Quilting, and a mural

So it's been a while. Work's been crazy. Nuff said.

And I've been doing a bit of this, too (not me in the picture):

Our foster, Sweet Pea, is still with us. She's a darling, but she really needs a home of her own. Brindle dogs don't get adopted quickly, so I'm worried about the length of her stay. Plus, I can't take her to adoption sites now that I'm working, so the foster org is trying to advertise her strictly via their website. Oy.

You're gonna laugh at this, but I think I want to learn quilting.

Yeah, I know, with all the stuff I'm involved in already, why add another activity??

But the thing is, I think all my computer work is slowly killing me. I mean that literally. My migraines are worse, my hands are getting shakier and achier, and I constantly feel like I'm in a fog. I'm theorizing that my 14 hours a day on the computer (work and extracurricular activities combined) are probably at the root of it. Just a theory, mind you.

So I want to try out a hobby or something that will pull me away from the computer, yet still satisfy my creative needs without requiring a lot of outdoor time the way my only other hobby does. That other hobby being gardening, which I love, but which is impossible in Texas for eight months out of the year unless you are a fan of heatstroke and fireants.

This year our white wisteria is going all out, by the way.

So why quilting specifically, when there are other options?

I mean, I don't know the first thing about sewing. I signed up for a Sewing 101 class, and the confirmation email said I should bring my sewing machine and an empty bobbin. The sewing machine is no problem--I bought one years ago for some reason--but I had to email the instructor and ask what an empty bobbin was. That's how clueless I am.

But quilting seems like a neat thing to learn. I've always enjoyed geometric designs, and I've been drawing something like mandalas since I was little, since before I even knew what to call them (or that other people draw them too). Traditional quilts play off that geometry.

And from a practical perspective, we use blankets a lot around here, both for us and our bed, and for the dogs.

Anyway, I'll take a few quilting classes and see whether I like it. It means even less time on the computer, but I think for me, that's probably a good thing right now.

Bonus section: Jungle mural, 1997

When I was in high school, me and a group of three other students painted a mural on the art room wall. I was in charge of the birds and a big chunk of the greenery. Here's a Scarlet Macaw.

This is a Quetzal, and the bird below it is a hanging parrot of some type (maybe Blue-Crowned?).

I'll show you some of the rest of the mural, but don't laugh at my outfit, okay? You don't dress up for art class unless you want to ruin your clothes. :)

Me and my art teacher, Mr. Leija, in front of the mural, which covered the art room door and several walls at the entrance to the art room (which was L-shaped):

Zooming out... The mural actually keeps going to the left and up, up, up, but it's all mostly plants.

I wonder if it's still there? The last time I went by my high school, which was many years ago, they'd whitewashed all the other groups' murals, and ours was the only one remaining.

I'm not allergic to dogs

Working two jobs over the last week has been pretty awful for me. Using the computer aggravates my constant headaches, and of course, both my jobs require the use of the computer for long periods of time. So I have headaches daily from about noon until I collapse at nine or ten at night.

On the occasional day that I break from work early, I try to get away from the computer--which means I haven't been blogging or writing or doing much of anything else. Last night, even though I was really curious about the term "shoemaker's children" (used by a New Zealander to refer to his coworkers), I couldn't even bring myself to look it up on Wikipedia.

The headaches are just one of a litany of symptoms that have been making day-to-day operations miserable for several years. I have finally begun to suspect allergies as the primary culprit.

But the symptoms that I'm dealing with are all a bit offbeat (headaches, itchy skin, exhaustion, perpetually swollen lymph nodes, recurring sore throats) and don't sync up to any particular season. They aren't the classic respiratory symptoms associated with hay fever (runny nose, sneezing, wheezing, itchy eyes).

So I've been hesitant to tell doctors that I have allergies, and it's apparently never occurred to my doctors that I might actually have them. Instead, I've been sent to one specialist after another: a neurologist for the headaches, an ENT for the recurring sore throats, and a dermatologist for the skin. It's become a tangled mess of diagnoses and medications.

Thus, I decided myself to get an allergy test to see if I have allergies, and if so, to what. Then I could request a single medication to treat allergies, and this would hopefully kick the crap out of all the allergy-related symptoms at once.

I told my plan to Byrd. Apparently Byrd had an allergy test when he was a kid. Kindhearted soul that he is, he described his horrific experience in graphic detail, then glibly added, "But I wasn't scarred for life, so I guess it wasn't that bad."

Consequently, I arrived at the allergy testing site with shaking hands and dry mouth, under the impression--courtesy of Byrd--that I was about to get eighty painful injections of toxic substances that would cause my skin to blister and peel off. (I later learned he was just toying with me, rotten bastard.)

The nurse must have noticed my tightly clenched fist and my grinding teeth. She patted my arm lightly and said, "Oh, honey, don't worry, it only takes fifteen minutes and I'll give you an antihistamine after that, if you react to anything."

Fifteen minutes later (after an easy test that didn't involve a needle or anything painful), it was pretty obvious I had allergies. My arms had itchy red welts all over them. A passing nurse started to ask, "So how did your allergy test go?" but ended up saying, "So how did your aller--oooooh yikes." My doctor called the results "impressive."

I reacted to the standard central Texas allergens: cedar and oak. Also on the list: perennial rye, Bermuda grass, some coastal grasses, various molds, and dust mites.

The biggest surprise was that I didn't react at all to cat or dog allergens. The doctor retested the dog allergen since I live with dogs; I guess he wanted to be very sure that my beloved pets weren't contributing to my troubles.

The re-test really did involve a needle, and this time it hurt a little (but still not as bad as Byrd led me to believe). The allergen is injected right under the skin in the shoulder area, and the reaction measured. Presumably, even a mild allergy would cause some sort of welt. But I still didn't react to the dog allergen.

So the good news is that I get to keep the dogs! (I'm kidding, of course. I would never give the dogs up just because I'm allergic to them.)

The bad news is that I'm allergic to my house and my yard and basically everything else in my environment. :(

Convenient technology

My fancy new laptop, a brand spanking new Dell Studio and the first brand spanking new computer I've ever had (except for the Apple IIc, about fifteen years ago or so), has a fingerprint reader.

Yes, a fingerprint reader.

As I placed the order online, which involves customizing the computer so that the price is almost always doubled by the time one comes out the other side, I thought, "What the heck am I going to do with that? It's not like I work for the FBI." I briefly considered removing it and saving $50.

Then I decided that I would like, for once, to be the first person in my group to have an interesting new gadget. I mean, my "new" cell phone looks a lot like the first phone I ever got (or rather, my husband forced me to get)--back in 1999. It doesn't take pictures or play songs or any of that stuff. It doesn't even flip open; it's a candybar style. I only just bought an MP3 player this year. Yes, I do have a ten-year-old printer and an eight-year-old scanner. And my digital camera, at seven years old, is just barely younger than Dozer. I often feel like I'm stuck in the early 2000s.

Anyway, back to the fancy new laptop with the fingerprint scanner. As it turns out, the fingerprint scanner not only locks unauthorized users out of my computer, but it also acts as a password vault for any and everything that asks for a login and password.

Oh my oh my.

Needless to say, I have happily set up the fingerprint scanner to log me in to just about everything I sign in to. It's so convenient to just swipe my finger across the scanner and ta da! I'm logged in to my blog, to my credit card account, to my Yahoo! groups...

The horrific side effect is that I now have absolutely no idea how to log in without the fingerprint scanner.

This is a real problem when I go up to my office to work on my desktop. User id and password? I don't remember anymore!

Sometimes I think the convenient solutions offered by technology only lead to new and different inconveniences.

A Really Great Day for No Particular Reason

I think it's bizarre that some days seem to go really, really well - even when it's not a holiday, no one's having a party, and I didn't win the lottery. No, nothing particularly fantastic happened today, but it was still a really nice day.

Today Byrd came home from work early (OMG), we put front porch lights up (OMG), the weather was gorgeous, and I got to see our resident bat swoop around in the evening twilight as we finished up the lights. You're thinking, eh, so what? Consider the following: Byrd worked 100 hours last week. I teased him that the dogs barely recognize him anymore, but truthfully, when he's working that much I feel like I've married a ghost. And we haven't had front porch lights since we built the front porch - almost two years ago. And bats are really really cute and they eat lots of mosquitos, which makes me a HUGE fan of bats, and especially excited that a bat has decided to live in a little decoration on the front of our house. I hope he brings a few friends!

The icing on the cake, though, was that Byrd and I spent almost 8 hours together, made several very important decisions involving money, the house, and his computer, worked on a household project... and despite the fact that home projects and monetary decisions are two things we tend to get into fierce debates ("fights") about, we did not even bicker the tiniest bit today. Not even a raised voice or an irritated tone.

Byrd bought me a plant to kill (because there's no garden to plant it in yet, but I really wanted it anyway) while we were at Lowe's looking at porch lights, and he smiled cheerfully while I pretended to hammer invisible nails into the porch siding (I need the practice). My nickname for Byrd is Mr. No Man, because sometimes it seems like everything out of his mouth is a variation on the word "NO." Tonight was a total change, however. Tonight he was Mr. Yes Man.

In exchange, I gave Byrd the encouragement and justification to order a brand-new computer from Dell. I do admit this was at least partly for selfish reasons... I'm sick and tired of troubleshooting the homemade computer he currently uses. Byrd was thoroughly pleased, though, because his nickname for me is The Tightwad - I hate spending lots of money on things that I don't think are necessary... and Byrd likes to buy some really unnecessary things. But tonight I even let him upgrade his new computer with the more expensive video card and extra memory. At first I was struck by intense fear that Byrd would go bananas when he realized I wasn't going to try to "reason" with him (control him), but he actually exercised extensive self-control during the customization part of the purchase, passed on several upgrades, and even downgraded a few things to reduce the total cost.

After much thought, I've come to the realization that I'm probably too controlling when it comes to spending money. I read somewhere that money matters are the #1 thing that married couples fight about, and we're no exception. I've got to loosen up a little. Byrd and I will probably always have different spending priorities and we just need to learn how to compromise with less fuss and more trust. I know, easier said than done... but at least today we took a solid step forward toward a more harmonious marriage. Maybe that's why today was such a good day!