Well, crap.

My sleeping has been erratic for a long time, but more so lately. On the nights that I get to sleep at a reasonable time, I’m usually awake before 4 am. This was the case this morning. I went to bed around 11:30 and awoke at 3:00 on the dot. I got up, had some coffee and played a few games of solitaire. When Paul woke up I made more coffee and turned on a few lights.

Normal morning fare.

Except not. Paul tends to leave the door open when he goes out to start the car, and closes it upon entering again. Sometime in the two or so minutes that he was outside, one of the dogs brought in something that looked like mud.

Only it wasn’t mud.

It was only after I’d picked most of it OFF THE BED and swiped the smaller bits off the sheets with my left hand that I smelled the unmistakable smell of cat poop.

This morning will be full of sheet and blanket washing and carpet recon. This is bad enough on it’s own, but to add insult to injury, I’d just washed both comforters day before yesterday.

 

Been a long time

I hate to say it, but I think my urge to blog has left the building. I go days and days without even thinking about it. Unfortunately, with that, I’ve also not been following anyone’s blog. For that I apologize. It’s not fair that you all come to visit periodically to see if I’ve been back and I haven’t been visiting at all. You’ve all been in my thoughts though.

I haven’t been doing a whole lot of anything relating to crafts lately. I’ve picked up a few projects here and there, but with the exception of a super quick coffee cup cozy I made in the wee hours of this morning, I haven’t finished anything. I’ve been playing a lot of games on Pogo (I bought myself a month’s subscription) and I’ve been working on getting my house in order. I haven’t been journaling at all. I’m hoping once the weather really does change that it will make it more comfortable to do some of the stuff I’ve been ignoring.

It’s small, but it’s something.

 

One year

Today is my blog’s first birthday.

Hopefully by this time next year there will be a lot more posts.

 

slacker

As much as I feel I should, I’ve had no interest in updating or blog hopping lately.  I feel kind of bad about it, but I just can’t seem to focus!  At the moment it’s only because I’m a little tipsy, but most of the time it’s because I can’t think of anything to say.  I’m boring right now…horribly so.  I made a lame attempt at folding the laundry that piled up on the bathroom counter today, and I’ve been keeping up with my dishes.  That’s about as productive as I’ve been lately.

We got Paul an Xbox 360 on Friday.  He’s been wanting one for a while now and they dropped the price of the most basic one something like $50 on Friday so we picked it up.  He’s been happily playing with it for about 20 hours now.  (Not really, but it seems like it!)  I’ve been watching The Office (US version) on surfthechannel.com and I’ve moved from dishcloths to knitting a towel.  It’s slow going.  By slow going, I mean really, really boring.

I met up with an old friend from high school on myspace last week.  He’s an absolute dollface.  I met him through this bitchface that I used to be friends with, so that’s one good thing that came out of a lifesucking friendship.  He’s funny and remembers more about the shenanigans we got up to than I do.  One time he brought his brother’s stick shift car over to my house because he was learning how to drive stick and I went for a ride with him.  We were on a hill and it was absolutely terrifying because we kept rolling back.  If it had happened last week I would have been screaming and crying and an absolute wreck, but once upon a time I was fearless and though there was screaming, it was mingled with laughter and it was fun.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to.  Nothing super exciting, just living.  I hope my eager, obsessive compulsive behavior comes back soon because I haven’t been having much fun.  I need to visit blogs, but I’ve been spending most of my time playing word whomp on pogo.com.  And eating beef jerky.

 

Taking a break from the web

I’m still around…thanks for checking in on me everyone.

I’ve been online on and off since my last post, but not all that much. I know I’m feeling bad when I don’t even want to be online! Well, I take that back. I HAVE been online quite a bit now that I think about it, but mainly to watch tv for free. I never got the chance to watch Freaks & Geeks when it was on the air except for one episode and I’d always been intrigued. I finished watching the last episode this morning around 5am and I’m glad I took the time to. It was a great show (imo) that got canceled way too early. All the shows I’ve really liked seem to end that way. Keeping Up Appearances had no definitive ending, neither did Freaks & Geeks or The Dresden Files. Booooo.

Crafting wise I’ve been really boring. I put down all of the projects that involved lace and counting and cabling and picked up some cotton yarn for the first time in months. I started a bunch of simple knit diagonal dishcloths and that’s ALL I’ve been doing. It’s therapeutic I think. All I have to think about is starting with 4 stitches, getting to 44 stitches and then decreasing back to 4 stitches. I can always use more dishcloths. The nice thing is that these suckers last longer than any store bought cloth I’ve ever owned. Well; except when Moxie gets a hold on them. Then they become string again. Drooly, dirty string.

I guess knitting the dishcloths are a doubly good thing right now. I’m gearing up for a thorough house cleaning and I’ve gone back to FlyLady. I plan to get this house in decent shape if it kills me because I am so sick of looking at the dust and the piles of dvd’s and the dirty socks. There’s no reason my house looks like this other than the fact that with it just being the two of us and we hardly touch most of the stuff in here on a daily basis, things pile up easily. I’ve been keeping up with my dishes so I don’t think it’s a matter of I’m too lazy (though that definitely factors in) but that I’m uninspired and bored. Usually when the weather changes twice a year I go nuts and clean the entire house. I’m hoping I can get myself interested in doing it all the time again. I started a new housekeeping journal for cleaning schedules, menu planning, gardening ideas, decorating ideas, all sorts of stuff. I’m hoping it’ll inspire me to finally do a few home repairs we’ve both been putting off and I’m seriously thinking of painting my kitchen when I pull everything out of the cabinets to re-line them. No one likes my color schemes though! I thought it’d be cheery and fun to do yellow (or maybe orange) walls and red cabinets. I’d probably do the doors and drawers in yellow and add new handles. Maybe it’s not a great color combo…I just thought it might be bright and happy. I also thought about delft blue and maybe a marbly cream, but meh…it’s too early to think seriously about.

Other than that, life’s been going on pretty normally. I had a really serious talk with Paul a few days ago about how I’m coping and it left me feeling a lot better. I feel so cryptic leaving the details out, but I really don’t think anyone needs to hear the dirty details; don’t need everyone else scarred too!

I know I haven’t been a good blog friend, and I really do apologize for that. I’ve been mentally checking out and keeping to myself; I hope everyone understands. If you don’t want to visit because of that, I’m totally cool and understand. I’m going to try to get more involved in my blog again, but I need to think up some things to talk about while I’m feeling all discombobulated and off. I’m not doing much in the way of crafting, so I haven’t wanted to talk about that. I’ll figure it out though!

I’ll try to get off my butt and get a few pictures up over the next few days. I’m off to actually come visit some of you now.

 

Thank you

I just wanted to write a quick note to thank everyone for the kind words and support.  It’s not something I can really share without a very very long back story, so I just leave it at I’ve been having some serious issues with my Mom and things came to a big head on Sunday evening.  There was a lot of yelling and crying and skeletons coming out to play.  I mainly just need some time to process everything and work on finally letting a lot of emotional baggage go.  It means the world to me that my friends rallied to my side when they were worried though.  Thanks so much.

I’ll probably be back to normal soon.  I’ve been writing a lot and I slept most of the day away today so maybe I can get my head clear sometime soon.

 

Ready for my Fail medal

One finished lace mitt, 3/4 of a sock and two repeats in to my scarf, I’m bowing out.

I’ve been dealing with some emotional crap way beyond my coping ability this past week and I am completely and thoroughly burned out.  I battled with whether to quit working on my Ravylmpics projects all last week, but I can safely say today that for my sanity I’ve got to just chill and not worry about it right now.  I’ll eventually finish my projects, leisurely, on my own time.  I hate that all this emotional crap came at a time when I was already stressed by working on a deadline, but I’m strangely calm about quitting.  I’m not going to beat myself up over it like I normally do, I’m just going to accept that it’s beyond my realm of comfort to have this much stress going on right now.

 

Got it!

Yay! My yarn finally came!

It was waiting for me when I got home from my mother in law’s house yesterday afternoon. I probably shouldn’t admit it, but I kinda wanted to toss my Ravelympics projects and start something new with all my pretty new yarn 😉

 

Progress

I’m really, really glad I didn’t wait for my yarn. According to my tracking number it’s STILL in frackin’ Phoenix. It’s been there for five days!

Ahem…moving on.

I took a few progress pics a bit ago and thought I’d post. My camera is decidely a picky bitch and only likes expensive batteries. I finally got it to work by tricking it. I used a cheap Eveready (which is the only brand of new batteries I have right now) and an old Duracell. It worked for approximately 7 minutes.

First; the Anya scarf:

See the look of excitement on my face? Heh. I was up to the point in the picture when I got in a bit of a tiff with the Mister and dropped about five stitches. As anyone who has knit lace can attest, picking up lace stitches is near impossible. If I’d have been smart, I would have put lifelines in so I wouldn’t have had to pull everything out, but I’m not. Therefore, I ripped all that work out and started over this morning. It took me five hours to get back to the exact.same.place. I was when I ripped back. The good to come out of this though is that I changed the beads to gold and they pop out more and I’m being a lot more careful about my place in the pattern.

The Breeze socks:

My mother in law saw the pattern right before I started and really liked them. Her birthday is tomorrow so I thought I’d knit these for her as a late birthday gift. She’s got tiny feet, so that’s a bonus. I won’t have them finished in time to give them to her ON her birthday, but maybe a few days later. Maybe…

And the Merletto mitts:

I had to rip these back too. I started with a super soft, fluffy pink cashmere, but it was too delicate and thin for mitts. I changed over to black sock yarn, and while it’s knitting up well, it’s REALLY hard to see. We’ll see if these are continued or started over in yet another yarn.

So that’s my progress. Three days in and I’m feeling a little stressed about whether I’ll be able to finish that scarf in time. It’s only 51 stitches across, but it’s a doozy of a pattern with the beads added in. I’ll get in to a rhythm and then I have to stop to place a bead. If I can manage to finish it though, it’s going to be fabulous.

P.S…thank deity that WordPress actually saved my progress…Firefox crapped out and I had to close. Phew.

 

Good news and bad news

I always like to do bad news first. That way there’s something nice to look forward to after the bad stuff.

The bad news is that my yarn didn’t arrive yesterday.

The good news is that after I bummed around for awhile, I canceled the sweater I was planning to knit and picked three other projects to do for the Ravelympics. I chose a lace scarf (that I’m beading, because I really like beaded lace right now and I’m a masochist), a pair of cabled/lace socks, and a pair of lace fingerless gloves. I figured all three were small enough that together they’d be about as much work as a sweater. I’m using yarn I already have.

I’m betting that my yarn with arrive this afternoon. That’s just the way things work. If not, no biggie because I’ve already got started on two of my three projects. I’m still a little bummed, but I’m chugging along.

I didn’t start at 5 am like I could have, but I did get a decently early start. My mil came over and made me ride with her to a yard sale, but other than that I’ve had pretty much unlimited knitting time all day.

I hope I can finish all this in time. I’m feeling optimistic.