Measure Once

          I’ve always been a mechanical idiot, or maybe that should be a wood-working imbecile. I’m too impatient to do anything mechanical or woody correctly the first time. Yes, if good mechanics and wood-workers adhere to the advice, “Measure twice, cut once,” I adhere to the opposite, “Measure once, cut twice.” Whenever I buy a piece of furniture or something like a bike that comes in a box and needs to be assembled, I ignore the instructions and go it on my own . . . and always discover when I’m finished that I’ve done something backwards . . . and have to take it all apart and do it again . . . this time correctly. Like I said, “Measure once, cut twice.” Well, I did it again.

For the last twenty years I’ve been running off the pages of my journals and the posts on my blog, Doggy-Dog World. I print them by the year using a printer called ClickBook. This printer takes a full page of text, changes it to a half-page size, and then prints it front and back into a booklet. I’ve had lots of experience doing this. After it prints the booklet, I cut the pages on my Boston Trimmer, then punch all the pages on my Rolodex 12-inch puncher. I punch six holes at a rate of about five pages per punching. Then I line them all up and bind them with upholstery thread, after which I duct tape the back to hide the threaded holes. Voila! Finished. And they look good and read easily. Then I line them up by year on a bookshelf. I’ve had lots and lots of practice and by this time I’m a very good book-binder.

Last week I decided I’d run all my Doggy-Dog blogs in a format tight enough that they’d come out in two really thick books, with tiny print but still big enough to read. It came out to 1248 pages. It took me hours and hours to run off that many pages, more hours and hours to cut and punch the pages and then to bind them with the thread and duct tape. I separated them into two piles, the first from 2009 to 2013, from page 1 to page 650, the second from 2014 to 2018, from 651 to 1248. Then, as I began binding the first, I discovered the error of my ways: I had measured once and done it wrong. Yes, I had punched all the pages on the wrong side. And when I bound them all together, they came out as a left-handed book. But they’re beautiful, just a little unhandy requiring them to be read by turning pages from left to right instead of right to left. I wonder if there are any societies whose books are all left-handed. I'd fit right in.