A Mother's Prayer

Dear God (or which ever entity has watched over my life),

PLEASE let me be the kind of mother that can teach Baby E to love others as she would want to be loved, to cherish those important to her, to care for those smaller than herself and to be the kind of person that would kiss her baby doll.

If I can do just that much with my life, I can die happy.

Thanks.

Me

I'm a Momma!!!

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The Confessions of a Hardcore Slacker

I am currently in the process of trying to kick myself in the butt and do Good. Being laid off this winter, my goal was to do Super Good and make up for my slacker ways over the last year or so. After meeting with my school counselor, I'm not sure that even being SUPER AWESOMELY GOOD will be enough to get me where I wanted to be. I am trying to figure out the best plan for fixing some summer mistakes (those mistake being taking too many classes over a short period of time!!), as well as getting other some things on track before the end of winter.

First off, one of the important things to know about me and my current situation is that I don't sleep like I should. I LOVE being up all hours of the night, and with Hubs sleeping like a rock, I can do so without fear of bothering anyone. Because of my night owl ways, I tend to start my day no sooner than 11 am. With my class schedule, most days I have to be at school by 4 p.m. That means I have 4 hours of daylight to make something happen at home. Usually, those four hours are spent on the homework due for class that night.
Once I get home from school, even if it is a late night, I can be home by 9:30 p.m. Normally, I will stay up until at least 1 a.m. All in all, I'm still getting 8 hours in which to be productive.
I like to think that coffee makes me focused and productive, but in reality, it makes me more half-assed than usually. I drink coffee and the brain wheels get moving every which way. I start the laundry. I run water for the dishes. I get my school books and spread them all over the kitchen table. I'm going to be PRODUCTIVE!! (This is very similar to "Clean All the Things!" syndrome, but without the cute cartoons - and induced by copious amounts of caffeine.) I start looking at Raverly and plotting out projects in my queue. I also realize I have too many things on the needles, so I want to work on them while doing the dishes and the laundry. Some where along this line of thinking, I end up in my craft/study room, looking through my books/yarn/fabric, and trying to think of the thing to craft that will FIX my steadily snowballing slackerness.

Usually about this time, it is time to leave for school. So I leave with the sink filled with dirty dishes and soapy water. The laundry is in the washer done, but not moved to the dryer. Yarn is all over my school books and kitchen table. I feel like I wasted all day - but I SWEAR I will finish my endeavors when I get home from school!!!!

Once I get home from school, all I have the energy to do is watch South Park or King of the Hill on Netflix until 2 am. If it is a good day, I will at least bother to clear the table of the yarn I left. Maybe.

I seem to vaguely recall once upon a time in my office life, 8 hours of productivity was not a myth. Even though I might have felt I was spinning my wheels and getting no where, I knew that I had worked during those 8 hours, damn it!

Somewhere along the way though, I began to feel that 6 hours of work would give me the same (lack of) results 8 hours was getting me. Then 5 hours. Then 4. And then I would work from 10am until lunch and surf the 'net the rest of the day. No one really noticed a difference in my levels of getting shit done, so no one complained. And just like any bad behavior, if the behavior isn't punished, it isn't going to change.

So here I am, 8 years of bad behavior run a muck, and no way to fix it.

What do you do when Motivation to be SUPER AWESOME comes a-calling, but  lack of organization gets in the way of getting anything done?  Does anyone out there have those time management skills we hear so much about?  Share your thoughts in the comments!!

To Quote My Favorite Doctor

I really need to get my [bleep] together.

Since I'm currently not working, I have far too much free time on my hands. Instead of being Productive and Getting Things Done, I watch South Park on the Netflix, knit (or rather, knit, rip and then knit again), and try to clean something but get distracted before I get done. My mom once said I need a routine and I won't get myself into this cycle of non-productiveness. I half believe her, and am too lazy to set this "routine" up.

This is what I aim to do each week:

Monday is Homework
Tuesday - Thursday is clean, with school in the evening
Friday is crafting (sewing)
Saturday and Sunday is whatever has to get done (errands and whatnot)

This is what happens:

Monday is Hub's day off of work, so we hang out and watch movies
Tuesday - Thursday I watch more movies and drink too much coffee in an effort to be super speedy and get done homework that is due for the class that night
Friday is crafty/movies/cleaning/food shopping
Saturday is usually horse riding which wears me out and makes me only wanna knit and watch Netflix
Sunday is FOOTBALL which means I don't do much else, aside from knitting during the game, then naps afterward.

You would think that I at least get a lot of knitting done during the week, but it so doesn't seem like it. I've been on a bad kick of ripping out most of the knitting I get done over the week and reknitting it in one sitting (usually until 3 in the morning), because its not perfect. Why (or how) I got on this kick, I do not know. The only explanation I can give is that because I have soo much time, I figure there is no reason for my knitting not to be perfect.

On the bright side, I am kicking ass at cleaning today. If we overlook the fact I should be doing homework, we can count today as a win!! In fact, I'm giving myself an award from one of my favorite blogs

In which I make my triumphant return to the world of blogging!

Once upon a time, I attempted to keep a blog. I was excited about my little corner of the internets and hoped that it would do well, make friends, and grow.

Then, on a dark, stormy day, I got an office job! This job prevented my from doing anything I loved and crushed my very soul. Soon all the things I cared about started to crumple and die, especially my little blog.

Out of no where, like a ray of sunshine and hope, I got the wonderful idea to leave the office life forever and to find a job that would not cause me such soul-crashing pain. My new position was that of caregiver to flowers and butterflies. I was overjoyed! My new job let me be outside on bright sunshiny days! I could spent my time knitting and reading in the sun! I never had to sit behind a desk again!

Sadly, not all good things can last. It is now too cold for the flowers and butterflies to be outside. I too, must be stuck indoors until the sun comes back to bring light and hope to Maryland. As a silver-lining to this deary situation, I can nourish my little blog and (hopefully) give it the life it so deserves.*


So I plan to blog again, and regularly. Just wanted to give you the heads up.


*This story, though based on true events, has been embellished for your amusement. Except for the soul-crashing office job. That part is 100% true.

And here is a monster I drew one day at said soul-crushing office job.

Converting the world - one little girl at a time.

I was hanging out with DBF’s sister’s friend’s little girl, Ava. She won at a game her and I were playing and declared that I owed her $3 cause she won (this wasn’t set up before I starting playing the game with her - gotta love little kids!). I told her “I don’t have and money - you want yarn?” She said yes, so I cut some bits of the yarn I had from the project I brought over, and started knotting the yarn into a friendship bracelet a’la 3rd grade. Ava come over to watch me do this, and was asking questions (she’s 7 y.o.).

DBF’s sis said “Why don’t you show her how to knit? She’d like that!” I asked Ava if she wanted to see me knit and she said yes. I was making a stuffed dog and had finished the body and had just casted on for his leg before I got there. I took my cast on row and started knitting, telling her the poem I heard “In through the front door, up over the back, peep through the window, and off jumps jack.”

Well, sure enough, Ava wanted to try. I only had my size three needles, and some “Reclaimed” yarn I was working with - not the best stuff to teach a young kid with, but damned if she didn’t keep trying and got it after a while. I kept telling her things like “you missed your house.” when she would put her needle between stitches, and “keep your hat on when you look out the window” when she would lose her yarn over.

Her older brother, who was in college, came over to watc, and I’m sure he thought I was nuts saying this stuff, but she was knitting and doing well. My fav. thing she would ask is “Where’s my window?” and I would take my figure or needle and show her where she was to peek out of.

I told her and her mom if Ava really wanted to keep knitting, to bring her over my house one afternoon and I had better stuff for her to work with and it would be more fun for her, rather than learning on these tiny needles.

Turns out, her father’s mom use to knit, and she died in a car accident when he was 24 - he teared up when he saw me knitting, and he left before I taught Ava how to - I’m sure he would be tickled pink if she learned :)

Sorry for the long post- this just made me happy and I wanted to share.

BTW - I was telling her how I make yarn from sheeps' wool and she asked me “who kills the sheep?!!?” I explained and put her on etsy to look at the different colors of roving and wool. After a bit, she pulled her brother over and proudly proclaimed “That’s sheep!” He said “That don’t look like sheep to me…”.

I've been busy

and nervous and scared and knitting and busy and ...

I started my own company. You may have (or not) noticed that I changed the name of my blog. This is now the home of Yarns from the Haunted Surf Shack. We are currently "debuting" at Sock Summit, thanks to Cherry Tree Hill Yarns showing some love to us Indie dyers.

This is where the nervous comes in. For purposes of full disclosure, I've only been dyeing yarns for about a month. Started when I lost my job, since I didn't have much else to do with myself (over then feel like crap, but that's another story). I enjoyed it, and send some of my hand dyed along on a Traveling Scarf Swap I'm part of over on the Ravelry. I figured that if I enjoyed my colors, maybe someone else would too.

I made the mistake of showing DBF.

He is ALL about quitting the day job for something that you love. This is the man that wants to give up our house that he just bought last year and just travel the country in our RV and make music, with me booking shows and whatnot along the way. Since DBF has been to a few LYS with me, and MD Sheep and Wool this year, he saw that I'm not the only one into fiber, and realized that, well, there's an opportunity here.

He's so super encouraging about this whole thing it's a almost a bit scary. Has bought everything thing I need of dyeing, without complaining. Is going to (slightly) remodel our basement washroom so I have a place to work. Even his brother has designed our logo, and my BBF Tamar is our printer of the business cards and labels.

Post Apocalyptic Luau in the mix

So what does all this come down to? I can't sleep. It's 3:48 in the morning, I have to get up at 6, and here I am, blogging, looking at colors, dye methods, yarn types, anything and everything I may need to keep this venture going. I fear failure. I don't want to let everyone down who's helped me. This could be awesome, or I could suck and not know it. I won't know for another week or so, until Sock Summit is underway and I how/if my yarns sell. I'll also have trunk show at Lovelyarns September 18, along with trying to submit something for the phatfiber sample box. So I've got enough to keep me busy for a while. And if I'm busy, I can't worry, right?

Argh, I need sleep.