Mending

I blame Ron Johnson. Or, maybe he should get the credit...This week I did some mending. Doesn't that sound quaint? CoolGuy came into our room to see me seated in the rocking chair, needle and thread in hand, stitching up the holes in one of my long skirts. (I accidentally rolled over it with my desk chair at school and tried to pull up the skirt without realizing it was trapped.) He looked at me for a second and said, "What are you doing?" And we both cracked up when I replied, "Why mending, of course!"

It's only hilarious because it seemed so pioneery or so grandmotherly. I used to "mend" all the time when we were first married and when the children were little. But the binge I got on this week was quite epic. Why is it Ron Johnson's fault? He's the one who made it so hard to buy shirts for CoolGuy. When J.C. Penney hired him to be the CEO in November 2011, his genius idea was to revamp the whole operation. He did away with "sales" and touted everything to be at every-day-discounts, but, duh...people shop for sales. Then, he also eliminated several lines of clothing that the store had sold forever, and put in some new lines to appeal to the hip kids. I didn't mind the lack of sales, so much. But I really minded being unable to buy the brand and style of shirts that CoolGuy has worn for a really long time. Just more proof that we're so not hip... Anyway, since I could no longer just walk in and pick out a couple of new shirts from the rack, CoolGuy's shirts were beginning to look a bit worn.

He has simple needs: two front pockets (one for his phone, one for his glasses and pens); no button down collars; 100% cotton; short sleeves. Seems simple, huh? But I couldn't buy them any more at Penney's. They'd discontinued those shirts by the maker from whom I'd been buying them for about fifteen years. Then, a couple of months ago, CoolGuy went on-line and discovered that he could still buy the long-sleeved version, by the same maker. And they were on sale! He bought three new shirts and the plan was for me to take them to my friend, the good seamstress, and pay her to turn them into short sleeved shirts.

Well, as I sat there mending my skirt, I got rather enthused about mending other things. I replaced the missing buttons on some shirts. I re-hemmed a pair of pants. Then, I got out my ancient sewing machine and sewed the torn belt loop back onto a pair of my jeans. Which led to patching my favorite pair of motorcycle jeans. Which then led to CoolGuy's pile of worn shirts. Really, the worst part of them all was the shabby collars. So, I promptly plucked out the stitches holding the collar to the neck band and turned the collar over and sewed it back on. Five times, on five shirts. And I repaired a torn sleeve on his denim shirt with a patch so clever that I'm sure my own mother---the best jeans fixer in the world---was nodding with a smile up there in heaven.

I was on fire! So, I got out those new shirts, and cut off those sleeves and pressed and hemmed them into new short sleeved shirts myself! So, now CoolGuy has a closet lined with eight newly renovated shirts that he can wear, and I don't have to worry about whether or not the new CEO of J.C. Penney is ever going to bring back our favorite brands. And, I have a pleasant (practically unseemly) sense of accomplishment about all the newly repaired clothing I have in my home. It almost seems like I'm a young mother again, thrifty and clever and industrious. It'll pass, I'm sure. I still haven't tackled the icky refrigerator, but I'd better get on it. Only two more weeks till I go back to thinking about 4th grade 24/7.