The Young and The Baby Lockless

Are you sick and tired of hearing about my sewing machine? You should be because I'm sick and tired of having to think about it.

There has been a new development which may prove to be relatively insignificant to the outcome of this tale, but then again it could potentially cause even more problems. We shall see.

Mr. President's assistant called yesterday with an alternative suggestion to our previous arrangement of her shipping me a box and me using that box to send my machine back to her. She said she discussed the situation with Mr. President and he told her to ask me if I would be willing to take my machine to one of my local authorized Baby Lock dealer/repair centers to have the repairs or shipping (if necessary) done through them. All of this would be done at Baby Lock's expense, of course.

I asked her which repair center she had in mind and the one she suggested was the one who said my repairs were not covered under the warranty and they wanted $65 to check my machine for internal injuries. I reminded the assistant about this incident and she assured me that this dealer was extremely reputable and has been in business for a long time. She felt confident that they would not be a problem to work with.

I told her that I would be willing to take my machine there on the condition that my only interaction with that dealer would be to drop off and pick up the machine. All of the other repairs and details should be between Baby Lock and the dealer. I'm not paying for it so I don't need to be involved unless there is a problem. The only problem I could think of would be that the parts I need are no longer available which means Baby Lock could just replace my machine with an Ellisimo Gold. The dealer happened to have one on sale for $7,499.00. She was practically giving it away!

Or how about this embroidery machine:

It has 10 needles. I would never even be able to figure out how to turn it on, but I bet I could get a couple of dollars for it on eBay.

After agreeing to the new plan, I dropped my machine off at the authorized Baby Lock dealer/repair center that was conveniently located in the same shopping center as this restaurant:

That's right. It's Ushi Sushi

Mr. President's assistant had already called the dealer and informed her that I would be dropping off my machine. The owner was approximately 157 years old but when I arrived she was using a machine similar to the one pictured above so I can only assume she's still pretty dang sharp. Or sharper than I will ever be. She said that Baby Lock was going to send her a hand wheel knob that they thought would fit my machine and she would let me know when it comes in. I reminded her of the other issues which she seemed to not know anything about so I gave her a short summary. I'm not the least bit concerned about it since from this point on it's not my problem. If she calls me for any reason other than to tell me my machine is completely repaired and ready to pick up, I will simply tell her that she needs to discuss all repairs with Baby Lock and I will give her Mr. President's assistant's phone number. Or Mr. President's cell number. I feel I should get some use out of it since I have it.

Now that my machine is gone and is awaiting repairs I'm finding all kinds of things that need to be sewn. If it's going to be more than a couple of weeks, I might need to work out an arrangement for a loaner. I've sold some journals that were sewn on my machine so not having it could potentially cause a loss of income for me, right? Okay fine, maybe the only sewing in those journals was a couple of zigzag stitches on a piece of paper but still...it was a decorative element that was crucial to the overall design of the product and whose absence might affect the product's marketability.

I should have been a personal injury attorney.