Entertaining The Dog is a full-time job. She is not very good at entertaining herself, mostly because she destroys any toys we get for her within about eleven minutes of us handing the toy to her. Makes for expensive and very short-lived fun for her.

Recently, The Girl and I did a little “spring cleaning.” What that meant was that we pulled a box out of the closet that we hadn’t unpacked since moving in to go through it. Please don’t judge. In our zealous cleaning, we discovered behind the box an old body pillow. The Girl no longer needs a body pillow, as she has, well…me. Also The Dog. Seeing as the body pillow was just taking up space, we put it in a pile of stuff to take to Goodwill. The Dog does not understand Goodwill. The Dog understands “anything on the ground is a toy.” So, she immediately grabbed it in her teeth and thrashed it about. Right on cue, eleven minutes later, she had torn a hole in the pillow case and looked to be on the brink of killing yet another toy.

But this time, this time I would intervene. This time there would NOT be another dead toy tossed into the trashcan. NAY! I am resourceful. I am creative. I am old enough to be comfortable saying that I am in touch with my softer side (which happens to be my midsection). I would save the day by CREATING a durable pillowcase, thus allowing The Dog to continue thrashing the pillow around like a great white on a seal pup. Like a monkey on a cupcake. Like a…well, i’m out of analogies.

Here’s a free tip: Michael’s does not have fabric. None. Not even a bit. Joann’s FABRICS? Yeah – they’ve got fabric. Not like “fabric” is in the name of the store or anything. Am I resourceful, yes. Am I bright, not always.

I got duck cloth. It’s not made of ducks, it doesn’t feel like ducks, it doesn’t have a duck pattern. It IS very durable though. Seriously I spent about thirty minutes looking at all the different fabrics. Eventually, it came down to a choice between the duck cloth and denim but the duck cloth just felt a little more sturdy. And it was more fun to say. Duck cloth.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to sew. I mean, I’ve mended a few things with needle and thread, but I was making a pillow case to cover a four foot tall pillow, so hand sewing that bad boy was just out of the question (full disclosure – I tried to hand sew it. The experiment ended with a lot of cursing and very little progress). Fortunately, The Girl’s family was coming for a visit, and they promised to bring a sewing machine. The Girl’s family isn’t quite sure what to make of the fact that she ended up with a guy who wants to learn to sew, but they seem to have accepted me for who I am. They are good people.

Here we are trying to figure out the sewing machine:

It took a while, but The Girl’s mom finally managed to teach me how to run the sewing machine.

I was the baby bird, flying out of the nest for the first time. Any success I had was due to the fact that I had an excellent coach. I managed to stitch some velcro on the inside of the top of the pillow case, then run a seam down the side and the bottom of the pillow case. After that, the only thing left to do was case the pillow and see if The Dog would go after it with as much vigor as she did previously.

Here’s the answer:

Pillow Fights are never as sexy as they sound.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, and dogs. The Boy was able to competently work a sewing machine, make a pillow case, save a pillow from being discarded, and entertain The Dog, all for the low low price of about $9 in fabric, and two hours of learning and working time.