What was new is not as new

I have never thought of myself as a hoarder or someone who keeps electronics way past their useful life is over. No duct tape on my vacuum! But I think I am kidding myself. My last post was about my sewing machine, and it got me thinking about what else I might be hoarding and nursing along. One look in my office closet reveals not one, not two, not three but four laptops living in laptop retirement complete with power packs, external cd drives, even a zip drive. They live there happily with two cassette players, a portable cd player, a few wireless and ethernet cards and miscellaneous hubs all nestled in a tangle of cables and cords. They were all so perfectly wonderful when they were new! My first lightweight Dell - the one I loved the most is there. Of course it had to have an external cd, misc external storage, but those were small things in exchange for its slim line and light weight. Now I have a "red" external drive that is 2 years old and way out of date, being nudged out by thumb drives that can carry enough data to build and launch a rocket, or hold 10 trillion tunes, or 4 trillion books. You get the picture.

My question to the outside world is "Why can't I just get rid of this stuff and free up two shelves in my office closet?" What am I saving them for? They aren't museum quality. My grandchildren will not discover them and ooh and ahh. They don't contain that one great novel that I have beeen working on for years. I can't give them away -- three aren't wireless without a card, they won't run Windows Vista, two won't even run XP. So I ask -- anyone out there have any ideas?

When you solve that we can move on to my 'new vacuum' that turns out was made in 1990 and the repair guy doesn't think it is worth the $100 to repair it. When did I get so out of date? Where did the time go?

Sewing Machine Lust

Over the years I have been an on-again, off-again seamstress. When the girls were little I made dresses and play clothes, a prom gown, costumes and many, many drapes and curtains. I have a handy dandy Singer Zig Zag machine that my mother gave me when I left home oh those many years ago. This year in a burst of creativity I went on line to fine some attachments - a buttonholer and a ruffler foot. The ruffler foot was for bedskirts - so much easier than the method of zig zag stitching in dental floss and then trying to adjust the gathers for a king size bed. That is when I learned the very sad news that this lovely sewing machine was now so far out of date (40+years) and that parts were a pittance, usually arriving from e-bay in a musty smelling box with badly photocopied instructions. But I pushed on oblivious to modern trends. Then, last week the light blew out and the machine STOPPED.

This was a crisis, I am mid project finishing drapes for the living room windows in West Virginia so you can see the tv when the sun is out. Beautiful long windows make for a great view but also great glare. And I am mid project finishing the bedding for Madi's cradle. But I digress.

I went to my faithful research tool, Google, and looked up how to change the light bulb. I turned, pushed and nothing happened. My light bulb did not look like any of the pictures I could find. So next step I called a sewing machine repair shop near home. The nice lady said "Sure honey, just bring it in and leave it, he will get to it sometime in the next two weeks." That was not a good solution. So I tried another sewing shop about 15 miles to the south in Charlotte. The nice lady said, "Just bring it in, I am sure he can fix it while you wait." Music to my ears. I took out the sewing machine, put it in the back of my car and drove to the shop.

Well that is almost how it happened. When I took the machine out and put it on the kitchen counter I realized that it was horribly dusty and dirty. I had tape still stuck to the machine as guides for some long forgotten project, there was strange crusty dust in the nooks and crannies. If my Dad taught me one thing it was "A clean machine always works better than a dirty machine". This was a machine I could not have shown my Dad. If this repair person was going to have pity on me I was going to have to shape up. Out came the toothbrush, windex and some goo-be-gone. With a little work it looked pretty darn good.

Then, I headed out to South Charlotte to the Sewing Center. Little did I know what dangerous territory I was heading into. Worse than a whole shoe store full of cute shoes just my size.

I brought my little machine into the counter. He took one look at it and said "Oh". Got out his pliers, popped out the light bulb, put in a new light bulb, plugged it in and there it was ready to go. Salvation for $5.15. Except, there were two rooms with neat rows of sewing machines with samples of their wonderfulness. The walls were covered with projects that had been done by the many seamstresses who had come to the classes. Quilts, embroidered pillowcases, little girls dresses with flowers and initials, Projects!!! everywhere.

Being a good salesman he let me wander from machine to machine, each more wonderful that the one before until I came to the "one". It was not in a row, it was off by itself in the corner clearly not part of the group. What was this! Turns out it is a Baby Lock - sewing, embroidery, makes coffee and -- well just let it be said that it was amazing. Here it was just traded in that week by a seamstress who was moving up - he would sell it to me for a deal, it was less than a year old, had all of the attachments, instructions, case, (and it was clean) for $2,000. He said a new one was $3,500 -- that made this one a bargain and he would give me a full warranty and throw in unlimited classes too boot.

I ran my hands over its amazing little body, he set it up to embroider my name, and as quick as a blink there was Jinni in a lovely italic script.

I sadly carried my little 40+year old Singer Zig Zag machine out to my car (covered it's little ears so it wouldn't hear me yearn for the Baby Lock) and drove home. The drapes are almost done, it has done its cute little zig zag stitch to keep the edges from fraying and has so far resisted turning the bobbin thread into a rats nest - but if I was a girl who bought lottery tickets -- I would be looking for one of those $2,000 ones. Who knew you could fall in love with a sewing machine.

I was telling this story to my husband who rolled his eyes and said with a little fear in his voice - you didn't buy it did you? And when I asked him what he would do with a $2,000 windfall -- he said he would go on vacation. As a matter of fact I think one of the golf magazines was turned to a page advertising something about Play like a Pro. Ahh priorities.

Who knew babies were so smart?

Today Ashby read two books to me. No big deal right? Ashby is 14 months old. He can sign more than 35 words. He was reading a signing for babies book to me. He would turn the page and look at the picture and then show me the sign. I am amazed. He is very patient with me as I try to catch up on the new words. I am still in book 2 and cracker is my best word along with milk, water, more and all done. I think I will take the books to bed tonight and study up before breakfast. So we can go "outside" with the "dog" and put on our "hat" to go for a walk.

Early morning intruders

I love our little West Virginia house in the woods usually feel safe and secure snuggled in my bed with lots of covers. This morning Bruce left before 6AM to drive down the mountain to Raleigh for a lunch meeting, leaving me another hour before I had to finish loading my car and heading home. At 6:30AM my fearless guard dog lept out of bed, raced upstairs and planted himself in the upstairs window barking as if the Visigoths were on the front porch. He would not be distracted by entreaties to come back and hush. He just raced down the stairs and continued to bark. My sleepy brain decided this must be more than a stray rabbit hopping down the lane. I struggled to the window, peered out into the morning and saw - nothing. This did not appease him.

So out on the deck he went to ferret out the intruder while I got dressed and prepared to venture out into the morning to do battle. The bears are safe from detection for another few weeks while we are in North Carolina. But be warned we will be back soon and the neighborhood alarmist will raise the warning if you venture near.

Can I shake my laptop? Will it suffer permanent brain damage?

Most days I am reasonably computer savy and a good problem solver. This was not one of those days. The first clue -- no email. No junk email, no work email, no ads to buy something wonderful. Nothing. What could be the problem? Two days ago I renewed my web hosting service. Could that be the problem. I try to log on and am rejected, I wait and wait for a person on the help line. "Well it is possible when they renewed the account they deleted the mail forwarding." My question - can you check and help me? No not really, I can send you an email with the instructions on how to do it, and in the meantime I will send you the link to reset your password. The reset password email came but no sight of the how to fix the forwarding problem. After 2 hours, calls to company hosting the email who verified they weren't getting any email to host for me, and hunting around the web site "help" pages, I think I have fixed it, but am not sure. In the meantime I send another trouble ticket to the web hosting company, getting another auto response that someone will email me in 24 hours. I am now getting email. Hopefully it will stay fixed.

I HATE problems I cannot see to resolve or get someone to answer me.

Where did I learn this?

There are some lessons that stand out in your memory as the day I learned to -------. But there are lots of other things that you know how to do but you have no idea where you picked up the lesson. I learned early on to never, ever put my hand or arm on my paper when I was writing. I am left handed, need I say more. For years I have given my Mom credit for my ability to quickly clean shrimp. Turns out she never cleaned shrimp, opened oysters but did not clean shrimp. After much thought I think my shrimp cleaning improvements have come from Martha, thank you for suggesting running water to keep my knife clean while I devein the shrimp. Cleaning corn is another mystery. I have never found a way to deliver silkless corn to the table.

I think the corn brush just combs the little silk strands and helps them lay down and hide between the kernels. Sage advice welcome.

Shoes

I have had a long running love affair with shoes. Some women remember great dates or great places, I remember great shoes. Most of the shoes are heels but there are two pairs of flats that are nestled in my memory. The dark blue with green trim Papagallos and the Weegun penny loafers. There was the wonderful blue pair with brown toes and a bow, the red patent leather heels that had a little sparkle, green shoes and blue shoes - wonderful, faithful shoes. My waist might get bigger, hips may spread, diets wars won, lost and battled again, but there waiting for me, always in my size, always a perfect fit are shoes. Everytime I have moved (and there have been many) I cull through the boxes and discard the ones that are no longer in fashion or have seen better days. It is always hard to let them go, but there are limits. So what prompted this confession -



There is a pair of Italian heels in the back seat of my car left there by my daughter after an event. They made me think of all of the shoes that faithfully waited in their boxes for their turn at the dance.