Oops, I did it again!

Two years ago, my mom sent a package and included an old, smelly, garbage blanket as padding. I was expected to throw away the blanket. Instead, I thought it would make a great picnic blanket, so I washed it, ran out and bought six yards of fabric for $6 and covered the blanket. Unfortunately, I really, really liked the blanket when I was done with it. I made coordinating pillows with the leftover fabric and really, really liked the whole set. Even though it was really inexpensive to make, I decided my blanket was worth more than just a picnic blanket and I used it on my bed for the next year and a half. (Featured in this post.)

A year ago, my mom sent a package and included another old, smelly, garbage blanket as padding. I noticed that it was exactly like the first one. How many of these blankets does she have lying around? This time I wasn't going to mess it up: I was going to take that blanket and make it into a picnic blanket for sure. Unfortunately, a year ago I was in school and had no access to a sewing machine. I decided a jean quilt would be the best option, so I made a collection of jeans, but then that collection of jeans just sat cut into squares, but unsewed because, as I mentioned, I had no access to a sewing machine and I was busy with school anyway.

This winter, I started sewing that jean quilt just a little. In fact, I even bought that padding stuff for the middle of it, negating altogether my need for the garbage blanket that my mom had sent.

So yesterday, when I went home from work early because I'd already put in a good twelve hours of overtime, I looked out at the sunshine and decided I needed to go out and get cheap fabric and make a picnic blanket (I was in the mood for sewing four sides of fabric together---not of sewing little squares of denim together). I hopped on my bike, drove to the local fabric store (I drove to Walmart, but since so many who read my blog hate Walmart, I've decided to call it "the local fabric store") and promised myself to look only in the dollar fabric section. I picked out two fabrics that would make a great picnic blanket because I wasn't in love with either of them.

But when I went to have it cut, another fabric just happened to catch my eye. It wasn't a dollar a yard, but I had to have it anyway. And I convinced myself that I'd have the heart to make it into a picnic blanket and use it as such. So I bought that fabric.

And then I put it home and put it on my bed and realized that it matched my room colors exactly. And then I realized that I had leftover fabric from covering my shelves, so I could use that as the backing instead of crappy backing fabric that I bought.

And five hours later (don't ask me why it takes five hours to sew four sides of fabric together---it got a little more complicated than that, and besides which, I had to sew buttons on the middle to keep both sides of the blanket together) I had the cutest, most darlingest picnic blanket. On my bed. In my bedroom. That I will never actually use as a picnic blanket.

Dammit.

A Job That Fits

This weekend, my mom said to me, "You seem to be happier these days. Is that because all the fun design work you're doing is distracting you from the fact that you're still not married?" (Okay, so I might be exaggerating her verbage slightly, but you get the idea.)

The fact is that my fun design work is making me happy. Which makes me seriously question my career goals.

When I was dating Viper, he would stay late at work as often as he could (which, because he was a busy guy, turned out to only really be Mondays). One day he was telling me that he doesn't mind writing the occasional email on work time because a lot of the time he's thinking about work while he's in the shower, and he doesn't charge them for that. I think that those two things---wanting to stay late at work and thinking about work when you're not at work---are good signs that you're in a career that really fits.

And at the time, it didn't escape my notice that I always left work the moment I could (and all too often a couple moments before I'd worked a full day), and I never, ever thought about work problems in the shower.

But now that I am doing design work as opposed to straight editing, I really find that I am happier. (Not that I was depressed before... it's just that my parents are constantly probing me for my state of happiness and asking me to describe it as a number, and even though that number is usually a 9, they can somehow pick up on the unquantifiable difference between 9-but-I-don't-have-a-husband and 9-did-I-tell-you-about-my-latest-design?)

I stay late at the office and I don't even mind (and I don't mind the overtime that will be coming my way, either). This morning, I was even thinking about work in the shower so that I could start my workday running. Close friends and family will attest that every time I finish a batch of designs, I send out mass emails showing the work I've done.

Editing is just slightly different. Sure, I send out mass emails whenever I find some true editing gem, but when's the last time that happened? It's true that I find editing fulfilling and that I take pride in my little editing library here at home.

But it doesn't get me as excited as my design work. And it's not as fun as my design work.

This is where it gets tricky. See, I studied editing because I love the English language and because I love perfecting anything that is printed or published. I chose it as a field because I'm good at it. Design is something that I have always had a knack for but that I never studied in depth. So while working in design energizes me, I feel that I am not prepared to do design professionally. While I understand some principles of design, there are many others that I'm sure I'm not even aware of. Take color theory for example. One of the hardest parts of my work in design right now is finding colors that work well together. Think making a stripe pattern is easy? Finding the right colors, the right order, and the right variation of line thickness drives me crazy and I'm rarely pleased with what I manage to come up with.

I guess that's all to say that I'll feel like a poser if I ever abandon editing to go into design, even though design is what I enjoy more (yes, even making those pesky stripes). My current situation is actually absolutely ideal and perfect---where I find professional fulfillment as an editor and extra enjoyment doing design work on the side. I guess that means that when I say I'm a 9, I really mean it (and a raise and a gas grill and possibly a husband would put me at a 10).

Sleeping Habits

A while ago, Rachel tagged me for some "six" thing where I had to list six random facts about myself. I couldn't come up with six random facts on the spot, but I've felt bad ever since at not responding to her tag. So this evening, because I'm sleepy but refuse to go to bed at 10:00 on a Saturday night, I present to you six random sleep habits that I have.

1) I love waking up and not knowing where I am. I often experience this feeling when I go to a new place. The coolest time I felt this feeling was in Florence. I woke up, realized I didn't know where I was, and tried to figure it out. For some reason, my brain always defaults to my grandparents' old home in South Porcupine. Then it goes through the different places I've lived. When I went through all my places of previous inhabitance and realized I was actually in Florence, Italy, that just feel cool. Of all the places in the world, Florence is probably one of the best to wake up in.

2) This goes with 1, but I love waking up disoriented. This happens fairly rarely, but it's cool when I fall asleep upsidedown in my bed and wake up confused in my surroundings. Very few times in my life, I've tried to get out of my bed when I am disoriented, and I've gotten lost in a corner until I've woken up enough to figure out what's going on. That's just fun.

3) In every home I've lived in for the past several years, I've dreamt about secret rooms. This includes all four of my mission apartments. I love home decorating and I love to fill space. If I have a new room, I get to figure out what to do with it. Office? Another bedroom? A second living room? And my mind obviously loves the idea of a secret, hidden room. The funny thing is that I did live in an apartment with an extra room. When I lived with Sophie, there was a third bedroom in our two-bedroom apartment, but our landlords kept it locked and used it as storage. So there it was in our home, a locked and unusable extra room. And that idea has obviously stuck with me.

4) I love waking up in the middle of the night. I love it because I get to see that it's not time to wake up and I get to go back to sleep.

5) To go along with 4, I set my alarm clock a full hour before I have to wake up. Then I press snooze for a full hour---sometimes two---just because I love that feeling of getting to go back to sleep again and again. When I moved in with El Senor and he heard my alarm go off several times in the morning, he said to me, "Oh. You're one of those people." The funny thing is that even though he said it with derision, I notice his alarm doing the exact same thing every morning. So I'm not the only one of those people in this house.

6) When I was a kid, I was fascinated with the idea of going from consciousness to unconsciousness. So I just started to pay attention every night and try and pinpoint the exact moment I was falling asleep. Because of months and months of practice, I now am able to tell exactly when I am falling asleep. I don't even know if that's normal. Does everyone else know when they're falling asleep, or am I special?

So those are six random sleep things. Recently, Switchback's mother told her to stop worrying about being single and start counting her blessings. One of my singleness blessings is being able to sleep freely. I can listen to my alarm go off as many times as I like. I can roll and squirm and cough and sneeze as much as I like. If I want to watch TV while I fall asleep, I can do that too.

Famous Bag Lady

Last night I went to Target. It had been a while. I often think of Mary when I'm at Target, because she once said that sometimes she just needs a therapeutic trip to Target where she can wander through the aisles at her leisure. And last night I only really had four things on my agenda:

1) Return unused drapes to Target.
2) Wander around Target aimlessly, collecting ideas for fabric designs.
3) Go to Home Depot to get all their Behr color "styles" pamphlets so that I have easy-reference color schemes in my office.
4) Go to Barnes & Noble to look at Communication Arts and see if it's worth trying to get work to buy me a subscription. (Yesterday, I kindof mentioned to someone that it would be nice to have a graphic tablet/pen... today I was informed that I'll be getting a graphic tablet/pen. Did I mention I want a raise, an assigned parking spot and a pony?)

As you can see, I'm a little obsessed with my new design responsibility at work, which is a good thing. If at all possible, one should be obsessed with one's work. One should also bill work for all the time that one spends researching at Target, Home Depot, and Barnes & Noble. I'd feel bad doing that, though. I mean, I was there for my own edification/enlightenment as much as I was there for work edification/enlightenment. Besides which, I bought a white shirt and a string of red beads, which was clearly personal. Except for the fact that I wore the white shirt and red beads to work today, which may again make them a work-related endeavor.

So after I went through every relevant aisle at Target, it was time for me to check out. I considered numerous lanes and chose a lane that had one customer checking out and one customer waiting to check out instead of the lane that had only one customer who was buying a lot of stuff. And once I got in my lane, the customer ahead of me turned to me and asked, "Are you El Senor's sister?" I told her I was, and expected her to say that we'd met at some point years ago. Instead, she told me that she recognized me from my blog. More accurately, she recognized my bag from my blog. (I'm sure it didn't hurt that I was wearing essentially the same outfit that I was wearing in the picture of me with my bag.) And that was about the extent of our interaction. I spent the rest of the night imagining what it would be like to have more recognition. More fame. At least in my imagination, it's pretty good.

So tonight I made a new bag. This one is 100% my design. We've been working on canvas bags at work, so I've been thinking a lot about canvas lately, and decided that I just needed a simple canvas tote. Nemesis has one and it's cool. (Nemesis bought hers for a few pounds though, and mine cost me $18 and five hours of time.)

After working all night on the sucker, hardly stopping for food or refreshment (El Senor made me dinner: a celery stalk with peanut butter), here it is in all its glory. If you would like to buy a replica of this bag, it will only cost you $70. It might be smarter to go to England and shop where Nemesis shopped... (Plus, if you look really closely, you can see my poor sewmanship, and really, why would you want to pay $70 for shoddy stitching?)

Dating the Brothers

(With apologies for the length of this post.)

It's funny... before I left for college my mom once admitted to me that her worst fear for us kids was that we'd go our separate ways and have nothing to do with each other. We've basically done the opposite. Four of the five of us came to Utah. We all lived in Provo. Now we all live in Salt Lake. And we'd give just about anything to have the fifth sibling out here with us. I prefer spending time with my siblings (and this includes my sister-in-law because she's as much a sibling as the brothers) more than spending time with anyone else. Basically a standard of measurement for the men I date is to want to spend the evening with my significant other rather than spend the evening with my siblings. When hanging out at a funeral with The Boy and El Senor sounds like more fun than spending the evening with the guy I'm dating, basically it's a good indication that the relationship should end. True story.

But I guess you can have too much of a good thing. Let's face it, I'm 26 and unmarried with no prospects. About six years ago, my dad sat down with me and told me that I needed to stop spending so much time with my brothers---I needed to actually go out and meet other people. Six years later, I'm still working on going out and meeting other people.

Tonight, after work, I met up with El Senor at REI to buy goo-filled, puncture-resistant tubes. We made it just in time for closing, and decided to grab dinner at Go Sushi, just down the road. When we were finished with our dinner, our waiter came to our table with the bill. It's always interesting to see what a server will do with a bill, because I know that the assumption is that we're NOT brother and sister. This waiter decided to take a direct approach and asked, "How would you like me to do the bill?" I immediately volunteered to pay because I'm just about to give El Senor the rent check anyway, so it would be easy for me to subtract his dinner from rent. But although the waiter asked confidently what to do with the check, he clearly didn't expect me to volunteer to pay it. At first he said nothing. Then he laughed. All the while, he looked frantically from me to El Senor, from El Senor to me, trying to see if it was a joke. It wasn't, though. Really, the girl was going to pay for the meal and that was just fine.

I have dating experiences like this with each of my brothers. I actually enjoy the fact that people assume I'm on a date with my brother. It makes the outing that much more fun. You'll understand why...


Dating Experiences with The Boy

My most recent date with The Boy was a trip to Red Iguana. Our after-meal experience was opposite to the one I just had with El Senor. I had cash, so I gave The Boy my half of the meal. He would put the whole bill on his card. But our waitress only dealt with me when sorting out the bill. For example, after we'd been waiting a long time to sign the bill and leave, the waitress came to our table and explained to me that their credit card machine wasn't working properly, so that's why it was taking so long. Several minutes later, she returned, gave me The Boy's credit card, and asked if I had another form of payment I could use. The Boy opened his wallet and paid cash for the meal. This is probably the only experience I've ever had where the server assumed that the woman was paying for the meal. (Maybe she thought we were married?)

Another great experience with The Boy was, of course, living with him while attending BYU. You may remember that I was assigned to be his home teaching companion. We also had several very confused ward members come to our door: "Oh. I'm sorry. I must be at the wrong house... I was looking for The Boy." I'd say, "The Boy lives here." They'd say, "I'm sorry---I thought you lived here." I'd say, "I live here, too." Then they'd be even more confused. This and similar situations repeated the whole time The Boy and I lived together. And it never got old.


Dating Experiences with Richie

Richie and I have fewer dating experiences because we've never really spent much of our adult lives living in the same city. But we have a precious couple. Like after his first year away at school in Southern Ontario. I hadn't seen him in months and the first evening we were able to see each other again, we were forced to go to a regional YSA dance. Neither of us liked to dance, and we weren't interested in meeting new people, so we went to a lobby couch to catch up. I suggested we play a game: See how long it takes for us to get in trouble. So he put his arm around me and I put my hand on his knee and we chatted like that for a few minutes. It wasn't long before a leader came across us. He looked at the two of us and looked at a girl down the hall chatting on the phone. "Is she your chaperone?" he sarcastically asked, pointing to the girl down the hall. I said, "Oh, we don't need a chaperone. This is actually my brother." Richie immediately chimed in, "Yeah, yeah. This is my SISTER. Ha ha!" The leader left perplexed, unsure about whether we were lying or telling the truth.

More recently, Richie and I went car shopping together. He wanted to bring me along to give him some legitimacy. Sure he had a hippie beard and hippie hair, but if he had a WIFE, the car dealers might take him seriously. I commented to him at one point that for young marrieds, we certainly weren't very touchy-feely. Richie said, "We got married when we were sixteen. It's been so long now that the love's basically died out."


Dating Experiences with El Senor

Other than tonight's experience, I particularly remember El Senor being the last of a few men who came out to visit my family in Maryland during the months after my mission. The first was a guy I dated but shouldn't have. The second was a guy I didn't date but should have. The third was a married family friend ("marriedin") staying with our family. The fourth was El Senor. As El Senor and I were sitting together in the YSA Sunday School, one class member commented to another, "Well, Cicada certainly wins the award for bringing the most guys home to meet her parents this summer."

Another date with El Senor that sticks out in my mind was a date to the Symphony back when we were both living in Provo. We were wearing our nice Symphony clothes. He picked me up and I figured out quickly in the car on the way up to SLC that El Senor wasn't in a very chatty mood. So we rode up to SLC in silence. Then we attended the Symphony and we didn't say anything to each other before the performance. During the intermission, we went into the reception area, stood with our arms folded, and continued to say nothing. After the performance, he asked if I wanted to go to the Red Iguana. We went and enjoyed a silent meal together. Nothing actually happened on that date, but during the whole thing, I wondered what people watchers would think of us. They'd think surely that the relationship was about to end.


Dating Experiences with Captain Fabuloso

Years ago, when Captain Fabuloso and I went to Calgary for a close family friend's wedding (the aforementioned "marriedin," though we knew his wife much better than we knew him back then) we spent the weekend meeting lots of different people. Every time we were introduced, we were introduced by our last name: These are the XXXXXXXXs. We didn't clue in till later that of course, everyone assumed that we were married. When one of us mentioned BYU, someone asked, "Is that where you two met?" Captain Fabuloso and I looked at each other and then CF said, "No... we've known each other a lot longer than that." I added, "We actually grew up together---we've known each other our whole lives." People thought that was just so sweet.

A year before that trip to Calgary, CF was in a ward whose bishop liked to fly hot air balloons. In an effort to get his ward members dating, he invited a different apartment each week to bring dates and have a balloon ride with him. CF, a dating wizard (just ask his wife), asked me to be his date. That was all well and good until the bishop found out that I was CF's sister and almost had a nervous breakdown, crying that he was doing all he could to marry off his ward members, but if the guys insisted on dating their sisters, no progress would ever be made.


And I guess he was right. As long as I keep dating my brothers, I'll make no real progress. But unless some guy measures up to the high standard my brothers have set, I won't be happy with him anyway, knowing that I'd rather be hanging out with my brothers than making out with him.