& Now It's Time for Rain

Thanks, Kelly Rae

Kelly Rae Roberts posted this video on her blog today. I think it's a really important message, so I'm posting it here. Please go read her posts here and here to know why she's spreading the message.

Then watch the video:

Then check your skin, please. Here's my reminder from three years ago. You can barely see it now, but I know it's there:

 I was lucky. Very, very lucky. You can be, too. Please.

XO

Something Fun for You To Do!

I've been spending my spare time here lately. I get lots of ideas from seeing his obsessions--with birds and odd guns-that-aren't-guns and animals and robot skeletons and, oh, my!

Today I saw this page, which captivates me. (It won't let me show the image here, sorry.)

So I did this:

You can see where this is going, and doesn't it look like fun? You don't even need a template--good, lord, don't go buy anything! Use the cap from something, or trace around a quarter, or just free-hand it. I happened to have a template, so I used it.

That's all--I just did these, so I haven't played yet. You play, too, OK?

Weekend Projects: Update

Yes, indeed, I have been working on the projects I told you about here, just like I planned. Since we don't grill or have parties or do anything special for holidays, I can get a lot done when everyone else is out of pocket, out of town, away from the computer.

Here's the dress I showed you:

Here's what it looks like now.

I cut it off to knee length and changed out the buttons--I had the absolute perfect ones already, bought on clearance and saved for just the right garment. I really recommend doing this:  buying cool buttons when you find them cheap and saving them. Oooh, remind me to show you my button box, please! But not now--I've got all the photos I want to deal with today.

Better view of buttons:

And then Jest #4. OK, here's Jest #1:

Jest #2:

Jest #3:

And Jest #4:

OK, I've got a pale orange skirt under it, so that longer part you see isn't part of the Jest.

The challenge I set myself with this one was to use only thrifted garments, not yardage. Everything here except the gold panels under the arms is from a garment, and those garments were used in their original colors. The body is from an ankle-length red sleeveless red dress that had--gack!--white plastic buttons. I cut it off and opened up the side seams.

The gold panels--left over from #2.

The orange in the front is the coolest stuff. It was from an ankle-length dress, lined, probably expensive, very stuffy. But it looks like that silk dupioni that's got two different colors for the warp and the woof, so one way it looks orange, and the other way--if you look at it in the light--it looks pink. This isn't like that, but it seems like that, in the right light. (That's how I think dupioni is created; if you know more, feel free to leave a comment explaining.)

The back part is from a fuchsia dress, also long and lined and probably expensive, but it had a tear in the middle of the shoulder. Not a seam ripped out, but a tear as if the wearer had snagged it on something and kept going--a big enough rip that it really couldn't be mended.

The pockets are from a hideous dress--knee length, with a self-belt and big shoulder pads. Aieeeee.

It's got an iPhone pocket. See?

The applique in the back--I think I'll bead it, maybe. It was just to see if I could do it, mostly.

So that's what I've been working on. I've made progress on Rain, as well--she should be photographable soon, just in time for rain.

Some of the Current Projects in The Voodoo Cafe

Slowly, slowly, the energy is coming back. I'm still sleeping a gazillion hours a day, it feels like. I take Nyquil at night so 1) I can breathe and 2) I won't cough all night long, keeping everyone in the house awake. So I sleep heavily and dream a lot. Last night a guy in a navy blue polo shirt and a bishop's mitre leaned over and told me, sotto voce, that he was on assignment from Catherine de Medici. Fascinating dreams, but I wish I'd dream things that were more closely related to projects, you know? Like I'd see fabric stuff and solve problems involving, oh, lining and gores, maybe, while I was sleeping. Talking to badly dressed assassins isn't providing me with tons of ideas for the studio. Or, maybe--maybe it is! Hmmmmmm. . .

Anyway, I thought I'd show y'all some of the things I'm working on. I've almost finished Jest #4 and hope to get photos of that soon--they don't look like much unless I'm wearing them, so I'll get The EGE to take some shots. Today's the last day of school, so he'll be hanging out with me for the next 3 months--yay! Well, not hanging out in the studio--he does stuff in the house and yard, and I do what I always do. Still, I love having him around for coffee breaks and photo shoots.

Here's the current stitching project: Rain. I wrote a Prayer to Mama Goode on it, so when I finish the last stitch, it should start to rain. I was very specific, though, keeping in mind that adage to "beware what you wish for." I hoped to have it finished during the road trip, so we could bring Rain back with us from Dallas, but I was too exhausted even to do that. It threw my plans off a little, but we'll see what we can do.

Then there's this dress from one of the thrift stores. Wish I'd thought to take a photo before I dyed it--I put it in a golden yellow dye bath. When you over-dye a print, you have to take into account all the colors in the print. If it had had, say, purple in it, the golden yellow wouldn't have worked. Orange wouldn't work because of the green. It was pale yellow, some pink-ish, and some green, so I did the golden yellow. Now I'm going to cut it off--probably just below the knee. This whole baggy-mid-calf look just makes me tired. The reason it's so wrinkled is that it's been wadded up in various piles for about a month, waiting on me to do something with it.

Then there's this cool thing. It's a vest, I think. I bought it because it intrigued me. It's cotton knit, which I usually avoid. And it's very oddly shaped. It's open on the sides except for the tie, and that's not going to work for me. I wondered what it would look like with lots of various colors of floss sewn onto it, funky, with the knots showing, maybe. I want to sew up the sides some and then add more stitching and, maybe, some beads. I don't know--it will depend on how much I like it once the sides are sewn.

I came home from a short walk filled with energy and set up the ironing board and took these photos, but now I'm tired again, so who knows how much I'll actually accomplish. Check back, though--I'll do my best to remember to take photos as I go. Or at least as I finish stuff.

And what are your plans for the long weekend? Got something exciting to work on? I hope so--I'd love to hear what you're making! XO

I ♥ Lennie Lulu

Lennie doesn't get as much attention as she thinks she should--she believes she's The Princess and is not impressed in the least with the amount of attention given to that upstart Clarice. So she thinks you should feel sorry for her, you know? Wrong. She gets more attention than most cats anywhere. Yesterday I lay down to rest, and she got on the pillow with me and curled up and put her paws in my hand. Luckily for me, The EGE came in just then and saw Her Cuteness and got his camera. I love this photo. It kind of explains everything about our life.

Cool Skull Beads

So, yeah, I forgot to take photos of the beads I talked about yesterday. Sorry about that. Here they are. Pretty groovy, huh?

 With my helper, of course. She does the vetting of The New Stuff that comes into the house. Everything is still new to her. I'm already wishing I'd bought more of these. What am I going to do with them? I have no clue.

Living Well with Arthritis

Brenda sent me a note asking about the neck pillow I mentioned yesterday, and I realized I never did this post, which I meant to do long ago. I even took the photos and everything back then. I figured, as I always do, that if it's information that's useful to me, it's bound to be useful to a bunch of other people, too. So here's what I've found to be helpful in dealing with arthritis.

Here are my fingers. Not nearly as bad as lots of people's I know, but bad considering I'm not yet 55 and that they're continually changing. The ring finger is the one that's currently swollen and painful. (Since this photo was taken, I've quit wearing most of the rings--I had to take them all off for new X-rays and just left them off. While I think the rings help protect the joints, like bumpers, the chiropractor believes that anything on the body, any alterations including piercings, effects everything else. So I'm checking to see if there's a difference. Sigh.)

I guess I should say that I'm not a Medical Professional of any sort, that I haven't done scientific research, I have not received any grants. I don't play a doctor on tv. I have osteoarthritis, at least in part because my father had it. And because he had it so horribly and because it drastically altered the quality of his life as he aged, and because the doctor who initially diagnosed it in my hands years ago said, ominously (or so it sounded to me), that I could tell in large part what to expect by looking at my dad and how his progressed, well. I set out to learn what I needed to know and figure out how to deal with it without big drugs and surgery. I hope to avoid surgery entirely, and I figure I'll need the big drugs later on, when it gets really painful. My dad had great results with Vioxx until they took it off the market and then was in pain pretty much constantly, I think. So far it's been diagnosed (meaning we did x-rays) in my hands and my neck--those are the only places that bother me a lot. And once you know you have it, what's the point, really, of x-raying and detailing all the places you have it, you know?

OK. So the first thing I always do when anything is wonky, from my energy levels to my digestive system to any pain anywhere, is to check my diet. One summer my fingers were driving me crazy, hurting way more than usual. By then I'd bought the hot wax thing and had tried that twice a day (it felt great while the wax was warm, but there was no lasting effect once I took it off, plus it was messy and tedious) and was doing finger exercises and whatever else I could do without taking NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, like aspirin and stronger RX stuff). I started checking online and found an anti-inflammatory diet, and one of the things it recommended for arthritis pain was to eliminate nightshades. Huh. What are nightshades?

Here's an explanation:
"Potatoes, tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, eggplant, tomatillos, tamarios, pepinos, pimentos, paprika, cayenne, and Tabasco sauce are classified as nightshade foods. A particular group of substances in these foods, called alkaloids, can impact nerve-muscle function and digestive function in animals and humans, and may also be able to compromise joint function." 

Now, most of these are things I don't eat anyway--I'm not a fan of potatoes, for instance, because the nutrients they contain don't outweigh the starch and calories. I like nutrient-dense foods. And my diet pretty much follows the anti-inflammatory diet anyway. But tomatoes! Ahh, tomatoes! The summer my fingers were hurting so much was the summer when both a friend and our neighbors were giving us tons of fresh, homegrown tomatoes. We were eating tomatoes every day, all summer long. Not just one, but lots: we'd cut them up, sprinkle on some onion salt and some pepper, and eat a whole plate full. Yum! I love fresh tomatoes!

But I don't love not being able to type. Or stitch. I gave up the tomatoes (and tomato-based foods, like pizza with tomato sauce (when we do eat pizza, I get the white cheese sauce instead)). And things improved dramatically. Amazingly. Now, please keep in mind that when you're changing your diet, the results aren't going to happen overnight. It's going to take a while. And that's the same reason that it's sometimes hard to pinpoint foods that might be giving you trouble: it's not something you ate an hour ago that's contributing to joint pain. You're going to have to do some sleuthing.

So go google "anti-inflammatory diet" and check out your own diet against the results. It's absolutely the place to start, and not just if you have arthritis.  I recently had bloodwork done to check for RA (rheumatoid arthritis), and the results showed no inflammation in my body. I don't know much about this test other than it shows sedimentation rate. Go here to read more. So apparently my diet is good there.

Then there's weight. I hate talking about weight because I always get grouchy emails and comments from people who are strongly in denial about how important a healthy body weight is. They will suggest that I'm bulimic, that I'm less healthy than if I were overweight, blah, blah, blah. The truth is, though, that you cannot be fat and be healthy. I don't care what anyone claims; I have seen the cross sections of actual human bodies at the Body Worlds exhibit, and--as I have said here many times and will say many more--once you see that fat isn't just something that hangs on the outside of your skeleton but is also encasing your heart and lungs and all your other internal organs, surrounding them and squeezing them and--you get the idea. If you're overweight and find yourself gasping when you climb stairs, don't fool yourself into thinking it's just because you're a little out of shape. Think about what you're asking your body to do, what you're asking of your heart and lungs, struggling inside the suffocating grip of that thick, yellow fat.

OK, so I'm a little fanatic about weight. I believe that the only thing that kept my father mobile at all, even a little, was that he was a skinny guy. Both my parents were. While my mother was malnourished at the end of her life (she was very skinny and had atrocious eating habits, living mostly on toast and chocolate, as far as I could tell, no matter how I tried to change her habits), both of them were always thin. If my dad had been overweight, he never could have lifted himself out of the chair once his joints began to go and the muscles began to atrophy. Plus weight affects inflammation:

"It's not surprising that anti-inflammatory diets have gotten popular, says Elisa Zied, RD, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association and a dietitian in New York City.

While they may have some merit, she cautions: "Individual foods should not be the focus. You need to pay attention to your overall pattern." And reducing inflammation is not just about what you eat, she says.

"Maintaining a healthy body weight is the best thing you can do to reduce inflammation," Zied says."

And inflammation isn't just about arthritis. Go do some reading. Don't be in denial, please. Denial is easy, it's comforting, it allows you to keep on doing what you're doing. But it's not going to make you feel better, and feeling good is vital in allowing you to do the things you want to do. Remember yesterday's post? Go back and read it again, esp. the end. Being as healthy as you can be and feeling as good as it's possible for you to feel--that has to be your priority. You can't do the things you want to do if you feel like crap. You can't take care of anyone else if you don't take care of yourself first. Remember that cliche about the airplane safety instructions? You know: get your own oxygen mask in place first? There's a reason.

My ideal weight is 125 lbs. It's what I weighed in jr. high when I hit my full height of 5' 8", and it's the weight I've hovered around ever since. I've weighed more--a lot more when I first started taking birth control pills--and I've weighed less, but it's the benchmark weight. Today I weigh within a pound and a half of that. It's not an option--it's not something about which I can say, "Oh, it doesn't matter." I can't say, "Oh, what's five pounds?" Which then becomes another five pounds, which then becomes another five pounds. For every extra pound of weight you carry, you're putting four extra pounds of pressure on the joints that carry that weight. (This is something you want to keep in mind if you're carrying hand weights when you walk, as well.) People say, "Oh, you're skinny. What do you care?" I say, "I care because I want to be mobile until I die. That's why." I saw what lack of mobility did to my father's quality of life, and I never forget that, and I never forget that the only reason he had as much mobility for as long as he did was that he didn't have extra weight to try to lift and move.

OK. For those of y'all who are still with me, let's talk about other stuff. Exercise is key. I hate that there's so much I can't do any more--I can't run. Most equipment at the gym makes my neck hurt. Riding a bike puts a strain across my shoulders and neck. The only thing I've found that I can do without causing problems is walk. Not on a treadmill (something about that makes my neck hurt), not with weights (ditto), but just walking. So I try to do that several times a day, walking as fast as I can while still paying attention to posture (relaxed, with my head balanced over my spine--no leaning forward or backward).

Everyone tells me to swim, but that's not going to happen. I don't swim in public pools because, well, in short: feces, urine, and snot. I know they're in there because I've seen it happen, OK? Other people's effluvia is not going to work for me. And building a pool of our own? I can't be out in the sun (the whole melanoma thang), and yada, yada, yada. So walking it is. The thing is to keep the joints moving. My dad was doing sort of OK when he could ride a stationary bike every day, but when he got double pneumonia and was in the hospital for a month, his muscles began to atrophy, and the joints got worse, and everything got a lot harder. I think about that whenever I think about how boring it is to walk every day. Sure, Midland is hot and dry and dusty, and there's smoke in the air some days and the drought has made it ugly and depressing, with dead lawns and scraggly trees. There's no nearby park to walk through, and there are no nearby woods or streams (snort) or gardens. Walking is not always a delight. But being *able* to walk is a delight, indeed, one I appreciate so much more for having seen what it's like when someone has it taken away from them.

Yoga: I credit yoga for much of what I can do. I can sit cross-legged. I can bend over and put my hands on the floor. You know, stuff that you take for granted when you're 20 and don't much think about until you realize you can't do it and don't remember the last time you could. I heartily recommend some form of yoga to everyone. I saw the difference it made in my mother's life when I finally, finally convinced her to take classes. It wasn't so much what she could do physically, not in her case (because she wasn't a convert and didn't come home and work at it; she did yoga only in the class). For my mother, the important part was seeing the instructor and seeing the things *she* could do and then discovering that the instructor was older than my mother was. It gave her hope, I think.

Let me stop here for a minute and talk about my neck. Your neck. If you've got neck pain--not just pain from "sleeping wrong" or getting "a crick" in your neck, but long-term, on-going neck pain, go find out what it is. I had pain for a long time before I got x-rays. I had a big knot on the side of my spine at the base of my skull. I kept going for massages, thinking it was stress, knotted muscles, a kink. Finally my tiny, 72-year-old masseuse (the fourth or fifth one I'd tried) said, "You know, this doesn't feel like muscle; this feels like bone." It was, indeed. X-rays, a complete round of physical therapy, and three chiropractors later, I found someone who can help with my neck (cervical spondylosis). The third chiropractor was the charm, and I go in every 2-3 weeks (we're trying to find the optimal schedule) for an adjustment. It means I can turn my head, and it also means my lower back doesn't ache like it used to. He does the adjustments and monitors any changes; I do the exercises and modify my habits. What habits? Oh, honeys. So many bad habits. Bad posture. Carrying humongous shoulder bags. Wearing Bad Shoes. Sleeping in awkward positions. It all seems like little stuff until you have the x-rays taken, get a diagnosis, and look around online and see what other people are going through because they're not willing to make those adjustments:  big drugs (the doctor who ordered the x-rays wanted to put me on oxycontin), surgery (how many people do you know who had surgery on their neck with no benefits?), braces (please, please don't go out and buy one of those padded cervical collars to wear around your neck unless your doctor has a really good reason for recommending it; those can lead to the atrophy of the neck muscles, which is the exact opposite of what you need to help support your neck. My mother bought one and started using it constantly, and her neck pain grew worse and worse until, in the last year or so of her life, she spent most of her time in bed because having her head propped on pillows was the only way to relieve the neck pain. I don't know about y'all, but I've learned a LOT of lessons from the bad experiences of people I know). Find out what's wrong and then educate yourself about selfcare, treatment options, lifestyle changes. You have to be willing to make the changes you need if you want to feel as good as you can so you can spend your time doing the things you want to do instead of lying in bed hurting. Or taking drugs so powerful they leave you sitting in a lump on the end of the couch, drooling on yourself. I've seen those effects.

And that brings up the other kind of denial, the really tough kind: the denial we all hang onto about getting older. I know people my age who think they should still be able to do the things they did at 20 or 30 or 40. Sometimes this is a good thing: it's good to keep doing things you love. But sometimes it's not, as when you keep running past the point when your joints need it, or you insist on riding your bike to the point of exhaustion and strain. The fact is that your body changes as you age, and you're not going to be able to do the things you once did the way you once did them. You're going to need more rest, more recuperation between events, more selfcare. You're going to have to figure out ways to adjust the things you do so you can keep doing them. Take breaks, stretch, move around. Do I like this? Hell, no. I wish I could still run six miles in the morning, eat an order of nachos for lunch, have a margarita after work, stay out dancing until 2 a.m., eat a bag of chocolate-covered peanuts in bed, have CNN blaring on the tv all night long, and get up the next day and do it all again. Not because I did all those things every single day, but because I could do them if I wanted to, and with no apparent (immediate) ill effects. I cannot do that now, and I will never be able to do that again. Part of dealing with getting older, at any age, is the acceptance of loss. We hate that; we are wired to hate that. Martha Beck, writing in this month's O Magazine, writes about saying goodbye to things and how hard it is. One thing struck me, when she wrote:

"Any kind of ending can leave us feeling 'deserted,' as if our lives have gone barren and dry. It doesn't take moving, divorce, or a loved one's death; we can feel bereaved when a friendship wanes, or our knees get too creaky for racquetball, or we quit a bad habit. . . . 


"'Every happiness,' writes Rilke, 'is the child of a separation / it did not think it could survive.' Conversely, any sorrow can be the parent of a joy we've never imagined."

So. Change is inevitable. It's all the time, everywhere. Our job is to learn to adapt.  When my dad could no longer hold a pen or a fork, I hunted online for solutions. He wasn't crazy about them, and I don't know if he really ever used the pens

or if he used the fork and spoon

once he got out of the hospital, but it was good to know that this stuff is out there. I like knowing that I can order this

for holding the key--something that's getting increasingly irritating.

The pillow I'm using for my neck. This seems to be helping a lot. it was $19.99 at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. If you have a coupon, you can save varying amounts.

 The long part lies along your back, and the little dent where the button is is where you put your ear. The side benefit of this has been that it's FABULOUS for the cartilage piercings: that little hollow keeps the pressure off while they heal.

The cover is removable and can be laundered. I wish they had extra covers, so I could dye some. When I took it off to wash it, I noticed that the pillow already has an open seam I need to mend. But for $20, what can you expect? (Answer: not a whole lot, not any more.)

I hope something here helps someone out there. We get only one life, and being able to spend it doing the things we want to do is so, so worth whatever adjustments we have to make. Sure, it would be great to be eating the nachos and sleeping in the grass in the park and wearing those fabulous 6" heels (like I would know about those from personal experience), but if giving those up means we'll be able to keep painting or sewing or playing the guitar or writing? Then it's worth it. It really is.

XO

What a Strange Trip It Was

For years, on the third weekend in May, we've gone to the bead show in Grapevine, Texas, and to Main Street Days, where there are wine tastings, vendors, live music--Tom Braxton was there one year, which was fun. We missed last year because we were on The Big-Ass Eastern Road Trip, so we really looked forward to this year. Especially The EGE: we haven't been out of town since the quilt festival in November, and that was lo! these many months ago. He misses road trips. So I made reservations, set up things with the cat sitter, and got ready to head out.

Except that, by last Thursday, I knew I was sick. Not just the sniffles, but bronchitis, with its ceaseless, bone-jarring cough. I've had it enough times in my life to recognize it, and it's never pretty. But I was determined The EGE was going to get to have a road trip, so I manned up.

Snort. Yeah, that's what I did. Truthfully? I'll spare you the whining and just say this: I slept all the way to Dallas. I never sleep on the road because it's my job to entertain The Driver. But I slept this time. Just dead, flat-out zonked.

We checked in, went to get food--I put us in the Doubletree Hotel on Central, half a mile from the new Whole Foods and Nordstrom's Rack, where we shop for shoes, and Northpark Mall, with the Apple store--and got wet in the rain. And met amazing people: when I asked the man at the front door if there were a shortcut to walk to Whole Foods (it was right there, but on the iPhone there was no apparent way to get there; turned out there was a big culvert thing, so you couldn't walk straight to it), he told me how to get there through the lower parking garage and then left his post, took us down in the elevator and walked us through the labyrinth to the exit. We thanked him and started walking, and it almost immediately began raining. We decided to turn back, turned around, and there he was in the shuttle van:  he'd gone and gotten it and come to pick us up so we wouldn't get wet. He dropped us off at Whole Foods. Everyone in the hotel was like that. I'd definitely recommend staying there, esp. since we got the $15 upgrade to a Room with A View and had two full walls of floor-to-ceiling windows on the 15th floor. Lovely. And it was less than the La Quinta Inn & Suites of Doom where we've always stayed before. (I'm boycotting that chain, in case you don't remember.)

Saturday morning, after I spend a couple hours hacking and coughing and blowing my nose and fortifying myself with caffeine, we head to Grapevine for the bead show. We park, noticing that there aren't nearly as many cars as usual, and go in. I always stock up from Jane's Fiber and Beads, and we go there first. But they're not in their usual corner. We look everywhere, with no luck. Finally we go back to the front table and ask and are directed to a tiny little booth in the middle. Instead of the people who usually man the booth, people we know and talk to every year, there's a woman we've never seen, harried and not too friendly, with less than 1/10 the usual selection. I ask if she has more beads, and she says, "Everything I have is out." I look at the paltry offerings and wonder why they even bothered to set up here--they're also at another show in another state, and it seems to me that they shouldn't even have bothered to send someone to Grapevine if this is all the beads they could spare. I shopped for a friend and then bought everything I could use: two tubes of size 11 beads. That's it. $5 worth of beads because THAT'S ALL THEY HAD. Talk about disappointing. Sure, I could buy beads online, but beads are one of those things I like to see in person. This year, though, I don't have a choice:  I'm running low, and this is the only bead show anywhere nearby.

We walked around some, but I was exhausted. Plus you know how when you're sick, your brain doesn't work well? It was like that. I couldn't really think and just wanted to lie down and sleep. I did find some way-cool ceramic skulls and bought a bunch of those--you have to pay attention: everyone else was selling these for $3 a strand for the little ones; this guy was selling them for half that. I imagine how irritating it must be to buy and then discover from a friend later that you paid twice what they did.

Then--the coolest part--we ran into Dale Wigley, who spends half the year in California and would have been there now but was in town for the not-wedding of a great-neice, a fabulous story about how this woman was supposed to have gotten married this week and had lost 70 lbs in preparation for the wedding but had finally accepted the stories everyone was telling her about the less-than favorable things the groom-to-be had been saying about her and so had called off the wedding and was having a big party instead. We stood around and marveled at the apparent idiocy of the no-longer-engaged-young-man who sabotaged his future marriage to someone who had just inherited $10 million. Dale has the best stories, always. We talked to a couple more people we knew, and then we headed down the street to Main Street Days. About halfway there--just a couple blocks--I gave up and let The EGE go get the truck while I sat on a bench and rested. Oddly, there wasn't the usual steady stream of people and traffic. When he picked me up and we drove into the middle of town, we realized that Main Street Days was not happening. Turns out it was LAST weekend. Why didn't we check this? Because for all the years we've been going to the bead show, it and MSD have always been the same weekend. Always. So while I checked the date for the bead show, I didn't check the date for MSD.

Yeah: lesson learned. I'll check next time. You betcha. I just assumed they had some sort of arrangement because the crowds drawn by one event benefitted the other. Apparently not. That's what I get for assuming anything.

We went to Su Vino, our favorite place for wine, and had a tasting and bought a case of whites and almond champagne, which is the most fabulous stuff in the world. Getting a case of wine into the truck was way easier than it would have been if the streets had been blocked off and we'd had to schlepp it a mile, so that was good.

And then we set out for Rockwall to hear Asleep at The Wheel, The EGE's current favorite group. He wanted to dance to them, but since there was no way I was going to be dancing, seeing as how walking was really pushing it, we'd agreed that we'd just go and listen. It was a free outdoor concert, part of Rockwall's Founders' Day celebration. So we drove across Lake Ray Hubbard, which I always think of as Lake L. Ron Hubbard, for some reason I don't understand, since I know nothing about L. Ron Hubbard [whoa: even less than I thought; I thought he was like the RonCo Chop-O-Matic guy] and don't even know why I know his name, if I actually do and it's not some other name. We got there in time and started trying to find a parking place. All the "Event Parking" signs seemed to indicate four parking slots in front of a dentist's office, or half a dozen in front of the post office, so there was a lot of driving around the one-way-street-infested downtown area. Finally we pulled in behind a truck parked on a residential street, and another truck pulled in right behind us. We sat there for a while, The EGE with an odd look on his face, the truck idling. He was watching the truck behind us in the review mirror, and finally he said, "We'll just go."

"But, but, but--" I sputtered. Why? We'd gotten here, he could hear Asleep At The Wheel live, we'd found a parking spot. Why weren't we getting out? He said it just didn't feel right, and we were going to go. He'd been watching people watch us as we drove around looking for a parking space and then watching the guy driving the truck that pulled up right behind us, very tight, as if to box us in, and had decided that this wasn't a place we needed to be. I grumbled about what, exactly, did he expect if he's going to listen to a redneck band in a little town in Texas, but I wasn't going to argue. We've been a ton of places in our life together, and generally we've been treated well. But there have been times when that was not the case, and while we like to imagine that in 2011 things are all warm and fuzzy everywhere, we are not naive. I don't remember this happening before, or not in a long time--where he's gotten the feeling that things aren't quite right--but I trust him. He is not a drama king, and if he feels  uncomfortable, there's a good reason.

So we left, drove back to Dallas, got food, and went to the room and ate and went to bed. We'd thought about staying until today, but what was the point? Why pay to stay another night when you're too sick to do anything?  So yesterday we came home. I didn't sleep on the way because the sleeping I did on the way there screwed up my neck, which is no fun, esp. since I'd just gotten it adjusted and put back all good and comfy last week, and now it's wonky again. Because the chiropractor has done such an amazing job with it (along with yoga and a special pillow and blah, blah, blah), I forget what it was like before, when it would catch and I couldn't turn my head. I'm remembering now.

Geez, what a lot of whining! I remind myself of my grandmother, who talked of little but her illnesses and aches and pains and, alternately, those of her friends. I think of that every time I start whining. Not that it stops me from whining, mind you. I'm a wuss. I whine. I like a lot of sympathy.

So I was thinking there must be a lesson in all of this, if you're a person who looks for lessons in all things. I generally don't because my brain is generally too busy with plots and plans to always be all the time looking for lessons, gah, but: I had six hours on my hands yesterday, riding home, not sleeping and also not talking because talking makes me cough so hard I can't breathe. The lesson, I think, is that if you have a good attitude, you can have fun anywhere, any time. Even when things don't work out and you've gotten the wrong date and your plans get screwed up, you can have fun.

Unless you don't feel good. When you're sick or unhealthy or just generally in bad shape, it's impossible to have a really good time. When you feel lousy, that's pretty much all you can think about, since it takes all your energy just to function. Just to breathe. It reinforces my belief that it's worth everything to be healthy--the diet, the sacrifices, the tedious exercises. Of course there are things you can't avoid, but I wish I'd paid attention to that voice inside. You know the one--we're not talking about schizophrenic voices; we're talking about your own little voice. Sometimes I will hear, "I'm so tired. I'm exhausted." But I ignore it because I figure it's just The Slacker Me trying to get out of work of some sort. I was brought up by parents who believed that the purpose of life was Hard Work, and I've totally internalized that. Lucky for me that I found work I love because otherwise I'd either be 1) miserable working hard at a job I hated or 2) feeling guiltily slothful. So when I hear that little voice, I think, "Oh, buck up. You're not tired." Turns out I usually *am* tired, but by the time I realize it, it's too late.

So listen to your body and to that little voice. Take care of yourself, adjust your diet, get more sleep. Anything's possible if you feel good; very little is if you feel lousy. I'm sitting here feeling grouchy thinking about all the things I could be doing if I felt better. I'm not sick enough to lie in bed, but it will be a while before the cough goes away. When The EGE's father was diagnosed with heart disease, many years ago, his doctors told him to be very careful not to get a cold and a cough because the stress of the cough could be fatal. It seems odd until you get one of those coughs that just kind of grab you and won't let go. Then you go, yeah, those are some powerful forces.

Another lesson? Don't try to travel when you're sick. You think you can tough it out, but it's just not worth it. You're spending the money, but you're not having the fun you thought you would. Eh. Better to re-schedule, no matter how disappointing.

OK. No more whining! I finished another project before we left, and I'll try to get photos of that so I can show you~~

I Love Ilona Royce Smithkin, Really I Do

I've showed you this before, but I just watched it again, and I think it's one of the most important video interviews I've ever seen. I love Ilona, and what she has to say needs to be heard by everyone. It's from Ari Seth Cohen's Advanced Style, of course, and you should go there and see video interviews with and photos of other amazing people. But my favorite? Always Ilona.

I Made #3!

Yeah, yeah--I couldn't resist. I finished--well, except for changing out the buttons--Jest #3 and thought I'd share photos. In fact, here are photos from all three--you've seen most of them previously, either here or over at CreateMixedMedia.com, but here they are, all together.

Remember, it all started with this jacket:

I dyed it and removed the collar and sleeves and then went kind of crazy.
It became Jest #1:

 I've got some pockets ready to sew into the side panels. Hope to get that done later this evening, but things are looking pretty booked up, so I may have to do it tomorrow.

Then I made Jest #2 from a dyed linen shirt. I cut off the buttons and placket thing and sewed it up the front in the middle:

I wanted lots of roomy pockets for stuff

Then I had this thinner linen, stiffer and kind of gauzy and see-through-ish, and a similar-weight blouse, and I used them to make Jest #3:

I didn't think I'd like it because I don't like the fabric--it's the Real Linen, $16 a yard, and I got a couple yards just to play with. I like the linen blend a lot better--much better drape. But this is lots of fun, surprisingly.

For this one, I experimented with what I'm calling a handkerchief hem. I have no idea if that's what it is, but it's very narrow, almost rolled, and it lets me do what The EGE calls the Batman-Cape Effect. This is the one the kids in the store commented on--you can see why. It's my current favorite, but that's probably because it's the one I just finished. As soon as I finish the next one, *it* will be my favorite.

I'm switching out the buttons for some old funky ones. I was going to cover buttons with the scraps, but that's too predictable.

I have, until now, resisted Crocs, thinking they were kind of cheap and tacky, with no arch support and not enough footbed padding. But I have succumbed because--of course!--the colors. I bought The EGE two pair--orange and fuchsia--and they looked so fabulous with his dyed stuff that I gave in and got some for me, too. So far I have 4 pair, including these that I got brand new for $4.99 on eBay.