Early Thanksgiving dinner

We went to Ian's parent's house for Thanksgiving today and got to eat very yummy turkey and pumpkin pie (as well as stuffing, potatoes, vegetables, and other sides). We're both quite full after gobbling all of that food. :)

You know how we're trying to lose weight? Well, I've lost 4 pounds in the last week but the software indicates that I'm only 1500 calories under what I should be eating to lose 16 pounds in a year. I don't feel hungry at all - and I occasionally even feel stuffed - but the weight seems to be melting off just now. Not that I mind :) I would like it come off just a little bit more slowly, though.

I'm very tired these days, partly because I haven't been sleeping well. It takes me a couple of hours to get fully to sleep and until then, I sleep very lightly and am awake a lot. Part of this is the pain which is up a bit. Part of this is also that I'm worrying, and I should take some anti-anxiety meds - but the only thing I have is the clonazepam which knocks me out completely. I'll go and see my doctor this week to see if he'll give me something milder like Ativan.

Why am I worried? Well, my tumour markers were up ever so slightly the last two times we took them, and I go in to do the bloodwork on Tuesday. I've been feeling a bit nauseous quite a lot lately and I've got funny aches on my right abdomen just behind and below the rib cage. So I'm worried - although I'm sure that I've got no real reason to be and that I'm just being a worrywart. Realistically, even if I have got a reason to worry, worrying won't do any good at all because it won't change the outcome of the test. I should be practicing belly-breathing or something instead of worrying :)

Have a great Thanksgiving, everyone!

This is October?

This has got to be the hottest, stickiest Thanksgiving weekend I can remember. It got up to 26C today plus it was crazy humid - with the humidex, it was 36C or so. That might be normal for August, but isn't way far away from normal for October.

I went for a walk this evening, after it had cooled down a bit, and a thunderstorm rolled in. I was walking quite quickly so that I could get back home before the rain got really bad when Ian came to get me. how sweet is that? He'd seen the lightning and drove out to find me on my walk so that I wouldn't get electrocuted by the lightning or drenched by the rain. I'm a lucky, lucky girl, I tell you.

No craft show for me yet

I didn't make it into the craft show... the organizer was calling to let me know that I was still on the waiting list, that it had 22 people, and that I could be called at any time from now until the show to sub in. I'd have rather heard that I was in the show :) Still, I'll get the application forms early for next year's show and maybe I'll make it in.

Today was one of those days where I end up doing not much of anything :) I slept in until noon and spent the afternoon vegging in front of the tv. I guess I haven't been doing that much lately - aside from being woken at just before 7am and sleeping for another couple of hours - but I still felt quite tired. Tomorrow I'm getting my hair cut and if the pool is open, I might go swimming. It's freakishly hot out there and so I might choose to stay home if I don't have to go anywhere :)

My curling is so much better

I went to the curling workshop tonight. It's the first time I've been on the ice since April; as I'm sure you can imagine, getting used to the ice takes some time :) Interestingly, since last April I've been able to improve my balance quite a lot with bellydancing and working out. At Well-fit, where I work out, I do some exercises on one leg or else while standing on those half-dome thingies while doing arm work. For example, I do ball wall squats, where I lean against an exercise ball against a wall and squat on one leg so that that knee is at 90 degrees. Yes, that's as difficult as it sounds.

Anyways, having better balance has definitely paid off as far as curling goes. I'm much more secure on the ice. For the first time ever, I'm able to slide out of the hack without holding on to any rocks! That's a huuuuuge accomplishment for me. This isn't to say that my rock delivery is perfect; I do have a lot of areas that need attention, as I found out tonight. They videotaped me and others and then later critiqued the delivery. It was very useful.

When we got home, there was a call from the person who organizes the Christmas in Ancaster show. I tried calling back but no one was home. I'd sent in my application way late (they were still accepting them) and I was put on a waiting list because there were already some jewelry people. I'm hoping that since the organizer called I might be in the show. Cross your fingers for me! It's not a cheap show - $165 for me - but I'm hoping that means that it would be a success for me. Here's hoping.....

Bellydancing!

I got to go to bellydancing today! I wasn't sure if I would because I've been dog-sitting the last few days. I'd planned to take a ball stability class on Tuesday nights but it's been canceled so I'm taking a veil class!!!!! I'd wanted to take the veil class before but I couldn't justify taking three bellydance classes this term (I take a class on Thursdays, too).

I love veils - they're so beautiful on stage. They do require a lot of work, though. Imagine keeping your arms straight and up for an hour... that's what my class was like. Thank goodness I've been working out and have started swimming lessons. My arms and shoulders look very strong in the mirror :).

Interestingly, because I'm taking the veil class AND the Thursday class, I'll be in the recital twice. Of course this means that I'll have to learn two choreographies. I think that what they're doing is taking a single song and each class has a two or three minute segment of the song in which to do a dance. It makes the recital move much faster and kind of pulls it together, too. I'll have to get a veil; usually they're silk crepe de chine and I think I might have some red sari fabric in the right weight.

Some improvements

I think I finally got caught up in sleep today. I slept until 12:30pm today with only a couple of awake hours between then and last night at about 11pm. Whew!

Interestingly, I'm taking painkillers less often than usual. Yesterday I took painkillers at about 9:30am and didn't take them again until after Well-fit, around 7pm. I did take them just before bed last night and then when I woke up, and then not again until the evening. I'd been taking them every 5 or 6 hours, before. I'd love it if I could take less painkillers with no adverse effects :) We'll see how things go over the next few days; if this trend continues I'll actually start trying to lower each dose.

Shopping and swimming

I got to go shopping again today! My friend needed shoes and we were able to find the perfect pair for her :) I also bought myself the cutest little red plaid purse. I thought about getting the similar clutch but I wouldn't have been able to fit anything in it and it didn't have silver threads in the fabric. I can't wait to get everything moved into my new purse :)

I also had both swimming and Well-fit today. Wow, that's a lot of work. Swimming is hard because I don't know what I'm doing and I do things inefficiently. There are supposed to be two other people in the class but neither of them showed up, so I got a private lesson. That worked out ok. She was able to really give me detailed instruction which was quite useful. I won't have lessons next week and so she wants me to be sure to practice swimming at least once a week outside of class. Hopefully I'll find some time to do that.

A very fun day

I spent the afternoon at a "Crock-a-doodle" party. They supply the ceramic piece and paints and you paint it. They take it away and fire it and you get the finished piece. I chose to do the cookie jar and, just as with the mandala, I had to fill in all of the whitespace. The design I ended up with is not exactly the same as I'd had in my head (I imagined something sparse and got a very full picture), but I think it looks ok anyways. I'll take a few pictures when it comes back to me for you.

I had a great time at the party - I met a number of people I hadn't met and saw some people I haven't seen in a long time. It was a lot of fun catching up. I also liked seeing what everyone else was making - they all looked so much better than mine! I'm really glad I went this afternoon :)

Ian bought some software that will help us keep track of our caloric intake and exercise so that we can honestly record what we're eating. Both of us are about 15-20 pounds over what we're supposed to be and the weight just won't come off by doing nothing (our current approach). We set things up so that we want to lose the weight over a year and it figured out what our daily caloric intake should be. It also allows us to "bank" calories to be used within a certain period of time, like a month, for special occasions.

The program allows us to keep track of our measurements, weight, or BMI - whichever we prefer. It seems to be a robust program, and hopefully we'll continue to use it. It works with our recipe software, too, which is cool :).

A good shopping day

I went to the Oasis bead show today. I didn't buy very much: an 8" strand of aquamarine faceted hearts in graduating sizes (only $35 - that sort of thing usually runs about $100), two 16" strands of freshwater pearls in silver or grey, an 8" strand of tiny blue sandstone dice, and an 8" strand of snow quartz cubes. I really don't need that much because I have quite a lot of beads, and I didn't want to spend that much. I'm very pleased with my purchases. I especially love the aquamarine; it's my birthstone and I'll have to make something for me out of those beautiful stones :) I'd be happy to make something for someone else, too, of course - let me know :)

After that I went shopping for a dress. We're going to a wedding in a couple of weeks and I always like to have something new to wear to those sorts of things :) I ended up buying this dress in red. Even though that link says this dress is casual, it's really pretty and I think it'll be fine for the wedding (especially with a cute black jacket over it, which I already have, and a red hat, which I have).

The colour is gorgeous! The dress has a swingy skirt and a cute top. It isn't all that well made - the cute swingy skirt has parts that need to be re-sewn with elastic. I also need to shorten the top bit and I'll do that by taking it up at the shoulders. However, overall I'm very pleased with this dress and think it looks really nice on me.

I already have shoes that I can wear with it. I have my tall red patent sling-backs that match it and some red suede flats that match it. I also have some black shoes that would work, and some nude-coloured flats that would work. So sadly, I don't need to buy new shoes for the wedding.

When support groups go bad

Thank you for all of your suggestions - I appreciate everyone taking the time to think about a solution and send it/post it. We tried the heat-shrink tubing on a D-ring that I have and it could still have been cut open with the strap. It also didn't prevent the ring from deforming more :( The owner of the bag doesn't have a soldering iron, so she couldn't do that.

What I ended up doing was buying a "quick-link", used for repairing chains, and sending that so that the owner can replace the D-ring with it. It's an oval shape with a twist-lock and it should hold the straps together without going undone. I've sent the quick-link out to the owner and hopefully she'll be able to put it in to make the bag work.

I had a Skills for Healing workshop today and I'm afraid that it didn't go well. During the sharing circle (a time where everyone shares something, usually personal, that is completely confidential), someone was writing down what people were saying. I noticed this and when it came to my time to speak, I asked her to not write things down. She claimed that she wasn't writing down anything about the participants and their names weren't there, but finally agreed to not write anything that I said.

Later on, the subject came up again and another participant turned to me and said "What makes you so insecure?" I replied by saying that I didn't think I had to answer that, and the person who'd been writing stuff down leapt to my defense. The facilitator didn't say anything.

Even though names aren't associated with the notes this person was making, she was summing up what each person said. She was the facilitator for a group that I've since left and our paths cross regularly. This is the second time I've had to ask someone to not write what I'm saying. Honestly, I thought there would be a rule against this, but there wasn't.

I think that if something is confidential and no one is supposed to talk about what's going on outside of that sharing, then no one should be writing down what people say. I feel violated by this - is that something weird to me, or what? I also felt attacked by that other person, who as far as I know was never told that saying that sort of thing isn't appropriate :( . I left the group quite upset and am thinking that I don't want to go back to this particular group. I did speak to the Program Director about this - maybe things will change.

Help with a project

Help!!!! Remember the bag that I made? I'd used a D-ring to connect the strap to the bag. I anchored the curved part of the ring to a strap that was sewn onto the side. The straight side of the D has a small gap which I knew about but thought would be ok because the gap was 1/8" and the strap was 2" wide.

It turns out that there is a flaw in my design and the strap is slipping out of the D :( :( :( I'm so embarrassed at the thought of having sent out a bad design :( I don't know what to do. Obviously it needs to be fixed but I'm not sure how to go about this. I'd like to be able to send the owner something that she could then use to fix it, but if that's not possible she'll have to ship it back and I'll have to fix it myself. Ian suggested having the owner apply hockey tape to the flat part of the D. Does anyone have any other ideas how to fix this? Any thoughts would be appreciated - I'm really stuck, here, and I know many of you sew and design things. I'll go with the hockey tape solution if there are no better ideas. Thanks in advance.

I spent the day shopping with another friend. This time, we ended up at Square One. We didn't really see much until we got to H&M. I ended up buying four tops and my friend bought one. I'm very pleased with my new tops :) I tried on quite a few dresses there, too, and there's one that I loved but that didn't come in my size - I think it would have been good for a wedding that we're going to. I may try and find it at another store.

Shopping with a friend

I was very flattered when a friend asked me to help her shop for some items to help update her wardrobe. I'm touched that she thought that highly of my taste and opinion.... or maybe it's just that I'm the most available :)

We did most of the shopping today in the Fairview mall area. First we went to the Bay. I specifically suggested that mall because that Bay has the best selection in the area. There is quite a bit on sale right now and we snagged a gorgeous pencil skirt and blazer. After a brief lunch, we found the perfect pair of pants at Laura. I'm quite a fan of Laura; their petite store is very well-stocked :)

Since we'd had such luck with the main pieces and my friend wanted some new tops, we decided to brave Winners. I know what you're thinking: Winners? Well, yes. It's possible to not like shopping much and to brave Winners. If you don't like shopping that much and you're going to Winners, then follow these guidelines and you'll hopefully find it more bearable:

1. Shop during the day on a weekday. If you must shop at other times, shop in the evening early in the week.
2. Look for only one type of item, like tops; if you can, narrow that further to blouses or sweaters. Don't look for tops and shirts or tops and dresses on the same day if you can help it.
3. Get a cart and walk ONLY down the aisles that contain the types of things you want. It's better if you leave the cart at the end of each aisle so as not to block things, but not everyone does this.
4. Pick up everything in your size that you might like and put them in your cart.
5. Go to the fitting rooms and try on everything in your cart, 6 pieces at a time (that's the maximum you're allowed to take in). Make decisions quickly; a lot of what you picked up probably won't work. That's ok.
6. And then pay for the items that do work :).

I know that trying on a lot of things seems weird and exhausting. But if you restrict yourself to only one type of clothing article like tops and have some sort of idea about what you like, it won't take that long. I find it a good idea to try on new styles at the beginning of the season to get an idea of what those styles look like on me.

Anyways - back to the subject. My friend bought four tops at Winners!!! I have to say that she looks amazing in everything she bought. All the clothes fit her like they were made for her and so she looks beautiful, stylish, and sexy in them. I'm very proud of her for shopping for as long as we did and for trying my approach to shopping :). It was a lot of fun; I know I enjoyed myself, and I hope she did, too.

ps - I'm almost always up for shopping if anyone would like company and/or my help or opinions. :)

etsy

I'm home a lot these days and I can be very lazy so I spend quite a bit of time surfing the internet. I sell things on etsy and so read the forums there pretty regularly. Recent events there have left me feeling a bit frustrated with etsy admin these days.

Five sellers were recently banned from participating in the etsy forums, and of those five, two had received no warning about "bad" behaviours before (note: these people did tend to bully other sellers in the forums.... but then, so did quite a few of their friends who have not been banned). Etsy admin had previously said that there was a process to be followed when dealing with people who misbehave in the forums, but now they're saying that there's no such process and that everything is dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

Really. A case-by-case basis. There are hundreds of thousands of users on etsy. I don't understand how they expect to make things work by dealing with bad forum behaviour on a case-by-case basis. So they can ban "Billy" without warning but they'll let "Jane", who continually disrespects people, makes fun of them, calls them names, and worse, stay there. Sigh. This makes me sad.

Swimming lessons

I had my first swimming lesson today. We practiced putting our faces in the water, blowing all the air out of our lungs underwater, flutter-kicking, and some front- and back-crawl things. There was only one other person there today (there were supposed to be two) and the other person hadn't been in the water as much as I had. Therefore, I ended up doing more actual swimming than she did. That's ok. At the end of the class we worked on treading water. I'm very excited to be really learning to swim.

Afterwards I was pretty tired - I'm not a strong swimmer at all, and swimming across the short end of the pool (ok, half-way across the short end) multiple times was tiring. The instructor said that it would get better over the next few weeks.

A new week

I don't know what's wrong with me, but I'm really, really tired these days. Ian got me up at 10:30 (after a half-hour of trying). After breakfast, I... fell over... and slept for another hour or so. Then later this afternoon I slept for another two hours. I guess I'm still recovering from the late nights I did working on the bag a week ago.

Still, I'm walking around feeling like I've been run over by a truck. More than once over the last few days I've just fallen over and gone to sleep. How weird is that? I hope I get back to normal soon; bellydancing and swimming lessons both start this week. Yes, I'll be taking swimming lessons as I am not a good swimmer at all. The lessons will help, I hope :)

For those of you in Ontario and who will be voting in the upcoming provincial election (and of course I encourage you to vote), there is information about the referendum at yourbigdecision.ca. A lot of the website is very high-level, but you can get a more detailed file outlining the proposal here (careful, it's a 3.75Mb pdf file).

Oops

Sorry, folks, I got the link wrong to my mandala in my original post. The correct link is here (and I've fixed it in the original).

Mandala workshop

I forgot to mention yesterday that I got a call from the insurance company. You might remember that they were calling every three months to check up on me. I've got a new case manager, and she's not going to call me anymore. Every year, she'll send out a form that I fill out and that'll be enough to maintain my disabled status. I could have had my doctor fill out a form once or twice a year for a couple of years and then I fill out the form myself, but we decided that that would be a lot of hassle. I came away very happy from that conversation.

Today I went to a mandala workshop. We meditated on our third eye chakra (between the eyes) and asked the question "where will I be in five years" and "who am I". We drew a circle on paper with a dinner plate and then used pastels and/or acrylic paints to draw. Oh, and we used our non-dominant hands to do the mandala, so I used my left hand :) Mine is here. It expresses who I am, I guess.

The interpretation the facilitator gave for mine is that the drawing brings you very strongly to the center, or soul, of the mandala. The outside is my "self", and there is a connection between my soul and self. She said that my soul needs to express itself very strongly and that as I go forward in self-improvement, it will find wisdom and discernment (two characteristics of the third eye chakra).

I guess if I were to do this again, I would draw a different mandala. It would be sort of interesting to see what I would do each time, huh?

More on the upcoming election

I watched the Ontario leader's debate tonight. I must say that I'm not impressed with the Conservative campaign, which is all about how the Liberals have "broken their promises". During the open debate periods, John Tory (the Conservative leader) continually interrupted Dalton McGuinty (the Liberal incumbent) with shouts about promises and whatnot. Sigh. I really wish the Conservatives had a positive campaign that outlined their stance on various issues as opposed to just pointing out negatives.

After the debate, I had a nap. Yes, I know the debate was in the evening, but watching it tired me out :) I'm looking forward to getting some good sleep soon.

Shopping, shopping, shopping

Ian and I went shopping today and we each got quite a number of good items. I bought a pair of jeans, a pair of khakis, and a pair of grey dress pants. The other day I bought a pair of black dress pants and a pair of black fine-wale cords. I also purchased a black pencil skirt. Everything I bought today was on sale or reduced in price :) I bought the pants at Mark's Work Wearhouse and I got $10 off because I tried on some pants in their new fits.

I have many of these articles in a smaller size, but they don't fit anymore :( I thought it was important to get replacements to fit the size I am. Besides, I can't wander around all winter wearing stretchy workout pants or a skirt every day! The bottoms should cover casual to dressy situations and a black pencil skirt is a wardrobe staple as it can be dressed up or down. I think I have a good selection of blouses and sweaters, although I expect that I'll buy one or two pieces to replace worn-out things (like my faded turtlenecks) before winter.

Ian set out to buy a new belt. He actually bought a belt, another belt, some pants, and some shirts. He spent more on clothes today than I have in a few weeks :)

Oh!!!! Our local Sears is bringing in Lands End stock. Lands End used to be available only by catalogue or online; many of their items are practical and stylish. I've heard good things about their fit, too. They were setting up today so I hope they'll have everything by the weekend.

More on me

You know, for all that I don't like to be interrupted on the phone, if you have something really important and urgent to tell me, then you should definitely call me. Although my first reaction will sometimes be somewhat brusque, that'll turn around in a hurry if something is happening. Similarly, if you're calling to talk to Ian, that's ok by me - you're not interrupting me then :)

However, if you're calling just to say hello and to chat, well, if I'm not expecting your call or I'm busy, then I'm not necessarily going to react well.

Onto another topic, I don't know what's up with me today. I'm so very tired and I've been sleeping most of the day. I had set an alarm to wake me at about 10:30am... I remember half-waking up and thinking that someone's alarm was going off. I didn't wake fully up, though, and I didn't get up until after noon.