Just a Short Note Tuesday Morning

Tuesday, July 30th, 2013 @ 8:01 am
Good morning.  Well at least mostly.  Rich just found out that I spent money online again.  He yelled, but just a little ... I think we frustrated him too much for him to be overly adamant.  I don't mean to do things like that, but with so many in our system ... eventually someone is going to break the rules.  I think we're all operating on a sense of anger and frustration because things that we might see as critical Rich does not.  Basically, what we did was went out and bought a floor cleaning system called the Shark Sonic Duo cleaning system.  It is a machine that does carpets and hard floors.  The basic problem is that we are having trouble with the cats SOMEtimes using the carpet in the sitting room to urinate.  We don't know why they do it because their litter box is in good shape.  I don't know if they just think its appropriate, or are too lazy to get to the other side of the house, or if they are mad and acting badly to show it ... just not sure.  But, I/we couldn't handle it anymore ... we need to be able to clean the carpet.  And, to have a machine that also does the floors in the living room and kitchen (pergo floors), well that was the balance that tipped the scales.
It's not over though ... the payment is made in 4 installments ... the first installment was $113, and then there are 3 more installments at $53.  I don't know what to do with this difference between Rich's practicality and ours.  For us, it's just absurd that not only we have to put up with the odor, but as well, we are that much more intimidated by inviting guest over which puts us at the same situation as with the apartment.  It was just too much.  I think we have to do this in installments too ... we weren't able to answer Rich's charges this morning.  I wasn't able to tell him this is just one of the payments ... I think I have no spine.  :(
I suppose though I should be moving on ... we only have about a half hour to write this morning, because today is another church day for the quilting/bags.  In actuality today is more of a bag day that is at least what this extra sewing time at the church is supposed to be for.  Yesterday, we met for about a half a day - from 12:30-4:30 pm and today we're meeting from 9 - 3 pm.  I'm pretty excited as normal ... We did continue a little of the sewing work last night, but not a whole lot.  We just finished off the tabs and we sewed four bags.  Yesterday at church, we sort of floated around a bit.
The first thing we did was start to iron bags - that meaning ironing a 1/2 inch seam around all four sides, and then Keith came in so then we needed to switch jobs because he really has first rights to the iron.  I don't know whether he was working on ironing bags after we left that spot or if he switched over to ironing for Don.  Rightfully speaking it was a bag day, but I'm not sure if he knew how to do that part.  I'm thinking now that maybe we should bring our little ironing board in case he's not.  I wouldn't want to sew bags without them being ironed first.  It makes a huge difference.  With the seam ironed in you just feed fast the fabric through, but if you have to do the seam too you have to fiddle with it every couple of inches.  It just isn't worth that kind of trouble.
We asked and Connie said that Carol wouldn't be in - but, her church sewing machine was up so we asked to use it.  I think that was a little unnerving for Connie and she asked if there wasn't one I was more used to, but we told her we were as used to Carol's as anything.  We started off doing the bags, but it was slow and balky because the machine just is terrible. And, after doing a few bags we realized that we were going to run into problems with the tabs.  There just weren't many and I'd forgotten to bring back the bag that had some leftovers we had made.  I figured too that if I were going to use the old machine and cut down my worry at replacing bobbin thread that it be easier to sew the tabs.  It was an awkward machine to thread and there wasn't much bobbin thread in the spool.  The other problem was that the thread kept breaking ... I worked to rethread the machine, but when I went to pull the fabric after sewing the thread would snap ... usually there's some kind of lead - stretching the space in old thread so its ready for the next one, but it was impossible.  Better to work with the 4" tabs and chaining them together.  There weren't any markings on the feet either so guiding the fabric through was clumsy.
I was happily surprised that Doris figured out that if she cut most of the tabs for me, I'd work more productively.  That's the way it ended up at least.  The problem there was that there wasn't a cutting board - forgot mine, so we couldn't rotary cut them ... it meant hand cutting each one by one ... BLAH
So that was pretty much the day ... I really do have a nice bag of tags now - and plenty to share.  Thinking then that I will bring the ironing/cutting board (small) AND my electrical outlet ... thinking that I might try to set up the machine where we usually sort.  I might have to share my outlet with Keith and the iron, but at least I know with my cord it would reach and it will have the three prongs I need in case I want plug in my machine, little light, AND iron.  They are going to think I moved in and I'm not sure if I'm doing right in setting up on that side.  Usually the machines are on the opposite wall, but there is people taking up all those spaces (tables).  It might mean that Mike needs to find another table to cut on *sigh* ... He has done that before.
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