afflictions

Summer seems to be the worst time for getting sick. Most of the time it's not entirely physical either. Sometimes summer afflictions last longer than an eighteen hour bug. They can't be helped with medicine or rest or even Gatorade. In fact, summer vacation is often a time of too much rest. I thought I had had my dose of summer illness with that weird food poisoning stint, but apparently not. Instead, I seem to have been bitten by the crafting bug. [insert B-movie horrified shriek]



Indeed. My idle hands are no longer the devil's playthings, as creepy as that sounds, because they are now busy (not with 24-hour blogging, I'm afraid) with the construction of a quilt. I shudder at the domesticity. Two days ago, fleeing the constant chaos of the main floor (more specifically the kitchen), I retreated to my room. I took a step or two in and remembered there was nothing interesting waiting for me. I had the Internet, of course, a TV and a Bill Bryson book (though lately I've been losing my interest. more on that later). All overused and under-stimulating. A quick glance around my room alerted me to the fact that I had been living in a dump for the past month. Seriously. I had been (and still am) living in the discount shopping cart at the front of the grocery store. You know, the one that always has Easter candy and broken candles or 2 dollar DVDs. Of the many things I noticed, a pile of t-shirts caught my eye. I had set them aside at the beginning of the summer due to limited drawer space upon the reentry of my

(Cat in the Hat day shirts ^)

college wardrobe. They all still fit me; nearly every one a size adult small and most of them were free. Even though I regularly donate to Goodwill (and frequently shop there, therefore replenishing the newly vacant portion of my closet), I could not bring myself to give up these shirts. I didn't want someone else running around with my 10th grade orchestra shirt. Or flutter about wordlessly claiming they worked at the Country Club of Roswell in the summer of 2008. I would create an army of frauds! Imagine the confusion:



person 1: Oh, hey. You went to Centennial. Remember that crazy Dr. Bartley? What a troll.

person 2 (aka IMPOSTOR): Uh, yeah.

1: ...and the salt on the football field. Man what a prank. Hey, who did you have for physics?

2: Actually, I just bought the t-shirt at a secondhand store.

1: What? So you lied to me?

2: only in the loosest sense of the word.

1: ... (at this point, person 1 slaps/punches person 2 until satisfied and stalks off, newly disappointed in humanity)



So, you see, I could not release these shirts for the good of the general public. It was my civic duty to collect these artifacts of my teenage life and preserve them in a shapeless lump on my window seat. Yesterday, however, I decided their time had come. So I cut em up, and I'm gonna sew em back together again. In an aesthetically pleasing pattern of course. At the very least it gives me something new to do. I even believe this urge to create is my brain's way of trying to save itself from atrophy. According to an article I read in a woman's magazine, crafts support brain growth and create opportunities to problem solve and hone new or semi-used skills. So there you go, brain. I'm trying. We'll see what comes of this...