A Better Rug And a Basket

Hello again Internet People!  Sorry for going MIA again on all of you again, but I think it was for the best.  For the past couple of weeks I have been feeling very angry, all the time.  Every time I came here and tried to write a Blog post I ended up with something cruel and hurtful that I just couldn't stomach posting.  The worst part was, for the longest time I could not figure out why I was getting so damn angry.  It finally dawned on me this weekend, it is Facebook that makes me angry.  Facebook always makes me angry, and yet I seem to forget this fact and go back expecting to get a different result.

So, I am back to trying to ignore Facebook as much as possible and I am feeling better already.  I finished the second rag rug, using the sewing machine, and I must say, it is 1,000 times better than the first one.  It lays all flat on the ground and everything!  Here, see for yourself:

 If I ever decide to make any more of these, the sewing machine is definitely the way to sew them together.  It took less than half the time and produced a much better finished product.  By the time I finished this one though I had no interest on making any more any time soon.  They were fun to make, but I have had enough of that kind of fun to last me a good long while.

So, the rug was done, now what?  I spent two days wandering around in my head looking for my next project.  I kept hitting this weird roadblock that I seemed to have developed recently. I have this thought in my head that whatever I create should have some purpose to it beyond just looking pretty.  Unfortunately this thought kinda conflicts with the kind of work I want to do.  Working with fabric and thread it should be easy to find some useful project to create, but when you figure in the kind of detail and artistry that I want to create, that places a whole new set of limitations that don't lend themselves well to items meant to be used. I went round and round in my head on this until I finally decided the only way I am ever going to get anything done is just to get working.  So I am back to working on my "Monumental" Basket project.

I know, I know, I said I shouldn't be working on this while I am still trying so desperately to gain weight, but I think I have found a way around my obsessive nature, and it seems to be working so far.  My issue was that when I start working on something like this I usually stop taking time to eat, so I am using the other interruptions that occur throughout the day as reminders to eat.  And I have to eat something before I ever get started working on it for the day.  I think that is a big key in all of this for me, I have to start eating early.  Once I start eating for the day it is easier to keep eating.  

I have been back to working on the Basket for three days, I took these pictures yesterday morning (when I wrote another huge post that managed to disappear on me):

               

 I started working on assembling the some of the flowers yesterday.  I finally figured out how to assemble all the little buds for the Grape Hyacinth, now I just have to figure out how to attach them to the background.  That should be lots of fun, ha ha.  Oh well, I got myself into this, I will figure out how to sew my way out.

Until next time:

One Bad Rug, One Pet Peeve, and A Thought

Hello again my wonderful Internet People!  Sorry I haven't written anything for all of you lately, my recovery is still going slowly and it has made concentration rather difficult for me, which in turn makes writing rather difficult.  That, and I have been playing at making those rag rugs I talked about in my last post.  I have one completely done (really badly), and I have a second one all braided and ready to be stitched.  Hopefully the second one will go together a little better than the first.  I am not kidding about the first one, it is really bad.

  Here, see:

Told ya!  And yes, I saw every one of those humps and valleys forming as I continued to stitch the braids together, I just didn't really care.  I needed to make the rug, and I needed to finish it, which I did.  I didn't care if it was any good or not, I just wanted to finish it (so I could start a new one!).  In all I did spend 6 days putting it together, but I didn't work on it all the time so maybe 30-35 hours total.  That's a lot of time to invest in crap, but I had fun and I wouldn't have been doing anything any more productive than making crap anyway, so I am going to call it time well spent. 

I did find a way to make it lay perfectly flat though, and I am using it right where I had planned on using it, and it is working just fine.  I don't think it will last for very long, but for now it works great.          

I think I am going to try stitching the braids together on the sewing machine for the second rug.  Hand stitching the first one was the most time consuming part (taking 4 of the 6 days), and I am pretty sure that is what is going to fail first when it starts disintegrating.  So, the sewing machine idea is rather appealing.  My machine does a very wide zig-zag stitch, and it has a wide space between the needle and the inside of the machine, so I am pretty sure I can at least sew the majority of it together on the machine.  And, maybe I can even get it flat this time.  

Other than making rugs I have pretty much not done a damn thing (other than play on Facebook) since last I typed.  We did actually leave the house for a few hours yesterday so I spent most of the rest of the day recovering from that.  And I have done some housework, and the usual, cost of living type stuff, but I am still trying desperately to conserve calories as much as humanly possible.  There are lots of things I probably should be doing, like pulling weeds out of the flower beds, but they are going to have to wait a little while longer.  I am still having a lot of trouble getting calories into me, and keeping any weight on me.  Fortunately no body has a house for sale on our block, so they can all deal with my messy yard for a while, or they can come clean it themselves if they don't want to wait for me.

That has always been a pet peeve of mine.  When people live in a neighborhood and complain about the one house where the grass isn't perfect or the garden is overgrown, it seems very few of them ever even consider the possibility that the people living there may have bigger struggles to attend to than cutting the freakin grass.  Did any of you ever go over there and ask them if they needed some help?  No?  Then do NOT assume they are just bad or lazy!  I know a lot of those houses are filled with people who just don't give a fuck, and helping them is as pointless as complaining about them, but a LOT of those houses may just be occupied by someone like me.  Someone who struggles each day just to make it from morning until night, someone who very much appreciates the need to keep her home neat and clean, but maybe just doesn't have the energy to do both.  Especially on someone else's schedule.  

No, I don't want my neighbors over here cleaning up my yard, most of my neighbors are not people I want anywhere near me or my family, but I sure don't want to hear any bitching from them either.  Especially since we are no where near the worst yard, there are several who don't take care of  their yards at all, and at least one who only waters his yard on the 4th of July (to lessen the fire potential, we have legal fireworks here).  The rest of the year the dead yellow lawn just bakes in the heat.  At least we do put in some actual effort whenever we can, the lawn is usual mowed and watered regularly, and if Salt Grass in my flower beds is my worst offense, well they can just get the hell over it. 

Hopefully I will be able to get back to posting more often soon.  I have a whole bunch of posts in the planning for you all that might even turn out to be fairly entertaining, I hope to get to those soon.  In the meantime I will leave you with this thought for the day ...

I Finally Found Something To Do

Hello again Internet People!   I am up another 2 pounds!  Weighed in at 94 pounds even last night and I am thrilled!  I am feeling better everyday, eating more and getting stronger. I might even start doing some freakin housework this week.  I have company coming next weekend, and of course my house is a mess.  My wonderful husband has kept us functioning, but there is a lot to keeping a house beyond just functioning and none of that has been done since before I got sick.

I did manage to finally find myself a project to work on during my recovery.  I am making myself a Braided Rag Rug.  I spent the last two days ripping and braiding strips of fabric, and I am trying to sew it all together now.  I have a bulge in the middle that won't lay flat, but the rest of it is going together pretty well.   Since this is my first attempt, and since I was too lazy to figure out what I was doing before I started, I am not holding myself to any kind of standard on this.  I just want to finish it.  I know where I am going to put it, and I might even make another one when this one is done.  But first I have to actually finish this one.  Which I will do, as soon as I finish typing this Blog post. 

I think I mentioned before at some point that I have dozens upon dozens of boxes of fabric that has been cut down into strips of varying widths.  They are organized by width, so all the strips that are 3" wide are in boxes marked, 3".  For the rug project I pulled out a box of 4" wide strips, and then ripped all of those in half down the middle, which should have given me 2 strips each 2" wide.  Well that's what I would have gotten if the original strips had been cut straight.  I cut them.  They were not straight.  To be fair, the majority of them were pretty close, but there were a few that were really pathetic. But hey, its called a "Rag" rug anyway, right?

I really enjoyed the braiding part, that was fun.  This sewing part, not as much fun.  I could do it on the sewing machine (at least that's what the people on the internet say), but I think that would be even less fun, so I am doing it by hand.  I have been using a curved needle, which helps in some ways, but hinders in others, so I might try a straight needle at some point to see which works better for me.  

Not that anybody really cares what the fuck I am working now (shh, yes I know a few of you actually do care, I am being silly, so just go with it, okay?).  I like to tell you all about it to keep myself working.  I feel so bad when I tell you all about this grand plan I have, and then drop it like a hot potato, so I have been trying really hard to get better about sticking with things and maybe even finishing them.  I know, its kinda hard to tell with all the projects I have told you about starting that you never get to see completed, but trust me, I am doing far better than I would be if I wasn't worried about disappointing everyone. 

So, I think I will go finish that rug now.  Maybe I will even have a picture to show you of an actual completed project soon.  Please don't hold your breath for that one though, you will pass out long before I get done!  Until next time ...

                            

                    

          

The Trouble With Typing

Hello again Internet People!  Guess what?!?  I have gained back 2 pounds!  I am so happy!  Only 18 more to go!  The ultimate goal is 110 pounds.  It is at the bottom end of a healthy weight for someone my size, and the top end of what I have ever weighed without being pregnant, so I figure it is a good, attainable goal that I can work towards.  

And while I have been doing pretty good with the eating thing, I did not get anywhere with the whole idea of writing something "real" yesterday, nor do I see it happening any time soon, so I think I will just stick to my nonsense here for a while.  There is still too much pain and too many distractions for me to be thinking that hard right now.  Just forming coherent sentences is rather taxing, and spelling is ... just impossible.   It seems like every freakin word I type has a red squiggle under it!  Thank gawd for spell check or you people would be thinking I was seriously stupid by now.

It really isn't my spelling that is bad, its my typing.  I cannot adjust to the keyboard on this laptop for some reason.  I have had laptops before, and they are always a little harder for me to use, but this one is exceptionally difficult.  The worst part is that I am looking directly at the keys while I am pressing the wrong ones.  I never learned to type by touch, I have always looked at the keyboard as I type, I only look up at the screen every few lines to see where I fucked up so I can go back and fix it.  I can type pretty darn quickly, depending on what I am typing.  If I know what it is supposed to say, I can type around 50+ words a minute, If I have to read it, or worse yet, think it up, then I type a lot slower.  But I get by pretty well for someone who failed typing in high school, twice.

Okay, I didn't technically fail typing, I only got one F in all of my life, and that was in P.E., not typing.  I just did so poorly in the class that both teachers gave up trying to teach me, and helped me transfer into some other class where I could enjoy some semblance of success.  I am not sure if that is better, or worse frankly, but as I said, I get by with my own way of typing now, and it works for me.  Most of the time, except of course for this stupid laptop, which (if you remember) is how this whole thing got started in the first place.

Now, I cannot think of a single other thing to talk about at the moment.  I have been sitting here staring at this screen for over an hour and I got nothing.  So I think I am going to call it a night and post this shit.  Until next time ...

 

                   

 

Looking For Something To Do

Hello again my Beautiful Internet People!  Hope everyone out there is doing well.  I am recovering, slowly.  This eating stuff all the time is still rather annoying, but I am getting better.  I gave up on the food journal idea already, it was way too much effort writing everything down, and I am not really sure if my guess-timates on volume were anywhere close to reality.  So I am just eating.  Everything that I can, every moment that I can, I just keep trying to find more stuff to shovel down my gullet.  And I am doing my very best not to do a damn thing besides eating.  Any calories I can get in don't need to be wasted by trying to do stuff, I am conserving every single one I can.

I would really like to get back to work on my basket.  But I am just not feeling it yet.  Since I do most of my hand sewing sitting on my bed you would think that would be something low stress that I could do without too much trouble, but you would be wrong.  My number one issue is that I won't eat if I am sewing, so sewing has to wait.  Never mind the fact that my bed is 4 feet off of the ground and an extra 20 feet further away from everything else in the house, that not eating thing, that's a deal breaker right now.                     

So I have been just sitting on my little ass in front of my computers trying desperately to find something to entertain myself with.  I went back and started listening to those Podcasts from Christopher Titus (and crew) all the way through.  I even went and paid actual money to download his newest special  - which was totally worth every penny!

Now I am starting to get inspired.  I have been talking for a long time about trying to write my story, and the more time I spend listening to the stories of other people, the more I really want to get busy on mine.  Not my rambling nonsensical, "what I did today" story like what I torture all of you with, but the real, raw, true story of how I came to be the fucked-up, crazy lady that you all seem to enjoy so much today.  It has been a journey, and while some parts may seem as normal as apple pie and baseball, some parts could have been taken from a sci-fi movie, or at least an old west film.  I think there may even be some humor in some of the shit I have been through, well, okay, pretty much all of it is pretty fucking funny - now.  It might not have been at the time, but I am older, and wiser, and just a touch crazier now, and everything is funny to me if I put enough effort into it.

So maybe I will work on some real writing while I work through my recovery.  Don't worry, I will still come here to bore you to tears with my nonsensical ramblings, but for a while I am going to keep the good stuff to myself.  Once I get enough of it together I will think about sharing some of it, but this is going to be another of those long-term projects, so don't go getting impatient on me.

Until next time ...

                              

Learning to Love My Dysfunctions - The Titus Way

Hello Internet People!  How is everyone doing today?  I am starting to actually feel almost human again.  Still weak, but getting stronger everyday.  I have just been sitting here listening to some Podcasts  from Christopher Titus, one of my all-time favorite Comedians.  If you have never heard of him, I am so very sorry for you, but you can follow the links and make up for some lost time.  I absolutely LOVE the man, he is even more fucked-up in the head than I am, and he makes a living from it!  That to me is genius in itself!  He is rude, crude, and even more socially unacceptable than I am, and even though I may not agree with him on every topic, I find him to be one of the funniest men of my generation.

I have never really taken the time to listen to any podcasts from anybody before.  I get so burnt out from the noise the TV makes all day that I have a hard time subjecting myself to more noise, I just want quiet.  I don't even listen to music very much anymore, for the same reason.  For some reason, today, I needed a distraction.  I tried watching TV, there were a couple of decent geological themed shows on, and then, there was crap.  I tried playing on Facebook, but they are so fucked-up this weekend they just piss me off.  Sure Facebook, none of the 5,000+ pages that I like posted a single thing for hours at a time, and then I get three whole new posts.  Even having 50 different special Newsfeed lists, I can't get them to show me fucking anything new!  It is so frustrating!

So when I am mad, and bored, and not up to doing shit, I turn to Titus.  The man is a nut!  I only listened to the beginning monologue on a few of his Podcasts, most of them are like over an hour long, and I don't have that much time right now.  But his monologues are the fucking best!  He calls them "The Armageddon Updates".  Dude is so pissed off, and happy at the same time, I cannot help but get drawn in until I am laughing my ass off wishing I could remember how to breathe!  Now I know not everyone appreciates the same type of humor that I do, but I figure if you enjoy my humor, we can't be too far off in what we find funny.  By the way, his tagline for the Podcasts? - "Never Unbiased and Always Unbalanced" - sounds a lot like me doesn't it?

The more I think about it, I think he played a big part in my learning to accept and enjoy my own dysfunctions.   I have written before about the influences that George Carlin and "Weird Al" Yankovic had on my formative years, Titus didn't come into my life until much later.   But, where George and Al helped me see that being different from everyone else was okay, Titus helped me learn that my dysfunctions could be fun too.  They didn't have to be something I was ashamed of, if other people can't understand them, that's their problem.  My dysfunctions are part of who I am, I earned them, and I might as well get something out of them.                            

Everyone has their own dysfunctions.  Some people deal with theirs better than others, Some people try to pretend they don't exist.  Everyone has their own way of coping with the fact that they are human.  Of course the vast majority of most people's dysfunctions are figments of the imaginations of marketing experts whose careers depend upon making everyone feel less than what they really are in order to sell them what they need to be better.  It is a completely ridiculous cycle that most people seem unable to resist, even when they know it is all bullshit.   

I don't want to play that game anymore.  I will just stick with the dysfunctions that I enjoy, and let everyone else do the living up to somebody else's manufactured ideas of what they should or should not be.  I couldn't do that shit when I was a kid, and I sure as hell don't have any interest in doing it now.  

                                                 

                                       

Confession Time

 Hello my Long Lost Internet People!  Sorry for disappearing on all of you again, but these near death experiences of the last couple weeks have taken their toll on me, and just sitting upright is still a challenge.  In case anyone missed my announcement on Facebook last week (which is probably everybody, knowing how Facebook works), my whole family was struck down with a monster case of the flu (on the first day of Spring, of course!).  Luckily, I am married to Superman, so despite his own severe illness he managed to hold everything together and take care of everyone and everything, while I spent 7 days unable to remove myself from the palette I made for myself on the Bathroom floor.  And, of course, since catastrophes never seem to strike alone around here, our refrigerator died in the middle of all of this.  So, Mr. Superman also had to deal with replacing that, all by himself!

I think the absolute worst part of all of this (besides feeling like a terrible Mother for not being able to take care of my kids), is that I lost every single pound I had worked so hard to put on the past couple months!   That was not fucking nice!  But it has brought me to a new realization about myself.  I have an eating disorder.  Now, I kinda already knew that, but I didn't really understand it before.  And I am really still not sure how to go about fighting it.

I never did learn to eat correctly as a child, and as I got older it only got worse.  As a teenager, friends, teachers, and even complete strangers were always asking me if I was Anorexic, no one in my family ever suggested that of course, but everyone else did, including the doctors.  I never believed that I was.  I NEVER thought I was fat, I NEVER even cared one way or another about getting fat, there was no distortion in my body image whatsoever, so obviously I could not possibly be Anorexic.  Turns out, that in my case at least, there is a whole lot more to it than just that one part, and most of the rest of them are exactly what I have been dealing with for the last 32 years.

When I finally consented to the diagnosis last August, I still didn't really buy it, but, it got me my "green card" (nothing to do with the immigration one - this is a whole different kind of "green"), and that was all I was after at the time.  I have lots of other qualifying conditions, this one was just the easiest to prove.  My very first Psychiatrist had prescribed my medicine of choice to me when I was 16.  It wasn't legal at that time, not by any stretch of the imagination, and he was very clear about that, but he knew it would help me, and it always has. 
Now, to have a "legal" prescription, this is a dream come true for me.  

The only problem is that, while my medicine helps me manage my pain and other psychological issues, it doesn't make me hungry.  I spent three decades training my body to ignore the "munchies", and I did a damn good job of it.  I haven't eaten Breakfast in the morning for at least 25 years, and Lunch is not an everyday meal either.  I can ignore the most pitiful pains and pleas from my stomach, mostly without even really realizing I am doing it anymore.  I did some figuring yesterday, and granted my brain is still fuzzy, so my numbers may be off a little, but as near as I can tell, I have been surviving on a diet of under 500 calories a day in real food, and well over 2,000 calories of just plain sugar.  Sometimes it was corn syrup, or whatever, but just pointless empty fucking calories all the way around.

I do NOT want to go back to that!  But I have no idea how to replace all of those calories with real food!  I cannot possibly eat that much in one day!  I mean, yes, I very much hope to be able to work up to doing that everyday, but I am so far away from that idea right now it is not even visible with a telescope!  The problem is, I really can't wait.  I need to rebuild my strength from this damn flu, because I literally have none.  I cannot stand up straight, I can't even sit up for very long at a time with being dizzy.  And oh my Gawd, the fucking Bathroom moved a thousand feet further away than it used to be.  Well, it feels like that anyway, its so damn far!  Just typing a damn sentence feels like running a marathon!

(It is now Saturday, I passed out after writing that last sentence above on Thursday, and slept for 15 hours, and yesterday I actually had to do some laundry and that took all the energy I had for the day, so I never made it back here.  Rather than trying to rewrite everything to fit, I am just going to pick up where I left off and maybe I can actually finish this post sometime today.)

Of course the fact that EVERYTHING tastes like crap right now doesn't fucking help either.  But I am trying really hard to fight through this and just freakin eat stuff, mostly healthy stuff.  I looked at the idea of trying to set up a "food plan", but I don't think that is really going to be useful for me at this point, so I am going with a food journal instead.  Keeping track of everything I eat during the day forces me to be conscious of my choices, and more importantly, my non-choices.  If the list is too short at the end of the day, I'll know where I fucked up, and can figure out how to do better tomorrow.  The idea is to eat at least as much, preferably more, than I did the day before.   So far so good, unfortunately I am only halfway through day 3 here, so I am not getting too excited yet.

I will find my way past this, because I have to.  If I don't, I die, and I have way too much fucking shit left to do, I do not have time for dying.  Besides I promised my oldest son that I would be around to meet his Grandchildren, and since I still don't have any Grandchildren, it is looking like this is going to be a long term commitment.  If there is anyone out there who has any experience in coping, or helping others cope with eating disorders, I sure wouldn't mind hearing from you.  I have no medical insurance, and no money, so professional help just ain't gonna happen. I would be extremely and eternally grateful for any help or support that anyone might be able to offer.  I know I have a long road ahead of me, but for the first time, I think I am looking forward to journeying towards health.  Just make sure somebody slaps me if I start going all "health-food fanatic" at some point, that ain't where I want to go.  I just want to eat and have the energy to actually get off my ass and do something!

Thanks for listening, I do not know what I would do if I did not have this Blog to let this shit out.  And I wouldn't be letting it out at all if you all weren't here to read it.  So, Thank YOU, you are all appreciated and needed more than I could ever hope to express, please don't ever forget that.

Until Next Time ...