Mistress of Disguise

Spent more of Friday at home than at work. I had to take a 2 hour lunch because of the car towing situation; I stayed home with the baby while M and Chance went to get the car together. I headed back to work to find that the captain had already left for the day, and had said to leave early myself, so I was out at 3:30 and back home. Finally ended up getting some of the dishes done, then dove into making an enormous baked ziti, which ended up feeding us for the rest of the weekend. 

Was up early-ish on Saturday to head to Dallas before it became too warm. Made a quick stop at Dutch Bros for a large chai. Arrived at the warehouses not long after they opened, and managed to hit every one of them before lunch. Restocked on my cheap black taffeta, found a lovely silvery-white taffeta for Navasota projects, and the perfect purple for the Navasota dinner dress. Didn't manage to find the right color of lavender for the Navasota ballgown, but I still have time. Also discovered that Best Fabrics had sold out of the fabric I'd planned to make the Kent State dress out of, but they still had plenty of the darker gold color, so I picked up 15 yards of that, which should be enough for both day and night options. 

Lunch at Kuby's for German food. It was absolutely packed, both in the restaurant and the grocery, so I simply ate lunch and didn't buy any food stuffs to take home. Had the worst piece of black forest cake I've ever encountered, that will not be a repeat. 

Made a stop at Half Priced Books on the way home. It was nice to browse a bookstore again, and it bubbled up a lot of nostalgia since it's the same location that I spent a good chunk of time in when I was in my teens and 20s, looking for bargain manga and second-hand Star Trek novels before the chain bookstores caught on and started keeping those in stock. Quick stop at the grocery store for beverages before heading home, where I relaxed for the rest of the afternoon and finished my Gilmore Girls rewatch.

Sunday was a sewing day! The baby was super cooperative, and I managed to get a ton of work done. The remaining ruffles for the skirt are now all cut out, assembled, hemmed, and have the gathering stitches in. I think I can finish the entire skirt this week! I'll try and get the bodice mocked up during the work week, and then maybe finished this coming weekend, she says optimistically. I'd be elated to finish this dress this early in November, though it will probably require a minor miracle. 

Anyway, the baby fought her bedtime last night, otherwise I might have done more sewing. Instead, I tried to rock her to sleep on the couch, which did not work. So I put her in her crib, turned on a YT analysis of The Thing, and let her tire herself out, which took another hour. M came home with armfuls of different ice creams - mint chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches, Mexican fruit popsicles, and a limited edition Tillamook of Oranges n' Cream, which we proceeded to pig out on. M loves The Thing, so he insisted we watch the rest of the video, even though it was super late. After the video, a shower, and more baby shushing, it was 1AM, so I am dragging today.

Soup for dinner tonight, which will feed us for a few days and free up the next couple of evenings for sewing time. I'm aiming to finish the last skirt tier by Wednesday and to get the waistband on before Friday, leaving the weekend for making the day bodice.

50 giant green spiders today!

Knocked off work early on Friday and spent the afternoon cleaning up/baby-proofing the living room. Now that she's tall enough to reach the top of the sewing table and the credenza, we had to move some things so she couldn't get herself into trouble. My dress form went into the bedroom, and the sewing table was decluttered and all the pointy/sharp things stowed in their appropriate drawers in the bookcase. All my project baskets went into the bedroom closet so there are no pins within easy reach of tiny hands. I got into a groove with the cleaning and ended up dusting as I went, and the living room feels much lighter and more open with everything clean and tucked away. 

Saturday M went out for most of the day, so I didn't get a chance to go to the fabric warehouses. I pulled the rest of the black taffeta off the bolt, and there was only about two yards left, so I definitely need to make a run next weekend. I cut the remaining fabric into strips for ruffles, then began hacking apart the second skirt tier so I could remove the offending cross-cut ruffle and replace it. The baby was in a good mood and happy to stay in her playpen and just chill, so I managed to get quite a bit done. The old ruffle is off, the new one was cut, assembled, hemmed, and gathered. Made an easy dinner of pork roast with roasted carrots and potatoes.

Woke up Sunday with a monster headache, and was not nearly as productive as on Saturday. The baby was also no longer chill, and decided to be extra screamy, which made me feel even worse. I spent most of the day just trying to keep things quiet and calm. M took the baby for a while during the afternoon, and I half-heartedly poked at the new ruffle. I managed to get it pinned onto the skirt and stitched into place, but I didn't manage to get the rest of the assembly finished. Still, some progress is better than none. 

Tonight I need to attack the dish pile and reclaim the kitchen from the clutter. I'm planning to make a baked ziti, which requires dishes that are currently at the bottom of the sink. If the baby gets to bed on time, then I'm going to try and finish reassembling the second tier, though I probably won't have time to sew it to the skirt. But, since Ziti usually lasts us a couple of nights, I should have plenty of time to do that tomorrow.

Hoping to start on the final skirt tier on Wednesday. I only have enough fabric on hand to make one ruffle for it, but that will honestly probably take up the rest of the week with how little I'm able to sew in the evenings. Saturday is my shopping day, after which I will cut out the rest of the ruffle strips and hopefully get those assembled and hemmed. If the baby is cooperative on Sunday, I'm really hoping I can get all the ruffles attached to the skirt, and the final tier assembled, maybe even added to the skirt. Optimistic, but here's hoping.

Early voting has started, so I'm planning to do that over lunch today. I also have a free sandwich available from Potbelly's, so I might as week make it a celebratory sandwich. 

43 giant green spiders today!

Came home Friday to a highly stressed M as he was finishing up his last Sequel class online. It took him a couple of hours for his anxiety to dissipate. He was still stressed as he started cooking the spaghetti sauce, but once he got into it and I helped him chop, it started to level him out. By the time dinner was finished cooking, he was in a much better mood. 

We sat the baby down with her own bowl of spaghetti and let her at it. By the end she was covered in noodles and sauce and the requisite pics had been taken. A very scrubby bath then commenced, after which she passed out easily and slept through the night. M and I finished the McMahon documentary and then headed to bed.

Saturday I unpacked all the pieces of the ruffle monster dress and got it all set up to work on again. The baby wanted to nap on me all day long, so I didn't get as much work done as I'd hoped, but I did get all the strips for the ruffles assembled and hemmed, so that was something at least. We had leftover spaghetti to eat, so neither of us had to cook, and the evening was easy. M went out to see about a car a friend had told him was for sale for cheap, and came home enthusiastic about purchasing it. It's a 1997 Honda Civic with 200k miles on it, but it runs well and seems in decent shape, and after all the title fees and registration and whatnot it would still be under $1000. He's fairly certain he is going to go and pick it up today.

Sunday was a quiet day at home for all of us. M played the new Silent Hill remake, I worked on ruffles, and all was well. I managed to get one ruffle fully sewn on, and another one pinned on halfway. I had to recut the top ruffle, so that backtracking took up a bit of time, but I'm still fairly happy with the progress I made. Ended the day with a cup of chai and a piece of cake, and it was all very cozy and comfortable.

The weather over the weekend was absolute ass, so I'm glad we got to stay inside. We hit 101 on Sunday, which is stupid. We have one more 90-degree day predicted for tomorrow, after which the heat is finally going to break. Wednesday will be in the low 70s for a high! Finally!

Either 36 or 37 spiders today! There are so many now that I lose track as I count!

Well, nothing went quite to plan yesterday. Left work around 2 and went to pick up our pizzas, but they had somehow lost the order, so had to wait for them to make it up for us. Not a huge deal, but I wanted to be home. But, I did get a great deal on the pizza and snagged both larges for a total of $10, which made me very happy.

Once I was home, M said that the baby had had a marathon nap and that he'd managed to get all his work done for the entire week, which was a relief to us both. I had gone home with the intention of doing work around the house to catch up, but I didn't end up doing it.

Instead I spent time with the baby, who was in a great mood, and I spent some time fitting the mockup of the 1830s surplice bodice. I was pretty happy with how it had turned out, too, except that the front was a tad too long, and it was just a smidge too large. I have a second version of the pattern now, and another mockup will soon commence. 

Unfortunately, as well as the afternoon was going, it soon went sideways. M got a message from his manager announcing that she was pregnant and would be going on maternity leave in a few months. She'd waited until she was 5 months along to tell anyone, so her leave is going to come up pretty soon. It sent M into a stress spiral as he catastrophized about it, thinking that he's going to be given part of her duties while she's gone (there is no other manager because the bank has been slashing personnel and didn't think they needed two managers for the department) and saying things like now he has to find a new job before she goes on leave. He ranted for nearly 2 hours after the baby had gone to bed. I was exhausted by the end of it and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Alarm this morning jolted me awake, and I felt like I hadn't gotten any rest at all. I need to stop letting M keep me awake so late, it really destroys me not to get enough sleep. 

24 inflatable green spiders this morning!

Had the bodice mockup done before 2pm yesterday, hooray! Before I even got home I could see I was going to have to redo the angle of the front crossover. But everything else looks pretty good! I'll hopefully be able to actually try the thing on this weekend, once I hammer the grommets into the stays.

Managed to do the reinforcement stitching for two more gussets last night, so now I just have three left. If the sewing gods are on my side, I might get them done tonight, but they've been fickle lately. Either way, grommets tomorrow.

A "Blue Alert" blasted from my phone at 4:52 this morning. I had no idea what a blue alert was, but apparently a cop was injured in some boonie county several hours away, and they felt the need to let the entire damned state know that the culprit was on the run. Texas, I do not care. Never do that again.

Need to make a stop at the Indian market by the house to pick up some spices. None of my regular stores carry black mustard seed, which seems crazy. But it does give me an excuse to pick up some of their fresh samosas. One of the annoying things about our tiny kitchen is that I don't have enough space to make samosas at home.

M and I have been watching the Vince McMahon documentary on Netflix together. He's a big fan of wrestling, so we pause often for him to give me context and trivia about what's being discussed. We're halfway through it, and it's been very entertaining. I don't give two figs about wrestling, but I do love a documentary about a scandal.

Since M still hasn't opened the joint savings account like he said he would, I went ahead and opened my own personal one through my bank. If he ever gets around to opening the joint one then I can just transfer everything over to it, but at least now I have a place to put my own money where I can't touch it.

Randomly learned yesterday that a new Star Trek cookbook was released in 2022. It made me go back and revisit my own abandoned efforts at a cookbook that I started some years ago, and I was surprised at how far along I'd actually gotten with the project. I do remember devoting a lot of time to researching the Ferengi dishes, because I was determined not to chicken out on them, and to use actual insects in the recipes. I actually had a good half dozen or more Ferengi recipes like snail cakes (crab cakes but made with escargot snails), sticky honey gree worms (sago worms in a honey soy sauce) and tube grub truffles. It had been a fun project, maybe I'll revisit it someday.

Inflatable giant green spider population has risen to 13! The house with the baseball playing skeletons has also installed a large web, so I'm guessing it will soon be inhabited by a giant spider, as well.

Was stumped for dinner ideas last night so I went to the old standby of Zuppa Toscana. Went over well enough with everyone, even the baby, who cannot eat soup but can eat leftover bacon. Decided to try planning out meals for the rest of the month, just so I don't have to make a decision on it every single night.

Attempted to bring the 1830s stays to work with me to work on during quiet times, but couldn't manage it. Since the boning is already in and they aren't foldable, the envelope I was trying to stuff them into was not big enough. Blarg. Need to get them done and the dress bodice cut out so I can bring that in instead. The event for the 1830s dress is only a month away now, and I haven't made any progress on it in weeks.

Halloween decorations are going up quickly in the nice neighborhood that we live by, and which I drive through every day to get to/from work. There's a 12-foot skeleton with matching huge skeleton dog. There's a pair of normal sized skeletons playing baseball. There are six houses in a row with the exact same inflatable green spider, which I find very amusing, like a giant spider infestation. That neighborhood always shows up for the holidays, and I am here for it.