Creativity, I need to find you...

I'm looking to find my creativity. I have spent many years feeling like I am not a creative person. I no longer want to accept that, for a couple of reasons.

First, I have the need to make things, I feel it deep inside and become unhappy when I ignore it. I enjoy seeing new things come from my mind and become real in the world.

Second, I don't want my son to grow up thinking that creativity has to be perfect, that if it isn't exactly what you wanted you can't do it.

So with that in mind and the serendipity of Craft Magazine posting on their blog about the Thing-a-Day I'm going to do this both for myself and with my son.

On Thursday this last week we went to the Zoo and he took pictures of things that he found interesting, cute, or fun. The only direction I gave him was to frame his pictures, make sure what he sees in the viewfinder screen is what he wants to see in the final picture, to look for the others things that will show up, the trashcans, the people tying their shoes with their butts towards you, you know that kind of thing. I also wanted to let him know that some pictures don't come out the way you wanted and they can be deleted easy peasy. He did really well and he deleted many that didn't come out the way he wanted.

So I'm thinking his will likely take the shape of photos and mine will be knitting/sewing/cooking. His might be drawing, or lego building. The thing it it doesn't matter, it will just matter that each day we devote some time to making new creative things.

Wish us luck and let me know if you are going to join in. I'd love to see what others make in the month of February to push away the darkness and call to the light of spring sooner.

I'm not crazy!

Well, I'm not imagining things, there really is a vast conspiracy to keep me from my preferred tampon. Ok, maybe not a vast conspiracy against me per say, but against women.

A few months ago I noticed I couldn't buy OB tampons in size Ultra. I bleed a lot, a lot, a lot and need the added protection the up to 18 grams of liquid containment gives me. After a month of fruitless looking on shelves I took my search online and found that at that time Johnson & Johnson was saying they were having manufacturing 'difficulties' and the Ultra would be back on the shelves 'eventually'. Well I sobbed and horded my precious purple bullets like gold, I would only go out of the house and have to use the ultra if there was a HUGE pressing need. So one or two days out of every 25 would be me housebound. Sad story.

Now for the past month or so I have noticed that all the other OBs are gone off the shelves, again I waited (I'm a stock piler I can last a few months without having to buy) I'm getting to the end of my stash and I find there are no more OBs coming lately. According to some other people's research OB is now saying that Ultras have been discontinued but the rest of their line is just having manufacturing problems. I just heard that line 8 months ago.

I am a sad, sad woman here. I have no idea what I'm going to use instead. I'm mad, and frustrated with Johnson & Johnson. I guess I should call them and let them know how I feel. I'm going to be on the phone tomorrow talking to J&J letting them know.

Good thing this is a Drama Free household

I'm going to try to be more purposeful in my interactions with my son and my husband. I find myself getting caught up in a game and ignoring the flesh and blood people in my house that I love so very, very much.

Like I said Drama Free Household.Speaking of that love, last night, whew. Well lets just say that the Boys sensitivities and the Husbands sensibilities clashed and caused my title to be laughable. It ended with them having a grand old time but there was a bit in the middle where I was in the middle and was so grateful for my ability to be diplomatic. Oh wait I'm not know for being diplomatic. Well I tried on the hat and while it didn't fit perfectly we did make it through it. It ended with the boy coming downstairs with his blankie over his head calling it his shame curtain. I swear I'm going to get that boy into acting one of these days.

We are going to get back into the swing of school today. Yesterday was a bust because I had to give the Boy benadryl Sunday night and it knocked him out for the next 18 hours. I guess he outgrew the crazy wildchild phase with it. 

We are about to start a painful, frustrating portion of our schooling. I'm picking up Phonic Pathways again and we are going to work our way through it. So today will be getting a feel for where he is it and where we can start again. Wish me luck, lots and lots of luck, oh and maybe send some extra serenity my way. (I can always use some Captain Mal in my life)

On the knitting front, well there is nothing new on the knitting front. I'm still trying to get the edging done on the shawl so I can have it for my own. Then I think I'm going to try for a sweater for myself. Then, well I may start on socks again after a year hiatus. I need some for my own draws. Wow that all sounds horrible selfish, but I almost never seem to keep my knitting so I'm gonna be a bit selfish for a while I think.

Results and knitting

The results were nothing, normal, no problem. So they saw nothing unusual in his brain wave. Good news over all. The doc thought the hospital would let me know results but he responded quickly when I asked about them. So we can put the fainting/seizure spell behind us and move on. (Oh and I have been told that it is not a spell or an episode, I'm not certain what I'm suppose to call it in front of the Boy, but I have been told what not to call it, I'm ignoring the directive)

I'm still working on the shawl, I'm nearly done. I have only the trim left but I screwed it up and am in the process of ripping it all back so I can try again to read direction that are clearly spelled out for me. (There is that word again, spell, do you think this is forshadowing for the year to come?) The good part of the frogging is the Boy slept in this morning and I was given a tea pot for Christmas so I have spent the morning enjoying the falling snow, tea and ignoring the headache I'm getting from pulling out 3 rows of 672 stitches each. I have put on Pandora on my Suzy Bogguss station, love me some 80's/90's country music, it really seems to fit my mood today.I hope everyone has a wonderful New Year, my goal for the end of the year is to get our holiday cards out this week. Wish me luck.

This is the 'No results yet' post.

The testing itself went fine. The Boy did not have a seizure when they did all the seizure inducing things at the beginning of the test. (Bright quickly flashing lights, blowing repeatedly for 3 minutes) He fell asleep quickly when we got to that portion of the test and when I woke him after 10 minutes his first words to me were "See I told you I wouldn't fall asleep" Ha, he was exhausted and slept quickly. He woke horribly as he always does when woken too soon from desperately needed sleep. He also developed a fever after we got home, actually probably had it while there, but it wasn't too high at that point.

He was down with it all day yesterday, but woke this morning feeling much, much better. He apparently was on the hairy edge of a cold and weakening his immune system like that just pushed him over the edge, luckily he is pretty strong and getting to sleep lots over the last 2 days has made all right in his body again.

He did so well Tuesday when we were having to keep him awake. He kept his sense of humor and didn't have a melt down, he struggled a little bit prior to the actual testing but that was less than 2 minutes and trust me he has the endurance to fight for much, much longer than that if he decides to.

He just seemed so grown up all of a sudden. He is all legs and arms at the moment and getting so tall. How in the world did this happen? I'm so proud of how well he handled it. Now I hope we don't have to do it again.

Knitting, testing, and stuff...

I finished the Boy's sweater. It took me less than a month and it turned out pretty nicely if I say so myself.

The funny thing is the whole time I was worried that it would be too small, it isn't. It fits him fairly well, the neck opening is wide enough but the bind off on the collar is a bit too tight. I'll have to fix that next time.

This is the collar, not too bad, I'm still pretty awful at ribbing and so it didn't turn out that great but it's OK. The bit of 'braiding' at the back is the tag so the Boy knows where the back of the sweater is.
I decided to try hemming it instead of ribbing, since as I said before I don't do so well at ribbing. I think the hemming turned out very nicely.

The Boy is going in tomorrow for an EEG to make sure his brain waves are normal. Or what passes for normal around here. heh. We have to keep him awake until midnight tonight, and then wake him at 4 AM. DH & I are tag teaming him during this. I'm going to bed around 8:30 or 9 and DH will stay up with him, I will then wake him at 4 and have the fun of the morning with him.

We had a horrible time this morning because he was so worried about it but didn't want to tell me so it became all about school. He kept fighting me over every single thing we did. Division was too hard, grammar too hard, reading too hard. If I were a better mother I might have clued into the fact that he was worried about tomorrow's test. Not so much that better mother here. So it took me finally breaking down and giving him a swat (I think this was the 3rd time in his life I have raised my hand to him) He was actually dancing around saying I couldn't hit him and acting like it was a game. This was after he had pushed me 3 other times this morning to near tears. Yeah, it was not the best of times around here this morning. I threatened to register him for public school since he was not showing me any respect maybe he would respect a stranger teaching him. Like I said it was ugly. It finally came out and we talked and cried and cuddled. I had never told him I had an EEG when I was his age. That calmed him down. I'm sure we will see more emotion about this as we go through the day tomorrow but for now things have calmed down.

He read to me about black holes and the afternoon has gone much better. Whew.

Ugh, today is not the day I thought it would be...

Well we did not go in for the testing. The Boy was in tears about it, kept telling me, through the tears, that I WAS teaching him to read. I also woke with a killer migraine, and so we canceled the testing and avoided that.

So no info on that front. I'm still struggling with it, he is still struggling with it, but we are moving forward. He is making some progress, I think. He has days when he does great and reads with some semblance of fluency and with inflection, and there are days when he can't concentrate to read the word 'crossing' twice in the space of 3 sentences. (That would be today) It is starting to feel like it might be concentration problems.

I don't know what to think, it doesn't help that today is one of those days where thinking is actually physically painful.

I a book that is a history of the alphabet Ox, House, Stick The History of Our Alphabet The Boy is loving it, and so am I. I am reading a page or 2 each day. I think it helps that we studied ancient history last year, and this year we are reading Vacation Under the Volcano, and learning about word origins from Latin. It all ties in and it all is interesting to the boy. Win, win, win. Yippee.

Vacation Under the Volcano is the book I'm forcing him to read to earn his Lego Mindstorms set. Of course I'm now questioning that logic. The programming language that they use is actually a visual language, all icons and no words. So reading is not a skill that is directly needed to program the robot. Also as DH pointed out if we say it is a family item then no one person will have complete control and anyone will be able to program it. Otherwise we will have problems with my son and his possessiveness. So, since the set came in last night and because I really want to play with it too, and ummm it is educational, and ummm, I want to play with it, I am now trying to think of a reason we can start using it. How about it is educational? Ummm, it will be a great thing to work on over the winter 'holiday'? Ummm, it will be fun?

Anyway, that is life in our school, tonight we are heading out to Bubba Gump's to celebrate the end of the boy's Birthmonth. ;) heh. Actually we just haven't had time to go and he really, really, really wants to go. Not enough to go 'spur of the moment' a couple of weeks ago, but enough that when we mentioned going tonight, he was fine with it. We are so not spontaneous people here.