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and all the trees in the field clap their hands

This month I have been through a lot, to say the least. I spent a lot of time with my cousins and drove around in the fog, in a fog. I bought two pairs of jeans off the internet that fit great, especially one pair was hemmed up by my illustrious momma. I went to Disneyland for seven hours and two baby showers. I saw Black Swan and ate a lot of Handi-Snacks. Readjusting my life has taken some… readjusting. I’m working on it.

I bought this on one of my mall trips:

Stretchy, plastic beaded bracelets, for about five bucks or so. I like the For Love 21 store, the accessory store for Forever 21. It has a lot of cute, cheap, junk that I don’t mind taking apart and making into things that are better:

Furthering my descent into plastic-mania (a long no-no in this household, but a rule I’ve been breaking lately), I bought some plastic flower things from Michael’s in the scrapbooking section and started gluing them on things:

Inspired by that success (I am using Aleen’s Jewel-It glue, which is pretty strong and seems to work just fine in terms of bonding plastic to metal) I ordered a bunch of resin cabochons from Snapcrafty on Etsy.

Those are so getting the glue treatment, believe you me. I love how they make easy statement rings.

I also got a bunch of bezel rings from Michael’s from the Industrial Chic line, which for the most part hasn’t interested me much (I’m not into found object stuff, to each their own), but I had purchased a resin kit at BABE! in November that I still haven’t used, but thought would be cool to try in the rings. I am not sure how that’s going to work at all, but I’m going to try it out later in the week.

This weekend I will be in Sacramento visiting with my friend Margie who is in town for training from San Antonio, and I plan to stop at U Bead It, my favorite bead store, for additional brass supplies to set the cabochons in.

Margie and I went to San Francisco this weekend. I don’t normally go to the city if I can help it, but we had fun. I hadn’t ever been to the Golden Gate Bridge recreational area, so we stopped there and then headed down to Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39, where we went to the Aquarium by the Bay. That was a little pricey but if you’re a fan of the underwater tubes where sharks and fish swim all around, I definitely recommend it.

It’s kind of amazing the sheer amount of things I packed into January. I can’t believe it’s February already.

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Every New Beginning’s End

Despite my optimism that 2011 would be a better year, and outlined how I thought I could make it better by making specific decisions on how I could do that, on January 5th, barely just a few days into the new year, I was kicked straight into a tailspin with a phone call from my sister at 9:30 p.m.

“The doctor just called Mom,” she said. “They’re saying Jason took a turn for the worse – it could be a matter of minutes.”

I had fallen down my back steps that morning. It was a foggy, slick, kind of icy morning, and I took the steps too fast, slipping on the rubber mat at the bottom and landing practically under my car, going down hard on my right knee and elbow. I’d managed to make it into work and through the work day, biting down hard on extra-strength, rapid-relief Tylenols like they were delicious candy.

By the end of the day, I was still in a fair bit of pain, and I knew that I would have to lie down. So when I got home, I did just that, thinking – Jason is in the hospital and I will see him tomorrow. My sister came by briefly to pick up something I had borrowed from her and told me that when she and my mom had been to the hospital that afternoon, he was doing good – better and lucid.

Jason had been admitted to the hospital on Monday with low blood oxygen. I had the day off from work, so I went to bring my mom some dinner when she called in the afternoon to say we couldn’t go to Costco that day like we had planned. Knowing how to circumvent Kaiser’s rather lax security procedures, I made my way past those into the ER and gave my mom a burrito and saw Jason.

I was there for awhile, and he was being crotchety, which was to be expected. At one point he noticed I was there, and said to me, “Hey, Babe! Weren’t you laid off?”

I responded with a “Uh, yeah, but I found a new job awhile ago,” and that was that. Due to lack of oxygen in his blood he was a little loopy but otherwise coherent.

The next day I went by to see him again, but they had put a full face mask of oxygen on him and he was sleeping, so I didn’t stay long. Then on Wednesday I fell down the back steps and went home after work to lie down, instead of the hospital, which was only a few minutes away from my work.

And then the call came. I had been dozing in front of the TV, my knee aching.

My stomach churning, my heart racing, I grabbed a jacket and ran. With a clarity I rarely see, I headed straight to the hospital; it only took me ten minutes on the freeway.

I was the first one there. And it was too late. He lay there quietly. The doctor said they thought a “catastrophic event” had taken him, a heart attack or something like that.

To say that I miss Jason is the understatement of the year. He was my grandfather, but he was also so much more than that – he was my friend, and he was always there for me and my family no matter what. He let me live with him twice. There will be a hole in my heart for him for the rest of my life.

I love you Jason.

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2010: The Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Year

I keep seeing all these posts on other blogs reflecting about 2010 and how awesome it was, and I just can’t bring myself to do the same about the worst year of my life. I mean, the constant cosmic bitchslapping I was given has turned me into a twitchy emotional wreck. I’m so glad that it’s 2011 and I can turn the page on last year’s truly awful circumstances. I have never felt – and still feel – so alone and adrift as I feel now. It’s amazing how a combination of things – getting laid off, turning 30, friends getting married and engaged and pregnant just totally shattered me. I’m not one who openly talks about my feelings (because a lot of times I get the impression people don’t think my feelings are valid, to put it bluntly) but in general, I feel very fragile right now. The new year gives me hope, though – there is always that possibility of new beginnings and new experiences to be had. I just need to make my own path and stop letting these feelings of total inadequacy and being the constant goddamn third or fifth wheel in life get me down.

Last year wasn’t all bad though: here is a collage I made of some of the things I made or did last year that I don’t feel like sticking my head in an oven over.

Look at all that awesome stuff! I am a great knitter and a great jewelry designer. If you’re good at something, own it. I’m also awesome at baking ridiculous cakes.

So, in 2011 I want to try to feel happy, instead of the unsettled feeling of, well, despair, actually, that pretty much summed up last year.

I have some goals in mind so 2011 doesn’t suck monkey balls like last year so colorfully did.

  1. Go to Disneyland with Abby. We talked about going in April, and I think that would be really fun and something to look forward to. Abby’s never been to California Disney, so I also look forward to subjecting her to the Tower of Terror, aka Best Ride Ever.
  2. Buy a new car. I haven’t checked in awhile but I think I can still get a bank draft from my bank, and I can use some of last year’s severance and the trade-in on my current car to get the loan down to about $10k which would only be $200/month over five years. One of the things that contributed to my sheer stress last year was a variety of car trouble on top of an emotionally volatile situation. I refuse to deal with car trouble. I just totally refuse. My car had its last strike last week when it failed to start again. No more. Eliminating car problems from my life will eliminate a multitude of stress. And I can finally buy a car that I actually want. A non-GM car, natch. I am looking at the Honda Fit, or possibly even another truck! And one thing I REALLY want to do is get a car in a happy color, like orange or lime green.  I hope to complete this transaction later this spring. (By June or so.)
  3. Continue to knit awesome stuff only for myself or people who really, truly care about it. This is a really short list, and I think I might just be totally selfish next year and knit only for me – or at least only things that bring me pleasure. That means shawls and socks, baby.
  4. Try to knit & bead only from stash. This actually is harder than it seems, but I think I will have to since I decided to buy a new car and need to save $1000 between now and buying a car. I get a pass at Stitches West, Lambtown, and the two bead shows, however. I’m not sure how going to Michael’s and JoAnn’s will fit into this yet, give me a little time to get financially sorted out, hah. I might give myself an allowance or something; that worked pretty good when I was on unemployment.
  5. Eliminate fast food from my diet. Not gonna lie, December was one hell of a clusterfuck when it came to fast food and alcohol.
  6. Go to Winco more often. Like, at least every three weeks. I’ve saved a lot of money by going here to buy my groceries. I still need to shop around at Trader Joe’s and wherever, but I need to start making the effort to go to Winco more often.
  7. Clean out my closet and bureau of clothes I haven’t worn in a long time. Also, start wearing clothes I’m inexplicably saving for “special occasions”. It’s not like I ever go anywhere, so wearing these clothes is not going to hurt anything. *rolls eyes at self*
  8. Bake a cake every week. I’m going to have to, if I want to use all my cake mixes before they expire, hah.
  9. Try to keep my house clean. I’m a messy person with clutter blindness. That’s the truth. I’m trying to work on it.
  10. Expand my repertoire of dishes I can cook really well. I’m in kind of a food rut. Pasta, burritos, that’s about it. The other day I made a great dinner of meatballs and gravy, mashed potatoes, and Brussell sprouts. Relatively healthy and well-rounded. And so tasty! I need to learn to cook chicken and other meats, like a pork roast, and also stop being afraid of my crockpot.

So, those are some worthy, and do-able things. Some other things I’m mulling over include going gluten-free and learning to sew. We’ll see how it goes.