Sorry I've been quiet around here. I've been quiet everywhere else, too. One reason is that my throat is still sore from the dratted cold that lingers and lingers, so talking hurts. Another reason is work life has been taking my full attention. A therapist friend of mine told me that in their profession there's a term of the trade called "compassion fatigue". Aha. In my world I think it is curiosity fatigue, or extraversion fatigue. So many interesting conversations during the day that I'd rather listen, or read, or watch a movie, or nuzzle with the dog in the hours when I'm not working.
But I wanted to show you something I did that was fun. I made these custom sun visor covers for a guy in my carpool. It's kind of a long story, but maybe that's part of the fun. One of our carpoolers has an older little Honda, and his sun visor has gotten all ratty and tattered. So I schemed up this ridiculous idea, that we should crochet him a visor cover. And I ganged up with a couple of other carpoolers and we just played with the idea, making it more ridiculous. We decided the visor covers should be reversible, and silly. We decided they should have a means of displaying offensive bumper stickers, because that's a topic of conversation in the carpool from time to time. We went on a field trip to the fabric store and we chose four fabrics that we thought were funny. We sent one of our carpoolies to our victim's car to measure his visor covertly. We met for a day of sewing on a Saturday morning -- I brought bagels, another person brought notions: fringe, colored buttons. We all contributed funny bumper stickers and sewed in different sized clear pockets (made of ziploc bags) on the visor covers so you could insert a baseball card or a bumper sticker or a business card if you wanted. And we made lots and lots of them, so not only our original recipient but everyone in the carpool could have one if we wanted. We all met for lunch in the campus dining hall and presented them in a big ceremonious box to our mystified carpool friend.
The whole thing was fun. It was a secret, and it was silly, and it was social, and it was a little bit of a prank. It was elaborate, and it required excursions: to the fabric store (have you been to a fabric store lately? What an interesting place) and to a carpool member's house for a sewing breakfast. It involved making something, and I now have this funny reminder on my sun visor of the oddball people in my carpool and the bizarre conversations we have on our commutes. As I've been thinking about Fun these are factors that I've noticed are rewarding and novel. So I'm kind of proud of this little sun visor project.
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