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Close to Nowhere
By Linda Jones Jack Benny is still 39! Anyone else out there old enough to remember Jack Benny? And Rochester? My
dad loved Jack Benny and my brother and I also liked him. And, as I’ve
gotten older, I’ve appreciated some of his very dry humor just a bit
more... 39 for example. Benny claimed to be 39 for at least 60 years. Me? I’ve only been 39 for roughly 20 years. I
recently celebrated another 39th birthday. I made myself poppyseed
chicken and green beans — I did forget to make me a birthday cake, but
Sue and I, who share August birthdays, had a beautiful birthday cake at
the office — and we’re so lucky. Beth Breithaupt, a world class cake
baker and decorator, is our friend and co-worker! Kris,
my son, never forgets my birthday. Technically, neither does Pop, but
Pop and Kris’ ideas about birthday celebrations are vastly different
than mine! Dana, our daughter, took me out to
lunch Friday and suggested we go visit fabric stores. I thought, “Aha,
she’s going to buy me a birthday present at the fabric store!” I
was wrong on that “aha” though. She did treat me to lunch at one of our
favorite Chinese places in Oxford and from there, we drove on to the
small town of Sherman, right next to Blue Springs. As
a long-time Toyota devotee, I’m delighted at the plant there. And it
didn’t interfere at all getting to Sherman, so that was just fine. The
discount fabric store in Sherman is called Premier Prints (I think,
don’t make me swear though). They sell mostly cotton drapery and
upholstery fabric. Quite a bit of the cotton drapery fabric works for
many other things also. Dana had a brainstorm
while we were there. She sells some of her hand-dyed and hand-spun
wools on a website called “Etsy.” She’s decided that Meredith, my
oldest granddaughter, and I, can keep ourselves in fabric by making
sock bags with the drapery fabric, sell them for a small profit and
voila’ — a cottage industry is born. It’s a really nice fantasy, but I’m sure, along with most of our cottage industry fantasies, that’s what it will remain. Oh — a sock bag is a small fabric bag that a knitter keeps wool and needles in while knitting a sock. All
in all though, my 19th Nervous Breakdown — oh wait — that’s a Rolling
Stones song — my 19th celebration of my 39th birthday was a nice
weekend. I enjoyed a great homemade meal, a great
Chinese dinner, got a new DVD from son Kris and more fabric for my
stash! — All I needed!
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