I spent a good part of the day cleaning. Not my usual M.O., but the house needed it. I suppose it’s some sort of freakish nesting-by-proxy, as my friend just had a baby on Friday. (Congratulations, Katie!)

It’s funny, but even though I don’t consider myself a very good housekeeper, I always accomplish so much more on a day that I get down to cleaning. I know that my Dad will get what I’m trying to say. It’s like my brain has to be organized and put away before I can be really productive, and organizing my surroundings is the only way to do it. Today, for example, I did two loads of laundry (Olga matches and puts away all of her and Gavin’s socks and underwear), all the dishes (Olga puts away the silverware), scrubbed all the gunk from around the sink (gunk seems to build up very fast in this climate), cleaned out the refrigerator (Gavin ate most of the cheese and tomatoes before I could put them away again), vacuumed the main areas of the house (both children run around squealing … very funny), made two loaves of bread with my cooking helpers (wheat yeast bread and banana quick bread), and even attempted to remove some stains from the carpet (unsuccessful, as of yet).

And then after breakfast ….

Just kidding, but actually I got all that done by three in the afternoon, and then I swilled down another cup of coffee and played for the rest of the afternoon. And by play, I mean I dug all of the sewing machines out of the closet to fiddle with them. My old Viking and my Singer embroidery machine have been in the closet since we moved here, because my sewing desk is only comfortably big enough for two machines, and really, I can’t sew on four machines at once anyway… In the back of my mind I remembered that there was something wrong with my Viking since the last time I took it in for service, and hauling it out of the closet revealed all — it is caked — CAKED — with grease. I don’t know what kind of “oil” the technician used on my machine, but he certainly gobbed enough of it on there to keep it from rusting… and enough to attract every particle of fiber in the county to stick to the gears. So this evening I cleaned it out, then ran it hard for a while to heat up the oil and get it flowing. Now it’s running great, and all that is left to do is to change the light bulb, which blinks on and off.

This machine is great. My mom bought it at a thrift store for around $20, if I recall right. It was my very first sewing machine, and I used it to make a LOT of stuff in high school, including the first shirt I ever made for Erik, back when he was only 15. It’s a Viking 4700, probably built in the 70s, if the color scheme is any indication (dark brown, tan, orange). It’s a machine that would make any do-it-yourself kind of person proud: it’s so easy to open up to get at the guts that I’ll probably never take it to the shop again. The body and innards are all metal, so unless it gets hit by a truck, I doubt I’ll ever have to worry about replacing any parts (except for that light bulb). And the best thing of all about this machine, is that it makes such beautiful, consistent stitches. Even my newer Viking, which is my every day machine, can’t quite match up to this one. Because it’s mechanical, and not digital, I can fine-tune stitch length all I want and not worry about presets. Really the only drawback I can think of is that it’s difficult to sew slowly, so I use the hand wheel a lot more with this machine…

Oh, sorry… you all must think I’ve completely lost it to be oozing over an old sewing machine, but the truth is that I fell in love with it again today while I was tinkering with it. I did see a close cousin, the model 4500 for sale, which is only a slightly scaled down version of my machine. If I needed another machine, I’d definitely snag it.

Deadline is over, we’ve all pretty much recovered from our colds, and the weather is beautiful (it has been in the 70s or low 80s for weeks). But instead of being outside as I ought to be, enjoying spring and my beautiful seedlings, I’ve been glued to my computer, writing.

Writing is hard. I’ve been trying for months (and months) to finish writing my cloth diaper article, but one thing or another always causes me to run away and seek the nearest source of chocolate (which, unfortunately, is almost never my cupboard). But I’ve been toughing it out for the past few days, and I feel like I’ve finally finally gotten into a rhythm. I’m not sure I’ve made a breakthrough, yet, but I’m getting there.

Truth be told, I’m a bit nervous about finishing the article and turning it loose on the world. Will it be any good? Will you like my pattern? Will I die of embarrassment when I discover a typo in print? It’s been years since I published an article in the magazine, and even though there have been many requests for me to start writing again, I worry that I won’t live up to expectations.

I’ll just keep working at it, anyway. With and awful lot more work, a fair amount of luck, a couple pounds of chocolate, and a hearty scoop of courage, I’ll make it into the next issue.

We’ve all been battling a cold for a little while, but Olga started running a high fever and it turns out that she has an ear infection. Poor little weasel. We’re trying to take it very easy around here, with lots of popsicles to keep her fever down. The good news is that we saw our new doctor for the first time and we all like him a lot (even Gavin, who played shy, started talking to him after a few minutes). Of course it didn’t hurt at all that the Doc had a healthy stash of Tootsie Pops.

Life never seems to slow down anymore, but for a few moments. This weekend my step-mom came to visit for a very quick trip, and even though she was only here for a couple of days, we managed to pack the hours with a whole lot of… nothing. Which was just perfect. It was so lovely to sit with her and a hot tea, crocheting and knitting and talking about the future.

Deadline is in less than two weeks, so things are very busy again already, but for just a moment we were all on vacation.

We’re so glad you could visit, Lenie!