Weekly Stitching and other junk

I know my posts have been short lately, but life is doing that annoying "kicking me in the butt" thing again. It's been a combination of issues that are all unrelated, but even I can only take so many hits.

1. As per usual, work is always shifting my moods up and down. Between all the extra work and hours, I'm exhausted, but I can't sleep because I'm too worried about work.

2. Bam had his bi-annual vet appointment and it cost me a fortune (mainly due to the extra food I have to buy because of Bugs), but Bam also has to have his teeth cleaned which is expensive in itself. But it will have to wait until Bugs has his heartworm checkup in the next week so I can see how much that costs.

3. The crown I popped off in Dallas and couldn't get put back on until I got over my bronchitis is now an abscessed tooth (including the one behind it), so now I have to have dental surgery and have both removed (including a very expensive implant to replace at least one of them). So much for getting ahead of my credit cards and working towards building my house...vet bills and dental surgery equals no credit card payoffs.

4. Speaking of said house, when I showed the plans to my mother, she very blatantly made fun of it's "small" size as well as several other derogatory comments (she had no idea she was stepping on toes, that's just the way she is). Normally, my mother doesn't have the power to hurt me but, for some reason, it walked all over me this time. So, even though I can't afford to build a bigger house, I've been working non-stop in all my spare time to find a better/bigger alternative and I've been driving myself crazy.

5. Even after paying off my mortgage and two credit cards, my credit score managed to drop almost 30 points! How does that happen? It was supposed to go up, not down! Maybe it will take another three months to benefit, but all three credit ratings showed the payoffs and one even reported the drop was due to not having a mortgage! Oh well, with all these new expenses, I guess my two year goal for house building might have to be a three year plan anyway. Damn.

But, anyhoo, I did manage to get my stitching goals finished for the week. I left off on Alice on the B's here:

And, despite all the odds, I managed to finish the row today:

Now, I have three completed rows and the whole project is as big as Bugsy!

Finishing the third row and possibly finishing the fourth one is one of my yearly stitching goals, but for now, it's time to go back to Happy Haunts so that I've got progress to show on The New Stitchy Start Blog. After that, I'm not sure which project I'm going back to. In rotation order, it should be Sleepy Hollow, but May is my horrible work month because I'm covering for someone else and working even later. Because I just finished Snow on Alice and the B's, I'm kind of leaning toward my other Snow White project instead. I guess we'll see after this week.

And I know I'm really far behind on reading blogs and answering emails, but I'm going to try to make some time next week.