Prisoner of 2nd Avenue...

This pic is how I've felt today.  It's the fire escape outside my rear window.  I tried desperately to get out of the apartment.  Tried to escape.  I didn't make it though.  I haven't, except once this week.

Last night I went to dinner with Mark and Holly LaRocco and their kid, Chad and Val Rawlinson and Chad's kid sister and her husband.  It was a little weird to see his sister as a married adult.  I taught her swim lessons when she was about three feet tall.  We went to Crown Burger.  M. Russel Ballard was there, eating with his wife.

Dinner was the first time I'd seen Chad in a few years.  We emailed back and forth from time to time about motorcycles mostly, then at about the same time I lost my job and he and his wife lost a pregnancy in the third trimester.  We wrote a series of really emotionally fraught emails.  Then we just stopped, and I worried I'd dug in too deeply with him when he was still too raw.  His experience was worse than mine.  Really hard.

Anyway, it was nice seeing them.  And it was good to get out.  I really tried hard today.  Really hard.

Before dinner I went to the library, and after to Lowe's.  I went to Lowe's to get something to use as spreader bars for the hammock I made with my Mom and Dad over Christmas.

I made Dad do all the math of measuring.  It is pretty complex.  Then Mom helped a lot with the sewing.  It was a bit of a mess.  We ended up not having enough fabric, and other odds and ends.  It was a bit of a hassle.  Both Mom and Dad had minor meltdowns at various points.  I was really grateful for their help.

It is relatively easy to tell the seams Mom did, and the ones I did.  I did the one above.  You can see how two seams became one.  Not so straight.  The one below was Mom's.  Very straight.  But I got a lot better as time went on.

This is the final product.  Not bad if I do say so myself.  It's just good that we changed methods on the second end cap vs the first.  It gave a little more room at the foot, which ended up being necessary.