Finished!

Boy, right now, finished is a word I wish I could apply to a bunch of projects I've got here but haven't done much on them - some, for a long, long time now, too. The one I have neglected the most would be the research stuff I've had in the works for over two years now - reading copies of the local daily newspaper from an online database through Ancestry. com in search of bits and pieces of information about the township where I live, along with obituaries, other news items of interest about the little villages and the people who once lived here. I think its probably been at least two, maybe even three months since I last worked on that stuff.

Then there's all the containers I have throughout the house loaded to the gills with fabrics and patterns - stuff I'd like to sew -someday! When, at this point, who knows! I know for sure if I really want to do any serious sewing, I'm going to have to do some equally serious re-arranging of furniture, plastic storage bins, my bed, etc., in my little room. Right now, there isn't enough room for me to get to the chair in front of my sewing machine and be able to sit down there! No, I haven't gained THAT much weight (close, but no cigar there -at least not quite yet), but my dear daughter rearranged the furniture in my room a while back and suffice it to say, it's just not gonna fly if/when I try to get to the sewing machine.

I also splurged last week on a little bit of yarn too - which I desperately needed too, I want you to know. Yeah, right! Sure I did. I only have three jumbo plastic storage totes all nicely sealed up in the basement waiting for me to decide to devote some time to crocheting a couple of afghans, maybe knitting some stuff. But I wasn't that bad last week - only bought four skeins - enough to experiment with some new yarns I saw that were on sale and only purchased enough to make two scarves with this stuff. I already have a great big zippered plastic bag stuff full of the eyelash yarns to use to make those nifty boa scarves with those skeins.

We won't even think about the embroidery project I've been working on now for almost two years - a crib blanket I started about this time two years ago that was intended to be for the little grandson's arrival into the world - which if you recall from previous posts, took place 18 months ago. That project is sorely in need of attention. But somehow, I don't see it as a happening thing for a while yet.

The past couple of days flew by here and all the excitement went this morning when "Poppy" - my ex-husband -had Mandy take him to the airport in State College to catch a flight back to Nevada. Don't get me wrong here - I'm not using the word "excitement" with respect to my feelings there - not exactly - but rather for my kids and especially for little Maya, who took to old "Poppy" like flies on you know what! Last year, when he was here for a full week - in June - Kurtis was way to small to be an attraction to him -he's terrified of handling tiny babies - and Maya -well she wasn't near as advanced then as she is now which made it a whole lot more fun for him being around her this trip.

As grateful as I am that he and our kids have a good, viable relationship now, and also that he is taking so much interest in the grandkids too, it's still bittersweet to see this when I think back that he could have enjoyed the same thing with our kids when they were small too -had he been willing and able to tear himself away from the bars and such back then. He does realize that now to some extent and probably has many regrets of his own there. But you know - at the end of the day - it still is something they missed, he missed and now, the grandkids only get not even a week of his time to get acquainted, to enjoy being around him sober - which also makes all the difference of night and day too.

When Mandy took him to the airport this morning, she had Maya with her. She didn't send her to school today. This was not because of Poppy's leaving but rather because Maya had both of us up last night as she was coughing so hard, crying because of the coughing which in turn caused her, of course, to cough some more. The poor kid was virtually exhausted when she was finally able to fall back to sleep around 1:30 or so but then, woke up again around 4 a.m. with the same issues.

Mandy said Dad had her drop him off at the airport - didn't want her and Maya to come in and sit with him till his flight was ready. She said it was because he didn't want to see her cry but I know better than that. Ok, true enough, he didn't want to see Mandy cry but I'd bet the family farm it was more because he didn't want her to see him cry to leave his baby girl and also, his little baby granddaughter too - who it was more than obviously had moved in and become the apple of his eye. For all his bluff and bluster most of the time, when push comes to shove, he really is a very sentimental slob - almost as bad as I am -and the tears come easily to him now but he still tries to conceal them. That old male chauvinist crapola there again, ya know.

Today, I spent the bulk of the afternoon and all of the evening trying to spruce up my blog, correct somethings I had done incorrectly - like the way my favorites list was showing up before. Thanks to a reader of David McMahon's Authorblog - a guy named "Fletch" from someplace in Portugal - I got information on how to correct my faves list! That much I did get accomplished. However, even though I followed his instructions to the nose on how to fix the way some of my "awards" pictures look on my sidebar, I couldn't get it to work. So now, I'll have to work on that again tomorrow - or rather today since I just remembered it is now almost 1 a.m. and it tomorrow is now today! It's times like that which make me wish I knew and understood a lot more about html and blogging! That's an understatement there as I know nothing about either faction so it takes me two to three times longer to get anything figured out then.

You would think though since I no longer work outside the home - all I do is watch the grandkids while Mandy and Bill work, try to come up with some reasonable meal for supper, occasionally do a few little things around the house and then, play on the computer, that I should be able to be well enough organized to get other projects completed now wouldn't you? Computers are supposed to be a great tool to enable us to do lots more things and much faster too - right? WRONG! It' s all a bunch of diversionary tactics that take place, led us - well, me anyway - astray from what we probably should be doing.

I think back to all the various things I somehow managed to accomplish in a day's time when my kids were young, when I was working full-time as well as running a pretty large Avon sales route too, cooking a big meal every night, tons of laundry, a little cleaning here and there and now, I can't manage the little bit that is on my plate here daily. I was reminded of all the craziness of the schedule I used to keep back then and for many years too - until December of 2003 -when I was reading Molly Gras blog tonight. If you really want to tire yourself out before heading to bed, read her post for Wednesday evening and you'll be reaching for the vitamin bottles to try to pump up some extra energy! It's titled "Free Verse Frenzy" and boy, after reading that, I decided that I am a total slacker these days or just really, really disorganized. Ok, could easily be a combination of both at play there I suppose.

So tomorrow (or will that tomorrow be today?) I'm really going to have to take the old bull by the horns, make some changes, and get my fat self busy! First up will be doing one more technorati authority grabber early tomorrow, and then when that is done, I'm going to start rearranging my life style.

All of this - just so I can get SOMETHING -anything - finished!