Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Puckers

My mood lately has been a little like the tension on my sewing machine. A little off. When I sew on lightweight fabrics, the upper tension is too high and the thread pulls. I just don't back-tack so I can pull the fabric out of its pucker then hand-tie the thread.

In other words, I make do.

I've tried to fix the tension a few times and strangely enough, each adjustment doesn't seem to do anything. I can crank the damn thing (bits at a time, of course) and not see a difference. And then I'll just put it back where I thought it was and out of the blue, it will be fine again.

Likewise, my mood is a bit off-kilter. There isn't anything wrong with it, it's just off. Not quite right. I've been in a bit of a funk that feels like I'm blue, but without the sadness. I feel like I'm just a bit off my game, but I don't really know what to do about it.

Except that I feel like I have a migraine knocking on my door. Or rather drilling a pilot hole so it can get a good hold on me. I suspect that the barometric pressure has something to do with this funkiness. I wish I could just pull the puckers out.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

In A Day

What a difference a day makes!

Today I took my dog for a 45-minute walk that took an hour due to grass eating, dog greeting, water play and babying my own knee today. Killing that extra bit of time, the traffic was nonexistent when I got back on the road. I am also having some vague recollections about some kind of warning for this construction, though, I still think it's ludicrous that they didn't start last week.

Then I got on my bike and rode to the library to do some writing. I stopped off at the Hippie Grocery Store and bought a tincture (Maca Magic) to help get my cranky-butt in line with reality. I don't know if it will work. The reviews are good and I'm willing to try. In fact it better work because it was expensive, though the woman at the register says they have a 100% guaranty on their products.

When I rode home, I had three library books and my laptop in a backpack as I climbed our steep hill to our lovely home. I'm pooped. I took the tincture with some water, made some coffee and I sort of feel like I can kick the world's ass if I had to. Yay me!

And our Crepe Myrtle is starting to bud.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Irritated and Itchy

I'm feeling a little more irritable than usual each afternoon. I'm not sure if it's because the chores seem to stack up on me in the afternoons or if my daily dose of sunny-side-up has run out. Whatever the case, the little things set me off more than usual these days.

For one thing, my dog steels food. It's a well-known fact. The trick is to keep the food out of his reach or keep an eye on him. Whenever I leave the kitchen, I look around to see what might be within his ability to snatch and then I move it or mentally relax a bit. That and I make sure I don't leave the dog unattended for any length of time.

Others in my family haven't caught on about that. I'm really directing that at the small children (who are bigger by the moment now) who think that the grown-ups are at their beck and call. If they leave something out (which is all the time) or don't put things away (also, all the time) then magically, nothing will happen or everything will happen for them.

I wanted to make French Onion Soup tonight and I bought a nice loaf of bread to get toasted for the top and some Greyhair cheese for it, too. One of my kids decided that the loaf looked like a good after-school-snack and sliced it up and walked away. Then the dog ran off with it. I may use it anyway, since there is a good possibility my husband won't read this until tomorrow and therefore won't know about the bread until it's eaten. But maybe not.

I was also more irritable about the road construction that is happening in my neighborhood on the way home from school more than on the way there. We just finished a week off from school where the traffic would have been at the very lightest it could be and they didn't start the construction then. No. They had to start the week we're all back to school and don't know about it so we need alternate routes to school at the last minute. Not only that, the next shortest way is going to be blocked tomorrow. I'm going to have to drive all over the place for this little inconvenience. What were they thinking?

Another thing I'm terribly irritated with - and by - is the bout of poison oak. It showed up on Thursday of last week in a little rash on my right wrist. It could be from the previous Sunday's gardening, but that seems like a long time before it showed up. It could also be from my cat, but my daughter isn't getting a rash and she plays with the cat as much as I do. Did I roll around in poison oak while singing to the moon recently?

The problem is that I have it on the inside of my right wrist, the back of my right wrist and a couple of dots on my forearm inside and outside. And on my ear! I have a patch behind my right ear that is also creeping to the front of it and down my jawline. I have several dots of it on my stomach, too. There is a dot of it in between my eyebrows and on my chin. Poison oak face is not fun.

I washed with Technu and have been using (the best) anti-itch cream, which is supposed to dry out the oozing parts. Gross. I know. It makes me crabby. I'm trying my best not to give in to the itches, but sometimes, I just can't help but give it all a good scratch.