I have stubby legs, relatively speaking. Not stubbly, just kinda short proportionally. One effect of this is that it’s hard to get legwear in my size. Shopping for jeans/slacks is annoying, and pajama bottoms are even worse because they don’t really do those by measurements, they’re just… “here, this is a roughly standard size, hope you like it because that’s what you’re getting.” But I work from home, so I’m in pajamas a lot. Thus owning a selection of options.

One pair of pajama bottoms which started out way too long was hemmed by a kind and caring person with a sewing machine, and boy is that nice, having a nice comfy pair of jammies that fits perfectly.

Another pair, we tried using some kind of iron-on tape product. It… kinda sorta worked, until it stopped working. And thus that pair of pajamas remained in an unusable state for the better part of a year.

And that bothered me.

I’d set myself a few modest goals for this late-autumn vacation, among which was: Learn just enough about sewing to be able to fix this situation by hand, myself.

And thanks to the Internet, I actually did so! I mean, the stitching is ragged as hell (no, I refuse to share pictures) but it held up through the washer & dryer cycle and seems to be sturdy enough. The proof will be when I wear them next, which will probably be early next week. (Our weather’s a bit too warm for the heavier fabric options right now. A balmy near-winter we’re having. But hey climate change is a myth right?)

I did a thing! All on my own, if you don’t count the various folks whose instructional materials I made use of! I’m kinda proud of it.

“We’ll go hang out somewhere, indoors, where there’s food. It’ll be great!”

And here I am, desperate for socialization yet diabetic as hell and guess what, COVID still exists and will still definitely do its best to kill me like it’s killing hundreds every week still yes even now despite what the official organizations are pointedly not telling you, and since keeping a mask on while watching other people eat and stressing constantly about whether my mask’s seal is good enough isn’t one of my favorite pasttimes, I’ll have to pass on that invite, which sucks because I don’t get invited to things hardly ever to begin with and turning down invitations is a great way to make invitations even less frequent.

Sigh.

But that doesn’t make it fun.

Monday afternoon I got the second of the two parts of the “Shingrix” vaccine, a shingles preventative. The first round was a couple months ago during my semi-annual doctor check-up, and that knocked me on my ass for two solid days. This time? Only one solid day of aches all over and a head stuffed full of wool. That’s an improvement, right?

I also got my latest COVID jab and the flu jab a couple weeks ago. Am I getting used to needles? (No. Not really. I’m just less of a wimp about it now.)

All in a good cause, mind you. I don’t want the real thing, flu or Coronavirus or shingles or any of it. So, this is me, once again trying to stay out ahead of any of that garbage.