I Still Sew, But This Post Is About Biking

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving. –Unknown

I really miss blogging. I miss having this voice to express my thoughts. But working full time and trying to figure out how to fit the rest of the important things in — how to find the right balance — is difficult. If any of you have that down, will you let me in on the secret? You can imagine that the last two years have been filled with the miraculous and the mundane, almost in equal measure. Today I'm jumping right back in, like I haven't missed a beat. I'm not promising to blog again all the time. I may catch up on some of the more interesting bits of the last two years, but then again, I may not. Maybe I'll poke my head in here now and again, when I have something I need to say. And maybe it will be a few years before I post again.

I'll begin with a little (or a lot of) backstory (because there always is one with me) so you know how I ended up on a bicycle. In April of 2016, the kid who is running the show at work burst into my office all excited about challenging everyone in the company to run a marathon. Yes. 26.2 miles. His brother-in-law was training for one and had gotten him excited about it. He'd talked the owner of the company into paying for the race registration for anyone in the company who wanted to join in. His enthusiasm was so infectious that I thought seriously about it. I texted Mr. Bug, who suggested that anyone who wanted to still have all their own joints when they were 70 should probably stick to 10Ks. I decided against running a marathon.

Back in the day, I joined the 9^th grade track team because the cool kids were doing it. I wasn't fast enough to do the short races and I wasn't coordinated enough to do the hurdles. The coach devoted her time to those with potential and the rest of us were sent off to “run” around the neighborhood during practice. I wasn't coached on technique or told how to work my way into it. I was put into the 800 meter for track meets, and with no training, no love for running and no success, ended any desire to run again.

After making his rounds, this young coworker of mine came back and said that half-marathon registrations would also be paid for by the company for any who wanted to. The idea was intriguing. 13.1 miles seemed a lot more reasonable. So, I found a series of apps that worked you into it and signed up for the half-marathon. The first app was called Couch to 5K (3.1 miles). It lived up to its name and took me from the couch to the ability to run for presumably enough time to finish a 5K, only I was slow. I finished all of the training sessions on the app, and although I still hadn't run a 5K, I moved on to the next app, 5K to 10K (6.2 miles). Midway through the app, my plantar fascia flared up and I had to stop running. I think that I told myself one too many times that I couldn't do it, so my body gave me an “out.” In any case, after about a week, I realized that I missed the physical activity, so I dusted off my bike and started riding.

As per usual, I jumped in with both feet. My first ride was about 7 miles. I loved it so much that I rode 27 miles the next day. I was riding a not-really-a-mountain-bike-but-not-a-road-bike-either with 7 gears. I bought it at a box store when the Not-So-Little Bugs were little. It had sat out in the elements and the chain was a bit rusty. It was a little worse for the wear. But I was excited. I did short, more intense rides on weekday mornings, 5 or 6 miles, and searched the interwebs for longer, organized rides on weekends. I rented a road bike and rack a couple of times and did a 47 mile ride and a 35 mile ride. It was awesome. Then the weather changed.

By chance, I came across a nice entry-level road bike at the outdoor shop where I had rented bikes. It was December and I'd been sent on an errand for work to pick up discounted lift tickets to a local ski resort. While the clerk went to the back office to get the tickets, I looked at the bikes on the rack and noticed a great big 40% off sticker on a pretty red one. I calculated the discounted price and the amount I had in my personal cash stash and saw that I had enough for it. I went home and told Mr. Bug about it and we looked up the specs and decided it was a good buy. I can't remember if I went back to get it that afternoon or if I went the next day, but I was soon the proud owner of an honest-to-goodness road bike.

In January of this year, I signed up for a series of organized rides beginning in June. Over the course of 11 weeks I worked my way up to a hundred miles. I started training in May and did yoga and again rode short, hard rides two or three (or four) times during the week. Saturdays were for the long rides. I started out on my first Saturday with 10 miles and added 10 more miles each Saturday. The first organized ride, on the first Saturday in June, was 50 miles and I rode it with my sister-in-law. Two weeks later, we did a 70 mile ride. And three weeks later we did a hundred. It was crazy and awesome and horrible all at once. I learned a lot about myself and what my mental and physical limits are. But that is a story for another day because we have finally arrived at the point where I can start to tell today's story. Well, actually, it was a few weeks ago.

I was out for a long Saturday ride. 60 miles, to be exact. I'd gotten a later start than I'd planned (because who doesn't like to sleep in on a Saturday), and the day was hot. I hit my wall at 37 miles. I was already headed back at that point, but I and considered calling search and rescue (Mr. Bug) to come get me. I was able to regroup and was feeling pretty good about my day's ride. I had three miles to go and came to a construction area. I'd noted it on my way out. The construction was on the opposite side of the road, and I thought to myself that it might be a good idea to cross back over to this side of the road on my way back and ride against traffic, or even up on the sidewalk, which was extra wide and had a yellow dotted line in the center of it indicating that it was a path of sorts. I wasn't 100% certain that bikes were allowed, and I prefer to ride on the road anyway, because unless it is a paved trail (of which there are a few around here), it is a lot bumpier. When I saw the construction cones, I briefly considered turning back and crossing at the light to ride on the other side of the road, but it was a few blocks back and I was ready to be done. I also didn't want to miss out on the segment recorded by GPS in my workout app by crossing to the other side of the road.

The construction cones were on the white line and there was about six feet of concrete shoulder before it was cut away. Curbing was being laid, so I assumed that the cones were there to keep people from driving off the concrete and damaging their cars. When I saw the gap that had been cut away from the shoulder, it was too late to stop. I couldn't swerve out into traffic because I couldn't see what was coming behind me. I hissed a curse through my teeth and closed my eyes.

{view from the other side}

My mom scolded me later about that when I texted my family group chat to tell them about my adventure. My sister thought it was amusing and asked me in code, using movie references, which word I'd said. Fortunately for me, I hadn't used the same word as Ralphie from A Christmas Story when he lost the lug nuts in the snow while changing the tire with his dad, and there was no need to get out the Palmolive. Instead, I echoed Biff Tannen from Back to the Future as he ran his shiny black convertible, top down, into a truck of manure. Really, my mom is right. I have a much better and more creative vocabulary than that.

I was going about 13 or 14 miles an hour when my front tire hit the opposite side of the gap (closest in the picture above). If I had been going just a little bit faster, I could have jumped right over. The impact and the accompanying image in my head of the rim crumpling in caused me to open my eyes for a moment. I would later find that, while the rim was out-of-round, the front tire didn't even pop.

On my first group ride, I was kind of a lost little puppy and I got picked up by a couple of stragglers at the back of the group who had been riding for years. One of them told me everything he knew about riding as we pedaled along. I don't remember much of what he said, but eventually we came around to the subject of riding with your feet clipped in and bike crashes. He told me that your arms aren't strong enough to catch you and it is best to tuck and roll. I thought it was crazy to ride with your feet clipped to your bike, but somehow I ended up with some fancy shoes and pedals that they clip into. Learning to ride with my feet clipped to my pedals afforded me plenty of opportunity to practice my tuck and roll.

My left ankle worked back and forth frantically to unclip. I'm fairly certain that I had unseen help at that point. I tucked my arms in to my chest. While the front tire had stopped, the momentum brought the back end of my bike around to my right. My left foot was unclipped at this point and the sideways motion helped my right foot to come out of its pedal as well. My cycling “tights,” you know the ones with the padding in the seat, are 3/4 length. I don't exactly remember hitting my knees, but both were sorely bruised. There wasn't a mark on my pants when all was said and done.

Free of the bike, I continued forward. I landed on my right shoulder and then my head hit the ground. My eyes were still closed and my mind registered this in single, disconnected words. Shoulder. Head. In all my toppling over, I'd never hit my head before. In the periphery, I wondered what would be the result of that. After, I was so grateful for my helmet — $20 of foam and plastic — that kept me safe from even a concussion. It's now in a landfill somewhere.

I must have rolled a little, because I ended up lying next to my bike, it with the front wheel facing towards the road and me with my feet towards the gap between the shoulder and the new curbing. I laid there for a moment more and then sat up. My first thought was, “nothing is broken.” Then I decided to call Mr. Bug to come get me, after which I would scoot over to the edge of the shoulder, put my feet down in the gravel and just wait patiently there. I dialed the phone and suddenly there was a man there asking me if I was OK. “Nothing is broken,” I said. Mr. Bug answered the phone. “I need you to come get me.” The man was asking me again if I was OK and if there was someone I could call. I was wearing blue-tooth bone conduction ear phones, which sit on your cheeks just in front of your ears, leaving them open and allowing you to hear both your ride workout playlist and the noise around you. He didn't realize that I was already talking to my husband. I explained to him that I had my husband on the phone and then I explained to Mr. Bug where to find me.

The man asked if I would like to sit in his car, where it was cool. It was then that I noticed it was a little warm sitting on the ground. I'd checked the temperature just a few minutes prior, and knew that it was 91˚ out. He offered his hand to help me to my feet and it was then that I noticed that I had gravel embedded in my left thumb, and my right middle, ring and pinky fingers. I later found some gravel in my back jersey pocket. My shoulder stung and my knees throbbed. The man's grandaughter was sitting in the passenger seat of his truck. She introduced herself as I got into the driver's seat. “I'm Tessie,” she said. “My name is Elizabeth,” I replied. Her mother climbed back into the passenger seat. She'd gotten out of the truck to move the driver's seat back and to talk to her father for a moment. She told me that she'd seen me crash and fall and immediately told her dad to pull over to check on me.

I was in 5^th grade when I learned that there are people who actually laugh at someone when they fall. I couldn't fathom it. I still can't. I briefly wondered if Tessie's mom had laughed. And then I wished that someone had recorded my fall. It would be interesting to see. I wondered if I would laugh at the playback. Embarrassment washed over me. Tears were close to the surface. Fear and panic caught up to me. I fought it back. Everything was different now. A bike accident wasn't a possibility anymore. It was a reality. In the cab of the truck, sweaty and sticky, stunned to numbness and hurting at the same time, I continued to exchange pleasantries with this kind woman who had taken time out of her day to stop and make sure I was all right. I thanked her several times. It didn't seem enough. Of course she hadn't laughed.

Mr. Bug pulled up behind us. I got out of the cab of the truck and went to get my bike, which was still lying on the ground. Tessie's grandpa told Mr. Bug to take me to the car and he would get the bike. I thanked the man and his daughter again and climbed into the passenger seat of our car. When Mr. Bug got in, I told him that we needed to go to the InstaCare. “Why?” he wanted to know. “Because that's what you do after a bike wreck. I'm going to cry now.” And I did.

At the InstaCare, the nurse told me that she didn't see many bike accidents in women, and especially women “our age.” She obviously had my birth date on the paperwork. She told me that just yesterday, a woman had come in with a badly broken shoulder from a bike accident. I wondered if I was trying to prove something with the crazy long rides. The doctor came in and asked me to go over what had happened. He ruled out concussion by the fact that I had not lost consciousness and that I could remember pretty clearly everything that had happened. Then he examined my knees and my shoulder. I hadn't looked at either yet, and when I pulled my sleeve off I was glad I hadn't. My shoulder was an angry red color and blood was oozing from the wound. There was no gravel in it though. It looked worse than it felt. Considering how the skin looked underneath, I was surprised that my jersey wasn't even really torn. There was just a small scuff on it. The doctor ordered x-rays on both my shoulder and knee, but there were no breaks. He cleaned the scrapes on my fingers, my right shoulder and right knee, bandaged them and asked if I needed a prescription for pain. I declined.

At home I undressed to shower. There was a bruise on my chest where I must have hit the handlebars. It hadn't hurt before, but now my chest felt heavy. I showered and dressed. I went to the computer to find out what organized rides were going on with the cycling club I belong to and added about 6 to my calendar. Then I took a Tylenol and an Advil and hit the couch to catch up on some TV.

First thing Monday morning, I took my bike to the shop where I bought it to have it looked at. It obviously needed some work.

I picked it up a few days later and took it to a bike fitter. This guy knows his stuff. He helps you position your handlebars, brake levers, pedals and the cleats on your shoes, and your saddle for maximum efficiency and to keep your hands and feet from going numb. The impact had knocked the handlebars out of place and I needed him to help me get them adjusted again properly.

What the guys at the bike shop had missed is that the handlebar was bent and needed replacing. They had also not completely put the front rim back to true. So I left my bike with the fitter. It would take another week. I deleted two rides from my calendar. And I wondered again what I was trying to prove.

I'd been sporting bruises all spring and summer long. Granted, most of them were in places that no one gets to see. But two weeks prior to the crash, I'd lost my balance coming to a stop and tipped in the opposite direction of the foot I had loose from the pedals. The handlebar hit my arm and I got lots of questions about it. Mr. Bug said I should say I got it from kick-boxing.

It was shaped kind of like a peacock and the coloring was spot on. I thought it would be funny to take a Sharpie and draw in the outline. It wasn't the ugliest bruise I'd had from falling off my bike, but it was ugly enough. I wasn't too ashamed to admit that's where I got it. It hadn't entirely faded when I wrecked. My new bruises were not as colorful, but more painful than the one on my arm. My right knee, which hurt the most, was swollen and a little yellow. My shoulder went from red and irritated to peeling like it had been sunburned, to soft pink skin. It was bruised, but only a little yellow around the edges. The bruise on my chest was purple at the center, but was surrounded by a vivid yellow. I asked Dr. Google, and found that when deeper tissues are bruised the skin appears yellow.

Still, I wasn't stiff and sore, as I'd expected to be. I only took Tylenol and Aleve for a few days after the accident. I was down to one band aid after only a week.

Back at the bike fitter's, new handlebars and wraps installed, shoes and brake levers adjusted, front wheel in true, he encouraged me to get back out there and ride. The next day, last Friday morning, I went out at my usual time — zero.dark.thirty. Riding in the dark is no big deal. It is quiet and cool. I usually stay on the roads, which means streetlights but it also means traffic although it is scant. I have lights on my bike (it's the law); a white one in front and a red one in back, and I wear a forehead light as well. I but wanted to do a longer ride, so I rode up to a nice paved trail. A paved trail with no overhead lights. I was jumping at shadows, worried that I would miss seeing something important and have another accident. When I reached the end of the trail, rather than riding it back, I cut through town. And that's when it happened. I was coming to an intersection. A car was coming. I unclipped and slowed down. But I panicked and forgot my left foot was free and tipped to the right. I untangled myself and got back up. Nothing hurt and I was sure there were no new bruises. As I was composing myself, another rider passed me without saying a word. I found it odd. Surely he saw my flashing red light arc to the ground. I shook it off and continued on my way home. 14 miles. And I didn't die. But I did have new bruises.

Saturday morning I had an organized ride with the cycling club on my calendar. I'm a member, but I don't ride with them much because they mostly ride in the next county over. The starting point for the ride that day was 30 minutes away (rather than an hour) and in the same county. They planned to take one of my favorite trails, starting at the far end, and riding the length of the trail to a connector to another trail which runs up the canyon and then back — 50 miles round trip. The group met at the parking lot of a local store, but to get to the trail from there, you have to do a bunch of fiddling around, including carrying your bike through a patch of weeds to get to a connector and then crossing a major highway. There is an intersection with lights, but it isn't the best starting spot because there is a trail head about a mile from where we started, with plenty of parking and immediate access to the trail. Besides all of that, I was anxious about riding in a group. I know my limitations and worry about being the weakest link — the one they all have to wait for and to accommodate. I worried about impeding their joy in riding. In addition, I'd been having problems with my left shoe clipping in and out, so I worried about that and not being able to start and stop, especially when we had to cross at the crazy busy intersection.

We made it across the intersection, but I was still anxious about keeping up with the group. As we headed up the hill on the other side of the highway my chain came off and jammed in the cassette between the guard on the wheel and the inside gear. I managed to put my foot down — I'm not sure if it was clipped in or not since the left shoe has been a problem — and not hit the pavement. I had trouble figuring out the chain and getting it back on. I cut my finger on one of the teeth on the cassette trying to get it unstuck. I didn't have a rag or a bandaid, so I just let the blood pool and dry.

I got the chain back on but something weird was going on, because it came off a second time as I was trying to get going again. The group was out of sight by now so I was just going to turn around and walk back to my car and go home. I thought maybe the derailleur was broken. We were less than half a mile from the starting point. It made me anxious.

There were only six of us in the group; two married couples, another man and me. One of the married couples noticed I was gone and turned around and to help me out. The husband fiddled around with shifting gears and got me set to go, but the chain came off again. He shifted gears some more and finally we were on our way. I was still anxious and wondered if I was going to continue to have problems for the next 49.5 miles.

As we rode, the husband explained to me that you want to avoid having your chain on the outer ring in the front and on the gear closest to the wheel on the back because the angle is hard on the chain. He said it works the same for the inside ring in the front and the outside gear on the back. He explained to me what to avoid and encouraged me to use the inside ring on our ride today. I followed his advice, not wanting to have an accident, but I feel like you have to pedal a lot more on the small ring to get the same results as you get on the bigger ring with less pedaling. I knew there was a bit of a science to it, but I just shift down when my feet start moving slower and up when they start moving faster.

Anyway, I was pedaling along minding my gears when we come to this part along the trail that has a really great (curvy) downhill followed by a corresponding uphill. I've done it a few times before. Still, I felt a little more anxious going down the hill than usual, worried about the riders and runners around me. The uphill is not my favorite, but it is doable. I was using the smaller/inside ring in the front like I was supposed to for climbing and had a few more gears left in the back before I got to the farthest one out. As the hill got steeper and my pedaling got slower, I shifted to a lower gear. The chain must have skipped or something because suddenly I was free-pedaling (if that is a word). There was no traction from the chain on the gears and I was slowing down almost to stopping and falling over speed. I spat that same curse out just as two of the riders from my group passed me. Maybe we do need to get the Palmolive out. I thought for sure that I was going to tip over. Again. More bruises. More pain. What am I trying to prove?

To avoid falling, I would have to put my foot down. To put my foot down, I would have to unclip. To unclip, I would have to stop pedaling. If I stopped pedaling, I certainly couldn't engage the gears. If I couldn't engage the gears I would fall over. All of this passed through my mind in an instant. Not in so many words, but in flashes of thought in pictures. Out of sheer terror, I shifted back into a higher gear and the chain caught hold. I kept pedaling, but didn't dare change gears. And by the time I got to the top of the hill, I was done. My heart was racing, but not because of the climb. I was shaking, in a panic about what had just happened and afraid of riding any further. All the joy that biking brings me was gone. I was ready to sit down on the sidewalk right there and have Mr. Bug come get me.

The ride leader was at the top of the hill waiting. He has to make sure the group stays together. The couple who helped me out earlier had fallen behind, so I stood there collecting myself and trying to decide what to do — continue on or call search and rescue. When the husband got to the top of the hill, he said his wife had broken a spoke and they were turning back. We were about 4.5 miles from the start. I decided to turn back and go with them.

The trail runs north and south through a major portion of the county. It is, therefore, intersected by lots of streets. That means a lot of stopping and starting. If you're cruising along, you'll be in a higher gear. Remembering to downshift so it is easier to start again, unclip, stop and not fall over is a lot for me. Sometimes I forget to downshift. So starting back up again is hard, especially when my left shoe is having trouble. I am goofy-footed, so I keep my right foot clipped in and stop and stand with my left. I didn't want to cross the street in the trail ahead of us to continue on the ride, or any other street along the way and worry about being too slow or too cautious for the rest of the group. Bikers tend to just slow down at intersections and try to avoid stopping and getting off as much as possible. The intersections along the trail are often blind; fences or bushes or curves in the road block the view. Slowing as much as possible to check before crossing and then needing to stop suddenly if a car is coming isn't a safe idea, especially for me. Cars aren't very considerate of pedestrians or bikers sometimes and 10 to 1, if you try to take the right of way on a bike, you'll get hit.

The thought of continuing on for another 45 miles, not knowing if there would be further issues with the chain or shifting or if clipping or unclipping would be a problem, took all the enjoyment out of the day. I've fallen over enough to know it's not the end of the world. I walked away from a crash that should have been much worse than it was. I survived with minor injuries. But, the thought of anything going wrong, major or minor, filled me with fear and dread. I couldn't count on my bike. I couldn't count on myself. Continuing on was definitely out.

Getting on my bike and riding back down the hill I'd just come up and then riding up the hill on the other side didn't sound good either. I was fully prepared to walk the 4.5 miles back to my car. I settled for walking down the hill and then back up. I called Mr. Bug as I walked, just to hear his voice and get a little reassurance. The wife of the couple had gone ahead, walking her bike up the hill. The husband could see that I was rattled, so he waited for me to walk down the hill and then rode very slowly with me as I walked back up. I'm not sure how he managed it. I can't ride that slowly. I fall over.

When we reached level ground, I got back on my bike and had a nice conversation with this kind couple who had taken me under their wing. We took it slow, but I was still afraid of something going wrong. The trail is intersected with a lot of roads, but it is also designed with a few tunnels that go under the roads that intersect it. At these tunnels there are little off-shoots that let you get back to the road. The wife needed to use a restroom. Having never ridden this trail before and not knowing we were coming up on the trail head with restrooms that we should have started at, she opted to go to a Chevron, which required crossing a road rather than going under the tunnel next to it. I got off my bike and walked across the street. When we got back to the crazy busy intersection on the highway, I walked across that too.

As I planned my day, I originally wanted Mr. Bug to drive me up to the starting point and drop me off. I wanted to do the club ride of 50 miles and then ride the 30 more miles home. He really wanted me to stay with the group, so I just drove myself to the starting point. And then I chickened out. So, my ride went from 80 miles to 50 to 9. All throughout the afternoon, I second guessed myself. Away from the panic of the moment, I felt like I could have continued on. But then the thought of having the chain come off, or tipping over on a stop, or crashing into someone pushed me to the edge of that panic again.

I texted the bike fitter this morning. He said that the derailleur lever might be bent. He also said that he'd look at adjusting my shoe and to bring the bike in. I'll take care of it in the next day or two.

Mr. Bug says I should take the clip-in pedals off and put regular ones on for a while. He spent the evening researching different types of bike shoes and pedals.

I am worried that I will never stop being worried about something going wrong when I'm out riding. Mr. Bug is surprised at how afraid these last few events have made me. He doesn't think I've been afraid enough. A few months ago, downhill at 45 mph was exhilarating. Now, riding around the block scares the pants off me. Maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration.

Something bad happened. I came out OK. Nothing was broken, not even a nail. I only had to pick gravel out of a few fingers. I had some bruises, but it was nothing short of a miracle that all I needed was a few band aids. But now my brain really knows what the asphalt feels like and how scary things can get, so it is in overdrive to keep me safe.

I am signed up to ride a hundred miles again this Saturday. Mr. Bug thinks I ought to do the 75 mile option. I kind of think I should just do 35 miles. Hopefully the bike fitter can figure out what is wrong with it and have it fixed in time.

It makes me sad to think of my bike sitting in the shed collecting cobwebs. That gives me hope that next chapter of this story will find me out riding my bike just for the joy of it.

Mischief Managed

Use your imagination not to scare yourself to death but to inspire yourself to life. –Adele Brookman

I suppose it is just as well that I haven't blogged in several months because the cobwebs on the decor seem to fit nicely with the theme of the day.

I'd really like to dust off the old blog and get back to regular posting. It's been one wild and crazy adventure at Bug Cottage lately, and totally in a good way. I increased my work hours over the summer to close to full-time, which is counter-intuitive since the Not-So-Little Bugs are home more during the summer, but things all worked out. When school started, I took on some new responsibilities at work and so bumping up to full-time followed.

As time has gone by, I've been keeping a mental list of all the things that I want to blog about, but the list keeps increasing and it seems so daunting a task that I haven't had the nerve to start. I've done lots of fun sewing though, and I'm hoping to get in a few posts about that soon. In case you were curious, I did finish the Signature Quilt for the woman who turned 100 in September. The party was 11 days before her birthday so it was close, but I got it done in time.

As you can imagine, I've been spending a little more time than I used to at work. They are a really wild and crazy bunch. One of the programmers pulled the best prank ever today.

Halloween is my favorite. Dressing up is so much fun. There was a costume contest today {winners to be announced Monday} and my office mate and I decided that we were going to be Minions. We were nicknamed the AdMinions {Admin + Minions}. It was a great collaboration and I think we pulled it together nicely.

Sleep: There's an App for That

I wonder why I don't go to bed and go to sleep. But then it would be tomorrow, so I decide that no matter how tired, no matter how incoherent I am, I can skip one hour more of sleep and live. –Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

It's been an interesting week around here. Yesterday LadyBug and I went to the dermatologist for our semi-annual skin check. It's one of those necessary evils, but it is never fun to strip down to your unmentionables and lie on a table covered in a paper towel while the doctor shines a bright light on you as he checks your skin for "interesting" moles. It's especially uncomfortable when you forget to shave your legs and underarms. LadyBug had three removed and I had one, we went for a brownie afterwards and that's over and done with for another six months.

Yesterday evening it was on to the next adventure—prep for a colonoscopy this morning. The procedure itself was a breeze. I slept right through it. But the prep was horrible. The solution was completely vile, I slept very little and 10 years will not be long enough for me to forget that process. This was a follow up to my giving up gluten almost two months ago. I went to see the regular doc and he referred me to a GI doc. They did blood tests and other kinds of fun tests {including testing for giardia, which I thought was hilarious} and when they all came back negative, a colonoscopy was the next step. In the category of finding nothing wrong, my large intestine is squeaky clean and a-okay. They even gave me a souvenir photo, suitable for framing.

Which brings me to tomorrow's stop on my whirlwind medical tour; a septoplasty with turbinate reduction. You see, I haven't been sleeping well. Do you want to know how I know? Well, there's an app for that. This is where we jump to backstory.

Sometime last October, Mr. Bug downloaded an app on his phone that uses the accelerometer to detect movement and then gives you an output of how well you're sleeping. Sleep and I are old nemeses. It seems like I toss and turn and I never wake feeling rested and refreshed. I figured, what the heck? It would be a fun experiment, so I downloaded a similar app {his is for Android phones and mine for iPhones}. I've used it almost every day and the results are in. I am not getting a good quality of sleep at night.

The app is pretty cool. It gives you an analysis of your sleep every morning and keeps track of various aspects of your sleep in charts and graphs. This graph shows my overall sleep quality. You can see that I hover in there right between 70% and 80%. If I were getting a report card for sleep quality, I'd be getting a C. I'm an overachiever and that's really not acceptable.

This chart breaks it down and shows my sleep quality by day of the week. I used to kind of make a game of it and on those days where my sleep quality was lower, I'd make an extra effort to go to bed a little earlier, clear my mind, relax and let the day go, to see if I could improve the graph {see also, overachiever}. All I really managed to do was to swap Tuesdays for Wednesdays.

And here, you can see I'm squeaking by on about 7 hours of sleep a night most of the time. If we were to put this in a report card, I'm getting about a B+ in time asleep, but the quality of that sleep is a C. After watching my charts and graphs for week after week hoping that things would improve, I decided that something more than hoping had to be done.

Back to the present and my impending upcoming surgery. I've suspected that I have a deviated septum {the cartilage in my nose isn't straight} for a number of years. I don't breathe very well through my nose. The right nostril always seems blocked up. And I clench my jaw while I'm asleep. Putting the two together, I am guessing that some of my sleep trouble is that I'm not getting enough air. I never made it a priority to get checked out, but after downloading this app and seeing how crummy my sleep quality is, I started thinking of it more and more. Even so, I put off calling an Ear Nose and Throat specialist to make an appointment. I mean, what if I got there and there was nothing wrong?

Then that would be a waste of time and money.

Recently, I've decided that is a silly way to think and I've decided to be more proactive about my health concerns {see also, colonoscopy}. I made an appointment at an ENT practice and the PA I saw said that my septum is definitely deviated and that I have about an 85% blockage in my right nostril. That means that it is operating at only 15% capacity, which is something like a T {for Troll} on my report card. I chided myself for waiting so long to get this checked out, because something is wrong and it can be fixed.

Of course, it was a different story when the hospital staff called to do early check-in and said that the estimated cost of the procedure was 15 bazillion dollars and 50 cents, which had been submitted to my insurance already for preauthorization and my portion of that was 15 bazillion dollars. And it kind of dawned on me that if care goes beyond the initial office visit, the cost of the thing skyrockets. I'm going to have to visit a therapist next, to work through the anxiety all these medical bills are creating.

In other news, if we have not yet met the out-of-pocket/deductible max for our entire family for the year, we will shortly. This means insurance will cover any and all procedures for the rest of the year. I should have scheduled a mammogram for Friday to round the week out.

Tuesday Tales

The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser — in case you thought optimism was dead. –Robert Brault

I forgot to post two Personal Progress Totes I finished this month with the bags I posted yesterday. I was planning to put them all together in one post but forgot, so you get to hear from me two days in a row, with is an altogether uncommon occurrence around here these days. We only had one April birthday girl in our ward.

And this second one is for one of my cousin's daughters. I made one for her other daughter earlier, and casually included it into my post with the ones for February and March birthdays, hoping she wouldn't notice her daughter's name. I sent both of them to her a few weeks ago as a surprise and she was tickled to receive them.

For me, that is what it is all about — I love it when someone loves what I have made for them. I put a lot of thought into the things I make and try to use fabrics and colors that suit that person. When I first started working with the Young Women, I had each of the girls fill out a questionnaire so that I could casually find out their favorite colors for the ribbons and their embroidered names. Even though all of the totes are made with the same fabric, I wanted them to be personalized for each girl.

A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by someone wondering if I would make a Gumnut Baby quilt, like the one I made for one of my Twi-Quilter friends. It was a collaboration quilt and we all made blocks for it. I did the center block, which featured the main characters, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie.

For the most part, I turn down requests for commissions. Honestly, it takes all of the fun out of my "me time." It makes my hobby a job. I'm torn, on this one though. I love needle-turn appliqué. And I'm very flattered that someone liked my work enough to pay me to do it. But that's the sticky part right there. I don't know how much to charge. I'm sure those Gumnut Babies took at least 20 hours. Add to that quilting time and supplies and we're looking at $500+ for a baby quilt. I don't know if I would dare ask that. Another sticky spot is that I tend to procrastinate something I perceive as a chore. Creating for money makes it a chore. The person who wants the quilt doesn't need it until Christmas, but that just means I have lots of time to put it off and then I'll end up stressing myself out trying to pull it together at the last minute. I also don't know if I saved my pattern. I don't even know where to start to look for it. I'm a fool if I threw it out, regardless of whether or not I will ever make this block again. And then there's real life; kids, husband, church stuff, job, summer vacation . . .

Do all of those "cons" outweigh the joy of creating something so individualized? I don't know, but I probably should e-mail the person back to let them know I'm still considering. That is the polite thing to do. And whether or not I make the quilt, I can be polite.

Today's post brought to you by:

P.S. Don't tell, but I think those Gumnut Babies are a little bit creepy.

Gluten Free Is Do-Able. Or So I Keep Telling Myself.

There are very few one-size-fits-all solutions. –L. Tom Perry, Obedience Through Our Faithfulness, April 2014

My tummy has always been a little fussy. I was tested for Celiac in December of 2012 and it came back negative. I knew that dairy bothered me so in January of 2013 I decided that it was time to give it up completely in hope of easing the discomfort. And for a couple of weeks, things seemed better. But it wasn't long before the the gastrointestinal distress returned. Since I'd tested negative for Celiac I was sure it couldn't be gluten, and I stubbornly refused to give up my daily bread. I mean, I'd already taken the cheese off my pizza. If I took away the crust too, I'd be left with sauce and pepperoni and that just didn't cut it in my book. I figured that I just had a more sensitive digestive system and that it was something I was going to have to live with.

About five weeks ago things became pretty unbearable. My stomach hurt all the time. It hurt so much that it woke me up in the wee hours of the morning, and as I laid in bed tossing and turning and waiting for relief, I started to worry. I got up and started cutting scraps into 2" squares, and I worried some more. And I was convinced that something was VERY wrong. I e-mailed P., who is dairy-free and also gluten free. She also tested negative for Celiac, but is gluten intolerant and feels much better without it. We've discussed our intestinal woes on occasion and she urged me to try giving up gluten for a couple of weeks {as she has done on several other occasions in the past}. I figured that the only thing I had to loose were a few worrisome symptoms, so I did. And I made an appointment with the doctor who took some blood, did a bunch of tests, including for Celiac {which was negative again}, and then sent me to a gastro doc where I was subjected to more and less pleasant tests. Everything is normal. Except it's not, because my body doesn't tolerate gluten.

Within just a few days of giving up the stuff, I started to feel better. A lot better. And I got to wondering why, suddenly, so many people are gluten intolerant or have Celiac disease? I mean, wheat is the staff of life, and all that. Why would our bodies suddenly turn on us? I followed a few rumors, like that hybridized wheat was to blame, or genetically altered corn, cotton, alfalfa and papaya {among other foods} were to blame. And someone to throw the blame on is just what I was looking for. I wanted to buy into those rumors, because they were on the internet, so they must be true. After more consultation with P., she pointed me in a different direction, and it would seem that lectins, gluten and phytates are just plain hard to digest. I suspect that, coupled with a diet high in the grains that contain these components, would eventually lead to rebellion. And it looks like the rebellion has won in my body.

While stubbornly refusing to believe that gluten was an issue, I thought giving up bread was the worst thing in the world. Now, almost five weeks on the other side, I can't believe I spent so much time eating myself sick. My tummy is SO much happier and I feel a lot better. Before, my brain felt like I should always be eating, even if my stomach was full. Now, my blood sugar stays pretty steady and my stomach is in charge of when I eat and it knows when I'm full too.

Granted, it is a more work to try and come up with interesting and tasty things to eat. The first week was a snap. I was so anxious for relief that I happily met the challenge. The menu I already had planned for that week lent itself nicely to being gluten free. All I had to do was pick up some GF soy sauce and I was set. The next week was much harder, because I was pretty sure we'd eaten all the things that are gluten free the week before. Somehow, I managed to scrape together another menu. It was seriously lacking in imagination. The week after that I put together another. And then another. We've only had a few repeats {the Not-So-Little Bugs love chicken tacos, and I'm good with having a crunchy corn tortilla and leaving off the cheese as long as there is plenty of salsa, homemade guacamole and dairy-free sour cream}. I'm hoping to develop a fairly well-rounded répertoire of menu items because fast food is quickly becoming a distant memory {although I've had some very lovely salads lately from Wendy's, Chick-fil-A and a local cafe. And I really love an "unwich" from Jimmy John's – think lettuce wrap sandwich}. I've made quite a few Asian recipes because they're mostly dairy-free, and if you've got the right soy sauce then gluten isn't an issue either. Potatoes and rice and quinoa have made appearances. We even tried gluten free pasta and I was pretty impressed. I tried a loaf of gluten free bread and wasn't impressed at all with that. When I left dairy behind, I discovered that it really is best not to try to substitute ingredients, but rather to find new recipes that don't require those particular ingredients. Although I am going to try P.'s gluten free double chocolate chip cookie recipe. I haven't had chocolate for five weeks, people! Five weeks! Almost. {Sidebar: did you know that Oreos are dairy free? Makes you wonder what is in that creme filling, doesn't it?} Eventually, I'll get around to trying homemade gluten free breads. Perhaps when I no longer have to go to work every day.

In the meantime, I think it has been a very positive change. I still have days here and there when I can't figure out why I've got a belly ache. I wonder if I forgot to read a label, if there are other items that my body doesn't like or if there were cross-contamination issues. But I'm not going to let it get me down. And I'm not going back to a pizza filled life. To be honest, I remember pizza and garlic bread, ice cream, cookies and cake with fondness, but I don't crave them. I don't even really want to eat them. Jimmy John's put cheese that I didn't ask for on my unwich a few weeks ago and I didn't notice until I'd eaten about ¾ of the sandwich {it was wrapped tight in lettuce, you know}. Within a half-hour of eating, I felt uncomfortably nauseated, and my tummy was pretty unhappy for the next 36 hours or so. I'd rather eat a nice salad or some beans and rice and fresh fruit makes a delightfully satisfying dessert.

Yes, I suppose gluten free is do-able, after all.

A Few Christmas Finishes

You can chase a butterfly all over the field and never catch it. But if you sit quietly in the grass it will come and sit on your shoulder. –Unknown

I've heard it said that the things you regret most in life are the ones you didn't try. I can't say no to anything because I want to do everything. I have overcommitment issues. And so I start a project a find out it is taking longer than I planned, so I put it on hold so I can do something else that isn't going to take very long, but then it takes longer than I expect and so I move on to something else, hoping to get it done and then go back and finish up the other things I started but never finished. Kind of like chasing a butterfly. And then another one.

As Christmas, and consequently, the end of the year approached, I had to make some hard and fast decisions about what was important to finish and what was important to let go for the sake of my sanity. I decided to let my neighbor gifts go this year. I like to make an ornament for about 50 of my closest family, friends and neighbors, and it was really hard to decide not to chase that particular butterfly. In hindsight, it was a good choice to make. I only got a handful of neighbor gifts—less than 10, in fact. Giving up that one tiny {gigantically huge, completely insane} project freed up some time for me to enjoy with my family.

Finishing the quilting on P's. String Ring Dresden {see it bound here} and another project that is under wraps for a couple more weeks has occupied a lot of my time lately, so I only made a few small things this year for Christmas gifts, but they were so much fun!

For cousin gifts, I made these cute holders {tutorial here} for the Young Women Personal Progress booklet and journal and For the Strength of Youth pamphlets. The Young Women of our Church, girls ages 12 to 18, are encouraged to live a standard of personal worthiness and to set goals for themselves in many different areas of their development {the Young Men have a similar program, and really all members are encouraged to live up to the same standard}. A couple of years ago now, I think, Deena Rutter designed a line of fabric for Riley Blake called Good Life, which is themed around the Personal Progress program. When I came across the tutorial for the booklet holders, I knew this fabric would be perfect for them and that they'd make cute Christmas gifts for a couple of the cousins. Even though the fabric line has been out for a while, I was able to find a shop here in town and a couple of on-line shops, including Deena Rutter's Etsy shop, that had enough of what I was looking for. And since these could be for any one of the Not-So-Little Bugs' forty cousins and I'm not giving you any clues as to who the girls belong to, I'm not blanking out the names so you can see my cute embroidery. Well, actually, they could be for only about half that many, but you still get my point. The under-eighteens remain anonymous. This first one is in the white colorway. Love it!

This one is in the blue colorway. I love the pretty colors. LadyBug turns 12 in February and I have fabric to make one of these for her in the green colorway. OK. Confession time. I actually have fabric to make about 45 more of these. I kid you not. I got carried away. I'm not sure what I'll do. Maybe I'll start making them and giving them to the girls in my ward {congregation} for their birthdays. Or all the nieces who are 12 or older. Or maybe I'll make them to sell on Etsy. Or just sell the kits to make them on Etsy. Who knows? But there are a few possibilities there.

This last one is a fun table runner for a lady in my ward whose birthday is December 24^th {I wonder if, after 75 years, she's tired of getting Christmas and her birthday all lumped together?}. These are fast and easy to make. It takes ⅓ yard of focus fabric and ½ yard of accent fabric and in a few minutes you have a really cute table runner {tutorial here}.

Hooray for a few finishes in December!

Today's post brought to you by:

It Was Supposed To Be TARDIS Blue

{Image Source}

I'll be a story in your head. But that's OK: we're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? Because it was, you know. It was the best: a daft old man, who stole a magic box and ran away. Did I ever tell you I stole it? Well, I borrowed it; I was always going to take it back. Oh, that box, Amy, you'll dream about that box. It'll never leave you. Big and little at the same time, brand-new and ancient, and the bluest blue, ever. –Doctor Who, season 5, episode 13, The Big Bang, Steve Moffat

I'm finally jumping on the Doctor Who Stitch-Along bandwagon over at Fandom in Stitches, even though I completely missed the boat {talk about your mixed metaphors. If I were really clever, I would have come up with something all time-wimey, TARDIS-y, bow-tie and fez cool. But I'm not.}. I have my patterns all printed out. I'm doing everything at half-size {4" instead of 8"} and am going to make a wall-hanging using the alternate TARDIS layout. {No. P.'s quilt isn't finished yet. This weekend. I promise. I only have a tiny bit to go on it. And I love how it is coming out. But this is what I do when I tell myself I can't work on anything else until the thing I'm currently working on is finished. Because technically speaking, thinking and planning new projects to work on is not actually working on something else.}. I even found the perfect wood-grain print fabric in TARDIS Blue. {It's an actual color. Pantone 2955C - 012C57 HEX - 1,44,87 RGB.}

So I ordered 2½ yards of it. It came in the mail yesterday. Did it not look TARDIS Blue in the swatch from the on-line listing above? Tell me that's not TARDIS Blue. It's totally TARDIS Blue. Below is what was in my package. This is definitely not TARDIS Blue.

Mr. Bug suggested dying it. Can I just say how much I love this man? He is a really great sounding board. I was actually already planning on discharging the dye from a small portion of the fabric to use to stitch the nine different Doctors on in the lower portion of the TARDIS, so that it would look like the panels on the side of the box, but give it a little bit of contrast in color. In my very quick perusal at Paula Burch's site on hand dyeing {thanks for the link, P.}, and with some fiddling around and probably an on-line dye order, it might be possible to pull it off. But sheesh. Why doesn't wood-grain print just come in TARDIS Blue already? I mean, it comes in Gray and Straw and Teal and Violet and whatever color it is that I got and about twelve other unlikely colors. So why not TARDIS blue?

Today's post brought to you by:

The Galloping Horse Method

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses. –Abraham Lincoln

I am slightly OCD. Obsessive Creative. Obsessive Compulsive. Potato, potahto, right? I tend to get wrapped up in the details and rather than seeing the big picture, I focus on all the tiny imperfections. I guess you could say I'm an imperfectionist. And I let myself be limited by all the things I can't to. I've been thinking about this on and off for a while now. Yesterday, as I was pondering the complexities of stripey binding, my sister reminded me that shifting your perspective opens up a lot of previously unexplored possibilities. She said, I don't know much about binding, but I think I'd take the longer lasting way even if it doesn't lay perfectly straight. Use the galloping horse method to determine how picky you're going to be.

And what is the galloping horse method, you ask? The story goes like this. I took a beginning machine quilting class in February of 2010. The teacher talked about how to determine if you're going to unpick. She said that if you were to pass by the quilt on a galloping horse and you could see the mistake, then unpick.

Several thoughts sprouted from this reminder.

1. Just do your best and let the stitches fall where they may.
2. Not every quilt has to be a show quilt.
3. Focus on what you can do and not on what you can't.

Do your best and let the stitches fall where they may.
I can do bias binding. I know it. I love it. So that's what I did. And I'm pretty darn excited about those formerly diagonal vertical stripeys. It's not perfect. Some of my seams matched up better than others. It might turn out a tiny bit ripply, as my bindings always do. But then again, it might not. In order to get enough binding out of the piece of fabric I had, I made it 2⅛" wide instead of 2¼". Perhaps being a fraction of an inch narrower will give it more fill once it is turned and might, just might, solve the pucker problem.

Not every quilt has to be a show quilt.
As a matter of personal preference, I like quilts that are "custom." I always have. When I piece a quilt, I pick the design because I like it and I want all that work to be shown off to its best advantage by the quilting. I think edge-to-edge tends to mask the piecing. But with no small amount of internal debate, I took this quilt and the one before it to the quilt fairy to be done edge-to-edge. Having them done in time to give as birthday gifts outweighs spending weeks on quilting the perfect design in them. These quilts are meant to be snuggled under and dragged around and picnicked on at washed and used and loved. Masterpiece quilting doesn't quite fit the bill, here.

Focus on what you can do and not on what you can't.
I kind of like having a quilt fairy. It means there are a lot of things I can do instead of making myself crazy trying to cram 40 hours of quilting into an already packed week. While my quilt is being professionally quilted {with a stitch regulator!}, I can spend time helping the Not-So-Little Bugs with homework and projects. I can catch up on the laundry. And the dusting. And the bathrooms. I can cook actual dinners instead of sentencing the family to cold cereal and ramen for a week straight. I can go to bed at a decent time. And I can be completely wowed by an edge-to-edge quilting design. Here's a peek.

You'll be even more wowed when I show you the whole quilt. With stripey binding. And a completely awesome embroidered quilt label. It's one of my best, if I do say so myself.

When Life Gives You Quick Cooking Oats Make No-Bake Cookies

Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out. –John Wooden

The other day I mentioned that, must to my distaste, I'd mistakenly bought a box of quick cooking oats and didn't know what I was going to do with it because I certainly wasn't going to eat the oatmeal for breakfast. I got lots and lots of replies suggesting I make cookies. I also got several recipes. I haven't had a chance to make any of these yet, but plan to {because YUM!} and wanted to share the recipes with you and to thank you all for your comments!

This first recipe is from a very wonderful friend, Jenna.

Oatmeal Clusters
¼ cup butter
2 cups sugar
½ cup milk
1 pinch of salt
1-2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla
½ cup peanut butter
3 to 3½ cups quick cooking oats

• In a 4-quart pot, melt butter then add sugar, milk, salt and cocoa powder. Bring to a boil; boil for 1 minute exactly. Remove from heat.
• Add vanilla and peanut butter and blend well. Then add oats.
• Drop by spoonfuls on wax paper or cookie sheet to cool.

Notes:
• Cocoa can be omitted to make Peanut Butter Oatmeal Clusters
• For dairy free, use Butter Substitute instead of butter and substitute almond milk for the milk.

Jenna also sent this next recipe, which is a favorite in her husband's family. Freda sent me a link to her Mrs. McKenzie's Chocolate No-Bake Cookies, which her family has been using for the last 50 years. The ingredients are identical in both recipes, although the quantities and directions vary slightly. I'm sharing Jenna's recipe here, but check out Freda's for a slightly chocolatier version.

Oatmeal No-Bakes
½ cup butter
2 cups sugar
½ cup condensed milk
½ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 teaspoons vanilla
3 to 3½ cups quick cooking oats
Chopped walnuts

• In a 4-quart pot, melt butter then add sugar, milk, salt and cocoa powder. Bring to a boil; boil for 1 minute exactly. Remove from heat.
• Stir in vanilla and then add oats.
• Drop by spoonfuls on wax paper or cookie sheet to cool.

Notes:
• Butter Substitute can be used instead of butter for dairy-free cookies.
• For a dairy-free substitute for the condensed milk, simmer 1¼ cups soy, rice or almond milk in a pan until it is reduced by 60% to ½ cup. Be careful not to scald it. {For sweetened condensed milk, stir in ½ cup + 2 tablespoons sugar, and stir in over low heat until it is completely dissolved.} It will keep in the refrigerator for several days.
• Another alternative for evaporated milk is to substitute coconut milk 1:1 in the recipe. This will impart a coconut flavor to the recipe.

This final recipe is from my friend, Sparkle Girl, who is as vivacious in real life as her screen name suggests.

Energy Balls
1 cup oatmeal
½ cup mini chocolate chips
½ cup peanut butter
½ cup ground flaxseed
⅓ cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla

• Mix ingredients together in a large bowl. Roll into bite size balls. Refrigerate to set.

Thank you Jenna, Freda and Sparkle for the recipes! And now, if you'll excuse me I suddenly have a craving for something chocolatey.

The Box It Came In Would Probably Be Tastier

One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference. –Robert Fulghum

I'm a big fan of hot cereal for breakfast. {Come to think of it, I'm a big fan of cold cereal too.} Cream of Wheat? Yes please. With lumps? Even yesser. I pretty much ate that for breakfast the entire 18 months I had braces. Zoom? Love that stuff. And lately I've been on an oatmeal {for breakfast} kick {see also: Coconut Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies and Applesauce Oatmeal Muffins}. I love the texture. It's comforting. It's less than 500 calories, even with sugar in it. It tastes good. It carries me through to lunch. I like that in a breakfast food.

{Image Source}

Day before yesterday, I didn't have enough oatmeal left to make my usual heart healthy serving. No problem. I popped into the pantry and pulled a box of it {can it be called a box if it is a cylinder?} off the shelf only to discover that what I bought {old-fashioned oats} was not what I brought home with me {quick cooking oats}. I hate it when that happens. But, no biggie. I mixed some of the quick cooking oats with what I had left of the old-fashioned oats and got on with it. It tasted a little funny, but it wasn't too bad. I thought that maybe it didn't have enough salt in it. Yesterday, it was all quick cooking oats. I added a tiny bit of extra salt. That wasn't the problem. I'm not sure what happens when you make oats quick cooking, but it changes the taste considerably and for the worse. The cardboard box it came in would probably be tastier.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with an entire box/cylinder of quick cooking oats. I had Cream of Wheat today. Specially made with lumps. It was a little bit stale {it might very well be left over from when I had braces, 6 years ago}. But it was still better than those quick cooking oats. Is it grocery shopping day yet?

The One Where The Not-So-Little-Bugs Go Back To School

The calm and balanced mind is the strong and great mind; the hurried and agitated mind is the weak one. –Wallace D. Wattles

Yesterday was the first day back to school for the Not-So-Little Bugs. I wrote this post all day in my head yesterday, but there just wasn't a minute to squeeze in actually typing it out. The moment has almost passed and this post is almost irrelevant, but I wanted to capture at least a little of what I was thinking of yesterday, because I'm still thinking some of it today.

This is Grasshopper. Yesterday was his first day of 8^th grade. I remember being in 8^th grade. I can hardly believe I have an 8^th grader.

This is LadyBug. Yesterday was her first day of 6^th grade. I can remember being in 6^th grade too.

And this is me on my first day of being the mother of a 6^th grader and an 8^th grader. {Sidebar: I didn't decide we were taking milestone photos until after Mr. Bug had left for work yesterday and he didn't get/ignored my text requesting that he snap a selfie and e-mail it to me.}

I never was one to get teary when my kids went to school. In years past I may not have been excited about it, but the reason for that is that we had to get back on a regular schedule with early mornings, strict bedtimes and homework. Leading up to the start of school this year, I was ambivalent. Staying on top of homework was at the top of my list of anxieties. In the perks column, with school back in I get to sleep in between thirty minutes and an hour every morning and I'm so over a 9:00 pm bedtime. {Sidebar: I considered keeping an earlier schedule in order to have a little sewing time in the morning, but I know myself and I would never be content with the amount of time available and would be grumpy to have to put away my project to go to work. Work first, then play seems to work best for me.}. And now that school has started and I've had two guilt-free work-days in a row now where I haven't had to worry about the Not-So-Little Bugs being alone, trying to mediate disputes or meet needs over the phone, and making it home well before they get out of school so that I can have a bit of time to decompress after work has been a huge relief. And that trumps tricky homework schedules any day.

If there hadn't been a need for it, I don't think I would have ever chosen to go back to work when my kids were this young. It has been hard, but it has also been good. My hours at work kind of grew to more than I expected, though, which was very stressful where the balancing act is concerned. At the beginning of the summer I asked to reduce my hours back to what I'd been hired for. I hoped that I could keep them steady at that level even after summer, and it looks like it is going to work out on both ends. A coworker who is a single mom needs more hours in order to qualify for health benefits so she has been picking up the slack for me. And the reduction in wages that accompanies fewer work hours hasn't pinched our budget too much. Finding the right balance has been hard for me over the last several years. At the risk of jinxing myself, I think I've maybe got it. At any rate, I'm glad the kids are back in school.

Speaking of which, they should be home any minute now and I want to hear all about their days.

Seven Days Without Sewing Makes One Weak

Doldrums: \ˈdōl-drəmz\
Noun
1. a spell of listlessness or despondency
2. a part of the ocean near the equator abounding in calms, squalls, and light shifting winds
3. a state or period of inactivity, stagnation, or slump

Once upon a time, about 2½ weeks ago, I kind of fell into a funk. About six weeks ago, I made a major adjustment to my schedule so that I could be around more for the Not-So-Little Bugs during summer. Overall, it has been a really positive change. I like being the first one in at work. I get a lot more done while it's quiet. And I also get to go home before everybody else; before lunch even. I think, too, that going to bed earlier {it's usually still a little bit light out} and getting more sleep has had a positive effect on how many migraines I get and how long they last {i.e., I'm having fewer and they don't hang on for days}.

I'm trying to keep this as non-whiney as possible, but what this little back-story is leading up to is that somewhere in there, I kind of lost my "me" time. And maybe a little bit of me, too. I know that making sacrifices for your kids is part of being a parent. But I kind of felt like there was a whole lot of resistance in the ranks to where I wanted to go {which, in the literal sense, was anywhere but sitting around at home staring at the screens all day}, getting up early to go to work, going to bed early so I could get up early to go to work, and trying to out-stubborn {in a happy, positive, encouraging kind of way} the reticent {or alternately defiant} Not-So-Little Bugs all combined to make me feel like I was kind of failing a little bit at life. Subsequently, not even sewing sounded fun. So for a few days, I didn't.

Going without sewing for a few days is no big deal. Sometimes you just need a little break. Going a whole week without sewing was kind of a red flag for me. I decided that I'd better get back to the machine and I started to write this post. Well, sort of. I had a clever post title {I ♥ puns}. A few more days went by and still no sewing. At around the 11^th no-sew day, it became a bit of a game and I decided to see if I could go a full two weeks without sewing. I think that was the turning point and by day 13, I was itching to do something creative. It was the 4^th of July and it is kind of my tradition to work on my Patriotic Sampler for a few days every year around this time. {I know. It would make more sense to start working on it in April so it would be finished and ready to display on the 4^th.}

I've been working on this sampler for about twelve years now. I started it when I was pregnant with LadyBug. She's eleven. It is my second oldest Ph.D, and I don't know why I don't just finish it already . I'm so close. Anyway, I decided I'd work on some of the itty, bitty paper pieced stars that go at the corners of the blocks in the sashing. It was then that I found out that my post title was more true than I knew. After the first star {which took an hour because I fussed and fiddled and unpicked a lot to try and get the stripes to line up} I was ready to quit. My sewing muscles {the mental ones that help you push through a boring/difficult/unpleasant part of a project} were seriously out of shape. I persisted, even though I didn't really want to. The non-stripey ones only took thirty minutes each. Seven down. Only twenty more to go.

Cute, no? They finish at 1". Who designed this quilt anyway?
Oh. Right. It was me.

After I'd had my fill of that, I put together one of two remaining blocks for the quilt top. It has been cut out and ready to go for, oh, I don't know. Four years now? This one is called Land of Liberty as was designed by Marcia Hohn at The Quilter's Cache. I kind of love it. Pinwheels and flying geese in the same block? It doesn't get better than that.

For the final block, I had three contenders, only two of which I can remember at the moment, so I won't even bother to tell you about the losers. I showed them to Mr. Bug and he said, hands down, this should be the final block. It is called Spiderweb Star, and it is pretty awesome. {Note: if you make this block, reverse the cutting directions for template piece C/CR.}

I also fiddled around at the old doodle pad {Microsoft Picture Manager & Microsoft Paint} and changed my sashing from tan {the same tan used for most of the block backgrounds. Yeah, not sure what I was thinking there.} to white, moved the blocks around a bit and added the flying geese border. It's kinda wild and crazy. I think it will be a little more mellow with a scrappy collection of reds and blues in the flying geese section. I'm debating about whether or not to add a border between the sashing and the geese and another on the outside of the geese. What do you think?

Block Credits:
Row 1 - left to right
The Old Red and Blue by Marcia Hohn at The Quilter's Cache
Zig-Zag Flag inspired by Karen at The Recipe Bunny
Our Eagle pattern from a BOM my mom did at her LQS

Row 2 - left & right
Glory Flag pattern from a BOM my mom did at her LQS
Crossroads traditional block

Center Section - left to right, top to bottom
Uncle Sam pattern from a BOM my mom did at her LQS
Patriot's Star {modified} at eQuiltPatterns.com
Banner Flag by Elizabeth
US Ribbon at Compuquilt
Pledge of Allegiance Embroidery by Elizabeth

Row 3 - left & right
July Fourth traditional block
54-40 or Fight {modified} or Star Shield traditional block

Row 4 - left to right
Land of Liberty by Marcia Hohn at The Quilter's Cache
Courthouse Steps traditional block
Spiderweb Star at McCall's Quilting