Saturday, September 21, 2013

Picking up where I left off

Looking back at my last several posts, I feel that they were pretty negative. Sorry about that! I'm going to try to focus more on the positive, and just try to get into the groove of sharing some things that I am doing - like hobbies, what I'm reading, sharing photos - stuff like that. I'll still tell you how I'm feeling, but I'm going to try to be less of a Debbie Downer. OK? Cool. There have been a few things that have happened since my last post. Here is a quick run down:

1. Still working for the same place, still hating it. Went on a job interview last week on 9/10, still waiting for the company to make a decision. More money, less miles, happier me.

2. Les had a humongous blockage in an artery in his neck about 6 months ago. He had two small strokes behind his eye that they can see on a MRI, but he hasn't had any lasting effects. Fortunately they were able to get him into surgery and remove the blockage in time. He has healed up very nicely.

3. Sissy has congestive heart failure and an enlarged heart. Starting around March, her asthma just seemed out of control; by August she couldn't walk ten feet without having to stop to catch her breath (which just couldn't be caught). I finally convinced her that she must go back to the doctor, and that is when her diagnosis was caught. With water pills and a practically non-existant (as opposed to low) sodium diet, she has recovered really well and is about 85% back to her old self.

4. The goats finally went home to Jeremy's. He and his family have a new home, and we just could not keep the goats anymore. They needed to have their hooves attended to, especially Megatron, and we just could not provide adequate shelter for them. I am glad they are with their family now, and I don't lay in bed at night worrying about them anymore.

5. I managed to complete two school quarters; I took an algebra class, Human Relations (very interesting), File Management (lame), and an English class that kicked my butt. I loved every minute of it. I have to put it on hold for now because I ran out of financial aid, and trying to work full time 55 miles from home and attend classes at night 25 miles the other direction from home was a bit much for me. We shall see what the future holds as far as that is concerned.

6. There has been some drama with Jim over the last several months, and Les has come very close to tossing him out of the house. Frankly, I am so over it and tired of talking about it that I'm not going to discuss it in detail here (at least not right now). Suffice it to say, he is kind of on probation right now, and is currently minding his P's and Q's.

So, that's what has been going on in a nutshell. Now. Onto the new leaf. 

CROSS STITCH

I love to cross stitch. I have been doing it since I was about 12. The bad thing is that I can count on one hand how many projects I have actually completed. (Bad) I love to collect patterns, and the other bad thing is that I now have enough patterns to last me for the rest of my life, plus an additional good 60 years or so. I have wish lists on Heaven and Earth Designs' website and ABC Stitch Therapy's website that are about 50 patterns so far - each. Yikes. I found some excellent blog sites and have learned quite a bit from them. There are whole blogs dedicated to stitching Heaven and Earth Designs (HAED's) and I am going to use a bunch of the tips that I have picked up from that site. I have learned about SALs (stitch a longs), WIPs (works in progress), and confetti. I have learned about mapping out the grid of the pattern directly onto your fabric with a water soluble markers so that it's much easier to keep your place and not make mistakes. I have a HAED pattern that I started last year; I was working on it and have come to the heartbreaking decision that I'm going to have to rip it all out (known as frogging) and start all over. I've just made too many mistakes to be able to fudge it, and I want it to be done correctly. Here is what it will look like when it's done:
Poppy Puss by HAED

And now, Blogger will not let me left justify my text. Sheesh. Anyhoo, here is how far I had gotten before I realized that I was going to have to tear it all out and start again from scratch:

Bazinga. Blogger won't let me load the picture.

I think I'm beginning to remember why I haven't been blogging. Oh well. I still need to fiddle fart around with this and see if I can't bypass the problems.  I will post pictures when I figure something out. So, in the meantime, I'm working on a sampler from Jeanette Crews Designs called "Country Sampler". Let's see if I can post a picture of it:

Well, what do you know, it worked! And my text is left justified again!  I have finished the E (eggs) and the D (duck); I'm nearly finished with the C (cat). (And on a side note, I never realized until now that there is a VW Bug in the background. Huh.)  I'm not exactly sure when I started working on this; I think it may have been last year some time.

READING

I had been tracking my reading on the sidebar, but it is now woefully out of date. I'm going to leave the books on there, but will add my most recent to it and will mention them here in the blog itself.

Books I am currently reading:

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill - almost finished with it. I feel this one reads much more like a Stephen King novel than his other books, and I am kind of disappointed by that. (Joe is Stephen's son, just in case you weren't aware.) But, it is still a good read, and not quite as "out there" as SK's books can be.

Joyland by Stephen King - speak of the devil (no pun intended). Just started but is already showing classic signs of a SK novel.

Omens by Kelley Armstrong - just picked up from the library today and haven't started it yet. A 24 year old woman with a great life discovers she is adopted, and her real parents are notorious serial killers serving life sentences. She seeks the truth about her parents, and of course, there are those that have issues with that.

Books I have read recently:

I love books by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, especially the Pendergast series. I have read them all, and I have been 90% pleased with them. There were a couple that I felt were not really up to par, and they were kind of like the 2nd Matrix movie - just a bridge between the first and the third, without any real merit of their own. I didn't feel that way about the last three I read: Cold Vengence, Two Graves, and the first of their new series - Gideon's Sword.

I also read Alafair Burke's novel If You Were Here, and I highly recommend it. It was one where I thought I pretty much had everything figured out, but there was still a twist I didn't see coming. I started to read The Execution of Nora P. Singleton by Elizabeth L. Silver, but I had so many books checked out at once that were not renewable, that I had to turn this one in before I even got the first chapter read. It is going back on my waiting list at the library.

I currently have seven novels on hold with the library; The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman is currently on its way, and the following are still waiting for my turn: A Delicate Truth by John LeCarre, Inferno: a novel by Dan Brown, the Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, Doctor Sleep by Stephen King, White Fire by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling).

Well, due to the problems with Blogger and my very slow "high speed" internet connection, it has taken me about three hours to do this post. I'm tired. I want to go to bed now. As soon as I can, I will post new pictures of our critters and my cross stitch projects; maybe we can talk out what we are watching on the boob tube these days.

Smell ya later. TTFN.

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