Here's Hoping Things Get Better In ... Oh, 7 1/2 Hours

Well, it's been a rough end of the year. Of course, it's not fair to judge the whole year by that, but it's hard not to when all of the last week is so immediate ... so right in my face.

Christmas sucked. I'm sick (bad cold or beginnings of the flu, not sure). And I may be paying for counting my chickens before they hatched. My dream home that we've been working towards is suddenly sinking into a quagmire of uncertainty, like an elusive oasis.

The sellers' real estate listing contract expired today, or yesterday - I'm not sure when, but the bottom line is, it did, and they didn't renew it. So we don't even know if the place is still on the market or not! It was very much like suddenly getting the rug yanked out from under us. We were asked to wait a couple weeks due to this death in the family; we were waiting as patiently as we could, confident that as soon as we were able, we were going to make an offer, negotiations would ensue, and we'd get the house.

Then they suddenly - maybe - yank it off the market. It's the worst thing, because as long as it's still for sale, there's hope - if it's not even for sale, there's no hope.

Granted, I don't know that it's off the market. But they let their listing expire and didn't relist, and my agent has contacted them directly today advising that she has a "very interested, very qualified" buyer wanting to make an offer, but they didn't return her call. Not a good sign if they're still planning to sell it - especially when they hadn't had an offer in 10 months. You'd really think they'd jump at the potential of one after all that time.

There was some talk about them suddenly balking in the last few days about the price - apparently the house was subject to short sale, they didn't think they were going to sell it for enough to cover their mortgage and fees, and they started getting all angsty about that. But if they still want to sell it, I don't know why they'd not at least see what we have to say - for all they know, we could be offering their asking price. We haven't even made the offer yet. So for them not to even return my agent's call smacks to me of someone waffling about not selling the place at all.

And that is sending me into a near-devastating depression. Of course I knew I shouldn't get my hopes up about the place, but it was impossible not to. It was absolutely, positively perfect. I'm not just saying that because we decided we liked it. I'm not kidding - two years ago I made a list of my "ideal, dream house" - not the kind of dream house you'd design if you were building it yourself, but 'dream house' in the sense of what might already exist that we could buy. And I knew when I made the list that the likelihood of finding all those things in one house was slim, as they were quite a mish-mash ... things like acreage (at least 2 or 3) plus city utilities - that's hard to find. But I made the list as a true 'dream list' - the 'in a perfect world, this is what we'd find' type of house.

But lo and behold, this place had it all. The acreage, the city utilities, the water source (a river), the 4 bedrooms, the fireplaces ... every. Single. Thing. It seemed so incredibly meant to be.

Well. I'm trying not to deflate too much yet. The fat lady ain't sang yet. They haven't actually said they're taking it off the market. Maybe they've just been too busy to call my agent back. Maybe they do still want to sell it, just let the contract expire to save on the fees they'd have to pay a real estate agent. Maybe, maybe, maybe. If, if, yadda yadda. Sigh.

So that's where I'm at tonight, and it's not in my happy place. Maybe I'll have something better to say tomorrow.

Third Time's The Charm

This is the third post in two days about Christmas, although I deleted the other two. After spewing them out into the world, I decided maybe they weren't fit for public consumption after all. (Although they'd been read at least once before being killed off - thank you, Rhys, you're the best).

Let me try again. I'm not fond of this holiday. I think it's because of having to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas morning alone, it just kind of lost its sparkle for me. I know for a fact that I'm doing something different next year. My first idea was to buy everyone on my Christmas list a heifer (or portion thereof), and then go away for the holiday, just me and Tyler. Since Christmas will be on a Friday next year, that would make it easy ... a weekend trip.

Plan B would be to find something else to do around here - go volunteer somewhere, a nursing home, a homeless shelter, I don't know. Something to take my mind off wallowing in my own personal cesspit, which serves no good purpose.

I suppose I can give myself two years of adjustment. Last year I knew it would be bad, and it was. This year I was taken by surprise - I thought it would be better. It wasn't. So now I've learned my lesson, and I'll move on.

Speaking of moving on ... I've got three more days of weekend and don't know what to do with myself. I suppose packing would be a good thing ... I've accumulated a bunch of empty boxes that are just starting to get in the way. And it's gotta be done sometime. If our offer gets accepted on this house (after we make it next week), we may be able to move in 30 days. That's not very long when you're working full time and trying to do it all in evenings and weekends.

As for other things to do this weekend, I considered going into work as well. I have a lot to do, it would help me get caught up. Probably not today, but maybe tomorrow.

I guess that's all I have to say about that.

More House Dreaming

First of all, thanks Rhys for your comment and suggestion. That sounds like a great idea, and I will go check out Harbor Freight as soon as I'm done here. I agree - finding something that doesn't lock me into one way of arranging things would be good - it'll probably be awhile before I get everything 'just right' and in the meantime there will probably be a lot of rearranging. Plus, the way I add hobbies to my repertoire, expansion possibilities would be good. ;o)

I suspect that for some of the rest of the stuff, I'm just going to have to wait until I get it all there and see what I have. I may have some things I don't really want anymore (plastic bins of general crap that I'm never going to use), and I may find there are some things I would like to have but never got because there was no room for them here. I may not need nearly the 'wall o' cubbies' I had in mind, I may not have nearly as many things as I originally thought to tuck into such places.

And some of the stuff that I do keep isn't large enough to warrant it's own specially designed space, but too large for small cubbies and wicker baskets. (I know I have some unfinished wood boxes, a couple of glass vases I had plans for, things like that). I may find that wall cabinets work better than a bunch of cubbies, once I get it out and look at it all.

While I don't need to seriously limit what supplies I keep on hand (like I've had to do here), I do know that the more of the room I can leave clear, the more chance I'll have the space for my comfy chair I'd like to have.

My head's spinning with the possibilities. But I suppose I ought to focus on something else for awhile, because I know how I work - once I get there, make a cup of tea and sit down in the middle of the empty room to just sit for awhile, looking at the room, it'll start telling me what it wants. :o)

I suspect, to be more pragmatic, I could start focusing on this place for now. There are plenty of things we can pack up now, and in fact we've already started. Because we made up our minds - even if for some awful reason we don't get this particular house, we're committed to getting something bigger than this place, and moving. So either way it's happening, and some things we rarely use can be packed up now rather than waiting till the last minute for it all.

I suspect the most likely place to start is my 'attic' - the little areas off the sides of the main room upstairs, all tucked up under the eaves of the house as it were. Not going to be fun or easy, but has to be done.

Maybe I can get to that this weekend ... dark evenings are not the time to be rooting around up there.

Knitting and Other Memories

I haven't done any real knitting in a long time. Occasionally I pick up the sweater, do a row or two, then put it down again. There has just been so much else going on ... thoughts and planning about the new house ... getting ready for the holiday ... work being crazy, which makes me exhausted in the evenings ... .

I was thinking about this a lot lately, and I know part of the problem is that there is just so much to do around here, that really needs done, that I've been having a hard time 'switching off' in the evenings, and just relaxing and doing some knitting. I always feel 'guilty', like there's something else I should be doing.

I'm hoping it won't be like that in the new house. Oh, I know - there will be tons of stuff to do, for a very long time. But it won't be like here, where it needs done and I've neglected it because there's no way to really do most of what I want to do. It'll be different. We have half a lifetime of projects already dreamed up, there's always going to be something to do, but since most of it won't be stuff we 'have to' do, but that we 'want to' do; and because I know there are ways to get it done, it's just going to take time, I don't think I'm going to be as angsty about it. There'd be no point ... as I said, there are years of projects in my head with this place - no sense in trying to rush it, it just ain't gonna happen.

The other difference will be that there, I want to do them, and will be able to do them, so on weekends I will actually look forward to these projects. It'll be the highlight of my weekend, working on my new home, it won't feel like 'chores' - and hopefully then my relaxing hobby time can be just that again.

I want to dream up plans for my hobby room, but I seem to be having a hard time coming up with anything - probably because it's been so long since I had an area like that, that looked like anything, that I can't seem to wrap my head around the possibilities. Since this is supposed to be a fiber arts blog, I thought I'd brainstorm a little bit about that here.

While the house is beautiful and I love it, the rooms are not the largest I've seen. Two of them are average, 12x12. The other two are slightly smaller. Those slightly smaller rooms are going to be the guest room and the kids' room, so I get one of the 12x12 rooms for my hobby room. At least it's nice and square. But it's not like endless space that I can just dream up anything I want, and fit it in there. I will still need to be streamlined on storage if I want it all to fit, and look nice, and be really efficient work-wise. (Believe me, I'm not complaining - and entire 12x12 room all to myself, for just my stuff, is a dream come true!).

I know I want a clear work table for starters - white. I'd been using a banquet type table upstairs recently, the kind with legs that fold up underneath, but it's got that fake dark-brown woodgrain top, and I don't like such dark colors. I considered covering it with something, but I don't think I'd be happy with that - a cloth cover of some sort would be inconvenient, because a nice smooth table-top is best for most things; and I'm not keen on covering it with contact paper, just because. So some type of white or light color, smooth work surface for starters.

Then I just have to start thinking about the types of things I need to store:

Art Stuff
colored pencils, drawing pencils, sketch books, paints

Sewing Notions
thread, bobbins, scissors, pin cushions, tape measure, needles, elastic, buttons, etc.

Other Sewing Stuff
material, interfacing; patterns

Knitting Stuff
yarn! and needles

Embroidery Stuff
needles; floss; material; hoops and frames

Weaving Stuff
cones of yarn bought just for this; looms; shuttles; cotton warp

Miscellaneous Crafty Stuff
ribbons and trims; hot glue gun; beads; various lacings; paper cutter; God alone knows what else is in some of those bins

Books
I suspect that's pretty self-explanatory

Well, that's good to start with. I have three categories of stuff. Large things (material collection; yarn collection; looms); small things (all the stuff that can fit in little bins or baskets); and books.

So I need a bookcase. I have several, so I ought to be able to find something workable for that.

Large things - I'd already considered organizing and even inventorying my material, so I know what I have and approximately how much, then storing it in plastic totes in the basement, to save space. Since material is something I'm not going to need all handy, all the time, and since there's so much, there's not much reason to take up so much of my room storing it. I could do the same with the large yarn tote.

The looms are a dilemma - I'd like them handy, especially the ones with any work in progress on them. I have my tapestry loom with my learning project on it half-done, and I very much want to get back to that. But they're mildly bulky (none of them are huge, the biggest probably being 18x18 or so, but they're all oddly shaped and difficult to just tuck away). I'm thinking that for inkle looms, a shelf higher up on the wall out of the way would be a good place to set those. The Handy Weaver that I got as a gift last year could live on a closet shelf. The tapestry loom ... I suppose I could hang it on the wall. Or, I could design a small cubby someplace which is narrow and big enough to slip in things that need to or can stand upright, but be out of the way - my tapestry loom, my large sketch book, my cutting mats. Sort of like one of those baking sheet organizers that holds them all neatly and upright in your cabinets, only larger, and closed in. Heck, for that matter - a stock narrow kitchen base cabinet might be just the thing for that type of stuff. I know you can (or used to be able to) buy simple unfinished stock base cabinets for as little as $35 at the local home center. As a bonus, it would have a drawer. I could finish it, find some type of top for it ... ...

... here's a really grand idea, but I don't know if I can afford it. A couple of these stock kitchen cabinets, maybe one a bank of drawers, spaced apart with actual nice kitchen countertop across them, on one wall, as my work area. Hmm ... that would be nice. It would also be permanent, I'd have to be sure where I wanted it. It might still work to just buy a couple cabinets, set them where I want them, and place a work surface (table top, nicely finished wood, something) across the top of them - then I could move it if I decided to redesign.

Redesigning probably isn't going to be much of an option, though, so I'd better get it right the first time. Because the last storage area - for all the small stuff - I have in mind to build in a section of cubbies, then store all that little stuff in nice little wicker baskets, or fabric covered boxes, or a combination of the two - something like that. But that cubby section would be permanently attached to a wall, so moving it around would probably be a pain. I might even build it on the wall, which would make it even more difficult to move.

There are a few other little perks I have to think about. I want a comfy chair in their for sitting, besides the wheeled desk chair that will be my 'work station' chair. Well, I'd like one anyway - I don't know if there's going to be room for all this.

This was a fun way to begin the morning, but I have to go get ready for work.

Things Are Looking Up

A lot has happened in a few days. I decided to go for this house we fell in love with, and in the last few days I:

• got our preferred agent back on board
• got pre-approval for a loan to get the house
• had a home inspection on my house anticipatory of selling it
• have a cash sale for my house! (it's not in writing yet, but I'm confident it's a go - it's a verbal agreement with somene I know personally who isn't going to screw me over)

Things are really moving quickly and (dare I say it?) amazingly easily toward us being able to get this house we want.

We were going to go look at it today, and make our offer then. But unfortunately the family selling the house suffered a tragedy this week, and canceled all showings until after the first of the year. That's fine, I have no problem giving them this time - I feel bad for them.

But from all my agent has told me about their situation - even before the tragedy, and moreso after it - they're going to be anxious for any offer, and may well consider our first (low) offer, or if not, at least it sounds promising that we'll be able to negotiate something workable, quickly. Even my agent - a completely professional and usually cautious person who is more prone to telling us things like 'we can't predict what's going to happen, we'll just have to wait and see' - has made encouraging noises about our chances of getting this house.

So I don't want to be counting up unhatched chicks, but it is encouraging. I admit I'm already browsing online for ideas for furniture, rugs, etc. We're going to need a ton of stuff - that house is quite a bit bigger than mine, and has more rooms, I told the Dread Reverend that we'll probably have to deal with a few big empty spaces until we find just want we want and need for the place. There's a living room and a family room, but I only have furniture for one or the other. There will be a spare guest bedroom, but fortunately I have a spare bedroom set, with mattress and box springs, that I kept when I sold my dad's home (hoping that living in storage for a year and a half hasn't damaged it).

I'm getting my own personal/hobby room (smile) for which I'll need to design built-in storage systems to really nicely organize all my stuff, but that'll take time to figure out what I need, what'll look nice, what I can afford. All I know is that for the first time ever, I want to have a nice integrated system for my hobby stuff - not just stuff stacked higgledy-piggledy in ratty plastic containers on ratty plastic shelves. I want something nice and beautiful!

There was a period of time this week when I thought everything was falling apart and we weren't going to be able to get the house - to get any house, because I thought there was a serious problem with my house that was going to make it unsellable. (turned out I was wrong!) But when I thought that, I got so sad. I remember thinking, for once in my life, I'd like a truly nice place to live - is that so much to ask? Every place I've ever lived has been varying degrees of crappy ... apartments that ranged from so-so to barely liveable; the house we bought when I was married which was a major 'fixer-upper.' This house, which was a more than major fixer-upper when I bought it, and while we (my dad and I) did put a ton of work into it, it's never been really nice. It has crappy old carpet, slab foundation problems, mold problems, and it is just so tiny and cramped that even if I got something nice for the house, it was hard to notice. The kitchen is the nicest feature of my house (and I do love my kitchen), but I got that with a $5,000 home equity loan and designed it myself.

But to have a whole house, where my washer and dryer aren't in my damned kitchen ... with nice hardwood floors, not old carpet with wrinkles and shredded backing ... with room for things, instead of tripping over something every time I try to move around ... with the ability to have spare sheets and pillowcases, and know where they are (huge linen closet upstairs in the house) ... with closets everywhere, plus a whole basement - room for our stuff! ... it's truly awe-inspiring to me. And doesn't really seem too much to ask.

I think I deserve a nice home. I'm not talking about a mansion, I'm not talking about excess here. Yes, it has four bedrooms, but they range from average size to downright small (the smallest will become the guest bedroom, since it won't be used as often). The living room is 24 x 12, nice size, but not enormous. There is currently no back porch or patio, something very important to us, so we'll have to add that. It doesn't even have central air (but I don't really care about that, so that's okay). The driveway's gravel, not concrete (again, I don't care). But the point of all that is not to downplay it - it's a beautiful place. The point is to say, I'm not trying to justify buying myself some kind of $250,000 home that is way more than we need. It's just what we need, and comfortable, and well maintained, and has a couple of bonus perks that just make it really nice (the fireplaces, the 3 acres).

And I think it's my time to finally have a nice home, one that I don't have to be embarrassed when people need to come into it - having a party, or even needing a repairman in for something. I'm really psyched!

But I am trying to keep at least a toe or two on the ground ... I realize none of this is signed, sealed and delivered yet ... and anything can happen. So I try, really hard, to keep that in mind. But it is difficult. It all just feels so completely and totally right ... .

P.S. I was reading this over and noticed something strange I said - that we'd need "tons of stuff." God knows I have no intention of junking this new place up the way the old house is. I'm not planning to go out and buy things to fill every corner of the empty new house. :o) But the fact is, we'll need certain things ... furniture for the living room ... rugs all over the place, to help protect the beautiful hardwood floors ... chairs for the dining room table (I have a table now, but only one chair, since there was no room for more; at the new house I'll have room for, and need, 3 more - because we'll actually be using it to eat on, instead of having to eat in the living room holding our plates in our lap!) ... stuff like that. Just felt the need to clarify.

Still Here

I know I haven't posted in awhile. It's been rather crazy around here.

All kinds of stuff has been going on. Major blow-up at work wherein someone almost got fired and I considered quitting more seriously than I ever have before. Things are somewhat on the 'truce' side at the moment, so I'll wait and see how they play out ... and keep my options open.

I've also been on the house-search rollercoaster again. It's too funny how every time I start seriously thinking about buying a bigger house, one or the other of us starts having serious job problems. I don't know whether it's a warning, or a life lesson to be learned ... there are no guarantees, you gotta do what you gotta do, and let the chips fall where they may. I have no clue.

We've looked and looked at houses, but there's just this one that is stuck in my head perpetually - it's beautiful and as close to perfect as we've found. Nothing else measures up to it. And it's that close within our reach. Well, technically, we could buy it for the asking price today if we wanted. But it would exhaust my entire life savings, and I didn't want to do that - spend every dime in my savings. I wanted to leave myself a buffer. (the good news is, we don't need the buffer for any unforeseen repairs on this house - it's in perfect condition).

So I was hoping to make a lower offer, but I've been advised the house is subject to short sale, which leads me to believe they won't be able to take a much lower offer.

I keep browsing for other houses from time to time, but so far nothing else has turned up that's as good as this. It's frustrating. Sometimes I decide I'm just going to stay where I am, and fix this place up - and it could be fixed up to some degree, without a great expenditure of money. But there's only so much you can do with a house this small, with people who have as much stuff as we do.

Those two things have kept me pretty preoccupied in the evenings - well, that and Christmas. This year I'm actually on top of the Christmas game. Mostly. I've done most of my shopping already. I do all my Christmas shopping online, and most years since I've started doing it that way, I mess around till too late, and have to pay for extra shipping on everything to get it by Christmas. This year I started early enough that I have most everything bought and ordered, some of it already arrived and wrapped and under the tree (by December 15th!) and some of it on the way. Amazing.

Unfortunately, I do still have a few things to get, and I haven't found anything appropriate online, so I may have to venture out to an actual store, which I just freaking dread. But, tis the season and all that. Much as I don't like to do anything after work, my best bet would probably be to go out one evening during the week - probably less busy than a weekend. Maybe even tonight, since it's a Monday - might be a good night for it. And I should start soon, since I don't even know what I'm looking for. This is the part of Christmas shopping that can be fun, and can also be a pain in the butt - those couple of people I have no idea what to get, and stocking stuffers. Just have to roam stores until I see something appropriate - which, like I said, can be fun, or can be very frustrating.

I did work on the sweater a bit this weekend. Not nearly enough. Well, as winter closes in around us, maybe I'll be more likely to just sit in the evenings and get some serious knitting done. This is when I usually get the most of it done, winter evenings. Although I have so many other projects going on right now, it's difficult - whether I decide to keep or sell this house, it needs major fixing up before I can, and that's been consuming a lot of my time.

Busy, busy, busy ... but, as my dad used to say, it's better than the alternative.

Knitting Evilness; and In Praise Of Oven-Ready Lasagna

I got my Knitpicks catalog in the mail yesterday, and while browsing through it, saw a little article on Miriam Tegels, the official world's faster knitter (Guinness even says so) (the book, not the beer). Constantly bemoaning my slow knitting speeds, I had to check this out.

I almost wish I hadn't. Watch this.



Knitting fast just for the sake of knitting fast has never been my thing (and good thing, too). I always enjoyed the meditative, relaxing pace of my knitting. But it does get frustrating when things take so long (as I've mentioned before). All I could think of while watching this was, "Wow, if I could knit even half that fast, I could actually start a sweater in the season I hoped to wear it in, and finish it in time!" If I could knit a sweater in a month to six weeks I'd be happy. Miriam could probably knit one in a couple of days (or less). I just tried to imagine sitting down and knitting, like, an entire scarf or baby blanket during one episode of your favorite TV show.

Of course - she must have to spend a fortune on yarn that way. See, there's always a bright side - I only have to buy yarn once a year or so.

But, I'm plugging away at my sweater - got several more rows done last night. I'm nearing completion of the third repeat of the pattern on the back, so that's not too terrible. (I don't remember how many I need to do, it's in my notes which aren't handy - 7 or 8 maybe?). I started it last winter with the intent for it to be a summer sweater (3/4 length sleeves and all). Then when summer blew by, I decided it would make an acceptable winter sweater (back to long sleeves). Now it looks like it's back to being a summer sweater - a next summer sweater. Ah well. It's all knitting, so it's all good.

Moving on ... okay, I don't make a particularly fancy lasagna - I don't use ricotta cheese or anything like that, just plain fare - lasagna noodles, sauce and hamburger, shredded mozzarella and grated Parmesan cheese - but I love the way I make it (and the Dread Reverend's pretty happy with it, too, so we're all that matter). But I always made it the 'old fashioned' way - boiling the lasagna noodles, then making the layers of lasagna in the pan, then baking it to melt the cheese and heat it.

Well. I went to make lasagna last night, and discovered that by accident I had bought the oven ready kind that you don't have to boil first. I intentionally never bought this before because I was just skeptical - 'oven ready' implied, to me, 'pre-cooked' - and I didn't see how pre-cooked lasagna could be any good.

So when I discovered that was all I had, and I already had the sauce and hamburger cooking on the stove, I decided to go for it. Man - was I glad I did. This was the best pan of lasagna I've ever made in my life! I don't know if it was just the lasagna, or that in combination with the sauce (I always buy plain sauce, then spice it up to my liking, never the same way twice - maybe it just turned out exceptionally good this time). But I was deeply impressed with the oven ready lasagna. It was definintely done after baking, not sort of chewy like I expected it to be. But at the same time it had some structure left to it, wasn't all limp and lifeless like my lasagna is when I boil it first (even when I boil it al dente - the baking after the fact seemed to kind of wreck it).

So, kudos for oven ready lasagna - I'll never boil lasagna noodles again! For what it's worth, here's my lasagna recipe. Seasoned cooks (ha ha, pun intended) might find this boring, but the unadventurous and / or new cooks might like it. And it's open to a lot of personal tweaking. I happen not to like chunky pasta sauces with veggies in them, which is why I use plain sauce and fix it up. But you could of course use one of those chunky veggie sauces, or add mushrooms, or anything you like.

A simple basic starting place, but really good even just as is.

12 lasagna noodles - oven ready!
2 cans Hunts Traditional spaghetti sauce
about a pound or so of ground round or hamburger
1 pkg. shredded mozzarella cheese
grated parmesan
spices: Basil, Oregano, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Salt

Pour the sauce into a pan and heat (mostly because it tastes yucky cold, and you're going to be doctoring it up)

Add spices - those listed or experiment - and taste till you like it

Meanwhile, cook and drain the hamburger

Stir sauce and hamburger together. Spoon some into the bottom of your pan - I don't have a pan measurement for you because I don't have a proper lasagna pan at the moment, but ideally it'll be just wide enough for 3 strips of lasagna to cover the bottom. Or 4 pieces across the bottom - then you might need more than 12, depending on how thick you like your lasagna. Three to four layers of noodles works well for me.

Place 3 lasagna strips across the pan, on top of the sauce and hamburger mix you just spread around the bottom of the pan. On top of that spread a layer of the sauce and hamburger mix, a generous layer of mozzarella cheese, and a good sprinkle of parmesan. Repeat those layers till you place the last layer of lasanga, top with sauce and hamburger, and lots of cheese.

Cover tightly with tinfoil and bake at 375 for about an hour (or whatever oven temperature your particular box of oven ready lasagna tells you to use; that's what mine said). Take the pan out of the oven but leave covered and let stand 10 to 15 minutes. Then dig in - num yummy! (Also to-die-for left over).

Knitting and Work - If Only The Twain Should Meet

It'd be cool to make my living by knitting. I wonder how people do that?

I have started working on the sweater again. I got 10 or 12 rows done on the back last night. Not a lot, compared to how many there are to go, but definite progress. I'm kind of psyched about it again, and want to start working on it more regularly.

But since the time changed, it's dark when I get home from work at 5:00 or 5:30, and by the time dinner's over the night's feeling pretty well shot, there may be a lot more knitting evenings ensuing.

The work situation has roller-coasted through several layers of hell lately. Last Thursday my boss dumped so much additional work on me I thought my brain was going to explode. I had one of those insomniac nights Thursday night, and at 5:00 a.m. Friday morning (still awake) I called off work. I didn't go in Saturday either, and I spent those two days basically in a horrible depression about what I was going to do about that lunatic job.

Finally by Sunday a plan had formulated. I went in Sunday and spent four hours doing nothing but prioritizing and scheduling my work for the week, assigning things days based on their upcoming deadlines. Then I took everything that had deadlines I wasn't going to be able to get to, and dumped it squarely back on my boss' desk with a big note telling him, "This stuff all has imminent deadlines, and I can't get it done in time."

There. Let him deal with it. And that's the ongoing plan. Every couple days I'm going to take some time to sort and prioritize my new work, and anything with imminent deadlines that I can't get to, I'm returning to him. I figure that's the only way he's ever going to understand the concept of "too much work and too little time to do it" - if HE is the one who has to deal with it, rather than just continually throwing it at me and my co-workers and saying, "Well, you figure it out."

Since I've taken a lot of the pressure off myself, it frees up some brain space to start relaxing in the evening again - hence the knitting.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not a slackass who doesn't want to work. I work hard at that job, and take my responsibilities seriously. In fact, that's exactly why I can't let him over-commit me to work I can't do - because I know I can't do it, and I can't just sit back and watch it not get done, and not care - or kill myself with stress trying to do more than is humanly possible.

Balance! That's all I ask - balance. If I have to physically force the balance by shifting things around myself, well, that works for me.

Looking forward to getting through today and coming home and knitting some more!

The Internet: Blessing, Curse

I've been having a problem with insomnia for awhile now. But it's lately developed a new twist: paranoia. (What's that called together - insomnoia? parasomnia?)

It goes like this. I will be exhausted throughout the early evening, or maybe just start getting really tired around bedtime, but either way - usually I am tired when I first begin thinking about going to bed. Then one of several things happens. Either I go to bed, but can't fall asleep - feel wide awake as soon as my head hits the pillow and the lights are off - or I fall asleep, but wake up in a few hours totally wide awake and unable to go back to sleep.

This was annoying enough. But lately when I'm laying there totally unable to sleep (or when I wake up in the middle of the night), I'm suddenly beseiged by a bout of total paranoia. I will be worried about anything and everything, but not just normal every day worries. I will either take semi-legitimate worries and blow them completely out of proportion, or I'll fabricate totally unfounded fears and let my mind elaborate on them for awhile. Then my heart rate goes up, I start feeling all antsy and anxious, and that just keep me more awake. Oy!

This is really getting on my nerves. A couple months ago this was bad enough that sometimes several nights a week I would wake up in the middle of the night, and be up until 5:00 or 6:00 a.m., when I had to work the next day (or, umm, that day).

At least tonight it's the weekend - and yes, you guessed - that's why I'm blogging this blather at a little after midnight. Not that that's late for some people, but it generally is for me, and earlier in the evening I was so completely exhausted I could barely hold my eyes open, and was only hoping I could stay awake until 8:00 p.m. (as going to bed any earlier seemed just wrong).

But as soon as my head hit the pillow, bam - I was wide awake. I tried staying there for about half an hour, then gave up.

An acquaintence of mine who happens to be a counselor told me once that insomnia has to be watched carefully, because if it goes on too long it can begin to create paranoia. Now I'm beginning to see what he meant.

So I'm up and awake, and decide to go do some browsing online. For fun, I typed into Dogpile "insomnia and paranoia" to see what I could find out. I turned up a blog where someone was talking about a disease they'd found online (probably during a late night insomniac bout of the same type of sleepless surfing I was indulging in) called "fatal familal insomnia." Just what it sounds like - the patient develops insomnia which worsens over several months until they can't sleep at all; hallucinations and complete delusions occur, followed by death. There is no cure.

"Oh, great," I thought. "Just what an insomniac who is also paranoid needs to read in the middle of the night!" I'd have been convinced I have it, except it's extremely rare - it's definitely genetic, and only 28 families in the world have been discovered who have the gene. I think I'm safe in assuming mine isn't one of them, or I'd probably know it by now.

Unless I've developed some mutant strain of it ...

Okay, enough of that. To be more serious (not that death by wakefulness isn't serious) ... I actually am pretty sure I know what's causing mine, and I just have to get my head out of my ass and do what needs done to fix it. It's actually a number of things all piling up. Stress - both job and home. Drinking way too much diet Coke, especially throughout the evening (apparently my former immunity to caffeine is wearing off as I age). And I need to do a bit of personal cognitive-behavioral therapy on myself. I've just let myself become too negative, too always ready to assume and expect the worst, and way too much of a worrywart. I recognize that I do this, in just about every aspect of life (day or night, so it's not just a late-night sleeplessness thing). I've always been a somewhat negative person (okay, those of you who know me - stop with the sarcastic "(snorf) Somewhat!?").

But in the past year or so it seems to have gotten much worse. And that is something I could have some control over. While I don't practice what I preach, I am a firm believer in the concept of mind over anything. Our thoughts really do to a great degree create or effect our reality, and I really could work on not always seeing the world through soot-colored glasses.

As for stress, well, unfortunately it just got ramped up. My boss fired one of my co-workers Friday. I understand why he did it, but man, it wrecked my job. I was already just barely treading water with my own work - we recently hired a new person who had no law office experience at all, so I am training her totally from scratch - a very time-consuming thing.

My boss had also recently assigned me to create and handle a 'case management' system to monitor and track the status of all his domestic cases (several hundred) because we hadn't previously had such a system, and too many things were falling through the cracks. Now, I think this is a great idea, and I didn't mind doing it, in fact I was sort of looking forward to both the challenge, and the increased organization it would bring to the office. But it has been a very time-consuming thing to create and tweak the system until it works for us, and to begin entering all the cases into it. Out of the several hundred, so far only 30 are actually up and running in the system.

With all of that, I was barely keeping up as it was. Now I have to take on all of my former co-worker's work as well as mine. This just about doubled my work load, and I do not honesty know how I'm going to possibly do it - even increasing my hours from 25 a week to 40+ and working Saturdays, I still don't see how it's going to get done on time - because it's not like I can just say "I'll get to it when I get to it." It's a law office - everything has deadlines, and everything that isn't an emergency right now will be in 3 days.

They will replace her, but in my past experience of this (many experiences - there have been at least 14 or 15 people there who have quit or been fired) it takes quite awhile to find someone, and even if we're lucky enough to find someone with law office experience, I still have to train them for how we do things, our systems. So I'll be training two people, with all the rest of it.

Yeah, it's enough to make my head spin. In the 12 years I've been there, I have never, ever been in this bad a place with my work. I'm completely overwhelmed and do not see any way I can do all this.

That alone ramped my stress up to possibly unmanageable levels. And I'm sure it's what's contributing to tonight's wee-hours blogfest.

But there's one bottom line to all this: I am the only one who can do anything about any of it. I have to get myself straightened up, and start normalizing my life. I have to stop with the diet Coke and maybe in fact any caffeine for awhile, until I get this situation under control. I want to start eating better, and taking my vitamins again. Some exericse would probably do me a world of good - both for reducing stress, and maybe for helping me be relaxed and tired enough in the evening to actually sleep. I want to start meditating every day, to help calm my over-anxious paranoid mind.

And as for work ... I really don't know yet what I'm going to do about that, except do the biggest emergencies each day, and the rest of it will just have to wait. And my boss is just going to have to understand that. Fortunately, he's very cool that way, and he won't give me nearly as much grief as I give myself.

Well, I feel a little better for having written it all out. I'm still wide awake, but not as stressed.

And the bonus - I bet I put you right to sleep!

The Real Estate Roller Coaster

I don't think I'm cut out for this house-hunting adventure. Okay, maybe I'm just getting ... no, I won't say it, but I admit I was much more enthusiastic about it the last time (when I bought this house 14 years ago). I looked at all kinds of crappy houses then (the only type in my price range), and was terribly excited about all of them.

This time it's not working that way at all. This time I can afford to look at much nicer houses, but we're having a very difficult time finding ones that meet our criteria; when we do there's always some snag; and I don't know what to do about getting rid of my current house and mortgage so I can buy said new house (a problem I didn't have to worry about last time). And the whole process is just angsting me out badly.

That first house we looked at was beautiful, but a little out of our price range, so we had to get over that one. We looked at what I'll call Tod House 2, and really liked it. The more I've thought about it, the more I like it. In fact, so much that I was ready to make an offer on it. It really does fit all of our needs perfectly - including price.

But what to do to get rid of my current mortgage, so that I could move on the other house? Then, serendipitously, through mentioning my dilemma to my boss, he knew someone who was looking for a small, nice but not too expensive house to buy right away - and he could pay cash for it. Problem solved! I started transferring my down payment funds around to get them all into one account, and got my pre-approval letter from the bank - I was ready to go, and knowing we can easily afford Tod House #2, was sure we'd get that house and be in it by Christmas.

That's what I get for counting my chickens before the hen died.

Because then came another dip in the rollercoaster - I found out Tod House #2 is subject to short sale, and the time involved in making an offer just got seriously extended. The lender can take 30 days or more to even respond to our offer; and if they reject it, they don't make a counter-offer - if we want to try again, we just have to start the process all over again.

Fine, but that loses me my potential instant cash buyer - this person can't wait that long to buy a house, he needs something right away, and in his price range and ability to pay cash, will certainly find it elsewhere.

And our agent advised us that a lender would never accept an offer on Tod House 2 if we make it contingent on selling my house first ... if it's a short sale, they just want it done and over with (then how come they delay the process so long?) and won't be agreeable to wait for my house to sell in this not-so-hot market.

So while I'd still love to make an offer on Tod House #2, and since it's definitely in a range we can easily afford, I should have no problem coming up with an offer that would be accepted - if I can't make it contingent on selling my house first, and I don't currently have a ready buyer for my house, I don't see how I can make the offer. I have to get rid of mortgage number one before I can get mortgage number two.

Back to square one.

We found two other houses we wanted to go and look at, but our agent advised us that both houses are also bank owned, and require septic upgrades - something the bank won't pay for, and we can't (we need all our funds for the down payment, and septic upgrades can cost between $12,000 and $20,000).

We found another, really nice house we wanted to look at (city utilities; no septic), but just when we called to get an appointment to see it, an offer had been accepted on it.

It's just one damned thing after another.

I know I don't have quite the right attitude about this, that of a fun adventure ... but it's hard when I so desperately want to move, and move soon, and have the funds and credit to easily buy a new house - but keep hitting roadblocks at every turn. It would have helped if I hadn't waited till things were so dire here, till I felt so desperate to move. I know what kicked it in though ... it got cold, and I suddenly can't spend all my time outside, but instead am cooped up in this tiny house too much. During the summer when I could spend most of my time outdoors it wasn't so bad. Now, the prospect of another 7 months sequestered in this glorified garage makes me feel like I'm going to crack up.

So, it's frustrating. But we'll keep looking. And I do have a contingency plan of sorts. I started last weekend really cleaning this place out. I hauled a truckload of stuff to the dumpster at work, threw away several more large bags of stuff, and packed several boxes. This house just has too much crap in it, and if we're going to move, this cleaning out and packing up process has to be done, anyway - so I figure, if I start now, and can begin to reduce the clutter and clean the place up, maybe it won't be so unbearable to live here while we go through this torturous finding-the-perfect-house-that-we-can-actually-buy process.

In theory, anyway.

A House! Another House!

Wow, this is getting exciting. We went to look at House #2 tonight. It's the "downgrade" (in theory) from House #1, the "Dream House" - the perfect house that is just that much out of our price range.

House #2 is the very similar house down the road from House #1, and it ran a close race. Why it's the downgrade is: the bedrooms are smaller; there isn't a huge multi-tiered deck off the back; and it doesn't have a pool.

But that's about it. On the plus side of House #2, the rooms are all nicer (the kitchen is way nicer); it has 3 acres instead of 2 (and still goes to the river); and it's cheaper. As my buddy Rhys so astutely points out (and YES you always have crash space - any place you want), we can build our own decking, and have a pool put in some time down the road if we want one badly enough - although the work and expense of one sometimes makes me wonder. (P.S. - Rhys, Robin plans to start having Roughnecks Training Camps again if we get this place ... plenty of room for ya'll to wreck yourselves for a weekend).

If it were $20,000 cheaper I'd buy it tomorrow. Er, Monday. It's really nice. Very nice hardwood floors. A huge living room. A beautiful 'family room' with a gorgeous brick fireplace, the whole room beautifully paneled in a lovely light wood (not sure what it is). It looks kinda small, but it's deceptive - it's the exact same size of the living room (of which I didn't take a picture, but looks much larger - they are both 24 x 12, the same size as the living room at House #1 and smaller than the family room with fireplace there; it's because this fireplace juts out into the room rather than being flush with the wall, but I am so not complaining - it's a beautiful, beautiful room).


It also has a built-in 'home office' in one end - a work station, shelves, and drawers galore - in matching wood.



The kitchen is to die for, huge, nice, tons of cabinets and space - way larger and nicer than the one in Alleged Dream Home #1. (This is only half of it - it continues on the right)



Upstairs, four bedrooms ... closets everywhere. Downstairs, a fantastic (large, clean, dry) basement with another fireplace. The three acres are at least half wooded (not so much at the other place). Just sweet.

I say "If it were $20,000 cheaper" but not because we're looking at houses we can't afford. Technically it's in our range - that's assuming, based on asking price, that they will come down at least somewhat from that starting point. It's just on the high end of comfortable, is all ... and I'd be much happier with considerably less of a mortgage. So I'm going to line up my ducks, and we're going to make a low-ball offer, and keep looking. *Shrug* Nothing else to do.

But I really like this place, although I am astute enough to realize that I'd probably like almost any house that was so much bigger and nicer than mine, and anywhere within spitting distance of achievable for us just now. So that's why we're going to keep looking - just in case. (And just in case they don't accept our low-ball offer, which is a good bet).

No new knitting news ... too busy house planning.

Houses and Knitting and Rum, Oh My

House News
Well, it's official ... I will be buying and moving into a new house. Why do I declare it official? Not because we've already bought one, alas - but because I realized something in the last week. One of the reasons - only one of several, but a major one - that our past house-hunting forays always ended in us just staying here is that I wasn't 100% fully committed yet to actually moving out of my house. Yes, the tinyness of it drives me nuts, and the work it was starting to want was more than I wanted to invest in it, and I knew I desperately needed more room ... but another part of me was still too tied to this house to be as serious as I needed to be about selling it and moving out. So though we looked at houses, I was never really, truly committed to actually buying one.

It's not a big surprise, though - I have quite a history with this house. It was the first house I ever bought solely by myself, fourteen years ago. Fourteen years is a long time! And my dad's fingerprints are all over this place - he did so much here after I bought it, helping me fix it up. That especially has been hard for me to think about giving up. Yeah, I know in a way it's kind of silly - but I'm not apologizing. I am sometimes a sentimental person, and after my dad passed away I was very sentimental about all the work he put into my little house to help me make it nice. I think, even, for awhile part of what held me back was this idea in the back of my mind that moving out of this house would somehow be kind disrespectful to all the work he put into it for me, as if it hadn't mattered.

But things have finally shifted. While I will be sad about leaving some of the things my dad did for me here, I've moved beyond some of that now. What he did, he did for that time and place, when I was living here alone and had no need of a bigger house - just one that wasn't so crappy, and all he wanted was for me to have a nice place to live.

Things in my life have changed. And he would still want me to have a nice place to live. And face it - this ain't it. Even he knew that. That's why he wanted me to keep his house - he said many times he wanted me to keep his house because it was nicer than mine. But I chose not to keep his house because it wasn't a good fit for me (a decision I do not regret), so finding my own nicer house now would be something he'd be happy about for me.

And, I plan to take at least a few of the things he did for me with me. He planted several rose bushes for me, and I have every intention of digging them up and taking them with me. Likewise with some other stuff as well.

Now that I've wholeheartedly committed, the process is rolling right along. I've already been pre-approved for more mortgage than I'm comfortable getting, so we're looking in ranges far lower than that - meaning there will be no problem with the loan. I've figured out a scheme to get my current mortgage out of the equation - paying my house off now, before we even try to buy a new place, which solves several problems at once. I've scoured the listings and picked about 10 houses we're really psyched about going to see, and we've picked an agent and are in the process of setting up appointments for them all.

And one reason I know this time it's going through: I'm ecstatic beyond the telling of it to think of moving out of this house, into a "real" house with actual room, with closets for God's sake, with a second bathroom so I don't have to hop around the house every morning waiting for Greg to get out of the shower ... (I know, TMI) ... a house with enough space for all our stuff for a change, so that it won't be cluttering up every surface I look at. I'm so ecstatic about that, I can't even tell you, and it can't happen soon enough. My favorite plan is to be in the new house by Christmas - for which I'll celebrate by getting a real Christmas tree for the first time since ... umm, I believe 1972.

Oh, the dream house I posted about - yeah, we've been back to see it again, and it's still the perfect house. But unfortunately it's just a little out of our comfort range, mortgage-wise. We talked it over and know what we're comfortable realistically paying each month, and I don't believe these people are going to drop the price by $50,000. But - we haven't entirely given up ... once all our ducks are in their little row, we do plan to make a low offer on the house - nothing ventured, nothing gained. And probably (assuming they'll reject it) I'll keep my eye on that place and renew my offer every month or so until either (a) they sell it to someone else, or (b) we find some place else we can accept as a substitute, and buy it instead.

But in my scouring of the internet house listings, I've turned up some others that, while not the dream house, are quite acceptable substitutes, so I'm still psyched about going and looking at them in the coming days.

Knitting
I've been working on the sweater. I buggered it up pretty good the other night. I forgot to move my marker on my pattern, and knitted the same row twice. I tried to unknit it, but for some reason couldn't seem to manage it (probably based on a combination of it being late, my being tired, and rum). So I decided to just go on from there as if it hadn't happened.

The next day I kind of regretted that decision, thinking I shouldn't have been so lazy, and I might ruin the whole project by this wonky line of mismatched knitting right across the back of the sweater. But I still didn't feel like trying to unknit it, and was considering ripping it out - either completely, and starting over (I'm only on row 13), or at least back to the plain knitting in the hem, and just starting the patterned part again.

But I got over it. It'll be fine. It's way down by the hem, and hey - it's a hobby.

In fact, I think I'll go work on that some more now.

Rum
I just threw that in there for cadence.

Here We Go Again

I'd mentioned in 'blogapalooza' about the new house. I went to see it yesterday, and oh. my. It really is my dream house. If I made a wish list for the perfect house, this one would seem to be custom built from the list. It - literally - has everything I could want in a house.

It has four bedrooms; 3 full baths and 1 half bath; a formal living room, then a rec room with a stone fireplace on the first floor; and another rec room with another fireplace, and a wet bar, in the finished basement. It has a whole laundry room in the basement. It has a gigantic tiered deck off the back, an in-ground swimming pool (with pool house!), 2 acres (in the city!), and goes all the way back to the river behind the house. It's absolutely perfect.

I've actually wondered if it's "too much house" for us, if it's more than we need. But really - no. I don't think so. The four bedrooms is exactly what we need to finally have room. The first floor rec room is a perfect solution to my complaint of having all of us crammed into one tiny living room every evening, and the 'main room' of the house always being junked and cluttered up. We probably don't need the second rec room in the basement, but what we do desperately need is more storage - and we'd certainly have that. After living in this tiny Cracker Jack box of a house for 14 years, having that much space just makes my head spin. It would be heaven.

Yeah, the place is just perfect, and they've dropped the price on it to a level that's astounding for this house. I can't believe no one's snagged it before now, but I think they only recently - in the last few weeks - dropped the price this last time. But even so, it's still stretching the upper limit of what we can afford, and that makes me very nervous. I would love to have this house, but not if it takes every dime we make, and I have to worry every month about how I'm going to pay for it, or how we'd afford it if a repair or something needed done. I'm not sure it's that extreme, but ... well, figure it like this - the house payment alone would be double my current one, and then there's all the utilities being higher because the house is 3 times bigger than mine (plus the pool). It's a whole lot more than we're used to spending. And I know how easy it is for things to look good on paper, but not really work out that way in reality.

Well. I think I'll go to the bank today and talk to a loan officer and see realistically what our options are, first off. Find out how much mortgage we can actually get, and whether or not it's anywhere in the range we'd need to buy this house. That's probably a good starting place.

Meanwhile, there's also the issue of having to unload my house before we could officially buy a new one. That's a prospect I'm not looking forward to, not only because of the market, but because of how cluttered and junked up this place is, how much 'sprucing up' and work it'd need to put it on the market, and the now very short time frame we'd have to do all that.

But this house is so nice. I'll leave you with some pictures. I didn't take very many, I was too busy walking around in awe.

Yes, I'm A Freak - It's Blogapalooza

I was in the mood to post recently, but didn't really have anything to say. I was looking over my page, and noticed what a long list of categories I have. And it came to me ... I'll do the annual (?) Category Update, with a little blurb about each thing on the list.

Okay - I suppose the 'blather' category can come at the end (if the middle doesn't cover it).

In knitting news: I went back to work on the sweater this week. Hopefully I'll keep steadily at it, and maybe get it done by ... umm, spring? Sigh. Oh well. I wasn't too keen on the last pair of socks I started, so I may scrap them and start a new pair. I decided some time earlier this year that life's too short and uncertain to waste time on projects I've truly lost interest in. It's a hobby - for fun. Not something (else) I have to force myself to do.

I haven't thought about whether I'm doing any Christmas knitting this year, but if I am, I'd better get busy planning that.

SCA: This is the time of year that my post-Pennsic glow (if there was one) is waning, and I start forgetting about the whole thing till next year. Bad idea. This is the very time of year to keep motivated on long-term projects, and if I did, I'd be very happy with myself next year. So I'm going to plan to work on some of my projects at least once a month throughout the winter. Some of the things I want to do:

• make some more (better) garb


• decorate the garb I have - embroidery and such


• make my tent cover


• make a new top for my shade pavilion


• hmm, I'm sure there are some more things, but that's a good start

Gardening: Well, I started strong this year, but was disappointed in my follow-through. But the good news is, since I decided to start treating gardening as work-in-progress, as an experiment of sorts, I'm not too angsty about it. I learned a lot from this year. I lost steam about mid-summer, and didn't maintain my plants and things well. I especially lost it after Pennsic - I stopped watering things, and being August, it kind of did them in. Nothing really ever recovered. I also didn't plan my fall plantings as I'd have liked - I'd wanted to plant some of these gorgeous mums I'm now seeing at the stores, but I didn't plan a space for them, so I don't know where to put them. And I wanted to plant some bulbs for spring flowers, which I also haven't done (although I don't think it's too late for that). There are still some things I need / want to do before serious bad weather - mark where my perennials are, so I don't disturb them next spring when I want to start digging around in the flower beds; prune the roses; trim the shrubs out front; clean out the planters; and clean up the pond. Those things I hope to do soon, to at least get prepared for next season.

Weaving: I haven't done any weaving in way over a year. But it's something I'm still very interested in. I'd like to continue learning about tapestry weaving, but to do that now, I'd probably have to start over in my 'tutorial book' I bought last year. Well, it'll stay on the wish list for awhile yet.

Tyler: Tyler's doing great. He had a wonderful time on vacation, running around on the beach. He seemed to do well on the trip there and back, despite it's length. I just had him to the vet's on Saturday for a T4 check (testing his thyroid to see if his current medication needs adjusted), and they told me his levels were perfect, so his meds are fine. He's lost some weight though, and is getting kind of bony. I know part of that is aging (he'll be 14 next month!) but I'm going to work on bulking him up a little without letting him get too fat. I'm adding a third snack / meal to his day, consisting this week of a half-cup of whole wheat pasta and some mozzarella cheese. We'll see how that does for him. I'd also like to start taking him out more for exercise - as I mentioned, he did great on the trip, wanting to run around and seeming very energetic. Here he just lays about all the time, but I think he truly just gets bored because we don't do much - it's my fault we don't go for walks and outings anymore. As long as he still feels like it, keeping him active can only be good for him. Unfortunately, I waited till fall when the weather will be turning bad - but we tend to have relatively mild winters here, so hopefully if I ever get started, there will still be lots of exercise to be had in the coming months.

Embroidery: I have several embroidery projects I'd like to get back to. One is the embroidery on the pirate coat (a separate entry). Another is some embroidery on garb (mentioned in the SCA entry). I want to finish The Dread Reverend's Sea Chameleon favor, as the only person who has one right now is Berg, and I certainly thing the Commodore deserves one at least as much, if not more. Maybe over the winter months.

Quilting: This is one of those hobbies that I'd like to have time for, but never do. I mentioned in knitting that I'd learned the difficult lesson of giving up on projects that were no longer 'getting it' for me. I'm about to that point with the Tolkien quilt. It's at least 10 years old, and I've just really lost interest in it. I think if I could scrap it with a clean conscience, it would free me up to do some other useful things. I would like to make a scrap quilt; I got a book awhile back full of patterns for scrap quilts made with 5" squares (so it's easy - you cut all your material into 5" squares, then you can choose any pattern from the book and you're all set for it). I spent an entire weekend some time ago cutting all my large, accumulated fabric stash into 5" squares, and have added to it since - I could probably make several of these at this point. And this type of project (if I don't over-engineer it) could easily be completed in a couple of weekends. So perhaps that's something I'll think about getting done this winter as well.

Poi: I'm still practicing! I had a wonderful evening on the beach in North Carolina doing some solitary poi with glow-sticks on the poi balls. It was around sunset /dusk, and I was actually standing in the swash zone, with the income waves washing over my feet. It was magical. I plan to continue working on poi, although I haven't learned anything new in quite awhile.

Travel: Well, the NC trip was a success (despite some dark spots which I won't go into here). I cannot WAIT to go back. So my vacationing for this year went really, really well. The only thing I want to do differently next year is plan a spring vacation - whether it's NC or some place else - because as it stands now, my only two 'real' vacations fall at the beginning of August and the end of September - too close together, with that hideously long stretch of 10 months in between.

Shenanigans: We haven't had many of these for awhile. We had the one wild porch party this year, but that was about it. We have our annual Samhain party coming up, but I've been getting lazy and not really wanting to turn it into an overnighter / weekend event anymore. I'd rather have something more quiet. Wild raucous parties are fun - except for having to deal with the aftermath the next day. I wish someone else would host the party; then I wouldn't have to worry about that part of it.

Project: Pirate Coat: I've done nothing with it since before Pennsic, except wore it in the surf in North Carolina and got saltwater on the bottom. :o) Which was planned. I need to remove the temporarily-sewed-on cuffs and finish the embroidery on them; and then do the embroidery on the rest of the coat. I ought to think about starting that soon, because that's going to be a winter-long project.

Sewing: Yeah, I don't even know why this category is here. I don't make much of anything that wouldn't fall into the SCA or Quilting categories. Fact is, while I enjoy the idea of homemade things, I don't really much like sewing.

New House Project: While the original house that spawned this category is old water under the bridge, I haven't deleted the category because it's kind of a never-ending dream of mine. I'm back on it, at least temporarily. As I've said many times before, my house is simply too small for the people who reside here throughout the month. We desperately need a bigger house. The problem is (a) affording it, and (b) figuring out how to unload my house in this market. But I'm currently re-obsessed with a house I first noticed a year and a half ago, which is still on the market, recently changed realtors, and on which they've significantly dropped the price. I have an appointment to go see it tomorrow. I really love this house (what I know of it) and it would be perfect for us - 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a living room, family room AND rec room; 2 acres; an in-ground pool; just gorgeous. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

And that brings us to recipes, which I've only ever posted once. That's only because it was my mom's recipe, and so not copyrighted. But I muck about with recipes all the time. Maybe over the winter I'll see fit to post some new ones.

Well, I guess that's about it - and certainly covers the blather. That's my life in a nutshell right now: desperately trying to figure out a way to afford a bigger house, and fit my many hobby dreams and wishes into my life. Winding down into the cocoon of autumn, and thinking a lot. But that's a post for another time.

Well, I'm Back

We got home Sunday evening from our annual trip to Emerald Isle, North Carolina. That place is so beautiful, it's really difficult coming back here afterwards. I've barely been online since I came home, so it took me awhile to get here to post.

The weather was gorgeous, warm but not too hot. It only rained once, and that was from a small storm that blew through one evening, so by the next day it was clear again. The water was warm and the waves were beautiful.

I spent a wonderful amount of time just sitting on the beach doing nothing. We saw bunches of dolphins this year, even saw one leap up out of the water several times. We went to Shackleford Banks, and I got to see some of the wild horses, and we found some fantastic shells.

Well, since a picture's worth a thousand words, and I do tend to go on and on, I'll just get to the pictures.

The beach house we rented ... appropriately decorated right after we got there.

I love this place! It's right next door to the one we got last year, and identical, except for a few minor things that make it better. One is that the vertical slats in the upper and lower decks are closer together, so Tyler can't get through them. Last year at the other house, they were just wide enough apart that he could fit through, and I spent the whole week terrified he was just going to leap off the lower deck or accidentally fall off the upper deck (his eyesight is going, and he's been known to just walk off the edge of things before now). This year, with no worries about that, we spent a lot more time out on the decks.

Tyler enjoying the beach. He seemed to have a pretty good time this year, and enjoyed hanging out on the beach (especially since this year we had a beach umbrella, unlike last year).

A couple of the ponies on Shackleford Banks.

Tubing in the surf.

We had a fleet of pirate kites this year.


One night we did full pirate regalia, and went down to the beach.

Why is the rum gone? ... oh ... never mind.

And then of course, the main attraction:

Not only are we sure we're going back next year, but I'm desperately trying to think of a way to afford making this a semi-annual trip, going back in the spring. A year is too long to wait. (Six months is too long to wait, but I am pretty sure I can't afford it any more often than that). Since I got the new office at work, I've increased my hours slightly, and am considering increasing them a little more ... with the right tweaking, I think I can make this work.

Aaahhh-ha-ha-ha-ha (insert maniacal laugh here)

That's me being blissful in my new office !!! Yes, it's official. I'm moved in to my new office, the former conference room. Amazing ... absolutely amazing. It's enabled me to like my job again. It's enabled me to tolerate my co-workers again. It's renewed my enthusiasm for actually caring about my job again. My productivity has doubled. My mood has skyrocketed. My stress level has plummeted. It's amazing.

Pictures. Caveat: the room isn't done. Since this all happened so fast, we didn't have time to do much other than use what was there (which is fine with me!). I'm using the former conference room table as a desk (this will eventually get replaced, and moved to the other empty office across the hall). I'm using a random table off to the side (also being replaced) and in these pictures my chair is one of the conference room chairs (since replaced with a 'real' desk chair, with wheels and all that). My boss has hired his cousin, a master carpenter, to custom build me a work station to my design and specifications in this space. How. Cool. Is that? It'll take some time, but in the next month or so this place is going to be so amazing, I might just like it better than home. (I know, check me for fever).

Okay - the promised pictures.

Reminder: old office

Back to new office.

What's not to love?? I'd say I've hit a good spot - finally. I work part time, and have my own office (the proverbial corner office, no less, with windows overlooking beautiful garden views).

Sigh.

And if all that wasn't good enough ... in less than 72 hours I will be on the beach in North Carolina. (that weird tropical disturbance thing will be gone by then ... trust me, my name isn't Rayne for nothing).

Life is good.

Screw the bad economy - we'll make our own coin.

Well. Sorta. Greg, in his never-ending ability to see something neat, say, "Hey, I wonder how that's done," then set about learning, is making coins. Pirate coins, just for fun of course. But pretty darned cool nonetheless.

I sat in on a session yesterday, and can now report to you the process.

First you need a source of meltable metal. In his case, he started with pewter because (a) it melts and molds easily, and (b) we happened to have some available to melt down.


This creepy menagerie was found while cleaning out the garage. I knew I had, buried in there somewhere, a box of old trophies. These are old trophies - back when they still made the 'trophy' part out of real metal - pewter, apparently. I didn't want the old trophies anymore, and was going to throw them away, when we came up with the idea of melting the metal bits down to make the pirate coins Greg had wanted to try.

The guy with the laurel wreath on the left is, I think, a spelling bee trophy from when I was in about 5th or 6th grade. The fireman trophy was from a 3rd grade "Fire Prevention" poster contest. The horse on the far right, and the thing between it and the fireman (I think another horse) weren't even my trophies (that's what the ex gets for leaving crap in my parents' attic), so ... melt away.

The procedure (as Greg aka Lord Captain Robin McCauley does it) goes like this. The metal is melted with a simple propane blow torch. He carved the larger piece in which he is melting the metal out of graphite. This would have been the crucible, except he was having trouble getting the large piece to heat up using just the blow torch. So he made a channel in it, then made the smaller crucible (sitting under the drippy metal) to catch it as it ran down the channel.





This way with the blow torch he can both melt the metal and keep the smaller crucible very hot, to keep the metal liquid until he pours it into the mold. Otherwise it hardens way too fast. Why not just use the small crucible? Because the chunks o' trophy were too big.

The mold was carved into another piece of graphite. Once the liquid metal is poured in ...


... it needs tamped or pressed in a bit, to get it to spread all the way to the sides of the mold. This bit took some work, as he couldn't initially find anything that fit just right in the mold. He tried a capped beer bottle ...

... a little too big. Then he tried a tipper (the 'beater' or stick used to play a bodhran - Irish drum) ...


... and this was working the best last time I checked.

And the finished product looks like this:


Pretty neat.

Tyler watched. I suspect he has ideas about making his own dog coins. Or else he just noticed activity around the brazier, and was just waiting for a taste.

Office Heaven

Okay, I admit I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop on this, but that's starting to wear off, and as the reality settles in, I can't contain my excitement, I had to post. There is a light at the end of the tunnel ... and it may very well not be the biohazard toxic waste transport train.

I'm getting my own office at work. This has been an ongoing dream of mine for quite a few years. For very good reason. My until-now current situation has been like this: there's me and another legal secretary in one room, in the back of the building. It's the smallest room in the building, added on to this 1890s century-home-converted-to-office-building. This room isn't much bigger than a smallish bedroom in an average house, yet in it is: 2 L-shaped desks for me and the other secretary; a huge machine that is our copier / printer / fax / scanner; a second smaller printer; a largish wooden shelving unit thing in the middle of the floor (on which sits my computer monitor and several large metal boxes of file cards); and three 4-drawer filing cabinets. Due to the fact that our file cabinets can no longer hold all our files, there's also usually files stacked all over the floor. Moving around in this room is an exercise in flexibility worthy of Cirque du Soleil.

In fact, here are some pictures I took awhile back. My (former) desk is the one on the left, with the blue coat on the chair.

From the doorway into the room:

Another view:

These pictures don't even really do it justice ... it doesn't give the 'feel' of what it's actually like to have to sit and work in this EMF-infested nightmare all day. If all that wasn't bad enough, we have a wonderful office assistant named Allen who never even got his own desk, and works in the far corner of this room, using the top of the filing cabinets, and sometimes the floor, as his desk (with a portable, cordless phone).

Because the main office equipment is in this room, the 4th person in the office, the front desk person, is back there 25% of the day using the copier / fax / scanner (and generally talking the whole time). And then the attorney (when he's in the office) is often in this room dictating to one of the secretaries, or giving general instructions on one thing or another.

Which means all day long I'm trying to work with at least two other people in the room, talking to each other or on their own phones, or all the phones ringing (which they do incessantly, and there are three of them in this one room), and other people coming into the room talking to those of us who work there. The noise level in this room is maddening. There have been many times when five people have been in this tiny-ass room, all talking at once ... and this is the room I'm supposed to do detailed, complex legal work in!

It's enough to drive anyone insane. No wonder I've been skirting that abyss for so long. The conditions in this room contribute in large part to the angst I routinely experience, like that mentioned in my last post. Large part.

Meanwhile, we have two other rooms in the front of the building that are largely empty and rarely used. I've told my boss on numerous occasions that it's ludicrous that he has 80% of the working guts of the office (the computers, equipment, and staff) crammed into the tiniest room in the building. I've been begging him to let me work in one of the unused rooms up front - to get out of that tiny claustrophobic madhouse would help enormously in mitigating the rest of the craziness I have to endure at that place. I mean, people can only take so much ... .

Believe me - this has nothing to do with 'prestige.' This has nothing to do with "oooh, I have my own office." I've really never cared about that kind of crap. I really just wanted a saner, more productive work environment. I actually just wanted to be able to do my job without the incessant, crazy constant interruptions and distractions, All. Day. Long.

So ... it's finally happening. Through a series of events I won't go into the details of, I am finally getting the front room as my own office! I won't officially move in till Monday morning, but my new computer's in there, and today I got to work in there for awhile while the boss and I were going over a backlog of work. And it was amazing!!!!

It's been hard for me to even say "my own office" ... I keep referring to it as 'my room' ... as if I'm presuming too much by calling it my 'office.' But it is, it is, and now that I'm finally wrapping my head around the fact, I can't contain my exuberance! After actually getting to work in there today, in the glorious, wondrous quiet ... the incredible, indescribeable silence ... no ringing phones all over the office (just mine, and it's ringer is turned down to an incredibly muted volume) ... no 4 or 5 people all talking at once, to each other or on their various phones ... just heavenly peace, where I can focus and concentrate and actually do my work without constant distractions ... all I can do is sigh.

And after the initial wonder settled in, I realized something important. This is MY OFFICE. I don't have to say "my room" as if I'm a teenager at home. It's my office, and I damned well deserve it!! I've been working at this place for 12 years. I've been a legal secretary for 17 years. I am incredibly good at my job, and I do a lot of very complex work on these cases. I'm far more than just a "typist." My work involves most of what a paralegal does - the only difference is that I learned it all on the job, and never bothered to go get the 'official certification.'

There's no reason for me to feel all 'unentitled' about this, as if I've somehow managed to trick them into something and they're going to catch on and boot me out of the place after a few days. I deserve this, and I'm going to freaking wallow in it!!! I have my own office.

Here are some pictures I actually took last February (when I was pushing for this one other time, but wasn't able to get it to work - then). The files all over the table were my boss's work files, as he used to use this room to 'store his work.' Those files are all moved to a permanent new location now - that's taken care of. For the time being I'm using that large glass-topped table as my desk, because I haven't yet picked out an actual desk. When I do, the glass-topped table will be moved to the room across the hall. But look at this place! Compared to that other room ... well, I'm sure you can understand my excitement. (picture that table as it looks now, empty of all but my new laptop computer - I chose laptop over desktop because I love laptops - and it was the right decision, it's a joy to work with, and is much more flexible).



And if the wonderful, quiet, room all to myself wasn't good enough ... those two large windows on the left look out onto a huge front porch which is about the size of half my house, and across the street from that is the Women's Garden on the grounds of City Hall. That's going to be my new view out my office windows! (as opposed to my former view, which was the parking lot; granted, I was happy to have a window - A window - so this is just pure heaven).

I am very confident that this move alone is going to wipe out half (if not more) of the angst I was experiencing here which was causing me to detest this place as badly as I did. I may actually like my work again - it was never the 'legal work' I didn't like, I did after all choose this job direction voluntarily (the only vocation I ever did choose voluntarily and consciously) - it has just been the working conditions and certain people who were making it unbearable. Now I get (a) better working conditions, (b) huge distance and buffer from the problem person, and (c) the ability to do my job well again - with focus and lack of disruptions to get it done right. I'm actually psyched about how much more I will be able to do now in managing this caseload, the new responsibilities I can take on because I will have the time, space, and mental focus to actually handle it.

Just hadda share. This doesn't mean I'm going to completely give up looking for something that I may find more rewarding. It can't hurt to explore! But at least I won't be in a panic about finding it anymore.