Quilt Rows

I went through two drawers full of blue and gray denim quilt blocks and pieced them together in rows of 7 blocks. I thought I could make a denim chenille quilt for my Etsy shop that consisted of 7 rows of 7 blocks (all of the previous ones were 6 rows of 6 blocks). I put the rows together, and I realized that I had two different shades of gray. The inconsistency gave me a bad case of the irritation. Here’s the before:

So I took some of them apart and took some of my remaining blocks apart just enough to fix it so it’s all the dark shade of gray. The end result is now only 6 rows of 7 blocks, but still a good size and the colors look more uniform. 

I thought back to my real estate class. It taught that if all houses in a sub division look the same, then the value increases. You may support someone’s right to choose to paint their own house purple, but the reality is that it will bring the value of the whole block or sub division down. That’s why those pesky HOA’s exist. I guess they’re a necessary evil, even though I really wish people could do as they wished with their own houses. Same went with this quilt. I have a better chance of selling it if the rows looked better. 

 

Therapy 👿😾👺

 This evening I had a therapy session. I would like to work through my fear of routine medical tests and the fear that something extremely catastrophic will happen just because I’m happy and in a good place now. I briefly described how I feel, what my goals are for therapy, and how I had extremely debilitating panic attacks for approximately ten years. The therapist had judgmental eyebrows. I don’t know how to describe it. She was knotting her eyebrows the whole time, and maybe she was concentrating. Otherwise, therapy was ok. She convinced me to go for my bloodwork. I’m off Friday and Monday, so I can go then- I just need to find out where to go. So I sent a general message on teledoc saying I looked on my order and can’t find where to go. They will answer in the morning. At least I hope. She gave me a breathing exercise. To me, breathing exercises don’t work well. I didn’t tell her that. I just let her think she was helping, because I feel like I’m going to need her at bay until I’m done getting all these tests. I need bloodwork, a Pap smear, a mammogram, and a colonoscopy. And even those aren’t going to ease my fears because what if I have a brain tumor?  They don’t screen yearly for that. 

I told her that I lost three cousins three years in a row in car accidents. Then two years after the last one, a friend of my mom died of pancreatic cancer and a year after that, the husband of another of her friends died of the same thing. Both of these people were health nuts!  The man ran marathons, and the woman was a yoga teacher. Anything can happen to anyone.  But this therapist said, that’s not a pattern. That was helpful. Catastrophic events do not happen in any kind of pattern, even if they seem to. 

Work is going ok. It’s slow, but still mildly steady. At the end of April we have a big ass busy spurt with a lot of overtime so I’m bracing myself. I found this picture online, and it reminds me of myself in my severe panic attack days  the woman in this painting also sort of looks like me when I was in my 30’s  

Quilts are fuzzy!

Today I went to Brenham, Texas to do some side jobs and wash my finished denim chenille quilts at a laundromat that I know has great washers and dryers. I think the quilts look so cute!  I put the rainbow one on my side of the bed and the other two I bagged up and put away, because they’ll be for sale. 

I also picked a bluebonnet.  

I was tempted to visit the Blue Bell ice cream factory. They are right down the street from this truck stop, and have $1 per scoop ice cream. But I resisted. I’ve been doing great with eating healthy. I’ve lost 25 pounds in the last 15 months. I want to lose about 40 more. 

 

Updates- Quilt and Wedding Shawl

My cat Alex has inherited my wedding shawl. I caught him sleeping on it on my desk one night, and as I tried to take it from him, he gave me a “don’t even think about it” meow. He looks so cute with it, and I’m never going to wear it again so why not?  He is so adorable with it. 

The next thing is that I’ve been doing the clipping on four denim chenille quilts that I plan to list in an Etsy shop. The plan was to have quite a few of them, whatever is “enough” for an Etsy shop, and then take them all to a laundromat together. Once you finish the clipping, washing it once or twice produces the “chenille” fuzzy effect. There’s a truck stop we do inventory at every three months.  They have a large laundromat attached, and kevin and I have used it before. The washers and dryers are super nice. 

The thing is that I can’t seem to want to part with this particular rainbow quilt. I don’t think I want to sell this one. I’m actually sort of attached to it. So I’m just keeping it. The only person I’ll consider giving it to is my daughter, but only for her dorm or my house- not her dad’s house. This quilt is just meaningful to me for some reason. I love how I put something with each color that sort of represents that color. The red row has roses, the orange row has little round sun-like designs, the yellow row has sunflowers, the green row has leaves, the blue row has water, and the purple row has lilacs. Idk I just love it and can’t part. 

The design started when I completed the red and orange rows. The fabric with the roses was a 50% off remnant from Joann’s. The orange fabric with the designs that are sunlike are from a skirt I got on 25 cent day. I remember doing the orange and red rows and thinking,

Hmm now the other colors can’t really be too plain. I have to buy fabric that has a design for each row to kind of keep this going. It was complicated, but I did it. 

 

Reflection

 I decided that I need to talk to a therapist, at least briefly. I have been on an app called Teledoc. You can have actual medical appointments, referrals to specialists, and mental health care including therapy. All of it is 100% covered for me. So it’s great. I went on the therapy section and chose a therapist who has an opening Tuesday April 1 at 2:45 PM. 

I am just scared that now that I’m happy and in a good place in life, that some catastrophic event will occur. Like it’s going to be a devastating diagnosis or a freak accident. I mean I hope not. I know this feeling comes from finally being in a good place after ten years of hellish panic attacks. Hopefully, a therapist can help me work through it and not cancel appointments for routine cancer screenings. Yea, I did freak out and cancel my colonoscopy consult on April 1. I can’t do it until I work through the anxiety. 

Cancer scares the absolute hell out of me. I don’t just lose my cousin Kathy, I’ve lost several friends and family members to cancer. The scariest is pancreatic cancer. One of my mother’s friends and a husband of another of her friends both were diagnosed and died super fast after diagnosis. The same thing happened to Alex trebek, but he lived a lot longer than my parent’s friends. I know people have different preferences, but I’d much rather go in a freak accident if I had to die at all. I’d rather not linger for X amount of months knowing the end is nigh. I mean preferably,  I’d live into my 90’s like my bitchy aunts. But growing old is a privilege denied to many. And I have the basic fear that God is going to punish me for being happy. And not really struggling anymore. 

Hopefully I can work through this and that this therapist is actually as nice as she seems online. God knows I’ve had a few awful ones. 

Surreal

 Being married again feels surreal to me. I can’t believe we actually did it. In fact, Kevin said to me the other night, “Babe? We did it!”  

Yup we did!  When I went back to work at the inventory service over two years ago, I did not do so with any sort of intention of meeting someone there. 

On the day that Kevin and I got married, one of my aunts died. She was not the “most” evil of the bunch, but she was pretty horrible. She was the mother of the cousin I lost last year to colon cancer. She was 94 years old. My mom grew up with 6 older sisters, and now there are two left. My aunt on my dad’s side sent my mom a sympathy card, and at first when she told me about it, I thought my aunt on my dad’s side was sending sympathy that I got married. I had already forgotten. My mom isn’t too broken up over this. In fact the last time she had spoken to this sister of hers that died the day I got married, it was about ten years ago and the last thing she said to my mother was, “Fuck you and fuck all of your sisters.”  Of course I had to ask, does that include her as well?  Was she also telling herself, fuck you?  

It’s been hard all these years navigating all the weird pressure and bad advice I’ve gotten from the older generation in my family. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so hard to believe I’m in the good place that I am now. I saw This clip and had to rewatch it several times, laughing hysterically at it. It 100% reminds me of myself answering to all of my old people, and having them get judgmental with me all these years. 

Old Tunnel State Park

This weekend, Kevin and I took a mini trip to Fredericksburg, Texas and this morning went to the “Old Tunnel State Park.”  The trail here surrounds a bat colony. There is a theater with benches for when the bats come out at night. It was very nice and peaceful!! ☺️