Category Archives: Ideas (blog)

bug babble.

Tales of a 33-year-old green belt

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So. Sewing.

When I joined Tang Soo Do, I was issued a uniform, and because I am obese (as the squeaky voice on the Wii Fit likes to announce to the world every time I use it) and Tang Soo Do uniforms aren’t sized for chicks shaped like fireplugs, I needed to significantly hem that uniform.

Being a white belt of unsurpassing optimism, I promptly bought a sewing machine.

Now, here’s the thing. I’ve sewn before – enough when I was in my teens to decently hem a pair of pants or fix a cuff or patch a knee or any of the other things someone at 5’2″ tall and klutzy would likely need to do. I know how to use the iron to press the seams, turn a corner by keeping the needle in the fabric, and sew in a straight line.

Or, at least, I did.

The hemming of my white belt uniform could definitely have gone smoother, but I figured hey, I’m a beginner, and I’ll re-learn how to sew while I learn all this awesome martial arts stuff.

As a green belt, I’ve gained just a touch of wisdom. Or rather, I have gained the ability to recognize that I need the ability to recognize a mistake when I’ve made it. The mistake I made tonight was listening to my inner white belt. She said that I’d improve on my sewing by sewing with every uniform upgrade. She said that by the time I’m a black belt, hemming my own uniforms would be a practiced skill.

She LIED.

See, it turns out that hemming uniforms once every year and a half doesn’t make you a seamstress any more than doing a side kick every three months makes you a martial artist.

I started hemming two green-trimmed uniforms at 9:00 tonight, and I just finished 10 minutes ago. 4 hours to hem two pair of pants (badly) and sew on a total of six patches. I didn’t even bother hemming the sleeves after botching the pants and pulling out more seams than I swore I sewed in. My sewing machine is full of demons. Every 15 minutes or so the thread would break or the sewing on the underneath with the bobbin string would just go haywire and I’d end up pulling out stitches. It took me 10 minutes to figure out how to put the bobbin back into the machine after it emptied and I had to refill it — I was holding it backwards. You’d think the phrase was “cursed like a seamstress” not “cursed like a sailor” the way I went about the task.

God bless all those who really can sew, and more importantly, enjoy it. I do not think I will become one of those people in the next two years, or twenty. If I’m going to get eye strain staring at tiny strings, I’d rather do so tying a knot to hold a hook onto my fishing line. There’s more bobber to me than bobbin.

Tonight was a subtle reminder that as a green belt I must learn to recognize those things I cannot do, without sacrificing the unbridled optimism of a white belt to try those things I might be able to do, but have never tried before.

Green and red

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You can spend a night like tonight reading about Douglas Spaulding and perfect boyhood summers in Green Town.

Alternatively, you can spend the evening with Ylla and Spencer and so many others on the dried up shores of Mars’ oceans, in thousand year old tile cities with books of silver written in black and gold ink, and you can explore the world or destroy it.

The problem is thus:

When you read Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales, you are in both places, and many others: the stairs where Laurel and Hardy chased a piano, the jungle, a farmhouse in Salem, MA.

I’m not sure who or where I am right now, only that I am all of them and none of them.

I’m lying in a bed in Pennsylvania on a cool summer night, enjoying the embrace of he who I love, comfortably trapped between the sleepy moonlight of Green Town, and the red, dusty, beautiful tiled patios found only on the dry hills of Mars.

What I’m up to.

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For a day that started with the realization that the alarm clock was not set, today was a pretty good day.

I got to work with great people to make decisions that make things better, and that’s always fun.

I got to start thinking through a design problem, and that’s doubly fun.

I ate a great lunch with a close friend on a sunny picnic bench.

I went to martial arts and participated in a belt test for the upper belts. It’s the first time in a few weeks that I’ve felt my legs ache leaving class, indicative of a great workout, but one where I felt like I was close to keeping pace. I’m inclined to blame/praise the new allergy/exercise-induced-asthma drug I started taking as the reason for the sudden improvement of my stamina as much as my instructors are inclined to claim it’s due to my hard work. Hard work is easier when you’re actually delivering oxygen to your muscles.

Still, except for a few moments of nausea that I suspect were due to too many crunches & push-ups overlapping the end of my recovery from a stomach bug, I kept pace. When I was a white belt I thought class would always be as physically hard as it was as a white belt. It’s not – it’s getting physically easier and mentally harder. I like it.

I got my confirmation that I’ll be attending martial arts camp the weekend after this upcoming weekend, up in Boston. It promises to be an adventure, with tents and camping and things that are totally beyond my current scope of experience.

I’ve got a big ass buffer of comics right now, which is a great feeling, even if the vast majority of them are idiocy on the Internet.

My awesome husband took our awesome dogs on a walk this afternoon, including a swim in the creek, so everyone’s actually kind of tired tonight. That means I might be allowed to sleep through to tomorrow morning…. and if I actually set my alarm this time, there’s no reason tomorrow won’t be a good day.

So, while every day is three to five meetings and there’s no consistent prediction of when I’ll be leaving the office any more, every afternoon is filled with hammer-wielding gnomes driving knitting needles into my sinuses, and my stomach has still not struck a full truce with food, I’m feeling pretty good.