Today, I'm going to tell you the tale of one of the very few typical-of-pretty-much-everyone's-childhood stories I have.
Bee stings.
My first (and so far only) was completely avoidable and I can absolutely blame it on my older sister.
No, but like... Seriously.
Okay, not really, but I'll tell you how it all went down.
First off, my sister is almost eight years older than I am, so when I was a kid, I automatically looked up to her and wanted to do as she said, regardless of whether or not that was a good decision.
I have since learned.
Many years ago, my family was stopping by a little shop that opens in the Summer for hotdogs, ice cream, and the like.
I was looking forward to these things.
Instead, I got this.
We were standing at the top of a hill:
Now, most children do want to roll down hills.
I understand this.
I was not most children.
So, to begin with, I really just did not want to do the normal-child thing of rolling down the hill.
Grass is dirty, worms freaked me out, sometimes grass made me itchy (which got worse with age), I feared rolling right into traffic... and so on.
With some coaxing, I (for whatever reason) was convinced that doing this thing was actually a proper plan.
Much like her frustration when I was not a fluent English speaker at two years old, all she wanted was to have me experience an authentic childhood thing.
All I wanted was ice cream.
So, I roll, like any other child would have done.
And, of course, I roll over a bee.
You know, despite the literal pain in my ass, I remember being very concerned about the bee.
I pictured a bee-crime scene and I wondered if his bee family would miss him.
Perhaps they'd send the bee-bulance, but it would "bee" of no use.
I had killed him.
With my butt.
We rushed home for an embarrassing round of "Here, hold that chair while Mommy takes a tweezer to your ass,"
And I resigned myself to a life inside, forever, because screw the outside world and its hills.
In case you are on the edge of your seat wondering, yes.
Yes, I totally did get some ice cream.
To recap here:
My sister's dog answer's to it's name, "little bunny," and a combination of the two.
The
cat (who has become my father's cat, apparently) was raised by a dog and never quite figured out that she is a cat,
which makes her this wonderful cat/dog mix that is perfect.
The guinea pig has been hanging out with the hermit crabs too long and is learning things.
Seriously.
She wanders around her cage wearing her house.
She's obviously not
stuck, since she does this with any of the houses (Mom likes to switch
them up sometimes) and gets out of them all the time.
Guinea crab.
Hermit pig.
Just thought you all should know.
I found a pattern and bought it on a whim. It looked simple enough and I'd never used a pattern before, so it was exciting. Then I scared myself into thinking I'd just screw it up and never even tried.
I was going to do this one, with a cowl:
...
Like a year or something later? More than that?
Couple of years later, I bought fabric for this pattern. My buddy Dani helped me pick out this fabric:
Isn't it cute? I don't really own a lot of cute things. I mean, yeah, it's still skulls but... CUTE! YAY!
Now, the pattern called for stretchy fabric and this was not, but I didn't want a zipper up my armpit either, so I decided to do panels on both sides of stretchy stuff.
You know what I own even less of than cute clothes? Pink.
Seriously. Everything I owned before was red, black or brown. Sometimes there were blue things. Mostly black.
I am le goth kid.
And so it began! I went to my mother for assistance,
realizing that she had about as much experience using a pattern as I
had. She had done it once in the sixties and her story didn't exactly
have a happy ending.
Pinning up the fabric to then cut out the shapes:
There was this tone of "Is this going to work?" throughout the process.
Of course, there were some mishaps. One example being when we attached both panels to what would become the same side, instead of one on each:
Slowly, it began to become a thing:
Thiiing:
The cat was entirely unhelpful. Please note that the rest of the table was clear at that point. She managed to sit on ALL the dress fabrics.
"I shall sit RIGHT ON ALL THE THINGS"
(The darker fabric in front of her is what we used for the second dress.)
It fit! We just needed the final touches aaand:
BOOM BABY!
The finished dress! The pink, as stated, is stretchy. The rest is not. That means it's comfy enough when bending the elbows and (while it doesn't look it on the hanger) it's really form fitting. The bottom of it wound up pleated just so it could be more fit to my body after the fact, so that's neat.
WOOT. I DID A THING.
Well, WE did a thing. My mother did a lot of the actual machine work because pushing pedals with my feet to make a loud thing go fast scares me whether it's a sewing machine or a car.
I need to work on that.
But WOO a dress!
My cat. OH MY GOD.
She just got in the arching "Imma shit now" position, I yelled at her, MOVED HER WITH MY FOOT
and she shat anyway.
"You see me trollin'…"
This cat gives NO SHITS except for the literal kind.
*Poop*
Okay, her's is really not that... Like that, but this is more graphically interesting to draw.
I wish I had the balls this freaking cat does. My god.
Next time I get rejected by a man who has been flirting for months, that's it. I'm just gonna shit right there.
"Yeah... You were like, third and a half choice."
Drop trow and just shit right in front of him, possibly on his feet.
Get a crap grade in a class?
CRAP IN YOUR CLASS.
Oh, drama happening with friends or family?
Disarm the situation by shitting right there on the rug! Or even on the furniture!
…
Fuck you, cat.
