Letters and Livelihood

I wrote letters when I was growing up. Mom insisted. Dad had escaped the Midwest with all of us in tow, so all our relatives were 2,500 miles away, wanting to know how we were and what we were up to. Especially Mom’s two older sisters, Sis and Dorrie, authentic maiden aunts who lived with their mother all her life, and together all of theirs.

Strangely enough, they were not crazy cat ladies. In fact, their living situation didn’t seem the least bit peculiar to me.

I wasn’t the most eager letter writer. By the time I was a senior in high school, I was so busy with chairing the Commencement Committee, copy editing the yearbook, serving as Treasurer of ECIVRES (service spelled backwards, an honorary.. yep, service organization), keeping up with a college class in Political Science, trying to earn A’s in my honors classes, working regular babysitting jobs, and attempting to have some sort of social life, my letters were closer to lists of activities and apologies for not writing more often, than to meaningful communications with people who loved me.

Dorrie often issued a dire warning against “burning the candle at both ends”, which I saw as:

And I’m pretty sure she saw rather more as:

To this day, I have never heeded her warning. Which brings me to the

Livelihood

portion of this post.

I am behind. I am behind in posting to the A to Z Blogging Challenge (today is N Day, isn’t it?) I am also behind in my livelihood work.

Confession: “I am an increasingly reluctant seamstress.” Me. On a good day.

From your side of the table, it looks a lot like:

From my side, it looks more like:

Several factors have come into play to inflate my dream of retirement from this honorable and manually laborious trade.

1. Advancing age
2. Retreating eyesight
3. I’d rather be reading good books
4. I’d rather be reading other people’s blogs
5. I’d rather be taking pictures for the M:P366 Photo Challenge
6. I’d rather be writing the A to Z Blogging Challenge
7. I’d rather be writing the 3 Day Quote Challenge
8. I’d rather be writing the “final” edit of Enhanced
9. I’d rather be writing the next part of the Second Earth Trilogy
10. I’d rather…

You get the idea.

But because I am well endowed with Dad’s Germanic stubbornness, my own near compulsion to defy common sense limits, and “a pesky need to eat sometime this month” (thank you Joss Whedon), I persevere. I will continue my unbroken 107 day streak on M:P. I will complete the 3 Day Quote Challenge tomorrow. I will catch up on A to Z this weekend.

And dammit, I’ll get all that sewing done, too. Because, reality being what it is, rather than retire, I will have to work until the Day. I. Die.

Well, maybe I’ll take that last week off.