Lets just say I've been busy...working too much, putting in OT and today I took a mental health day and didn't even have to spend any PTO or comp time...yeah, working too much. Its had me feeling very very guilty about projects for D*C that I have to do and with the Benton. Mommy Guilt has been in high swing with me an I'm not sure what started it but it keeps getting reinforced by Benton, situations with him, comments at his school, my personal struggles with work/life balance, the imp in my head that tells me I'm a bad mom and not suitable for the task, conversations with my husband that make me feel completely inadequate to be a mom etc. I'm sure its all stress etc but its been weighing on my brain something fierce. Nothing like your brain trying to sabotage you.

Work has been so busy that I lost track of a few projects and now they are in critical paths but everyone understood and its going okay now. I've been doing the work of about 3 people due to vacations etc and yeah...crazy but our hardware is getting shipped out so that is good. We just hope to get as good of results with the next lot. (crossing fingers). Things will not be easy with that lot and I have changes that have to be made and I'm lacking the original design documentation from *cough* 6 or so years ago and may have to call they guy who left the company for info and will probably have to talk to legal to do it. Sighs. Oh well. I also gave one of the best presentations of my life for the customer and our program. I realize that most people don't know I can have a "command" presence or "presentation" presence when standing up in front of the brass and thank the SCA for all of the courtly graces I have learned. It went really well. The Captain was very happy and the program manager kept telling me I did well, even days afterwards. So, feather in my cap on that one.

Benton has been making logic leaps of late. He's learning letters now and can recognize them. This morning I was wearing my new Raven T-shirt and he noticed it was like my Luna Shirt. He's been using the potty okay this week though we had a week of poop issues...not sure what is up with that but I think he's too busy to stop and head inside while playing to go. Sighs. He's picking up some words for reading and has been practicing his letters on my ipad app so he's learning. I just need to have the patience of Job and not scream at him when I'm tired and crabby too.

Books...I finished Victory by Susan Cooper #12 of the year. And I'm waiting for mel to finish the next Rivers of London book so I can read it. I've been keeping up on some fan fiction and stumbled upon a Loki AU that is out of this world. Very awesome. Its called Kingverse and follows items from Thor I in an AU where Loki becomes King with Sif his queen...seems not plausible until you start reading and man are you sucked in!!! So good and in Part 6 they cross into the Guardians of the Galaxy which is good. Interestingly enough SHIELD is not really the "good" guys in many ways but the characterizations are spot on for most of them. So good.

Other than that I've been biking 3 weekends in a row with the Road Boars...though I need to see what we are doing tomorrow. I got my bike repaired after and epic blowout where it took the tire out the previous week and treated myself to new tires, tubes and two new pairs of short since my shorts I had were bought well before I was even pregnant...they were old. New shorts are comfy and a bit longer which makes me happy. Have not made it back to the gym but I've been valiantly and to good result eating better, not drinking much at all and that is helping.

On the D*C front I've got lots of things in partial stages. I hope this weekend can get things to almost finish stages. I'm way behind on the Raven items and still need to start the victorian outer clothes but at least the inner stuff is done. I've also been spinning on the spinning wheel for Tour de Fleece and its going well, I need to spool off what is currently on the bobbin to be able to spin the other half since there is only one bobbin for the Country Craftsman wheel. Sighs.



Had an epic monsoon on Sunday which had huge wind gusts and about 1.3" of rain at the house. Took lots of pictures of it and the damage and our neighbors helping out with storm damage down the street.

2014 Monsoon!

So, that is life in a quick update.

Well, my weekend was pretty busy. Friday was dealing with the cats and the vet. We've had to make some changes to the girl's litter box setups and I'm not convinced its working. Time will tell I guess. We were all very tired by Friday night. Little boy has been teething hard on his top front teeth and mel is still getting over his crud. Saturday morning mel got up and ready to head to Bumble Bee Ranch for MWW with the Knights of Hrafn and the his squire. Benton and I had a good day where we played I sewed off an on all day. After his nap we had a good time shopping and we picked up a new pair of shoes for him and a new outfit. I had pulled one off the rack and he looked at it and did his happy noise about it. Other outfits he didn't comment on so the one with little blue monster's going "ROAR" came home with us. (You can see a pic of the outfit here.

Mel got home a bit late and I had sat and worked on Tony's TARDIS mitts. I had ended up frogging them back to the start of the stitch pattern because I couldn't read my own pattern. Lame but true. I'm happy with them now and should be able to work on them pretty well. On Sunday I did a bit more sewing and knitting while mel was in the shop. Benton was a bit crabby by the end of the day and would not take a second nap though he needed it. By the end mel and I were pretty strung out and tired. But little boy has been sleeping good (though a bit of whimpering at night) so that is better than the previous weekend. His walking is much improved and he's been walking across the family room quite regularly. I think all of his effort to move while standing is wearing him out.

Over the weekend I finished #3 book of the year Steal the Dragon and moved on to reading #4 which is When Demon's Walk by Patricia Briggs. I relaly like that these stories are all independent but if you read them all you get a very large at least 40 year history of the area from very different points of view.

Monday dawned early and when I got to work I was working hard when my phone went off to tell me I had a blood donation scheduled. I did my first "double Red" donation. I have to say that is weird and I did not like tasting medical saline all day in my throat. I was really tired afterwards and throughout the whole day. That was normalish but I was wiped. Got home late after working late to make up the donation time and a wonderful lunch with the work husband Pete. Benton was a bit cranky when I got home but it was the "i'm tired" kind of cranky. He ate a good dinner and I guess was out shortly after his bottle. Mel had a nice evening home while I headed to scribble and almost finished a scroll. We all made good progress on things and got to chat with Gael on her new position. The Southern Scribble Hive Mind is weird for lots of people to conceptualize until they see us in action. We all work really good as a team and have a good time doing it. Plus we push ourselves which is also really good.

I got home and mel was getting ready for bed. I was a very good girl and put away my laundry that had been sitting in baskets for a week or so. I need to do laundry again so...maybe I'm not as good as I want to be.

Today is St. Valentine's Day and the Arizona Centennial. Last year at this time I posted this picture :

Of mel at Joe's before he headed off to Estrella. Wow, its been a crazy year since then.

Oh, well, time for some meetings.

Well, I've been sewing for 10 years or so. I'm not bad at it..I know I have lots to learn still but I can do most pre-1400s sewing. So, I was very confident that making curtains wouldn't be a big deal. It really hasn't been but its been going slower than I really ever thought it would. I'm not used to things being this uber precise with square etc. I know, I'm an engineer, I should be exacting with things but honestly, I can turn that part of my brain off for some sewing and I can also tell when things are "good enough" to work and still look nice and be functional for a long time. When I was sewing the podling sweater together Becky (knitting guru) said I didn't need to be so precise on the seaming but when I explained I'm entering it in the County fair she understood.

I had my first foible with the curtain over the closet when I cut the first panel too short. I got that fixed...got the lining in and then hung it up on a temp rod to see what I wanted to do. I've decided to split the panel and have buttons to close it and I need to get the rod up today too. Mel told me what saw to use to that shouldn't be too hard. I'm using the same closet rod section that I cut from for the closet rod so it will be easy-ish. I'll probably need help getting the brackets lined up but I'm going to try to get it up today.

I have not found a curtain rod I like yet for the actual window curtains. I'm going to get the curtain panels sewn and have extra fabric at the top to align it correctly once I get the setup. Anna's Linens closed while I was in the store yesterday due to a computer glitch. I'm looking for a wooden set so I might hit lowes and see what they have. Also on the docket today is some cookie baking and making banana bread. The cookies are for the household to nosh on and the banana bread for us to nosh on next week.

The concrete guys are here to pour the slab for the shop so I was up early. I'm going to be good and take good breaks. I've been getting lots of braxton-hicks (practice) contractions if I'm moving too much but other than that not too bad. Though I'm starting to feel uncomfy in general. Podling was moving around a lot yesterday evening with big sweeping movements that had me going "ugh" but I slept way better last night. I think part of that was that obsidian did not sit outside the door and cry for hours. I also stayed cooler than previous nights by just not covering up so much.

Well, time to get cookies on while its cool in the house.

Well, I managed to overcome a rather nasty sinus headache to go riding yesterday..the headache came back after I cooled down though...need drugs. But I got a ride in, go the coronation photos uploaded correctly* and then headed for ari's for kirtle adjustment and scribal.

Well, The kirtle adjustment requires me to redo half of the hand done eyelets...yup, I know what I'm working on tomorrow. The funky curve that we saw in my back pattern of my kirtle pattern from February has now now evened out to more of a straight line.
( kirtle pattern from feb )

So, we took almost 4 inches out of the sides and 2 inches out from under my boobs. Yeah...go me...but having lots of work now to do...and Stefan got sent out to Yellowstone...so I get to work on a few things myself on monday. Probably cast the weekend after that I guess. Anyhoo...there was much amusement during the taking in of the pattern from Ari and I.

Scribal was fun and it was really good to see ceciliamowebray in attendance. We all had fun. I didn't finish the scroll I was working on...I was almost starting to shade in circles but I stopped and pulled out my A&S stuff and started sketching. I hope to have my sketches done over the weekend so I can start getting things going on that front as well. Lots to do though, lots to do...but at least I got the shapes going for what I wanted and that was important. I can now doodle to my hearts content on the patterns to get them just right.


I woke up at 3am this morning and laid away till about 4am when I decided that I needed more pain killers and a snack. I obviously didn't eat enough dinner yesterday and was starved. The girls were more than happy to follow me around and then when I crawled back into bed they smothered me with warmth and purrs and I fell fast asleep. Course, that made it so I really, really didn't want to get out of bed this morning and I'm still tired. Might see about a nap before the demo but it all depends on when I get out of here and if I can get another ride in. We shall see.

Well, time to get going on things...its gonna be a busy day.

*seriously, why would I have to put things in "manual" mode to make them sort by file name? seriously, someone punch a code monkey!

So, I was still feeling pretty icky yesterday. My brain wasn't firing on even half of the cyclinders and it was hard part of the day. I managed to do a few things around the house after breakfast and a costco trip for the stuff for Knight Light. Then I got over to ari's with my box o' fabric and I got a mintan, an entari and a caftan cut out from my new measurements. It was hard for me to think that way for a while but I got it done...and I only cut one thing out weird. Got home and the boys were having fun in the shop.
I took a break from sewing stuff and worked on my laptop for a while and then got the studio converted from glass to sewing. I was uber happy to take my baby lock out. Its been years since I've been able to use that machine and it just hums away! I got the mintan mostly put together...I'm lining it and that always takes me a bit. I'm leaving it as a shell right new before ari and I do a form fit. But I was happy with the progress and if I work hard I should be able to get everything to finish work by Wednesday. I hope.

Things are shaping up to be odd again at work....or maybe that is still odd. Not sure.

Oh, in other news. Dear Taco Bell, if you really think the Volcano stuff is hot...seriously, that could go up a few notches. Now admittedly...maybe my sinus issues are to blame but I wanted something to clear my sinuses out and it just made it a bit loose. Try again TB!

So by the time I went to bed last night I was feeling pretty good...way better than I had been all week. I stayed up a bit to finish reading #20 - The Ghost and Mrs. McClure which has a Sam Spade style gumshoe who haunts a bookstore. Pretty fun, kinda neat premise and I luv all of the 40's talk.

So, time to get working on the DATA of DOOM!

Well, it was an odd weekend. My motivator was properly in gear and I bike both Saturday and Sunday. It was good...I'm a bit saddle sore but that will get better. Saturday I did 5.25 miles, had a nice cool down while talking to my mom and then had a shower and breakfast with the guys and renee. Then I headed over to meg's for her weekend kirtle workshop. Much hilarity ensued between weavedancer and I trying to get "their excellencies" to be rustled into a kirtle. We left a bit early and headed back to my house so she could play with the indigo pot. I manged to get all caught up on Sheldon and then Ivan and I headed to Thyra's party. Had very nice time there and did some swimming/hot tubbing too. My hips were very happy about that after so much riding. We got home about 1030 and I read and then fell asleep. Mel came to bed quite a while later.

Sunday I got up and biked what I thought was 8 miles but after checking my odometer it was only 7...sighs. But I did it and it was good. I'm still maintaining just under 14mph so not too bad. The new handle bars and positioning are really nice considering I can now post in the pedals and be pumping my way through intersections without feeling like I'm gonna fall off the bike. Got home and cooled down, ate some yogurt and then showered. Headed back to meg's for part 2 of the kirtle class. I did pretty good and only sewed one seam of my kirtle incorrectly. That was easily fixed but I had a borderline migraine going for quite a while and when I had to do a major take in on the neckline I called it quits and headed home to a quiet, cold dark room. Mel was off at a movie with drew so I snuggled up on the couch with the cats and an ice pack. Mel got home and I moved to the guest room for more darkness and finally slept for a bout 2 hours. The girls were piled up with me and I got up about 20 mins before charlie and renee came over for our dinner date. My head was okay..I took more drugs and drank more water to help it. Mel commented that the palo verde's are blooming again and that could be the culprit. Curran stopped by briefly and then left when our guest arrived. We had a very nice dinner of the smoke bbq pork mel did. He made homemade bbq sauce and salad and honeyed carrots. We relaxed back in the family room after dinner and had some drama involving the wash and fire trucks. Our neighbor put out the fire (go rachel) but still had the fire folks come out and check. After showers I noticed the cooler was sounding...off. Mel said he'd check it today. We got up this AM and while packing up I noticed that the cooler was cycling to turn on at 600am. It was warm in the house. Mel listened while it was in its soak cycle and then went outside to see a waterfall off of the roof. I shut off the cooler and he had to put the pulley back on the system and fix the float since it had gotten knocked ascew by the pulley falling on it, thus causing water falls. Course this probably happened last night so we had lots of water loss over night. Sighs.

So, work this week is 8 hour days due to the holiday. I'm stoked to be able to go home, bike 7 miles or so and then clean up the house for scribble. I also need to get my studio up and working for sewing and meg said she'd help with my kirtle. I also need to do laundry. I'm really out of everything and had to wear a skirt today to work. I'm sure the cat calls will ensue when I get on the floor. Other than that it should be a good day.