Bless Me Blog-Father...

for I have sinned.  It has been 2 months and one week since my last confession blog entry.  I haven't even been reading any!  Just an occasional peek at a few.  Blogging just doesn't hold my interest like it once did.  I try really, REALLY hard and I do think about it a great deal, but never quite make it here.  So many of my old blog buddies don't write any more and some of them are on FaceBook, so we keep in touch there.  That's not the same.  FB is a whole different ball of wax and shouldn't replace blogging, by any means. 

So, I'm here today but might not be here again for quite awhile.  Who knows.My life is so helter skelter.  I have no real (or reasonable) routine and it's hard for me to function and accomplish much of anything this way.  But I can't seem to find my groove.  And every time I try to establish some sort of routine to my days, if it gets interrupted, I get all flustered or even resentful of the intrusion.  Like....what the hell does it matter?!?  I'm hopeless. LOL

I do have some amazingly good news to share! Which is one reason I have been drawn to my blog. I am getting together with  2 of my bestest buddies in the whole wide world in March!!  My Senior Moments, Terri T and I will be flying to San Diego to spend a week with Poolie!  We met in the World of Blog and have had several get-togethers.  Always an adventure and always great fun.  I can't wait to spend time with them and I can't wait to just get away from it all for a few days! 

I will also be heading to Alaska for a month at the end of April or first part of May.  Haven't got that pin pointed yet, as it is pending pinning down the dates of a trip Chuck will be taking in the spring.  He'll be going to Wyoming with Dixie.  A guy he knows has a cattle ranch there and he wants to be in on Spring Round-up and Branding.  If he had a bucket list, I guess doing something like this would be right at the top, so good for him :).  I'm just enjoying a peaceful easy feeling of knowing that he doesn't mind my month long trip to Alaska again.  Last year was so awesome and this year will be even better! 

I think for now, I need to get off of here and go to some X-Mas decorating and stuff.  Chuck has been busy all week getting ready to have Dixie and her buggy in a local Christmas parade and so he only got all my decorations out today.  Puts me a bit behind schedule for trying to get my X-Mas spirit mustered up, but better late than never!  TTFN, if anyone is out there!  LOL

Holy Cow!

Another week, another post.  Can't keep up the daily thing, although I regret it because I like having a reference to things and after so many days have passed, I forget most of what I wanted to write.  I even made some notes......they're around here somewhere....... LOL

My last post was  in regard to trying to de-clutter and reorganize "My Room".  Well, some of it is done and some is not.  No big deal.  It will happen.  Actually the knitting bug that bit me back in May has been taking over and I've been a knitting fool, with some occasional reading tossed in the mix.  Why I've even been in the kitchen more and much to Chuck's delight he has recently consumed 2 batches of cookies and a cake! He's been like a kid, so excited that I have felt like baking again.  LOL

During that time frame my PC was in the hospital.  A bad storm and power outage zapped my network adapter and the  apparently my battery back up was dead and I didn't know it and the abrupt shut down corrupted my OS and blah, blah, yada, yada.  The poor battery backup is about 12 years old and was located in an out of the way place so that I never noticed that the lights were off and that it was simply functioning as a $150 power strip!  Got a shiny new one, and it's placed right where I can see it!  I found a great local repair shop and at first I was not pleased with them because they 'missed something' but they went above and beyond to make it up to me, so all is well.  I had my laptop, but am rather limited with what I can do on it (with my photos, bookwork, etc.) thus I had more knitting time.

I have several knitting projects I want to complete before December and a sewing project or 2 as well, but I am just not as enchanted with sewing as I once was.  Once I get a table cleared off and my Embroidery Machine stuff put away, I can get working on a couple quilts as well.  Chuck keeps reminding me to not be so hard on myself for the things that I can't do around the house and do just relax and let myself DO and ENJOY the things I want to do, because for all intents and purposes I am 'retired'.  I think it's beginning to sink in.  I have spent far too much time simply lost in thought trying to come to terms with all the changes in my life and wasting too much energy on the negative.  I think I'm on the way back up the hill out of my black hole.

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Well, heck!  I started this like, Wednesday I think, and never finished or posted it.  Duh.  I was just about to start a new post, but will toss this out there and write one later.  I'm off to get ready to go shopping with Victoria!  My 1st outing of it's kind.  Let's hope I hold up.  My Vicodin is going into my purse as soon as I hit the Publish button :)

Shopping Online

I was supposed to have a rare shopping opportunity with my BFF yesterday and it didn't work out.  While posting my complaint about it on FaceBook, my buddy Terri @ myseniormoments suggested that since I always get the short end of the stick when we have vehicle problems, I should just shop online.  Well, I'm here to tell you......I do plenty of that!  Here are some of my recent acquisitions

This first picture is a Photo/Panting done by the Photographer that took Riley's senior portraits.  She is quite the artist and has many talents.  When I saw some of her Photo/Paintings, I just knew that we had to have one of the horses!  I found some pictures of The Girls and sent them to her and we finally decided on this one.  The overall size is 30 x 30 and it is stunning!! 

What happens is this.  I had a 20x30 photo printed of this picture and had it shipped to her.  She actually tears the edges (in this case to make it about 19x19) then she affixes it to a canvas.  In this instance, she did an abstract border in colors to complement the picture. The wonderful thing IS, we didn't actually discuss colors and it just so happens this will look perfect on our green living room wall!!Another awesome aspect of this painting is that the sides of the canvas, where it wraps around the frame, are painted as well.  That gives it a wonderful unique finish and I don't have to frame it :).
If you'd like to see some of her other work, go here Christina-M-Ehlinger~Artist for starters.

I had planned to give it to Chuck for X-Mas, but she got it done so quickly and I received it last week.....and our anniversary is this coming Friday (the 12th)....soooooo.....I'm giving it to him for our anniversary!  I can't wait!!  We don't always exchange gifts and usually just treat ourselves to an "All we can eat Lobster or King Crab fest" at home.  He'll be so surprised and I know he's gonna absolutely flip over it!  I can't wait to get it on the wall, as we have a perfect empty spot behind the love seat that has just been waiting to be filled for about 6 years now!  Next weekend I'll get to post photos of it on the wall!! I can't wait!  Squeal!!!!!!!!!

The next picture of online acquisitions is just one box of many that I have been buying since I went to Alaska in May and acquired serious knitting fever.

Not only did my lovely daughter, Terri, get me to finally take the 'knitting plunge', she also gave me the bug for only the finest yarns!  When I did alot of crocheting, I always preferred some of the better brands (such as Lion and Bernat over Red Heart), but oh, she had to get me into using wool and wool blends and alpaca and all sorts of beautiful colorways in scrumptiously delightful spun yarn! 

And I have found a couple of WONderful websites that often have WONderful sales on this sort of delightful yarn!  I will give you an example of what my new passion is doing to my checking account.  I found a sweater pattern, using Noro yarn, similar to that in the above picture.  The color  I selected is darker hues, but still multi-colored.  Anyway, the pattern calls for 11 hanks (sort of a skein)so I ordered 12 to be safe and I found it for a terrific sale price! Normally $20 a hank for $14.00!  Weeeeeeeee.........Adds up tho', as do the many other great finds I have found......but they were all on sale!!  So that makes it okay, right???  Right???

See what happens.  Make me get a new bionic hip and keep me house bound for 6 weeks with a desk top, a laptop and an iPhone.  I can search, find and order from any room in the house!  When I have to explain the piles of yarn and my lack of $$......I'll blame the Percocet.  Buwahahahaha

Where Do Your Loyalties Lie?

Friendship and loyalties......how deep should they run?  I've always had a problem with this regarding both friends and family members.  So quick to go to bat for someone dear to me.  Always too quick to stop and think first.  I just jump right in, defending, supporting, protecting.  I figure if I care about someone, then I should put my 'outspoken' self to good use when I think they are being abused or attacked or otherwise mis-used by someone.  A person should really think it over before getting out their "Poison Pen" {or, these days, their "Poison Keyboard"  LOL}  Because, when the dust settles, just who do you think it is that ends up getting screwed without a kiss, and left wondering........

The first time that I got out my Poison Pen was at least 35 years ago.  My Mom and my Great-Aunt Ethel got into it over something.  God only knows what, because I can't remember to save my life!  But Aunt Ethel was really, really good at stirring things up.  The more hurtful and hateful, the better.  I just remember that she had my Mom SOOOOO upset, that my Dad was about to step in and give Aunt Ethel a piece of his mind (which was totally not my Dad's typical scenario).  So.....I decided to take Poison Pen in hand and I wrote her a letter that would have scorched the Devil himself.  When I got done verbally butchering her for the issue at hand, I tossed in few more of her devilish antics for good measure.  End result?  She and Mom made amends, actually because of some of the things I pointed out in my letter. But Aunt Ethel would have nothing to do with ME til the day she died, several years later.

I really think that was the only family member involved but it has happened numerous times thru the years and my loyalties usually leave me with being the bad guy.  Odd man out.  Go figure.

One of the worst cases was actually a little different scenario.  In an attempt to aid an 'acquaintance' and offset a potentially dangerous situation, myself and a dear friend jumped in right up to our ears.  Round and round it went.  Tons of people involved, twisting and turning and dredging until the original 'cause' was lost in the shuffle and in the very end, friend and I were hung out to dry.  Eventually and ultimately by the 'acquaintance'!  WTF to the max!  Epic Fail..........

Another time, I apparently looked at a long time buddy (with whom I had much in common) cross-eyed one day and she literally tore me a new a$$-hole on the world wide web!  I have never been so humiliated, had such vile, hateful things said about me in my life! And such lies.  That was the worst part.  I'm so not perfect.  In fact, much less so than most people, but really........Okay, so I look back on that and, obviously, realize that this person was never a friend and a thing like that can make you start to look around you.  If you were me, would you feel 'set adrift' if close friends commiserated with you, but went on to continue their relationship with this 'buddy'.  Would you feel hurt to see them together?  Would you think that maybe they believed all the BS and doubted you? How would you feel?  If the shoe was on the other foot, I am the sort of friend that would tend to back away from the buddy for having been so cruel and unjust to my friend.  Probably gotten out my "Poison Keyboard" and made it worse.  But that's just me.  How deeply should the loyalties of friendship go?

I am quick to anger and quicker to hurt, which is a very bad combination, indeed.  I am also quick to trust, but I'm learning.  I need people in my life that I can feel good about and trust with anything and that I know I can count on.....always.  And I have that in my wonderful little family.  I am ever so blessed to have Terri & Mike and all of my wonderful grand-babies!  Without them, life is bursting with insecurities and uncertainty.  I DO have a lot of amazing friends out there, but I am learning that it is a rare, rare friendship that will ever be unblemished.  I am learning never to expect that of others.  It's just not the fair or right thing to do.  But my family????  They better toe the line!!  LMAO