It’s been such a rewarding day! First, the quilt news…

I finished not one, but two whole blocks tonight. I even fixed my sewing machine all by myself when it decided to throw a tantrum. I’m so proud! If you were just going on the pictures alone, they don’t look so hot. I PROMISE I will take them outside tomorrow and take some shots that do them justice. I’ll also see about researching how to take better indoor pictures, because these really are terrible.

The other photos are a little better. They are slightly more important too.

My littlest sister is getting married (sniff* sniff*) this weekend at my dad’s. I’m the unpaid planner, decorator, photographer, wedding cake artist and also, hair stylist. Luckily she’s got fabulous hair and I have great taste, so everything should be fine. Tonight we did a practice run through on her hair. She fell in love with it and I took a bunch of pictures to commemorate the occasion. We were missing a whole bunch of things we need to get a real updo, such as a small curling iron and bobby pins, but the main thing we were doing was making sure we could make it work. And we can. Again, this is not the finished project, so judge nicely…or not at all, you could just enjoy! lol

Well I am tired so I’m just going to post the gallery and let you click through. Later gators.

PS – I hate how these pictures look, I will edit this post soon and make it look better, promise.

This is block #1 and post #1 on this super fun quilt (I decided that the previous post, my inspiration pictures, didn’t really count as the first post in this quilt update since it wasn’t about my particular quilt.)

The following pictures suck for two reasons. One, I took them at 12:30 in the morning, and there is no natural light to be found in my kitchen at any time, let alone in the middle of the night, since I live in California and not Alaska. Two, I am too tired to open Photoshop and touch them up, so this is what ya get for the moment. I’m so proud of actually finishing an entire block that I couldn’t wait another second to post!

One other note – I am not done choosing or cutting fabric for this quilt. If you count carefully, you can see five different fabrics; for a true Disappearing Nine Patch pattern you need nine separate patterns. I know one of the remaining four will be white flannel. And that I need more red, and a little more contrast in print size. Other than that, I have no idea which fabrics I’ll be buying, but I just couldn’t wait one more day to piece part of this and get a start on it. I am seriously having dreams about this baby, lol.

Okay, enough rambling…here we go!

To all my fellow fabric lovers – go check this out and take the links to enter to win!  The site is beautiful, worthy of many hours spent sighing over all the choices and combinations…I know ’cause I just did that…lol. 

Sew Fantastic is hosting a great giveaway. So is the site she is letting us all know about, Hawthorne Threads.com. I don’t know which one I’m in love with more, but next time I’m looking to buy fabric online, it will for sure be at Hawthorne Threads.com.

So go, have fun, shop for me and have a great time!

Thought I’d show you guys what’s inspired me to start on my newest quilt. But first, just a random little side story: I’ve never once made anything that’s just been, from start to finish, for me. Or, for my husband, for that matter. I’ve started a project (a green patchwork quilt) that was supposed to be for our room, but since then I changed decorating directions and gone with blues and teals over greens, so it’s a lost cause. The point is, this is the first thing I’ve ever made just for me. And it didn’t start out being for me. I bought the fabric for a quick flannel baby blanket (a post on those coming soon) and when I got it home and put it up on my work in progress shelf, I just couldn’t keep my eyes off it. I woke up dreaming about the quilt I could make myself out of it. And that’s when it was decided, it would be mine.

On to the teasing…

First, a gorgeous in process shot of an awesome inspirational piece:

Second, showing what white can bring to the board:

Third, just because it’s great:

And lastly, the inspiration behind the pattern I think I’m going to use to arrange the quilt blocks in:

I love the idea of using the Disappearing Nine Patch because the reality is that so far, I only have one red fabric picked out. However, I have tons of red scraps that can be used in 4×4 squares, and by using the Nine Patch method, it won’t be as obvious that very few of the patterns are repeated. Probably considered cheating, I realize, but I am desperately trying to use up what’s in my fabric stash. I no longer have a sewing room (sniff*sniff) and so my crafting bins just float from room to room. It’s driving me crazy and I am determined to cut back on the amount of fabric I am storing, by using it all.

The other reason I like this pattern is that I’m tired of doing random patchwork quilt tops, and the stacked coin quilt top I did is ugly and I detest it. So I needed a new method. This one seems just eclectic enough to suit me and not so rigid that I will be setting myself up for failure by trying it, lol.

Okay, enough rambling. I just want to add that I’ve already cut out over 150 squares for this project and am super excited!

divide this one blog into two instead of one massive chaotic over spill of crafts, anxiety diary entries, and just plain writing. Maybe three? lol.

Today I am taking the day off from cleaning, social networking and school work, until I have sewn at least an hour or so.

Selfish? Maybe. But with all of this from SewMamaSew for inspiration, how can you NOT be selfish? I need a new quilt for the winter…new curtains for the living room window…a door snake to keep out drafts…a book cover for my mother…three presents for our Winter Gift Exchange…covers for my tall book shelves in my room…and some peace and quiet to recover from all the drama around here (more on that later, I promise.) So I am off to vent to my sewing machine and recuperate with my fabric collection. Also, I finally remembered batteries for my camera, so there may even be pictures of this miraculous eventful hour in my life!

Later gators!

I have waited for you for days, for months, for years. I have waited breathlessly, in agonizing uncertainty, wondering when you’re going to make your words come true, when you’re going to hold up the promises you made me in bitter blood on snow white skin and say, today is the day I will do what I said I would do for you. Today is the day I love you.

I have ached with loneliness for you. This huge gaping wound you left in the center of my life throbs with infection and oozes with green anger. It has sharp, jagged edges that hold me captive within the red blisters. I want to be free of you, I promise I do; some days it feels like I have finally forgotten you and moved on. But then life rears back and hurls another cannon ball at me, and it smacks right into my septic wound, and memories of you crash down on me until there is no more light to be found, no more peace to be had. You saw away at my life with every breath you or I draw. You look like an angel, come to save us and help us and heal us back to whole, when the truth is you are nothing more than a pestilence bent on destruction and death. I remember when your words used to soothe me well into my dreams, when the knowledge that you were happy made me smile with pleasure, and I wish I could take it all away from you, every single good memory I know you have of me. My heart is still cold with wanting you, but now there is room beside the want of you for want of revenge on you.

Instead of giving in to my base desires and obliterating you with the words and truths I know would destroy you, I am patient. I am waiting for your apology to mean something to you like it doesn’t to me. I am waiting for the day when you look back and realize the depths of all that you did and watch your life curl away into the black smoke of destruction that you will never be able to fix. It would be well within the acceptable for me to laugh then, for me to feel a rush of righteousness in the face of your ultimate failure. But the truth is that I will be sad for you instead. I won’t, could never be, happy to see someone’s else torment at my expense, but that is the difference between the two of us, I suppose. I wait for you, I watch for you, I ache for you, I give you chance after chance to rectify the situations your selfishness has caused, and in the end, I will break for you as well. When it’s your turn to feel one single ounce of the despondency, despair, and utter misery I have felt for you, when it’s your turn to weep from the bottom of your heart with only endless torment ahead of you, I will be the one to catch you.

I will never be rid of you. I will never be able to turn you away or cut you off or repay you for the damage you have done to me and mine and my life. That is yet another difference between you and I. In the end, I know that even if the moment of perfect revenge came to pass and I could lay yoiu out cold with the ending you so deserve, I would let it pass. I would walk away and hang my coat up and crawl into bed with my shoes on and cry for you and the blow you were almost dealt.

The waiting is torture, the wound is hot, the uncertainty is lead weight around my neck, but the truth is the truth. I will continue to wait and bleed and hold my breath in anticipation…and maybe, one day, some day, you will see that truth before the end rushes up to catch you. Maybe we will be able to forge a new future and leave the scars of the past as evidence of a lesson learned. Maybe. One day.

Tonight I had a melt down. The first one in a few weeks. So of course now I am thinking that I’m going to be seriously down with anxiety again for another six months, when the truth is that it was just a minor set back and I will be fine tomorrow and the next day…and the day after…but you know, reality and logical thinking aren’t really things we consider when we are in the throes of anxiety.

I was asked to babysit my nephew overnight. I was asked a few months ago, and the date was supposed to be for tonight. Well, of course, a few months ago I thought I’d be feeling great by now and things would be easier and I’d feel up to it. So I said yes. Then, my sister who lives here with me realized she didn’t have a sitter for her almost two year old daughter tonight either. It was kind of announced to me a few weeks ago that I’d be having both kids overnight tonight.

I started feeling really pressured and taken advantage of. I tried to make myself clear without being aggressive, but that didn’t work very well and I backed down and agreed to do it in the end. When tonight came though, there was no way. I was anxiety ridden all day today and even yesterday I was having some issues just thinking about tonight. Two hours after I picked my nephew up, I took him back to his mom, bawling and hysterical the entire time, convinced my sister would never forgive me and be really mad at me and my life would be over.

She did, she wasn’t, and it isn’t.

I blew things way out of proportion. Now I am sitting here at home in my pjs wondering if I could have kept my nephew after all. I feel like an idiot, I feel like my anxiety won out tonight, but in the end I don’t really know what I would have done differently to avoid this ending.

What should I have done?

Well one thing I know is that I should have been more assertive and made it clear that keeping both babies overnight is too much for me right now, no matter how I felt when I originally agreed to the deal.

The second thing I know is that I should have not waited until the last minute to analyze what I was feeling. I should have had a plan in place for how to deal with tonight. I should have prepared myself mentally and emotionally.

But the truth is that I thought this would be no big deal and everything would be great. So another thing I learned was that I need to prepare even for things I think are going to be good and easy.

I am so tired, so drained…I hope I can sleep tonight. Lately I have been having so many problems sleeping that I’ve been awake all night and slept all morning, which always gives me a sleep hangover and makes me feel sick to my stomach. It also seems to add to my depression. When I was going to bed at nine and waking up at six I felt so good. I really need to get back to that schedule.

But now, I am starting to have huge amounts of anxiety about sleeping at all. I have been dreaming and having nightmares and I hate HATE HATE that more than anything. I hate feeling out of control of myself, and how do you control yourself while you’re asleep???!!!

Well enough random rambling, I am off to get a drink and go to bed. Updates later.

In my quest to have a fulfilling life, I usually find myself crafting in one way or another. I sew, I quilt, I write, I make things. A project that’s been hovering around the edges of my brain lately is making a recycled journal to write in daily. I was thinking about using a lot of unlined paper and a lot of white space to make the journal; I’ve found that it’s easier for me to take notes on totally blank paper then it is to use lined paper (I’m not sure why, this is just a personal preference. I’m not trying to dog lined paper by any means, lol.) It seems more freeing and less restrictive, and I like to doodle all over so it looks a little better without those blue lines behind everything.

Anyway, I was on youtube this morning looking at different ways to make journals, different book binding techniques, etc. I came across this video about Significance Journaling that really sparked my interest. It’s something I’ve never heard of before, but it instantly made sense.

The gist of it is that every day, you write down something significant that you accomplished during that day. It doesn’t have to be a world changing event. But it’s also not just a regular diary entry where you gripe about how much work you had to do and how the day made you feel. It’s just a simple list of important things that you did that day that you want to remember.

How does this tie in with anxiety?

All too often, those of us who suffer with anxiety beat ourselves up one side and down the other about all the ways we’ve failed in the past, are failing right now, and will fail in the future. We are never good enough for ourselves. Nothing we do is valuable, because we are so busy worrying about what we used to do wrong, are doing wrong, or may do wrong in the future, that our present moment loses any value that it deserves.

Forcing yourself to step back and look at your day from an outsider’s point of view and search for the important task(s) you accomplished will change your point of view about yourself.

It’s another twist on the whole idea of talking positively to yourself and being your own best friend. And when you take the time to sit and think about it, then write it out, then reread it later, you are being kind and loving to yourself.

In my journal (which I will be making today at some point if all goes as plans) I intend to have a Significant Accomplishment section, a Gratitude section and a diary section. I think it will help me to be more organized with my thoughts and more aware of what I’m feeling, which can only make life better, right?

Here’s an example of what my entry for today will look like:

Gratitude Journal – I am so grateful for the sunshine outside my window! After a week of rain, it is refreshing to see the blue sky and hear the birds. My garden has even begun to grow again, so I am grateful for the fresh rain as well. Also, I am grateful that my sisters trust me with their babies. Baby laughs are contagious. They make me smile.

Significance Journal – Today I hugged my daughter and told her I loved her when she crawled out of bed. This is significant to me because it never happened during my childhood. I am being the kind of mom I want to be.

So, what about you? What are you grateful for today? What Significant things did you accomplish today?

Something that helps me deal with anxiety is crocheting. In the last two days I’ve made three dish clothes and learned two new stitches. (There would be pictures if I wasn’t tired tonight. Maybe I’ll edit this and add them over the next few days.) I’ve found that repitive motions, like using a crochet hook and yarn over and over, really relaxes my head and helps me sort things out. It seems to bring an inner calm.

What works for you when you are stressed?

Oh, and a quick PS – a LOT of people recommend working out to deal with things. I fully intend to implement that technique in the future. Right now, anything I do that raises my heart rate too much has been really scaring me, triggering the I’m having a heart attack train and effectively destroying any benefits from the work out itself. I have been doing yoga poses and slowly working my way back up to a full work out over the last week.

So comment and tell me what helps you so we can all try it!

I have been doing pretty well the last few weeks with my anxiety, although I haven’t been blogging about it because I have been busy trying to catch up on real life and learning how to deal with every day things again. I have had some residual chest pains, stomach problems and moments of high anxiety, but they are outweighed by the strides I’m making – I’m able to drive alone comfortably now, go into busy places without panicking, even sit for a few hours in a group of people and not disintegrate. It was starting to feel rather surreal – I would do something that used to panic me, then sit and wait for the panic to strike, and when it didn’t, I would think, “Wow, I’m really getting better.” I was starting to trust myself again. I was starting to get confidence back and even missed a few counseling sessions to try to test myself and see how much progress I was able to make alone.

As some of you may remember, I lost my babysitting job about three months ago. It happened right as I started the descent back into an anxiety-ridden, panic-attack mess, and was one of the triggers that really set everything off.

Yesterday I got a mini-bomb dropped on me when my brother showed up to drop off my nephew for a job interview he had to go to. I was surprised but happy to see them, of course, since I love my baby boy and and was glad to spend time with him. But after the interview my brother just announced (without asking me, mind you) that he was going to be working the night shift, so he’d bring the baby to me in the mornings, hang out with us for a few hours, then go home and go to sleep and leave the baby with me until my sister was able to pick him up in the late afternoon when she got off work.

It’s not that I don’t want to babysit again. It’s not even that I wasn’t asked, but just told. It’s just that I feel like I didn’t accomplish anything in the three months since I last worked, and now my life is going to be going through another massive upheaval dealing with the baby and setting up new routines, and I just odn’t know if I can handle the stress without getting sick again. I AM doing better, but really, it’s only been about three weeks since I’ve even been able to eat properly; I don’t want another relapse, and I don’t want the feelings of anxiety that go with it!

Last night after they left I really started having bad anticipatory anxiety. I was what-iffing myself to death and almost worked myself into a full blown panic attack over it. My hands started going numb, I threw up, I was sweating and shaking and irritable. It was really terrible. I even became my own worst enemy, because instead of dealing with what I was feeling I started fighting against it, when just gave it more strength. In the end I stayed up all night and then realized this morning how ridiculous I was being.

I started talking to myself in a nice way and working through things. It went something like this.

“No one can make me babysit if I don’t want to. I am a person who has the right to say no. If my family gets upset they will forgive me because they love me anyway. And even if they stay upset, Frankie sees my point of view and will not be angry with me. I’m just avoiding confrontation because it scares me to be out of control and risk losing things. I will be okay.”

“I am fully capable of being a good babysitter. I am responsible and smart. I can handle whatever may come up. It was fun to babysit him in the past. If I choose to do so again, it could be really fun and I might enjoy it.”

“I can take him places with me. Working again does not mean I am stuck at home. Being stuck at home would not mean I am going to relapse.”

“I have a right to an opinion that’s different than everyone else’s and I have the right to make myself heard. I am lovable anyway.”

I didn’t take the time to write all of these down (well, until just now) but just thinking about my options and telling myself I am not stuck or trapped helped so, so much. I feel a lot better now. I was feeling like I was losing control to the anxiety and the situation, which of course made me feel even more scared. Now that I realize I have control and am not a victim of what happens to me, I feel much better, stronger and more in control.

I have had some help in learning to think this way, and two posts in particular went through my mind this morning. this post has some great advice for how to view your anxiety and deal with it. This is a ten step mental exercise plan that helps tremendously, especially step #9. I use this exercise more than anything else, including what I’ve learned in CBT and other counseling sessions. Read it, apply it, memorize it, and use it…it can help, I promise.

Those are my wonderful words of wisdom for today, hope it helped someone!