These boots are made for walking

Something absolutely terrible happen a couple of months ago. I resolved that my cute black wedge-heel boots were not worth trying to salvage.

They're just a cheap pleather pair I picked up off an online garage sale page for $2, but I loved them. Like it often does, the pleather coating was separating from the fabric.

That's just one spot. It was happening all over the front part of the boot. I had a lot going on at the time, and let's face it, my recon stash is so big that it's a miracle my husband still currently tolerates it.

I resolved myself to simply give them away. They were tossed in the back of my Jeep, aka Box, in anticipation of meeting with their new owner. The woman who wanted them, however, proved difficult to meet with. Since I live in south Texas, and this was during the heat of our summer, the boots literally melted togethor.

I sadly do not have pictures of the great mess that they were. I was too upset over it to think to take any.

I know it sounds silly, to be that damn upset over a pair of shoes, but for me, it's much more than that. Pretty much every piece of clothing I own, with the exception of my legging collection and my undies, are things I have made from other things. . . mostly t-shirts.

Even my wedding dress was made completely of discarded t-shirts I obtained from a local thrift store. I know other people who use new items to reconstruct or upcycle, and while I do this from time to time, I prefer everything I use be used (and this would be I don't recon undies!)

The head-thingy and my bouquet were also made from t-shirt. So were our decorations. The base was just a simple dress I made from t-shirts, and then I hand-stitched flowers from strips of t-shirt. The top part of the dress, the flowers are tacked down. The rest of the dress the flowers were left fluffy. Yes, it was all done by hand and with t-shirts. Yes, it took as long as you're thinking.



I could have bought a dress. I could have bought a new pair of boots. I actually have other boots, and oddly enough I had a dress I had purchased as a back up dress in case my wedding project didn't turn out.



I don't reconstruct stuff just for the end product. It's not just what I make, but how I and from what I make it. I work with used materials, things nobody wanted. It was something I did as a little girl, playing in the scrap fabric bits of my mom and my grandmother. As a teen, I think I was just so used to using leftover bits that it was just normal for me.



As an adult, I got really into reconstructing clothing after the end of my first marriage. Part of it was the freedom to be able to do such. Cutting stuff up like I do simply wouldn't have been an option then. It was also in part to the fact that I found myself with an abundance of used clothing, from well-meaning friends trying to supply me with a work wardrobe, that just didn't fit right.



There was a deeper part though. A part that has followed me, and now looking back, it's always been there, even in other parts of my life. It's a pull to take the unneeded, the unwanted, and make it something new, something unique, and most of all, something needed.




That is why I made my wedding dress out of t-shirts.



I couldn't bring myself to throw the boots away. I tucked them away sadden that in my next purge of my stash, they would likely end up in the trash. The melted boots came at a bad time though. Shortly after that, I received a bit of shocking news. The same news that sent me into my emotional mess that led to the adoption of Riot. I was upset. When I'm upset, tearing into t-shirts makes me feel better. But those damn melted boots were at the top of my pile. I started ripping the coating off them.



It then came to me that since the coating came off easy enough, and still seemed to be okay on other parts of the boots, that they could be painted.



So I did.

They turned out well. I used just a small, and cheap, bottle of fabric paint.

They, of course, had to be purple.



I know it's just a pair of damn boots. Maybe I've taken one too many English literature class, looking for symbols and deeper meanings where there are none, but my pretty new boots came at a time to remind me what it is I do.


I save shit other people toss out, and this time, I got a kick ass pair of boots out of it.

When God gives you a kitten

I haven't been myself lately. Call it depression. Call it a funk. Whatever the hell it's been, I don't like it very much. It sucks. The world kind of sucks. Random crying. Not being able to sleep. Not being able to write. Not being able to eat (and yet that hasn't sped up the removal of body squish). I've spent way too much time thinking about situations I can't control. I've had too many discussions with God lately that have involved cuss words. Have I mentioned it has sucked?

Then the other night, my husband and I heard a tiny little cry from inside the boat next to our house, and we found this tiny kitten.

First, we're not cat people. I prefer dogs, which explains our fur-baby Assie the awesome pibble. It was clear that this little kitty had been abandoned by his mom. He (we haven't decided the kitty's gender for sure, but I'm now thinking we have a boy) is likely only about 4 weeks. He still needs lots of milk and walks on little wobbly legs.

But something inside my head kind of clicked. We couldn't leave him out there all alone. We went out there to check on him. He was so scared that it took a while to get him to come out to us. One look at the tons of free kittens on our town's pet page, told us how unlikely it would be to find him a nice, safe home.

We named him Riot.

He knows how to re-purpose t-shirt scraps. He likes to use them as blankets.

He likes to play with t-shirt scraps too.

He likes to watch me write.

He likes to help me write.

He falls asleep watching South Park.

He likes to cuddle.

He's really playful.

I still don't like cats all that much, but this one is kind of cute. There is something about seeing another living creature be so helpless that can snap you out of any strange head space. Putting energy into something I can't control is useless, but I can control helping a little kitten. I can do something in that situation. Adopting one little kitten isn't going to change how much the world might suck.

But Riot doesn't think the world sucks.

That makes me feel better.

Winter is coming

Okay, so I live in south Texas, so it's more like, less hot summer is coming. I also get cold really easy, but I hate regular winter clothes. Enter a new recon project: the hooded scarf.

I got the idea from this blog. 

There's nothing wrong with the original project, but it called for me to go get actual fabric. Yeah, not this little recon girl. I used a t-shirt for mine. 

There's there thrift store shirt I used. I paid .10 cents for it, and this project allowed me to not use the part with the stain. The shirt I used was a 3x, so it was the perfect size for a scarf for me. If you use a t-shirt, make sure the shirt you use doesn't have side seams.

First, I chopped the bottom seam off. Then I slit it right under the armpits.

I used a hoodie to cut out the hood just like the original project. I never use chalk to draw out my cuts. You'll like want to.

Then I was left with something like this. I sewed now open back of the hood. Turned it inside out, and I have a hooded scarf.

Here I am with a finished scarf I made. I added a little t-shirt flower to the side from some scraps I had in my recon stash. It can be worn with the hood up to protect my ears (since I'm forever getting colds this time a year), or I can tuck the hood under the scarf and it looks just like a scarf.

I love being a tutor

My day job is at a local community college as a writing tutor, or writing consultant as we've recently changed our title to. It's much snazzier and doesn't have the same negative connotation that the word “tutor” can often carry. I love my day job. 

I'm also a mom as I've mentioned in previous posts. My children are 8 and 10. Often people are startled by the fact that both of my children frequently complete works of writing here at home. My children have been creating pieces of writing from the time they started being able to write groups of words together to form sentences. We do momma school during the summer, which normally includes several papers. When my children have behaviral issues, as all children do, a normal part of their punishment is to write a paper about the issue or a letter if their behavior impacted someone such as a teacher. 

This week my little padawan made some poor choices at school. As a result, he was told to write a letter to his teacher. I know what you're thinking; this practice is going to make my children hate writing. I disagree. In fact, the actions of my children also disagree with that statement. November is just around the corner, and this year both of my children are excited for National Novel Writing Month's Young Writer's program or NaNoWriMo's YWP. I do not think my children would be so excited for the challenge of writing a short story and novelette if they hated writing.

My children don't just get to scribble out a rough when I've given them an assignment though, be it part of momma school or as part of a punishment. No, my children have to produce at least one rough draft and work with a tutor to develop that draft. Good thing they have a tutor living in the next room. My children have also been having writing sessions for as long as they've been writing.

I've had other parents remark that it must be very difficult to be my own children's writing tutor. It might be one day. Right now though, it's not, and I contribute that to how I handle sessions with my children. I do not normally work with young children. In fact, I have actually turned down requests from other people asking me to work with their children. My youngest student at work is normally 16. The only younger writers I have ever worked with have been my own kids. So how do I change my tutoring style to accommodate my young children?


The short answer is I don't.

I might adjust the levels of concerns to accommodate where they are as writers, but I'd do the same thing for my college writers. When I first started, I did shorter sessions with my children than I would at work, but I've even decided that practice was unnecessary. Our normal session time at work is 30 to 45 minutes. My son's session tonight was 45 minutes. He'll have several 45 minute sessions this weekend before his letter is finished. 

Tonight we focused on organizational issues because his letter was all over the place. his writing was also rather redundant as he repeated the same basic details and added far too many "very"s in there to hit his required page length. Yeah, guess what the average college student does when they have an assignment they don't want to do with a length requirement they have to hit? Guess what I do in the same situation?


My son is a writer, and there is no reason to treat him like anything else. During our session, my son and I both had pens. Guess which pen was used the most? It wasn't mine.


I encouraged my son to read his rough draft to me. My son works best when he reads the paper to me. It's the opposite of how both me and my daughter do things. He knew to read slowly. He knew I'd be circling things on his paper as we went. He knew we'd talk about each thing I marked. He knew I'd want to talk about the big stuff (or the hard stuff as he calls it) before we looked at other things. He also knew that it was okay for him to stop reading to ask a question.

My eight-year-old child stopped reading a letter he didn't want to write to ask me to remind him what the rule for commas was when you used a conjunction because he "heard a pause" when he was reading.


What my son had to write was not something fun. One of the main reasons he had to write the letter was because we knew that the writing of the letter would force him to slow his racing eight-year-old thoughts down to really think about his behavior. That is not something fun to write. That sucks to write.

My son was smiling for the first time since getting in trouble because he knew he was having a productive session, and he felt accomplished. He wasn't proud of his actions this week. He wasn't proud that he had to write about them. He was proud that he could communicate to his teacher how much he regretted his behavior and how he planned to do things differently. My son was proud that we were working to make those jumbled up eight-year-old thoughts into something that made sense to him when he read it to me.

Will this letter be perfect? No. Will this letter be something written on the academic level of a college student? No. He's eight. It'll be written on the academic level of an eight-year-old, who took the time to revise.


My children will grow up to be writers because I've always treated them like writers. And even if the only things my son ever writes is Star Wars fanfiction, assigned papers, and apology letters, I know I'm giving him the tools to be the best writer he can strive to be.