anagram of brat

A little short of the goals I'd set, but not a bad amount of progress, really.

I have a POST but honestly I'm still all up in my feels and can't quite get it out on paper yet. Not thinking about it for now and knowingly, flagrantly sublimating into beading. And maybe baking. And maybe Christmas decor.

I'll probably take pictures tomorrow cause you can actually see enough of the tree trunks to make it interesting.

My end of month goal is half done: 76 trombones in the big parade rows. We'll see if I get there.

Woot! I have gotten to row 44! Which means I'm done with the eye bleedingly difficult top foliage and next row begins tree trunks. I know that just made no sense whatsoever and I should probably repost the pattern but I'm lazy and I want to go bed down with my book and boy.

First the non beading news. River seems to be joining the fantastic dying by degrees party and is grounded until cell23's next paycheck. We're hoping she just needs new transmission fluid and not, oh, a new transmission, in which case a new (to us) car might be in order. Not that we can afford one, but lets worry about that shit later.

In better news, yesterday was all kinds of fun. First some noodling around downtown Greenfield with deliriumdeva and cell23 looking for lunch. We ended up at a Korean restaurant, which was a bit of an adventure considering I'd never tried Korean, but I found a seaweed beef soup that was more than acceptable and I've gingerly tried kimchi and found that it's actually tasty. This was followed by the next stop in our Kidless Saturday Local Brewery Tours. (Seriously, we've been on three now, it's kind of a Thing.) This one was Lefty's - one, I love the name for obvious Reasons, and two, porters seems to be their specialty and porters and stouts seem to be the only beers that don't immediately taste like awful to me. (Another reason these brewery tours are kind of a hilarious thing for me to be tagging along to.) But anyway, they make a graham cracker porter (IKR?) that is more than acceptable, and the only other place that sells it isn't too far away, though I suppose it's not much harder to get it directly from the brewery.

The latter portion of my Saturday was supposed to be a trip down to Northampton to see HMS Pinafore with extrajoker and claxman, which did eventually happen, but due to Spontaneous Social Things, before the show I spent the hour beforehand having a light dinner and a draft cider with deliriumdeva, esotericscribe and avalon616 at the new McLadden's Pub, which I'll fully admit I've rather fallen in love with at first sight. I sorta wish I liked beer more - 101 on tap? OMG. Anyway, after that I met up with extrajoker and thoroughly enjoyed the performance of Pinafore, which I'd never seen live. It was admittedly a bit weird to hear music I primarily associate with Animaniacs and $amusement_park area incidentals in its original context, but the show is so raucously silly that I quickly got past the weirdness. :) After extrajoker dropped me home I found myself over at deliriumdeva's for a bit to wrap up the evening with some of the usual suspects - all in all a quite successful day.

Also I looked damn good:



Serving some American Horror Story Marie LaVeau realness, if I do say so myself.

Today? pajamas, antisocialness and BEADS BEADS OMG BEADS. My wrists are the sore of accomplishment, even if the side of my pinky's still a bit raw - I bought medical tape at CVS last night so that the thread would quit cutting into my finger when tightening it. Crafting injuries are so badass. *rolleyes*

Anyway, just completed row 40. 4 short of my goal for the weekend, but eh whatever, I don't actually want my hands to turn to useless noodles.And I've almost caught up from the several days of little or no progress so there's something.



It doesn't look like much yet because you can't tell that that's the tops of trees without, well, additional context. Also, shitty photo, but meh, I'll do better when it actually looks like something.

And with that, to bed with me.

Just a bead count...

I'm about a quarter shy of being done with row 30, but it's damn late and I don't feel like finishing it tonight.

Today was just full of runaround stupid and I'm really starting to fucking hate Wednesdays.

I had two doctor appointments today. Ugh. Remind me never to do that again. In fact, I'ma go through my calendar and make sure all my damn doctor appointments are spaced at least two weeks apart because UGH. But anyway. This morning was a follow up with Dr Kate about last week's drama (and to dig the stictch from the biopsy out of my elbow because ITCHY). Turns out the lab lost my tissue sample so I have been admonished to come back in the office the second it flares up again and maybe I get a small chunk taken out of a different part of me, huzzah.

At least I have the go-ahead to start weaning off the prednisone, yay.

Doctor #2 in the afternoon was going to my GI for my check in, which I kept because I had put it off a couple times before and I wanted to discuss the rash with him. I was apparently tested for sarcoid before and came up negative (guess I'd brought it up before) so between than and the lost biopsy rash remains a mystery. Game plan for now is to get off the steroid and back onto a regular schedule with my other meds and check back in in 3 months, or before if rash=yes.

I also had to sit and go through my huge file of gastrointestinal fuckery with him because they're transitioning over to digital records and some of my files weren't jiving with other ones. (Turns out a years worth were not, in fact missing, but refiled because I apparently became a different person once I got married. Whut.) While doing this several photographs of my small bowel the night before it exploded cropped up... scary shit I never want to see again.

I had just enough time to scratch kitties and pee before heading back out to bells.... and then home to what would have been a nice evening with the husband and deliriumdeva except Moonbeam peed outside the litterbox in a corner of the kitchen and it was pink. Because great, the last thing I needed at the end of my day was elderly cat UTI. Calling the vet first thing tomorrow, and meanwhile kicking myself for forgetting to put down water for them this morning, and having a good old grump about some folk back home and their unwillingness to take care of cats properly.

After all that the fact I got even one row done of beading seems heroic.

4420 / 25840 beads. 17.105% done!

There were nice things about today too. Bells was good and I like our holiday piece. Drew unexpectedly met me in town for lunch off the Amherst halal cart which was soooooooooooooooooo good. I spent much of my day working remotely from the Jones Library, which was lovely. And I continued to unravel bits of code and put it together better today, so it wasn't all a wash. And now I'm going to have a nice shower and maybe watch American Horror Story before bed.

Here's hoping tomorrow is a bit better.

First day back at work in the actual office in almost a week. And it kinda sucked, honestly - I didn't sleep very well last night so it took most of my effort just to stay awake today. About the highlight of the workday was getting to eat some yummy leftover stew for lunch. But yeah... meh. I was dizzy and sleepy for most of it. Feh.

Also not best pleased by how dark it is by quitting time. Even getting out an hour earlier than everyone else, cars already had their headlights on by the time I got to the bus stop - soon I will have to start flagging down the bus by strobing my phone flash again. Le Grrr.

Things turned around by the time I got home and could work on the beads though. I rather shocked myself by managing to crank out an entire row in 54 min - when I was this far into the Tetris Dance it was taking me 2.5 hours a pop. Clearly I've gotten much better at this in the past year.

Anyway. I just finished row 22. I kinda had to talk myself out of trying to crank out one more because 3 rows in an evening is respectable, and I'd like to get to bed at a reasonable hour and also do some reading since I have library books out that I've been neglecting. I did promise a picture, even though there isn't much to see. as yet.



Interestingly enough, probably because of the light levels and quality while I'm working, but when I'm actually doing this it is VERY hard to tell the difference between the apple and olive greens. You can see it clear as day in the picture, but in progress trying to tell what bead I'm on is kind of murderously hard. I need to get an LED craft lamp or something at some point.

At some point I'm going to have to update my web site with this project too. Bah, lazy.

3740 / 25840 beads. 14.474% done!

Anyway. Crash time for me.

Kids are here. Ye gods, it's good to have LilBeast off of screen restriction, it's a far less tension filled house. Still have to get after both kids for overindulgences with their various screens, but what can you do.

I'm really enjoying Lil'Beast's obsession with My Little Pony. I think obsession is the right word when he refused to get a Twilight Sparkle plush doll because it wasn't a Princess Twilight Sparkle and therefore she didn't have wings. Also he's doing NaNo - only 50 words per day, what do you want, he's six - and what is he writing of course but MLP fanfic. I am dead from cute, though I'd be lying if I didn't also enjoy cell23's various expressions of OH DEAR GODS HELP WHERE IS THE WHISKEY whenever Brian goes off on a tear. But hey, he was also patiently proofreading and offering suggestion to kiddos writing so it evens out.

Miss Kidzilla and LilBeast had collectively racked up about $75ish in Barnes & Noble gift card money over the past year, so we took them out to spend it today. My lord, though it is hard to get these kids out the door for shopping, even if it's something for them. But some fun stuff was picked out and a reasonably decent time was had by all. I also taught the kids how to properly set the table for dinner, which they liked doing and did well at, so I'm going to see about making that part of the lunch and dinner routine at least.

I continue to improve. I still have itchy spots, but it's the uncomfortable itchy of healing as opposed to the uncomfortable itchy of WTF is wrong with me, which honestly is somewhat worse at times. But hey, I can eat and kiss things and people and and talk and it just feels at worst like I stood out on a windy winter day with no chapstick. Still coping with disproportionate emotional reactions to things and apparently my obsession for keeping things clean wasn't just a yesterday thing. Also we've hit that point where I can tell the medication is fucking with my blood sugar because hungry like the motherfucking wolf all the damn time, not to mention mood fuckery. I'm not minding too much - a return of the appetite after its prolonged absence is welcome for the moment, but I have to watch it so that not everything I'm shoveling into my face is pure carbohydrates. I don't want the diabeetus.

Still I hope I can wean off of this shit soon. Starving snapping turtle is not a good look for me.

There is progress on the bead front, fueled by roid mania and the electro-synth-industrial station I built on iTunes radio and have been listening to since Friday. (Aww, the Haven top40, the memories.) Not as much progress as I would like as I had to rip out most of a row to fix a counting mistake I made days ago (luckily I could adjust the pattern quite easily to accommodate most of it so I didn't have to start ALL over) and also to repair a skipped bead in one row, which was throwing the counting in subsequent rows off. Ugh. But luckily the mistakes were in reasonably discrete areas and were fixable, but I did lose about an hour or so's worth of work. Ah well. Some is better than none.

2245 / 25840 beads. 8.688% done!

I forgot to add that I spent a little time updating the php program I use to generate patterns so that it now highlights what row I'm working on and advances to the next with one click. Makes seeing where I am easier and probably helped catch the counting error I made. Bah.

Was just reminded that this week is going to be a rough one - one year ago starting tomorrow (today?) was the week we lost the kids' maternal grandmother. Ouch. Battening down the hatches, since her loss is still hitting cell23 some kinda way.