Do it yourself.

Recognizing the fact that at some point in the last few months, I had gotten off of a happy path, spiraled into a bottomless pit of indecision, and felt myself swinging in a discontented limbo of my own making... I decided to shake things up, take matters into my own hands, let my hair down, and do it myself (whatever it was)....

Painting from an art exhibit at Powell's Books

I was semi-inspired by close friends to live the cliche (after all, that is why they are called cliches... it happens so much that there is a phrase to describe it).

And so, I moved, cut 9 and 1/2 inches off my hair, started doing track workouts, finally bought the AppleCare for my iPhone, switched coffee shops (Brew Station I love you for brewing Stumptown and your homemade scones!), and got an oil change (for my car.. mind out of the gutter).  I managed to stop short of inventing a new high school.

I also considered myself something of a Suzy-homemaker: I decided to re-upholster my own grandma chair.  This is a chair that has followed me through 7 homes, to comfortable to get rid of, to ugly to display prominently.  But in my smallish apartment, I planned to display it front and center with a new -ahem- "chair-lift" (think face-lift).  I've spent hours in the fabric store looking at material, online browsing instructions, at home with tape-measure trying to figure out how to best cover and sew-around the weird shaped arms.  In this do-it-yourself age of Home depot, the internet, and the independent woman who does it all, I never though twice that it would just be easier to go buy another a chair or just pay to have someone reupholster it.  What's the fun in that?

I have a history of do-it-yourself projects with mixed results:

1) Repainting my road bike:  a year of "Wouldn't it be cool...", three months of planning, breaking up with my boyfriend (had some time on my hands), $100 of supplies, two months of coming home at lunch to work on it, an garage covered in orange particulates, and I now own a bike painted like Tigger.

2)Sewing an evening gown:  pressure to look fantastic at a New York reception for my friend Molly's marriage (all internal pressure), too tall to look good in most dresses (they cut me off at the mid-thigh or the ankles and the waist is forever too high!), and a desire for something in plum silk.  I still have a half-sewn plum silk evening dress and as a substitute: a beautiful last-minute-impulse-buy dress from my favorite clothing store, the White House Black Market.

3) Changing my car battery... 'nuff said.  What could possibly go wrong?  I am now the proud owner of a new battery connector-thingy.

So, I'll have to let you know how this one turns out.  I've finally decided on the material... a reddish-mauve corduroy, and I've pulled out the sewing machine.  When I start this, who knows... I've got my first cyclocross races this week-end in Hood River, OR, the Double Cross. And I have-to, have-to, have-to find a kitchen table for my new apartment.

Parting shot... what do you think of the new do?