Feeling uncertain

Hey there! More medical melodrama. Enter at your own risk.

Oh, sleep... How I miss you...

     Today's warning: This post will be discussing details of my physical and mental health. I'm willing to share this, but not everyone may want to know specifics. I'm inserting a jump, so people have a choice.

Repeating Patterns and Baby Steps

     I've been in a pretty bad "poor-me" funk of late. I'm looking at the holding pattern in my life and seeing myself as being lonely, and apart from the world. I've been feeling miserable and thinking there is nothing I can do to change it. Then something small happens to remind me that I am moving forward. I am not lonely, I am alone. I set myself apart from the rest of the world, because I am remembering what a wonderful person I am.

      This song came on the radio at work last night. It helped, like it always does. Also, an old friend from my attempt at college managed to find me on Facebook. It seems like every time I get into this pattern, a new person from my past surfaces to remind me that I'm doing good.
     So today, I'm going to tell myself how good I'm doing! In the last six months:

• I'm getting so much better at my knitting. Now that I'm not being yelled at for wanting to knit, I can just sit and enjoy my time playing with yarn.
• I'm getting healthier. I can afford to go to the doctor, and pay for medications that are prescribed for me. I also eat more than once a day, and have time to relax.
• I'm not really a slob. Admittedly, I probably could be better at housekeeping, but the reason my old place stayed a mess wasn't all my fault. I have a floor at CNFH (Creatively Names Furry House)! And clean clothes every day! All it took was having access to a washer/dryer and roommates who are willing to do their share toward keeping a nice house.
• I learned that my friends are around me because they want to be, not because they have to be.
• I am learning not to be a doormat. I like doing things for other people, but I will not be taken advantage of anymore.

     That's a pretty decent list, if I do say so myself. Now, I'm going to go transfer my bedsheets from the washer to the dryer, go cook some lunch, then get a shower before I resume knitting for the rest of the day. Because after doing chores, I deserve to play with my pretty yarn! Oh, and here's a pic of the Midsummer Night's Shawl I'm working on:

Thinking Midsummer in the middle of winter

     I finally got started on my Midsummer's Night Shawl to wear for Anthrocon this summer. For such a simple looking pattern, I'm having a ridiculous amount of trouble. Every other row has a pair of increases that create an eyelet pattern around the outside edge. But, I keep forgetting to add an increase, or add one on a row where it doesn't belong. This is resulting in me having to rip out several rows. Like I rip out about 8 rows for each repeat. Which means that I'm taking twice as long to knit this as it should take. But I'm up to 10 of 30 repeats, so things are progressing, even if slower than I'd like.

     On another note, I also have a toilet that works again! Ok, well it always worked. Just it took special handling for the last few weeks. The cheap, plastic flush arm broke. We'd been pulling the chain up by hand. It worked, but was not fun. I finally got paid and made the scary journey to the nearest hardware store. I may have played dumb in the store, because making the employee show me where to go was easier than searching, but I knew this was going to be an easy fix. The most amazing part of all this? Only one roommate cared enough to thank me for doing something about the broken plumbing. And everyone seems surprised that I just knew how to fix the toilet!

     Perhaps it makes a big difference that I was raised by a strong single mother. Ok, divorced. Whatever. The point being, I grew up without a man living in the house. And my mother raised my sister and I to be self-sufficient and learn how to do things for ourselves.

     Oh joy... it's one of those says where I can't get my brain to focus.... Train of thought derailing. I'm just going to post this. I'll add more later.