As I toil away on the next quilt, I notice that repetitive motions make the going difficult. 

I find that if I mix it up, the cutting, the pinning, the stitching, the pressing, it goes much easier. My body doesn’t get the chance to stiffen up and ache.

So I stand at my cutting/work table for a little bit. Then sit at my sewing machine for a while. And from there, I stand at the ironing board pressing each piece just so. Always pressing toward the dark side.

I always laugh when I think of it, the dark side. The idea is that the seam allowance won’t show as much if you press toward the darker fabric. But I can’t help thinking that applies to life itself. At least, to mine.

RA is the dark side. Trying desperately to recruit me as a permanent resident. Well, hell no, I won’t go!

I see the doc next week. I will stress quality vs quantity. I am more afraid of pain than I am of death. To me death is nothing more than a library filled with books, real books, and all eternity to read them.

I am not being morbid. Death comes to us all, as the saying goes. It’s something inevitable, unavoidable. We can do nothing about it.

But, life. That we can do something about. If we want to.

A few years ago I stopped working in order to increase the quality of my life. I’d lived in a fog. Pain had taken over the driver’s seat and left me trailing behind. Only I couldn’t bring myself to actually quit, to sever those long-held ties. So I just didn’t go to work one day. Months later they tenderly let me go with a letter that said: let us know when you want to come back.

Today that fog, that malevolent mist, is circling, beeping inside my radar screen, waiting for the opportunity to make its undesired approach. But I won’t let it land. My little traffic controller is acutely aware of it; it’s been in the trenches before. Surprise is no longer on RA’s side.

Still, sometimes it causes me to do funny things. For instance, I unwittingly wrote this title backwards at first, quantity vs quality. Freudian slip perhaps?

And today, while in the lab’s waiting room, I almost burst out laughing. I went to catch up on my emails and opened my DailyWritingTips newsletter. Today’s topic was on “gratuitous capitalization.”

Only I misread the title. I read gratuitous capitulation.

I’m still laughing. I’m thinking that would make a fantastic title for a short story.  The possible storylines are endless!

BTW, this isn’t what the quilt will look like. I was just playing around with the possibilities. Life is full of them, you know. Possibilities, that is.