Lelia Allison reckons she has found a cure for melancholy of huge proportions with this story. This is what she said:
I was feeling low. So low that I could have walked under a snake’s belly and had plenty of headroom. November had mildewed my blood and my listless heart had pumped the stuff into my brain. The Great Questions in Life pooled like scum on the floorboards of my mental theatre: “How come the good guys never win? How come fancy-priced shoes hurt my feet? And why, dear God, why in Your Holiest Hour did that bi–witch at the espresso stand “forget” to add whipped cream to my mocha? What’s with the hate, Father? After all didn’t I generously say “Keep the change,” after I handed her six bucks to satisfy my five-dollar and seventy-six cent bill? And yet there was no whipped cream when whipped cream was what I had needed most.
I was in the throes of my deepest melancholy when I decided to go into the LS stacks in search of a reason to keep on living the painful and disappointing existence I must bravely endure. I found it at The Fifty Dollar Sewing Machine by Mitchell Toews. Not to give too much away, I think that you too will be energized by this fine tale which features a Mennonite ass-kicking machine. I was. If I can convince Mr. Toews to let me “borrow” his two wonderful protagonists and have them go teach a useless bit–barista a lesson in whipped cream application, I do believe that the world might become a finer and fairer place.
Leila Allison
***
The Fifty Dollar Sewing Machine.
literally stories 
Ahh, Leila. If I was able to give you temporary relief from your daily burden, I am ready to stand on the deck of an aircraft carrier and proclaim my absolute satisfaction. Here’s the thing: you are one of the great fixers—terminatrix to creeping doubt, solidifier of the cracked and the crazed—for all of us! You are the epoxy that mends us. You blend equal parts of sweet resin, flowing with laughter and empathy with the hardest of the hard, the unyielding resolve we need to bear up to the challenges life presents. So, thank you — I am honoured to be one of your rerunners. Now let’s round up Rosie and Roy and go give that Schmaundjiezhauls (cream miser) of yours a good whipping!
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Schmaundjiezhauls – excellent and yes she deserves a good whipping.
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Thank you, Mitchell.
Your comment deserved more than a mere, puny “like.”
LA
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Hi Leila,
There is a common answer to all three of your questions. Now I don’t have the same questions in my life (I can’t get a pair of ladies shoes to go on my feet) but for all my questions, I also have the one answer to all my queries which is:
‘Just to fucking annoy you!’
I always think if there is a God, he deserves getting nutted!!
Anyhow, another brilliant choice and its great to see Mitch around the site again!
Hugh
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