Does anyone make their own clothes anymore? I’m talking about the kind of sewing that involves choosing a pattern, buying fabric and constructing an entire piece of clothing at home. And the women wearing the very homemade-looking shirtwaist dresses in that weird polygamist Mormon cult don’t count. They obviously know how to make a sewing machine work.

My question about whether anyone still sews came to mind when I was in a JoAnn Fabric store last week shopping for buttons for a sweater that I had knit. On my way to the button aisle in the back of the store, I walked past the bolts of fabrics and a mannequin modeling a jacket and dress made from a Butterick pattern.

Did I stop for a moment to see if the outfit had any potential as something I might wear? Nope. The thought that ran through my mind was that I could probably find something more stylish for less than the cost of the fabric next door at Target. And I could wear it right away without investing hours of time to make it.

And over the years as I’ve chatted with other moms, I have never once met one who said they made any of their own clothes or their kids’ clothes. Is sewing an archaic skill that no body does anymore like changing your own oil?

I know how to sew so making something like I saw on the mannequin is fully within my skills. It was my sister who taught me how to sew although if she hadn’t, I would have learned the basics in my “home economics” class in junior high. Instead of a computer lab…because there was no such thing as a personal computer back then…my school had a classroom with 20 sewing machines and all girls were required to take basic sewing.

I actually loved the sewing class because it was a chance to show off my more advanced sewing skills. I clearly remember many of the fabrics I used and the outfits I made. I was very proud of wearing something I had made that fit well and showed no hint of being homemade. It didn’t get much better for me than perfectly straight rows of parallel topstitching on my pocket flaps.

But it’s been decades since I seriously considered making an item of clothing for myself. Who has the time and motivation when there are so many options for places to buy relatively well-made clothing that’s not expensive which I can try on so I know that it’s going to fit?

And young women these days don’t know how to sew. My own daughters are examples of that. Where I work, I’ve become the go-to person when a pair of pants needs to be hemmed. When I sewed on a button in about 30 seconds, everyone reacted as if I had performed magic.

Knowing that I was pondering sewing, Steve kept an eye out on Craig’s List for me. In the course of a week, he forwarded about 10 requests for people looking for sewing help of varying degrees.

So…since women like me who can follow a pattern to sew a skirt or dress choose not to, and girls of my daughters’ generation aren’t learning how to sew, I come back to my original question of who is buying the fabric and patterns?

In the next week, I’m going to do a little research to see if I can get an answer.

The horrific earthquake that devastated Haiti and the – by comparison – the seismic love tap that  Humboldt County recently experienced have renewed my appreciation for my situation. I experienced the 1989 Loma Prieta temblor that at one point closed down both the Bay and Golden Gate bridges and I remember the feeling of shock and disbelief I felt at the time. Yes, these feelings hardly compare with what the Haitian survivors are going through. All the more reason for me to thank God that we are safe and warm, that my children are well and accounted for, and that Steve and I are healthy. I am truly blessed.

Sometimes when were sitting on the couch and our three cats are happily snoozing on our laps and our dog is contently stretched out across her dog bed, we’ll comment on how amazing it is that people choose to invite animals into their house…and how much we love them in spite of the snags and spots in the carpet.

So it’s a sad day for us when it becomes apparent that one of them is coming to the end of its life.

On the way home from our walk on Saturday, our 11-year-old German shepherd, Xena,  tweaked her hips as she turned to greet another dog. Her right back leg gave out from under her and she couldn’t regain any strength in it. Taking a few steps at a time, she was able to wobble slowly back home.

We were lucky to be able to get an appointment with the vet later that morning and as the vet explained it, there is inflammation surround some nerves so basically, she doesn’t have feeling in her legs and that’s why she can’t get them underneath her. Also, as is common in shepherds, she has always had bad joints and there is degeneration because of her age. We left with some anti-inflammatory medication that might or might not improve her condition.

We are thankful that for now, her appetite is good and she doesn’t seem to be a pain. It’s just painful for us to watch her move with such extreme difficulty.

We’ve never been through this process with a pet who has been such an important part of our family. Tears were shed when my daughter’s two pet rats died, but we didn’t feel much of a loss when the numerous fish and fire-belly toad came to the end of their lives; I find it a lot harder to feel a connection with a creature that doesn’t have fur to stroke.

We want to do the right thing for Xena so I’ll be calling the vet tomorrow to get some advice. In the meantime, all we can do is look into her brown eyes and tell her the truth, “You’re a good dog.”

As our daughter began the college application process this fall, I was surprised at the many letters she got in the mail from colleges near and far encouraging her to apply to that particular school. All the letters were crafted to make the schools and their academic and social opportunities sound as attractive as possible.

Some of the letters even started to resemble the credit card offers we used to get by the dozen when credit was cheap and easy. But instead of offering “0% interest for 12 months,” they were offering her “No application fee and we’ll waive the essay requirement!” Unless she gets a letter that screams, “Full-ride for four years!” she just puts the letters into the “Thanks, but no thanks” file.

Just like when we got credit card offers because of our credit score, Valerie is getting these letters because of her score – but in her case it’s her SAT and ACT scores, GPA, class rank and AP scores. Apparently for those colleges, as well as some of the UC’s, she would be accepted based solely on her strong numbers.

But for the private schools, high test scores alone aren’t enough to ensure acceptance.  They’re putting together a freshman class that has a mix of strengths and interests – and even a little bit of quirkiness. After going to a number of presentations by the schools, I came away with the impression that they review the student’s applications as if they are developing a guest list for a really interesting party. Test scores are important but they also want kids who can do more than use a #2 pencil to fill in the correct bubble.

So, if that’s the case, how do you showcase your student beyond just what can be recorded on an application form? In a sense, how do you market a student? And placing an ad in the school’s newspaper probably isn’t the best way.

Since Steve is in the marketing business, it wasn’t a big leap for him to come up with the idea of making a video of Valerie. We interviewed her on camera talking about what she is passionate about and what she hopes to get from her college experience. In editing it, Steve cut in some samples of her art portfolio as she talked about specific pieces.

Are we being stage parents who think their daughter is so special that an admissions director has to see a film of her in order to fully appreciate who she is as a person? Not entirely. I think it’s more akin to the father of the talented place-kicker who sent videos to 200 schools so they could see his son in action, and as a result, got a full scholarship. Our attitude is that if the schools are willing to take the time to look at the video, it won’t hurt her chances of being accepted and could certainly help.

At this point, we’ve sent a link to the video to admissions directors at two schools. One of these people was out-of-town so we don’t know what his reaction, if any, will be to receiving it. However, the dialogue that followed when the gal at the other school watched it was very interesting.

Steve first got an email back from her basically saying that it was too long and didn’t focus enough on what admissions departments would really be interested in. Steve listened to her comments, edited it down, and exchanged many emails with her. At her request, Steve sent her a revised version. Thinking he was done, he was surprised when a couple of days later, he got an email from her that starts, “I’ve been thinking about Valerie’s video…” and goes onto suggest that he put back in some of the footage he had edited out.

Did the video get the attention of an admissions officer and make Valerie not just a name on an application but a real person to them? Most definitely. Does this mean she’ll be accepted and get lots of financial aid? That’s our hope.

It was about a year ago at this time, that our son began the application process to transfer from the junior college to a four-year school. I remember standing behind him watching him fill out the Common App online. He flew through it as if filling in the answers demanded the same fast-twitch reflexes as a first-person shooter. He hit the “Submit” button while I was still stuttering to say, “Are you sure you don’t want to check your essay for typos one more time?”

It’s hard for me to argue that he should have taken a more considered approach; he got accepted at his first two choices.

Then I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about parents who quit their jobs so they could devote themselves completely to helping their child through the college application process. Based on my experience with our son, this seemed like the higher education version of parents doing their kid’s fourth grade science fair project. Shouldn’t the students be filling out their own applications?

Fast forward a year to our driven, type A(+)daughter’s college application process. After selecting nine potential schools, she created an Excel grid of their due dates, essay requirements, contact info, etc and posted it on her wall. Then the process seemed to come to a halt.

When we would ask her, she said that she wanted to do some more “art” for her college app portfolio. After a couple of weeks of this we realized that she was probably over-whelmed and was using adding to her portfolio as an excuse to put off tackling the immense amount of work to apply. No two schools have exactly the same requirements and navigating her way through complex websites to figure the details was certainly daunting.

Then there are applications themselves…supplemental applications and departmental supplements to the supplemental apps…and all of them require specific essays. And don’t try and take any shortcuts because as the University of Southern California website warns, “We can tell when a recycled essay has been changed only slightly to fit one of the topics.”

With the early action deadline for some of the candidate schools fast approaching, we sat her down and after two hours of “whatevers” and moping, we extracted an admission that she needed our help.

Since that conversation, any time that Valerie isn’t doing homework, has been spent sitting in front of the computer with her as she slogs her way through this tedious process. She’s still the one doing all the work; I just proofread her essays and encourage her as she clicks “Submit” that her hard work will be rewarded.

And here’s good news, she doesn’t even have to wait to find out where she’s been accepted to reap her reward because another two weeks and she’ll mostly be done – after which I’ve promised Valerie and myself a shopping trip to Nordstrom Rack.

Wherever Valerie eventually enrolls, I have now an appreciation for that mom who quit her job to get her daughter into a good school. Applying to college may not be a full-time job, but it certainly feels like it.

I certainly don’t consider myself a foodie yet I felt pang when I read that Gourmet magazine was folding. It’s always a little shocking when something that has been a part of your life and that you feel a connection with dies unexpectedly…whether, as in my case, it’s a magazine, or for millions of people, a celebrity like Michael Jackson.

When I was about 10 years old, I can remember sitting on the couch and looking through Gourmet with my older sister, Carolyn.  She aspired to a more sophisticated style of cooking than the very basic meat-and-potatoes fare that our mother prepared. So when she found a recipe in Gourmet that appealed to her, she cut it out and filed it in a binder under the appropriate tab of soup, salad, appetizer, etc. And then at some point she would cook from the recipes; complicated directions and hard-to-find ingredients never stood in her way.

What I took away from that time with Carolyn was that if you really wanted to be someone who knew about food and entertaining, Gourmet was the essential magazine to read. So when I got married, I began subscribing to it. I pictured myself being the gracious hostess and using recipes from Gourmet for the many dinner parties we were going to have.

My image of evenings filled with luscious food, sophisticated cocktails, and witty conversation turned out to be more fantasy than reality. But even when our children were little and plain pasta and chicken tenders were standard fare, I still looked forward to Gourmet arriving in the mail each month. I would read it cover-to-cover and if I found a recipe I liked, particularly in Gastronomie Sans Argent, I would highlight it in the index with the hope of making it.

The lush Thanksgiving and Christmas issues were like a gift arriving in the mailbox. I loved looking at the tables set with layers-upon-layers of china and reading the recipes that required so many steps to make that a person would have to quit their job to be able to have time to make them. And the gorgeous cookies. I still have on my shelf the December 1992 issue that has the recipe for Biscotti De Greve. Page 164 of that issue is now very splattered and wrinkled; I’ve been making that recipe for biscotti to give as Christmas gifts for the past 17 years.

I had probably been subscribing to Gourmet for more than 20 years when I began noticing changes in it that were certainly the result of Ruth Reichl being hired as editor. The most obvious difference was that the photos in the magazine started to be staged with models. Previously, the photography that accompanied the recipes was only of food; people weren’t shown eating it.

Once the editors added people, the food was no longer the focus. Instead of looking at a gorgeous cake or beautifully plated meal, my eye was drawn to the models who were cast to set the scene. The photos that accompanied recipes for a child’s birthday party or a family gathering all looked so artificial and staged. They always seemed to be saying, “The setting is perfect, the food is perfect, we look perfect and we know it.”

When only the food was photographed, I could have the hope that if I made a particular recipe, my finished product would look as beautiful as the one in their photo. But now, there was no way I could ever measure up to the scene they had set.

It was enough of a turnoff that about two years ago I decided not to renew my subscription.

When I read in the Wall Street Journal article that Condé Nast Publications which owns Gourmet told its editors to only fly first class and stay in top hotels, the editorial attitude of the magazine began to make more sense to me. These people indeed felt privileged and that came through in the magazine. Gourmet’s motto of “Good Living” had become “Smug Living.” That’s not a quality that tends to keep readers.

A few weeks ago, there was an announcement in church that City Ministries of Petaluma had organized a fall clean-up day for October 10. Volunteers were needed to put in a few hours of time to spruce up the city. In advance of the clean-up day, the city departments would come up with a project list and take care of all the behind the scenes organization. All we had to do was show up at the Fairgrounds on 7:30 that morning and pick up our assignments.

When anybody asks for volunteers, you generally won’t find my name on the top of the sign up sheet. But this request was hard to ignore; it was only for the morning, my calendar was clear for the 10^th, I could procrastinate cleaning our own house, and it was an opportunity to give a little something back to the city that has been our home for the past 15 years.

People were already chatting and holding cups of coffee to keep their hands warm when I arrived at the Fairgrounds parking lot. At 8:00, when Mayor Pam welcomed the volunteers and thanked everyone who was involved in the putting the day together, several hundred people – all dressed in grubby clothes and ready to work – had gathered. After a brief blessing was offered on the event, we regrouped to get the details of where we would be working.

I don’t really know the full scope of the jobs that were done, I overheard talk about painting fire hydrants and picnic tables and picking up trash. Our church was assigned to spread mulch around the bases of trees at five different parks and that 10 yards of shredded bark would be waiting for us at each location thanks to good advance planning by the Parks Department. My daughter and I had spread 20 yards of mulch around our backyard last summer, so I felt highly qualified for the task at hand.

We divided ourselves into teams for each of the parks, and since I live on the west side of town, Walnut Park seemed as good a place as any to put my mulch moving skills into action. There were four of us who headed off to Walnut Park and thankfully one who had thought to bring a wheelbarrow. I shot home for reinforcements: more shovels and a couple of garbage cans that are my mulch moving medium of choice.

Experience should have shown me that 10 yards of mulch looks like a deceptively small amount to move. About half way through we were joking that the pile of mulch was like the Bible story about the oil that never runs out because the mulch seemed to be replenishing itself.

We kept at our weeding, hauling, dumping and spreading and in a little less than three hours, the last of the mulch pile was swept up and all the younger trees in the park wore collars of clean mulch.

What did I get out of the day besides sore latissimus dorsi  muscles? An opportunity to get to know some folks in our church who I didn’t know before yesterday, gratification that I took part in an event that beautified Petaluma, and gratitude that I was moved to serve in this small way.

I happened upon some information last week that confirmed what we have found to be the case with our kids and college: it’s harder to get in, and assuming they do get accepted, they are borrowing more to pay for it.

Let me share with you what put this in black and white for me.

Our daughter, Valerie, who is a high school senior, got a brochure in the mail titled “Introducing the University” from the University of California system. Of course, it was filled with photos of good-looking, ethnically-diverse students participating in all sorts of intriguing activities that represent the college experience at a particular UC campus. It was obvious from the happy expressions on their faces that none of them were thinking about their student loans.

The brochure also had a single page for each UC school that gave the 2009 admission profile for freshmen. There was a little pie chart showing the percentage that were accepted and their average high school GPA and SAT scores. This profile page looked familiar so I flipped through my file labeled “General College Info” and there I found the same information except it was for 2003. These pages had been photocopied and handed out at a college information night I attended for our son six years ago.

Now I could compare apples to apples and see if it really was harder to get into a UC in 2009 than it was in 2003. Looking at UC Davis: in 2003 they admitted 56.8% of applicants and the average high school GPA was 3.86. In 2009, the admission percentage was 46.2% and the GPA was 4.0. Next page; UC Irvine. They admitted 53.8% with a 3.89 GPA in 2003, and in 2009, they admitted 42.3% and the average GPA had gone up to 4.01. Wow, they are admitting about 10% fewer applicants. It seems as if only students loading up on AP classes so they can super-size their GPAs should even bother to apply.

In my small statistical comparison, the only UC school which increased its admission percentage was UC Berkeley. They admitted 23.9% of applicants in 2003, and in 2009, they admitted slightly more, 26.6% which is still basically one out of every four applicants. The gates into UC Berkeley have not been flung open; the statistics show that now they are letting in a couple of salutatorians in addition to the masses of valedictorians.

The piece of information that really amazed me about Berkeley and the other big UC schools was the huge numbers of applications that they receive. More than 55,000 students applied to UCLA and almost 50,000 applied to Berkeley.

So that means that these schools are receiving 50,000 or more essays that are supposed to be read and evaluated as part of the selection process. The thought of reading 5,000 or 10,000 essays boggles the mind, but 50,000? And I have to wonder; does the essay that an over-achieving high school student spent hours crafting get the same consideration whether it’s essay number 49,899 or essay number 130?

That leaves me with one piece of advice for my daughter about the process, “Valerie, get your application in early.”

Next week: paying for college.

A few months ago, it seemed like every third phone call that we got on our business line was someone from AT&T asking to speak to the person who handled our phone service. So when they called one day and the alternative to talking to them was paying bills – a task I’ll happily procrastinate doing – I stayed on the phone and agreed to let them review our phone service.

The rep told me that we could get a better deal on our package of phone services if we signed up for AT&T Universal Messaging. And as a thank you, they would send us a $25 Visa gift card. OK, fine. Sign me up.

I hung up and forgot about the entire phone call until a letter from AT&T arrived in the mail a couple of months later. Instead of the usual “your contract is about to expire and your rates could go up” message, enclosed was the promised gift card.

While an unexpected $25 isn’t exactly winning the lottery, I was happy to take the money and run an errand to Target. All the items that I buy there that get entered in the “Household” category in QuickBooks can really add up, so this was the perfect time to use the gift card to shave a little off the total.

At the checkout stand, I handed the AT&T gift card to the cashier and watched the screen so I could feel the victory of saving some money. She swiped it once, and nothing happened. And then again without so much as a penny coming off the $95.36 that I had spent.

Neither the cashier nor her supervisor had an explanation as to why the card wouldn’t go through; I had definitely activated it. Now I felt like $25 had been taken away from me, so I was determined to find out why the card didn’t work.

At home, I retrieved the letter that accompanied the gift card from the trash and called the number for “Card activity.” After I made my way through the phone tree, all I was able to get was an automated voice telling me that I had a negative $15.62 balance. Wait, they’re giving me $25, how did I end up owning them money on a prepaid gift card?

I tried the number for customer service on the letter. After making my way through the phone tree and techno-pop hold music, I was connected with a sweet girl who confirmed, that yes, I had a negative balance. I explained that I had tried to use the card at Target but that it wouldn’t go through. She conferred with her supervisor and said to give it a few days for the transactions to clear and then the card would show the correct balance.

Two weeks later, nothing had changed when I checked the balance online at www.myattgiftcard.com. I called again. I was put on hold again then given a different number to call. I spoke with David (although I’m sure his name was Rajnesh) and he referred me back to the original number. I called again and got the same story.

At this point you may be thinking, why am I pursuing this with such vengeance? It’s not like I’m really out $25; it was money that was never mine in the first place. Two reasons: I’m cheap and I want my $25 and second, I love a challenge. So if it’s me versus AT&T, I’m up for it.

I spoke with four different reps and three different supervisors, until I got one that said that AT&T had sent out a batch of “hot” cards, meaning they actually didn’t have any funds on them. They apologized for the inconvenience and said I could expect to receive a new gift card in about six to eight weeks.

Last week, I got my new card. And when I tried to activate it, I got a recording telling me the status prevents them from activating it and to call the AT&T Customer Care Center.

Yes, I’m conceding defeat. An hour of phone-tree hell made sense if I was at least going to get $25 for my effort. Three hours…not so much. As Cesar Millan says to a bulldog and Steve sometimes has to say to me, “Drop it.”

So how does this experience affect my opinion of AT&T? Did I think more positively about the company before the gift card fiasco? If their goal was to create customer loyalty and generate warm and fuzzy feelings, it had the opposite effect. And these days, companies need all the goodwill they can get.

At the start of summer, our 17-year-old daughter Valerie, made a list of tasks she wanted to accomplish. Close to the top was “Get a car” with money she had saved. The prospect of mom or dad driving her to school during her senior year made her skin crawl. You’ll understand what I mean if you’ve seen “Freaky Friday.” There’s wonderful scene in the movie when Jamie Lee Curtis drops off her cynical teenage daughter, Lindsay Lohan, in front of the school and shouts out to her, “Make good choices!”

Our first strategy in finding Valerie a car was to tell everyone we knew that we were in the market for something cheap but dependable. We thought that by just putting the word out that the ideal car would find its way to us, kind of like a stray cat that ends up in a good home. I hoped that one morning I’d open the front door and there on our doorstep would be a 2001 Honda Civic previously owned by a sweet old lady who only put 45,000 miles on it driving to the grocery store and beauty parlor twice a month.

By the time August arrived, it was obvious that plan was a fantasy and if we were really serious about finding her a car before school started, it was going to take some work on our part and we were going to have to approach it differently than we had in the past.

When Valerie’s older brother needed a car and when we replaced our 10-year-old-mini-vans, we went to the dealership. We developed a relationship with a salesperson there who worked hard for us and made buying a car – a shopping experience that I had always dreaded – quite painless.

But times being what they are, this time we couldn’t afford anything that would be available at a dealership; our $3,000 to $5,000 price range put us in the more scavenging approach to car shopping – whatever we could find by the side of the road, and scouring Craig’s List.

Since the first day of school was quickly approaching, we weren’t going to rule out any options, so when Steve spotted a 1993 Sent (it was actually a Sentra but the last two letters had fallen off) with a “For Sale” sign for $1,750, we decided it was worth spending some money to have our mechanic check it over – if only to show Valerie that we were serious about getting her a car.

It’s amazing what a teenager is willing to settle for in a car when the alternative is taking the bus or suffering the humiliation of having their parents drive them. As soon as we told Valerie that the owner had agreed to have our mechanic give it a once-over, she took ownership. All of a sudden, she was referring to this beater as “my car.”

Sadly, the diagnosis on the Sentra was not good. It would require the equivalent of open heart surgery to get it running dependably.

Steve made his way through numerous listings on Craig’s List and came up with a couple more options. We were surprised that people were so responsive and willing to accommodate our request to have the car checked-out. We were beginning to understand one reason dealerships are having such a hard time; there are lots of good options for cars on Craig’s List. It just takes some legwork to find them.

There was one more false start with an Isuzu Rodeo that looked great on the outside but was decaying under the hood. Then the third time was the charm. A delightful young couple in town was selling a 2001 Volvo. Yes, it needed some belts replaced, but agreeing upon a price was so easy and quick, that it could hardly be called negotiating.

It was great to see her Valerie proudly drive off on the first day of class of her senior year in a car that suits her so well.