One of my work buddies has the same problem I do with pants. Namely, that they’re more often than not cut to fit domesticated giraffes. Coming from a crafty family where professional tailoring services were generally impractical (not to mention an affront to my mother’s l33t domestic skills), I’ve become used to doing my own rudimentary adjustments over the years to avoid looking like I have a fetish for playing dress up. Hemming pants is a fairly straightforward process, though it can take a bit of time if done by hand. If you happen to have a sewing machine with a setting for hems, it’s a snap.

She didn’t have the time to take them to a tailor shop before the holiday and I wasn’t about to let her duct tape them, so I talked her into bringing them over after work with the lure of taking a peek at the progress on the basement.

She came to the door loaded up with edamame and cucumber, tuna, and salmon rolls. No pants. That is to say, she was wearing pants, just not the ones that needed hemming. She had left them in the car because the food was more important than the fashion. You have to appreciate a person with sensibilities like that.

So, thanks, Mom, for teaching me how to sew, and thanks, Grandma, for the sewing machine, and thanks, Miss Shy-retiring-flower, for the fishy goodness!

So yeah, I was going to make a point of posting an entry every day this month, and not just because it’s NaNoBlogMo. I just wanted to break out of the non-writing funk. Professional writers say that to be a writer, you have to write something every day, even if it’s crap. Even if all you have to say for entire chapter is that you don’t have anything to say. The point is just to keep the words flowing. Only, the whole stated goal thing generally seems to have the opposite effect on me. Maybe it’s a subconscious rebellion against a totally arbitrary application of pressure. So far, every time I’ve tried it, it always results in failure, usually within the first week (see November 3rd). First there’s a good excuse (sick cat / husband’s birthday / prepping for the holidays), followed by denial (it’s not like I announced it beforehand, so who’s to know? – I’ll just do it next month), then some embarassed silence topped off with a slightly bitter confession.

And now I have to go downstairs before my husband beats me with the rice paddle because it took so long to just get that one paragraph done that my dinner is getting cold.

My voting history is pretty spotty. Because I find politics so distasteful, I end up woefully uninformed on voting days and often only cast maybe half a ballot because I just don’t feel right picking names out of a hat. If I’m feeling extra pressure to vote on a measure with which I am unfamiliar, my default answer is generally ‘no’ on the theory that if something really needs changing, it will come up again if, by some freak occurance, it’s my vote that kills it this time around. But still, I try not to cast a vote unless I can defend it (notice I didn’t say well). Today wasn’t much different, but I did get out there and vote for the few items I did know something about. It’s something, anyway.

Of course, my favorite part of the process was the overall experience. I was in and out in 20 minutes, including registration time and stopping over at the village services desk to apply for the HVAC permit we still needed for the basement.

I love living in a smallish town.