My Eclectic Mess

The beginning. All bright and shiny and brand new. Blah. Blah. Blah.

I do need to make some resolutions of sorts though. I’ve begun to feel like the Falling Woman. Just bouncing from one thing to the next with no real control. Since closing the store in 2009 I feel like I’ve been trying to get caught up, trying to get organized, trying to get my shit together in other words. I’ve made little bits of progress here and there but never quite reached that place of stasis where everything is where it belongs and life is moving along nicely. Maintenance mode – that’s what I’m aiming for.

Like this blog. Because my life and mind has been so scattered I haven’t managed to carve out moment to organize my time, thoughts and photographs to blog regularly. Writing is a muscle and like all my other muscles, it is terribly ignored and weak right now. I’m afraid had I been regularly blogging for the past 6 months it would have been a bunch of confused babble anyway. (I know, how is that different from usual right?)

I’m stealing an idea I just read on another blog this weekend. It’s called “The Rose, the thorn and the bud.” Every day she asked her young son to tell his Rose – something good or beautiful from his day, a thorn – something bad or painful, and his rosebud – something he is looking forward to for the next day, week, or year. Here are mine for 2010.

Roses

• My new job. I just love what I do and who I work with and for. If I had sat down a year ago and wrote out a list of what I was looking for in a job this one would probably tick off everything on the list. I get a chance to do what I’m really good at every day. I get to be creative and learn new things in my favorite form of craft. One thing that has probably kept me from going completely nuts is that my boss is incredibly organized! While my house and life is a scattered mess, my work environment is pristine and OCD-like organized. I also enjoy working with customers. People come into our store because they love to sew and quilt, we are there to help them enjoy their hobby.
• My new dog. Castiel came to live with us after Heidi died and has really filled the hole in my heart. He has an old soul quality about him and just fit right in. It was meant to be for him to be my dog. Someday I’ll have to type out his whole story.
• The Theater. I’ve found a second home there again. I feel that between working at the sewing machine dealer and being in plays I’ve finally found my life’s calling. I always wanted to be an actress. Always. I invented reality television in my head when I was a little girl. I used to imagine that cameras were following me and recording my every move (not in a paranoid way!)  I used to write little skits for me and my friends to put on during recess. If there was a school play or performing arts group around I was there. College beat that love out of me. I didn’t go to a school because of their drama department. I went where I had a scholarship to and could afford. I didn’t stay as a theater major because I was overwhelmed with college life, working so I could afford to stay in school and the theater dept. wasn’t set up where underclassmen had any involvement in actually being on stage. Plus I bought into the prevailing zeitgeist of the 1980’s that making money was what was the most important aspect of finding a career. I changed majors to something that I was already doing, Retail Management, in order to further my career. Now I have theater back in my life and I couldn’t be happier. I also have a new family of theater friends that have finally made living here feel a little bit like home.

Thorns

• Saying good-bye to Heidi. We knew it was coming, we planned it, we prepared. And it still knocked me out. That is still about all I can manage to type about it with out dissolving into tears.
• The disorganization of my house. I still have too much “stuff” left from the store. Bins and boxes of my personal supplies that I moved there and back home that have never been put where the belong and reorganized in a way that they are useful to me. Boxes of inventory that I just can’t sell and don’t know what else to do with it. I could donate it or give it away but I have to account for it and don’t know where to donate it to. We also just did a small remodeling project that has tossed my basement into chaos, not that it wasn’t chaos before. I swear I hadn’t been down there other than for absolute necessity in a year. We had to clean out part of it for this project and I found crap (some literal) down there that we hadn’t laid hands on in a decade. Now everything else down there is literally stacked to the ceiling like one of those Hoarders shows and covered in drywall dust. When that all finally gets sorted through, donated, tossed and organized I will feel like  I climbed Everest. The upside is that we now have a finished room in our basement that is warm, dry and sealed from mice and bugs. Once the workers get all their stuff out of the garage and the waste picked up off the lawn, I’ll feel better too.

Rosebuds

• My daughters. I can’t believe Sarah will be a senior in the fall of 2011 and turn 18. My girls will always be the center of my life even as I help them transition into their own lives. I will never regret one moment I spent with them or thing I gave up to be their full time Mom. Sarah is now past the half way mark of her high school career and I couldn’t be prouder or more impressed with the person she’s becoming. Emma’s creativity and drive impresses me every day. She’s always been a little stubborn but as I predicted when we would butt heads, it is serving her well as she gets older. As both of the girls get older we find more and more things to share and do together instead of less. Both of them have been involved at the theater with me. They’ve stepped up and volunteered and worked hard that now both of them are requested by the directors and stage managers to help out when they are available.  Both of them are talented artists and crafters. Sarah has gotten into knitting again this fall and Emma is always making something and surpassing me in creativity and craftsmanship. We share and talk about books, music, movies and television.
• More sewing. I finally bought (on ebay) an embroidery module for my Bernina 180. I never thought I was that interested in machine embroidery but after working for the Bernina dealer for a few months I learned all the cool things you can do with them and had to upgrade. I’m not able to afford a whole new system yet but was able to swing a module for my old machine using my ebay ninja powers. I got it a week before Christmas and haven’t had time to do much with it yet other than test that it works. But I have plans to master it and the V6 embroidery software I get to learn on for my job.
• The possibility that with a lot of discipline and hard work I may be able to pay off all the debt from the store. I am still about $17k in the hole but have transferred it to a no interest loan and am putting every penny from etsy sales and 95% of my paychecks toward it every month. I am determined that my last foray into small business will not be bailed out by Steve or other family funds. The other reason I love my job. Without it there would be no way that my etsy business could pay off this debt. I would be faced with the possibility of Chapter 11 or using our home equity to pay off a bad idea. I just need to get my etsy business rolling again at a higher level. I have old fabric inventory that needs to be moved out and I need to find some marketing avenues to get my name out there. Again, time and organization are key.

So there it is, all typed out. I was interrupted at least twice while typing this by Steve and the dogs and distracted countless times by the sunshine coming through the window highlighting the pet hair and dust under the tv cabinet and my to-do list nagging at the back of my mind. This isn’t going to be easy but sitting here in my chair isn’t helping.

Heidi – “Liebenhund’s Hydrangea”
3/21/00 – 5/21/10

It’s been almost 3 weeks and I still can’t talk about it much. It was time. She left us with dignity and grace, just as she lived her life. She will always have a special place in our hearts and memories.

This is Cate our neighbor and dog sitter. We got Heidi right after Cate and her family moved in next door. In middle school she started a pet sitting business. She just finished her junior year in high school and has been the greatest friend to all of our animals. When she heard that we were preparing for the inevitable she came over to say goodbye. You can tell by the looks on both of their faces how much they loved eachother.

This is my best friend Jayne with Heidi the day before we made our final journey. Jayne and I have taken our dogs to the local off leash forest preserve for years. She also dog sits for us when Cate isn’t available. She came by to say goodbye and offer her love. Again, it is obvious how much Heidi touched lives.

I keep having brief ideas for a blog post and then lose them when I sit down to write. Or they just kind of fizzle after the first sentence or two. Or worse, I have SO MUCH to say I can’t get my thoughts organized or don’t have the time to write what I really mean in a complete way.

Sooooooo, today you get random thought farts. Lucky you!

Twitter I signed up for Twitter (Follow me! I’m Snarkdog) this summer. I’m still not sure I really get it. I follow about 20 or so people. I find following “famous” people the most interesting thing about Twitter. Jason Mraz sends regular inspiration/gratitude/thought-of-the-day kinds of tweets. (He doesn’t actually type them himself which is kind of a bummer.) It has been interesting to read P!nk’s posts from her Australia tour this summer too. I also follow Dooce and she has just recently started Tweeting a lot. But I have to say, I don’t think if I ranted about crappy customer service anyone would be offering me a free washing machine. I guess having 1000s of blog readers really helps in that regard.

Facebook Oh Facebook, how I love and loathe you! I think I have a serious addiction problem with Facebook. Screw vodka, I walked away from that bitch with hardly a tremor, but take away my social networking and Bejeweled Blitz/Farkle fixes and I may have to be institutionalized. Of course as anyone can tell you, the coolest/scariest thing about FB is that it is like a cyber high school reunion except at this reunion you can avoid the people you hate and those that you don’t want to know that you got fat and did nothing to live up to your potential. (But you can show them that your hair finally recovered from that unfortunate perm you had 1980) I’ve heard many people talk about old flames finding them on FB and just for shits and giggles I did a search for an old high school boyfriend. I found him, didn’t send a friend request. He didn’t go to my high school so we don’t have any friends in common, he did have a friend in common with a couple of my friends but it was like 3 degrees of separation and quite frankly, he was a douche and no one liked him so I doubt he’ll be mixing with my cool crowd anytime soon.

I do have the usual complaints/annoyances with FB as a lot of you do I’m sure. While I do love a stupid quiz to pass the time on occasion, I do get annoyed with the constant stream of them from some people. I equate them to Christmas cards. Follow along with me here. Do you get those Christmas cards from people you’ve known for years but never get to see anymore that are just signed with their names and no note or anything? Or worse, a photo card with pictures of their kids that you’ve never seen in person and the card is “signed” by the computer that created it. I would much rather receive a long treatise of your year in review complete with details of your last surgery and pics of the scars and photocopies of your brilliant 3 year old’s transcripts from Harvard than some bullshit generic holiday greeting. But I digress…These are the same people that do nothing on FB but play games and take stupid quizzes and post EVERY score and result on their feed. (You can disable these notifications and believe me I have!) They never comment on anyone’s status or shared photos. They rarely even update their status. Facebook is about connecting with people, getting to know them better or reconnecting after years apart. It is a dialogue. Also, I don’t care if your cow is missing on Farmville or if you are looking for an exploding cigar in Mafia Wars or what your latest Hatchling became, especially if you are over say, 12 years old.

The other really interesting thing I’ve discovered via Facebook is just how many LGBT people went to my high school. I graduated in a class of 106 students in a very small town in rural Michigan in the mid 80s (1985 to be exact, and yes that song was written about me, why do you ask?) I knew what gays and lesbians were and even knew a few personally but no one was “out” in the way we are familiar with today. My cousin moved to California sometime in the 70s and I remember when he came home to visit with his “friend” (or maybe we were progressive enough to call him his “partner” I don’t remember) and there were assumptions and rumors about a girls’ volleyball coach or two over the years but that was about it. But it seems that the “10% rule*” holds true even in small rural communities. (*Common belief is that 10% of the population is LGBT) Many of my gay/lesbian classmates haven’t attended any of our class reunions over the years and I think it is probably due to the worry that their lifestyle wouldn’t be accepted or understood. I’m hoping that through the buffer of “coming out” on FB and reconnecting with some of us they will realize there is nothing to fear and feel comfortable enough to attend a reunion in the future.

Blogging and reading other people’s blogs. I have been blogging since about ’01 or ’02 I think. One of my old original blogs is still floating around out there in Blogspotland and a couple years of original posts to this blog were lost in an unfortunate database accident about 2 or 3 years ago. I come and go with how diligently I post new things. Probably because I change my mind every 6 months or so as to what direction I want to take with my blog. (Which incidentally is why I chose “eclectic mess” as my name because I knew I would change my mind and naming it something with Knitting, Mommy or Crazy in the title wouldn’t make sense in the long run, well except for that last one maybe.)

I really enjoy reading other people’s blogs too. I’m very much a voyeur that way. (Which is also why the game/quiz/signed-card only people annoy me so much I guess.) Right now I only have about 30 subscriptions on my blog reader and I need to weed those out further too. I’ve been adding a few new ones here and there now that I have a little more time to go link surfing and comment reading. I’m always curious to try to figure out how some blogs get so many readers and especially commenters. I’ve never been very good at self-promotion (see: failed business venture 2008). Because I read so many blogs in my blog reader I don’t often see other people’s blog templates or sidebar junk but often to read comments I have to click through to the actual blog. (BTW, if you only have a partial feed sent to the RSS reader, I will drop my subscription to your blog unless I really love you. Just saying.)

This leads me to a question. Can someone explain how BlogHer works? I think I joined it or signed up or posted my blog address there ages ago but never had the time to figure it all out. Recently I found a few new blogs that I really enjoy (Aunt Becky I’m talking about you again in that weird stalker way I have) and I know they are “members” of BlogHer but I still don’t quite understand what is involved and how one goes about getting involved. I’m not sure I’m really down with the big ugly (sorry) advertising thing I see in sidebars across blogland so if that is required I may have to think it over more. The other problem I have (and I have many as you are well aware) is I don’t know how to classify my blog. Is it a craft/knitting/sewing blog? Yes, sometimes. Is it a parenting/mommy blog? Yes, but rarely. Is it a humor blog? Only because if I don’t laugh I may never stop crying. Is it a lifestyle/personal blog? Most definitely, sometimes too personal. But what am I to do? It’s my life.

School started this week Both girls are fine with it. Sarah is a sophomore and Emma is a 7th grader so neither of them had a new school to adjust to so it was pretty smooth sailing yesterday. They both came home with fairly standard first day of school reports. A few weird teachers, a few annoying students, no locker problems and the usual complaints about the bus. I’m trying to acclimate to the 6 a.m. alarm and it has been cold and rainy so I’ve had to drive them to the bus stop. But all in all it is just another school year.

Maizey got spayed a week ago. She is still wearing the “cone of shame” because she is a tad bit obsessive about her stitches. She slams around the house and into things and people. It is a quite entertaining and a bit annoying. I tried taking it off her and putting a T-shirt on her but she found a way around that too.

Plus she looked even more ridiculous wearing a “Have you hugged your Big Dog today” shirt than one would imagine.