Look How That Turned Out

So why try again today?

Bad Wife

Today was the first day all week that I got my husband off to work with a packed lunch. I almost felt proud about that, but sure enough, the broken record piped up immediately with "Well you should have been doing that every day this week. You're a bad wife. You stay at home and do--what, exactly?--all day, and you can't even feed him?"

And now my toddler is crying for gods know what and I can't find my give-a-damn. She has her favorite snack, a sippy cup of juice, two loveys and a video playing, and she isn't happy.

A Good Thing

This one actually took 10 minutes and concentration for me to find the downside: My daughter cleans up after me.

Well, not really after me. She just put something where she thought it was supposed to go, and she was right. Once again, last night, her diaper leaked. We need to go up a size, but we still have the 3s to get through first. When she woke up, I took the full diaper off her, cleaned her up, and took her back to bed with me. I forgot about the diaper, left out on the floor.

Three hours later, I finally decide to put a new liner in the diaper pail (as it has sat empty for two days now; when I take it out, there's still room in the resealable bag, so I've just been taking diapers to the trash can and slipping them in the already-full diaper bag there). Opening up the front door of the pail, I find a small pile of dry diapers in it--on top of the fat wet one from this morning, folded over on itself. Diapers go in the diaper pail, duh.

So what's the downside? If she keeps this up, I'm afraid I'll fall into a habit of letting her clean up everything, and then I'll turn into a lazy slob. Yeah, I know it's reaching.

The More List-y List

Sidetracked when I tried to make a list. I'll either have to update this post, or post updates, because otherwise I'll just revise and rewrite and never post.

Driving. I prefer to drive, because I feel out of control when my husband drives, and sometimes unsafe because "I would have started braking earlier" or something else relatively minor. Just because it's not what I would do, it's wrong. That comes from my father insisting that every detail be done "right," which of course meant "his way". It took me years to realize the difference. I'm afraid I'll be that picky and demanding when my daughter gets older.

My hair. I mentioned this one earlier. Even though I really do have control over it, I insist that I don't. I'm not sure why, or why I would be scared of being in control. Maybe because the person with all the control also takes all the blame when it goes wrong.

Money. It has never been in my control. For a while, before the baby was born, I kept a ledger and paid all the bills, but that's the most control I could pretend I had.

The List

I cut my hair yesterday. Another tooth broke on my hair clip, and I discovered that was the last straw for me. I have hated dealing with the weight, the heat, and trying multiple times every day to get the stupid twist just right to get the stupid clip on.

It's one of the few things I feel I have control over, but even so, I don't really. I foist some of it onto my husband, because after all, he's the one who has to look at it every day, right? Even though he doesn't want "control" over my hairstyle, I still ask his opinion and then give it more weight than he thinks it should have.

I think I get scared when I actually have full control over something.

Perseverance

The Hyperbole Strikes Back

Well, it's been a while. I was supposed to post one thing, every day, that made me happy. It devolved into posting something that simply made my facial expression change, even momentarily, from its perpetual neutral/frownish position. And then I gave up on it entirely, because searching for things like that just made me angry.

Today I can quite happily post under the original intent: Allie's back.

Hyperbole and a Half is one of those blogs that makes me laugh so hard I fall into a coughing fit and end up with a sore throat. A hilarious sore throat. About a year and a half ago, she fell off the internet and made a lot of people very worried, including me. Now she's back, and further along on this "recovery" path than I am. This makes me happier than anything in quite a while.




Actually, I'm pretty proud of myself lately. I finished two baby blankets in the span of a week and a half, and if I choose to send the second to another guildmate, that will make TWO blankets I've managed to finish BEFORE the baby is born. I haven't decided whether to send them both to pregnant guildies or whether to sell the second one; the first is intended for a girl to be born in August, and the other expected baby is due in... errr... November? So still plenty of time for that one, AND with yarn ordered and on its way already.

My worry is that I'll cling to this "accomplishment" for far too long, basking in the self-praise, and not accomplish anything else. In fact, I finished them nearly two weeks ago, and only made two hats since then, one by request and the other just sitting on my shelf, doing nothing.

I still haven't made the effort to take proper photos of these hats and list them for sale online. I think I could get $25 or $30 for the smaller blanket. We'll see.

...And once again, a happy post devolves into beating myself up.

Oh.

A new way of putting what I'm trying to do with myself, I guess.

Noob!

Today I made a rookie mistake while piecing the quilt I'm working on.

Quilt? What quilt?

Well, when I made the mistake of going to my father's house when we were in Georgia, I managed to grab a bag of yarn and the 17 butterfly quilt squares my mom and I made years ago. It was going to be twin sized, since she talked me out of attempting a queen size as my first try.

Two square shapes are sewn right sides together, down the diagonal of the smaller square shape, which is then folded over and sewn into the corner of the larger square shape. Two of those, put kitty-corner to one another, and two large squares without the small triangles create the butterfly quilt square.

The thick black line is the main color. The red line is the butterfly color, placed face-down ("right sides together") on the main color and lined up with the corner. Sew the thin purple diagonal across the butterfly color, then fold the upper triangle down into the bottom right corner. This exposes the "right" side of the butterfly color. Iron the seam flat. The thin purple square just inside the black square is the 1/4" seam to sew the other squares together, so the edges of the butterfly square (now triangle) won't be visible.

I decided to have a finished butterfly square of 8" x 8", so the four main color squares are cut at 4.5" x 4.5" (1/4" seam on all four sides) and the two butterfly color squares are cut at 3.5" x 3.5".

Well, this turned into a tutorial, but that's ok because it helps describe what a noob mistake I made. I'm putting tan sashing in between each butterfly square, like a grid that the squares are slotted into. This is partly to separate the squares in a neutral color so it's not so "busy", and partly to add size to the finished quilt. With only 17 butterfly squares available and no more of the same fabrics to make more squares, it will be a 4x4 pattern, with one square left over. I'll probably make a throw pillow out of that one.

Anyway, I've gotten the sashing onto the sides of the squares, making four strips of tan/square/tan/square/tan/square/tan/square/tan:

What I should have done next is to pin and sew a strip of tan square/rectangle/square etc, like so:

...with four 8.5" x 4.5" rectangles and five 4.5" x 4.5" squares. Then I would iron that strip flat and pin it right sides together onto the strip of butterfly squares and sew them together.

Instead, I pinned each loose tan square and rectangle directly onto the butterfly strip and sewed them down.

Folded down:

At this point I was smacked in the face with "How the heck are you supposed to sew the tan pieces together properly?" I can't fold the sides together, since their 1/4" seams are all overlapping and sewn down. Herp derp.

So I spent the wee hours of the morning (still having sleep hygiene issues) picking out that LONG seam and pinning the tan strips together properly. I'll sew them all together later, then iron them all flat, and then I can sew them onto the butterfly strips like I'm supposed to.