My mother started her career with a treddle Singer machine, which she later converted to motorized.  About six years before her death, she finally talked Daddy into buying her a new machine; a White basic model with about ten stitches and a new-fangled bobbin winder.  She sewed like the wind and she loved it.  When she died, it passed to me.  I gave it heavy use for about ten years, then lighter use as time wore on.  But the fact of the matter is, it got fairly heavy use for 28 years before it finally gave up the ghost.

When the trusted White sewing machine died, I went in search of a new one.  I wanted bells and whistles, something to make my sewing life easier.  I bought a Brother, with the self-threading needle doo-dad and the drop-in bobbin.  It had a TON of stitches, all computerized and easily accessed.  In short, it did everything in the world.  It did everything in the world but sew.

Now, I bought this machine about 2 years ago for a little less than $400.  Within a year, the self-winding bobbin mechanism gave up the ghost.  The machine shook and rattled when it sewed, no matter what stitch I was using.  And it was feeble enough that it wouldn’t sew through two layers of thin denim.

Yesterday, I was making a skirt for my daughter….using a light, woven knit material.  All of a sudden, it began making this ratcheting sound and then the needle simply….froze.  Try as I might, I couldn’t get the needle to move.  I couldn’t change stitches, couldn’t get the threading mechanism to work at all.  The bobbin refused to pass its thread through the plate.

Seriously.  I got this machine from a Brother authorized dealer.  It is NOT a cheap machine….not top of the line…but far from the bottom.  I don’t think I gave that machine more than 5 hours of work in 2 years and it’s dead.  Warranty?  Nope.  It was open box and the warranty is voided.

I bought a new machine because my experience in these matters is that I could pay postage and ship this thing back and forth with the customer service center until I was broke and blue in the face.  Nothing would come of it other than the obvious end result: buying a new machine.  I look at this thing and every single part of it is made of plastic.  The gears inside are even made of plastic.  It is a plasticized, volumized, computerized piece of SHIT.  My mother’s machine was heavy, with a metal housing and it made a noise something like a 747 when it operated.  But that sucker lasted a LONG time.

Looking at all the machines, they’re almost all made of plastic.  They have what they call a professional series and a mechanical series in almost every brand.  THOSE are the good ones.  The electronic machines…not so much.  They’re feeble and have no power.  They snag and give you fits every chance they get.

Will this new Singer live up to its heritage?  I’m not sure.  If I could have located another White machine nearby, I would have bought that.  But in the face of one store and two brands (one being the awful, dreaded Brother) I made the choice to buy the one that was NOT Brother.

And so, in a long line of complaints about Things That Do Not Work, I offer up the Brother Sewing Machine.  It is worth about a tenth of what you’ll pay for it and the anxiety of having it die way before its time isn’t worth the pretty, shiny gingerbread that they place on their machines.  Give me a solid, cast-iron, Hemi-powered, get a hernia lifting it, sews through steel machine any day.  But do not…I repeat…DO NOT….give me a Brother.

Trish

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Leno and I have a special relationship.  He was on right before they rolled me into the OR when I was in labor with Katie.  He was on when I finally came out of my induced coma in the hospital 2 weeks later.  His face was the first thing I saw, looming over the respirator.  Every night since she was born, we would wake Katie up, change her diaper, feed her, play with her.  From the time she was a year old, Katie was aware of Jay and, when he walked out to the stage, his hand held out in a wave to the crowd, she was convinced that he was waving only to her.  She waved back.  We smiled with pride.

Conan is good, don’t get me wrong.  But I want Jay back in that Tonight Show slot.  I don’t think Conan had enough time to come into his own and I think NBC gave him a raw deal.  They signed a contract with him, made him uproot his family, travel across the country and start fresh.  Then they canned him.  Personally, I hope Conan takes them for everything he can.  But none of that really matters if I get Leno back.

Every time I turned around over the past 17 years or so, Jay Leno was doing something good for somebody.  Free concerts, auctioning signed motorcycles, free shows….he never missed an opportunity to help others.  He’s a good person.  I’ve never heard anything bad about Conan and I suppose he’s a good person.  But Jay’s charity is widely publicized.

So, Jay should go right back to where he belongs, hosting the Tonight Show in its original slot.  Conan should go on and do something else wonderful, after totally giving NBC the shaft, of course.  And NBC should learn how to treat people right.  They should stop playing games in the name of ratings and learn to be a stand-up bunch of guys.  As for me, I’ll probably keep watching The Tonight Show no matter who’s at the helm, though it’s never as good without Jay.

We got Gizmo and Ginger about a year ago.  They were tiny puppies, no more than half a pound and they had the cutest little mushed faces you’ve ever seen.  I was warned about Pekingese from the start.  There are entire articles that expound upon their character flaws, ranging from stubbornness, stupidity and disobedience.  Nothing could have prepared me for these two tiny tyrrants.

Our previous dog, a Maltese named Rocky, was playful, smart, cuddly when called for, and above all, well-trained in the cute tricks that make humans love dogs.  The dog before that, our Pitbull named Elvis, was so well-trained that I could place his body in any position and tell him “freeze” and he would stay that way until released.

No such luck with Ginger and Gizmo.  After a year of intensive training, neither one will perform on command.  They won’t do a simple trick like “shake” and repeated commands to lie down result only in a stare that I can equate only to that of a petulant teenager.

Ginger is the really stupid one.  Every time you take her outside, you bring her back to the same door, open the door to the same width, and in every case she will run face-first into the door.  It’s not her eyesight.  She can see a person walking down the sidewalk a hundred yards away.  She’s just THAT stupid.

You can’t train them.  They’re stupid and stubborn and choose to ignore you and be punished for it rather than obey.  I know they understand what I’m saying to them because if I use the word “treat” or “cookie”, they’re all over that.  But when it comes to commands, they just blink.

Aside from that, they quite simply hate all humans.  They bark and snarl and growl.  Gizmo will actually attack and bite, so we can’t let him near other people.  No matter how many times, they see you, if you aren’t part of the core family, they bark every time you move.  That means approximately 30 good barking fits a day…or night as the case may be.

The male still pees in the house.  The female still has a penchant for eating everything on the floor, including dust bunnies and any bits of paper she can get her teeth on.  Then she throws up all the next day.

Our evenings are now spent rangling the dogs.  We have to get up from our chairs and pull the dogs away from whatever thing they’ve gotten into that they’re not supposed to.  I hear what you’re saying, “Why don’t you just remove the offending articles from the room?”  That’s all well and good but we would quite literally have to remove every single thing from the room, including carpet, drapes, furniture and some doors.

These fussy little spawns of Satan have been the bane of our existence for the entire year that we’ve had them.  I don’t see any hope for them in the foreseeable future.  We’ve even invested heavily in good anti-bark collars with no results at all.  When the collar goes off, they lose it, jumping and screaming and snarling at it.  Then they won’t bark again as long as the collar is on.  The minute you relieve them of the collar, it’s business as usual: Barking at every single thing that moves.  The problem with these collars is that the battery life is about 5 days on one of these little tyrants.  And the batteries are pretty expensive.

So, if you want a nice pal, man’s best friend as it were, you’d best not invest in a Pekingese.  Aside from being ugly and stupid, they’re stubborn as the day is long and quite destructive.  With their long, constantly shedding hair and shrill screaching bark, they are more suited to a Guantanamo Bay sort of torture than a home environment.  Their eyes run, they have a myriad of health problems and their total lack of cooperation means a lifetime of chasing them down, scolding them, keeping one eye always on them.

Having a Pekingese in the house has made me totally lose my taste for having a dog.  A nice bird or fish would be better suited to a calm family life.  A screech owl would be more calming.

Fall is coming, that’s true.  For me, it signals an end to the glorious summer heat and begins that dreaded cold, gray, dead portion of the year otherwise known as winter.  I hate winter.  Everything dies in winter.  The sky is always gray.  The electric bill triples when the cold sets in.

The very last episode of Guiding Light ever will air on Friday.  I’m depressed beyond words.  I’ve watched that show for 40 years and I figured it would always be there.  In fact, I was contemplating ways to come back after I’d died, just so I could stay current on the soap.  I was just getting used to the fact that Steph is away at college and baby Katie had started school.  They took the last Star Trek series off the air and now THIS!  It ain’t fair, I tell ya!  They need to give an old broad time to adjust before they throw in those new changes.

I’ve been trying to use the alone time constructively; trying to get the house finished and ready to put on the market.  The good news is that we can double what we paid for it.  The bad news is that it took eight years of back-breaking work to get it to that point.  Eight years and about $40,000.  There are still 2 columns to be replaced, a bit of wood to put in the porch ceiling, the kitchen and bathroom flooring to be replaced.  Then it’s done.  Oh, and the third paint job for that porch.  Funny but the beautiful wrap-around porch that drew us to the house is now the butt-busting thing that makes us want out.  120 continuous feet of porch to paint and I’ve done it twice now.  It refuses to stay painted.  For those of you seeking old houses, please steer away from any house that has a porch, covered or not.  It will kill you in the end.

So, this is the process I refer to as chewing off my leg.  I’m doing anything and everything to get out of this house.  We can drop our bills by $900 a month by moving just a few miles down the road.  And we can get rid of this huge sprawling space that won’t be needed soon.  We’ve already picked out the house of our dreams.  I was going to build one but if we did that, we’d have to rent a place until the new house was done.  That sure wouldn’t drop our bills any.  Aside from that, there’s a distinct lack of decent contractors in this area, especially those of the mason variety.

We found this new house as we find all other things….by accident.  I had met a realtor to look at this one place and on the way home, we happened to be driving just the right direction, the sun in just the right position, so that we could make out the realtor’s sign which was obscured by the bushes.  It had escaped my online search because of my tight criteria….a 4/2 with at least 2500 square feet.  It was listed as a 3/2 but had this glorious bonus room next to the other bedrooms.  Thus, a 4/2.5 in reality.

It has a concrete slab…one of the few in this area…and it’s stucco….the ONLY house in this area that is stucco.  Billy pointed out to me the vast similarities to our house in Florida.  Both were CBS, both grey and white, the floor plans are almost identical.  So, as I hurry to finish this dump….I mean, classic old house…and get it on the market, our dream home awaits.  Hopefully, it will NOT be anyone else’s dream home.  I have hope.  It’s been on the market for over a year and has only shown twice….once to me.   It’s an oddity around here; doesn’t even look like the other houses in this area.  So, maybe I’m the only one who can appreciate that custom dreamboat of a house.  Maybe some sucker…err….lucky buyer will snatch my house off the market.  Sure would be nice to drop the electric bills from $1100 in the winter to $300.  Sure would be nice to cut our taxes in half.  It would be nicer to live in a neighborhood where there are other children….children who had NOT been to jail before they’d been to kindergarten.

Mazel tov!

If you want to get to Hertford, just go about a thousand miles down any highway, turn left at Hell and there you are!  The one exciting thing to do in Hertford happens every September and it’s called the Indian Summer Festival.  It’s a huge deal and people come from long ago and far away to attend.  I know this because they frequently use my driveway to park.  They block the streets of Hertford and clog the side streets.  You can’t get out of town all day long.

We go every year and were actually looking forward to it.  Being the big event that it is, there’s always something awesome to see or do.  It was cancelled last year because the organizers (being the sound-minded people that they are) didn’t have the forethought to set a rain date.  You guessed it!  It rained that Saturday and the event was just cancelled.  Now, they can no longer call it the “Annual” Indian Summer Festival.

Being that David and Billy were both working and Stephie is off at college, Katie and I set out on our own to behold the wonders of the Hertford festival.  The first thing we saw was the proud Hertford Volunteer Fire Department.  I owe my life to these guys and gals and I think the sacrifice they make for us all is just un-repayable.  They have 2 fire trucks and they respond lightning fast when that old air raid siren goes off.  I can’t even imagine how hard their jobs are.  So, I felt wonderful seeing the two shiny firetrucks parked on the street for all to see.  Halfway through the afternoon the siren went off and I, being the sort that I am, had to wonder exactly what equipment was going to be used to put out the fire, since both trucks were parked on a street with no egress whatsoever.  I’m still not sure what happened.

Katie’s only hope for the festival was for a balloon.  It’s that simple for her.  Find her a balloon and life is great.  There were no balloons.  In years past, we’ve enjoyed the pony rides.  Well, I enjoyed watching the ponies and Katie screamed “I wanna get off!” at the top of her lungs while we smiled, waved and took pictures.  How’s that for irony?  She hates the pony rides.  I love the pony rides but am over the weight limit by quite a bit.  No jokes, here.  I’ll kick your butt!

There was a decided absence of ponies this year.  The bounce house (another perennial torture device for Katie) was lying on the ground, as deflated as my spirits.  There was, however, a rock climbing wall.  They wanted $15 a person to have a go at it.  Seriously, the back wall of my house shoots some 45-50 feet into the air.  This rock climb was no more than 20 feet.  If Hertford has any budding rock climbers, they should come around and see me.  I’d gladly let them have a go at my back wall and would not charge them a penny.  The only catch is that they have to take some paint and brushes up when they go.  Truly, it’s the only part of the house I can’t reach to paint.

In the absence of bounce houses and ponies, I still had high hopes for a funnel cake.  Yea, that’s part of the reason I’m over the weight limit for pony rides, but it’s one of the few delicacies that any festival has to offer and even at $6 a pop, I wasn’t passing it up.  We get funnel cakes every year.  There were two places selling them…the usual food trailers they haul in for every event.  But you get up to the head of the line and look inside and what do you see?  The cooks who serve up this fine fare are stomping roaches while they sift sugar onto the funnel cakes.  I’m not kidding!  There were roaches EVERY-freaking-where.  We left empty-handed and with our stomachs turning.

With our hopes nearly dashed now, we moved on to the main street where various vendors have set up shop.  They pay a hefty amount for the table space, I’m told.  There were the usual crafty people who sell things they’ve made out of gourds and other handmade items.  Some of it is pretty cool but the price will hold you back.  Seriously?  $25 for a gourd painted to look like a Santa?  No thanks.

The Bikers for Christ booth was nicely attended.  We have quite a lot of bikers around here and with David and I both having ridden for a good portion of our lives, we always stop by to have a look-see.  Then I spotted the Republican Party booth.  This one made me turn tail and run — not walk — run from the festival.  Standing there, looking all regal in their jeans and grimy t-shirts, they had a single table with a few chairs.  The table was festooned with leaflets and booklets and every other ‘let you can imagine.  But the one that caught my eye bore the 30s style picture of an African American man and the caption read, “It’s okay to leave the plantation.”  Wow!  The thing that bothers me most about this is the fact that these people actually thought they were somehow doing good…for their party, for humanity, for the African American community.  Again, wow!

So, head reeling, I stood motionless for a few moments, Katie gripping my hand and searching the crowd for any sign of a balloon.  Things had started to move in slow motion now, except inside my brain, where I argued with myself in a hundred different ways over how this was wrong and I needed to explain to them WHY it was wrong.  Then an odd thing happened.  An older African American gentleman walked up to the table, picked up a pamphlet, started reading.  A conversation ensued between this gentleman and the very white, poorly dressed  guy behind the table.  It was an amicable duscussion and apparently neither party was offended by the imagery on the cover, nor the attitude behind it.

I squeezed Katie’s hand a bit and gave it a little tug.  “Come on.  We’re leaving.”  She didn’t offer any complaints.  Without ponies, bounce houses or balloons, there wasn’t any reason to stay.

On the way out, I spotted several other things.  There was a middle-aged choir singing to a captive audience of elderly people, held prisoner in wheelchairs.  Our town symbol is the turtle.  There were turtles on the tees and the following words: I break for turtles.  ’nuff said.  Around here, I prefer the shirts that say, “CSI: Can’t Stand Idiots” and “If I got smart with you, how would you know?”

Past the usual SPCA booth with NO pets save for my neighbor’s old and formerly vicious dog, which she delights in unleashing on small children whenever she can get away with it.  Past the guy playing guitar and pan flute simultaneously.  Past the aforementioned food carts with their roaches and tantalizing smell of fatty foods, and straight home we went.

People say there are only two things to do in Hertford: Go to church and eat.  I find, for the most part, that it’s true.  I also find that whenever possible, they try to combine the two and can even work food and church into a simple thing like a festival.  I think the excitement of an actual carnival might kill the people around here.  I think the idea that all men were created equal has somehow passed this place by.

I’ve spent eight years here now and it is with happy heart that I will soon bid this place farewell.  I’ve had it with the monstrous bills, with the house that needs so much care, with the oppression and ignorance and complete mind-numbing boredom that exists here.  So, we will be putting our house on the market in the next few weeks and we will bail out and head for Pasquotank County.  The mind-set isn’t that much different, but the bills are half of what they are here and there’s at least more than 2 roads out of town.  It will be one of the happiest days of my life, right up there with the birth of children and the finalization of divorces.  Yippee-ki-eye-ay….Bruce Willis knows the rest.

A month ago, I saw the commercial for the Purex Laundry Sheets.  I figured, anything that saves time and prevents the fabric softener from being forgotten is a major boon to society.  So, I gave them a try.  I’m pleased to say, they performed far better than expected, and at a considerable savings.

I have to admit, the sheets don’t get my laundry quite as soft as the old liquid Downy did, but it’s still plenty soft.  My laundry is just as clean, just as many stains are taken out as with my old Cheer (which I used for nearly 20 years) and there’s ZERO static….something I couldn’t say about Cheer or Downy.

Here’s the most important part: I traditionally pay $8.95 for a bottle of liquid Cheer, plus another $4.95 for a bottle of liquid Downy.  This gets me 20 loads of clean soft clothes, and at a cost of  $13.90.  Now, I pay $5.95 for a package of 20 Purex Laundry Sheets.  That gives me 20 loads of clean soft laundry for just…well…$5.95.  Right off the bat, I’ve saved myself just under $8.00, plus an extra step in the laundry process.  You gotta admit…that ROCKS!

I might also mention that I stopped using Cheer because their new bright, white formula was making us all itch insanely.  Even the dogs got a little itchy and started shedding when I washed their bath towels in it.

So, for us at least, it’s goodbye, Cheer and hello, Purex!  I give this particular item 8 out of 10 stars, simply because I would like a choice of scent and because the plastic container doesn’t seal well enough and some of the scent bleeds off.  Other than that, it’s PUR-fect

What I’m about to impart to you is a little-known and closely guarded secret.  Are you ready?  Here goes: To be successful at growing things, you have to plant the RIGHT things for the RIGHT places.
You knew?  Oh.

Well, in case I’m not alone in my ignorance, let me explain this very simple way to always buy the right plant for the right spot.  Feel free to take notes if you like.  See, plants need three things to survive.  They need light.  They need air.  And they need water/food.  The trick is, they need it in the proper balance.  That’s where I fail.  Balance.

Now, the darker the leaves on a plant are, the less light it needs.  Take for instance a Cast Iron Plant.  It has very dark leaves and will survive in your average office environment with just a little ambient light.  A petunia, though, has fairly light colored leaves and likes a good deal of sun.  Best to avoid that for your office.

Again, the darker the leaves, the less light required.  Hand in hand with that is the rule that says, the less light a plant requires, the slower it will grow.  And even more stunning is this rule: the slower a plant grows, the less water and fertilizer it requires.

If I were good at math, I could probably come up with some cool and impressive algorithm to express this.  Sadly, I’m as bad at math as I am at growing things.

Okay, so you have a plant with nice dark leaves, like a Cast Iron Plant or a Pilea.  It needs little light, little water, and even less fertilizer.  And now you know!  You can tell exactly how to care for a plant by the color of its leaves. And you can tell where you went wrong if the plant starts to change.  If a dark plant suddenly develops pale leaves, it’s probably that the leaves are bleaching out because it’s getting too much light.  If you can rule out the light thing, then it’s probably getting too much water and the roots are rotting.  Ease up on the water already!

Over the years, I’ve tended (and killed) hundreds of plants.  But there are a chosen few that have survived my TLC.  Here is a brief list of indestructible or nearly indestructible plants:

1. Pilea — this plant originated in Southeast Asia.  They grow everywhere in the dense jungles of Viet Nam, where I was born.  They can survive without much light, much water…they pretty much can’t die.  And they have these awesome bumpy/fuzzy leaves that tickle when you stroke them.

2. Pothos — I had two of these hanging in my kitchen for 17 years.  Sometimes, I forgot to water them for weeks at a time and they still survived.  They’re the storm trooper of the plant world.

3. Cast Iron Plant — as its name suggests, the plant can’t die.  It’s tough as nails and one of my personal favorites.

4.  Snake Plants or Mother-in-law’s tongue — these are the hardiest plants I’ve ever seen.  I once pulled one out of the ground and threw it on the driveway.  I was amazed to come back a month later and find the silly thing not roasted in the hot Florida sun as I had supposed, but sprouting new growth.  It lived off the daily rain run-off and was strong as ever.

5. English Ivy — watch this one though.  If you don’t keep it trimmed, the new growth will vine out and the tendrils will drill right into wood or weak stucco.

6. Peace Lily — they call this the closet plant.  You can put it in the closet and it will still survive.  Note that it has VERY dark leaves.  It will love you if you leave it.

If anybody has any other ideas, please feel free to respond.  I love to experiment with new plants and my plant database consists of whatever they have at Walmart.

Ciao!

The computer I own now is an Acer,  It was bought because the hard drive on my HP died after 3 years of use.  Said Acer is a mid-level computer, certainly not top of the line, but not cheap crap either.  I had used it for about 7 months when it crashed.  We sent it off to the manufacturer, who repaired it.  Seems there were blown memory chips on the motherboard.  They sent it back with a new motherboard, data intact, and all was well…for a little less than 2 months.  Last night, the stupid computer started crashing again, in the same way.  David’s a network engineer, so he knows about such things.  It’s the same problem, no doubt.  After the fix, the same failure happened.  Absurd!  So, now we must box it up (I just got around to throwing out the box it last shipped in) and send it back to Acer.

There’s time and work lost.  Hopefully, the data will survive because I have a lot of images and stories on there, some work that was done since the last backup.  For the love of God, how can a computer — any computer — be that big of a piece of crap?  It crashes and dies twice in 8 months?  What Chinese-made piece of junk motherboards are they putting into those things anyway?

It will be a cold day in hell before I ever buy another Acer product.  Their support sucks, their products suck.  And to top if all off, the computer was purchased at Office Max, on their store credit card.  Months later, we get a notice from them that they are discontinuing their credit card services. We will not be able to make any more purchases with our card.  Now, we always make MUCH larger than minimum payments on our cards, and almost always on time.  Now they are calling us relentlessly, wanting us to make larger payments, hurry up and pay off the card.

How about this?  Instead of paying off a card I can no longer use, why doesn’t Office Max take that card and the piece of crap computer they sold me and put them deep where the sun don’t shine?  How about they remove the charges for said computer from the card and to quote “The Bride of Chucky” kiss my shiny plastic as*????  How about THAT?

So, I suggest everyone avoid Office Max like the plague and stay FAR away from Acer products.  Both are festering sores on the consumers of this nation and should be run out of business.  Long live Office Depot!!!!