It has been some time since I post­ed much here, so I fig­ure that I should do a bit of an update. It isn’t as if any­thing has changed in any big way. Sam has the same nice and sta­ble job, and we’re still very hap­pi­ly togeth­er after—oh, wow, it’s twelve years this month.

Katie is a col­lege stu­dent now, and still liv­ing at home (I’m very hap­py about that!) since she decid­ed to attend a local school. Her health issues haven’t gone away, but she’s try­ing so very hard—I wor­ry about her con­stant­ly. She push­es and push­es until she col­laps­es every day and at the end of every week. She has a very active social life (what do you expect? she’s a babe!), and hap­pi­ly she has a great group of friends who are sup­port­ive about help­ing her get to class when nei­ther she nor I dri­ve.

One of the class­es she was sup­posed to take (French) was can­celed due to inad­e­quate enroll­ment. She was ter­ri­bly unhap­py, and I was a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed because I was look­ing for­ward to help­ing her with the sub­ject. On the oth­er hand, it was an 8am class, and with­out it her ear­li­est class is much lat­er in the day. I think it worked out for the best for this semes­ter.

I’ve had anoth­er nui­sance come up with my own health, too. Annoy­ing bod­ies. They’re great when you want to taste choco­late, hug some­one, smell flow­ers, etc. but I have some com­plains about a few design flaws.

That’s enough for tonight. Tomor­row: More about Art!

Katie seems to be feel­ing a bit bet­ter. She slept through most of the day, and just got up a few min­utes ago (right at the end of my and Sam’s date) feel­ing like she could eat some­thing. Sol­id food, even! That’s progress. Since she did­n’t have any antivi­rals, I don’t think this was real­ly the flu. She should still be much sick­er if it was. I’m not at all unhap­py about that.

The last time I respond­ed to a prompt from Plinky, it post­ed with absolute­ly no context—so let’s try to fix that this time. Today’s prompt is:

“Share three good things about your life right now.
(A lit­tle New Agey, maybe, but it nev­er hurts to look on the bright side.)”

Take a look: The Sev­en Sides of Sam Chupp « Leon­Dale­Pho­tog­ra­ph­er

And I have to say thank you to hs par­ents, and to the unknown woman who deliv­ered him 42 years ago today. He’s the most incred­i­ble per­son I have ever known in my life.

Sam start­ed a meme!

I used to get so annoyed when my moth­er would say, “Twen­ty years from now, nobody will know the dif­fer­ence.” She was wrong in a sense—I cer­tain­ly still know the dif­fer­ence, about so very many things.

On the oth­er hand, I do under­stand the longer view much bet­ter now. Twen­ty years seemed like such a long time then, and now? It’s so very short.

In any case, Katie did get home from her trip to the great north­west. She had a mar­velous time and thinks she has found her school.

I’m real­ly proud of her. She planned this trip, to a place nei­ther she nor any of us had ever been before, all by her­self. She went with­out a qualm, had a mar­velous time, man­aged her mon­ey mar­velous­ly, and made some great new friends.

Since then she also went to her first LARP. Again, she had a mar­velous adven­ture, lots of fun, and found a new thing she enjoys. I think we need to acquire camp­ing equip­ment.

Sam has start­ed play­ing Burn­ing Wheel with a group of local peo­ple. He real­ly enjoys the game. I’m glad to see him get­ting out and hav­ing some social time with oth­ers.

I had a big thing hap­pen, but I’m going to stay qui­et about it a lit­tle longer, ’til it’s also a sure thing.

In the mean­time, I’ve found a nice out­let for my OCD urges as a “librar­i­an” at Good Reads.

Look! TWO posts in ONE day! Maybe I’m final­ly crawl­ing out of my pit of depres­sion.

My very help­ful child dis­ap­proved of how I was treat­ing my small stitch­ing project, so she sweet­ly put it in a huge Ziplock bag and “put it away.”

I have absolute­ly no idea where “away” might be, but it isn’t in my stitch­ing bag, or near my reclin­er, or in the area where I’ve been sit­ting in the liv­ing room. Now she says she did­n’t put it any­where. Buh?

And we stopped at Michael’s yes­ter­day to get the DMC I need­ed for it!¹

I also got the fab­ric for two big­ger pieces, though, so I can start one of those. Tech­ni­cal­ly, I know that I have the fab­ric for Deep Peace around here some­where, but I could­n’t find it, so I got a new piece. Now the orig­i­nal fab­ric will, of course, make itself known.

Small­er, less involved projects are bet­ter to do while in com­pa­ny, though. And it’s date night. The girl is, her­self, out on a date, so I can’t even shang­hai her into help­ing find the small project. Grump. She found sup­plies for a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent art projects while we were at Michael’s, too, so I expect heavy art­ing from her short­ly.

We picked up din­ner for the three of us at Lit­tle Azio’s on the way home, which was as deli­cious as usu­al. That was a love­ly way to end a tir­ing, but reward­ing, day.

I hate com­ing up with titles. Can you tell?

Hap­py New Year to all of you. I hope to see more of you in per­son this year!

I’m still not feel­ing well at all, so I haven’t been online much. Despite that, my wrists have been aching as if I were work­ing again. How does that hap­pen?

Our Yule was qui­et­ly pleas­ant. I hope your win­ter hol­i­day was as good.

I did final­ly fin­ish stitch­ing the Fairy Tale Sam­pler for Sam. It did­n’t take that much stitch­ing (so it can’t be blamed for the wrist pain), but I did have to re-pur­chase some Mill Hill beads. That gave me an excuse (like I need­ed it) to talk to Susan of Nease’s Needle­work, which is always love­ly. But now it’s fin­ished!

My cam­era bat­tery won’t recharge any­more, so I’ll have to con­vince the girl to take a pho­to of the piece for me.

I think I’m final­ly ready to do Deep Peace. It’s a gor­geous piece, and some peo­ple I love dear­ly got all the sup­plies for it as a gift for me a few years back. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we broke up right after that, and every time I start­ed to work on it, I cried. I think there’s been enough time now that I can focus on the hap­py mem­o­ries instead of the hard stuff.

I think I need to start a small­er project, too, that I can car­ry around with me. Com­plex projects don’t lend them­selves to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty while doing any­thing else, any­way. Sam tends to get me so inter­est­ed in gam­ing that I can’t get much stitch­ing done. Mul­ti-per­son games are bet­ter for needle­work, because I stitch while the focus is on some­one else.

I’m not real­ly into New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions, and if I made them seri­ous­ly, I’d be more like­ly to do so at Samhain than the end of January/beginning of Decem­ber. Still, I’ve been real­iz­ing how much I’ve missed needle­work. My eyes are still giv­ing me trou­ble, but I got out an old, portable magnifier/travel light and that helps. I think it may be worth­while to check into a mag­ni­fi­er attach­ment for my Ott Lite (after get­ting new glass­es). I’m going to try stitch­ing more reg­u­lar­ly, and I’d real­ly like to learn needle­point and knit­ting and/or cro­chet­ing. I think I can man­age the needle­point on my own, but not the yarn stuff. Hope­ful­ly I can find some­one local who is will­ing to teach me. Appar­ent­ly there’s a group meet­ing at a local library that may be a pos­si­bil­i­ty.

I thought my DMC was get­ting too old for use or some­thing, because it kept fray­ing apart while I was stitch­ing. I final­ly real­ized (after buy­ing 3 new skeins of black floss) that I’d been using those nee­dles that does­n’t require thread­ing (which I love), and that they stress the floss (and the floss slips out eas­i­ly). I switched back to a reg­u­lar tapes­try nee­dle and presto! the prob­lem was gone. I can’t find those no-thread nee­dles any­where online, so I guess oth­er folks fig­ured that out far more quick­ly than I did! I have a two-sided nee­dle that came with a mag­a­zine or some such, but I don’t know that I can quite fig­ure out how to use it.

Sam and I are stay­ing in this evening, avoid­ing all the obnox­ious drunks in favor of our own cel­e­bra­tion. The girl is here, too, because her beau is in Europe with his fam­i­ly and most of her oth­er friends are also out of town (some­thing about a Flam­ing Lips con­cert?).

After get­ting caught up with all the shows I enjoy, I went look­ing for some­thing else to view. I enjoy Bones, but I find the sizist com­ments (and plots) high­ly offen­sive. I tried to watch the first episode of The Men­tal­ist online, but it keeps tim­ing out. Sam got the first disc of The Tudors from Net­flix, and it’s inter­est­ing at times. I tend to get annoyed with the lib­er­ties they’ve tak­en with his­to­ry, though.

Ten years ago today, Sam took me out on our first “real” date (as in, with­out the kids or any­one else). Thank you, love. Here’s to many more decades!