#3400s

today mom and i went to another quilt store and finally got the last pieces of fabric to round out my selection for the quilt!

we came back after dropping birthday cards in the mail and stopping at a diner for lunch. mom tends to be picky but she liked her food.

and while sitting and fixing the blanket i started for my mom, i realized that i didn't have enough yarn in one color and i didn't have any more like it so i had to make an emergency run to michael's for more and i found a bunch of colors that are really nice! and i got four skeins and a chocolate bar for my dad and an amigurimi book for $40. thank fuck for sales, coupons, and rewards points, let's fuckin go.

tomorrow i'll stop at joann fabrics for more yarn. they're farther away from home so i couldn't make it there tonight but that'll be fine since i have to come that way anyway.

speaking of.

joel is sick.

so i asked him to keep me updated because i worry but also i am concerned because he doesn't get sick, like ever. in the five years or so i've known him he's gotten sick one other time. so i worry.

yeah tomorrow will be my day at home at 100%. happy i'm finally almost completely better.

so despite my multiple explanations of why i will never go to hobby lobby, my mom decided to go there today. with me. for fabric. she was grumpy that i didn't want to get anything from there and i gave everything a genuine look but i didn't find anything i liked. the section was small anyway. but i know myself and i know the recipient of this gift and i KNOW that my fabric needs to be "ethically sourced" as in not purchased from a company that wants people like me dead. so. didn't get any fabric. mom did. but i discouraged it. but she got two things sadly.

alas.

anyway we also got lunch and we stopped for ice cream and i got to chat with my sister for a bit. she's doing digital art and does character drawings for her d&d groups and she's really good at it and im really proud of her and im happy that she has a creative outlet and im glad that she loves it. i wish i could draw better. but i like making things with my hands. i've been crocheting and it's a lot of fun for me and im happy to end up with things that are physical objects. same with beading and sewing and painting and crafting in general. i really was born to make things.

i went online to look for a new job today. i worked on my résumé a little bit and came up empty handed so i looked at postings for key words and stuff, and what i found was nothing. i came up pretty empty-handed for all of it.

and then i looked into working on a phd in physics or astronomy and that didn't really work, either. it's frustrating because i don't know what i want to do. it's miserable.

anyway.

one good thing about me feeling better is that i'll be able to see joel soon, and im very happy about that. i miss my joel. i want cuddles. fuck, even just sitting in the same room as him would work. i miss him a lot.

anyway, i had some wack dreams last night and i didn't take a nap today but i need to wake up tomorrow at a reasonable time and go for a drive in the morning, so. that'll be fine.

i slept in and then went to get more fabric with my momma. i'm gonna do triangles bc i like triangles.

for the quilt, that is.

i made dinner tonight! and apparently it was good bc my mom had seconds which doesn't happen. i didn't particularly like what i made. it didn't look appetizing, but i am also cursed with "if i made it im not hungry"itis, added on to make it sound like tinnitus or bronchitis, like a real actual problem. which it is, because that was dinner and i didn't eat almost any.

oh. i made stir fry. with fried pieces of white meat chicken that were carefully hand dipped in flour and egg and flour again before being added to the wok of oil. i'm sad i didn't eat it or like it. i don't think i like stir fry. hm.

also my lungs do not like directly inhaling from inhalers. learned that today.

something else i learned today is that engagement rings are stupid fucking expensive when they have no need to be. nothing happened, don't worry. i was just browsing. but like. yeah real metal will cost you. but i don't want a diamond that's been pulled out of the ground. i dont want a blood diamond. give me moissanite or lab-grown diamonds. conflict-free. now i gotta find a place that uses recycled metal for a setting and i'll be golden.

and definitely getting joel a ring made out of something cool as fuck.

speaking of joel, i talked to him briefly today. he wanted to check in on me to see how i was doing. i go radio silent sometimes and he likes to know im still breathing. which i appreciate.

i went to a little quilt shop with my momma today. we picked out fabrics for a baby blanket i'm gonna make. they're coral and pink and teal and i quite like them. i got a sea creature fabric too that's so goddamn cute but i want to keep it pinker i guess, and since the whales and manta rays are a different color blue, i was gonna use it for the back. if i make it 40"x40" that would work and i could do the backing in a single sheet without a seam. that may be what i have to do. but i have yet to really come up with a pattern. i gotta get another pink and another blue and probably another coral and a white but honestly i just need more fabric.

i also withdrew my yarn from the storage shed. i ordered new hooks and amigurumi eyes and a project bag, all of which came in today, so i was able to go through and re-roll some yarn that had come undone. and i checked into the size of the chenille yarn spools i have, and i also started on a blanket for my mom. so it's really wide and i wish i didn't make it that big but here i am.

i also ordered more woobles; i ordered them the other day. and i pulled out the ones i had in my yarn bag so i can make those ones too. i wanna make little bunnies for easter. i dunno why. i just do.

i also bought a few patterns off etsy so i can make those too. they're more advanced patterns.

i need to practice more.

that's fine.

i also need to fuckin rest still. i'm still easily wiped out and always fuckin tired.

but i'm happy it's bedtime so i can sleep.

i told joel that i might be able to make it over for game tomorrow but im thinking that'll be a no. but i'll be back to work at the school on tuesday and back to the office on wednesday.

not thrilled, but it is what it is. heading on eight months of waking up at 4am repeatedly and going on 9 months for an hour and a half commute daily.

it's a lot. i'd like a job that pays better and doesn't have so long of a commute. even if it's the same place but pays a lot more, i could move and be closer to work. but i'm hoping a job in new hampshire will come up and be more lucrative.

oh well. it is what it is. i might pay for one of those resume builders again to get help writing descriptions. i asked my papa, but what he said is confusing.

i went out today with my mom and i only had issues at the grocery store! yes it might've only been our second stop but we went up and down nearly every aisle in that giant store today. it was about 2/3 through the store that i lost my steam. i did the slav squat to try to rest a little. standing up from that........ not a good time.

so i drove the cart and went slowly for the rest of the adventure we had there. it was the first grocery trip we'd done for the family in two weeks, since i'd come home and started being sick, so the cart was FULL and it makes sense that i would be tired. so much food.

we stopped for lunch, fed the pigeons (love those little guys), went through the car wash, and then went home. got home and grabbed my laptop and sat down for a while, converting my résumé to a word document so i can update it and send it off to my dad - he's in DoD contracting, and now that i have some experience in a SOC it may prove useful in getting me a job that's more local and/or pays more. i'd work for the state police if they would hire an analyst like me. but i'd like the freedom to have blue hair or purple hair and wear fun colors. not everyone is cut out for corporate america and i am one of those people. who's not cut out for corporate america, i mean.

i would much rather make things day in and day out and sell them to make my living than sit in an office. sure things can be fun, but "can be" and "are" are two wildly different environments.

anyway.

i didn't nap today. i did my laundry though. and i helped with dinner. and i folded my laundry (?!?!?!) even though it'll end up unfolded and everywhere despite my best efforts.

i'm so tired.

good news is i'm almost back to 100% in probably a day or two out from it at this point. if i had to work on sunday, i might be able to do it.

no note from joel today. every time i try to swipe "joel" my says "no his name is hotel" and i hate it. i already have "joe" autocorrect to "joel." why can't my phone figure out that i don't say "hotel" all that often.

anyway.

i remembered to set an alarm for today's nap so i wouldn't sleep past my next inhaler dose. i honestly think im sleeping better because of the inhaler. apparently i haven't been snoring as much lately, and the only thing that's changed is the inhaler. i may ask my doctor about it.

mom and i went to pick up her blueberry quilt today. the shop mom usually goes to finished it, so we went and got it today. this quilt is something my mom started 31 years ago with a small group of friends. i was maybe four months old when she started the project. it has 16 blocks, all made of the same fabric, but all different designs. each person in the group picked a design and then gave their fabrics to each other, and all of the people made their pattern over and over again with different fabrics, so they all ended up with the same blocks as everyone else, just in the colors they wanted. mom picked blues and greens with a major focus on the blueberry fabric she had. so she's had this in the closet for a few decades, not enamored with it enough to try and really fix it, because she was the only one with sewing experience of the group. no one else's blocks were square or the right size. so mom had to go and fix the ones that were really bad, and she let the ladies at the quilt shop fix the rest of it.

and the call came today that they'd finished it.

it's something that holds a lot of meaning for who mom was 30 years ago, so she kind of owed it to herself to have it finished.

i don't think the backing goes with it very well, and i don't know who picked that fabric because it's the wrong colors for the quilt.

regardless, it's done now. i like it. it reminds me of my childhood a little bit, and it reminds me of how i felt when i was little when i thought my mom was invincible. it's kind of comforting in a very nostalgic-unreliable-narrator kind of way.

i know she's not invincible now, and i know she's not perfect, but neither is the quilt. and i think that's a fitting match.

another day spent recovering.

joel checked in on me. just making sure i'm still alive. he's funny.

i took a nap this afternoon. it was much needed.

and i didn't throw up when i took my gross inhaler today! i'm glad about that.

i'm hungry. and tired. but my appetite is coming back, i think - i went out for lunch with my mom today and was able to eat my whole sandwich and my fries! dinner was a less appealing affair; i had a banana and a cup of chocolate milk. which, on any other day, would've been a nice snack. but today that was all i could manage to put together. and that was four hours ago. so i'm a little hungry.

the inhalers are doing their job. at least one of them is. the other makes me throw up. unfortunately that's the steroid one which is supposed to make all of the ick go away eventually, so that sucks. in the meantime, though, i apparently didn't snore last night while sleeping. that's a big deal. i snore so loud joel's dad thought there was an active construction site outside the window of the hotel we stayed at before the cruise we went on.

that said, i got sleep because i didn't have a hard time breathing. which was wild. and the same thing happened this afternoon when i took a nap - no snoring. the common denominator was the inhaler that i used not long before sleeping.

so that's rad.

my seester has returned from the land of eng and the country of wales. she brought me a snow globe from wales that has the dragon in it! it's so pretty. and i remembered to write on the bottom of it.

i have a large snow globe collection and i wish to make it grow more. i gotta go places and i gotta pay people to get me snow globes when they go places.

yeah.

but i gotta get better first.