Dogged

Franklin is quite meddlesome most of the time. That's pretty much a dachshund hallmark, but dam it can get annoying. I've been working diligently to wash, iron and fold a boatload of fabric that I recently procured (for a good value!) and Frank insists on being in the middle of everything. Generally I don't mind, in fact, I think his tenacity is kind of cute.

This weekend, however, he's been acting especially bad. I don't know if it's because he's bored, or what, but in the past 24 hours he's:

• Chewed 3/4 the buttons off my favorite green sweater, leaving big holes behind
• Mounched the strap off of one brown T-strap shoe. My only brown dressy shoes, of course.
• Terrified the neighbor's cocker spaniel
• Gotten into my craft supplies and helped himself. See below:
  

Even Rita has been badder than usual this weekend. She was definitely an accomplice in the craft supply heist; when I walked in she was chewing on a pinecone (no idea where that came from?). Last night I dropped her leash and she took off towards the rabbit patch and hid in the bushes for 10 minutes , while I wandered around looking for her.

One of Jeremy's big things as we look for a house is having a space to himself where the dogs can't go. Now I can understand why.

Assholes.

Shmear Campaign

Since the VP debate last week, I've been thinking very critically about the role of government in domestic issues.
My liberal side tends toward the side of socialism - we've got to take care of everyone in a benevolent fashion. It's the government's duty to see to it that everyone gets a fair chance. There are plenty of people who are brilliant and hardworking, but for one reason or another, real life got in the way of great potential.
My conservative side feels like if everyone just took on the personal responsibility that's expected of them, we wouldn't have the kinds of issues we're facing today. I work hard in order to take care of myself and my family; why should anybody be allowed a free ride just because they can't hack it? Why should my tax dollars be used to bail out corporations and consumers who made risky decisions that I wouldn't abide by in a million years?

No where is this issue clearer to me than in the arena of health care. Having navigated the health care system both as a consumer and as an administrator, I feel like I have a good enough grasp on the health care situation to understand McCain and Obama's proposals. This is a good jumping off point for me to understand the candidates' platforms on other issues as well. I heard something during the debate this evening that scared the daylights out of me: something that completely cleared my indecision regarding the role that government should play in domestic policy issues.

In response to the absolutely great question "Do you believe health care should be treated as a commodity?" I didn't hear a straight answer out of either candidate. But at one point, while explaining his health care proposal, John McCain said:

"But the point is that we have got to give people choice in America and not mandate things on them and give them the ability. Every parent I know would acquire health insurance for their children if they could."

That's simply not true.

Someone very dear to me was strongly affected by a parent actively choosing not to insure his child. The fallout from that decision, made over 5 years ago, is still creating challenges: financial, emotional and physical.

The fact of the matter, from where I stand, is that there are plenty of people who still don't prioritize insurance. Whether it be a parent or a single individual, young or old, low or middle income, working or not, there are always better things to spend money on than insurance. While I agree that some people simply can't afford to pay, there are legions of others who spend that money on other things. Things that sometimes I feel should be lower on the priority list. There are others that I know who have worked very hard for not a lot of money, just to make sure they had reliable, reasonable health insurance for their families
Some of these first kinds of people carry on as usual, trusting that if they fall, someone will be there to catch them. And there always has been someone there to pick up the pieces and pay the bills after a medical catastrophe, be it a benevolent parent or relative, or Uncle Sam himself.

I think we can all agree that it's the administration's responsibility to help people who can't make it on their own. The question, in my mind, which has suddenly become clear to me, is this?

Is it better business to provide reasonably-priced (but federally mandated) health coverage and preventative care to every citizen, or is it more beneficial to let individuals deal with the free market of health care and coverage unhindered, then bail them out when they've gotten themselves into a hot mess over assuming too much risk?

Useless mounds of paper

Last week or so, Jeremy and I were talking about illuminated manuscripts, for whatever reason. He asked me what the term was that means "fancy illustrated capital letters" in a manuscript. Seeing as I don't deal with medieval art history on a daily basis, I went to look it up in the first half of Marilyn Stokstad's Art History, a book I've kept around since my freshman year of college for reference.

Seriously, I've dragged this two-volume set around with me since 2001, moving every year. Jeremy always bugs me to get rid of it, but it's sort of nostalgic, y'know. These textbooks feel like one of the last vestiges of my college education, a souvenir from that part of my life, which, intellectually I've more or less left behind.*

At any rate, I first used the book's index to find the section on illuminated manuscripts. I flipped to the correct page, and read the 5-6 paragraphs. No mention of decorated initials. I had noticed there were a few other places the index listed, so I went through every mention of "manuscripts" in the whole book. Nothing.

Where did I end up finding the information I was looking for? Wikipedia.

*Believe it or not, there's not a pressing need to know about, say, Abstract Impressionism from a Marxist perspective in corporate America.** I *do* get complements on my ability to draw straight lines on chart paper, though.

**Don't worry, I still fiercely believe in the value of a Liberal Arts education. That's another post, however.

I TOLD you...

Work on Bobbi's quilt keeps getting pre-empted by people having babies. Clearly there is an easy way for her to jump to the front of the line... ;)

This quilt is for one of my imaginary friends inside of the computer. Her son was born at the beginning of July. About 30 participants sent in 5" fabric squares or pieced blocks. I ended up sorting them into light, mid- and deep tones, and arranging them in three sections. I added borders, plus a fair amount of my own 5" squares, to even things out a bit.

I quilted this one on the machine...yay for more practice! Auntie and I decided gray thread would work best for this one and it was a perfect choice. I'm really catching on to the fill patterns and I believe I'm almost ready to start doing more complex designs.

I really like the way this quilt turned out. I think if I had to do it over again, I might move the light squares away from the center and make the value arrangement a little less symmetrical.

I am starting to feel the pull to move away from quilting as a craft and focus more on the art side of things. Now that we have the longarm quilting machine, I can power through the quilting in a couple of days. The process is a lot less labor-intensive and much quicker, and I feel like I can re-do things more easily if I'm not satisfied with something. With the old way of quilting, by the time I finished one project (a year later, most of the time), I was so sick of looking at it and so ready to move on to something else I didn't spend too long evaluating or critiquing my work.

I'm also finding that I'm becoming either more of a perfectionist or more mature with my techniques. I really spent a lot of time on this project making sure blocks/seams/rows were all the right sizes and everything lined up perfectly. I anticipated a situation and made a decision to deal with it one way, then midway through the piecing decided I didn't like it. Instead of just living with my bad decision, I took the time to remove some seams and re-work the blocks that were off.

I suppose I'm more willing to go back and correct my mistakes with my sewing now because there are far fewer opportunities to do that in real life than there used to be. Here, I have a medium that is highly flexible and forgiving, and doesn't appear worse for the wear if you have to rip something out and try again...

An Exercise in Frustration

Househunting is pissing me the hell off. It's a major issue in my life right now and is causing a lot of negative and hurt feelings all around. Not fun.

Quilty

This is a project that was finished at the end of June, but I've just now gotten the pictures. I realized lately that a lot of my crafty endeavors of late have involved these nephews of mine. I don't know what to say - people having babies brings out my crafty side, I guess. Anyways, Auntie and I planned these quilts for Robbie and Charlie months before they were born as a way to get more practice on the long arm quilting machine. We were sailing right along, planning to get the quilts finished long before the twins' due date. Obviously they had other plans. We *did* finish and present the quilts per the original target, however. I believe we made it out to see the kids within a few days of the original due date.

Auntie made Charlie's quilt. Her reasoning behind that was because Charlie is named after her father. And my father. But who's counting?

I made Robbie's quilt because he's named after, uh, my brother. We devised the pattern first, then found the turquoise fabric in Auntie's stash. It's a batik with little baby footprints all over it, and we figured it was pretty perfect for this. We kind of realized halfway through the planning that it would be neat to reverse the colors of the sashing and borders to make the quilts alike-but-different. We were going to keep the turquoise and yellow squares in the same pattern but we couldn't quite squeeze another block out of the turquoise fabric, so necessity made us change up the colors there, too.

The babies seem to like their quilts...I was over there the other weekend and one was laid out and both kids were laying on it, gurgling away.

That's my Auntie's beautiful yard and garden in the background, BTW. She works really hard on it and it really is as lush as it looks.

Bugs of Summer

Just this past weekend I was lamenting the fact that I hadn't seen any junebugs yet this season. Last year the dogs had so much fun chasing and catching those lazy buggers. Bobbi once said that junebugs are "the drunk drivers of the insect world" and she's totally, completely right.

Well, just in the past few days I've started seeing junebugs all over the place. We also encountered some pretty serious mosquitoes at the Muny last night. But the best part?

Franklin ate his first cicada of the summer this morning. Yum.