I'm not nearly as sad as the song implies -- I just thought it was fitting since it has been raining and snowing all weekend (we saw about three inches at our house yesterday), and Eric did work all weekend, so I really didn't see him much.
But I made the most of it. On Saturday, I worked on some tiny pants for tiny people, and when I realized that I had screwed one one pair up royally, I decided to remove myself from the vicinity of the sewing machine and the window it sits next to and hole up in the library for awhile to work on my term paper (whose deadline was generously postponed by a week).
Between the library and going home to get ready for the events of the next paragraph, I stopped at the fabric store for some braided elastic. The fabric store is located in a local strip mall in a busy retail district. The strip mall building is two stories, with stores on both stories. As I was walking up to the doors of the fabric store, I was hit by a snowball thrown from the second story, square on my uncovered neck. Very annoyed and quite ticked off, I cursed under my breath, and quickly resolved to not give any acknowledgement at all. I figured it was some pre-teen or teen aged kid, either seeking, or at least expecting, some sort of response, and I'll be damned if they were going to get that from me. I warned a couple of shoppers inside the store of the overhead pest as I scooped slushy snow out of my collar. Not horribly upset, I was nonetheless cheered when I crossed paths with a friend from work before I left the store.
Come evening, it was time to go see Stuart McLean and the Vinyl Cafe (often called the Canadian Prairie Home Companion [but better, in my opinion]). I met Eric downtown in the freezing slushy dark (they opened they show: "well, this is the type of weather you get when a bunch of Canadians come into town!"). The music was fine (especially the piano solo--the type where an extremely talented pianist blends about thirty well-known pieces into a ten minute frenetic piece. I love those), but for me, the Vinyl Cafe has always been about the story telling, and Mr McLean did not disappoint! He's a bit jumpier than I had imagined though....
Sunday was largely a repeat of Saturday (working on those same tiny pants, except here all the work was to be done with the seam ripper instead of the sewing machine. I settled onto the couch with my book on CD from the library (Atonement by Ian McEwan) and my coffee. Seems ripped, but not wanting to stop listening to the CD, I got started on the Winter Solstice cards. I got the prototype finalized and got some of the pieces put together before I was distracted into making other sorts of cards (sympathy, birthday, thank yous and blank notecards). During that activity, I concluded that I am going to hang up card making. I have been considering this for years -- between jewelry making (beading and metalwork), quilting/sewing and knitting, and oh yeah, non-craft activities, cardmaking might just be one too many hobbies. For about a year, I have planned to dedicate a weekend to a massive card making marathon, using up all of the supplies I already have, developing a huge backlog of cards, and then finding a good home for the remaining supplies (rubber stamps, mostly, but also papers, stamp pads, an embossing tool, scissors, and various ephemera). I still think that would be a grand idea, but in one year, I haven't found one weekend in which to actually do it, so I am beginning to wonder if it wouldn't be better to just hand all the stuff over to someone else now and be done with it? Anyone need a shoebox full of rubber stamps?
The other thing of note that I did today was that I cooked a pared down Thanksgiving dinner on a whim. Delicious as our Thanksgiving dinner was, I know Eric loves the traditional turkey, dressing, cranberry relish, potatoes, green beans and pumkin pie dinner. Though I'd gone to the store for only a few things, I left with the makings for a two-person feast. I substituted cornish game hens for an actual turkey, made Grand Central Bakery dressing, cranberry relish with orange, green beans almondine and two pumpkin pies. We will not discuss how I was a little miffed when Eric came home, immediately praised how good the house smelled (I had told him that I was making him a special dinner), and upon being introduced to each of the dishes, asked "where are the mashed potatoes?" Besides, it was all quite good, and for once in Thanksgiving dinner history, there is leftover dressing instead of leftover white meat, which is a much preferable situation in my book.
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