The Youngest Sister blog turns four years old today. Happy Birthday to me! This time last year I gave you an annual report and told you all about the blog’s accomplishments of the previous year. I can’t do that this year because, frankly, this blog hasn’t done diddly squat over the past twelve months. After I wished myself a happy birthday last May, I didn’t write another post until Hello again on Nov. 15th. It was a pathetic, apologetic post that was sort of like the very late thank you notes I would write to my grandfather once a year when I was a kid, in which I spent half of the letter explaining why I hadn’t written sooner.

I got my shit together again in time to put out the 2020 Millennial Gift List, only because I know you all depend on it and wouldn’t have a clue what to buy without it. My friends Karen and Bryan scanned that list and each immediately bought the other a bidet toilet seat, so they, like us, are now the proud owners of two. Honestly, if you have one, you have to get two because once you get used to it you can’t live without it and it is a drag to have everyone fighting over the same toilet. Okay, the truth is that Tony and I actually now have THREE of them, because Tony wanted the ultra fancy Japanese kind that has warm water and a blow dryer. It’s like a tiny carwash for your ass.

Finally, I was forced to write a piece about my revolutionary Champagne and Bacon Diet because I got so tired of people telling me how fantastic I look and then asking how I did it. I am pleased to report that I have not gained a single ounce since then. Also, I had a routine doctor’s appointment last week and my bloodwork came back completely normal, so it seems clear that I have neither a parasite nor an exotic tissue-wasting disease. So that’s cool.

Of those three posts, Google Analytics tells me that you read and forwarded the Champagne and Bacon Diet post the most, followed closely by the Millennial Gift list, and the pathetically apologetic Hello Again post was a distant third. Interestingly, during that same time period, there was a big surge in readers of the How to Recane a Footstool post from January 2018, and views of its accompanying video doubled. This warms my heart because it tells me you all are taking the possibility of an apocalypse more seriously than you have in the past. It is never too early to get ready for Doomsday, so good for you!

I may not have been writing, but that doesn’t mean I have been sitting on my ass. I have finished lots of projects that I have considered telling you about but they were kind of boring and, frankly, I know it is unlikely that any of you have the wherewithal to do any of these things. Because if you did you wouldn’t be sitting on your ass right now reading this blog. Am I right? Of course I am. So, in no particular order, here are the things I have been doing over the past year that have kept me from writing blog posts.

SLIPCOVERS

I became so obsessed with sewing during our pandemic year that I got a wild hair and decided to make a new slipcover for my kitchen sofa. It turned out really well, thanks to YouTube videos like this one from Mimzy and Company, where I learned to put velcro around the bottom of the slipcover to make it look upholstered, instead of adding a droopy skirt all around.

Speaking of skirts, when I was done, I still had a ton of fabric left over, so I made this one. Maria von Trappe’s got nothing on me.

When our renovation was done, I made new covers for the chair pads in our sunroom, as well as a matching dog bed cover for our charming Jack Russells, Ben and Eula. Eula has physically recovered nicely following her encounter with the b-e-a-r, but does seem to be suffering from some PTSD. Thanks for asking.

One of the coolest things I learned about while doing these slipcover projects was — wait for it — zippers by the yard. I know, right? Makes you want to smack yourself in the head. How could I have not known about this? You just buy however many yards of zipper stuff you need, along with the pulls that go on them, and then you shove the pull on the top and yank the sides apart and, boom, you have a functioning zipper. Unbelievable. It is tons cheaper than buying individual zippers and, besides, you can’t get zippers that are, like, 36” long anyway. I honestly felt like such a moron because I never knew about zippers by the yard before. Then I thought about the fact that none of you knew about them either, which means you are morons too, and that made me feel better.

T SHIRT QUILT

My son Taylor turned 34 in April. He has lived in California since college, so I wouldn’t really know what to get him even if I had seen him in the past year, which I have not. I’m not sure I would recognize him if he walked down my driveway because, according to my sister Janelle who lives in California and has seen him, he is currently sporting a Covid man-bun to go with his beard.

I have seen a lot of T shirt quilts advertised recently so I’m thinking they are a thing. You can get people to make them for you but, you know me - if they can do it, so can I. So I decided to make Taylor one for his birthday. I’m generally not a very sentimental person, but I had saved a lot of his T shirts from when he was little. His father brought T shirts home from just about every place he went and he travelled a lot, so I had a lot to work with. Since we have been trying to clean out the house before we get too old, it was a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

As always, I went to YouTube and found a lot of videos about how to do it. Honest to god, there is nothing you can’t learn from YouTube. Since my pieces were all different sizes, I made it a collage, which I laid out in Photoshop, to figure out what pieces should go where. I indulged myself and made a long overdue purchase for this project and it was a good thing because I couldn’t have done it very well without these new tools. If you ever do any cutting that needs to be straight, get yourself a big clear ruler, a cutting board and a rotary cutting tool. This stuff is made by Fiskars and I am only pissed that it took me so long to buy it because I really could have used it when I was making the slipcovers. I bought this set at Joann Fabrics but the sales clerk said I could get it for less at Walmart. But I had a coupon. Only Joann’s is one of those places that sends you new coupons every day to get you in the store, then you go to buy the stuff and find out it’s not covered by that particular coupon but you buy it anyway. I hate that shit. But on this day the coupon actually gave me 20% off so it was all good and it didn’t matter that I was too lazy to go to Walmart.

Anyway, the quilt turned out very well and I sent it out to California in time for Taylor’s birthday. So now, instead of having a bunch of useless T shirts from his childhood, he has a useless quilt made out of the useless T shirts from his childhood.

OTHER FAMILY SEWING PROJECTS

When my sisters need specialized sewing projects, they actually find it fortuitous to be related to me. Norah said she needed a new bedspread and I said, “I’ll make it for you!” Only she wanted the kind that is quilted around the flowers. So I said, “I’ll make it for you!” Did I know how? Hell no. But do I believe in myself and my abilities? You bet I do. So I went to that place that I keep talking about where you can learn how to do absolutely anything and learned about something called a quilting foot. You put the quilting foot on the machine, drop the feed dog, which is the thing that pushes the fabric forward, and just freestyle it. It is so much fun and so easy to do that I bet even my blog readers could do it. I’m thinking Norah saved about $300 in labor cost which proves to me that I really do not want to try to make a living as a seamstress. It would be sort of like trying to make a living off this blog. Only much more lucrative.

I told you about Norah’s envy caused by my success with the Champagne and Bacon Diet, so now Norah needs all of her clothes altered, just like me. She dropped off a bunch of stuff for me to alter on her way to Massachusetts but, honestly, there is not enough love or money to make me alter a fully lined dress. Sometimes you just have to take that stuff to Goodwill and buy clothes that fit. Or at least put it in the back of the closet to wear when you gain all the weight back following the Champagne and Bacon Diet. Same with pants with baggy butt. You can’t always fix baggy butt, so if your skinny jeans are now your fat jeans, you probably need new jeans.

Don’t worry - I’m taking care of Janelle too. I made her napkins at Christmas time because she wanted really NICE ones, but not the big fancy linen ones that have to be professionally laundered. So I actually made her a dozen white napkins and I can assure you there is nothing much more boring than making a dozen white napkins.

Unless it is making four sets of white sheer curtains. Taylor and Amanda bought fabric several years ago to make curtains for their house but had never gotten around to doing anything with it. It’s a California thing, I think. They asked me if it was smarter to borrow a sewing machine (they don’t know how to sew) or have them made. “Send the fabric to me,” I said. You do not want your first sewing project to be sewing sheer curtains because the fabric is really slippery. So they shipped it off to me and I made four sets of sheer curtains for them which I sent out along with Taylor’s bespoke quilt. They were so grateful that Taylor 3D printed me a bunch of Easter eggs and a tray that holds my bobbins. Taylor is a 3D printing aficionado, which is a skill that is beyond my capabilities but I reckon I could learn how to do it on YouTube.

THE BASEMENT

This one will make some of you as envious as if I told you I had just won the lottery. People like my sister Norah, who hasn’t parked in her garage since, well, since they bought their house. That’s because her husband is a “collector.” And let’s just leave it at that.

I have lived in this house longer than I have lived anywhere in my whole life, including when I was a kid. I think that’s pretty cool but, after 19 years, the basement was getting out of control. Since we had contractors around renovating our sunroom, we decided to get them to install cabinets in our basement. Unfortunately, the contractors wouldn’t clean the basement for us, so we dug in and got it done. There was not a lot of tear-jerking Marie Kondo-style thanking the room and the old coolers with the broken handles before we said goodbye. We pretty much just threw a load a day into the truck and took it to Goodwill. Which, by the way, has gotten pretty persnickety about what they will and will not take. Like, you have to hide the fact that the cooler has a broken handle or they will turn it down. I think that is pretty rich. You know there are plenty of times people might like to have a really inexpensive cooler to send one-way with their children back to college or to ship something frozen. Am I right? Of course I am. We eventually came to recognize that there are two kinds of people that work at Goodwill — them that has to and them that want to. I’m talking mandatory-social-service versus volunteering. The latter will take almost anything and be grateful. The former just doesn’t want to have to process one more thing. So if the attendant at Goodwill looks like someone who got a DUI, find someone else to hand your stuff to. This is the sort of useful information you can only find here, so aren’t you glad you are a Youngest Sister subscriber? Oh, you’re not? You should fix that now.

Anyway, here are the before and after pictures of our dank basement:

While it is a little bit embarrassing showing you the squalor that was our basement, I figure you have seen our toilets, so why not? I could LIVE in this room now, and it only looks as sloppy as it does because I am currently working on…

CANE RUSH CHAIR SEAT

This is a relic from Tony’s family and there has got to be some very big sentimental mojo attached to it because it is not what I would call either a beautiful or comfortable chair. But Tony has very special feelings for this chair, and I have wanted to do another cane rush chair seat since the footstool, so I was happy to take this on. It is a mother of a job though, and I have to let my caner’s thumb rest periodically, so it’s going to take a while. I’m just happy to hang out in my beautifully organized basement while I do it. I’ll be sure to show it to you when it’s done.

DIGITIZING PROJECT

Speaking of mothers, late last year I undertook the mother of all scanning projects. My children had inherited boxes and boxes of photos, slides, movies and newspaper clippings which they deposited in my house before returning to California and New York. I knew that, if I left it to them, that stuff would be there until I croak, at which time they will be forced to do something with it. I actually wouldn’t have minded that option, but I have this thing about being able to walk into and use rooms in my house and, with all of those boxes stacked up in it, my study looked like my sister Norah’s garage.

I started to tell you all about how I did this project and, in so doing, discovered it amounts to a legitimate post of its own, so I will give you the details in another post which I swear I really will write. It was a very complicated process that required a lot of steps and research and selecting and I bet many of you might be interested in how I did it. That’s what this blog is all about - I do the work so that you don’t have to. Did you know that? Because it is.

VIRTUAL CHOIR VIDEOS

I told you about these last year but I’m still making them, so they legitimately go on the list of things-that-keep-me-from-writing-blog-posts. All told, I have made 29 (soon to be 31) videos for my women’s a cappella group, Fire, and another 6 or so for some local churches that actually paid me. (FYI: Being a video editor pays better than being a seamstress). I reckon the need for these will soon be over, just as I’m getting really good at this. Sigh.

You can watch all 29 (soon to be 31) Fire videos on our YouTube channel. Some of them are singalongs and rounds — the kind of songs you sang at scout camp. Enjoy.

Editorial Note: When I was proofreading this, I stopped at the “All told” sentence and mused about whether it might actually be “All tolled.” I couldn’t bear to have a reader write to me with a correction, especially since I consider myself a grammatical bad ass, so I looked it up. “All told” is correct.

I feel like I just finished a school essay on What I Did Last Summer by Mary Welby Hardin, Grade 4. I hope you learned at least three things you didn’t know and that you think this list is sufficient proof that I have been too busy over the past year to write blog posts for a bunch of people to read for free.

Now for a little bit of housekeeping. I am sorry and embarrassed to have to tell you that my Facebook account got hacked. This is the kind of thing my sister Norah calls me to fix and I roll my eyes and scold her for being so careless. It is the social media equivalent of getting an STD or crabs — it’s just plain embarrassing. You want go to the doctor, get the medicine, fix it and try to forget it ever happened. But the first thing the hacker did was change the associated email address and phone number, so all the reset stuff goes to some asshole in Romania and not me. Ergo, I can’t fix it. Not yet anyway. Did you know that you cannot speak to a human at Facebook? You would think that, with all the cash Mark Zuckerberg has, he could at least set up a call center somewhere.

Anyway, if you look for Youngest Sister posts on Facebook, you might not see them for a while, until I figure this out. Maybe I should look for a solution on YouTube….