ALL THE BAD WORDS

WARNING: There are bad words in this post.

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"SHIT, PISS, FUCK, MOTHER FUCKER!!!" I yell, nausea washing over me. 

I have spent the last 60 minutes painstakingly placing, pinning, and subsequently sewing together the edges of outdoor fabric to a recycled zipper only to  just now discover that the ends of the zipper do not match up. By about three inches. How the fuck is that even possible? Zippers have two sides that are of equal FUCKING length!! While I angrily attempt to close the zipper, the zipper pull... comes off in my hand. I broke the zipper. The zipper pull in my hand mocks me mercilessly. I storm down the stairs in a fit of failure.

David, who has heard my barbaric YAWP, is prepared. "Hey, love," he commiserates, his voice soft and supporting, without even knowing yet why he is offering his spousal commiseration. 

"I GIVE UP!!" I yowl, flopping down on the living room floor, desperately trying to ground myself as I drag my fingers through the carpet fibers.

"What happened?" he asks, propping himself over me, availing himself of an unexpected arm workout in this endeavor.

"THE ZIPPER DOESN"T MATCH UP!!" I wail.

"The zipper?" he queries.

"THE FUCKING ZIPPER DOESN'T MATCH UP!!!" I let out a bark of near-hysterical laughter, as I jam the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. "The zipper, which I have spent FOREVER lining up doesn't match, which is fucking impossible, because it's a ZIPPER with two equally matched sides  AND..." This is where I begin to cackle maniacally... "I yanked the zipper pull off!! I YANKED IT OFF OF THE FUCKING ZIPPER!!!" I show him the zipper pull. "It won't go back on!!!"

"Oh," says David, still braced in a plank above me. "That sounds bad."

"Yeah," I say. "I've spent 4 hours so far seam ripping the old cushions, cutting new fabric and sewing Turkish corners!! I should have just bought new cushions."

We purchased our outdoor sofa in 2008. 13 years on, to save a buck or 800, I decide that I will sew new covers for the existing cushions. Did you know that good outdoor sofa cushions - JUST THE CUSHIONS - cost as much as an actual fucking sofa?!? I mean, for the price of purchasing brand new cushions for our existing outdoor sofa, I could buy a brand new loveseat and two chairs WITH their cushions!

Defiantly waging war against consumerism, I purchased bright red discount outdoor fabric last fall in preparation for recovering the cushions. It costs me a quarter of the price of brand new cushions. Over the past week I have begun my adventures in reupholstering. 

I'm not an upholstery virgin, I have "box cushioned" a 1/2 dozen times since I've owned grown up furniture. I have the old piping, the old cushion covers and the old zippers. No actual instructions for these particular covers which aren't technically box cushions, but I'm sure that my dormant sewing intuition will soon kick into high gear.

I am lucid enough to recognize that I might need to refresh my skill set. I watch some quick and dirty YouTube videos on "Turkish Cushions," "Piping for seat cushions," "Zippers for seat cushions." I extrapolate, I bob, I weave... I feel almost confident about possible outcomes. Turns out that wrestling with a 36" zipper while herding extra stiff outdoor fabric through a non-commercial sewing machine is not my forte. Hence my vitriolic outburst.

David walks me up the stairs and offers an extra set of problem-solving eyes as we face the fallout from my valiant first effort. Having him there alleviates my urge to take all the fabric and cushions and throw them out the window while speaking in tongues. By some miracle, I manage to get the zipper pull back onto the zipper. That there? A big fucking win for me. After a quarter of an hour, it seems like I've managed to figure out a path forward which involves me ripping out the stitching for half of the zipper and refolding my Turkish corners. I no longer want to sob uncontrollably. 

"You okay?" David asks.

"Y... eah... I think so."

"Do you need a beverage of some sort?"

"Yes please."

"Whiskey?"

"Yes please. TALL."

I re-tuck, I re-pin, I re-sew. It looks mostly like it should. I stuff the old cushion into the new cover and notice that the fit is... if I'm using my indoor voice, imprecise.  For it to look good, I will have to rip out the front piping... again. My face scrunches up. My inner banshee demands to be free. I force my shoulders down. I take a calming breath. And another. I eschew foul language. 

I walk calmly downstairs and message a friend who sews for the theatre. I offer her heaps of money to finish the project. She hasn't responded yet. But if she doesn't, I'm going to donate the rest of the material to our local theatre and I am buying some fucking replacement cushions. Life is too fucking short. I don't want "Death by sewing aneurysm" in my obituary.

I've ordered HOW much from Amazon?!?

As a grown-ass woman paying down a mortgage/credit line/supporting a child in university, I've managed to curb non-essential spending by online window shopping and pinning the fuck out of colourful things on Pinterest; thereby racking up my virtual endorphins rather than my Visa statement.

I have evolved in the past 30 years. I have learned to differentiate between want vs need and no longer go shopping as an activity to alleviate boredom. I shop because I need to replace winter boots, or my exercise leggings no longer have material on their inner thighs or I need to dye my hair.

Since April of last year, I have placed 121 Amazon orders. ONE. HUNDRED. AND. TWENTY. FUCKING. ONE.  Even if I eliminate maybe 24 of those for friend/family birthdays, Christmas and baby shower gifts, that is still 97 online orders! That's 8.08 orders a month. That's 1.86 orders a week!! I have ordered MORE THAN ONCE A WEEK from Amazon FOR THE PAST YEAR! 

HOLY FUCK. 

And yeah, we're still in the midst of a pandemic and yeah, maybe  a dozen times, I returned an item because it wasn't the right size/colour/it didn't feel/look/sound right. So that might take me down to  85 orders. But that is still 1.61 times a week! What the fuck have I been buying?!? 

FACE MASKS - because putting clay on one's face forces one to sit still for at least 15 minutes and not focus on the news.

POSTURE-CORRECTING BRASSIERS - because I'm looking more and more like Quasimodo with all my time at the computer.

CURLING IRONS - (plural) - because even if I'm not going out in public, there is the odd day when I want to look like I give a damn - even just for me - CAN I NOT LOOK GOOD JUST FOR ME?? - and random hanks of bone straight hair amidst the rest of the curly locks make me look crazy (er).

LOW-CALORIE, GLUTEN-FREE STARCH OPTIONS - because despite 45 - 60 minutes of cardio every single fucking day, my menopausal body does not process food the way it once did and my waist defiantly remains (grabs measuring tape to confirm)... 36 fucking inches!! I have to find a healthy way to lose "very bad visceral body fat encasing my organs" or at least that's what my GP says. "Middle-aged women with waists over 35 inches are at risk for early death due to heart disease, stroke, Type 2 Diabetes..." Which, if I wasn't already hi-key panicked about dying from Covid-19 complications due years of ignorant chemical use as a Molly Maid while in university (I can say with complete confidence that I never read a single label on a single cleaning product before I was at least 25 years of age), this whole waist-to-hip ratio thing is making me anxious as fuck. So we're taking steps to avoid that.

MAGIC WAND 'personal massager' -  because David became worried when my previous one started to smoke.

BEDDING - lots and lots and LOTS of bedding. Because we weren't able to spend Christmas with any of our family, and I got it in my head that festive Christmas bedding would make it all easier. And patterned flannel sheets would obviously alleviate angst too. And then, having new white sheets for everyone's bed just made sense, because we hadn't purchased new sheets in about a decade and the previous sheets were looking like they'd been through trauma. And really? Even with all those 'coping' purchases? I spent less than what many folks would spend at Bed, Bath & Beyond on a single set of 400 ct. Queen Sized sheets. Or at least that's what I realized when a friend told me what he'd spent on sheets.

DVDs - because we have evidently reached the end of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Crave and whatever other media apps we've signed up for during the pandemic. 

BODY LOTIONS - nice smelling, luxurious, infused with fucking essential oils - because anything, and I mean ANYTHING that gets me to calm the fuck down and not obsess and over-empathize with the state of the world is a good thing.

If I could buy edible cannabis products from Amazon, I'm sure I'd be doing that too. And yes, I just checked, and other than some gummies with cbd oil - I'm out of luck there... WAIT!! I'm such light weight, that might be exactly what the Heather ordered.

A fuck of a lot of money was spent through Amazon in the last year. But I'm not sure that it was any more than what we would have spent if we'd had a vacation anywhere. Or done regular summer day trip shit. Or spent a long weekend in New York and binged on plays.

We're all fucking coping. As best we can. And right now? My coping comes from pink clay masks, my new (4 speed) personal massager and new sheets. When I can hug all my people again? I won't need substitute comfort. My endorphin rush will come from actual physical contact. And that? Will be fucking awesome. 

p.s. Our family's position of gainful employment with PAID sick days makes us so fucking fortunate. We have greater freedom and security than many others during this time. I can write a post feigning shock related to over-spending when others don't have that outlet. It's up to families like ours to give more to charities, help our friends, families and neighbours, support small businesses and independent restaurants because, right now, we can.