This is something Not To Show Mum. But it's Fun to do!!  ¶ 10:22 PM

  A weight has been lifted, and we can breathe.

Finished a toilet paper scarf for my dad. I gots to take piccies and post it. And a Pink Peanis. Ditto on the pics.

Now if I could knit a plot like I knit a sock, one word at a time instead of a stitch, I'd be one heck of a writer.  ¶ 1:26 PM

  For the first time in a long time, I'm looking forward to Dead Bird Day.

Thanks to the terrible price of gas, I'm staying home.

Suddenly, there's No Stress, and I'm enjoying the holiday. I have baking plans and crochet plans, and ooo... it'll be fun.  ¶ 11:18 AM

 

The cat furniture transformed into The Cat Wall Furniture.

By the top shelf, one of the rungs of the banister has been removed, so the cats have access to the shelf from upstairs.  ¶ 1:46 PM

  I've been playing with Flickr.

Here's the picture of Kelvin that made me gasp when I saw it. If you add a half moustache, it looks very like our Colin.


And here is the image after I made an art quilt with it. :)



The smaller quilt on the right is an abstract of the larger quilt.

I still haven't gotten a dowel and some nails and hung it up. That's still on my To Do list.  ¶ 8:39 AM

  When you are making out your Christmas card list this year, also include one

for the following address:

A Recovering American Soldier
c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20307-5001

If you approve of the idea, please pass it on.

Help to show our appreciation for their sacrifice. Thank you  ¶ 11:34 AM

  Stop Right Now With The Christmas Music Before December, Or Lock Me In Jail Now Please.

I mean it. I will take the AK-47 I don't yet have to the Mall and "spread a little cheer" if I keep hearing about how much money I should be spending on gifts I can't fucking afford and never want to buy for someone any way. I no longer even like Christmas carols. I never want to hear them again. Ever. Because I am hearing them all fucking year long. And this just makes me ANGRY.  ¶ 3:33 PM

  Posted elsewhere, but I felt it important enough to share here. This is about why I am child-free, and made the conscious choice to do so.

I do make derogatory terms about breeders, but when I say them, I am 99% of the time referring to my siblings. To me, they are fantastic examples of why I remain childless.

I am the middle child. When I was 14, my older sister got pregnant and decided to keep the kid. She was 18, going to college full time and working near full time. Mom refused to do anything with raising hands on. So instead of listening to the child scream, I took over most of my niece's childcare. I had my fill of diapers before I graduated high school. I had to break my dates so that my sister could date, and "hopefully land a man." She met her first husband while six months pregnant with my niece, and that man was fantastic with my niece and my sister.

After college, for whatever reason, I came down multiple chemical sensitivities. It means I'm violently allergic to anything perfumed, most cleaning products, paints, etc. And yes, "baby powder scented" is something that sets me off. This of course makes me really "enthusiastic" about the challenge of taking care of a baby and trying to find stuff that won't make me ill. When the child gets older, I don't want a rebellious teen making me ill just because they can. Nor do I want to try to explain to a 6-year-old why little Timmy can't visit because he smells and makes mommy ill. About the same time I developed my allergies, I started seeing the man who became my husband. He was very supportive for my health issues, but he clearly did not want children. He had a vasectomy years before I met him. We have talked occasionally about a vas-reversal, but we usually swing back to not wanting children. The odds of his vas-reversal working are pretty damn slim anyway, and the longer he waits, the worse the odds. He's now 48 and I'm 38. Truly, we're better off not, at this point. The window is really closed.

Two months after my marriage to my beloved, my little brother took his wife down the aisle. They were still both in college, but my brother was expected to graduate that spring. You can guess the reason for the rush. Watching them struggle financially and continually add to their family certainly makes my tubes tie themselves. They now have three children (two boys and one girl, all with problems), one large bouncy dog, and varying numbers of cats (one of which now lives with me as a rescue) in a very tiny house.

I still adore my niece. I even adore her half-brother who was raised by my fabulous ex-brother-in-law. Oh yeah, and the reason he's my ex-brother-in-law is because on my sister's 40th, she went through a midlife crisis. She had an affair resulting in her divorce. Now she's recently remarried, and expecting her third child at 42. Um, do I need to say that marriage was a rush to the altar too? My niece will be 25 when her little half sibling is born.

I sincerely wish they would think about it. I know I'd be a great mom. But my favorite part of all children at the moment is being able to send them home with someone else. So I'm focused on being a great Aunt, and maybe my adorable niece and nephew will take care of me when I am old, and I am happy to will anything I have to them. I also adore my "furbabies"- 4 cats, 2 dogs. Life is wonderful without kids.  ¶ 11:45 AM

  Ravelry forae can be more time-sucking than any MMORPG.

You have been warned.  ¶ 7:46 PM

  John is a friend who visits often. He is well aware of my chemical issues, as I have kicked him out of the house before, or ran for it myself. He's tried, over the years we've known him, to winnow out stinky things and keep things unchanged so I won't react to him.

But about two weeks ago, I could smell him when he came in, and I started coughing immediately. I went out and opened all the windows, and informed him, "You're stinky today." I did not bother with tact, between hacking coughs. Jazz wanted to know if it was okay. I had to tell them that John had to leave. I was getting faint, dizzy, and coughing terribly. The taste of the smell would not fade. He swore he hadn't changed anything. I rebuted- my reaction claims otherwise. It is possible that one of the products he uses normally changed the formula to something far worse for me. And he really ought to check. But as long as he was smelling like that, I would not survive his visits, and he was banished. Jazz went with him- he had come over to socialize, and there was no reason socialization could not continue.

But if it was true that nothing he wore changed formulas, then I was a shitload worse in my sensitivities. I got very paranoid about going anywhere or doing anything outside of the house.

Fortunately, he admitted later he had changed his laundry detergent.  ¶ 12:21 PM

  So I got out of bed and came down stairs because I could not sleep. I have to teach on Saturday and I am being interviewed on the radio tomorrow - both SCA related. So I'm nervous, and that spurs the insomnia.

The easiest solution for insomnia is work. Yup- there's work in the queue, so I jump in, and the first thing I pull is a 15-minute soundfile. This job has me pull one sound file at a time, finish it, then it auto uploads this file and downloads the next. So that's 15-minutes of one doc dictating one report. Must by default be a snooze-inducer!

Except it's a psychiatric evaluation. And the veteran is talking about why he's depressed. For once, it isn't about the dead bodies on the beach in Vietnam. No, it's all about his upcoming court case where he swears that the girl and her mother told him she was 19. Apparently, the girl and her mother have worked this as a con to extort money in the past. When he found out she was 15, he tried to get away, and that's when they threatened him to pay up or face rape charges.

Suddenly, I don't feel like sleeping ever again.

Man, I hate this job.  ¶ 1:40 AM