Beyonce

Every Tuesday night, my hubby has a group meeting at school to work on his Senior Design project with his group members and he doesn't get home until later in the evening. This means that Tuesday nights are mine, all mine, to do with whatever I so well please.

Typically, this includes an hour-long trip to wander the aisles of Target (and shamelessly throw money at frivolous things like throw pillows... oopsies), followed by a supper of (what else?) noodles with butter -- easily one of my most favorite foods of all time. I used to eat it practically every night when I moved off campus and lived in an apartment with some friends my sophomore year of college. Mmm, I love it.

Anyway, before my jaunt through Tarjay and five-star meal, I usually go to my gym and use the elliptical machine for 25 minutes (why 25? Easy. Because after your set time, you have five minutes of cool down. So why would I want to work out for 35 minutes? Thirty minutes (25 + 5 minutes of cool down) is more than enough). Oftentimes you'll find me zoned out on some trashy MTV show because they have cable there, my friends -- a luxury which we do not have in our apartment.

I'm a teacher, remember? That means I'm too poor to have cable.

Kidding :)

Anyhow, I'm always enjoying my trashy MTV when I'm rudely interrupted by some bass thumping that shakes the building and distracts me from some quality Teen Mom time. And you know what the culprit is?

ZUMBA.

Have you ever been?

I was a pretty good follower a couple of summers ago when it came to my hometown's YMCA for the first time. It was ridiculously fun but made me sweat like a man pig (no offense, men). I heard the feeling you have when you leave class, dripping with sweat and feeling like you're going to die, described once as feeling like a hot flash during menopause.

Now, I have no idea if that's true. But if it is, please count me out of menopause. Eeeew. I hate sweating.

Anyway, if you haven't been, Zumba is a group exercise class that's basically dancing to Latin music to get your cardio in and even some toning. It is all - the - rage at my gym. Seriously. Some nights, the lobby is jam packed with middle-to-later-age women wearing jingle bell bracelets and colorful wraps tied snugly over their behinds with little gold jingly coins tied all the way around them. Think Esmerelda from that Quasimodo movie (what was that called again? I forget. Apparently not one of Disney's finest).

So here I am, Tuesday night, made my place comfortably on my elliptical trainer, ready for some good quality Gary and Amber watching (will they get their lazy butts up off their bed in this episode? And even better: will their bed finally have sheets on it? Doubtful. I don't know why I get my hopes up), when a Tuesday night Zumba regular comes over to invite me in to "the party".

They seriously used those words.

I almost laughed.

In fact, I think I might have.

Whoopsies.

But I promise that's as rude as I get, because I'm a sucker and can't say "no" to save my life (I was apparently absent the day they practiced the broken record strategy in D.A.R.E.), so I made my way into the room and felt oddly out of place without a bright pink scarf wrapped around my bootie. Regardless, I was welcomed with open arms and away we went.

Luckily, as mentioned earlier, I'd been a Zumba junkie for a few months awhile back, so I pretty easily picked up on the steps again. But I also quickly remembered how hard it is to keep a straight face during class.

Now, by no means am I a fantastic dancer. I cannot shimmy or bootie shake to save my life (which, by the way, so totally fine by me. I mean, when would that skill come in handy, anyway? While I'm teaching fractions at the whiteboard with my backside to my students? Doubtful. So creepy). And in fact, more often than not in Zumba, I look like a complete idiot. I know this. It's a fact of life for me. Which is why I just keep my feet moving and don't bother with getting too fancy with all the hip thrusting and "booty poppin'" (yeah, my booty doesn't "pop"... whatever that means).

However, there was a woman in front of me who was all in. Except she looked just about as wholesome as you could get. I mean, like, Sunday School teacher by day, cover your children's eyes by night. Her dancing was definitely PG-13. It was hilarious! Here we are, a bunch of white, upper-middle class women, who are about as far from sexy Latina as possible, and this woman is totally shaking her rear and smiling at her reflection in the mirror like she's Beyonce. She was just loving life.

Which isn't a bad thing. Granted, I did let some giggles sneak out here and there about it, but as I thought about it more, I realized it's probably an outlet for some women to just let loose and not worry about other people watching you.

Except me, I guess. Whoopsies.

But I'm sure I had someone loving on my uncoordinated moves. Good thing my club has a "no boys allowed" sign on the door.

And next time (yes, I said next time. I'm going back to join "the party"... HA!), she won't make me giggle. Because maybe next time, she'll become an inspiration. And slowly over time, I, too, will begin to channel my inner Beyonce, conquer that bootie shake (highly unlikely) and sport a jingle bell bracelet on my right wrist.

Succumbing to wearing a jingly scarf over my bootie will take a bit longer, though.

MIA

It seems that just about every other post I make begins with an apology for being so MIA, followed up with a lame excuse for it. But really, I have some good ones this time.

Lame excuse number one: our laptop died! Yes, it came to its' untimely demise a few weeks ago. The screen turned some crazy colors and then went black. No luck making it come alive again, either. So, as hubby says -- we now have a nice, big paperweight. And, many hundred dollars later, also a nice, new desktop computer from Best Buy!

Lame excuse number two: my heart hasn't been here. I'm sure you noticed in my last few posts, I've been far from myself. And I don't really want to subject you to all the gloom and doom that I find myself submerged in during bits and pieces of the day. I'm typically a very happy, optimistic person -- but this infertility business has made me a more anxious, stressed, sad person. Luckily, we've finally gotten a few pieces of good news that will hopefully turn into bigger, even better, pieces of good news. After a few weeks of feeling really, really sad, I'm feeling much better. And eager to be back! Lets hope that continues. If you're the praying type, hubs and I would appreciate all the messages to God that we could get. Thank you!

Now, the one good thing about this whole infertility business is that I've been pouring every free moment (so as not to have any extra time to over think things) I have into different projects and recipes from (where else?) Pinterest! One of my first projects was an infinity scarf. I was feeling the urge to buy one with the up and coming autumn season, but decided to try making one of my own first. And it was so simple, I promise.


The urge first emerged in the evening, so I dragged my eager husband along with me to JoAnn's to pick out some fabric (because goodness knows it takes me at least an hour to make a fabric decision. You might think I'm kidding, but trust me: I'm not). Unfortunately, even when he comes, it only cuts the amount of time it takes me to make a choice by probably a fourth. So about 45 minutes, five dollars, and a cranky hubby later, I skipped out of JoAnn's with a smile on my face. Don't worry, hubs was smiling on the inside; after all, if momma's happy, everyone's happy (never you mind the fact that I'm not a momma... yet).


Here's what we walked out with:

 

One(ish) yard of this purple, navy, white and tan plaid. I wasn't so sure if I was in love with it initially, but now I do really like it. Anyway, here's how it all came together at midnight that Saturday night.

First, I zigzagged the whole way around the edge of my fabric to prevent fraying. If you're fancy lucky, you could serge the edges of it. But I'm a teacher, so I'm poor and can't afford a serger unless I want to eat ramen for supper each night.

KIDDING! We already eat ramen for supper each night.

KIDDING again. Anyway.


Lay your fabric out in a single layer as shown above. Then, fold the fabric over so that the right sides are together, hot dog style (elementary art class, anyone? Mr. Raske, my elementary art teacher, had a thick, black, shiny mop on his head for hair. He eventually became my middle school art teacher, too, and the rumor around school was always that he had a TOUPEE! Trust me, it was a huge scandal that kept every pre-pubescent teen preoccupied for at least a few days in my middle school. Anyway, Raske always told us to fold our papers hot dog or hamburger way).

Pin the fabric together on the open edge like so:

(How impressed are you with my little point and shoot Canon PowerShot right now? That's a pretty dang good picture, if I do say so myself.)

After you've pinned it together, sew the baby up with about a 5/8 inch seam allowance. You don't have the remove the pins as you go (just sew over the top of them), unless you're weird like me and have an irrational fear of the sewing machine needle hitting a pin and making an awful "clank" noise. It happened to me once, true story. It made an awful sound that I liken to nails on a chalkboard. Eeeeee!

Anyway, yes, sew it up... except leave a couple of inches that are not sewn at each end of it... and don't sew it shut on short the ends. Remember, we're only sewing shut the long side. The short sides do not get sewn shut.

After you finish sewing it up (except for those two inches or so on each end), go ahead and turn it so the seam is now on the inside and you've got the right sides on the outside and wrong sides on the inside. Make sense? Good. If it didn't, here's what those two inches on the ends should look like:

See? No stitch at the ends.

So here's how mine looked after that:

Mmhmm, a nice long tube of plaid. In my messy sewing/computer room. Whoopsies. I promise it's much more clean now, thanks to my hubs. He's nice like that.

So next, we need to take care of those open ends. So now you bring those two open ends together and start pinning them together so that you can sew them together almost the whole way around.

So the thing is with this part, is you're not going to be able to sew the entire way round here. In fact, you'll only be able to sew about as far as the ends that you left open when you first sewed your fabric together (hot dog style, remember?). Which, my friends, is exactly why we left that two inches at each end: so we could get this part of the job done.

At this point, you should have the entire scarf pretty well put together. The only problem left will be that little opening there that we need to fix, as shown below.

For this little fix, go ahead and pin the fabric on each side of the opening together, closing up the hole like so:

Now you could do a little secret, invisible stitch here. However, at this point it looked like this outside:

And I know you can't see the interstate, but there was literally like, zero cars out there. Because it was midnight. Infertile people do weird stuff. Like start making an infinity scarf at 11:45 p.m.

Anyway, the point is, it was late and we had mass in the  morning -- so it was time to get the show on the road. So I opted to just sew a straight stitch with my machine just about 1/16 of an inch in from the edge of the fabric. It ended up looking just fine and dandy:

And so my infinity scarf was officially created! From start to finish (not including the whole, 45-minute fabric-picking-out-sesh), it took me about 20 minutes... it was awesome.

So naturally, after I finished, I couldn't just go to bed and be satisfied knowing that I made something neat. Oh no, I had to do something else. I had to take a picture and send it to my mom, of course!

Obviously my mom was mega proud of my mad sewing skills.

Unfortunately, this story ends sadly: I have yet to wear my scarf! It hasn't quite been cool enough yet. And I'm a horrible outfit saver... always "saving" it for a "special" day (which makes no sense -- what am I waiting for, the day I find out I'm pregnant? HA!).

Sorry for the snarkiness. It's because I've missed you. Have you missed me?

I promise I'll be back soon. After all, I did somehow find myself in a Zumba class today. And goodness knows I'll need to get that experience off my chest somewhere.