July 30th 2026

I’m not really sure how I did it.

The repairman made some comment about it being virtually impossible to break.

Hold my beer.

Not only did I break it, I snapped a chunk of metal clean right off.

“These machines practically run themselves,” he chuckled.

Do they, John? Do they really run themselves?

Personally, I’d beg to differ… as would the mutilated Singer sewing machine I just dropped off at the local home design store.

John told me that he comes by every Tuesday… sometimes every other Tuesday. He spends 5-6 hours and roughly 450 miles round trip; hopping from store to store, home to home… picking up ‘virtually impossible to break’ machines like mine… and I guess easy to break machines too.

“Did I know that?” The woman at the local home design store wanted to know.

“You know John does a lot of driving. 450 miles or something like that…” she had said matter-of-factly.

Oh yeah… I knew. My Singer will have at least 900 miles on it now…

At this rate I can probably keep John’s odometer running.

He’s a sewing machine repair man. High in demand not because of the actual demand, but because there’s virtually none… he’s the last in all of western New York… which by default makes him busy. He’s good too. Damn good.

Told me to refer a friend to him.

I would except…

Sir… I’m 43. I’m not in my 80s. I don’t know too many millennials out here burning the candle at both ends in front of their 1960 Singers.

I just happened to pull at least $10k in upholstery fabric out of a dumpster in St Petersburg, Florida and had the wherewithal to save it, ‘because it may come in handy one day,’ and in a strange twist of fate… that tired fabrication used to justify the reclamation of way too many starter projects, actually came to fruition when I bought a place that has somewhere between 100 and 200 windows in need of curtains.

Well, well, well.

Look who’s feeling like fucking Nostradamus now. All that shed space we sacrificed for a good year suddenly feels like a really good call.

Except that I broke the indestructible Singer.

Nearly indestructible.

“Yeah the housewives loved these because they practically did all the work…” John told me.

“Well then there’s something to say about me… because I can’t even get the darn thing (I spared John the F bomb) threaded.”

“I could probably walk you through it on the phone… or better yet, YouTube… do you know how to look that up?”

John, I’m 43… not 103… remember?

“Yes. But I’m gonna tell you what, John… I’m way past YouTube. You think you could take 5-10 minutes of your time and do a quick demo when you drop it off? I need to see it done, then give it a whirl while you watch on… remember I broke the unbreakable… (?) and that’s all I’ll need. I’m going to record it… then I’ll be good. I’ll be happy to pay you for your time.”

“Sure. I can do that. I just can’t spend too much time. There’d be a lot of ladies upset with me if I were late (ha). You know I drive about 5-6 hours, 450 miles every… well almost every Tuesday….?”

John and I are on the same page now. He’s going to fix my sewing machine that he already fixed one time. And I broke on the second sitting.

His sample demonstration swath of a soft blue fabric that sat in the machine with the fancy stitches, the zig zags, the long stitches and the short… Looked perfect.

I managed to spit a bird’s nest of yellow thread clean through the back of the sample piece and wedged hopelessly under the foot plate of the judgmental Singer…

“Practically runs itself…”

It’s cuz I’m not a housewife isn’t it? Damn near feral, really. I don’t cook dinner. Can’t even remember the last time I grocery shopped.

Domesticate this?

Hardly.

Singer met their match.

“How’d you break it? Are you sure it’s broken?” John wanted to know.

“I mean I have a piece of metal in my hands here… it looks pretty important… it came from the bobbin compartment… seems relevant to the inner workings…”

“Is it the automatic threading feature!?”

I think John was giving me way too much credit…

John, Dear… I don’t know how to thread the fucking thing. You think I know about an automatic threading feature?

Spoiler alert: I don’t.

What I do know is that I snapped a piece of the bobbin type thing off after making something that loosely resembled an emu’s nest near the foot press.

John was really pressing though on the ‘how.’ The ‘how’ in the ever loving fuck did I break the nearly indestructible Singer?

And I hesitated to tell him. I really did. I hesitated because when I called John I gave him my name and he didn’t recognize it… but when I gave him the make and model of my machine… keep in mind this man takes a 5-6 hour, 450 mile trip like the pied-fucking-piper of broken sewing machines for all of western New York, every Tuesday (sometimes skipping a week) and as soon as I give him my make and model, his memory is jogged and suddenly he knows exactly who… exactly what he’s talking about.

It’s like introducing a friend to an acquaintance and suddenly your friend and acquaintance realize that they’ve met that one time before and have so much in common and they’re not even talking to you anymore… John was on a first name basis with my Singer: Gertrude.

He loved the machine.

He really did.

Does.

He loves it present tense.

Let’s dare not say past…

Told… actually told me it was his FAVORITE model ever. Ever. He added that part: ever. Yup. Stressed how much he loved her. Gertrude. That model.

So when he asked me… when John asked if it was broken… yup… snapped metal piece in my hand… check… how I broke it…? The ask felt more like a small town prosecutor who was indeed taking the assault personal, asking you to explain to the jury just how and why you used a screw driver to attack Gertrude, everyone’s favorite bingo caller down at the Moose club... like an accusation vs genuine curiousity.

I couldn’t lie about it though. I want this machine fixed probably just as much as John does… and somehow telling him that I used a screwdriver to try and force a piece of the machine up to loosen the emu nest felt relevant.

Judging by the gasp that judge, jury, (and executioner) John let out, I think though that he felt more horror than relevance.

What can I say… I tried.

Clearly I shouldn’t have.

I am blessed with the toxic trait of believing that I can do something that requires professional skill merely because I thought it into existence.

I fancied myself Betsy-fucking-Ross whipping out curtains from the dumpster fabric we salvaged long ago because this Singer was practically going to run itself. After all…

How hard could it be?

Thread the thing… so easy, right?

Right?

Then just zip the fabric through the machine. Super easy.

Now tie off the edges and TA DA! You’ve got yourself a certified-gen-u-wine… curtain panel… Way to go, Mrs Ross.

Repeat, repeat, repeat… like 200 times. Repeat. Boom. Done.

Easy.

Peasy.

Lemon-squeazy.

Except that I wound up instead with a broken machine, a horrified repair man, an emu nest, a partially finished curtain panel (just 199 and 1/2 left to go) and now a new bill for a machine that is ‘virtually indestructible.’

Do emus even make nests? Now I’m here wondering if they just plop those eggs out onto the bare ground.

Hmmm…. I’ll have to look that up. Regardless… if an emu fancied a nest, have I got a deal for them. Little bit-a brocade fabric, mountain of thread… wait until you see the bolts of fabric tossed into the back corner of the santuary’s southeast corner… right this way… very fanciful stuff we got here.

I’ll even give them a deal.

“Well where do we get one?” All the other emus want to know… because duh… look at this gorgeous nest.

“Well my friends… line up… because this machine practically runs itself and I’ve got some time, zero skills, and a shitload of fabric…”

I just don’t have the machine right now… because John, who drives all over western New York, driving five to six hours, 450 miles - (did you know that?) picking up sewing machines for folks like me, has got mine.

I think…

Sometimes he says, “I skip a week… on account of all the miles.”

Same, John.

Same.

Not threaded properly here. Chaos was already well underway at this point…

Gertrude… John’s favorite machine.

These are John’s stitches… well the good ones. The white ones are his and the yellow is mine. Things went downhill from here.

How gorgeous is this??? That’s rhetorical. It’s fucking gorgeous. I’m going to be… I will be… how’s that for positive manifestation(?) making eight panels for the four windows upstairs in the belfry bedroom. These are going to look incredibly beautiful against the indigo / navy blue we plan on painting it. Swoon…

Here’s a better view of this fabric. The curtain panels are HUGE. I believe the’re a good ten and a half feet long. The eight of them are very heavy. Working on laundering them… one by one. Ottoman approves. Maybe I can make a bed cover for him with the left overs. Well look at me Betsy Rossing the hell out of this shit in my little make-believe reality. :)