This is who I am

It really gripes my butt when I’m put in a difficult position because of something that’s totally out of my control. I am so angry right now over the looming government ‘shutdown’ situation I could just hit someone! I want to stomp my foot, curse, throw something, slap somebody, scream, just SOMETHING that will make me feel better.

We have money in the bank, but, that money is not supposed to be for us to support ourselves. It’s for our future! I am thankful that I have a job (even one I don’t particularly like going to everyday) that won’t be affected by the shutdown. Been there, done that!

I have a stitching weekend planned for tomorrow. Not going. Gas is too expensive and I don’t want to spend money on the class when I should be tightening my belt even with M telling me I should go.

I have a Disneyland vacation planned for next week. We have had the tickets since Thanksgiving. Not going. Even though the tickets are paid for we would still be spending cash on gas. We had planned to make this trip as ‘cheap’ as we could in the eating department long before the government plans loomed but even that would be too much right now. I will, however, still be off work.

I have some Christmas bonus money I’m going to be spending this week. I held on to it because I knew Market was coming and have had my order in at The Attic for some time now. I’m just waiting on a total so I can send it off. I wish I could cancel the order and sock the money away, but M says ‘no.’

For the past couple of days I have been second guessing every penny I spent on non-food items last week. It all seems so frivolous and wasteful right now.

I am thankful we live in government housing and don’t have to worry about a mortgage or utilities. I am thankful I have a good paying job that will keep us in food and gas; however, our commissary and gas stations will be closing down and we will be paying higher prices for gas and groceries. Right now gas is almost $4.50 a gallon here and I have no idea what the difference in groceries will be but I’ll definitely be experimenting with generic brands.

I am thankful I have a Kindle full of free-reads and re-reads and a room full of stash to keep my needle moving and my mind and soul soothed.

I am thankful I have friends who will listen to me worry and hug me when I need one.

I am thankful I have M home with me and the puppies and he’s not overseas worrying about us instead of concentrating on his job.

Tomorrow I hope I can be thankful that all of this worry was for nothing.

I cannot believe the weather today.  I’m sitting here with the front and back door open, listening to the birds and the girgle of the fountain out back.  I so, so, so wish I could have sat on my back porch with a pot of coffee this morning instead of having to go to work.  Everyone is in just a great mood because of the weather, too.

M has been off work for two days getting his final preparations ready for his big day tomorrow.   He surfed yesterday and today and said it was beyond beautiful on the ocean.  I know he’s going to miss it so much when we leave.

I have to be up at 4:30 in the morning to accompany M so I have no hopes of being very productive tomorrow afternoon.  I’ll try to stitch but I usually can’t concentrate I am taking Summer Queen in to be framed on Sunday.  I can’t wait!  I have purchased a couple of supplies I need to finishmatize the 3 ornaments I’m working on and am looking forward to (hopefully) doing that Sunday as well.

It’s been a long time since I had a weekend that I considered *great.* Why was this weekend so great? No particular reason.

I finished the stitching on Red Desert Scissor Pocket and started and completed the stitching portion of an ornament. I still have the finishing portion to do on both, and two more ornaments to stitch and finish. As fast as the stitching portion went on my ornament I’m almost believing I can get the other two stitched by next weekend. I need to stop by the fabric store and grab some interfacing and thin batting so I can do some finishing work.

I conquered Mount Washmore. The only dirty clothes in the house when I went to bed last night were the clothes M and I were wearing before changing into pj’s.

Both puppies got a bath and pedicure.  They have pre-dental appointments to night.

I made Chicken Adobo.

I caught up on some of my DVR’d programs.

See! Nothing spectacular, but the weekend felt long and I felt like I’d done something when it was time to go to bed last night.

The downside? The weekend is over.

This next weekend starts a whirlwind month for us. First, M has his half-ironman this weekend. Next, it’s my stitchy weekend. Then we’re going to Disneyland on April 14^th, I’m taking my car to a car show on April 16^th  (I am beyond excited about this), and M has a half-marathon on April 17^th. April 23^rd (I think) we’re going to a horse show…or maybe it’s the next weekend. Whew!

Thank you for the lovely comments on Summer Queen.  I’m looking forward to getting her framed and will share that also as soon as it’s done.  I’ve decided to go with framing similar to Spring Queen, and will probably use a deep blue-green velvet mat and silver filet.

My mother called me just as I was going home last night to tell me that my uncle is doing as well as can be expected after his 4-hour surgery.  They ended up removing the upper left lobe of his lung, part of the chest wall, and 2 partial ribs.  He’s expected to be in ICU for 3 days if there are no setbacks.  They intended on getting him out of bed today.  She said they allowed her to see him for a few minutes once he was out of recovery and his color was really good although he was still out of it.  Plus he was not on any type of ‘support.’ 

Bless her heart, she was so stressed out.  I could hear it in her voice and when I asked her how she was holding up she started crying which, of course, started my waterworks as well.  I don’t think she realized how stressed she was until that minute.  She and my dad had just walked in the door and she called me because she knew I was worrying. 

I was too tired to think properly last night so I didn’t stitch.  I tried reading my current book, but couldn’t concentrate on that either. 

It’s really Thursday, finally, which means it’s WW day for me today and I almost talked myself out of going this morning, but I’ll be good and go.  It’s not that I don’t want to weigh in, I just want to be lazy and not have to go anywhere for lunch today.  My incentive?  My PP start over today 😆

I have been trying to keep up with my stitching blogs and have wanted to comment on so many but I can’t.  They have their settings in such a way that you have to have a blogger account or a google account.  I can’t even do open ID 🙁  PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE STITCHY BLOGGERS…ALLOW MORE OPTIONS TO COMMENT! 

Before I settled in for the weekend, I did manage to get some running around done on Saturday morning.  I had hoped to come home with a new iron (I did product reviews all week long), however, M had other ideas.  He NEEDED a Dyson Hand-held.  So, that’s what we ended up buying 😆

I spent the majority of my weekend beading Spring Queen.  I’m having a heck of a time though because I broke the ‘snap’ part of my handi-clamp because I clamped it in my stand too hard.  (By the way – they do sell replacements.)  This of course means I can’t use my stand, so I can’t use my magnifier/light.  I had to rig it up to my desk and while it’s working it’s so much slower not using a stand and just resting the rods on my desk.  It’s low and wears my back out.  My eyes are bad enough that I need the magnifier in order to not pierce stitches.  It sucks getting old!

And in non-whining news – M managed to crash and burn on his tri-bike yesterday.  First time that’s ever happened and he’s very lucky he wasn’t hurt more than he was (no dings in his helmet).  Besides his pride (his words, not mine) he’s sporting some magnificent road-rash on the side of his knee and he has some scratches and a gouge on the side of his bike.  Fortunately, again, he didn’t ding his deraileur and nothing seems to be out of sinc.  It would be awful to try to reset things at this stage, just 3 weeks out of his race.

Just sayin’