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Never Doubt Those Grandmas

 Continuing on with the general theme of amusement during quarantine, today's post involves a microcosm of life during COVID-19. It's not so much that I'm trying to focus on that as the topic, as it's a daily part of our lives, like it or not. Many of the things that happen, laughs and all, happen with that as a backdrop, and many of these anecdotes are actually precipitated by the quarantine itself.

For example, today's post involves masks. We try very hard not to leave the house unless it's absolutely necessary, but every now and then, something comes up that requires us to leave the house. For those occasions, we want to take every precaution to keep ourselves safe, so we needed masks of some sort. My first instinct was to buy some, but as you can probably imagine, lots of people thought the same thing. The end result was that finding a mask, at least initially, was not particularly easy.

So, we figured we'd try to make our own. The Mild Wife and I don't know much about sewing or constructing masks, but we have the Internet and more free time on our hands than we used to. So, we figured we'd give it a go by getting a basic sewing machine. Sure, that's not going to be the same as a medical-grade mask or one of the N95 ones, but it's better than the alternative (nothing), and it gives us a way to try to tailor them a bit more to us.

Now, that sounds good on paper, but that also means that at some point, we had to actually sew things using that sewing machine. And as anyone who has ever used a sewing machine knows, that means you have to thread said sewing machine. That's where the fun began.

You see, there are instruction manuals, YouTube videos, and other manner of aids in how to accomplish this. That also implies how intuitive the process is. Sure, it makes more sense once you've done it a few times, but if you're a complete newbie to this, you definitely want to consult those learning aids to see if you've done it right.

The problem, as I discovered, is that you can't see everything. So even if you generally understand where things are supposed to go, there are many winding paths through which thread has to flow in order for everything to work. What's more, there are two threads to set up, so that makes it even more confusing. The end result, in my case, at least, was that I ended up trying things and not being entirely sure if it was going to work. This obviously meant a few false starts.

My favorite part of that process was an off-hand quip by the Mild Wife. She's seen plenty of aunts, cousins, and grandparents sew, so she knew that they could handle the very task that I was struggling with. As a result, she basically said, "how the heck do those grandmas do it?!" as she saw me futzing with the sewing machine. We both had a good hearty laugh about that, as clearly I have better dexterity, eyesight, and possibly cognition than some of our older relatives.

Still, I eventually got the sewing machine threaded properly, and felt more than a little proud of my accomplishment. Still, I can't help but think of the grandmas doing this with sheer muscle memory and years of practice. Don't doubt those grandmas, indeed.

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