Remembering

Last night I dreamed of the past... the swimming pool of the school where I grew up, and kids I knew.  Today I thought of my cousins - childhood memories of a place where I was loved and safe. I played on a computer for the first time in their house - I remember the excitement of typing letters and seeing them on the screen! My cousins were a lot older than me... Tracy by 8 years, Ed by 6 years. Their house was not clean, and their dad never screamed. I loved it... I loved the smell of the bathroom, manly soap in the air. I loved the fact that Tracy's room was dirty, and no one cared much.  Their parents comforted me when my dad was acting crazy at family functions, and somehow managed the miracle of being able to take me to Walmart with them. (For my extremely over-protective father to let me out of his sight with anyone but my grandma was nothing short of amazing.) They let me buy something for myself, just because.  I chose a single of Amy Grant. 

Their house was one of the few places where I never remember my dad being angry.  We all tried out their new Nintendo, and even my mom tried Tetris and fell in love with it!  I read my first books about ghosts and other creepy things there, and I was even allowed to borrow some to read at home!

My childhood was complicated, and so are the memories... but its amazing to me how just thinking about their house makes me feel safe. I want to make my house that kind of place, for my neice and nephew, but also just for myself.


 

A Crafty Christmas

In honor of my objections to the spending frenzy that occurs each holiday season, and in honor of my status as a person living in the poverty typical of a college student, I decided to make Christmas presents for the relatives as much as possible.  How did it go?  Wellllllllll some presents went really well, and some... well... not so much. LOL 

The first presents I made were for the neice and nephew.   Flower Girl (almost age 4) got the pink and white scarf, while The Boy (age 2 and a half) got the blue and brown one.  Flower Girl was like "you made this for ME?!?!" lol and The Boy... well... he immediately put it on...

 and wore it through the rest of present time. 

For the family present exchange, I was given the name of someone who only wanted art canvases. How on earth is that any fun?  Well, I asked her daughter what she liked... and was told "dragonflies" I went on Pinterest and found some patterns for beaded dragonflies.  Here are the ones I made for her:

Oh, and what is that in the corner, you ask?  My mom loves holiday earrings and jewelry. I attempted to make her some peppermint earrings... Here is a closeup:

The color quality on my phone was pretty crappy, because the red in the thread was just as red as the red in the earrings, and the white yarn was sparkly. The mints themselves were very very cute... but the attachment to the earrings really sucked. I need to find a better way to do that. I was really disappointed with that one. :( 

What about you all? What were your favorite gifts to give this year?

Privacy and Masks?

So I have found something I really really hate about my future child protection career - we are constantly at the mercy of the media.  In Indiana, this is an even greater concern, as our major newspaper in the state has a long-standing hatred of our state child protection department.  In addition to this, we are never allowed, due to confidentiallity concerns, to defend ourselves against anything the media says.  The media will be able to say absolutely ANYTHING about how I handle cases, and no matter HOW untrue those accusations are - I will never be able to say one word in my defense, because the people I investigate are entitled to confidentiality. (And I agree, wholeheartedly, that people DO deserve confidentiality. It just sucks that there is no way for a social worker to defend himself or herself against anything said by the public. )

So here I am... a user of social media.  A blogger who may one day be put in media spotlight - everything I have done or said suddenly up to public scruitiny. A Pinterest junkie whose Pinterest account, featuring snarky pins about various social work subjects, can easily be found via Google.

What the heck do I do?????  I've contemplated moving to a new blog with no part of my name in the title... but this blog chronicles my life, and I really don't want to shut it down.  I just made my Pinterest account unable to be searched through search engines. I viewed my FB profile like an outsider, and deleted the 2 posts that showed up.

What about you all? How have you adapted to the digitalization of your world?

Bubbles in Dark Places

So you're probably wondering how my vacation is going, and why I am not on here posting more! Well, I think I am suffering from the worst case of holiday depression on record, and I frankly want to pretend that Christmas is not coming, and that most other human life does not exist.   This semester was rough on me... intense semester last spring, classes all summer, and then classes this fall that really just sucked the life out of me.  I did okay... no anti-depressants for the entire semester (trying to keep the body clean of as many chemicals as possible as I try to get pregnant). I was strong, I made it through things that broke others around me... until about 2 days before the end of the semester, when my shield couldn't hold any longer, and everything broke down.  I cried in the office of a professor. I began having panic attacks at least once a day.  I wasn't in a good place. I'm still really not in a good place, actually.

So how am I dealing with it?  Well, first of all, I'm taking control of what little I can, and scrubbing my house until it sparkles.  The bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen are done! That's half of my house!!!!!!!!  I'm sooooooooooo proud of that!  Tonight I will work on the living room so that the floor is clean enough to rearrange my books and maybe even make some new crafts that require floor space.  I'm experimenting with new foods, trying new crafts... and basically "faking it til I make it" for the moment - living like I am okay, and hoping eventually I will be.

In happier news...

Hehe I crocheted mints!

I have also tried to learn ASL and Spanish over the holiday break - trying to study each for at least 30 minutes a day.  Having a blast with the ASL actually, and struggling through the Spanish til I find a funner way to learn. Maybe I'll try reading some of the books I have in Spanish.

Anyway, that's all for now, I'm off to try and cook this recipe along with an experimental chicken dish.

Anxious

After having classes since the last January without any real break, I finally have 3 weeks to relax. Three, whole, weeks. 

So what am I doing? Well, I set some goals...

• Reconnect with God, husband, family, and friends
• Get everything ready for Christmas
• Get my house cleaned
• Make art that speaks to me.

Seems really simple, right?  Yep, it did... until I tried to spend today, my first full day of vacation, relaxing. 

I cleaned out a cabinet, put up laundry, crocheted part of a scarf and 6 ornaments, completed 2 spanish lessons, went grocery shopping with the husband, and had a panic attack.

Just a guess, but this does not sound like relaxation to me? 

Gonna go off of caffine tomorrow, and try to actually RELAX instead of rushing to not squander my vacation.  *sigh*