Militant Millie Mondays

So Diana calls and asks if I want to scab for this quilting class she and another friends signed up for in exoburbia Eagan. Turns out other friend has babysitting and monetary issues which interfere, blah blah blah... not to diminish her situation, but it's my story and none of that stuff is funny anyhow.

Sure, why not, I say. I have tons of bad crafting habits that a formal class will only further indemnify into my persona.

Class is Mondays. It starts at 6. In Eagan. Now, I'm by no means a workaholic. I love my job and I dedicate a lot of time and energy to it. But I put in my 40-ish hours and go home. I leave work around 4:30 most days, I'm home by 5, even if I putz picking up Paige and John and dinner. So, 6 sounds reasonable.

However, let it now be known that even if I LIKED exoburbian track homes the color of diaper-rash ointment and constructed from cardboard and pvc tubing (and if you haven't already picked up on it, I don't), the drive to and from exoburbia alone would kill me. I have twice attempted to leave my little slice of 120x44 foot city lot heaven in the afternoon to get to Eagan for said class, and I have now decided that there is no way (short of airborne transportation) that any reasonable, non-politically pivotal human with can traverse the 20 miles from Minneapolis to Eagan in less than an hour, unless they have a secret service detachment assigned to their motorcade.

Di and I are less fortunate. Our political aspirations fall just short of voting for Nader a 3rd time, we don't get secret service. Maybe Burger King's secret sauce on my khakis, but that's about as close as we get. Anyway, we tried the freeway. No dice, we're 20 minutes late. We tried city streets. We moved, but still 15 minutes late.

All that travelling is greeted by our wonderful teacher - militant millie.
Millie, our quilting instructor, is about 180. She's hunched in half because she's spent her whole life finger-pressing flying geese seams or some such quilting crap I don't really care about. Millie is a quilting PURIST. Wait, scratch that. PURITAN. The woman has one way of doing things. Her way. Deviate from it - and you're humiliated in front of the class. Honest to God. I've never attended Catholic school, but this is as close as I ever want to come to being taught something by a ruler-carrying old woman who definitely hasn't seen the sweet sweet love of a good man in a while.

Case in point: I'm big on not wasting fabric. I've got a house and kid and car and dogs and shoes to buy and I just can't be wasting money on fabric I cut to shreds, right? So, color crayons do the trick. A company PAYS me to envision things and get them right, and generally speaking, I do. So what's the problem?

I'm not doing it Militant Millie's way, is the problem.

WHAP!

Now, I've got my fabric in shreds, I'm being chided for not having the right sewing machine and not having the right kind of focal fabric and wearing a tshirt and not being 70 and why isn't my machine computerized and why don't I want to pay 80 more dollars for different fabric and AAAAAIIIIIHHHHHH! It's primal scream time because I have 12 more militant millie mondays and I can't even sit next to di and snicker for most of them because we have to drive through the vast expanse of urban sprawl to get there and for god's sake, some of us have to work for a living to feed our expensive quilt habit!

I can't wait til my quilt is done so I can give it away and never again think about it.