Torianna's Corner

This is my official “I have nothing worth writing about and/or no time to write it” vanity post. From now on, whenever my schedule is so busy that I don’t feel I have time to come up with something interesting in a timely manner, I’ll publish “Vanity Post #14 — my version of Chuck Lorre’s vanity card #111.

For this vanity post, I am borrowing the concept behind Chuck Lorre’s vanity card #111, which begins as follows:

“This is the official ‘I have nothing worth writing about’ vanity card. It will run whenever I have nothing worth writing about.”

However, I am going to add to it by saying:

“From now on, whenever my schedule is so busy that I don’t feel I have time to come up with something interesting in a timely manner, I’ll publish “Vanity Post #14″ — my version of Chuck Lorre’s vanity card #111.”

Because I’m borrowing from the original creator of “vanity cards”, it didn’t take me 110 previous vanity cards to figure out when I either have nothing to say or no time to say it. It only took me 13 previous “vanity posts” AND one very busy day to realize that I needed my own version of #111.

Just know that more original vanity posts WILL be “coming soon”, so stay tuned for more.

Happy “National Sewing Machine Day”!

Did you know that…

• “before the invention of the sewing machine, tailors and sewists [seamstresses] created clothing by hand, one stitch at a time”?
• “the invention of the sewing machine brought about revolutionary change”?
• many men, such as Thomas Saint, William Newton Wilson, Walter Hunt, John Greenough, Isaac Singer, and Elias Howe, invented various kinds of sewing machines — going all the way back to 1790?
• “industrial use of the sewing machine reduced the burden placed on housewives, moving clothing production from them and seamstresses to large-scale factories?” [Because I don’t like much of what these “large-scale factories” (especially those located overseas) are putting out these days, I’m going to be putting MY sewing machine to work as I start making my own clothes again.]
• “quilters across America [of which I am one] are also known as sewing machine experts” AND that not all quilters use sewing machines?

Well… According to the folks at nationaldaycalendar.com, all of these are true!

While perusing my e-mail this evening, I came across a message from the GreenStalk folks, which mentioned something I want to try this year:

a “Pizza Sauce Planter”.

I would dedicate one of my eight 3-tier GreenStalk vertical planters to be a “Pizza Sauce Planter”, and it would contain all of the plants needed to make homemade pizza sauce, including:

• Roma tomatoes,
• Basil,
• Oregano,
• Thyme,
• Rosemary,
• Marjoram, and…
• a couple of others that I WON’T be putting into MY pizza sauce: jalapeno peppers and sweet banana peppers (since I don’t like either of them.).

I think I’m going to like growing the makin’s for my own homemade pizza sauce because Sweet Thing and I definitely LOVE pizza.

Hmmm… I think I’d better also have a planter that’s dedicated to salads since I always try to have a big bowl of salad whenever I eat pizza. So, yeah… I see a pizza sauce planter AND a salad planter in my garden this year.

To end this Vanity Post about gardening, I’m going to share a quote from Gertrude Jekyll (pronounced JEE-kill), a famous Victorian gardener/garden designer:

“A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfullness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all, it teaches entire trust.”

~ Gertrude Jekyll ~

This morning, I was reading the local newspaper that Sweet Thing had brought home for me, and I discovered an article that made me angry, which had this headline:

“Postal rates are expected to go up 4.8% in July

Here’s the text of that article:

“The U.S. Postal Service has announced mailing and shipping adjustments that, if approved by the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), will go into effect on July 12, 2026.

Mailing rate changes include:

• First-Class stamp: Increase from 78¢ to 82¢
• Metered 1-oz letters: Increase from 74¢ to 78¢ maintaining the 4¢ savings
• Domestic postcards: Increase from 61¢ to 65¢
• Certified Mail fee: $5.30 to $5.55
• Average increase: 4.8% across mailing services
• Forever stamp: $0.78 to $0.82 (+5.1%)
• Postcard stamp: $0.61 to $0.64 (+4.9%, pending final tables)
• Additional-ounce price: Unchanged at $0.29
• Marketing Mail letters (commercial): 5-6% increase, varies by presort
• Nonprofit Marketing Mail letters: Lower increases, varies by presort
• Periodicals (Newspapers): Increases averaging 5-7%.

The 4.8% average is one of the larger mailing-services increases of the past decade.“

This article was the main cause of my “anger before breakfast”, but close to the above-mentioned article was another that caught my attention — about “traffic safety checkpoints” being announced. I just hope they don’t pop up on my way to/from one of the many upcoming appointments I have in town! Don’t want to be late to any of these appointments by being stopped at one of these “traffic safety checkpoints”!

Maybe I don’t want to read any more newspapers…

Had a rough night (thanks to LOTS of wandering thoughts that kept me awake much of the night) AND I had to get out of bed earlier than usual. So… I felt exhausted almost from the moment I woke up this morning.

However, I did manage to get myself to the first crafting session of Summer 2026 — despite being VERY tempted to stay in bed and skip it. Today’s craft project was the making of an armchair caddie — something I plan to keep on my end of the couch in an attempt to keep track of such things as my PDA and pens (both of which I’m constantly losing — mostly by putting them down in strange places that I then don’t remember). So, yeah… I’m hoping the armchair caddie I made (that reminds me of my shower curtain, actually) will help me keep better track of these things — and whatever else I decide to keep in it since it does have FOUR pockets in it!

As I was selecting fabric for today’s craft project, I immediately fell in love with a pretty print fabric. Sadly, though, it wasn’t big enough for today’s project. However, I thought it would be perfect for a vest, so I purchased it for $1.00 ! I’m determined to add a vest to the new capsule wardrobe I’m in the process of assembling, so I can wear it to one of the upcoming crafting or “quilt-along” sessions to show ’em what I did with that dollar’s worth of fabric.

Anyway… As Liz, the instructor for this crafting session, was explaining the project to me, I immediately thought that it reminded me of something I had asked her to make for me: a cover for my spiral-bound notebooks! After my discussion with her about that project, I had done an online search for such covers, and I found one that I was going to try — one that looked exactly like today’s armchair caddie project. So… Now, I’m thinking about modifying today’s project and then turning it into a cover for my spiral-bound notebooks as a way to make these notebooks less modern-day and more old-fashioned.

I managed to make it through the rest of the day — thanks to LOTS of dozing on my end of the couch, with my new armchair caddie holding both my PDA and at least one pen! I’m content.

Back in my younger days, I used to hate Mondays — as did almost every working person — since Mondays meant having to get up early for the start of yet another work week. Thankfully, my feelings towards Mondays have changed. Lately, they’ve been feeling a lot like Sundays.

However, I just realized something: With my Mondays feeling like Sundays, nothing has really changed. I STILL have to get up early the next day! The main difference is that I’m getting up early for something fun!

Hmmm… I hope what I just wrote makes sense.

As the title of this post indicates, I experienced MORE “technical difficulties… AGAIN! When will they ever end?

Maybe if/when I STOP relying on technology so much…