Archive for the ‘Home’ Category

My first ever job was as a dishwasher. I was nine years old and my pastor’s wife–who also happened to be our across the street neighbor–wanted someone to wash dishes on Fridays as she prepared baked goods to be sold at the local Farmer’s market.

We started at eight or nine in the morning and kept going until at least four or five in the afternoon. Malinda made sticky rolls, braided Danishes, angel food cakes, sponge cakes, and more. And I washed dishes and wrapped baked goods.

We were on our feet for most of the day. Malinda chided me for my lack of appropriate footwear and lent me an extra pair of Birkenstocks (my feet were already size huge, so hers fit me just fine). And once an hour, we took five minutes to put our feet up.

We’d go to the kitchen table, pull out a chair, and…lay on the floor with our feet on the chair.

It was purposeful, intentional, and utterly relaxing.

We’d been working hard. Our feet were tired. They needed a break. We needed a break.

And so we took one. Not a break to laze about and gossip, but a break to rejuvenate our bodies for the next task.

Undoubtedly we looked silly, an older woman and a young girl, lying on the kitchen floor with their feet on a chair. But we were catching our breath, relaxing our bodies and minds, and letting the fluid leave our feet.

I don’t wash dishes all day anymore. I’m rarely on my feet. The need to literally put my feet up occurs only rarely. But I wonder if I’ve forgotten what Malinda was trying to teach me.

It is good to take a break. Not to be lazy or idle–but to rest. I may not be on my feet anymore, but I sit at my computer for hours on end. Perhaps I need to get off the computer for five minutes an hour and rest my eyes. I read for an extraordinary amount of time each day. Perhaps I need to rest from that. I think for a living–studying, preparing lessons, grading papers. Maybe I need to rest my mind every once in a while–and take time to just be.

Instead of running as hard as I can and burning myself out, maybe I need to learn how to take purposeful breaks, truly relaxing breaks. Maybe I need to re-learn the lesson Malinda taught. Maybe I need to put my feet up every once and a while.

Since my earliest childhood, black has played an integral role in my wardrobe identity–or so I’m told. My mom tells me she used to always want to put me into pastels, and I’d gravitate instead to deep, dark, or bright colors–even the dreaded black. Mom tells the story now as a testimony to the “Color Me Beautiful” seasonality approach to colors. I’m a winter, there’s no doubt about it–and even as a child, I knew what I looked best in.

Black is the base color in my wardrobe. I own no less than 6 black dresses, 1 black suit, and 5 pairs each of black slacks and black skirts. And that’s not counting the outfits in which black plays a role but is not the primary color.

So it’s not as though I need another black dress–another black anything, for that matter.

But I couldn’t resist the lure of the black dress that has been sitting at the bottom of my mending basket since my grandma passed it down to me years ago (maybe 6 or 10 years back?)

It was a simple dress, a mid-calf a-line style with short sleeves. It fit me well enough, except for the sleeves, which constrained my movement too much. I’d torn the sleeve off the last time I tried the dress on, and the dress had been in my mending basket since. I planned to take off both sleeves and simply finish off the armholes for a sleeveless dress.

Meanwhile, I acquired black dresses by droves, including a mid-calf a-line style dress with short sleeves, which made the dress in my mending basket superfluous.

But it fit so well, and I liked the style, and it used to belong to my (now-deceased) grandma. My frugal and romantic and black-dress-loving nature rebelled against giving the dress up.

So I tried it on and developed a plan. I removed the other sleeve and finished both armholes with black bias tape (left over from a quilting project). I finished the neckline with the same tape for continuity. I chopped off the bottom half of the skirt and hemmed the rest to just above the knee. I bought some white rick-rack and sewed it along either side of the center seam.

My dilemma solved, I tried on my new-from-old black dress. Absolutely retro-mod. I love it!

A couple of weeks ago, I was horrified to realize that none of my clothes fit. And by none, I truly mean NONE.

You see, I just so happen to be blessed with an ample top and a practically non-existent bottom, with long arms, legs, and torso. Which means that I can rarely find something that fits off the rack.

Even brand new, my shirts tend to strain across the front, barely cover my belly, and unintentionally become three-quarter length sleeves. I’ve dealt with it for years by wearing wife-beaters under most of my tops.

Brand new slacks tend to be too short, and have big bags where most people’s hips and behinds go. I solve half the problem by buying slacks with cuffs–and then taking down the cuffs for extra length.

Note the “bags” in the hips.

But I lost some weight last year, leaving me with even more fitting problems. Now my slacks and skirts slip right off my waist–in addition to bulging around my hips.

I refrained from altering my clothes, except for adding belt loops to a few pairs of slacks, because I felt sure that I would regain the weight. After all, I’d maintained that weight for years–why would I develop a new set point?

But maintain a new set point I have–and now I have decided that it’s time my clothes fit properly.

So I loaded my machine with black thread, pulled all the black garments out of my closet, and got to business–and quickly remembered why I don’t like to do this too often.

Tailoring is a laborious process of trying on, making adjustments, trying on again, adjusting some more, ripping out seams, redoing seams. It takes forever, and it’s pretty imprecise.

I had just decided that maybe I’d only do one pair of slacks this evening when an idea hit me. What if–instead of trying on the slacks, guestimating what needs to be altered here and there, trying it out, trying it on, and repeating the process until perfect–what if I just put my slacks on inside out and pinned everything up. Then I could just sew along my pin line and call it good.

Pinning up those hip “bags”.

Amazingly, it worked. I kept going and ended up getting 3 skirts, 3 pairs of slacks, and 1 dress altered this evening–much more than I had expected.

Pants that fit. Amazing!

So, next time you’re frustrated at the fit of your clothing, try the little trick I learned this evening–turn your pants inside out.