Month: March 2021

Morning, have decided to share about my index tab system with you all.

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I have tabs for the days of the week, the months of the year, and then 2 sets of 31 day cards that I rotate through. Then there are the topics.

Lets talk about the days of the week first. I have certain things that I do every Monday. So, I write down a card for those tasks, and on fibro fog days, I can look at those and have a glimmer of an idea of what to do.

In the monthly tabs, in January certain once a year bills are due. Or say every March there is a VIP event happening. I write down those and put them in their corresponding month.

The 1-31 cards get rotated through the months. So say in a phone call with my sister, she tells me that Dad has a Dr appoinment next month on the 6th, and she wants me to drive. I look at the 6th of April, and see that it isn’t open. I let her know that I can’t.

There are 2 sets of 1-31 cards, so that I can rotate them. So for today’s tab, I put it in May at the end of the day. So far, May has tabs 1-29 in it, because at the end of the day, I move the tab forward.

I have a set of A-Z tabs, for addresses. I keep them there instead of address books, because for many folks, I only have a name and phone number, or email address. This way, when someone moves, passes on or the like, I can remove their card when I am able, not cross them out. I sometimes line the card with a black edge, until I am able to remove it.

Other info that can go on an address card is birthdays, or recovery dates. I love being able to text someone on their birthday, or to call and bug them.

Now for topic cards.

I use a MRC tab. There are cards in there for the automatic payments, with an estimated date those payments come out and the amount.

I have a passwords tab. I used to use a book or sheet of paper for that, but they feel much safer lost amongst the mother ship of cards. Also, as I update passwords, I can change them easily.

I have topics that I want to study, knit stitches that strike me, goals, ideas, prayers, shopping lists, recipes (duh), a yarn stash tab, a library tab, with sub tabs for recovery, knitting/crochet, and religion as well as fiction.

There are inspiration tabs, quotes, (I mine Adam Savage like gold from his videos.) Things that make me smile, things that bring joy (the only thing from that Kondo person that I kept) and a WIP’s tab.

Other topics I included were sewing, knitting, crochet, and WTF aka oFFS!

I’m not telling all of the tabs I use, because that’s not the scope of the blog post. I just want to light a fire under your tail.

Service work gets it’s own box. I originally kept it together in the mother ship box, but then I missed the important parts of my personal life for the service work.

Yes, service work is important, and it keeps me clean. However, I needed desperately to have me time. So, I had to relegate those cards and tabs elsewhere. Those tabs include recovery contacts, meeting lists, and tasks to do with the service board I am a member of.

That’s about it. Hugs, love you all. Take care, -L

Hello all, amd settled in with a hot cuppa on my right, and a liter jug of iced tea on my left. I should have enough caffeinated goodness coursing through my veins to make me vibrate.

Sadly, I just don’t. Soon enough the joy will go away, and I will need to sleep again. Sighs. Anywho.

I learned almost by accident that my tablet will work with a standard computer mouse and keyboard. I now do 90% of the webwork I do via these methods. I had bought a usb-c adapter, and then one of those bluetooth keyboard and mouse combos.

I do my blog, the 2 websites I update regularly, and all of my social media via this method now. It’s a happy thing for this lunatic.

The only crisis? I have to disconnect to charge the device. I don’t want to screw up things by running a charging cord and the dongle at the same time.

That said, it’s a lovely day. I’ve been tempted to grab my knits and head outside, but that rain stuff puts a damper on things.

Hugs, -L

Morning all, have been trying to keep on keeping on lately, but have been cornfuzzled more than not. I was up until 2 because I just had so much to do.

I finished the external pockets, and I enjoy them. There are some pattern changes I’m going to make. These are modeled after what a youtuber posted for external pockets, without embellishment. I did use ribbon for the waistband, but that’s about it.

I got sick and tired of not having my phone or whatnots with me when I needed them. And since most of my outfits don’t have pockets, this is my homegrown answer. I made 3, one for the cellulary device, one for smokes and lighters, and one for kleenex and the whatnots.

I’m still working on the Pi Shawl. When our stimulus check arrives I’m going to switch to 60 inch circular needles. I need 5 of them to make the project work. The big reason for this is that I am now on 9 needles, and I feel like I’m being eaten by an Octopus each time I pick up the yarny deliciousness that is this shawl.

I have made a drastic underestimation. Each color band is going to be much shorter than the 3 inches I thought it would be. I may have to use 2 10 inch skeins per color band to make it right. However, I am tempted to leave it as is. To have the color segments be natural.

My sewing machine has been staring at me with a scowl on her face. I mucked up the sewing on those pockets, and went to hand stitching. She knows I need to reinforce the stitching on a couple of the seams, and is in the corner pouting because of it. Oh well.

One of the websites I work on needed renewing today. I sat with the owner out in the sunshine and blinked quite a bit from the heat wave we are going through. This time of year, a heatwave is almost anything over 40*. I can’t believe how lovely it was to sit outside. If the trend continues, I’m going to have to grab my needles and relax in the sunshine before bed.

The hubs made a cake the other day. He has been on a chocolate kick lately. Normally, he makes it 2 layers, but one of the layers ended up a charcoal brick, not a lovely light and fluffy sponge. Sighs. I am still mourning the cake that could have been.

I think our oven got it’s attitude from Ms Singer, who is still snippy with me. She, the oven is the Hubs domain, unless it involved cinnamon rolls or certain pizza ideals. I often wonder if the oven is frustrated with his ministrations. Yet, I’m not in the mood to fight our tiny kitchen from the wheelchair and see. The hubs has the kitchen set up for a stander, not a sitter.

He is learning though. Sometimes, he will make a soup or stew, go to bed, and it is mysteriously gone before he wakes up. While I sit at the desk contentedly burping, and sighing, with a satisfied smile. Others, the foul dreck can rot in the fridge for all I care, and Duke whimpers to get outside before he is forced to have another bowl. It’s pretty bad when the dog whiimpers to get away from the stew.

I keep a large quatity of Ramen in the house for just those occasions. I make it with some frozen veg,, and possibly an egg, I may add some meat, or have it as is. It all depends. Hubs notices, but doesn’t say anything. I’m not going to take one for the team when he scorched the soup so badly that it makes my sewing errors look good.

That said, there is a bit of a competition going on.

Anyways, that’s enough of the rambling for this morning. Huge hugs, no photos today, I just can’t be arsed to do it.

-L

Here I am, innocently working through the night, as is my jam… and relaxing with my favorite hoodie and leggings on. I began as most do, with going to my favorite research, historical women’s production of textiles, and wound up with a lady from the old country who harvests stinging nettles and makes fiber out of them. She also made her own icelandic loom, and weaves on it.

Um… Granted, she is an archaeologist. Okay, Phil Harding is a heart throb and a half. I miss Timeteam.. but still. Making clothing out of stinging nettles. Then my brain went back to the story of the princess with 7 brothers who were turned into swans. Who had to make nettle shirts for all of them to be turned back into human. She got all but one sleeve done, and her brothers were saved, except for the one who had a swans wing the rest of his life.

Watching this archaeologist work with stinging nettles, I am fascinated. What with nahlbinding being one of the earliest fiber arts… I’m fascinated with the loom as well. Yet, thinking of that poor girl that had to make 7 shirts… which at the time were probably knee length tunics. 50-7 feet tall nettles do not give a lot of fiber, from watching the archaeologist.

Wow.

So, I went back to my notes, and ended up watching the welsh viking on youtube with his tunic reconstruction. I can definitely make a tunic, especially with the construction being so simple.

I then fell down the rabbit hole of Bernadette Banner, Morgan Donner, and Mrs Crocombe… Holy Hannah. Ms Banner insists on Historical Accuracy as much as possible, freaks at fast fashion (buying off the rack) (rightfully so, but I can’t afford to buy tonnes of fabric) and yada yada yada…

Mrs Crocombe on English Heritage is a reinactor making things the Victorian way… I’m still a little off in the head, and am sorely tempted to try her recipes. However, I watched a video on her outfit. Her garb starts with a simple chemise (tunic) a petticoat or two, a corset (not a waist reduction corset but a back support and boulder holder) as well as a dress and apron…

I then ended up on my 2 goto sites, Amazon and Walmart.com and started searching… Um, in reinacting using sheets for fabric is frowned upon. Yet most insist that the innermost layer be linen. I can’t afford to go buy linen from a fabric store. Next thing I knew, I was on fabric.com and whirling through screen after screen of wools, cottons, and linens… I then looked at the cart. Coming back down to earth, the cost of enough fabric for 2 outfits to cover my overly copious carcas… 698.23 before tax.

My heart is still racing. I think that this summer, I’m going to go harvest some nettles. I think I’m going to have to seduce a shepherd. I think that I’m going to have to repair my spinning wheel, and I’m going to have to go into robbing banks. But in reality, I’m going to wait until certain sheets go on clearance, and wear what I can afford to wear.

Historical reinactors and archaeologists rock. However, they can suck it for the fabric. I can’t afford to drop basically 700 on fabric. I think I’m going to go have a liedown for a bit, until my heart stops racing, and the blinding migraine at the thought of spending that much goes away.

Take care, watch out for the slippery slope of historical reinacting, and have a good one. I am going to go lay down now. -L

Morning all, I’m again trying to get the braincells firing. There are days when that is just cruel. I did have good dreams last night. I woke in a very good mood.

Yes, write that down on the calendar, while it is not a first, it is quite rare. I sat down to use my tablet and bam. Nope. Even with autoupdate on, there were over 20 updates waiting, and audible was not working.

Crap. Dirty drawers. Great big balls of snot rolling downhill. Nothing can be done but update and reinstall what I can.

I have over 300 audiobooks with audible. That number grows every month. If I am not actively watching a video or listening to music, I have either a podcast or a book running in the background. Last night, I had just done a major dump of files, meaning I had downloaded probably 10 G of books.

I wear a headset 90 percent of the time. My husband has a noise phobia. Imagine living in a public library with a guardian who says Shh or demands absolute silence all of the time. That is mild compared to our lives. He has adapted as much as he can, but there are days when I fart, loudly, in the dining room, on purpose.

My headphones, and needing to be silent are total necessity. Even my smart tv has headphones. My favorite pairs are noise cancelling themselves. They are designed to be in either a factory setting or on the range. My serenity, linked directly to zoom meetings, and to prayer, is also directly tied to these headphones. So, having the tablet not working like it had when I went to bed, I panicked.

I put my headphones on, at least to cancel out the white noise machines in the background, and I got to work. White noise machines: Fans that he must have running 24/7/365 per year. I even have 2 directly by my desk to cover the sound of the keyboard I am using. The noise of these fans is loud enough to drown out a radio. I have a hard time hearing anything with these things running.

Back to the tablet. I reinstalled audible, updated 19 other apps, and restarted the device. I also installed a few other backup apps in order to make sure that I would have something to listen to if this ever happened again. I did not go crazy. I didn’t react, other than a mild sense of panic. If absolutely necessary, I can go to plan C, which is to hook up to my phone, and reformat the tablet. The biggest problem with the current system is the opportunity for failure.

I always look how to make each task more efficient. Even knitting. I look for how to organize, how to change the order of operations, how to make things easier, and often “lazier” if you could believe it. This is why I got the wheelchair before I really needed it. Cooking and cleaning while standing and in pain were impossible. It is why I learned certain stretches and exercises, so that my hands can continue to knit and sew. It’s why I do this or that which seems insane to others.

When Corona hit, the hubs and I were already doing many of the measures which others had to learn to adapt to doing. Imagine, a woman in the wheelchair, pushing a cart through a large store, in order to pick up her weekly shopping. I have done this many times, as those electric shopping carts are not worth the weight of my cell phone. So, when online ordering and curbside pick up became available we switched.

Even books in my life changed as a part of adopting and adapting to circumstances. I have been an audible member for quite a few years. I would get the free membership book, and a few others for a few months. Then I would cancel, enjoy those books while listening to podcasts in the meantime.

I was also an earlier adopter of kindle. Books, even recovery books, are heavy, and so when phones and tablets allowed me to read, you betcha I spent the money on kindle books. My Bible, many of my physical books, any book that was replaceable were moved to the kindle. When kindle allowed me to upload my pdfs, ya sure, I was happy. With the first stimulus check last year, I also bought the last of my recovery library in order to be able to have my recovery with me at all times.

However, like I said, this morning, having updates, which I hadn’t planned for go through.. … I’m going to have to come up with a solution for the problem. Plan A. Check for updates before bed, and start the download process. Plan B, do it when I wake up. Plan C, etc… When I get to plan Z in any situation, I then go to plan A1, B1 and etc.. Note: this is something my sponsor and I came up with around the time my husband and I moved in together. Plans A-Z, then A1-Z1, and on and on. I still use the solution to pre-existing problems today.

I had better get busy. I have less than 2 hours before the first of the daylight scheduled things begins, and I am certain that another cup of coffee is going to be required before then. I also need to edit this post. Hugs. -L