Stuff And Frustration

What more can I say to that? I’m doing a lot of stuff these days and stuff is the only way to put it.

Well, I could have tried Frustrations after a day like this one, but I’m trying to overcome my frequent frustration when things don’t go the way I planned. Best solution is to stop planning, but then I wouldn’t know what to do next. Oh wait! I really don’t know what to do next most of the time. So, I just added the frustration part to the title.

Todays frustrating moments began during the night actually. The quilt block I was appliqueing got stuck under the presser foot of the sewing machine. I’ve had things stuck before, but this one was BIG TIME stuck. I think it took the better part of an hour to free things up and then I just shut the machine off and finished the book I was reading.

Later in the morning (at least 4 a.m.) I tried the machine out again and something seemed really wrong. Needle threader didn’t work, no where close to working, and when I tried sewing the clanking was loud enough to wake the dead. After an hour spent trying to figure out what was wrong I decided to change the needle! Brilliant idea! It didn’t look bent but the new needle didn’t make the noise and worked out. So I began appliqueing again. Did the leaf of a flower before really checking how it looked. Oops, I didn’t check to make sure there was thread in the bobbin. Replaced the bobbin and started sewing again…but didn’t notice the top thread had broken. By that time it was time for breakfast so I turned everything off and tried reading again.

Tried is the key word here. My Kindle, which holds all of my books began having several kinds of fits. Jumped around like, well, like a Mexican jumping bean! No way to read through that, so turned it off for a while. Fortunately I have the Kindle app on the laptop and my phone, so first I read from the laptop but that isn’t very good so switched to the phone. Happy to say it works, Now to wait out the fit the Kindle is having so I can reset it all again. Poor little device. I think I’ve overloaded it and used it too much and it is just very tired.

So, walking past the pin holder — straight pins and magnetic holder, I managed to hit the side of it and it hit the floor. It’s amazing how those little things can go when they bounce! Thankfully, I have a telescoping magnet that got them up — at least the ones I saw, but my eyes are old now and they don’t always see what I want them to see so I’ll probably be finding pins for a few days now.

And so far we are still talking about the morning hours. Big sigh! it was a bad morning. So to try to recover from the morning I sat out in the sun for a long time after lunch and let my bones thaw out a bit.

Now to see if I can find a few photos of some of the things I’ve done while I try to do another quilt block on the machine. Time will tell.

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

Now, before you think the day was a total bust, it really wasn’t. My sewing machine works now, I’ve had two of the best meals of the week that are served only on Friday, I spent some time soaking up sunshine this afternoon and finally thawing the chill that was taking over, and just now, while looking for something else I think I might have found the password that could possibly hook my laptop to the printer. More later on that!

I THINK I’M HUNGRY

No, not so much for food. I’m hungry for some good news. So tired of all the political rhetoric in the news, in my email from people running for office from other states wanting me to send them some money. Why on earth would I want to send money to help elect a Republican from some other state? Or even a Democrat for that matter.

I’ve always heard that money is the root of all evil, and so far a few people are proving that. Take the former idiot President, for example. I read a few days ago that he has all the earmarks of the anti-christ. I had to agree with that, although there have been others in the past that made me wonder. None as bad as the present one though.

I’m hungry for the touch of a human hand, held out in friendship on days when the sun refuses to shine and my mood reflects that. I grew up in a large family but always seemed to be the one who was alone. Probably because of the asthema and sinus infections I had as a child, and in the case of the sinuses still have. It’s not fun having to stay inside while all the other kids are out playing and learning to interface with each other. I never had that experience and as a result was alway shy around other people, never knowing what to say and with a voice so soft that nobody heard me when I did think of something.

Don’t think my life has been terrible though. I found a life in books and music that I otherwise might never have known. The books almost got me in trouble one night though. I was taking a page from my mother’s book and reading with a flashlight under the covers. The book was “LIttle Women” and I was at the part where Beth was dying, and being me, crying right along with the March family. Mother thought I was having another sinus or asthma attack and came in with some medication while I was hiding the flashlight and the book under the pillow. Since the one thing she used that always made us feel better was a hot toddy I drank it and then settled down to finish the book after she left the room.

I probably would never have thought to do that if my mom hadn’t told us about having to read “Tale Of Two Cities” in high school. She was a boarder and the school library only had two copies of the book. As luck would have it, she didn’t get the book until the afternoon before the report was due, so she read it by flashlight after lights out. She always talked about how much she hated that book so I was aprehensive when I was a boarder at the same school and it was on the required reading list. Since I got the book early on and loved it so much I read it in an afternoon, I couldn’t understand why she had not liked it, but after she told about the flashlight I could understand better. Dickens is not an author to be read under wraps, so to speak. And of course now having remembered that, it’s time to dig out a copy of that one and read it again. I have to admit I wore out several copies of “LIttle Women” over the years, but it’s now on my Kindle and safe from dropping —I shouldn’t have said that. Fortunately the Kindle is in a good case and dropping isn’t as dangerous as it would be without that case, but it’s also old and beginning to act up by going black on me at times. I have discovered that by resetting it to factory default it will come back for now, but have had to reset it several times lately.

Whew! That took some time to write. I used to be able to type faster and more accurately, but that was when I thought I wanted to be a secretary. It didn’t take long to realize that wasn’t what I really wanted. After watching the nurses taking care of my dad when he was dying I decided I wanted to work for Hospice some day. Happy to say that mission was accomplished a few years later and was the most fulfilling job I ever had. I might have said most fulfilling time of my life, but that still belongs to the days when my babies were little and still needed me.

Oh gee, I’m hungry for an arm filled with a baby now. Maybe it’s because today is my baby’s birthday and I kinda wish he was still the cute and cuddly little guy from 14 birthdays ago. He’s still cute but not so cuddly these days, but he really does act 14 around me most of the time. It’s hard to believe that grown up responsible man is still the baby I remember when I remember the past.

I’ve mentioned before that I love quotations and have a few notebooks full of them. Tonight I found a few that seem to relate to my mood, so I’ll share a couple of them. You can stop reading if you are bored. I mean really, how would I ever know?

“No one needs to paint himself into a corner: no one needs to be completely hemmed in by circumstances; no one needs to be the victim of his biography.” — George Kelly

“The essence of creativity is figuring out how to use what you already know in order to go beyond what you already think.” — Jerome Bruner

Several have hit home for me in the past, but those two just stuck out in front of my face tonight.

And now I’m hungry for a snack and there is a container of yogurt screaming my name, so I think I’ll just close this off now. After the yogurt I might just try something creative before my one hour of sleep drops me into a stupor.

KODAK Digital Still Camera