One Project Finished

It's taken awhile, but I have one thing to show for the new year. It only took 2 years to get around to it, but now I'm not scared to open the black hole. I have to confess that behind the labeling machine are all the Southern Living magazines I tried to throw away. They're not hurting a thing, and I might need them one day. One scary thing is that each needlework magazine in the black holders has at least one marker in it, indicating something I would like to make one day. Considering it takes me many weeks to months to make 1 thing, I think I'm a little optimistic about my life expectancy.


Now when the door is closed, no one can tell how much chaos is in there, how many unfinished (unstarted) projects I have, and how weak I am when it come to throwing anything away.

My sewing area/sunroom is next for plowing through and straightening. I have a friend whose husband offered to look at and maybe replace the sunroom threshold, so I have to clear a path for them.

I'm looking so forward to working tonight. I've been having a hard time with some new software that the company is using and have been fussing for 3 months now. Today my coordinator called and gave me great news about letting me change back to the old one. I love my work, but I have dreaded going to work lately. I kept thinking if I gave it time, surely it would get better. Apparently I'm not the only one, and after lots of complaining from everybody and receiving a resignation letter from another person today, people got their heads together and made some changes. I couldn't be happier because I love the company and the people, but I had started to think about possibly considering the idea of making a change - maybe. This is much easier!

Forgettable Saturday

Some days are more interesting than others, but yesterday was not one of them. I worked some in the morning and some in the afternoon, and the only time I went out was to get our weekly fast-food - Tenda-Chick this week - and the Birmingham paper.
I was kidding my doctor about my ear falling off, but for a while I wasn't sure that wasn't happening. It started with a vague sore throat which I sometimes will have but ignore. Then my ear also started hurting when I swallowed, and I've never had an earache before. I felt fine otherwise, so I started putting 2 and 2 together and remembered that blast of arctic air that probably not only froze the bump on my outer ear but went rushing down my ear canal, freezing the eardrum and, oh, how about the eustachian tube? The electric shock feelings are probably frozen nerve endings - that's my story; top it if you can!
I worked anyway but felt kind of irritated that I would have to dread swallowing and about 9:00 begged Mama for one of her pain pills and got in bed to read. The pain eased a little, and I slept very well until 8:00 this morning. There are still random lightning bolts that shoot from my jaw to my ear, but it doesn't hurt to swallow, so I'm pretty optimistic about my diagnosis. That and the dreary weather made us decide not to go to church this morning. I read the Montgomery paper - 87 seconds on Sunday - clipped the Hobby Lobby 40% off coupon, and scanned (as in looked at, not copied) and threw away 3 magazines.
The bookcase is coming along. I've been working on it all week. You can't just throw out magazines without looking all the way through them for articles that might save your life one day or at least make you happier, so it's a little slow. Here's what it looked like a couple of weeks ago:


Hopefully in a day or so, I'll have something much better looking than that. When I moved here 2 years ago, I just stuffed random books and magazines in there, planning to straighten them out later. Well, it's later. I see an outlet in this picture that I didn't notice before. I'll have to go check. It looks like a phone jack? It seems terribly useful. I think I'll hide a phone down there.
I sent Mike an email yesterday that had been forwarded to me about a 1977 Penney catalog and the "fashions" then. We tried to reassure each other that we had never worn anything similar to those. He confirmed that he had never had a leisure suit - whew! I didn't think so, but then our children never thought we would dress them like we did in the 70s and 80s. I did have some pretty busy prints that tend to make me dizzy when I see the pictures. We reminisced about about the first items of clothing we bought with his long-awaited first paycheck in 1968. We had gone without anything for a whole year except groceries, rent, and gas and an occasional movie - maybe 2. There wasn't enough money for first-year anniversary flowers, so I got them on the 13th month anniversary. Funny the things you can remember. I hear elderly people should start writing down their memoirs for future generations. In case there is a future generation, here it is. Welcome. My life may be boring now, but it hasn't always been, and I might be able to find some interesting things. Maybe. I'm sure it was better than straightening bookcases. Although that seems pretty exciting to me now.

Christmas Holdout

Every year for as long as I can remember, there will be some Christmas item that fails to get put away in December. Usually it shows up within a few days or sometimes not until the summer when some jingle bell or ornament gets pulled out from under a bed where it was chased by a cat. One year it was a Santa magnet on the refrigerator that I must have looked at 3 or 4 times a day for months and just accepted. Last fall, Mike asked why I had already put a Christmas arrangement on top of the refrigerator. I usually keep a basket of artificial ivy there and hadn't even noticed the red berries. OK, I'm short. Or not very observant. I was feeling pretty good about not having a holdout this year until I saw this last week:




Now this is where I sit and drink my coffee and read the paper every morning. Granted, it takes about 23 seconds to read the Montgomery paper, but I am usually in that chair every morning for that amount of time. Then at night, that's where I sit to read a little or do needlework. So I'm not sure how I could have looked in that direction for 2 weeks and not have seen anything out of place. I think he may have made a case for being a permanent fixture. I could take the Christmas green bow off and change it seasonally.


I hope to get a few things accomplished today, like getting the tax stuff ready to mail to Mike and finishing up that one cabinet I've been working on. My sewing room needs work, and I have not only the 1 monthly quilt square to do before February but 2, since I messed up the last one.
I have a bad procrastination habit, and I'm going to try to make myself finish one sewing project a month - just one; that means hemming, binding, clipping thread - whatever it takes to say I've finished something. In the meantime, I vow NOT to start a new project or buy anything else. I won't even go inside a fabric shop. I have 16 days.