Restful Weekend of Creativity

 Yesterday was a good day. I gathered all of my 6 and 1/2 inch squares that were either denim or not and worked on arranging them into blocks and rows. I really do have a ton of them, but not enough to make one quilt with a good enough color scheme or pattern that makes sense. Making hodgepodge denim chenille quilts to ship to my closest friends out of town for Christmas will be a good way to learn how shipping these will work and get rid of my scraps so I have a cleaner area to start over with. I do have six quilts ready to list for sale, but I’m not sure if 6 is good enough for an Etsy shop. I had a 7th one that my mom gave me $50 for and donated to the church raffle. So I did sell a quilt, but the customer was my mom. The woman who won it is reported to love it. 

Yesterday, I made several blue rows, two blue and gray rows, a red row, and an orange row. The mountain of squares in my daughter’s room is already less. She’ll love that when she comes home for Thanksgiving. 

Kevin voluntarily gave my car an interior detail. I wasn’t expecting that!  He even went to auto zone and got me new floor mats and seat covers. It looks so nice!  Since his car hasn’t been running well, we’ve been using mine. We just got around Friday to taking his to the shop. 

I’m also glad my thumb feels better enough to have done some sewing. I want to be creative in my free time, but my writing is too heavy for the headspace I’m in at the moment. 

There was another instance of a missing grown adult woman who made contact with law enforcement to confirm she’s safe, but her family members keep posting in missing person groups that she’s mentally ill and needs to come home. To me, that’s just infuriating. Since I have this weird fascination with finding missing persons, I follow a lot of their cases on social media. This comes up often. This woman’s family is acting like law enforcement is these big meanies because they closed the case. Well, I’m sorry but that’s what they do if the person was confirmed to be safe. A lot of people are learning that they can cut off their toxic and abusive family members, and the toxic family members end up doing this crap. It takes away from people who are truly missing and in harm’s way, with the idea being, if someone is looking for your grown child who doesn’t want to speak to you because you’re a piece of shit, they might miss someone who’s actually being trafficked.  I took this screenshot from

Charley Project:

Adults who do not wish to be found by certain people have the right to. Although I believe many may not be aware of this, and the people they’re trying to stay away from might claim mental health reasons why you should be controlled, it’s still true that you can walk into a police station and clear your missing person status and not have contact with whomever you ran away from- even if you were a minor when you did so.

With that being said, I have stayed away from social media due to some disturbing news in the Houston area as well. Sometimes the comments are worse than what happened. I still care about missing people, it’s just that all the cases in which the above happens are a little disappointing. 

Halloween Present and Tidbits

Anna sent me a selfie she took getting ready in her dorm for a Texas State University Halloween party on Friday night. I got this picture right after I published the post below with her past Halloween costumes over the years. 

I’m glad my daughter is there. She’s living her best life. I’m a little worried about her mental health when she graduates in 2029 or 2030 when she realizes that her degree isn’t really going to get her the career she believes it will. Hopefully, she’ll be right and I’ll be wrong, but it’s still a concern that I have not shared with her and don’t plan to share with her for at least another year. 

Secondly, I got an idea that will get rid of my fabric scraps, help me learn to ship things I make for when I open an Etsy shop, and give some Christmas gifts. 

My denim chenille quilt scraps are in squares, blocks, and rows as shown below:

 I don’t have enough of each color scheme to make entire quilts nice enough to sell. So I’ll just make really patchy looking ones, ship them to people very close to me out of town who won’t mind getting free quilts that don’t have a good color scheme, and it may be a Christmas gift. I’m working on this all day today, and my thumb injury feels a lot better.  So, I can!  

This also solves the issue of all the scraps I have taking up space in Anna’s room. I ordered these big mailers for shipping practice. 

Wreath Fix

 

This is the fall wreath I made a month or so ago. It's been hanging by my door like this, and has been bothering me. 

It wasn't symmetrical. The lower left of the wreath wasn't as full as the rest of it. So I got out my glue gun and just added two leaves. Much better!  Sorry for the before pic being shown twice. 

Halloween Past

 These were all in my Facebook memories. I don't remember exactly what year each one was. I really miss having a little one! 

Thoughts on Writing and the Next Step

 I know I had a setback over the last couple of weeks, but I'm ready to delve back into writing. I need to start racking my brains in order to remember a small lesson a woman from church gave me once called “Advocates in the Bible”.  She wrote the lesson herself years before she showed it to me, and taught it to me briefly when I was staying at her home between apartments. I was about 23 years old then, and she was a mom figure to me. I often referred to her as my “foster mom”, even though I was grown and not a foster child. To make a long story short, she was a spirit-filled Christian and was diagnosed with bone cancer. Her denomination believed in miraculous healings, and she prayed for one. She believed she would receive one, but didn't. Her passing was what made me sort of “give in” to dating my first husband, Anna’s father. I didn't believe that I really could ever have a partner, but grieving her just made me give up and be like “ok I'll go out with you.”  

Before her tragic passing, though, she did write this lesson called Advocates in the Bible, and perhaps she taught it to others in the past. She and I spent a few days at her table going through the lesson. She went through all these biblical characters and explained how they were advocates of a certain cause. I hope that makes sense. I was a little lost in life, because I really wanted to know what advocacy was, but was constantly told it meant I had to go to law school. An advocate can mean a lawyer, but it means many other things too. 

I no longer rely on the Bible for inspiration, but I did then. Over the past 20-something years since she passed, my faith has evolved. I deconstructed before deconstructing was popular. 

However, in the last couple of years, I honestly hate to say it, but the war in Israel has really caused a totally unexpected wave of deconstruction. Some people say this war started on 10-7-2023, some say it was 1945, but honestly, it started when Joshua fought the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down. 

As I watched the news over the last couple of years, I realized that the stories in the Bible that used to bring me so much inspiration are actually stories of this same war that's been happening for thousands of years. The Queen Esther story was part of this war. When David killed Goliath, we are also taught that it was an inspiration for if you are facing an insurmountable problem.  When Moses went before Pharaoh (as an advocate) and said, “Let my people go”, it laid the groundwork for the following battles.  “The promised land” is used as a euphemism for either the end goal of something positive or maybe going to heaven, but it didn't start out meaning those things.  

Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking a side in a war in a part of the world I've never been to. I've struggled enough taking sides in my own country. I've spent the last year or two listening to the advocacy of Ms. Rachel, the education from Miriam (and the subsequent antisemitism against even her 1-year-old baby girl), and I can't stomach the hate against the innocents on both sides. That's all. 

Going back to those biblical stories and remembering my inspiration when it's now two decades later and I'm learning to associate those stories with current events is going to be really hard. There's no room in my book to talk about the war in Israel since 10/7/2023. I do talk about the crisis of faith in other ways. 

To sort of get back into the spirit of who I was when Mary sat me down at her table and essentially gave me what I wanted by teaching me what an advocate actually was, I've started listening to some songs that I stopped listening to. The main one is Jericho by Andrew Ripp.  It's supposed to be an inspirational song, and it is. The chorus goes, “All of my fears like Jericho walls gotta come down, come down, come down.”  No one is actually talking about what happened in Jericho- we just want our fears and anxiety to come down like Jericho walls. The song is about us, not them. I'm trying to get back into the innocent t headspace I was in when I was 23 or 24 and sitting at Mary’s table. 

Once, right after the October 7th attacks in Israel, I was venting to my mom that this has been going on since Joshua fought the battle of Jericho. Now my mom is very religious, but has never read the Bible. I think that's pretty common for her generation. When I said that, she told me, “I don't know the story of Joshua, but I do know the song.”  I thought she meant the Andrew Ripp song that I mentioned above. No, actually she meant when Mahalia Jackson sang it to MLK.  The fact that we have drawn so much inspiration over the millennia from the battles and wars that led to the events of today is wild to me now. 

In order to write about this effectively, I have to temporarily let go of all the ways in which the current events have clouded my view of the biblical stories in the actual lesson Mary had. Mary lived from the 1950’s until then early 2000’s, so probably never had the opportunity to watch the ongoing conflict live like we do now in 2025. RIP Mary C,

I'll do my best. 

“Ive Been Everywhere”

 Today, my manager introduced me to a song I've never heard before- I've Been Everywhere by Johnny Cash

I liked it, and it reminded me of that time in 2020 when I took off and did these side hustles on the apps and made a lot of money. I went all over nine states plus Memphis, Tennessee (but not into the rest of Tennessee).  I often say I may do it again someday and visit the entire lower 48. We'll see. I thought about copy pasting the lyrics here and answering yes or no to each location Johnny Cash names in the song- did I go there or not during the time period that the apps were my only job?  Here are my answers: 

My answers are in ALL CAPS. I went all over Oklahoma too, and some of these town names sound like Oklahoma. 

I've been everywhere, man

I've been everywhere, man
Crossed the deserts bare, man (YES)
I've breathed the mountain air, man YES
Of travel I've had my share, man NOT YET
I've been everywhere

I've been to Reno NO, Chicago NO, Fargo NO, Minnesota NO
Buffalo NO Toronto NO Winslow WINSLOW, ARIZONA YES

Sarasota NO
Wichita  NO Tulsa YES Ottawa NO Oklahoma YES
Tampa NO Panama NO Mattawa NO La Paloma NO 
Bangor NO  Baltimore NO Salvador NO Amarillo YES
Tocapillo NO, Baranquilla NO, and Perdilla NO, I'm a killer NO

I've been to Boston NO , Charleston NO , Dayton, THERE WERE A COUPLE DAYTONS YES

Louisiana YES
 Washington NEITHER, Houston I LIVE HERE, Kingston, NO Texarkana YES

Monterey NO, Faraday NO , Santa Fe, YES Tallapoosa NO 
Glen Rock NO Black Rock NO  Little Rock YES Oskaloosa NO
Tennessee to Tennesse Chicopee YES, Spirit Lake NO
Grand LakeNO , Devils Lake, NO

I've been to Louisville NO, Nashville NO Knoxville, NO Ombabika NO 
Schefferville NO , Jacksonville NO, Waterville, NO Costa Rica NO
Pittsfield NO Springfield YES, Bakersfield NO , Shreveport YES
Hackensack NO , Cadillac, NO Fond du Lac, NO Davenport THERE WAS ONE DAVENPORT NOT IN IOWA
Idaho NO, Jellico, NO Argentina, NO Diamantina, NO 
Pasadena YES

I've been to Pittsburgh NO, Parkersburg, MAYBE Gravelburg, NO Colorado TOO SCARED OF THE MOUNTAINS
Ellensburg NO, Rexburg NO , Vicksburg, YES THERE AAS A VICKSBURG SOMEWHERE El Dorado YES

Lattimore NO , Atmore NO , Haverstraw NO , Chatanika NO 
Chaska NO , Nebraska NO, Alaska NO , Opeli NO 
BarabooNO , Waterloo NO , Kalamazoo, NO Kansas City YES
Sioux City, YES  Cedar City, YES  Dodge City NO , what a pityNAH IT WAS FUN

Tidbits

This was in my Facebook memories- the picture of my daughter's first Halloween in 2007 dressed as a banana, that I posted below, side by side with the one of me holding her. 

Her expression in the pic of me holding her is like “Get me out of this thing” lol. Baby side eye. 

I did a lot today. We went to a town called Schulenberg and did inventory there at one little quickie store. When we got home, I went out alone and did my own shopping. I went to Walmart and HEB.  I also got an oil change. I bought a bunch of groceries to get back on the healthy eating bandwagon. 

I also somehow injured my thumb. I don't know how it happened, and I do not want to see a doctor. I mean, ideally I would like to see a doctor. But my PCP is a nightmare to deal with. I really can't wait to start over somewhere where no one knows I was ever prescribed gabapentin. I called my insurance to find an urgent care with Xray capabilities. They gave me several locations contact info, but I called each one, and none had X-ray. That process is so fucking maddening. It's the same situation with finding a new PCP. A bunch of listings are given to you but when you call each one, they are not open, or they're really a pediatric dentist, or they're in Arkansas, or always some wild thing why I can't go to them as a PCP like my insurance said. When I tell my insurance company this, they just say “Oh I’m sorry to hear that.”  

And who has time for a million dead end calls like that?  Not me, not this time of year!  So what I did is I bought a box of two finger splints with metal, put the bigger metal splint over my right thumb that hurts at the base. Then wrap it with bandages that self stick around my hand and wrist. And I’m going to work like that!  Yup!  But I do such a good job immobilizing my thumb that the pain is subsiding. A couple days ago, I was alternating Tylenol and Motrin but don’t need to anymore. I take it off in the evenings at home, but I sleep with it and I also wore it while shopping today. 

I have no idea how this happened. I’m afraid that someone will think I punched someone. I swear I didn’t!  The pain is at the base of my thumb- I think when you punch people, you hurt your four other knuckles. But I wouldn’t know because I’ve never punched anyone, and definitely not with the base of my thumb. I also hate it lately when they ask you to rate the pain from 1-10. I’ve seen ER nurses on TikTok making fun of ppl for rating their pain high. They think you’re a drug seeker if you rate it high, but honestly why would you go to the ER if your pain level was like a two?  The rating it from 1-10 doesn’t prove anything, but an X-ray will. Unfortunately, you have to go through the triage nurses before you can get an X-ray. I just don’t want to be entertaining that question with anyone associated with the pcp. Honestly, on a scale of 1-10, my pain has been about a five the last week or so, but is now probably only a 2-3. Immobilizing helps. And why pay $80 for a doc to tell me that when I already know? 

I did some google image searching for Queen Esther, ever since entertaining the name Hadassah (Dassy) as a pen name. Years and years ago, I struggled to learn what an advocate really was. It’s easy nowadays to learn what an advocate is, but things were different back then.  I got an entire lesson from someone called “Advocates in the Bible”. I’ll talk about it on here someday. The person who wrote this lesson has passed away, and I have to really rake my brains to remember all of it. I need to incorporate it into my book called The Child Advocate. Unfortunately, it won’t be possible to do without rereading the stories. Since there’s really not a snowball’s chance in hell that I’m going to have time to sit down and read the Bible any time soon, (not cover to cover like I used to anyway), I’ll just list the biblical figures and then watch cartoons about them. It’s easier. 

At the time, Daniel (from the lions den in the Old Testament) was listed as one of the “advocates in the Bible” and the person who wrote this lesson mentioned that he was my “patron saint”. He actually wasn’t, but I appreciated the idea. I printed a picture of Daniel in the lions den for above my desk for inspiration. At the time, I would have liked to believe that no harm would come to me either. I’m realizing now that harm did come to me, because I have vicarious trauma. Vicarious trauma sucks, but I still have almost no regrets when it comes to working with kids. 

If my main character is named Dassy, then that little anecdote about my “patron saint” becomes much more interesting. (I wouldn’t call it a patron saint though, I’d probably just use the word namesake). Queen Esther actually was an advocate, that's why it's more interesting. She actually did go before the king and plead for a cause. If I recall correctly, Daniel didn't do that much. He just stood his ground. That's important too. But the latter story is more inspirational as it relates to what I'm writing. 

I looked on google images for Queen Esther. I found this one, and I thought- what is she wearing?  If you've seen The Handmaid’s Tale, I mean it looks like she has on the dress of a commander’s wife and a handmade’s robe over it. I like the picture below it better- her hair is longer, her mauve dress doesn't remind me of The Handmaids Tale, and she's “pleading” more.