Another year gone by

Hello, world. Thought I might go back to updating my blog for the month of November, at least.

I've been busy, but mostly not with bloggable stuff, unfortunately. My craft room is now Dan's home office, and his former space is a sensory room for Sam. My desk moved to our (ridiculously large, don't get me wrong) master bedroom and I am still in the process of getting it organized.

One thing I have been trying to do more of since school started is cook at home. I've made my Rotisserie Chicken a few times, as well as my favorite Pork Roast, and a few others that I am probably forgetting. Tonight's docket is Fajitas. Later in the week I have loose plans for Chicken Stroganoff, but that may or may not happen. I also have a couple of newer crock pot recipes that I have never blogged about, so those will be on my list the next time I make them.

I also did a few small batches of canning over the summer. It was nowhere near as crazy as the summer of 2014 where I canned several times a week, all summer. This year, I made some strawberry jam, rhubarb syrup, bread and butter pickles, garlicky dill pickles (I made spears though), and a couple of batches of applesauce. (My applesauce recipe contains nothing but apples, and if I make another batch soon, I will try to blog about it.) In the spring I made a couple of citrus curds, and plan to make a few more nearer to the holidays. My goal has been to give away as much as possible as soon as possible after processing. I have a few more pickles on hand than necessary, though. I wish I had done some diced tomatoes, since we really do use them up throughout the year. (Literally everything else I preserve is consumed by no one in our household except me. Maybe Dan will have a pickle. Maybe.)

Everything I have left: 1 half-pint jam, 2 half-pints syrup, 2 pints applesauce, 4 pints pickles

Back in Crafts

In the last couple of months, I've been busy making new coasters and scarves. More specifics on them in a later post.

I made the decision to attempt to clear out my backstock of crocheted items made (mostly) prior to 2011. All the old scarves and baby blankets are on a steep clearance (think 75-90% off) while they last. Luckily, they had all been carefully stored in a dust-free location, so they are all as fresh as the day I put them away. I'm at a point where I'm kind of done experimenting with specialty fibers, at least in non bridal crochet pieces.

Then, business being business, I had to up the prices of my coasters. They still aren't where they should be, for the time I put into them, but I think they are still reasonably priced for what they are. They also seem to last forever--my first one ever has been on Dan's desk at work for 7 or 8 years now. All it needs is quick rinse in the sink whenever something gets spilled on it, but other than that, it's just holding on and looking great. I realized though that by pricing at a bare minimum, I can't ever offer discounts. And I love a good discount! So I immediately put up a 10% off coupon. Good through Christmas. Details in every listing.

I finally got on Instagram, which has been fun. I'm still sharing it all on Facebook, too, but it's fun to tap a potentially new audience. I'm still working on remembering to hashtag things properly. Photography is still my nemesis. Considering recruiting a few friends as models and photographers to get better product photos for my new line of scarves. More on that next time.

Coming back?

Tap. Tap tap. Is this thing on?

Ahem. It's been awhile. I had about 7 draft posts partially written, and I just deleted all of them without even reading what was there. Suffice it to say that I was stuck. Slowly, bit by bit, I've been coming back. And I think I'm finally ready to write again.

Sam started Kindergarten this year. It's full day in our state, so he is gone from 9 to 4 every day of the week. I'm slowly getting back on top of my housework after a difficult summer. And, I'm back to crafting regularly as Auntie Mel. More about that next post.

In the meantime, here is Sam in his Halloween costume. He was Toad from Super Mario Bros this year.

Loosely collected thoughts

No new 31 day challenge today. I am working on kitchen cupboards and drawers, but it is turning out to be a bigger/tougher job than I had anticipated. Luckily, later in the challenge, there are things I had already done or things that we don't actually have (separate master bathroom and kid's bathroom, for starters.) I'd also been working on our bedroom for a few weeks before this whole thing started, so I am not going to have a whole lot of "before" pictures there. In other words, I'm probably going to do some skipping ahead until I can finish the kitchen properly.

A little bit ago I did something I haven't done a whole lot of this year: started a crochet project. Sam is in private therapy in the afternoons a couple of days a week, and now that he's not a baby, I get to spend a lot of time in waiting rooms, instead of in with him. I have grand plans of reading and crafting during that time. We'll just have to see if it happens. My current project is one I've done before, but not since I was pregnant with Sam and on bed rest.

I spent the summer preserving all manner of fruits and vegetables, mainly local, mostly from recipes from Food In Jars. I didn't take many pictures during the process, but I'll try to get a few of what the author calls "preserves in action" over the winter. Thinking that all of my jams and jellies will be excellent on my homemade bread. I'm still menu planning, so there is that.

What else is going on with me? Not a whole lot. Just sticking to the "Susie Homemaker" stuff until I get the house sorted out. Somewhere along the line I realized that we've been living here for years now, but not really ever finished moving in or decorating. For awhile, when Sam was small, it felt futile to even try. He just destroyed everything we tried to have up on the walls. Now, I am taking a different tack, getting rid of the things that don't fit our life as it is now, and adding new things that work for us. Vertical blinds destroyed? How about simple drapes with tie backs instead? Candles not an option with little kids around? How about LED candles, in sconces, up high? So we're learning. (And trying not to buy anything so expensive that we'd be heartbroken if he ruined it, e.g, a $35 synthetic rug from Target instead of a $200+ wool rug.)

Hello again...and my 31 day challenge

Now that Sam's back in school, I've had a little more time to think and space to breathe. Thinking about dipping my toe back into blogging again, but I want to start kind of slow and casual. So, we're mostly going to talk about cooking, decorating, and household-y stuff for a bit.

One of the blogs I've been subscribed to for awhile now is called Living Well Spending Less. It is pretty much what it says it is. They are doing a 31 day decluttering challenge, and since I was already in the process of purging and redecorating our townhouse, I figured I'd take a stab at it. So far, it is kicking my ass. Day 2 (the first day was setting the rules) was the entryway. So here are my before and after shots:

Before: From top of stairs

Before: From basement stairs

Before: From front door

Before: Closet

After: From top of stairs

After: From basement stairs

After: From front door

After: Closet

So, in the before shots, the closet floor has been used as a dumping ground for old shoes and other random stuff that we never dealt with when it came into the house. Epiphany: Things coming into the house and not having "homes" and things lingering too long on the way out of the house are major issues for us in terms of clutter. 

I threw out a lot of old worn out shoes from the closet, and moved the board games from the top of it. We literally hadn't touched any of them aside from Cards Against Humanity since we moved in three years ago. So they are going to either find new homes or leave. There was also a banker's box full of light bulbs up there. It got moved to what I'm calling the "utility cabinet" in our laundry room.

Sam has hooks on the wall for his backpack and coat, but we didn't have a good method of dealing with shoes. The tray tended to both cover the heating vent and attract random clutter. I moved it into the closet with my winter boots and shoes and Dan's hiking boots. Other than what we currently wear (and my run-into-the-garage slippers) there are no shoes in the entryway. 

Other additions to the closet were a scarf hanger and a hanging shelf system to keep track of hats and gloves. We may add some baskets to the top shelf, but for now, I am liking the idea of leaving it empty until we discover a good use for it. I'm still not happy with the folding tray tables and the white board being in there, but as we declutter the rest of the house we will probably find better homes for them. 

Cosmetically I added two LED candles to the sconces for the first time. The rugs were still in reasonably decent shape, so I left them as-is. I still haven't figured out a good solution for my purse. Perhaps it would be better kept off the landing anyway.

Anyway. Onward! #LWSLClutterFree

Thinking about blogging, and crocheting, and motivation

I've come out of my early-fall fog a little bit, so I think I might be ready to start blogging again. We'll see how that goes. With the cooler weather, Sam's not escaping the house as much any more, so I'm less stressed out about that. Our family just got over a bad stomach bug, so I'm still a little slow on the cooking. Today I'm making homemade yogurt and taking pictures of the process. I'll post about it tomorrow, including the recipe.

So I looked back over what I was doing at this time last year, and my gosh, I was stitching up a storm. Anything to keep my hands busy. I stayed that way until Sam started preschool in April. I suspect that that was my way of dealing with Sam's autism diagnosis. It was something that we'd sort of known was coming since the summer prior, but hadn't really processed (and let's be honest, we probably never will, completely.) Doing this blog, and making all that stuff, kept my mind on other things than the elephant in the room. Working (caring for Maggie) was much the same. But eventually there was a breaking point where our family as a whole had to accept and embrace Sam's diagnosis for what it was, and begin the hard work of giving him the best start we possibly can.

I thought I knew Sam a year ago. I knew what he did, sure. I knew every detail about how he did things, and what he was saying, and I normally knew exactly what he wanted or what was wrong. But I didn't know why he needed to bundle objects and hum, or memorize letters and numbers. I might have had some clue about his triggers, but the need he was fulfilling with his behaviors wasn't even on my radar. "Yeah, he does that a lot," was the extent of my knowledge. I had no idea how much visual and auditory stimulation he craved. I had no idea how badly he wanted to make music. I had no idea why he craved certain motions and not others.

In the big picture, of course we don't know why he has certain sensory needs, but we have learned a ton about how he meets them. Most of the time, I can redirect his humming to singing, and his bundling can be done in a way that's safe for everyone. Food is still something we're working on. I have a feeling it'll be a long process. He drinks milk and eats chicken, so between those and all the junk food, he's growing and reasonably healthy.

Anyway. I'm not going to set a schedule for updating this blog because I don't want to use it as an escape as much. I'll update when I have something to say. We're finally done with most of our classes, the exception being three more weeks of More Than Words, which we have tonight. Sam got pretty bored over Thanksgiving break, so he's pretty happy to be back in school. We put up our sad little tree yesterday with only one ornament--a star that I crocheted at the top. I'm debating about bringing the big one out for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but for now, this is what we can handle. It's a little Charlie Brown, but it works.

Hmm. What happened there?

I honestly didn't plan to take a whole week off from blogging, but it looks like that's what happened. I'm not entirely sure where the time went, but I know I wasn't doing much different than usual. On Facebook I quit a group that was a bit toxic and joined a better one, so there were the requisite "getting to know you" posts, so that's probably where my writing energy went. I also took another weekend off from Facebook altogether for the last two days. There was cleaning, as I did keep up with my 20 minutes a day, plus laundry. We got Sam's hair cut in time for school pictures, which are tomorrow. I did some cooking but neglected to take pictures. Well, I took no pictures at all of my Chicken with Mushrooms, which was a winner; I took pictures of about 1/3 of the process for Roasted Vegetables with Sausage, but I don't plan to make that again any time soon. Today I made beef stew in the crock pot, so there will be pictures of that tomorrow. It smells amazing!

In the meantime, here are some random pictures that never made their way into posts.

Raspberry jam on the stove

Raspberry jam in the jars

The beginnings of applesauce...forgot to take any more pictures the whole time

And just a cute one of Sam waiting for the bus one day, pre-haircut.

Slow Cooker Chicken Stroganoff

Yesterday morning, I chopped up four boneless skinless chicken breasts and plopped them in a crock pot with a packet of dry Italian dressing mix and two tablespoons of butter. I let it cook on low for about 5 and a half hours, then added a brick of Neufchâtel cheese and a can of condensed cream of chicken soup, stirred that up, and let it get all hot and melty. Meanwhile I boiled a pot of water and cooked some wide egg noodles to go with it. And that's all there is to this recipe.

Forgot to take any pictures, but Dan liked it so much he agreed to take a portion to work to reheat for lunch. Win!

Also, I am debating doing a short social media fast, maybe 48 hours of not popping onto Facebook or Twitter, or reading any of my blogs on feedly. Just to get some perspective on my time-wasting and online behavior. I haven't committed fully either way, just something I'm considering. If I do, I'll continue to post here and push links to my Facebook timeline, but I won't be engaging in comments there.

Tonight is Fancy Homemade Mac and Cheese, which I am so looking forward to. I hadn't intended to have two pasta nights in a row, but that's what happens when I shuffle meals around toward the end of the week/weekend.

Jumping back in...and a new short-term project

Since the last time I posted a new blog entry, I've quit my job, spent Sam's summer break going on endless field trips, slowly but surely worked toward getting my homemaking back on track, and gotten him back to school. It's been a little nuts, and I've started and abandoned several posts that just never got finished before they were irrelevant. But now Sam's back in school roughly 3 hours every day. So I've got time to take on a project each day, cook every night, and pretty much get my "poop in a group", as my mom says. Yesterday, the first day of school, I cleaned out our minivan from a summer's worth of straw wrappers, toys, abandoned hoodies and shoes, and whatever else was back there. Before I stopped watching Maggie, I had flipped the third row bench under so that I had a huge flat surface to put both strollers in, but it wound up full of other stuff eventually. No more. The third row is back up where it belongs and the cargo space is now limited to what will fit behind it. Whew.

Last night I plotted out a menu plan for the entire month of September in this nifty software called Cozi. I have the app for my phone but the menu planning is only available on their desktop website, so I was using that on my pitiful little netbook. It's pretty neat, though: you can enter all the recipes you use regularly (including links if the recipe is online) and then drag and drop them onto dates. There's even an option to add the recipe's ingredients to your grocery list (which is available on the mobile app, natch.) The only thing it seems to be missing is a social networking piece. It would be cool to have the option to share links to my recipes with notes either here, on Twitter or on Facebook. A lot of my friends on Facebook have been posting about wanting healthy dinner recipes and whole food cooking ideas, so I figured an easy thing for me to do over the course of the month would be to blog each recipe as I cook it. Days which are repeats will be posts that I write a little more about what's on my mind or what's going on in our lives, but days which are new recipes will be mostly devoted to the menu.

Last night was my Zucchini Pasta, which I have already written about here, therefore I'm not going to rehash the whole recipe. Wednesday was the final day of the MN Zoo Farmer's Market for the summer, but I was still able to get a few onions and a pound of yellow squash. Many of the other local markets go through Halloween so I may have to get a new favorite. :) One thing I tried with the squash was to slice it using the slicey side of a cheese grater. It did NOT go well. Those things are not sharp enough to slice produce neatly. So I dragged out the mandolin slicer after all, and got two kitchen implements dirty. Sigh.

Tonight, pork roast! Will post about it tomorrow. (Note: not a particularly healthy recipe. Potentially high in fat. Contains refined sugar, ketchup, and soy sauce.)

Writer's block

So I've had a lot on my mind lately, but not a lot of it is publicly shareable right now. (No, I am not pregnant, as far as I know.) A lot of what's "on my heart", to borrow the evangelical expression, is related to something that is not my story to tell, even though it's taking up a lot of my time, energy, and worry. I will write what I can, when I can, and backlog those posts as drafts until I and able to talk more openly about it.

I realized a few days ago that I'm filling up Facebook with my cute pictures and anecdotes about Sam. Part of why I started this blog was to move my content off of Facebook as much as possible. So you can expect more "fluff" kid-related posts from me in the near future. Here is one:

Sam has taken to pronouncing the word "tortilla" the way an old southern woman would say "oh dear": oh, DEE-ah. Cracks me up.

And another: Wednesday was unofficial "hug day" at my house. Both kids would walk up to each other and me and say, "Hug?" Hugs would follow, often group hugs. It was the best.

Just so you don't think my life is perfect: we recently came to the conclusion that all of Sam's toys have to be locked away in his closet, or he will dump everything all over the floor and then not even play with it. It was exhausting to try to keep up with and frequently I would just mutter "oh f*** it, whatever" under my breath and just give up. We're almost to the point where everything's put away, and he's taken to writing on the walls (how the heck does he keep finding crayons?) And ripping his books apart. And bringing sticks in the house from outside. Can. Not. Win.

Also as I was typing this? With my thumbs, on my phone, because that's apparently the only way I am allowed to computer lately (side note: do anyone else's kids climb up and lay themselves across your forearms whenever you're using a handheld device? Just mine? OK.) And he jumped up on me and headbutted me, right on the mouth. I am going to have a fat lip. Lucky it wasn't harder or my front teeth would be gone.

So. I am going to try to post more of that sort of stuff, in the mean time. Because honestly, my kid does weird stuff on the daily.

This and That (and why is it still winter?)

I've not been updating the blog the way I intended. At this point, at least until the snow is gone, I'm not going to hold myself to any set schedule because I just can't. I meant to write last week about how Sam is doing at school (good!), but I just couldn't wrap my brain around words. Remember how I said depression is like a fog that won't let me think straight? That's pretty much what's going on with me. I am scattered as all get out right now.

But I've been baking. I borrowed Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day from my mom and am slowly working my way through the recipes. I make a lot of boule, but I've also attempted demi-baguettes, ciabatta, light wheat, and oatmeal bread. I also borrowed a bread machine and made two loaves of old-fashioned white bread with that. As summer arrives, I'm going to quit using the oven as much so I'll be back to making bread in the crock pot or the bread machine.

I've also been crocheting. I finished blanket #3 and started on #4. Pictures, you know, eventually. (My house is too messy to take pictures at the moment. Sorry. I'll do my spring cleaning when it is actually spring.)

And aside from all the depression nonsense, I haven't been well, as in, not having a cold or illness of some sort, in at least 6 weeks. I have not had more than a two week break from being sick in roughly a year. (That's being generous...it feels more like a 1 week break, maybe. I honestly don't remember anymore what it was like not to be sick. I am starting to wonder if we have mold in our house or something.) I am tired of winter and I am tired of being sick all the time and dang it I am tired. This is my reality at the moment, and I don't like it, and I figure you all don't need to hear the same complainy thing from me three times a week, so there it is. See you when the snow melts. It's going to melt, right? It has to stop by like June, right? Sigh.

All winter I said to myself, if I can just make it to April, I'll be OK. Well, I did. And I'm not. April didn't hold up her end of the bargain. I know everybody else feels the same way, but that doesn't really make me feel better about it.

Oh, and happy tax day! We owed a ridiculous amount. Another sigh. But hey, free stuff!

I am not a photographer (and, 100th post!)

powered by Fotopedia

...and I don't particularly want to be. There seems to be a trend among bloggers to go one of two ways: either they steal images by googling and then not getting permission or paying for them, and that's how they get images for their blog posts, OR, they become better photographers and take their own damn pictures of whatever it is they are blogging about. (Or in rare instances, they do what Amber Dusick did and get a book deal and it's great. But that's her idea, so I'm not stealing it. Frankly, I don't think I could even make MS Paint pictures as well as she does.)

I have halfheartedly tried to do the second, but I lack equipment, talent, practice, and, frankly, desire. I am a writer. I am a crafter. I am a mother. I am a feminist. I am NOT a photographer. I tend to drop my phone when I'm trying to take a selfie--it's that bad. And I am tired of feeling like that makes me somehow defective as a writer/crafter/mother/feminist/blogger.

So for now, I'm going to keep taking crappy cell phone and webcam pictures and maybe I'll start cruising creative commons sites to find images that I can get permission to use for free with attribution, like the one above, or just post walls of text with no images. (Cool tip: if you want to find out who published an image first, you can google the image's URL in a google image search to find similar images. Great way to track down the authorship of memes.) But I've decided that I've got to stop feeling that pang of jealousy when I look at the other craft and mommy blogs and they have artsy images of their work or their kids. It's just not my thing. I rarely even remember to take snapshots on special occasions.

Hopefully my words here can stand on their own most of the time. This is my 100th post on this blog. I'm feeling pretty proud of that milestone, with or without cool pictures.

I kind of hate March

March is pretty much my worst month, depression wise. I am sad and annoyed with myself that I left my blog sit for two weeks, but there wasn't much I could do about it. I was just empty.

Yes, the days seem longer, but it was still cold and snowy. And we were sick. It started with a stomach bug that Thursday after Charter screwed up our internet. I wasn't 100% until the next Monday or Tuesday. At that point Maggie was coming down with a cold, which hit us full force by the following weekend. And we were sick with that pretty much all of last week. As of Saturday night, I was feeling better but still coughing up goop.

Aside from the sickness, I just felt blank. Yes, I was having "the feels", but I just couldn't put any of it down in words. What I really wanted, practically every second of every day, was to go back to bed. I knew that was the depression talking, though, so I just stuck it out. I think part of it is that at this point I've been patiently waiting for spring for so long that it feels like it will never come. A March day in November would probably feel delightful. At this point though, I'm just so worn down that I can hardly stand the cold and snow anymore.

On Friday, I read a post on The Feminist Breeder about how she likes to organize when she's stressed. I am sort of the opposite. I tend to let things pile up until it's unbearable. However, I almost always feel much better when the piles are finally dealt with. Now, I'm going to trust all of you here when I share what I posted in response to one of the other readers who said that her clutter will build up sometimes as well. And the before and after pictures.

"I so hear that! Mess is one of my symptoms and also triggers for depression. Definitely a downward spiral. Usually it takes the husband getting fed up with it and going on a rampage for things to get straightened out. Rather than looking at everything like Tetris, I just sort of get overwhelmed and shut down. It sucks. It gets worse when I have a cold or don't feel well, too (like right now). You wouldn't want to see my kitchen counter at the moment...just the one surface looks like a hoarder's house. Piles. ><

But now I'm feeling inspired to clean it off. Maybe I'll take a before and after and post a link to the pictures. :)"

Just put me on TV. I'm a bad person.

OK. Majority of the garbage, dirty dishes, and food dealt with. At this point I needed a short break.

Second wind and I made a good sized dent made in the clutter. We can see the surface of the counter peninsula! Hooray! (Note: I did not align the fridge magnets. That was someone else. ;) )

And Saturday. Big piles of paper under control (sort of; I still had a big stack of "paper I don't know what to do with" on the kitchen table.) Neat line of things that belong in other rooms at the end of the counter. Appliances conquered; bread dough rising on the stove. Top of the fridge still needs help, but that will have to wait.

Pre-Sam, (well, pre-Sam's climbing days) I used to reward myself for tidying up the kitchen by lighting a scented candle I'd place on a plate on the stovetop. Unfortunately his idea of a good time these days is to push a large dining area chair or a counter stool into the kitchen, climb up, and open and close the microwave. It is terrifying. One of the few times we've spanked him has been for climbing like this. I really, really don't like or plan to do it...I don't think it helps communicate anything other than "Mommy is very angry". But he scares the crap out of me sometimes. So no lit candles in my house at the moment. You might also notice that the block of knives that used to be back in the corner to the right of the stove is now gone. I had other things piled in front of it, but now that Sam climbs it needs to be locked away. For the time being, it's on its side on the bottom shelf of the cabinet to the right of the microwave, and that cabinet will have a Sam-proof latch very soon.

Anyhow, the fridge still needs to be cleaned inside and out, and I need to go through the pantry and purge and reorganize. But my cabinets and drawers are mostly in good shape.

And I feel a bit better. And it's almost April.

Finally changing my update schedule

Woke up this morning with no posts close to completion. Most days I've had the next morning's post scheduled and set the night before, and I would say that I've been slacking, except that I spent last night doing laundry and taking care of things that needed to be taken care of. Life's just gotten too busy for a 5x a week update schedule, so from here on out, it's going to be M-W-F.

OK. Now go look at these cute puppies. Thanks!

So I got a new phone.

And I used it to write this post. The one shortcoming the Blogger app has is that you can't schedule posts for the future. Other than that, I really like it. Also, I took this dorky picture of myself. Uploading pictures to the blog is much easier now.

Stupid colds

So I had like 3 different posts in various states of completion that I could have posted this morning...except that I never finished doing any of the things I was going to post about. All 3 (well, now 4 since Maggie's here) of us have nasty headcolds with icky boogery noses. Not a great way to start a week. Tomorrow I'll have something more interesting to write about.

New contributor! Sort of.

I figured out how to post as me, not as my former business account, and still keep the same blog. It's much easier than logging in and out of Blogger, Google+ and Google Reader every time I want to compose a post. So from now on, I'll be posting as myself and not as Auntie Mel. Sounds good?

I also wanted to make a note that I'm not going to be restricting myself to post mostly about crafting, which should be obvious from the last week or so of posts. There will still be lots about crafting, but it's not the blog's main focus anymore. I think using my own name and my own Google account will make more sense than using my Auntie Mel account because of that.

Then I want to thank everyone who's been reading so far. When I blogged before, I had pretty much zero readers. Maybe my mom. And according to Blogger, this blog had 98 page views last Thursday. This blog has only had 320 page views, ever, and 285 of them have been in the last week. So, thank you. Hopefully I'll have something interesting to continue to say.

Since this is a rather boring post, here is a picture of my first holiday ornament of the season. Normally I do these on plastic canvas, but that's sort of impossible with the littles around. It's a good way to use up some of my scrap yarn, though.

It's a pink poinsettia. The rest of them will probably be red, but I thought the light green yarn would work better with pink petals.

Years go by and still I think of you...

Two years have gone by and it's time for this blog to reboot, for two reasons.
1. I started crocheting again! Yay!
2. I have decided that FaceBook can go eat a +#&%. However, I still want a way to share the awesomeness of my day-to-day life and opinions on stuff with people, and have them write back.

 Anyway, more to come.

Back (It's all right!)

Wow. Almost two months since my last posts. To be fair, I started a draft in early February, but got side-tracked and never posted it. It seems a bit pointless now - it was basically saying that I was all better (from whatever illness I had at the time) and detailing an awesome trip through Target's clearance section. To quote Mike Birbiglia, "That's not a blog, that's a text message."

Honestly, I just haven't had much new to say. I've been a sort of a depressed funk as tends to happen to me towards the tail end of winter. So I'll just hit the main highlights and you can judge for yourself whether I should have been blogging them:

• I haven't made much progress on the apartment or my office, though I did enlist Dan to help move and reorganize some bookshelves.
• I checked out a local technical school where I intend to apply and get a quick 1-year accounting certificate so I can get a "real" job (well, one where I make actual money on a regular basis.)
  
• I had a terrible infection on my chin that has finally gone away with the help of strong antibiotics.
• One of my nieces turned 3, but celebrated her birthday at Disney World so I didn't get to be there. (Later she, her mom, me, my mom and my other niece all met up at the Mall of America for lunch, which was fun. The girls had a blast on the merry-go-round.)
• Dan and I joined a gym, again. He's been pretty good about going every day after work - me, not so much.
  
• I bought new business cards with my new PO box address, new web address, new graphics, etc.
  
• I got a custom order for a set of coasters from Final Fantasy 7 which was challenging.
  
• I've migrated about half of my current items from my old Etsy shop to my new Etsy shop.
• I made and tested prototypes for a few new projects - crocheted ponchos, crocheted bath poofs, "mug mat" sized coasters, etc.

So yeah. I've been busy but just haven't had a lot to say until these last couple of weeks, in which I've been so busy that I haven't set aside time to think about blogging. I'll most likely write separate entries about those last few items, but I don't want to post them all today and burn myself out again. Baby steps.

Sunday night

And my tummy is UNHAPPY. Dan picked up some sort of stomach bug which started on Friday - and I didn't get sick until this morning. He is still sick as a dog, so I don't have very high hopes as far as my own productivity this week goes.

Last week I shared the location of my blog with my Facebook friends, and promptly stopped updating. I have this tendency to fail at things as soon as I put pressure on myself by making a big announcement. Before I met Dan, I would date a dude for a few weeks, decide I might really like him, tell my friends about it, and after that it was basically jinxed. He'd dump me in the next few days. I repeated this cycle at least three times. But, obviously, I fixed that pattern and I'm going to fix this one too. Which brings me to today - blogging while sick.

So. Where was I last week? Here. Nowhere. I just really didn't have anything worthwhile to say - at least that's what I was telling myself. The truth is, I was in a bit of a depressed funk for most of the week. I've been "behind" on housework and my business tasks that need to get done if I'm going to grow. I've been whining forever about my crummy photography skills, and I know of a few "friends of friends" who are photographers, but haven't worked up the courage to ask for their help. My spring cleaning project is stalled for the moment - I cleared out the next area I was going to showcase, but I haven't placed the new pieces of furniture into it yet. I can blame part of that on the fact that Dan was sick and unable to help me, and today I got sick and was unable to do much myself.

The one plus of my little lethargic spell was that I crocheted like a madwoman, finishing one wool blanket set and one cotton blanket. Pictures to be posted when I take them. Don't hold your breath.

Anyhow, I wasn't feeling motivated, and now I am feeling it but can't act on it. Which is a little bit frustrating. What I have managed to do is make a list of daily to-dos, which hopefully will lead to a schedule to get me into a routine where I actually get things done that I need to do.