Day 134 of 365

Today's schedule:

Get new drivers license. Return chair mat to Staples. Get gas. Take hubby to doctor. Go to my own rheumatologist appointment. Blood work at lab. Go visit daughter. Go with daughter to look at new apartment. Take keys back to property management office. Go to lunch. Go back to property management office so husband can get glasses he dropped there. Go to JoAnn's fabric store to get big early birthday present. Go to Target for hubby and daughter to birthday shop. Take daughter back to her place. Drive in rush hour traffic. Get groceries. Get prescription at drugstore. Get buy one get one free frozen strawberry lemonade at McDonalds. Come home and ride the exercise bike.

Never did make it to the grocery store or drug store. I was too tuckered out after the full day we had.

But a couple highlights today are worth writing about. First, if you haven't tried McDonald's frozen strawberry lemonade you're missing out. I'm not one who ever gets brain freezes (I don't even know what one of those feels like) but I get throat freezes. Tart and ice cold.

And at the fabric store - my birthday is coming up and my husband knows a fabric store is a good place to shop for a present. He headed to the sewing machine section to look for me a new one, but I headed in a different part of the store. As much as a new machine would be nice, it's not necessary.

What is necessary is quilt batting for my future charity baby quilts. 10 packs of batting is much more appreciated by me than a new sewing machine right now.

I almost arranged the packages with the labels all facing the same way like I do my cans (I wrote about that on Day 131), but decided I was going to be a rebel.

Day 133 of 365

I discovered ebay a few years back.

Not as a buyer, but as a seller. I had a pair of concert tickets a few rows from the stage for George Strait. But as the date got closer, we found out we had a dilemma. It was senior night for girls basketball and our daughter was a senior. George Strait or daughter. We picked the daughter, of course!

Being that the concert was sold out, I knew I had something good on my hands. I had heard about people selling tickets on ebay, but hadn't ever been on the site and didn't know anything about it. After doing some research it appeared that I might not only get my money back for the tickets but make some profit, too.

So the tickets went up for auction. The person who won the tickets e-mailed me after the concert and said the tickets were amazing and George Strait came through their aisle and shook their hands. In the end I made a $200 profit on the tickets and got to see my daughter being honored on senior night.

Then about a year ago I heard about a way to wrap fabric nice and neat. I could either buy some corrugated type white boards (expensive) or use comic book boards.

I used to read some comic books when I was a kid (mostly Richy Rich - boy, what I would have given to live that life!), but had no idea what a comic book board was. It's a piece of thick cardstock-like paper that collectors use to help maintain the shape of the comic book. I guess you can purchase them at comic books stores, but since I don't typically hang out there - or even know where one is - I headed to ebay for my boards.

After some patient searching and waiting, I found someone getting rid of used boards. 500 of them. For a doggone descent price. 500 boards? Never would I ever need 500, but what the heck?

Unfortunately as I began to wrap all my fabric and then cut some of the boards for my smaller pieces of fabric, it became apparent that I had plenty of fabric to fill those boards.

Until today. Up until today, all of my boards had been filled with fabric.

Today I finished cutting the fabric for 22 more turtle pillows (like the one yesterday). Lots of empty comic book boards now.

Then the mail arrived. Another cheap ebay purchase. Sometimes you don't know exactly what you're going to get when you order from there, but today's fabrics filled my 5 foot table. Looks to be close to 30 yards of high quality fabric. So much I couldn't hardly get it all in the picture.

No more empty comic book boards anymore.

Day 132 of 365

It's turtle time!

My house is clean (shiny in some spots even). My roses have been clipped and my gardens are just about weeded.

I get to play with fabric again. And this time I'm making turtles. For charity.

Some day I may actually make something for myself, but not yet. My new charity project will benefit kids at a Hole in the Wall Camp.

Paul Newman started Hole in the Wall Camps for children with life-threatening conditions back in 1988. One of those camps in California, The Painted Turtle, sends each child home with a lap quilt and a turtle pillow. I've made enough quilts for a little bit, so I'm tackling turtles now.

The turtle pillows are quite large - about two and a half feet long. And I'm making bunches of them. I don't have to stuff them (the organization does that), but I get to use up some of my excess fabric to make them.

My first one was finished today, but I'm working on cutting enough fabric for at least 20 or so more.

It's kinda cute even without its stuffing. One down and many more to go.

Day 131 of 365

I'm a stockpiler. Have been ever since I can remember. I love the look of neatly stocked shelves (the labels always have to face out), and I especially love a good deal.

I haven't been stockpiling much this spring, but last summer when I was couponing a lot, I did some major stocking up. If I could get one can of shaving cream for 25 cents, why not go ahead and buy five at that price? I'm lucky we have plenty of storage in the house! Doing the big stockup on many items saved us this year - with me not bringing in any income, it's been nice being able to keep our grocery costs down. We still have plenty of soap, paper towels, cleaning products, shaving cream, toothpaste, and deodorant to last us another year.

Frozen foods and canned goods are another story. Our freezer is just about empty and our canned food shelves are looking bare. Last year we had stocked up so much on canned goods that I made racks to hold some of them. (I used the directions here, but painted mine.) So as soon as another bargain comes along, I'll be taking advantage of it. I like having my own grocery store in the basement.

Like my fabric store in my sewing room closet. Even though it's nicely stocked, if a bargain comes along, I can't resist.

It's not like I don't have enough already. (The picture from Day 57 can confirm that.) As many quilts as I send out the door and fabric and quilt tops I give away, it still isn't dwindling. I have a big project I'm about to get started on that will use some of the yardage up, but that won't keep me from buying.

Just this week (on ebay of course) I found a gal offering 5" and 6" squares of fabric, already cut, in some interesting patterns. So I pulled the trigger and spent five whole dollars. Such a bargain. I have a few more dollars of squares coming in the next few days, but my five dollars worth arrived today. Over 200 squares, just perfect for baby and kids quilts.

Someday maybe I'll even get back to grown up quilts. Probably not anytime soon, though.

Day 130 of 365

I wake up every morning with hope.

Hope that my body can get out of bed, get dressed, and eat breakfast without having to take 3 hours to do it.

Hope that I have the stamina to do what I have planned for the day.

Hope that my pain is less than the day before.

Hope that my fatigue is not as great.

Hope that I have a positive attitude through it all.

In the last week I've sent out 5 charity baby quilts. Scrubbed the kitchen clean. Mopped and vacuumed. Pruned up the roses in the rose garden. Went grocery shopping. Had a dentist appointment. Went to the movies. Cleaned and organized the sewing room. Washed windows. Exercised every day. And just today cleaned and organized the den.

I've done more in the last week than I have done in a long time. The combination of all the work has taken a toll on me.

Each day has been a bigger struggle than the day before. Each day I've had to force myself to get out of bed and dressed. Force myself to do my self-assigned task for the day. Force myself to exercise. Force myself to keep going. And even force myself to write and take the picture of the day.

It was tough. Probably the toughest week I've had in a quite a while.

The thing about rheumatoid arthritis is that it makes you feel like you have the kind of flu with the body aches and fatigue, but all the time. Then add in the side effects from my medications. Then add in the back issues. Add in no pain medication. Try and accomplish physical things during the day - cleaning, washing, gardening? It's enough to make someone start popping those pain pills again.

But I didn't. And I won't. Because that's a short term solution.

I want a long term solution. A solution that will let me work in the garden, clean my house, and even get myself dressed without pain. A solution that will allow me the energy to get back to work.

A solution that will help me meet the goal I set when I first started the blog - the hope that I will be back into the land of the living instead of the land of the existing.

This week was proof that I'm not even close.

I'm having to dig down deep to keep a positive attitude about it. I need to be thankful I can get out of bed and get myself dressed (even if it takes 3 hours). I need to be thankful I can wash my windows, mop my floor, exercise, and prune roses, even if it keeps me in pain and takes every bit of oomph I have. And I need to be thankful I can get outside and enjoy my beautiful flowers.

This one just opened today - some type of huge lily. An Asiatic one maybe?

Day 129 of 365

I had to wash my windows today.

There have been so many missed picture taking opportunities lately because I've had dirty windows. It seems like each time I sit down to type, a new bird shows up in the tree out the window. Whether it's a hummingbird, or another yellow bird like on Day 81, or the pair from Day 83, a woodpecker who has been appearing lately, or a new gorgeous orange and yellow bird, I keep missing them because of my dirty windows.

Remember the squirrel from the picture on Day 89? The one that turned on me on Day 101? If I had clean windows I could have captured a picture of mama hummingbird attacking that squirrel. The squirrel was frozen as mama hummingbird buzzed, and buzzed, and buzzed him. Haven't seen that squirrel much since. But what a picture that would have made!

Clean shiny windows and a camera just waiting to snap a picture is a good recipe for the picture of the day. Although my windows are beautiful, nothing has shown up outside them today.

Since I'm not working in my sewing room until my house is spotless (it's getting there), it's back to my gardens for the picture.

Our wildflower bed turned perennial garden looks like it's turned into a den of daisies instead.

Day 128 of 365

Today was a day full of highlights. I thought about ranking them, but I don't know which one is the best!

Worked outside in the garden a bit.

Had no sugar today.

Rode a little over 21 miles on the exercise bike this week.

In the past six weeks, I've biked a tad over 108 miles.

Today was the 82nd consecutive day of exercising.

And two new things in the picture department today - my pic of the day is a video and I have a guest picture, too.

Jenn sent this picture from her cell phone of ducks, geese, and birds in the park. Canadian geese, mallard ducks, a seagull, and an Aflac duck. Can't get much more diverse than that.

I

And for the first time, a video for my picture of the day. I took a still picture of it, but the video is so much better. That's our baby hummingbird sitting all by herself in the nest, but not for long. Take a look at what happens next.