Keebles World

Contacts are still screwed up, so I had another week off stitching and it wasn't a good thing. I needed the stress relief last week and I had no outlet at all. It seems like ever since I told work about me going back to school, they have been riding me harder than ever. I think they are trying to push me to not go to school by trying to prove that I'm too busy at work, but what they are actually doing is helping me out the door quicker. I just don't have the energy to fight with them anymore. The week may have sucked, but the weekend wasn't all bad. For the first time since my "bad" hospital stay, I went down to the coast (although I didn't go alone, a coworker went with me, but it's still a major achievement for me, so I'm counting it)! We went to Gulfport first and, although I did take my real camera, I haven't uploaded the pictures yet, here's a quickie shot of my favorite kind of pic...my toes in the water (forgive the lack of ...

My contacts were better after sitting in the juice all weekend, but still no-go, which meant no stitching last night (but I really didn't feel like it anyway). Went to the doctor to get my boosters, only I ended up having a 102 fever and full-blown bronchitis (I had no idea, I just thought my asthma was acting up and I had a scratchy throat), so they wouldn't do the shots (oh, and the visit cost $88, three more dollars than the whole ACT fiasco). And I still have to go back again after I'm better, which means another visit and more money! I ended up mentioning something that was completely plausible in one of my work meetings that apparently I was supposed to keep my mouth shut about (a bit of warning would have been nice...I had no clue it was some big secret), so my boss spent the day bringing it up to anyone who would listen that I screwed the pooch. Yea me. Nothing like being made to feel like a worm when you already feel bad from bronchitis (that I really should...

This is almost sad, but I'm going to post it anyway. In my defense, I had a REALLY bad week (as you guys know) and, on top of that, I've been having major contact issues. I can't stitch on 28ct without my contacts and readers. With my eye condition, glasses don't correct the problem...I'm not allowed to drive with them, I can't read with them by themselves (you wouldn't believe how big I have my screen blown up right now), and my eyes constantly water without my contacts in. But my contacts are also gas perms, which means they are tiny, but hard. So I can't sleep in them, and when they irritate, they REALLY irritate, so I'm taking a weekend break from them while they soak in the "heavy" juice. I had exactly one stitching day last week so I went from nada: To a hair past nada: Remember when I said that stitching all that white background wouldn't bother me? I think I might have lied. I also now know where the crappy fabric fo...

Luckily, my shot record was NOT in the duck room closet, but in a secret area where I hide all my important documents, but, as per usual, there was a problem. Not even GOD could read the bloody thing! Seriously! (and yes, I say "seriously" a lot in person too). Apparently, handwriting wasn't big in the 70's, so I can now see what the girl at the college was talking about. I called my doctor's office and they said they would ask his nurse if she had time to try to interpret it and get her to call me, but I got tired of waiting (again, seriously, why are people sooo slow in the medical field? I work in the medical field and I'm not slow). I ended up just calling the health department in the county where I was born and she pulled my old records (although that too took an act of god for reasons I'll explain in a moment) and that record was even worse than my little card. She just recommended I have the stupid MMR shot over again since I'm 47 and my t...

You guys are not going to believe this, but after $85 of non-refundable testing and online training fees and three days of intense stress, I do not have to take the bloody test after all! I'm a total wreck! Seriously? She kept going on and on about the fact that I hadn't had English Comp 1 (which I did in 1988), so I pulled out my old transcripts (which took hours because I was looking in the Duck room closet and I had to move all kinds of junk to get to my file boxes, only to discover it was in my bedroom closet in my file cabinet, which took moving exactly two blankets to get to). I emailed them to her today hence the "oh, OK, you had English so never mind on the ACT test", like it was nothing! Seriously? But for all my talk in the last post, sometimes I forget that a lot of you guys, oh friends of mine, are not from the States and don't know our crappy school system ways and I just blab on and on like you know what the heck I'm talking about! I figu...

Tell me again I'm doing the right thing? I called the college today after I got an email saying that my FAFSA was approved but they had no application for me (which I did last week), and come to find out, I have been accepted, but they are holding my application because I have to retake the ACT! Seriously? It has literally been 30 years since I took that stupid test and I sucked at it back then! So I went online, registered for the test (which cost me more money, of course, welcome to higher education), and now I have to study stuff I haven't thought about in 30 years so that I can take a test with a bunch of kids on April 14th. Yea me! And if I do badly on the test, I have to do remedial classes which you have to pay full price for, but which don't count toward your degree (so you're basically paying for nothing). Granted, they are only looking at the English section on mine for some reason (not sure why), but I'm afraid the girl might have told me wrong...

I started DoNa's Rapunzel last Saturday at 5:00 pm and stopped last Sunday night here: And I finished the row this Sunday night here: I finished an ENTIRE ROW of a stitch project in a WEEK...four pages, 14" of fabric width! And there were two days I didn't stitch at all! Granted, it was 49.43 hrs of stitch work (which was just a few less hours than I worked at my job last week), but that's about average for me because I tend to stitch all weekend long. It helped that it's nothing but large blocks of color...no confetti, no dithering, barely any color switching at all, so it's probably not that great of an accomplishment, but I'm pretty proud, especially considering the mess at work this week and the stress of re-applying to school. I don't know about you guys, but for some reason, when I stitch on my normal 28ct 1x1, I tend to go top to bottom with my rows when I have blocks of color. But when I do 18ct, 2x1, I tend to go bottom to top. For so...

I'm not sure what head space I'm in right now, but work must be more horrible than I thought it was. You guys know I've been talking for a while about going back to school, but talk and action are two separate worlds. Well, I called my college's disability office yesterday and talked to them for a while. I explained that I think a lot of the issues I had the first four times I tried college and failed was due to my Asperness (and money). They have all kinds of help for Aspers as well as scholarships and I felt so much better after talking to them that I not only started my online financial aid applications for THIS fall's semester, but I finished both the aid app and my readmission app to school this morning! I may have made the wrong decision going with a BS in Computer Science instead of a BA (too much science courses...not my strong suit, but I change it later if need be, it's not like I haven't changed majors before), but I'm kind of freaking ...

Yes, I suck and I'm weak because I just broke down and bought the newer version of the chart: I'm still changing dress colors and fairy colors, but anyone who wants the PDF to the original chart, I'm giving it away, so just message me and it's yours. If I have more than one request, then I'll draw for a winner. At least that way the original pattern won't go to waste.

One of the reasons I picked Rapunzel first was because there are things about my Sleeping Beauty that "bother" me. I had always planned on changing her dress from pink to blue (make it blue!), but the fact that my pattern only has two fairies bothered me to no end. I have been debating forever how in the world (and where in the world) I could add another fairy to make it story line accurate. I also planned to change their dresses to green, pink, and blue (for accuracy, as well as their hair color), so that would also affect their placement with the background, but I'm HORRIBLE at changing patterns, nor do I like to change the work of others unless I feel it conflicts with the Disney way (which this one does too much compared to the others in the series). All her other patterns are right: Snow White has seven dwarfs, Merida has three brother bears, etc., so why do I only have two fairies? I was actually going to post this conundrum at the bottom of Sunday's pos...

After 10 long miserable days, by Friday afternoon I was FINALLY headache free. I'm not sure if it just gave up or if being back on Ritalin did it, and I'm not sure I care. It may have been the shock of finding out that our lot rent here at the trailer park is going up $50/mo starting next month! They have NEVER raised it THAT much! Plus, they haven't done anything to deserve it. My neighbors across the street have already moved out and more will follow. I've been here over 20+ years and it happens every rent increase...mass exodus. When I moved out here, the lot rent was $75 and now it's going to be $250 starting in March. My house payment was only $318. Just with the lot rent alone, I'd probably paid for a house already. It's kind of sad really. I still think I'm going to stay here and focus on the school path though (although I had my doubts for a while on Friday). I don't want to pay them this extra money, but I know a degree opens more...