouraged Hope in her new hobby. She suggested that we come to the new quilting class to learn basic stitches and how to sew. The idea is that one time a month the class meets to teach basic sewing by making a quilt square. At the end of the year, there will be 12 quilt squares made (so they say, but I'm still not quite sure about that), and then the next year we will all be ready to make a quilt. Hope was thrilled to be invited to a REAL sewing class with a REAL teacher and other REAL people. She promptly asked her Daddy if he could take her, but his REAL job seemed to interfere with her plans. Guess who that left??? Yep, that left me the REAL mom who NEVER learned to sew. I decided that if I could learn to garden surely I could learn to sew. So off to the sewing class we went. I purchased a few cool tools. I made one cut with the wheel roller and then I cut my finger. That took me all of about 10 seconds. The good thing about it was I didn't need immediate medical attention like the teenager next to me who also cut her finger with her new device. 3 long hours later here is what I had to show:



It took me T.H.R.E.E. hours to make this. It isn't even the same size. Tell me how can I measure EXACTLY and come out with two pieces totally different sizes? I don't know. I even invested in the handy dandy cool ruler thing, but obviously it wasn't very useful.

THREE hours of my life to make this. I could have cleaned the whole entire upstairs in three hours. I could have made a very nice meal in three hours. I could have planted a lot of plants in three hours!!! Now I am committed to sewing class for the next two years of my life!!! Can you believe it? My husband's Christmas gift to our daughter has taken hours from my life. I think I should demand retribution. For every hour that I suffer through sewing class I should get a free hour of something fun. That sounds fair to me. Of course, Hope is doing a bang up job at sewing class. Perhaps the teacher just had pity on her for having such an inept mother. Whatever the case, she did spend extra time working with Hope. What did I get for my efforts? The teacher sent me back to the iron because I didn't even iron my "square" good enough. Hope kept asking me if I was having fun. I don't know why the girl child would ask me such a question. I should think that the wrinkles in my forehead should give away the fact that I was a bit stressed. I didn't want to lie to the child, but I found myself growling something about I would rather be having fun in the garden. Yes, retribution is definitely what I need...and two Tylenol for next month's class...and maybe some private sewing lessons!

grace and peace,

julie