All my emotions are on the surface these days. Today was a vivid example.
This weekend was good. Saturday would’ve been a good day for any Saturday, even without the “pandemic” weighted scoring. Sunday I made an apron, and it was satisfying to craft something. Last night, I slept with the windows open; it stormed, and it felt magical to half-wake to thunder and then fall back asleep in my cozy den.
This morning, I walked out to the kitchen, and got verkpempt with love for my life. The way the sunlight streamed through the windows! Fresh, sweet air flowed into the kitchen! Outside the windows there were beautiful green plants. Indoors, I took in the pleasing turquoise color of the cabinets and the smell of coffee. (Erik gets up before me and makes coffee every day. He did this even when we both actually left the house for work.) “Maybe,” I thought, “despite the rest of the world more-or-less being on fire, my existence can be safe and beautiful; something to be cherished.”
Later, I hit a minor roadblock in my 18th Century Dressmaking dream. I bought The American Duchess’s book of that title (18th Century Dressmaking), and was excited to dig into it. I’d purchased some linen and muslin to play around with. The book was supposed to arrive on Saturday, but the USPS is getting dismantled, and my hobby book is low on the list of problems caught up in that. Anyway, it arrived today, and I was excited to crack into it. I ended up dismayed.
First, the book opens with the clarification that this is 18th century *dressmaking*. No instructions for shifts or stays are included; stays could have an entire book to themselves. They are not wrong. But one of the things I was hoping to get out of the book was guidance on that. The blurb says it is for sewists at all levels who want to get started. They just… want you to start at a different point than the raw beginning where I am. It reminds me of those recipes in some of my cookbooks that start with “First, make a batch of (other complicated recipe) and (another complicated recipe).”
So, I was crestfallen. The book also went on to explain that really every thing should be handsewn, not machine sewn. It would just be better that way. Trust them. And I mean… maybe? But also, I am 100% not going to handsew that much. I’m just not. That sounds excruciating. It’s not who I am as a sewist. (Yes, there will always be details to hand-finish, but that’s wildly different than completely handsewn.)
This has made my impostor syndrome flare up. I’m really not a part of that world. There is a whole subculture out there who does this at a much higher level than I do. For example, on a recent video by a historical costuming youtuber I generally like, she made a note that “seamstress” is problematic. She prefers “sewist” or “dressmaker”, because “seamstress”was low-skilled labor, historically. And like… ok. Does that then reflect badly on myself if I prefer “seamstress”? Or maybe that’s a realistic assessment of my abilities.
And now I have to solve the problem of how to make stays. Follow a guide on the internet? Challenging, at best. Buy a whole other book on corsetmaking? I’d like to be that person, an exhausting perfectionist in my methods and research. There is the option of giving up and buying a modern “costume” pattern of reasonable quality, but that would be such a dilettante move. I am an established professional with a disposable income; I could buy a set from a committed, skilled maker. But those start at like $200 (which is FAIR for the expertise and labor involved), and ultimately I think I *can* make them, so I want to try.
As I talked this through with Erik on our walk, I knew the answer: just as I absolutely will not completely handsew the dress, so will I buy a Simplicity pattern for some stays, and make that. It makes me question why I even bought the book. I should’ve just bought an Outlander cosplay costume and had done with it, but I wanted something “more authentic”.
Anyway, I digress. Point is, I had a good weekend. Good morning. Mild bummer in the early afternoon. In the late afternoon, Erik asked about my car registration. It expired in May. Because of the pandemic, the state said that all renewals were “good” until August 31, 2020, so it wasn’t really expired until today. I’m not driving much. In short, it hasn’t been a priority. But now it needs to be.
I hadn’t intended to procrastinate this long. I tried to renew my registration when I first got the letter, months ago. But I’ve moved since the last time, so I can’t renew online. The website suggested one should call one’s county treasurer to find out one’s options to renew if one could not renew online. And thus I hit a dead end. I’m a Milennial. I’m low-key allergic to making phone calls.
Erik asked about the status of my car registriation, and I laid out all the above, before draping myself melodramatically on the bench next to his desk. He offered to call (bonus of marrying someone 8 years older: he had to actually function as an adult before smartphones were ubiquitous).
He called. The extremely friendly woman on the other end of the line explained that all we needed to do was come in to the DMV in person!! No, there wasn’t another option. When Erik told me this, I suddenly got in touch with my inner middle-aged-white-woman entitlement: “Well, that’s just not reasonable! I refuse!”
I acknowledge it is probably quite safe, but for family reasons I maintain an extremely low risk tolerance. I’m still pretty much only leaving the house to go grocery shopping every two weeks. You remember in March/Aril when the streets were deserted because no one was leaving their house? I’m still living like that. This weekend, Erik went to the Asian Market and I went to Russ’s, and we were giddy with the recklessness of it.
But there is no “I refuse!” I just have to do it. And that led to a full-on toddler meltdown. I shouted and swore. I cried hot, ugly tears. I slammed the door to my office, and sulked there for an hour, well past the end of my workday. When I left, I went immediately to bed, where I pulled the covers over my head and pretended I did not exist.
Even in the throes of the tantrum, there was a meta set of emotions: Calm down. You are completely overreacting. You are more resilient than this. It is a gorgeous day out. The air is soft and smells good. The sun is out. While you sit here and cry, you are losing moments that could be spent feeding your soul in the sunlight. Stop it!!
And, of course, the anger I felt at myself compounded with the anger I felt at the situation. I felt completely trapped. The DMV call reminded me how little control I have over the world. My tantrum reminded me how precarious my control over myself is.
Out of spite for the terrible system, I did manage to submit my address change for my driver’s license, which I had tried to do for months but kept coming up against a broken website on their end. And, as Erik and I took the pup for a walk at Wyuka, I confronted something else I’ve been procrastinating on.
I have this couch and chair. They are one-of-a-kind. The arms are carved like lions, or dragons. My grandparents reupholstered them in gold velvet. They haven’t been usable for years, due to a marinade of pet urine. When I moved out of my house with a basement into my rental (3 years ago), I put them in storage. I couldn’t have them in the house, it reeked up the place. And I couldn’t bear to get rid of them.
So, they have lived in a storage unit since September 2017. I was going to get them reupholstered, but the upholsterer was booked and told me to call back in a few months. (No points for guessing whether or not I followed through on that.) I told myself I’d check them once a month… once a quarter… once every six months… once a year. And I never quite made the effort.
Once a full year had passed, my brain catastrophized. “The furniture was ruined: chewed to dust by mice, or damaged by a leak in the unit. It had been stolen! Surely it was Ruined Forever.” But as long as I didn’t look, I could pretend it was still fine. And the longer I didn’t look, the greater the chance was that Something had happened.
Tonight, i decided to take control. I could not control the conditions by which I need to renew my vehicle registration, but I could confront this. They are completely fine. Dusty, of course, but not one errant mouse nibble. If anything, they are in slightly better shape now because they have had years to air out the cat urine smell.
That was a major win for me. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. I looked behind the curtain at the scary thing, and discovered that all my anxiety and lost sleep was for nothing. Everything is fine.
As I write that, I realize now why I needed to go look at my storage unit tonight. Just as my furniture has been fine, despite the years I have spent fretting in uncertainty, so too will it be fine when I renew my plates.
And so too will it be fine for me to buy a modern pattern and make good-enough 18thc. stays. The monster always looms larger in the shadow that in the flesh.
Notebook 