My adventure in Bangkok has come to an end! I want to thank Jesse for the amazing opportunity to help him build the business. I've learned so much from him in the past three months. He's got an amazing team working with him and is about to launch something truly excellent.

Now I'm back in the States, helping Mom as she recovers from surgery, working on a new project and exploring some new opportunities. On to the next adventure!

I do so love patches. But I've never ever made one (or had one made). So I'm attempting to remedy this.

Last night, I made a design. Today, I'm going to find someone to make 100 of them for me. Hopefully this design is "patchable". And that patch makers are affordable.

UPDATE 4/17: The proof is here. Me likey!

Whoa, am I having a bit of an emotional day today. Bear with me, I'm trying to get the world framed right again. I think this particular time is the result of the prolonged bed rest (four weeks!) and a migraine last night followed by insomnia. I could ride it out silently, or I could write to you guys and maybe get a good process going.

I was in the middle of some paperwork I have to take care of once a year. This is the sixth year. It has to do with my work and health, so it's already a touchy subject. While looking through the massive pile of unfiled documents that is now my harddrive (thank you iTunes fiasco), I stumbled upon some emails I wrote to a very close female coworker, exactly 16 years ago today. We thought we were so clever and witty. We lovingly called each other bitch. I have to laugh. We were the youngest at Stanley Vidmar by 15 years in our respective departments, hers sales, mine engineering. I can't imagine what the others thought of us, and I'm so glad I didn't know.

But then I realized, 16 years ago today, I had a successful career, a very active lifestyle, a fiancé, an upcoming wedding, and had just returned from a trip to Jamaica. From where I stand right now, if I looked just right, it seemed like such a stark contrast to now.

I was looking out the bedroom window at another sunny day when the tears hit me. Lots of tears. So I wrote a long, private, journal entry to myself, outlining my woes today (thank you OPW), and then I went back and looked at more of the emails. And I discovered not a month later I was leaving Stanley during another sweep of layoffs.

And I remembered how stressed I was, with the axe dropping almost every Friday. And the three bosses, and the unending overtime, and the list of 21 open projects, each of them unironically labeled top priority. And the tears then, too. So many tears.

And that I started my housecleaning business not long after, and which then became my favorite job ever for the next ten years. A business that got me through a divorce, a health diagnosis, a lost beloved pet, and someone totaling my car. A business that found me a best friend, a bevy of new people in my life, amazing adventures, and eventually a wonderful man who loves me.

I've lived alone for 10 years, fiercely independent. I've had to give up the independence due to health, but I think I accidentally gave up the fierceness, too. And now I may or may not be on the cusp of giving up the alone part. (Or really, I already have and it scares the hell out of me.) On top of that, everything that's happened since last fall is still fairly recent. It really hasn't been that much time yet. I've since filled my time with a renewed relationship, a wonderful vacation, and more recently, back surgery that may improve my quality of life, yet here I sit suddenly reeling from the weight of loss and laughingly not knowing why. Oh, dear.

So, how do I keep my chin up? I'm prone to realism, not optimism. I can't change my stripes in that regard, so I have to work within the pattern. How do I frame this period of time so that I don't keep feeling so lost whenever I'm alone with myself, in this bed? Because I am definitely more than a little lost right now.

Thoughts on what the future might bring are great, but the days are long right here and now, and I'm pretty painfully chained to the right here and now. I've already made the first step by writing it all out and gathering my thoughts, but I could use some help, or just some connection from you guys, to ground me a little today. At the moment, it's difficult just getting up and making food, if that gives you an idea of my mobility levels. So, tell me anything, or tell me nothing at all. Just say hi.

Three and a half weeks out from surgery, and I feel a little like I'm waking up from a coma (again? do I use this description a lot?). It's been nice to read up on OPW after a long day of washing my bedsheets. Yeah, it took all day. Still gotta stop and lay flat down quite a bit.

Now if only I could reach my legs to shave them. There is nothing like freshly shaved legs on freshly laundered sheets. Amirite, girls? Girls who shave?

I'm off the percocet which means my mobility is a little more limited now, and that means a lot more time on my back than even the week before, but it's worth it to be able to kiss that medication and it's side effects goodbye. I was on pretty heavy doses this time, so I'm still sweating like a fat man. And the insomnia is pretty full-on without the help of Benadryl. We're all (middle-age-ish) grownups here so I CAN say how nice it is to be able to poop again. The mood swings can go fuck right off, though. It's only been a week, but that's by far the worst part.

I do want to say that if you're hearing less from me, its usually (not always, but for right now, yes) a sign that things are pretty decent. *Sigh* even good, though I feel like I jinx myself when I say that. I am unfortunately one of those journalers who usually only writes when something bad is going down. It's a good release for bouts of depression, but I forget to come back and here and let folks know my life is more than just these journal entries.

So, let's see. I have a good thing going with a great guy, and we are already doing that thing where we have so much fun together we end up just not ending the date. Let's go do nothing together, it's amazing. These things don't come along every day, so I'm thoroughly enjoying it and hoping the newness feeling stretches out for a good long time. I feel like a lucky girl. :)

What else. Well, I am 3.5 weeks out of surgery, which means I'm 2.5 weeks closer to taking the back brace off. And driving. And maybe doing some light, light, liiiiiight gardening. (How does one garden without bending/lifting/twisting? I shall find out.) That time went by a lot faster than I was expecting. I expect the next 2.5 weeks to go pretty nicely too. Still too soon to know if the surgery worked, so I can't answer that, but I look forward to Spring yard stuff to distract me until I do.

I learned that laughing really does drop pain levels. This has caused me to ask everyone around me for their favorite jokes. There are too many to repeat here, but here are two favorites:

Q: "What is brown and sticky?"

A: "A stick".  (This one makes me laugh before I can even finish it, because I'm a dork for stupid jokes like this. I just made you think of poop!)

Q: "What is the difference between pink and purple?"

A: "The grip." (Buwahahahah, naughty. Thank you Roger and Harold.)

The best was Roger's 80-year-old mother telling me a joke that involved her saying the word "testicles" several times:

A man is lying in bed in a hospital with an oxygen mask over his mouth. A young nurse appears to sponge his face and hands.

"Nurse," he mumbles from behind the mask, "Are my testicles black?"

Embarrassed the young nurse replies, "I don't know, I'm only here to wash your face and hands."

He struggles again to ask, "Nurse, Are my testicles black?"

Again the nurse replies, "I can't tell. I'm only here to wash your face and hands."

The ward nurse passes by and sees the man getting a little distraught so she marches over to inquire what is wrong.

"Nurse," he mumbles, "Are my testicles black?"

Being a nurse she is undaunted. She whips back the bedclothes, pulls down his pajama trousers, moves his penis out of the way, has a good look, pulls up the pajamas, replaces the bedclothes and announces, "Nothing is wrong with them."

At this the man pulls off his oxygen mask and asks again,

"Are my test results back?"

I will never forget my shock and joy at hearing the words "Are my testicles black?" come from her mouth. Ha! That made my back feel better for a good while!

Anyway, where was I. So, yes, nice to come back to earth and catch up with you guys. Thanks for the lovely prose. <3

Much love,

Your Biggest Fan,

Karen

p.s. - I'm forgetting myself and commenting on old posts. Oops!

There's a difference between being a proud small business where you're not tied to big dumb corporate rules so you can be flexible and agile, and being so small that you still have a single AOL email address on your website.

I want to support the small guy, but if they still use AOL, how can I be confident that my credit card info is secure in their office?

This one local place sells kitchen appliances. They have cutesy commercials featuring the owner's two small boys. "I'm Cameron!" "And I'm Gavin!" "And if you have trouble, call us and we'll make sure it gets handled RIGHT!"  I wonder how creepy it would be if I called up the store asking to speak to Cameron or Gavin to complain about a bill or a customer service issue. They would call Child Protective Services in 5 minutes. And what the fuck does that say about their family dynamic (or Dad's business acumen) that a 7 year old is their accountable executive in charge of customer satisfaction?!

Anyway.

We need a new washer/dryer. The one I have currently is the set that came with the house. I would love to get a set of stackables, and then put a shelf where the dryer currently is.  The washer/dryer used to be in the basement, but my house's previous owners brought them to the main floor of the house, taking up the hall linen closet with the washer/dryer. So I'd love to reclaim some of that closet space since I currently have none whatsoever, unless you count bedroom closets.

I heard a thing on the radio this morning about how small businesses should consider buying "CyberInsurance" in addition to general liability insurance and worker's comp, because small businesses are more vulnerable to cyberattacks.  Really? I know of a zillion huge corporations that were brought down by the ransomware viruses and no small businesses that I use were hit. But maybe that's because large businesses have a higher percentage of dumb people who surf the web at work, clicking on shit they oughtn't... and granted, I'm a small (vaguely tech-related) company, so maybe the percentage of employees who work for my company who click on dumb shit is 0%. 

But I figure Cameron and Gavin (or their mom) click on dumb shit pretty often, so they probably need CyberInsurance. 

The only people who use the term "cyber" are people who shouldn't.

In other news, we spent this past weekend (Saturday through Tuesday) at my folks' place. We hadn't seen them since Christmas, which is waaaaay too long. My mom tore a muscle in her right shoulder, so in addition to her back and her legs being in constant pain, let's add her right shoulder to the laundry list.  My dad has days where he's very weak for no discernible reason, so we needed to go up there and just help them out a bit. They felt so awful that they decided to cancel Easter dinner because my mom couldn't cook and my dad couldn't clean the house, and they both felt that having a house full of people would be too much.

So we offered to come up and do all of the cooking/cleaning, so now Easter is back on. 

We're in the car now heading back up there. We'll be there for a few days. I'm so excited it's finally starting to get warm... this fucking winter might FINALLY be behind us.

I hope everyone has a fabulous Easter, Passover, or April Fool's. :-)

So I have some friends who march with the local 501st Legion, First State Garrison.

They wanted to engrave helmet stand bases. The stands are stainless steel. I've never tried steel on Glowforgeous Splendiferous, so I'm heading down that rathole. 

First, I did the design file, and a quick cut on wood.  Meh.

Then I tweeked the design file, redid it, again on wood. Better!

But now I notice there are issues with the font where characters overlap. Meh. 

Now discussing with my friends the next steps. Space the font out? Color in the overlap spots? A different font all together??

I also did some research that suggested a coating to use before you attempt to laser steel. So I got a bottle of Dry Moly Lubricant Aerosol Spray. Yup, I'm buying Moly. :-P  . . .My Moly arrives tomorrow. So maybe tomorrow night I'll be etching steel! Assuming I can sort the font issues by then. 

It occurs to me that I never posted finished photos of what I did with the silhouettes I posted about last month.

So here:

I made a cuttouts of my campmates and framed them. I did this 4 times i n various color combinations, and have 1 more to make. (I stopped because I ran out of frames). I made several because some of my campmates wanted their own copies. Here are 2 of the finished product - coffee mug included for scale

And then, with the silhoutte of my daughter, I assembled a wall hanging, and then attempted an inlay. The inlay is not as perfectly flush as I would like, but I'm fine with it as a first try.

So yes, having fun with the Glowforgeous Splendiferous. 

Maybe some of you can help me out with this. 

I like the book A Wrinkle In Time, and I appreciate how the movie is a little inescapeable right now. I think this is a good thing. I will take Ted to see it when we can swing it and showings are less crowded. 

Spoilers for A Wrinkle In Time (the book, not the movie) follow. 

There is an obstacle in my heart about this story. The first time I read it (I might have been seven or so), I had to stop when they described Calvin O'Keefe's mother. It made me so upset that I cried uncontrollably, and I couldn't finish the book for years. Calvin's mother is described early on. She's described as a miserable woman with a messy house. The point of having her this way is that Calvin wouldn't be missed if he takes off on an adventure with the Murry family. Right? She's too busy and unhappy to show up banging on the door, saying, "My son wasn't home in time for dinner, where is he?" One more kid in that house wouldn't be missed, right? I felt so sorry for her, so angry that she was left alone, forgotten, that it distracted me from everything else. 

I don't have a copy of A Wrinkle In Time around to refer to, only my shoddy memory of the book. The first time I read it, I knew that there was a very sad mom in the book, it upset me, and I moved on to something else. The second time I read it, I grudgingly finished the book, liking many aspects of the story, but not fully understanding or cherishing it. I think I moved back to the Narnia series, and then there were too many paperbacks lying around that weren't going to read themselves, so Stephen King was up next, and then John Lennon had a date with destiny, so I was obsessing about music for a while. 

What bothered me was, "why should I try to wrap my head around all of these heavy duty scientific concepts when you can't seem to balance the fact that you're chasing after a poor imprisoned daddy, but nobody seems to care about a poor imprisoned mommy, staring sadly into a sink full of dirty dishes?" 

I wish I could remember the wording of the passage describing Calvin O'Keefe's mother. All I remember was that it was extremely clear to me that this was a woman with a strong and serious mental illness characterized by depression. I'm shedding tears right now, just thinking about it. I mentioned it to other people who love that book, and they've said, "well, yeah, she's kind of a throwaway character." 

a) there is no such thing as a throwaway character. everything in your story is part of its foundation, otherwise get rid of it. if it's still there when it's published, it's important.

b) HAVE YOU NOT READ THIS DESCRIPTION???

I haven't read any of the other books in the series, because I have no proof that Calvin's Mother is saved, or that her imprisonment is justified. It's just that she's a "bad person," and Calvin should totally leave her to go play Shining Time Station with the Murrys. Did anything ever happen with her? 

The last time I read this, I was babysitting. There was a thunderstorm, and a power failure. I picked through the bookshelves with a flashlight, and then sat in my young charge's bedroom, reading A Wrinkle In Time by candlelight, accompanied by rain on the windows and the susurration of the child's breathing as he slept. It was the perfect way to read it. However, I had to take a deep breath, swallow my pride, read the passage about Calvin's mom, and store it for later, knowing that I would deal with those feelings and maybe write something about her in the future. 

I guess I'm going to have to deal with this. I'm really worried about Calvin's mother. On the other hand, maybe she and Calvin's stuffed tiger escaped and went sledding. 

EDITED TO ADD:

Editing editing editing editing editing editing editing Jarnsaxa Rising. 

Last night, some nice people said some nice things to me about the mermaid nightgown. So this morning I was inspired to spend time on a skirt made from the remaining mermaid print fabric.

I can't really finish the hemlin until the kid is around again next week.

Someday I will have to get me a serger.