Mr. Gazebo

Good morning, my dear, dear friends. My wife had a come-to-Jesus word with me last night. Yea, THAT serious.

Do you remember Scrappy February when we made 42 quilt tops? I’ve quilted 23 of them and have 19 yet to do. I know that for a fact. She counted. And told me the number. With gestures that added punctuation I’ve rarely seen before from anyone, let alone my saintly wife.

“Come here,” she then ordered. “Here! Look here!” She jabbed her finger in the direction of a basket. “There were 13 quilts in the basket from before you had that harebrained idea for that Scrappy February fiasco.”

She paused, but I did not think it wise to reply. Turned out she had more to say.

“What kind of loony tune has gotten into you?”

I looked to see if she expected an answer to her question. Turned out she had already hurried on.

“Do the math,” she ordered.

Okay. Umm, 19 plus 13 equals 32.

“What’s the answer?” she demanded.

I almost took a half step backwards, but held my ground. “Umm, 32,” I mumbled.

“At least the portion of your brain that does arithmetic still functions.”

By this time we were way past serious to … uh … I don’t know what to call it, but we were WAY past serious.

She grabbed my arm and led me to the sofa where she had piled the 41 quilts made on National Quilting Day. “See what you’ve gone and done,” she said. “Do you see that?”

I nodded, but didn’t dare say a word.

“It’s bad enough that you can’t keep up with me! Then you go and invite folks to join the whoop-de-do and they do in one day what took me a whole month. I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

I nodded again. Maybe that wasn’t necessary.

“Do the math!”

Let’s see: 19 + 13 + 41 = 73.

Yes, my dear, dear friends, I have 73 quilt tops just waiting for quilting. And there are 7 more quilt kits that went out on Saturday that may come back this week. That would be 80 quilt tops patiently waiting for a turn on the longarm quilting machine. Guess I’ll be busy and staying out of trouble for a while. I hope … that staying-out-of-trouble part.

So, here’s the deal, she says, now speaking with a more gentle tone. She says I need some accountability. With a capital A, she says. She told me that I WILL post every day to Facebook to let y’all know if I’m making progress. Kind of like an AA group, I suppose.

Now, you might think I’m being shamed, a social media kind of public flogging. But you would be wrong. That’s not it at all. No, she says that I have one more chance. One more — she repeated those words. I know what that is. That’s grace, the one more chance part.

But here’s where it started getting intense again.

“I’m giving you 34 days, Mr. Gazebo” — that doesn’t sound right; maybe she said Bizarro.  “I’m giving you until April 20, Mr. Bizarro. That’s Holy Saturday. Either you have this mess you created cleaned up or there’ll be no resurrection for you … never ever.”

In the moment, I believed she could make it happen.

Oh, wait, she said Bucko, not Gazebo. And she didn’t use the mister part, just “34 days, Bucko.”

So 73 is where we start. I’ll add to that number as the remaining quilt tops come in. She has promised not to add anything to the pile herself until I clear the decks. I’m immensely grateful for simple gifts like that. I’ll subtract the ones that I get done. Check in often for the running total. And I have 34 days to quilt 73 (maybe 80) quilts or eternal oblivion.

The one good thing that comes to mind is that for the next few weeks I won’t be sent to my room to sit and think about what I’ve “gone and done.” The longarm quilting machine is in the basement.

So let’s get started.

Hi, my name is Keith and I’m a quilter. I have 34 days to quilt 73 quilts or else … poof.