I'm like a lost little kitten, mewing in the dark

*sigh*

I am lost.

My sewing machine is in the shop for repairs.

I have no tool to work on my masterpieces. I stare at my project pile wistfully. I sigh dramatically. I wander around the house, cutting out bird shapes with no manner of putting them together.

It should be ready by Wednesday, but that seems like an eternity right now.

Yesterday I finally made it in to my favorite fabric store/sewing machine dealer for my first personal class on how to actually use that beast. I know, I've been sewing for going on twenty-five years, I should be able to figure it out, right?

Like I said when my husband bought it for me last fall, sewing with my Bernina Artista is like knowing how to drive and somebody handing you the keys to a Indy 500 race car. Similar? Yes. But waaaayyy different.

It's only taken me seven months to finally succumb and subject myself to the most painful thing I could have imagined - sitting with an older lady for two hours while she painstakingly went at her pace to explain to me every single detail about my sewing machine.

You see, patience is a virtue. But it's not my virtue. Or I am not virtuous? Whatever, now I'm just confused.

My point is I have a really hard time learning at someone else's pace. When I say "really hard time," I mean I'd rather poke my eyes out with hot toothpicks.

A few years ago the company I was working for decided to divest my division, which is a fancy way of saying they laid us all off. I've had an active real estate license since 'Nam, so I thought "hey! maybe this is my chance to work in real estate like I've always wanted to." Remember, this was a few years ago, long before the BUST in real estate.

Anyhoo, I went to my friend Sue's agency and met with her broker for their sales schpiel, the part where they try to convince me to work for them and lay out the tiny details of how I have to pay them to work for them. This lady proceeded to take out a three-ring presentation binder, and read it out loud to me, page by page. By the fourth page I thought my head was going to explode. By the seventh page I was daydreaming about guns and ammo. By the twenty-fifth page I had gone to my happy place.

I didn't take the job. I got another job in pharma.

So yeah, sewing lessons with an old lady? Not my idea of fun. Especially when the teacher starts fiddling with my machine and exclaims "I can't believe this is even making stitch! We have to keep this for repairs, you can't be working on this."

So I wait. And I wander. And I twiddle. Is it Wednesday yet?

- H