Seem to be busy these days!!

The three things I seem to be doing this Fall are: working at the Drop-In Center, taking a class in knitting and k-nitting my heart out, and scheduling 'In Our Own Voice' presentations.

I also cook dinners a lot since we seem always out of money and eating out is a big no-no.

Oh, and controlling the Jungle when they are hungry like right now and the Pugs want to go after the poor Siamese kitty.

Speaking of kitty, he had lost 2 pounds in a year which the vet said was the equivalent of a person losing 30 to 40 pounds in a year for no reason. They wanted to do more blood work on him, which I said okay to and it came up with nothing wrong with him. Then they said the next thing is an x-ray or sonogram.

He is a happy purry, active kitty. I absolutely do not have the money for x-rays and sonograms and didn't really have the money for the blood test. I have to fight against the feeling that I am a 'bad Mommy' for fighting the 'authority' of the vet, but at the same time if Reese is dying he sure is the 'happiest dying cat I've ever seen.' So I have resigned myself to loving and feeding my cat as much as he can stand of the wet food and leaving it at that. He is 'lording' over my laptop and now on my lap as we speak, purring away and I hope for the best for him. I hope you all don't judge me.

I'm still hanging on mood-wise. I often expect the other shoe to drop in the Fall time as this seems to be the difficult time for me. And I have had some days of depression that I could not pin-point the reason and I chalk it up to the bipolar. But I do hang in there when it counts (like scheduling presentations or trying to be 'present' at my job or meeting new people at a night class) and I'm still at the point where I am enjoying my hobbies, which is a sign that I'm still in some other stage than the full-blown depression (where I can't handle much and hobbies are out of the question).

Okay, the Pugs are REALLY going at it ~ I guess they need a feeding and I need to work on my sock! (Just started my very first one last night. Knitting socks has been a dream of mine for a very long time - Joy!). When I first looked at the needle set-up and the pattern I thought, 'No way!' but my teacher assures me that I can do it!!

I wish good good thoughts and luvs to my blog friends and hope that you are all doing okay.:)
Most sincerely,
The 'Tart

Must bring attention to: The Snuggles Project

If you love animals and making things (crochet, knit, quilt or sew) then you will probably be interested in The Snuggles Project. It's making and donating blankets for animals that are in shelters, where the floor can be cement or other harsh, cold environments. Check it out!

http://www.snugglesproject.org/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/

Went to the doctor/a sea of red hearts!

My cold is subsiding. No rattling in the lungs. I am done with antibiotics - yay!! Now we can talk about other things, as I am not as consumed with being sick.:)

Tomorrow, work is throwing a Valentine Party. I have been somewhat consumed with that. I went to the 'Dollar Store' and got a ton of decorations. We also made our own, cutting out red valentines and putting white crepe paper on them to hang them on the ceiling. It is a sea of red hearts flowing from the ceiling at work!:)

Also, our second 'In Our Own Voice' Presentation is coming up on Tuesday. The weather is a little 'iffy' so we'll see what happens. I need to go over my presentation again and mentally prepare myself. After the party tomorrow.:)

I am thinking of picking up my knitting needles again and working on my first slipper ever. It makes me happy.:)

Good stuff, good stuff, good stuff!!:)

The NAMI presentation 'In Our Own Voice' went great, fantastico, wonderful!! We knocked their socks off!

You are presently reading the blog of the new In Our Own Voice Coordinator for our County!! Yes, I agreed to be the Coordinator for our County, which is a volunteer position, but will be helpful to our program.:):):)

I also was able to get the Red Cross to come to our workplace to teach our staff CPR and First Aid, which impressed my boss because apparently they had been trying for some time to get that to happen, and I got it done!

Also, I organized a crochet class for work. I am in charge of getting supplies and I have checked all the ads for LYS (Local Yarn Stores) in my area, found who has the most inexpensive prices for yarns, printed all my coupons and I will be ready to go tomorrow hitting three stores to use my 40 and 50% off coupons. I'm a happy little shopper.

I've also been finding my instruction booklets for crochet that I find the most helpful and I think will help others, and I am going to find the section on the http://www.lionbrand.com/ site that has instructions for crocheting in the round, because you can make flowers, doilies and hats with that technique. Lionbrand.com is a great resource for over 3,000 free patterns for knitting and crocheting and even has videos, a newsletter, etc. I love it.

On a more personal note, I STILL have the cold, going on two weeks now, the coughs at night sound horrible but for some reason during the day I just sound hoarse. Thank you all for your good thoughts and prayers during some of these recently stressful times. I wish the best for all of you.:)

I'm getting back into my yarn arts.:)

I love yarn and thread. I have crocheted a few things, and have actually given away scarves and at least one hat to friends as gifts. I made a hat for myself, too. I fiddle with knitting, I did take a class in it a while back and made a pair of mittens, but I was following a pattern and had a teacher looking over my shoulder. She said if I could do the increasing and decreasing necessary for that mitten, I could do anything. Perhaps true, but I am very slow with my projects, and sometimes take a lot of time from them. It may be that upping and lowering of energy that bipolars get, I don't know.

I also cross-stitch, especially when a kit strikes my fancy. I have completed a few kits, most memorably a 'best friends' one for my friend Tracy, and that sweet baby girl one I finished for last Christmas for a family member's new baby. That was really satisfying because I finished it just in time!

My new thing, is that I would like to learn weaving. I would love to have a loom and use it. I would love to have the room for a loom! My office is very 'junked up' to say the least. I am a horrible pack rat, it is so hard for me to let ANYthing go. I honestly think that is an outcrop of the illness as well. I saw my Dad struggle with it his whole life. Pack-'ratness' - genetics? bipolar? or just annoying thing to keep people from visiting? I don't know.:)

I'm not lazy; I'm just medicated!!:)

This phrase came to mind this morning when considering another night of bouncing back and forth between taking Seroquel, in an effort to get off of it. Last night was a no-take it night.

I ended up not going to bed until 4 a.m. (watching 'Citizen Kane' in the meantime - "ROSEBUD!!" - and cross-stitching till the wee hours) and then still getting up at 8 a.m. and here I am still up, and not wanting to go back to sleep. Yaay, me!!

I say 'Yaay, me!!' but what is clear is that I am a creature of chemicals, whether my own or the medication (and I admit that this contributed to some of my meltdowns yesterday - what an emotional, moody day that was for a while, as I became angry and sad all at once after these realizations. I took a break from blogging about surviving Seroquel for a day to see if I would in fact survive!:).

Meaning: I am so affected by a little 'ol pill. If not affected by a little 'ol pill I am left to a seemingly more natural state, which it looks like I AM CAPABLE of getting up in the morning, something that my body had completely forgotten for years at I have been medicated for years.

If not for the fact that I have had 2 hours of sleep and and am OH SO awake, I was considering getting off the Seroquel for good and not taking it anymore. It is just so awful to almost see the food cravings, to see myself unable to move in the morning or wanting to go back to bed so badly after taking it the night before that I want to be off it. At the same time, I don't want to risk mania (you heard it here, folks. As a bipolar I, mania takes me to Saturn, not a day of charging it at the mall or even within this stratosphere) by getting no sleep for days.

I help 'clean up' the big grant tonight at five, so I have something to do this evening and that usually revs me, and keeps me up late. Time will tell what will happen tomorrow - in the morning and if I get more sleep. If not, I will allow myself to have a wasted day on Sunday after taking it again. What's one wasted day, when you realize you have wasted years on this stuff?

See, I am my own pdoc half the time. I wanted so badly to call and ask what the hell to do yesterday when my mood was up, down, all around, and I was scared as to what was happening. But my Pdoc is only around on Mondays and nobody at the County answers these kind of calls. After years of dealing with Them, I knew I was on my own.

I did have moments, one moment I can remember, of feeling suicidal. But every moment was so fleeting, even that didn't last long, without much effort on my part. Thank God for the emotional ADD that occurs with this illness.

I think it's important to blog this stuff out, put it out there for other people who feel that their 'chemicals' (natural or not (the meds)) are messed up, because as bipolars, I think people relate and don't have people talking about it much.

My husband laughed when I said I was mad that a little pill could turn me upside down like this. I said, "I'm glad you can get a little chuckle out of this." He said, well don't you know, that's why you take the meds in the first place, because your chemicals are out of whack (I paraphrased it). Yes, I must be reminded that I am on Disability for a reason. I must be reminded that for all I accomplish, which seems minor, I do in fact have an illness. That is painful.

On a more positive note, I have shifted into overdrive in finishing the baby cross-stitch and in cross-stitching in general. It's something I can do, it has a neat outcome, because you can see your work and it's pretty. What more could you want from a hobby?:) And at the moment, I have the energy to work on it.

Thanks to all for listening. I hope you have a great day, a well day. I mean that.
Tart:)

Announcement!

Did you guys know that my husband's cousin had her baby? One day earlier than expected actually, on October 24th. I reveal Baby's name on my good stuff blog, www.jungletartsgoodstuff.blogspot.com .

Even though, or especially because, I don't have children, I get really excited for people having babies. I'm still working on the 'birth record' cross-stitch for the parents of the baby (that's who you really give it to) to be given to them at Christmas.

I hope you have a good rest of the weekend.

Knit/crochet squares for VA Tech victims: Gotta movie about it

Because I stay up all night gazing at my favorite things on the web (knitting, spinning, fiber, alpacas, pugs, ETc.), I found this absolutely lovely YouTube movie from the blog www.skeincocaine.blogspot.com. That blog is written by the one and the same Gina, owner of the Mosaic Yarn Shop in the Blacksburg, Virginia area that is featured in this short. She is being interviewed because she came up with the idea of knitting squares for blankets for the families of the victims of the VA Tech shootings. Dang, I am so slow I don't think I could knit fast enough for the May 31st deadline. But, there's alway crochet.... Anyway, she has now posted on her site that the finished blankets will be displayed in some high end museums - this is very important stuff people. And from the hands of knitters. There still is beauty left in this world.