Quilting 101

It all started with TV.

Back in the day (around about 1990) there was a quilting show on PBS affiliates starring Eleanor Burns. She showed how to sew strips of fabric together, cut them up into sections, and sew those together. I thought the patchwork aspects of this was way cool, so I bought a lot of fabric (naturally) and started sewing. Mind you, I didn't want to make any of this into quilts -- I had this "bright" idea that I could fashion the resulting quilt tops (meaning the patchwork without the batting and backing that makes up a quilt) into duvet covers. (Okay, so I later learned there is a way of doing this, but I wasn't going to use anything that clever.) I bought enough fabric for several duvet covers, and made precisely . . . no quilt tops. Maybe two-thirds of one, and I still have that partially-made quilt top. I'll finish it some day...

Well, as some of you know, in 1992 I went to law school. No quilting there! Years passed, I kept the fabric but did no sewing, and moved on to other crafts. (I'll save cross stitch for another blog entry.) Eventually I stopped being a full time lawyer (yippee!) and Hub 1.0 and I got our very first DVR, a lovely little TiVo with 60 hours of memory. Hmm... what to watch? I'd gotten into the habit of watching HGTV for all their room makeover shows, and noticed that they ran Simply Quilts everyday. I told you it all started with TV!

What I learned watching Simply Quilts was this: There are a heck of a lot of ways to sew three layers together to make a quilt. Innumerable blocks, layouts and designs for piecing, applique, whole cloth quilts, embellishments, crazy quilts -- you name it, someone's doing it. And what was great about the program was that it showed it all: the basics for beginners all the way to the quilts that win Best in Show at Paducah or Houston -- and one program put together a lot of the "100 Best Quilts of the Past 100 Years" -- wow! Talk about inspirational.

So I started sewing. I signed up for a class on machine quilting and bought me a way-expensive sewing machine two days before the class.

Here's the first quilt I did, and frankly the sewing is WAY better than the photography. This is a pattern I saw on Simply Quilts. It's called "There's a Dog on My Quilt" The colors are way off, presumably because we photographed it on our third-floor landing with the light on, and that light still had the hideous 1970s green & yellow plastic faux-stained glass fixture -- so all the pretty pinks and purples look like week-old bruises. But you can still get the idea.

This was a gift for Coffee Jones's daughter, aka the "Beanette." She had a thing for dogs, although she favored West Highland terriers, which even I now think of as "Kirby" dogs because that's what she called her stuffed dog. Still, a brown mutt with rather more hound than terrier -- I think that's okay.

And what with the bad photography, you can't see all the mistakes. Just as well hunh.

Okay, on to the companion quilt!

I made this gift for the Jones' boy child (just known as the Bean?) immediately after the one for the Beanette, and I wisely kept them together until I could give them at the same time. It's called "There Are Two Cats on My Quilt" and it was done the same way as the doggy quilt. Only this time I made an effort to fashion the two cats with appropriate fabrics for the Jones' household cats: India and Duke. [The cats don't need special blognoms, do they, CJ?]

From a techinical standpoint, these aren't bad first quilts -- my contrast is good, color selection is fine, I happen to know my corners don't all match up, but as quilts for kids, I'm not unhappy.

And from a technical standpoint, I've learned a lot about uploading photos to a blog. Step one is -- load all your images first! I'll continue to show my quilts, in chronological order, in future blog entries.

The Medical Mafia

Something Sharyn wrote in a recent comment [I miss you too, sweetie; maybe we can come visit you in the sunny place you live . . . like, in March, when it's dreary here??? ] about hospitals and doctors got me thinking about what my mother used to call the Medical Mafia.

To me, doctors are body plumbers -- they know stuff about the workings of the body that I don't know. But they don't necessarily get it about people. And bodies aren't just bodies; whatever is the answer to the mind/body problem, it's got to be more than just the neurons in our brain. How we think about our body has to have some effect on how our body is doing. I had an ulcer once, confirmed with barium and treated for many years. Clearly a product of stress and mental issues. One day I decided I had to deal with mental problems in another way. Ulcer symptoms went away, and the next time I had a barium test, the doctor stated emphatically that there was NO evidence I'd ever had ulcer. And for that doctor, that was that. My body couldn't lie.

Oh can't it!? It lies all the time, and in really interesting ways. That's okay. I love it nevertheless. I just don't expect a doctor to have a clue. (I consider myself fortunate that my current physician -- I still go to the one in Philadelphia even though I live 160 miles away -- understands that some aspects of my life, like my obesity, are more complicated than he would like them to be. In exchange, I don't lie to him.)

But here's my big insight into doctors, and I actually think this can be useful in everyone's dealings with doctors. When I was starting up as an associate in my law firm life, my mother was in the hospital for what turned out to be the last time. On Thursday afternoon, I was in another office building getting Westlaw training, when my secretary patched a call through to me from my mother's doctors, both of whom were on the phone. They proceeded to explain her current condition to me, and then asked me (as her health care proxy) to authorize them not to take extraordinary measures to save her life. Well, that was easy (it was what she'd wanted), and I agreed. That all took about 20 minutes; not a quick conversation. At the end, I asked, "Can you give me six or eight hours' notice before she's likely to die so that I can get up there?" and there was a stunned silence on the phone. Finally one of the doctors said, "Oh. No. We think it will be in the next few hours."

That's when it hit me. Lawyers gather information with the certainty that at sometime, in some context, they will have to explain that information to someone. We're always fitting together facts and bits of law and case law to make the best argument, to explain to a client what is and isn't possible, to draft the most persuasive brief. Doctors, I realized, don't do that. They gather information with the certainty that they will have to act on it. All vital signs, symptoms, physical indicia are leading to a diagnosis (which isn't something you tell someone, but something that tells the doctor what to do) or to a treatment. This explains why they're so often bad at communication. The 20 minute call wasn't structured the way a lawyer would have; I'd have started with the news that the patient is dying and then asked for permission to take extraordinary measures. All the details would have come later, and possibly only if it was requested. The doctors were telling me all that stuff because it was, in effect, the course of treatment they'd already taken. It was the account of what they'd done, not how she was!

This story isn't as sad as you might think. My mother died on her own terms. In fact, the morning after the phone call, she woke up at the insanely early hour that grand rounds occurs, lifted her head up and looked straight at the doctors. The nurse told me later that the doctors were stunned -- she was not supposed to be that alert! But I knew her, and she wasn't going to die when they thought she should die. That weekend she was conscious but out of it. Her last words were to ask a nurse, "When does the party start?" On Monday evening, I got home in time for a telephone call from the first year resident left in charge (all the important doctors are there super early; by dinner time you're lucky the person left even has M.D. on the name tag). He explained that my mother wasn't responding, and then admitted, "We really don't know what's happening with her." She must have liked that modesty; she died 45 minutes later.

So, about doctors: The next time they're talking to you, understand they don't know how to talk. (I understand some medical schools are working on this problem; I'll believe that education is working when I hear it for myself!) Assume they haven't told you any of the stuff you consider important, so ask. Ask more than once. Understand, also, that when they look at you, they're more likely seeing you as a compilation of body parts and possible symptoms. If you have a doctor who doesn't make you feel that way, keep her or him. [Oh, it's not gender specific. I deliberately picked a female surgeon to remove a cyst from the back of my head, thinking she'd have a better "operating table manner." Hah! I was awake for the operation, and being a) interested and b) not squeamish, I asked at one point what she was doing. "Working," was the chilling response. I should have said, "Yes, but you're working on my body!" but I didn't think of it in time. That was okay, though -- the scrub nurse (a man!) answered my questions in a much nicer tone.]

And, about my mother: She was special. Coffee Jones and I were reminiscing about her the other day; she's missed, but she's remembered. I'll share some of my best stories about her as we go along.

TV

Feeling much better -- thanks for thinking that.

Okay, so here's the thing about TV. I love it, I love that we're in a golden period for TV (Coffee Jones and I can both remember the day when "good enough for an ABC sitcom" was a pejorative even lower than "good enough for government work"), and I love (LOVE!) the new technology that allows us to watch and record simultaneously. Gotta have my DVR! But for all that, I'm having some problems with this TV season.

Mind you, I could be having a whole bored-with-excess reaction. I have a satellite dish (because we are out in the middle of the countryside here) and a DVR that allows me to record two programs at once. Only on Thursday at 9 p.m. is that insufficient (I record CSI and Grey's Anatomy and figure I'll get caught up with The Office in re-runs). So what I do is tell it to record all the shows I know I like (police procedurals, medical shows, and How I Met Your Mother) and the shows I think I'll like based on the critics' reviews. Somehow, though, this separates out into distinct tiers -- like one of those "magic" desserts that settles into three layers. I have the shows I watch immediately (after enough of a buffer so I can fast forward through the commercials), the shows I watch later (because I'm watching the other shows first), and the shows I never quite watch.

That's right -- I don't watch the shows I watch. I mean, I think I watch The Office, but I've got 20 episodes saved up on the DVR . . . and those are from last season! Same thing with My Name Is Earl. I have to admit I just don't watch them. Right? But they're good, and the critics tell me they're good, and I enjoy them when I do watch them. So why aren't I watching them?

I don't want to. And here's what I mean by that. When I've watched the stuff I look forward to all week -- the Houses and Lifes and so forth -- I then scroll down through the list of shows I have on the DVR. I'll watch Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert in tandem, I'll watch one of the lesser police procedurals (even those are tiered into must watch, will watch, don't watch: I mean, really -- they're ubiquitous. I don't even record all of them! I skip the Miami and NY CSIs, I didn't do Mandy Patinkin, I don't do Mark Harmon, and I don't do the governmental ones, like The Unit and 24. I do like the math whiz on Numb3rs...), I'll watch a single episode of Brothers & Sisters or Men in Trees. And that's about where I fizzle out and wait for the next eps of my favorites.

But I don't want to delete the stored episodes of Bionic Woman (the critics make me record that, you know -- they pretty much insisted -- but I haven't seen the charm yet) and Dirty Sexy Money. I may need them. There's a strike coming. We could be without newly scripted material for MONTHS! Ahhh! The sky is falling!!!

- - -

Uh, okay. I'm okay now. Thanks.

You see the problem. Because my DVR stores up to 200 hours of regular material (or about 30 hours of high def material), I don't have to delete as aggressively. So I could blame my greed on the technology, but I'm a better person than that. I'm the one with the problem. And I might even admit I'm powerless, but for now, I'm going to get rid of the final three episodes of Friday Night Lights the critics MADE me record. (I know it's a lovely show, with great performances, and I even like football, but I can't watch it. Too gritty and scratchy -- it's like sandpaper TV. Must be something about that corner of Texas.) But then again, I might watch it, and Connie Britten really is that good.

[Oh, god, I really am powerless. Anybody got a 12-step program for this?]

Nah. It's okay. I had already removed it from this seasons' shows to record. I just don't like to delete stuff I have stored up without watching it.

Meanwhile, back to the point I had thought I was going to make. I love Chuck, but am just so-so about Reaper. I love Life, but have to make myself watch Pushing Daisies. I did watch two episodes of Hot Shots and agreed with the critics that it was unwatchable, so I stopped recording it, even though I really like Michael Vartan. I'm currently not watching any reality programming, but Project Runway starts soon. And I'm missing all the great cable programs from this past summer: The Closer (of course!), Burn Notice, Army Wives, and Side Order of Life. (I didn't go for Damages; I wonder if I missed the boat there. Nope -- too much like the women I used to work for, right?)

So there are precisely two new series (Life and Chuck) that are on my must-see list. (Starman is another factor here -- he doesn't like a lot of what I like, so I'm always looking for stuff he'll like. Aliens in America appeals to him for obvious reasons, so we watch that together.) And I have five new shows that I'm recording and not watching so much.

This entire blog comes down to this: I wish it were the other way round. I wish I had five new shows that I love and two that I'm not watching so much.

Whew! Glad I figured that out. Thanks, guys.

Now, what am I going to write about tomorrow... I know, I'll write about quilting, and practice inserting photos.

First day of the Blog-a-day month, and . . .

I'm sick.

Coincidence? Nah -- just some weird bug. It's actually a lesser version of one I had in the spring. Starman was so worried with that one (I spiked a 103-degree fever -- at least we think I did; Starman used his UK metric thermometer, and while I can calculate normal outdoor/indoor temps in my head, I wasn't up to working out triple digits Fahrenheit conversions while sick, and Starman was so freaked out by the whole thing, that he wasn't up to it either -- and I was doing a rather alarming Linda-Blair-making-the-bed-shake thing. so yeah, he was worried) that he called 911. I refused to let them take me to the hospital, cuz you know if they admit you, you're not getting out for a LONG time, regardless of when you feel better.

And, it turned out to be a 24-hour thing. A violent, nasty thing causing an unexpected amount of laundry, but just a thing. And last night was the baby version of the same thing (without the laundry, though -- I've learned that lesson, thank you very much!). A touch of acid reflux, a few hours of feeling way too cold, a little bit of the nasty, and it was done. Now I'm just tired. And bored.

Which is the really crappy part of being sick, isn't it? You get stressed with all the things you have to do, and how they're keeping you from doing the things you like to do, and then you get sick, so you imagine "Hey, neato-- I get to take time off and do the fun stuff," only you're too tired to do any of that. So I'm propping myself up in front of the TV and watching programs on my DVR, possibly with my eyes shut.

I'll save my observations on the current TV season for later. If I'm going to make it through 29 more blogs, I gotta pace myself. Or maybe it's just that I'm feeling tired again...

Halloween Tricks and Treats

The really scary event this Halloween was this morning's "Budget Conference" for the wedding. Talk about your sticker shock! The crazy part is that we just bought a new car this week, and it cost way less than the wedding will do. And it's not like either of us is fanatical about this event -- I'm not being Bridezilla, and Starman's not the Groom from Hell -- we just want to have a nice, happy event for everyone to remember. I think our mistake is having it in an expensive place, and at an expensive exchange rate. But when we sat and thought about it, we decided it was okay. Scary, but okay.

So out went all the deposit checks, along with letters intended to keep the schedule the way we want it, not the way the last couple to get married there had it. (Really, I think "cut-and-paste" has a lot to answer for in these proposals!) Starman got his visa application done as well; yes, I need a special visa to enter the U.K. with the intent to marry my own husband. Anyway, that's something done for the time being. And I've created a lovely temporary file with all the bits and pieces sorted out. To my surprise, an impulse purchase of Martha Stewart's Wedding magazine paid off: we found a fun place to order the tiny number of wedding invitations we need, and the cut-out organizer (including budget page) has proven very useful.

On the treats side of the page, we have our first dinner invitation from the new group of people we've met because of the lawsuit I'm working on. Sue and Irv live around the corner from us (that's still three miles away -- they're big corners here) and stopped by recently to see the house, drink tea, and invite us to dinner. I've made a pumpkin cheesecake, which should be yummy; that remains to be eaten, for now it just looks good.

And now, here's the trick/treat conundrum for my readers: Someone has issued an INternet-wide challenge to blog every single day in November. I'm going to try to do it, although I'll warn you, some days you'll be lucky to get a sentence or two. (A noun and a verb I should be able to manage; asking for subordinate clauses and parenthetical phrases might be a bit much.) So, whaddya think -- is that a treat, or a trick?

I make that 1.84 total

I've been meaning to blog about bridge for a while now. This weekend seems the perfect time.

Here's the backstory. I learned to play bridge at the age of ten, when my parents needed a fourth from time to time. I am sure I didn't love it then, presumably because I wasn't very good, and also because it's a hard game for a ten year old to master. Still, I didn't hate it, and as I got into my teens, I actually enjoyed it. I played bridge with some kids in free periods in high school, and I admired tremendously my brother who got to play in tournaments with our then-calculus teacher. In fact, I think that brother is a life master as a consequence of those tournaments.

But the rest of my life, it was very rare that I would play. There was one exhilarating weekend at my parents' house when Coffee Jones and I arrived for a visit and learned that my mother had enough players to do a mini-tournament. Now, Coffee Jones is sublimely gifted with cards, but the rigidity of bridge -- its rules and conventions, counting and considering -- is very off-putting to CJ, so she doesn't play despite being having the best innate card sense of anyone I've ever known. But man was she on her game that weekend! We came in first of the couples there that weekend, and that included people (like my parents) who'd been playing for decades. (I should point out that the weekend was exhilarating only for me -- CJ may have enjoyed aspects of it, but the bridge was stressful for her. Sorry, sweetie -- even years later, I do get it that you were ambushed!)

So, when I married Hub 1.0, I thought, Cool -- he's a puzzle guy, he's super-smart, he's bound to love bridge. Nope. Just didn't take to it, and I didn't push (this time -- sorry, again, CJ!). Which brings us to Starman, who like Hub 1.0 is a puzzle guy and super-smart, but had even less experience playing cards in his childhood. It might have been a disaster if it weren't for two vitally important things: Starman likes to study (really -- he reads bridge books voluntarily!) and we discovered the Bridge Studio by accident one day.

I forget now why we needed to find a Jo-Ann Fabrics store, but we did, and there was one up in Vestal, NY that was convenient. But for some reason we were there too early so we walked around to see what the Bridge Studio was. Our introduction to the magnificent Mary was a newsletter she had written reminding married couples not to bicker at the bridge table. ("Wow! How the game has changed since my childhood!" I thought.) We got a schedule for Starman to take bridge classes, and off he went for his first class.

Let's just say, he never went alone after that! When he came back and showed me what he was learning to do, I knew that I needed to learn this stuff too. So we've been going to classes since last February, and it's wonderful. Mary is delightful and smart, but also perceptive enough to encourage each of us to believe we can play better, while reminding us that everyone makes mistakes from time to time. (She and her husband Harry have a bazillion match points between them.) At first, all we did was go to the class and play afterwards, about two hours total. But we signed up for a website that allowed us to play against computer opponents (less embarrassing when we make mistakes!) and we practiced. Ross read books. (I started books, but you know how it is -- I've got a novel to read somewhere, so the bridge book didn't usually compare). Last month we started coming to another Bridge Studio session where we play with other people in the duplicate format. The first time there were enough people to run three tables, Starman and I came in second! That startled the woman filling in for Mary, particularly as she hadn't met us before. The explanation that we were still taking the EasyBridge classes may not have satisfied her, but she was very nice to us.

And that brings us to our very first proper tournament. I want to be a life master. Silly, perhaps, but I grew up in a very subtly sexist home: my parents believed in women's rights, certainly, and treated their kids pretty casually across the board. But somehow it was understood that the boys were bright math types, and my sister and I were good at sewing and cooking. (Interestingly, my sister has a Ph.D. and I've got both a masters and a JD, but it's true that I like sewing and cooking more than being a lawyer...) It would just be nice to accomplish something that I thought cool 30 years ago but never thought I could do.

In order to become a life master, you need 1,000 match points, and they have to be in different colors. Black points are the easiest to earn, as everytime you do well at the club level you get some fraction of a point. They do add up over time, of course, and anyway, we all need the practice. Silver points come from performance at a sectional tournament; these are held in various places and the American Contract Bridge League (the folks who keep track of the points!) let us know by e-mail when and where they're going to be. And finally, there are gold points, won at regional tournaments. Those are the hardest to get. To be a life master, you need some number of black, some silver, and some gold points. And this is a slow climb -- when Starman and I did well at the club the first time, we got precisely .41 of a point! We'll be playing a while at that rate!

Starman and I played in our first sectional yesterday -- and we qualified (with .82 of a point between the two of us) for the 199's class. This meant that we were playing with pairs with combined points under 200. I believe there were ten pairs, and we played 21 boards. Everyone was very nice to us, and while I know I made mistakes, it was nothing too painful. It's all learning, innit? Okay, so at the end of the session, I felt good -- Starman had played with pleasure (ultimately, his enjoyment is my most important goal, as I really want to keep him as a partner!) and I'd had a good time. Then the results went up.

We came in first! Yippee!! And that means we've earned our first silver point, or rather 1.43 points to be precise. We're on our way to being life masters!

Check back in five years...

A Nuptial Update

It's okay, you can breathe again. Yes, Coffee Jones, my intrepid "crone-of-honor" talked me off the cake tier, so to speak. She mounted many sensible arguments why it would be a BAD idea for me to make my own wedding cake, including stress, scheduling conflicts during the pleasantly social weekend we have planned before the wedding, and how no one would care but me. (To her credit, she did not suggest this was a bad idea because either a) the cake would be a disaster if I did it, or b) there would be no cake at all, just some crumbs and chunks left over after I'd taken a chain saw to it in frustration. She's so loving, my crone!)

The winning ("icing on the cake") argument was this: It would be like having the bride step aside and sing at her own wedding. No matter how pretty her voice is, that's just wrong. (I actually saw something like this, but it was the groom and he played the guitar. Still wrong though.) Mind you, I worry I won't have a cake I personally care to eat, so the deal I've struck with Coffee is this: no matter what I arrange or do, no one will know but her and she'll know only if she turns to me during the cake-eating segment of our reception and says, "Well?" and I respond either "Mmm-hmmm," or "Unh-hunh." How subtle is that?

For the rest of you, you'll just have to wait for the post-wedding blog report next spring.