I never realized how hard it can be to do everything with your left hand when your right-handed. Ended up at urgent care last night because my cut finger was just throbbing and did not look right (see Monday's post). I am so thankful I followed my gut and went because things weren't right. I felt like my finger was about to burst open. It was so painful yesterday afternoon; more so than I thought it should have been. There was just so much pressure built up in there. The doctor had to remove a few stitches to relieve the pressure and put me in a sling so I would keep it elevated. I guess working yesterday and even using the index finger on that hand to type didn't help. I'm now out of work for the rest of the week per doctor's orders. I have a follow up Saturday and I'm hoping things improve by then so I can be released to go back to work next week. It's month end and only my 2nd with this team and I really don't want them to have to cover all my tasks. So I am following doctor orders and icing, elevating, and resting the finger/hand. I do not want to lose this fingertip. Hey it's the middle finger on my right hand and under some circumstances I really need that finger! No I'm not flipping anyone off; just showing you my pretty finger. Be thankful it's covered; it's gross under that bandage. And yes I know i look tired - I am! Even with vicodin last night before bed, I was still up 3 or 4 times either tossing and turning or for bathroom trips. Arrrgggh!
I didn't realize how frustrating it would be to clean and re-dress this wound by myself. So very frustrating and it clearly does not look as pretty as the doctor's wrap job and the Neosporin doesn't work well when you drop it on the floor and then proceed to step on it when you get up! ARRGGHHH!!!! I'm frustrated that I'm not good doing things with my left hand, that it's hard to shower, blow dry my hair etc. But I know it could be worse so I try to remember that.
Thank goodness for good friends. My friend Kim went out of her way last night and insisted she take me to urgent care. I really didn't want to inconvenience her and told her she really didn't have to; that I was very capable of driving myself, but after thinking about it, her offer made sense seeing I had been taking the Vicodin all day. Well thank goodness she drove me because I wouldn't have been able to drive with the sling and after what the doctor did to my finger removing some of the stitches I was feeling a little queasy by the time the appointment was done. Oh - maybe that's also because I hadn't eaten dinner before I headed to urgent care either. But anyways - thank you so much Kim! You are truly a great friend and for that I am so very grateful!
This post was typed all with my left fingers - please excuse any spelling/typing errors. I believer I caught them all, but if I didn't - oh well!
So for the past 65 days I have packed a healthy lunch for work everyday! Well for day 66....today....I had great intentions and was going to have a nice cucumber salad with my lunch, but this little contraption below spoiled my plans. OK...so it was me that really wasn't thinking and forgot to put the guard on my cucumber and went slicing away envisioning the nice crispy cukes I would be having for lunch until I almost took my fingertip off too! A hospital trip, eight stitches, tetanus shot, a splint, Keflex, and some Vicodin might just be enough to make me remember to use that guard in the future! It's after lunchtime now and I can't even think about the nice crispy cucumbers. OWWEE!!!
Anyone want to make me lunch tomorrow??
Note to self: Mandolins come with a guard for a reason!
I'm finally getting around to reorganizing my scrap room and I'm loving some of the little changes so far. I've moved my sewing machine up closer to my work space. I love to stitch on my pages so moving it a bit closer will allow me to do that more often. My Cricut is set up and ready to go and that was ultimately my goal this past weekend. I really wanted to get that out of the box and set up. But the best change is this rack below. It's my "piece of the Island" when my favorite scrapbook store, Scrapbook Island closed. I saw this dish rack in the kitchen of the store and thought that would be so great to store my Thicker letters. My friend, the owner, said I could take it as my "piece of the Island" and I LOVE it! Thanks Camille. Don't my Thickers look so nice now, all organized by color? I love that my button jars now have a nice new home atop the shelf too.
Some photos of the other areas in my scrap space:
My new Cricut...love it! Also my sewing machine up closer to my work space. It's out and more convenient to use now.
My new shelf that I also got from my LSS. I really needed this and love that it holds all my baskets full of scrapbooking goodies. Now all I have to do with these is resort them by categories as they once had been. They've gotten a bit messy over the past year or so. That's all for now. I wish I could spend the day up there again today so I can get it finished, but it's off to work today. Hoping I can spend a couple of hours in the scrap room tonight doing some more organizing.
New releases from BasicGrey coming up this week and I am sooooooooooo happy! I always love their new collections, but this time, I am soooooooo in love! Check these out -
Wander - so love this one! I believe this is the first travel line by BasicGrey and I can't wait to get my hands on some for my travel pages.
Jovial - Holiday line and so pretty!
Pyrus - beautiful fall colors and I L.O.V.E that little birdie!
Marjolaine - this one is absolutely beautiful! I am always drawn to lines with blues and greens so this one just sings to me!
And I think my absolute favorite of them all.......Curio. The colors, the flowers and butterflies and birds.....oohlala!!! July 27th can't come soon enough!! Have to go make some room in my scrap room for these collections. I saw the Fancy Pants releases yesterday and loved those as well. I'll highlight those maybe later today. Seriously have to get back to the scrap room and reorganize for my Cricut and clear some of the clutter that has accumulated up there in the past couple of years. Out with all the older stuff I probably won't use anymore and more room for some new stuff like............these new releases from one of my favorite scrapbook manufacturers.....BASICGREY!!!!
Finally had some time to scrap the week before last when I took a vacation day from work and joined some friends for a day of cropping. Did this page below to document the "beginning" of my weight loss journey. Sadly I forgot to take them in April, so these photos are from 2 months into the journey. I have a couple more that I scrapped for my weight loss journey album, but I'll save those to post for another day. I have to get myself off the couch and upstairs to re-org my scrap room. It's a mess up there!
Seriously...construction in the middle of the night? They are repaving an intersection VERY close to where I live and because it is such a busy intersection they have decided to do the repaving at night. When. I. sleep! Hello? Did you know that this machine/vehicle/piece of heavy equipment below is earth shaking? Well it is, no matter it be 4:30 a.m, 5 a.m., and now at 9:10 p.m. I knew they were starting the construction this week and even sat out for a bit and watched with my niece the other night as a big piece of machinery ripped up 1000 feet of cement 6 -8" deep right in front of our eyes. But to hear this machine below RUMBLE in front of my house at 4:30 in the morning was scary! Seriously when awoken the other morning at 4:30 I thought that we were having an earthquake. Took me a few seconds before I remembered the construction happening outside. The thing is darn loud and right now as it is working outside my house, I am sitting on my couch and my whole house is vibrating and I'm hoping that nothing falls off the shelves in here. OK...I can't even describe this fully......unbelievable....sounds like it is going to come right through the house. My only hope is that they will get this work done early enough tonight that I don't have to listen to this as I try to get some sleep tonight. Here's hoping!
and landed quite nicely! I finally made the decision to buy one of these below. My very own Cricut!! For those that don't know what that is - it's a personal die cutting machine used for scrapbooking, card-making, home decor projects, gifts, etc. I am going to love this!
I haven't even taken it out of the box yet, but that's my project for the weekend. With the cricut bundle I ordered I also got 6 cartridges, Design Studio, and the Jukebox. Seriously it was such a sweet deal - I couldn't resist!
On another note - this cutie patootie came to spend an hour or so at Auntie's house last night while her parents were at her brother's basketball game. Love this kid! She can come visit me anytime! Hi Reyanna - Bee loves you!
I spent the day yesterday with my Mom and 3 nieces up in Meredith, NH.
What an awesome day! These girls are so fun - smart, kind, funny! They are all turning into beautiful young woman. The two girls on either side, Payton & Alexis, had not seen Kameryn for 8 years, but they fell right back into where they left off all those years ago. Where does the time go? It seems like just yesterday they were these little girls in the camping photo below and today they all look so grown up (2nd photo)! They are all in matching jammies as we were trying to re-create the photo from camp years ago. Fun idea - though Auntie was looking more toward the long flannel nighties...LOL! They opted for the short shorts - go figure! We had an awesome day. Thank you girls! Auntie loves you all!
2002
2010
And of course, the photo from behind. Couldn't forget that one. 2002
Oh this Eddy Teddy loves to have fun! A few pages to document what he's been up to lately.
"Fessin Up"
This page tells the story of how a roommate I (Kathleen) once had that thought that I, yes me, a human, had pooped in the hall. Seriously???? She really asked me once if I had pooped in the hall because there was a pile of poop outside my bedroom door. HELLO???? Did she ever maybe think that 1) she had a dog and it must have been the dog's poop, or 2) it looked like a pile of dog poop and NOT human poop! But anyways, come to find out - Eddy Teddy confessed to me this past weekend: "Remember that time your roommate accused you of pooping in the hall? How ridiculous huh? Then you turned around and blamed her dog? Well - I need to fess up. It was me! I'm sorry you got blamed. I just didn't want you to know that I had been out and about in the house. I promise next time that I'll try to make it to the potty." ~ Eddy Teddy 7/14/2010
"Identity Crisis"
This was just a quick one about the pretty lace that Eddy was wearing on his head. I took Eddy to a recent scrapbooking event and a friend of mine put this lace bag thing on his head. When I posted the photo on my Facebook page shortly after, my poor son was shocked and commented to "take that thing off his head". Poor Eddy was just exploring what it would feel like to wear lace. Hence the page - "You silly bear! What is that on your head? You're a boy and most boys don't wear lace."
"The world is yours....Dream Big!"
Field trip to Scrapbook Island - May 2010.
Another page about the field trip that Eddy Teddy took to a recent scrapbooking event. Hey even a bear wants to scrapbook! He loves scrapbooking about his humans. There we are - his humans in that little photo within the bottom middle photo. Even though Eddy Teddy had all good intentions to get a lot of pages done that day, he completed NONE. That's right - NONE. He was too busy checking out what everyone else was doing and was very distracted by all the attention he was getting from the other scrappers. He also got in a lot of trouble that day, spilling my button jar when I walked away, dirtying my scrap space with glitter when I left my space for a few minutes - BAD bear!!! I hate glitter!! He even hooked up with a girl bear late in the day and that was the end of his scrapping time. (Kind of scary though as I saw that girl bear shopping in the wedding section of the store late in the day! She better not be thinking of wedding Eddy. He is not getting married!) Eddy at this point was way too distracted to get anything done. He even hit up the store and went shopping for some scrapping supplies. I have no idea why he would be purchasing supplies. It's pretty clear that he'll never scrap a page. This bear really likes to have fun though. Maybe he should get out more often.
ETA: these scans look like they did not upload very clear. I'll update them later tonight. Off to a cookout to see my great-niece who I haven't seen in years! Can't wait!
Saturday, July 17, 2010
“Don’t cry because it’s over, Smile because it happened.”
What a sad day it was on Thursday – to open the web page of my favorite scrapbooking site and see the below image.I mean I knew they were closing, but it brought tears to my eyes to actually see it.I visit this site every morning while having my coffee.I sure am going to miss that as part of my morning routine.This is where I started out with my love for scrapbooking.Where I could post my artwork and share with the awesome folks that were part of this site.Where I met some great “online” friends.I will miss all the awesome gallery layouts, the BEST forums and people on a scrapbooking site that I’ve ever encountered.Just an awesome website that will be missed by many!But I love the way the owner summed it all up – “Don’t cry because it’s over, Smile because it happened.”So true – I’m adding that to my list of favorite quotes.I’ll miss you Peek, Pat, and all the wonderful ladies that called Peek their online scrapbooking home.
I heard this song a couple of weeks ago (posted on Karen Russell's blog) and loved it! The House That Built Me by Miranda Lambert. You have to watch this video....very moving for those that have fond memories of the home they grew up in. Made me cry the first time I watched it and every time since.
This is the house that built me below. I have such fond memories of this house. My parents raised 10 children in this house and I lived there for 20 years before moving out with my younger sister into an apartment of our own. Sometimes I think I'll stop by the old house and ask the folks that own it now if I can look around, but then I think, it won't be the same and maybe I just want to keep my memories the way they are and not clutter them with the current feel of that home.
This sandbox was in our backyard. My Dad built this sandbox for us kids. I remember those benches we are sitting on in the photo below. The tops lifted up for us to store our sandbox toys in. We spent hours upon hours in this sandbox, building sand castles and trying to dig our way to China. When we would get to the black sand I think we pretended we had hit China. But I also remember when we hit the black sand we had better stop digging or else we'd be in trouble for mixing the black sand with the beach sand of the sandbox.
This is the swing set we spent many hours playing on as well, trying to pump as high as we could so we could be horizontal with the ground. The slide on this would be mega-hot on those hot summer days. I can still feel how hot the back of my legs would be if we dared to venture down that slide on a hot summer day. See that little white fence in the background of the swing set shot? That was the border of the veggie garden my Mom kept every summer. I remember loving those fresh veggies fresh out of the garden!
This is the house we were celebrated many holidays & birthdays - Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, & Christmas, and birthdays for all. I'm sure it wasn't easy for my Mom & Dad to cloth us all in our Sunday finest for these holidays that required it. I remember my Mom used to make the dresses my sisters and I wore. I remember how I couldn't wait to see how they would turn out every year and how I couldn't wait to wear my new Easter dress every spring. I mean seriously.....look at how cute we looked!
I remember Halloween every year. How we couldn't wait to bring the storage boxes up from the basement and rummage through trying to find which costume we'd want to wear that year. I remember the plastic face mask of a man and how I hated how that felt on my face. Look at this photo below of my three youngest brothers. I mean how cute it this? Mom came up with the idea of doing a "theme" this particular year. A firefighter, a hydrant, and of course, a spotty dog. How cute!
How can I not mention Christmas? Can you imagine what it took to pull Christmas off at our house every year? Santa coming for 10 kids? I just can't even imagine. I do remember our Christmas trees and how as we got older we had to help decorate them. I HATED the tinsel - just hated it. We couldn't clump that tinsel together and put it on the tree. We had to take piece by piece by piece and hang it on the tree. Do you know how many individual pieces there are of tinsel in each box? I think it has to be somewhere around a million, don't you? I just hated that job. Seriously - look at how much tinsel is on that tree? Did we really need that much? Oh - maybe that's why I never used tinsel on my own trees once I moved out!
This front porch was a gathering spot on many hot summer nights. Dad used to love sitting out there when a thunderstorm used to move in. You know, now that I think about it, Dad loved any kind of weather. He always watched the weather broadcasts and we had a barometer thingy in our house. I remember him checking it each morning when he went to the thermostat to turn up the heat. Anyways, we would sit out on this front porch and watch it pour and watch the lightening as it hit the river not far from our house.
I remember sleeping down there on that front porch years later when it was screened in. How much cooler it was than up in our bedrooms. I remember that stone planter - I LOVED the feel of the cold stones on my hands as I sat out there some days and just ran my hands over and over that stone.
We used to have our first-day-of-school photos taken out by this front porch. I must have been going into 4th grade in this photo below because my hair was short. I had it cut the summer between 3rd and 4th grades. There I am on the left with long hair in July of 1971 and the shorter hair 2 months later. I still have the braid from that haircut. Don't ask my why - I just saved it.
I remember this kitchen where we must have had thousands of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. What a chore it must have been to plan meals for 12 people. I don't even want to think what a chore it was to pay for that food for 12 people! In this left photo below I believe we are having our eggnog and cake maybe for Jesus' birthday. Mom used to make a cake every year for us to celebrate. In the right photo - celebrating Mom's birthday one year. Not sure when - but it must have been in the 70s as those two boys are my youngest brothers and little Michael was born in 1971 and he looks about 2 or 3 in this photo. Oh and the wallpaper and glasses? Need I say more? 1970 something!
This was our living room below with all the stockings "hung on the shelf with care". This photo below only shows 6 of the stockings...the others where tacked to a shelf similar to this one on the other side of the room. I remember those stockings. I loved the appliqued trees and candy canes my mother sewed on them. So cute! I remember this particular Christmas below when my sister and I got these cut little coffee pots. When you tipped them they looked like they were really pouring out the coffee, but really it just stayed inside the double layered plastic. But oh I remember how much we loved those coffee pots!
The front room - I think that's what we called it at first until it was turned into the dining room. Here below we've having a "pig pile". I have no clue where that term came from, but we LOVED to pig pile on our Dad! It was just so much fun pinning him down on the floor and all piling up on top of him. There I am in the second photo, lower left in the yellow/gold shirt, pumping my fist in the air at victory! Guess I wasn't into actually getting on the pig pile that day.
Our basement where we had so much fun as kids! I remember that table & chair set and that toy box. (Sorry little brother, I won't mention your name, but this was the only photo I could find of our basement. Maybe you just shouldn't have peed your pants.) As we got older this place turned into a teen hangout for the "older" kids, and when I was a teenager I eventually moved my bedroom down to the basement as my sister and I always fought in our shared room. I was the slob; she the neat freak and we just could NOT share a room any longer. Funny though that we ended up moving into our first apartment together and lived together for 5 years after moving out of our parent's home. This basement was a fun place to hang out. I wonder how they use it now?
This was an awesome house! The house that built me.
From the I Am Enough blog today....just a little reminder: Be Kind to Yourselves.
Boy - this is so something I need to work on. So I'm up for a challenge. Are you?
Here's a little challenge for you this week:
Every time you say something to yourself that's disparaging or hopeless, or just plain hurtful, ask yourself if you would say those same words to anyone else. this is just a just a simple way to observe the negative self-talk you might be falling into. Would you say those same things to ANYONE but yourself? My guess is not. So then, it's time to bite your own tongue and replace those mean words with KIND ones. Treat yourself as you would treat your own child or your friends or family.
When you put your words through that filter, you'll better your chances of being KIND to you and that's the whole point here; to learn how to simply be more KIND to yourself.
Wikipedia defines empty nest syndrome as a general feeling of loneliness that parents or guardians may feel when one or more of their children leave home. It is more common in women. A strong maternal or paternal bond between the parent and child can make the condition worse. The role of the parent while the child is still living with them is more hands-on and immediate than is possible when they have moved out, particularly if the distance means that visits are difficult.
I'm so feeling this "empty nest syndrome" and really have since my son moved 3000 miles away from home back in May of 2006. I believed back then that the feeling would go away some day, but you know, it really doesn't. I miss my boy every day! I was thinking today that sometimes I so wish I could rewind my life back to the time when my son was 10 or 11.
I loved his adventurous spirit; his smile. I loved being his mother as he was growing up and was and still am so very proud of him. But occasionally I get that empty nest feeling that just crushes me. I want my boy around. I want to be part of his every day life and that's pretty difficult when he is 3000 miles away. Some snapshots of our times together. Love you Keith!
Though these kiddos below aren't "my" kids, they are in my heart and help so much when I'm feeling blue or lonely and miss my boy. I just have to pick up the phone and I can see any of them pretty much at a moment's notice. Some of these kids live a little further away that a few minutes, but they all mean so much to me. These are by no means all of my nieces and nephews. I have 23 now I believe, maybe more. Some days I lose count. But no matter the number, I love them all. They all bring so much to my life. None of them can take the place of my own child, my boy, but they sure help Auntie when she's feeling lost without her boy. Love you all!
Bryce, Teige, & Landry - my brother's boys.
Reyanna - my godchild. She makes my heart so happy!
From the bottom-- Kaitlin, Dakota, Alexis, & Kayla. The bottom girl and the top girl - my brother's daughters. The two kids in the middle - my sister's kids. We had so much fun last week when Kayla and Kaitlin came up for "Auntie night". I'm so glad Kayla is driving now and made the trip up with Kaitlin to spend some time in Londonderry.
Payton - sister of Reyanna, Bryce, Teige, and Landry. My brother's daughter. What a beautiful young woman she is turning out to be - both inside and out!
Some of the gang at Christmas. Jared, Nick, Travis, DJ, Keith, Dakota, Kaitlin, Payton, Teige, Bryce, Alexis, Kayla. Front row - Dillon, Landry, Reyanna.
Love you guys and all my other nieces and nephews not pictured above and especially my boy who was the inspiration behind today's post!
