Happy New Year

I haven't really thought too much about formal New Year's resolutions yet. So darn busy. As prior I do have some things I'm working on, such as the daily prayers and readings and getting out rosaries, and I think that just might be enough for now. One thing I did find while poking around on the internet is this. www.stpaulsmonastery.org. It's the local Benedictine monastery here. With my change in hours I'd been kind of bummed out that I was losing the opportunity to go to daily Mass if I could, but at the monastery they follow the Rule of St. Benedict so they have the Divine Office going, so I may be able to at least occasionally make it to the Evening Prayers as family obligations permit. Actually, looking at their website I've noticed they have a lot of interesting programs. My prayer style is contemplative in nature and they actually may be a good fit, again depending on family obligations. Ah, the joys of being someone who needs quiet contemplation time and having a very active 6 year old boy. LOL

I went to the Christmas Salad yesterday and it was a lot of fun. Crochet gifts seem to be the thing this year. LOL I gave out coaster sets and scarves for a couple of the kids, and I received a scarf and a crochet top towel. I love it! I directed a couple of my friends to Crochetville, too. After the Christmas Salad, my friend's 2 daughters wanted to come over for an overnight at my house with my son and that was fine with my husband, so I currently have a sleeping 8 year old girl, 6 year old girl, and a 6 year old boy all in my living room on cots in sleeping bags snoozing away. I went to bed while they were still awake, leaving hubby in charge as I'm such an extreme morning person, and it looks like they were up late and had french fries at some point. I'll have to wake them up eventually as the girls are getting picked up at 11, but they look so cute all sleeping. I have caramel rolls all ready to go when they wake up. This I think is the first time my son has had friend's sleep over. What fun!

Gratitude

It's been a heck of a month (when will I learn to post more often). My grandmother-in-law and my friends son died on the same day; GMIL was in her 90's and it was just time, but my friends son was a Marine killed in Iraq. My nephew, who is also a Marine in Iraq, knew him. I went to their funerals. I'd never met Brett's wife before, but she was really nice, someone who I would really like to get to know if circumstances allowed. It was obvious that she and Brett had a deep love for each other and for the Marine Corp. I think the Corp is going to be good to her during this time, especially Brett's Marines.

Speaking of my nephew, he was home on leave from Iraq at the end of November and beginning of December. It was really nice to see him. He brought back tons of pictures and such so we could see what he was doing there. Pretty scary the stuff he has to deal with and was so casual about. He's a communications officer but he does a lot of patrols in support of the EOD guys (that's how he knew Brett, who was an EOD expert). I gave him a rosary that I made and he's going to talk to the chaplain about me making rosaries for his Marines (or any other folks over there who would want them.)

The holidays are usually pretty hard on me because of my depression; this year made somewhat worse by the deaths mentioned above and also with my husband being laid off for an extended period of time. He's still not back to work and it's getting to be a real grind. The money's tight and he's feeling bad so he's been really crabby and mean. It doesn't help that our computer crapped out twice on us and then got a virus, our TV died, and so did our microwave; all things that we really can't afford to deal with right now. If it weren't for help from friend's and family, we'd be a lot more cut off right now.

Something I've started doing to try to counteract the depression is I started a gratitude notebook. It's a pocket-sized notebook I carry around and it which I write thank yous to God. Anytime I think of something to be thankful for I write it in there. I write "Thank you for...." It's really helping me keep some perspective. Some of the items are deep, such as being thankful for my family and friends, but I've also been thankful for things like coffee and indoor plumbing. Whatever pops in my head gets written down. It's gone a looooooong way in helping me keep going and keep an even keel.

I've also been trying to spend a little time with God every day. I'd like to do something formal, like the Lectio Divina, but I have to cut myself a little slack as I tend to overdo things. I try to at least do my rosary and a short daily reading, but sometimes it just sitting there with God, not really doing or saying much, just being.

Crocheted Crosses and Rosaries

Okay.....I've got a new obsession. I've been crocheting crosses and rosaries, and I think I'm addicted. I'll have to dig out the web link for the pattern so you can see what I'm making. I've been goin to town with these darn things. I've been making cross bookmarks, pins, and rosaries. They have a base of plastic canvas, too, so they're stiff. I've been adding ribbons and/or ribbon roses. I'm still playing around with what I think looks nice that way. I've found I really like the look of 6 mm wood beads with the rosaries. I did one with 6 mm faceted glass beads, also. I've had to put an order in with Fire Mountain for more glass beads though, as I don't have enough 6 mm and 8 mm of any one color to make rosaries. Their prices on wooden beads are really, really good so I ordered some of them too in brown, black and natural. Some of those are backordered though. I do have some wooden beads to keep me occupied for a while. LOL. I think the pins and bookmarks especially would make nice little gifties for my Christian friends. I'd like to come up with a similar pattern with a Star of David for my Jewish friends too. I'm kinda challenged that way, so I'll have to work it out on graph paper first.

One heck of a ride

It's been quite the month. I've been totally terrible about coming in here to update, and I know some folks are reading this. Here's what's been going on for the past month.

First, I had to get my depression medications changed as the one I was on wasn't working very well anymore. I also got a new therapist in addition to a new medication manager. Both of them are men, which is a big switch for me. They're both cool though.

Let's see.... The next thing is my grandmother-in-law is dying. She's 92 (I think) and got an infection that she just can't fight off. She was in home hospice for a while, but she's become increasingly delirious and having pain control issues, so she's back in the hospital. I got to see her on her last coherent day. Fortunately, my son also got to see her. He just turned 6 and great-gramma is his buddy, so I'm so glad he got to see her while she was still able to remember him, although she did think there was 2 of him, but he didn't realize that.

The next thing that happened is that I got fired from my job. I'd been working from home 2nd shift and it really was hard to keep my family and work life separated. I'd been just begging to be placed on 1st shift so I could work while noone else in the family was home, but they were unable to accommodate me, and ended up firing me because I had gaps in my work. My production and quality was just fine, but they were looking at my foot pedal activity and there were times when I'd have an idle foot pedal, so that's why they fired me. The funny thing was, I was actually somewhat relieved. I'd been almost hysterical trying to keep up with everything and felt like I was getting pulled apart.

Fortunately for me, I'd just been at that convention and had met the vice president of a national company, so I called her and she sent me the testing materials. I passed the tests and the company hired me. They use the same software I'm used to and I had my expansions saved to a jump drive, so I was able to just import that. Yay! I've only been working a couple days, but so far I really like it. The best part is that I got the hours I need to mesh better with my family and the fact that I'm extreme morning person by nature. I work 4 a.m. to 6:30 a.m., then get the kiddo up for school and get him to the bus. I then work from 7:30 to 1. I'm all done before anyone gets home. It's fabulous. A really pleasant switch to be able to work first thing when I'm fresh and most awake. Just have to kick butt on production, which will be a lot easier without my family bugging me while I'm trying to work.

A couple of days ago I got notification that I had gotten my FAAMT designation. For those who don't know, that's Fellow of the American Association for Medical Transcription. It requires getting points in various areas, such as certification, community work, service for the AAMT, mentoring, publishing, speaking, etc. Basically advancing the profession of medical transcription. It's huge. There's less than 200 people with that designation.

I'm busy trying to get a bunch of crocheting done for Christmas gifts. Money is really tight right now, so I'm making what I can. I have been making thread crochet crosses and a rosary, too. Those will be cool for Easter, and maybe I can get enough done to send with my friend to sell when she goes to craft shows.

So, that's it in a nutshell. Can't say my life is dull.

Here We Go

I'm finalizing getting ready to go to the WMAMT convention tonight. Just have to finish packing and get the CEC forms printed. I can do that on the way. I'm kind of bummed out for my kiddo, though. Since I'm gone tomorrow and DH works really early, gramma is coming to get him tonight, so he's going to miss school tomorrow. At school tomorrow his teacher is getting a blue Mohawk and there's going to be a big rally for the Marathon fundraiser that they just had. He's going to miss out. I just couldn't figure out any way to keep him in school tomorrow, and I just can't miss the convention tomorrow as I'm one of the folks in charge.

Speaking of being in charge, this will be my last obligation for the year for my transcription group. Fun as it is to help out, I've really burned myself out this year. Between all my obligations, having my aunt get sick and die, and trying to deal with my own illness (severe depression), it's been a very long year. I'm going to have to bow out of a lot of stuff for next year and concentrate on getting myself well.

I've finished the tote for my purse swap partner. I just have to line it. I've got another thing done to go with it and yet one more thing I'd like to finish before I send out her package. I'm bringing my crocheting to the convention LOL

Just Stuff

I found out that my church has a prayer shawl ministry, so I signed up for it. Pretty cool. I found a website through Crochetville (talking about sites combining math and crochet) that had a crochet pattern for the Chartres Labynith, so I just had to order it. The website is www.woollythoughts.com.

I'm still plugging away at my purse swap partner's tote bag. It's really starting to shape up nicely. I'm actually almost done with it, but It's going to be a hugely busy week, so I'm not sure I'll get it done this week or not. I do have until the end of November, though, so I have time to get the tote done, along with something else I'd like to make to go with it.

Latin and rain

I've started studying Latin, just because it seems like fun. I picked up Wheelock's Latin and the workbook to go with it, and have started working with it. So far it's fun.

We had some hellish storms here last night. I can't work when it's lightening out, and I ended up having to bail a couple of times. We got a ton of rain, too. I had to unclog a drain outside because the basement was starting to flood. Yay. I'm still recovering from falling down the stairs on Sunday, so shoveling wet leaves at 1 in the morning was not what I'd call pleasant. I ended up doing reports on 2 people who'd been struck by lightening, too. Scary.

I'm plugging right along with the tote I'm making for my swap partner. I'm not going to say much about it in case she reads this, but I really like how pretty it's turning out. I hope it's big enough, though. I'm trying to get it finished ASAP as I've got to ship it to England and I want to have lots of time for shipping before the deadline for the swap.

I went to Hobby Lobby with a friend Monday. It's in Rochester, which is about 50 miles south of me, so it was kind of a fun road trip. They had lots of yarns that I haven't seen anywhere else. The prices were pretty much the same as Joanne's and Michael's. I miss going to road trips with friends. Granted, this was a short trip, but still......

I had to find somebody to watch the kiddo next Friday. DH is going to be working OT next weekend and I'm at the convention. My MiL will take the kiddo Thursday night and keep him for the weekend, so I don't have to try to be in 2 places at once :)