I want to write you a chatty blog post. Really I do, but when I look back at the last 24 hours for something to chat about, all I can remember is an hour of surfing job sites and finding nothing and four hours of wrestling with sheets

Yes, sheets. No, I was not trapped in my bed. Nor am I having an Exciting Sleepover Guest of some kind.

No, I unboxed my new Christmas gadget, that hand-held sewing machine I mentioned before, and got down to one of the projects I've been putting off for the last year--cutting down a pair of king-sized sheets to fit my double bed.

(Yes, I know. I've frequently grumbled to myself about the kind of insanity that drives a person sleeping in a double bed to buy king-sized sheets, and never more than when I'm trying to tuck the excess two feet or so of material under the mattress. But I had to buy them. I'd been looking for months for sheets in the right red to go with the hand-made quilt my mother & her sisters made for me and this pair, two flats found on the sell-out rack, were the closest I'd found.)

Anyhow. The plan was to cut off the excess width and use the remnants to make a pair of pillowcases to match the sheets. It was a good plan and it worked well except that king-sized sheets have a lot of material in them, meaning I wound up with sheets stretched across the living room floor so that I could eyeball the straightness of my work. Possibly someone with actual sewing experience would not have made such a Herculean task of it.

And then the pillowcases. The width I trimmed was just short of enough to actually make pillowcases, forcing me to piece in a strip. What with measuring, pinning, re-measuring, repining on the other side once I realized I was sewing back-to-front, re-measuring, and then finally sewing, one pillowcase wound up taking an hour. The first pillowcase remains unfinished (a bit of hand-work needed) and the second pillowcase unstarted. At one point, I just wore out on domesticity.

But my gadget worked just wonderfully! After the hours spent prepping, it was such fun to run the actual hem in three minutes.

After that, I was tired.

I ripped out a scarf I'd made for the R.C. (she's decided she wants a hat-scarf combo job instead) and started reworking that yarn. I subsequently ripped it out four more times over the course of the evening, before I achieved a width that I think will work. I'd forgotten how aggravating this yarn is to work with.

My own hat-scarf is coming along nicely, if slowly (not much time to work on it recently) and my remaining project (a normal scarf--light ice-blue with gray-white-gray bands at the end) is half-done.

I have been boring recently.

I sometimes suspect that y'all miss the days when I worked for Bernie--even with all of the bitching and moaning, I bet that those were more interesting posts for you to read.

I heard back from Buehler. He and his family were off on an extended holiday trip, but he has some work for me next week, hooray! Haven't heard from Bernie about any work yet, although She continues to call from time to time for free tech support. I'm biting my tongue and providing it--Bernie doesn't pay as well as Beuhler, but he does pay better than any other temp work I'm finding. I billed him for my December hours.

No news on the tax bill for Mom, but I have the money squirreled away. The money I've been earning recently is this month's credit card bill, car insurance bill, and food. (Rent & utilities are already paid.)

I remain astonished by the connection between money and expenses. I'm starting to think that this extended interval of comparative poverty is valuable to me in some ways. For many years I've handled my finances on the foundation of "Do I want it? Yes. Buy it!" Nowadays I make myself think twice before buying an extra skein of yarn for $4.

The last few months have been educational. When I compare how much I actually need to live on--that is, to pay bills, buy food, and keep a roof over my head, with the amount of money I used to make in a month, I'm at a loss to figure out where most of my money went.

Even though I'm accumulating a list of things I want (my "When I Get A Job" list), I don't actually need them, so I doubt I buy most of them.

(Well, I can't buy some of them. Just because I saw someone in a cheesy science fiction movie wearing a cool jet-pack does not mean I can boogie down to Sharper Image and get one like it for myself.) (My wish lists tend toward the fantastic.)

But I'm turning over a new leaf, and it will remain turned, even after I'm back to gainful employment. From now on (When I Get A Job), saving will be a bigger priority for me. My retirement fund is not what it should be and I should really have more than 2-3 months of expenses on hand at any one time.

As soon as I get a job.

And now, back to today's crop of help-wanted ads.