Of Mice and Men

***this unmailed letter has been floating around my desk for years now.  this morning i determined to post it here then consign it to the recycling bin. ***

Weds 11.25.2009 - just before 6pm
It's the weds night before Thanksgiving.  I am holed up @ Silver Lake Coffee trying to wait out the stupid stupid rush hour/holiday traffic.
I got off work early (woo!) and was full of intent & motivation.  I had 2 goals: 1: visit Sew-LA for some sewing goods, and 2) hit the Glendale Galleria for my twice yearly cosmetics & sock purchasing rip.  (this is the last possible mall visiting day of the year for me.  Thanksgiving -> January are black out dates.)  Stop 1:  I spent some quality time @ the fabric store choosing buttons to put on a dress I'm making (went with 9 small, square purple buttons.  Pretty damn cute. :) ), got a few yards of muslin to use in practicing making a fitted skirt, a hip curve for...drawing hip curves in patterns, and a jaw-droppingly adorable pattern for a bunny toy. (really good.)
As I left the shop, all mall plans were off.  My sewing mojo was cooking.  shifted plans to stop at The Rad Beer Store & bank instead.  Commute traffic along Silver Lake Blvd is notoriously slow:  1 lane each way, lights, etc.  I took an untried residential detour in an effort to circumvent it.  At a crucial crossroads I opted to go back down to SL Blvd just past the traffic.  Well.  Here the title of a Steinbeck novel comes to mind... Tonight there is no point "past traffic."  To get from point A to point B, a distance that one might cover in 3 min by car, it took me 15 min.  or maybe 45.  I don't know.  It was just slooooowww.  When I got to the light @ Glendale Ave (a left turn to take me home) I saw the traffic socked in - 2 lanes wide.  I uttered an expletive, kept straight, I worked my way to this cafe.  I had no cash, no knitting, no writing paper.  I went thru my glovebox & scrounged up some stuff to write on.  (Hence, this brochure :) ).  I'm hopeful that one hour here will be enough time for the residential streets to clear.  Perhaps everyone will be on the highway by that time.  The bummer is that i'd really like to be @ home sewing.  We'll see where my mojo level is when i get home.  (I might just go grab that bunny pattern out of the car to read...


***the letter ends there without the close-parens.  nothing like the frustration of not being able to ride the wave of motivation.
yesterday morning i was going through a stack of postcards and come across one that i'd written to my friend md in oregon last may.  i put it in the mail without any note about the delay.  the card was about getting my new car and having a new basket put on my bike.  the car is still fabulous.  the bike basket is too heavy, though and has shifted the balance of the bike.  i had a bit of a accident, not a crash but i still ended up bleeding and have some cool scars that will forever end my career as a foot model.  still trying to work things out with my bike.  i don't want it to gather dust this spring.***