So, I signed up for six months with Wardrobe Refashion. SIX MONTHS! Starting Saturday! I’m so excited, and also a little bit nervous. (I also needed a new bra, so I went ahead and bought one before my six months start.) Now all I want to do is sew and knit and crochet. I seriously have about a hundred things I want to make, which is probably totally unreasonable. I think I’m going to try and start with easy projects, and stuff that I’ll be able to wear in the coming months, rather than stuff that won’t be practical until winter hits again.

Anyway, that’s all. I’m just excited, and can’t wait to start sewing. Awesome.

Well, it’s 5:15am, and I’ve been up for a little over an hour, so I’ve left the bedroom, so Greg can sleep instead be kept awake listening to me toss and turn and sigh. I’ve gotten maybe three hours of sleep, which seems to be the max I can get before waking up. And then I’ll be awake for a while, go back to sleep for one to three hours, wake back up, lather, rinse, fucking repeat. I can’t seem to get any more solid or restful sleep, unless it’s daytime and I’m staying home from work because I’m so exhausted, and then the only reason I stay asleep is I’m so exhausted, not because I’m more relaxed or have stopped worrying, because I haven’t. And I can’t keep missing work, so Monday I’m going to call and get an appointment with my doctor for Friday to discuss sleeping meds, as well as whether we need to up my Lexapro or prescribe something in tandem with it, and also whether or not I’ve got an ulcer, since I’m pretty sure I do. SUCK. It’s obvious to me now that I should have gone to the doctor long before now, but I was too busy worrying, and trying to deny that it was out of my control. Whatever. On the bright side, tonight right after I woke up, I was tried to find other, specific, concrete things to think about, rather than my amorphous and never-ending worries – and I think I’ve finally decided what to do with the Trendsetter Aura yarn I’ve had in my stash for…probably going on five years now. That’s cool.

I stayed home Wednesday because I couldn’t sleep the night before, worrying, of course. In the evening, after Greg got home, we went for a walk in the neighborhood, so GAGG: 101.16 miles. I also need to get into the gym more often for some ass-busting exercise. Walks are nice, and they’re non-stimulating enough that, in the evening, they don’t add to my inability to sleep, but they don’t wear me out enough to knock me out. More rigorous exercise in the morning helps me stay on a better sleep schedule, when my anxiety’s at a more manageable level than it’s been lately – but it’s still good for me, and it can’t hurt. It’s obvious to me that, at this point, I need some sort of medicinal help calming down and getting to sleep, but meds and exercise is probably an even better option. Meds and exercise in the morning and walking or meditation in the evening is probably the best option, but it’ll put a dent in my precious, precious crafting time – so that’s what I’m going to aim for (meds, exercise, relaxation practice), but I don’t know how rigorously I’ll hold myself to it. I know I should probably just suck it up and leave the crafting for the weekends, but poop on that.

And now if I haven’t been Debbie Downer too much, how about some pictures? Here is the second chemo cap – well, the second one that works, as a cap – in Moda Dea Dream. And the beholder I made for Greg for Valentine’s Day, to go with his brushed steel dwarven dice. I used this pattern, but modified it, since the Monster Manual says beholders have one central eye and then ten eyestalks. I also – obviously – put all the eyestalks on its top. They’re pretty neat, since they’ve all got thin copper wire in them to make them somewhat poseable. (And those white things next to it are minis that have been primed for painting.)

I’ve pretty much been up all night, worrying about meaningless bullshit. Thanks, Anxiety! I’m taking today off to get some sleep and get my shit together, since I’ve basically worried myself sick. I’m awesome like that. And by “awesome,” of course I mean “ridiculous.” I’m going to go eat some breakfast, and then go to bed. What a waste of a day. Blahr.

The etching tute is up at Craftster: here. It was a beast to type up. I should’ve just said, “Go read the instructions in Steampunk Magazine Issue 1. The end.” Oh well. I’m done with it. I’m not putting it up here, because it took like four days to type out and I’m fucking sick of it. But have a look at the pictures from the etching, not in any real order – just alphabetical by whatever I happened to name them:

There are a couple things I could tell you about.

I could tell you about the two newest chemo caps I’ve finished. AC Moore decided to stop carrying my go-to chemo cap yarn (Moda Dea Dream), so I picked up some Patons Bohemian, since I’ve been asked to knit up another chemo cap, unfortunately. (“Unfortunately” because it means a new chemo patient, and that sucks.) Anyway, that hat turned out too large, which you can kind of see in the picture. Then I ran out to Michaels and got some Moda Dea Dream (which is on the needles as I type), but also had to get some Patons Nuance because it was too soft and too pretty not to get, and I’ve already finished the hat with the Nuance. (I’ll be handing over both the Nuance cap and the Dream cap, since the Nuance is very nice but hand-wash-only, while the Dream is machine washable and dryable. And who wants to hand-wash and lay-flat-to-dry when they’re going through chemo? They’ve got other things to worry about. On the other hand, I rarely wash my hats, so maybe they don’t, too, which is why they’re getting the Nuance.)

I could tell you about the deer I hit Friday night, on the way home from the Wedlock show. I was driving, since Greg was a little drunkypoos and tired from just playing a show, and I was heading down MLK towards 40, doing 35, when seriously out of nowhere, a deer showed up in my headlights, running towards the passenger side of the road. I think it must have been crossing from my side of the road, and over a planted median, and I might have noticed it beforehand if I’d had my brights on. But as we were still in town, I did not have my brights on. And obviously the streetlights weren’t enough, since I do, you know, look around while I’m driving, and not just pretend I’ve got blinders on. Anyway, there it was, in the headlights, running towards Greg’s side of the car. Scared the shit out of me, but somehow it was running fast enough, I was driving slow enough, and the timing was just right, that it cleared the car, and only one of its back hooves hit the front bumper on Greg’s side as it lifted up from a step. Greg said it didn’t even falter, just kept running and didn’t slow down or limp or anything, he watched it in his side mirror after we passed. I didn’t even have time to slam on the brakes, it was that sudden. I was pretty shaken up about it, so we pulled over at a bus stop a little bit up the road, and I got out to get some air and check the car (just a little bit of paint chipping, nothing else). So, yeah, there you go. Probably the best “I hit a deer” instance in my life, considering no one was hurt, including the deer.

I could tell you about the minor silliness in the grocery store parking lot tonight. Greg had to work late, but I had to come in early for a meeting, so I left earlier than he did. I grabbed some dinner, and then got some groceries we needed. I had to park pretty far from the store entrance, which is fine, but you need to know that for the story. Anyway, just as I’m wheeling my cart of bags up to the hybrid, another car starts turning down the aisle I’m parked at the top of. And then it stops, and I’m thinking, “I’ve only just gotten my cart to my car, surely they’re not waiting for my spot.” So I unlock the car and start putting my groceries in, which wasn’t going too fast, especially since I got a heavy-ass thing of cat litter and had to lift it myself. (I know, I know, pobre mio.) And they’re still waiting there for my spot. The thing is, there are three cars pulling out of spots further down the same aisle, basically right in front of the store, at that very moment, and no one else waiting for those spots, or even anywhere near. So I try to wave to the person in the waiting car, to get their attention, then point down the aisle and yell that there are free spots down there. Do they move? Of course not. I should have mentioned earlier that there are two other wimmin sitting on a parked car across the aisle from me, watching all this happen. (I think they were waiting for a friend or something.) Anyway, the person driving the car (it was dark – I think it was a lady, but who knows – it was Carrboro, it could have been a hipster dude with a ladylike haircut for all I could tell) is still waiting there. And there I am, clearly all by myself, loading my groceries, obviously I’m going to have to put the cart up by myself, before I can get in the car and pull out of the spot. I don’t know what the fuck they were thinking. At this point, I wondered briefly if there was any way I could get out of their way, but I couldn’t. I don’t just go around leaving shopping carts out in parking lots. I’m not an asshole. They have to go either in a little cart corral, or back to the store. Usually I take them back to the store, but someone was waiting for my spot, so I took it to the closest corral, which meant walking right in front of their car. For some reason, they didn’t give up waiting for my spot until I had put the cart up and started walking back to my car. Weird. And the two wimmin who watched the whole thing said I must have had the most popular parking spot in the lot, if it was worth waiting for. I don’t even know. It was a little surreal. Other cars were turning down that same aisle, trying to get out of the parking lot, and had to maneuver around the car that was waiting for my spot. Crazy.

Those are the things I could have come here to blog about. But none of them are what actually motivated my lazy ass to wake my computer up and blog. Oh no. That would be Skeeter. Greg took this picture the other day, and I wasn’t initially going to post it, but it’s totally a propos, and it’s really not that bad, actually. I think it’s probably PG-13, if not just straight up PG.

Not terrible, right? I mean, my cussing on this blog is worse. Anyway. I put up the groceries, and since it’s Monday night, which is trash night, I do the litter boxes. I do the bedroom one first, then the two in the bathroom, and of course once I’m done with the bedroom one, Skeeter has to use it. Finish up in the bathroom, and as I’m leaving the bathroom with a bag of scooped poop and whatnot, to throw in the trash, I see a fresh little turdlet sitting in the hall. UGH. Anyway, throw out the trash, take care of the turdlet, use some Lysol wipes on the floor where it was sitting, chill out. Skeeter’s scratching in the bedroom litter box, so I figure it must have gotten stuck to him or something the first time he used that litter box (like five minutes ago), and he’s having some bowel issues or something. In fact, when he leaves the bedroom, he’s got his head down and his tail at half-mast, and slinks past me like he’s embarrassed, so I feel bad for him and instead of being all, “Skeeter! We do NOT shit on the floor!” like I usually am (we both know how I am about poop by now, don’t we), I tell him it’s okay and I know it wasn’t on purpose. Blah blah blah, I kill some time until it’s time to get Greg, get Greg, come home, go into the bedroom to change into my jimjams, and see Skeeter sitting NEXT TO the litter box, but not IN it, hunched over funny. Not quite sitting like he’s about to poop, but you know me and poop, so when I see he’s sitting funny, I go over to see what’s up, and he walks off. Then I notice, not where he was sitting, but close to the litter box nonetheless, ANOTHER little turdlet on the floor. This time I do yell at Skeeter as I’m cleaning it up – well, not really yelling AT him, since he wasn’t in the room and I wasn’t really yelling. It was more of a loud proclamation that he better not be fishing turds out of the litter box and playing with them, because we don’t do that in this house. (My sister, Susan, had a cat that did that once. Oh no. I won’t have it, especially not since Skeeter’s gone almost four years without doing it once.) Finish cleaning up, and walk in the living room, bitching to Greg a little about what is with it with all this shit on the floor?! Mid-bitch? I notice Skeeter sitting on his favorite thing to sit on (some folded up hanging organizer – I thought it might make a neat cat toy, but he just loves sitting on it on the floor, so I never got around to hanging it), hunched up all funny again. I wonder if he has another turd stuck to his butthair, so I lift his hind end up to see – and it’s STUCK COMING OUT OF HIS BUTT!!!! AAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH! THE HORRORS!

So I plop him in the bathroom, thinking that at least it’ll be easier to clean up, if he manages to work it out outside of the litter box. But he went right to the litter box. I don’t know why he couldn’t have sat hunched up in the litter box, and why he had to sit hunched up in the living room, on his organizer thingy (which got thrown out, oh yes – it’s not washable), but whatever. So I threw away the organizer thingy, and notice some suspicious Mr.-Hanky-like splotches on the floor of the dining room and kitchen, which I had seen before, but they weren’t blatantly poop-like, so I didn’t think much of them other than, “Damn, I guess I need to mop or something.” But now I knew them for what they were, so of course I had to Lysol-wipe all that shit up. And seriously, I just Lysol-wiped like a third of the dining room floor, and three-quarters of the kitchen floor. (And I wiped most of the clean-looking parts of those floors, too, just for good measure.) I checked on Skeeter periodically in the bathroom, and he doesn’t seem to be in distress, and there aren’t any more turdlets on the floor, nor sticking out of his butt, so I let him out after an hour. If there’s going to be poop horrors involved, I’d rather he stay in the bathroom all night, because it’s a smaller room, it’s easier to clean, and honestly if I need to grab him and take him to the vet (I was worried for a while, and I’m still going to keep an eye on him) there’s nowhere for him to hide in there. But I’d feel bad for him being cooped up in there all night, and, luckily, it looks like there’s no more need for it.

But holy fucking jesus. There are times when it is awesome to own cats, and I love it. This is not one of those times. I am fucking disgusted, and I think I need to go Lysol-wipe my feet again. (And yes, OF COURSE I’ve already done it once. You know me and poop.)

I’m working on the etching tute, I really am. It’s like…a third to halfway done.

I just filled out some online form at Target’s website to complain about their Gilligan & O’Malley Seamless underwear. I can’t believe I’m about to share this with you, but those fuckers do NOT stay up, and I’m pissed. I wore a skirt today, and the little bastards let me take about five steps before they started inching their way down, and I narrowly escaped having my underwear fall around my ankles in public. And that’s the time they almost made it to my ankles, not to mention the other times I just gave up and hitched them right back up, repeatedly, in public. Are you fucking kidding me? And before you suggest it, no, they’re not the wrong size, they’re the absolute right size. I think it’s the fabric, because I bought new underwear this weekend (to get ready for signing up with Wardrobe Refashion for six months, and I needed new undies and didn’t relish the thought of making them myself), and all the other pairs (which are cotton) are fine, and stay put. Anyway, I was going to mail them back to the manufacturer, since what the fuck else am I going to do with them, but G&O’M is a Target brand, and I couldn’t find any info on Target’s site, of course, about where to mail them to, or even really how to lodge a complaint. The best I found was some “contact us!” online form, which I almost didn’t fill out because it was a little embarrassing, but then I thought, hell no I didn’t just buy two new pairs of underwear to chuck them in the trash and not even bitch about it. So there you go. I guess I could wash them and donate them to a thrift store or homeless shelter, but 1-I feel kind of sketchy about donating used underwear even when it’s been washed (I mean, I know people who need them are probably just happy to have them, even if they’ve been slightly used, but I still feel weird about it), and 2-even if I got past that, I don’t know if I could conscionably donate these fuckers, since they appear to FAIL at being underwear. (PS, Blogger’s wordchecker? “Conscionably” IS SO a word, and the OED agrees with me.)

So the bad news is, I have two brand-spanking-new pairs of bogus unwearable underwear. The good news is, I have five new pairs that are awesome and wearable and make me feel like doing the New Undies Dance. The other good news is, I finally signed up with Wardrobe Refashion for six months, so starting March 1st, I will be making/repairing my own clothes, and not purchasing new, until the end of August. I think this should be pretty good for my sewing skills. (And I’ve been patching up some of Greg’s pants lately, too.)

I hope your Valentine’s was as awesome as mine. I gave Greg a set of brushed steel “dwarven” dice, and a crocheted beholder (this pattern, but altered – pictures to come later). Greg gave me a PajamaGram! It’s soooo awesome. The pants are a comfy knit, that feel almost like flannel, and the top is kind of fuzzy/furry with satin trim at the neck and cuffs. And it also came with a collapsible hatbox (for keeping in), a do-not-disturb sign, and a little herb pillow with lavender in it. It suits me perfectly, because I *love* being snuggly and comfy and cozy. Wonderful! Best jimjams EVER! Such a wonderful, wonderful, awesome, and thoughtful gift. I love it! Then we started a fire in our little outdoor fireplace thingy, and roasted marshmallows and made s’mores. It was AWESOME! We sat outside and read and watched the fire for a while, and then when it was dying down and we were cold, we went inside, and lit an oil lamp (which we usually reserve for when the power goes out) and read and talked and it was very cozy and relaxing. Just perfect.

Today, Greg treated me to a haircut at Moshi Moshi, which I needed, and I love it. I’ve been growing my hair out, since I’ve never managed to do it before (but always kept getting bored and cutting it off – or damaging it with bleach and *having* to cut it off), and also I want to do a pompadour for Hallowe’en, and I was okay with the length but the sheer amount of it was killing me. When it was flat, it was just flat and fucking boring; when it was full of volume, there was so fucking much of it, I felt like Cousin It. Here it is this morning, before the haircut, and more or less on the flat side (although it’s been even flatter at times):

And here is what it looked like after the incomparable Mary worked her magic:

Much, much better!

I still owe an etching tutorial/procedural, but I’m not in the right frame of mind to do it now. And anyway, Greg and I are going for a walk in a bit. He’s got his last show with Wedlock (filling in on the e-drumkit) tonight at Hell, too. So more later.

Damn, Natalie Dee. Making fun of fat people? Really?

Not cool. Or funny.

GAGG: 100.16 miles

Broke a hundred, finally. Go me.

GAGG: 99.16 miles
After I worked out today, while I was changing in the locker room after my shower, I heard these two bitches talking mad shit about a friend of theirs who apparently isn’t fat, per se, but wears jeans that they consider too tight for her. Shit like how “bad” it is when she sits down, and how she “really ought to start working out if she wants to keep wearing those jeans.” It made me so fucking mad, and I wanted to say something to them, like, “Hi, I’m fat and I’m right fucking here, so shut the fuck up.” Or ask them how they expect their “friend” (because is she really, if this is how they think about her?) to be comfortable exercising in front of others, or changing in the locker rooms, with people like themselves, especially people like themselves who don’t just *think* this shit but feel totally comfortable saying it out loud? (This is a huge deal for me, a very major part of why I’m so uncomfortable exercising in a gym, in public.) Or ask them why, if their friend is comfortable with her body and comfortable with those jeans, they need her to be ashamed? I’m so over shame. It’s bullshit, and I’m done with it. At least consciously. I’m sure it’s ingrained in me – I’m sure that’s part of why I didn’t say anything to them, because I’ve been taught that I should be ashamed that I take up more physical space, to be ashamed that I’m fat, and that I should somehow attempt to make up for that by silencing myself. Or that it would be “even worse” to be fat AND loud. Most of it was probably that they were so heinous anyway that anything I said to them wouldn’t do any good, and they’d just write me off as a fat angry bitch, or a nosey-parker stranger, but some of it was also I was too embarrassed and ashamed to speak up. But you know what? Fuck that noise. Shame is bullshit, and it doesn’t accomplish anything at all positive, it just hurts us.

Anyway. I’m also working on a tutorial/procedural for the trilobite etching, since I’ve been asked for one on Craftster. (And, yes, I went by the instructions in Steampunk Magazine’s first issue, as well as the Steampunk Workshop rundown, so I’ll reference those on Craftster, but also reiterate how important it is to be careful, since you could potentially poison yourself or electrocute yourself.) Anyway, I’ll be posting that here, too, once it’s done. Soon, hopefully.