I thought for several years that it wouldn't be too much to ask to have one day a week where I don't have to get dressed, leave the house, or do anything that constitutes a 'chore, responsibility, or obligation.' Just one day a week ... that has to be reasonable. But my cursed Protestant work ethic upbringing made it extremely difficult to just do something "fun" for a whole day, without throwing some obligation or chore into the mix ... I felt wanton and useless. It wasn't until about a month ago I was finally able to put this theory into practice with a clear conscience.
I got extraordinarily busy in the late fall, when my 81-year-old father got out of the hospital for the 5th or 6th time this year, and began needing a lot more help than previously. He still lives alone, and I live about 7 minutes away. Although he's asked me about moving in, it's not an option right now, for reasons I'll save for another time.
One of the things he needed a lot of help with was meals ... due to his health problems, he needs to be on a very low sodium diet. He won't/can't cook for himself, and doesn't like frozen meals or the local home-delivered meals service, and so was eating out in restaurants every day. But that wasn't keeping his sodium down (which is what in part kept landing him in the hospital). After the last hospital stay, I knew he needed to be eating healthier food. I tried cooking up a week's worth of meals in advance, and freezing them, but that didn't work out well for either one of us. So I started going over every night and cooking a fresh, healthy dinner for him.
It worked great in one way - he began to feel a lot better, and his health problems have stabilized, keeping him out of the hospital for awhile now. So, yay for good food. But the down side was, going over there every night was getting exhausting. As he began to improve, we struck a happy medium. I go over there four days a week and cook for him, and the other three I leave him some type of one-dish meal that he can heat in the microwave (spaghetti, lasagne, soup or stew, or this chicken-and-rice dish I made up myself, stuff like that).
Anyway, after doing a lot of extra stuff at his house throughout the week, I was finally able to 'justify' taking my Sunday all to myself, and it has been wonderful. Heaven. Fantastic. So the new rule is, I don't leave the house or do anything I don't really, really want to do on Sundays. So far it's working out beautifully!
Usually what I want to do on Sunday is some of my hobby stuff I don't really have time for during the week, like working on a quilt. And now, this week, I can do that. We got the new sewing machine yesterday!! It's a Jenome 525s, and I love it - well, what I've seen of it so far. I haven't had time to do much with it. The saleslady gave us a good demonstration - it's so quiet! It sews so smooth! It went from sewing thin gauzy material to several layers of heavy denim without even a twitch ... I'm going to love having a decent sewing machine, not a piece of crap, for perhaps the first time in my life.
Yesterday after bringing it home, I didn't have time to do more than take it upstairs, set it up, and play with some decorative stitches for about 5 minutes. But today ... today I have the whole day to go upstairs and play to my heart's content. And I will be doing that very shortly. Just as soon as this coffee kicks in and I wake up enough not to sew my fingers together or something that would make knitting difficult.
In other news, I've had bad dreams for the last two days, and I'm wondering about it. I have the occasional bad dream, but nothing too frequent - before now. Yesterday while taking a nap I had a disturbing dream, and last night I had two more. These aren't wake-up-screaming nightmares, they're the kind where just bizarre, creepy things happen that almost could happen in real life (except that bit where someone I know in a dream suddenly turns into someone else), but that it would be extremely disturbing if it did.
I'm trying to figure out what might be causing it ... I haven't started any new medications (I don't take anything except a vitamin), I haven't been eating weird food. I didn't think there was anything particularly disturbing on my mind lately.
Maybe the sewing machine is possessed ... these didn't start till I brought it home. Hmmm. That'll bear watching.
I'm off to sew. Later this afternoon I'll post a picture of the quilt in progress, an ode to Tolkien.
Later ... as promised (6:45 p.m.)
Here's the quilt sammich, all pinned together (which only took about 2 hours I could have been sewing). More on the details tomorrow. (Love, love, love the new machine!!)
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