Happy December!

November kind of sucked, well, quite a bit of the whole year sucked. November was the month of dental woes, and it was really horrible. I had the second of a series of appointments the day before Thanksgiving, where I was fitted for a temporary crown. Even though it was a little over an hour with two people's hands in my mouth, it wasn't nearly as bad as the week before, when I had a molar extracted. That one was so awful, so traumatic, that the nurse (?) suggested nitrous, and while she said my insurance wouldn't pay for it, she thought I needed it. I don't know how much it helped, but maybe it at least gave me something else to concentrate on.

Bob went out and got me a milkshake after that appointment, and since then I've been eating mostly soup and drinking tea. I had a broken tooth -- the one that is getting the crown -- and the dentist was out of town, so he told me to be very careful with it until he could get the temporary crown on. I'm slowly working back up to eating other stuff, like a turkey sandwich on a soft roll. My sister invited us over for Thanksgiving -- my parents don't want a whole house full of people anymore, so my brother and his wife took dinner over to them -- but I didn't feel up to it the day after the dental drama.

So I bought the smallest turkey breast in the store and roasted that for Bob. He had to work for part of the day, so I didn't really go all out, just the turkey, mashed potatoes, Stovetop stuffing, and I baked a frozen apple pie. Having the small dinner with just us was nice, and I put together a dinner for him to take to his boss at work that night.

My birthday was a week ago today, and we didn't do anything, but we're going to go out tonight, probably just somewhere like Culver's, but that sounds good. Bob brought me a beautiful spicy-scented candle and some chocolates, and Barb sent me a care package with Disneyland tea, a Vera Bradley shopping bag, and a "Sally" (from the Nightmare Before Christmas) doll, my dad and Bob's dad both sent me cash, and my niece Mallory sent me a gift card. It was a low key personal holiday. :)

I don't really have much money to spent on shopping, but I did go out on Black Friday. I had a $10 free coupon for Kohl's, and a 20% off coupon, so I went there and bought myself a sterling silver Disney bead for my Pandora-style bracelet. It's two interlocking silver circles that are engraved "Wishes come true."

I also went to Bed, Bath & Beyond to buy a humidifier that I ended up taking back the next day. It was horribly noisy -- Bob said it sounded like an aircraft carrier. As it turned out, they had humidifiers in two separate places in the store, and I only found one. I exchanged the noisy one for another one that is much better, and it was slightly cheaper. At the low speed, it's almost silent, and at the higher level it's just a low background noise that doesn't bother us at all.

Saturday was my "day of beauty. I had my nails done and my hair cut and colored, and that took up most of the day. I came home and made mashed potatoes for Bob to have with the leftover turkey when he got home from work at about 10:00. It's been nice to have these days at home.

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I decided I needed to do some kind of "project" for December to keep my spirits up. I'm not sure what it's going to be, except that for one thing, I'm going to take a bunch of photos. I started today, taking pictures of some of my favorite little Christmas ornaments that I put out each year. My "thing" is primitive snowmen, and I try to pick them up whenever I see them. They're usually pretty cheap, and I have quite a collection of them.


I also started reading some of my favorite Christmas books. I read Miracle and Other Christmas Stories the other night when I was feeling particularly down, and it cheered me up, as it always does. And I checked out Murder with All the Trimmings from the library, a "Josie Marcus, Secret Shopper" mystery set in a Christmas store.

I've started thinking about my favorite Christmas movies, too, and may watch one tonight. I'm thinking Christmas with the Kranks, or maybe Home Alone.

Louise Marley

Several years ago I ran across a book that I absolutely loved, The Glass Harmonica, by Louise Marley. The story involves a little homeless girl in the 1700's who plays musical glasses on the street for handouts. She is rescued by Benjamin Franklin, who has invented the glass harmonica, and she becomes his protege and lives in his house, a lifestyle very much removed from her previous life.

Contrasted with this story is another one set in the future (2018) involving a concert musician who plays the glass harmonica, which is enjoying a resurgence in popularity due to a wave of nostalgia sweeping the country.

I don't really have any interest in classical music, and I almost never read historical novels, but for some reason, this one really grabbed me, and I loved it. In Marley's novels, the present and the past are blurred--the veil between the worlds is very thin. She is able to write historical novels that also bring in science fiction-like stories, and weave them all into one wonderful book. She also writes books that are more straight science fiction, and while I tried them, I didn't really like them.

I recently discovered that, since The Glass Harmonica, she had written several more similar books. In short order, I read The Brahms Deception, which involves time travel between Brahms' time and the present, and The Glass Butterfly, which moves back and forth between a present day psychologist who is running for her life, and a young housemaid in opera composer Giacomo Puccini's household in the early 1900's. The glass butterfly in the title is a paperweight which ties the two women's stories together.

Next up is Mozart's Blood, which is somewhat different in that it's a vampire book . . .

Dental Adventures

I hadn't been to the dentist in a long time. I've always had good teeth, very few cavities, and while I knew I should go, I just didn't want to. Then, a few weeks ago I was eating something, I can't remember what, and one of my teeth felt weird. I could feel a kind of ridge with my tongue, and I realized that the tooth had broken. But nothing else happened, so I didn't do anything. Then, a week or so ago, I started having some pain in a different tooth, and I started getting scared about it. I have a mitral valve prolapse, which is the fancy word for a heart murmur, and any time I have dental work I have to be pre-medicated with an antibiotic. I thought, how stupid would it be to die of some kind of infection that could have been prevented?

So I called and made an appointment. But it was so traumatic for me! I know that no one loves going to the dentist, but I also know that most people don't have a terrible phobia about them. Bob used to go all the time. For one thing, I thought that they might give me a hard time for not coming in sooner, and, of course, I was worried about the pain and, not least, the cost.

They were all very nice, of course, and that fear was unfounded. It turned out that I will need to have a crown put on the fractured tooth to try to save it, and the tooth that was giving me pain needed to come out. So they wrote me up a treatment plan, and gave me a referral to a dental surgeon. The appointment for that was Monday, and it was about as traumatic as making the initial appointment was. I really don't tend to get all that upset about things, but this was really getting to me.

The technician could tell that I was upset, and she asked me if I wanted nitrous oxide. She said, "It's $65, and your insurance won't pay for it, but it might be worth it." I declined, not wanting to pay the extra cost, but when the dentist was giving me the shots to numb the area, I would wince, I guess, and he said, "you're jumpy!" The technician asked me if I wanted to try the nitrous, and I said, okay, maybe I should. I had never had it before and didn't know what to expect. It wasn't a huge difference, I don't think, but it probably helped.

I took the rest of the day off, and Bob got me a milk shake for my dinner, which I had to eat with a spoon because I can't use a straw yet. I did go to work the next day, and when I mentioned how traumatic it all had been, one of the girls in the office said, "It's because you're a redhead." Well, actually what she said was, "It's because you're a ginger." Apparently is is a somewhat well known fact that redheads are harder to anesthetize, and have a greater amount of pain and anxiety, particularly regarding dental work. I've always felt like I had a pretty high pain tolerance, and, in face, have never taken any of the pain medications that I've been given after a procedure, but there's just something about dental pain that shakes me. I looked it up, and there was a study documenting it.

Pretty interesting, and somewhat validating.

So anyway, on the day before Thanksgiving, I have to have a crown put on. I'm definitely not looking forward to it, but I'm planning on mentioning the study to the dentist and see if he has heard of it, and/or agrees with it.

Vacation

Bob and I have gotten in the habit of taking a week's vacation in October, our wedding anniversary month. Sometimes we go to Bennett Spring; the last couple of years we've gone to a friend's condo on Lake Taneycomo.

Bob and I both like to do a lot of hobby preparation--while he's busy organizing his fishing lures and flies and rods and reels, I'm going through my sewing box and putting together a mobile quilting kit. I didn't get as much done as I had planned for, but that's okay. I just wanted to be sure to take enough that I would have plenty to do if I wanted to.

I took a bunch of English paper pieces supplies--hexagon templates, mini charm packs (2-1/2" x 2-1/2" precut fabric squares), needles and thread, and I also pre-cut a bunch of circles from a regular (5" x 5") charm pack to make yo-yo's. I made a bunch of Halloween hexagons, and started on some snowman ones. I ended up doing a lot of the snowman ones, and was able to stitch them together as well. My plan is to make some kind of table topper, about the size of a placemat.

I've been wanting to make a tumbler quilt, so I also took a small cutting mat, a rotary cutter and a tumbler template, but ended up not doing that. I decided I want to do English paper piecing for the tumblers, too, rather than cutting out the shapes, and I ended up ordering some papers from Paperpieces.com. I really hated to do that, but I couldn't find any printable templates and didn't want to draw them myself.

There are a lot of English paper pieces hexagon tutorials out there, so I'm not going to go over all that ground, but I know that some people are interested in it, so I wanted to at least show some photos. I downloaded a sheet of printed hexagon shapes (link is on this page, along with an explanation of how to do it), printed them out, then cut them out individually. I actually kind of like that part, too. Then once I have a bunch of little paper hexagons cut out, I start making the fabric hexes.

There are a lot of different ways to do it, and my method isn't necessarily the best, but it's what I like. I buy the mini charm packs--at first I thought that was kind of extravagant, since I could, of course, cut out the squares myself, but they're actually fairly inexpensive: a pack of 42 squares runs around $3.75. And I like having them all perfect and exact and micro-pinked, so I decided that for myself, it's worth it.

I start out by placing one of the paper hexes on the back of a fabric square, and start folding the fabric on one side. I stitch through the paper--some people don't do that, but I like doing it that way. I also don't use freezer paper or glue or pins or anything, the hexes I am making are about 1-1/2" across, so it's easy for me to just hold them in my hand as I stitch. Keep moving around the shape, folding as you go, kind of like wrapping a package. Some people also trim their fabric in a hexagon shape, but I don't think that's necessary, and it's just an additional step. It doesn't matter what kind of thread you use, but you want it to be contrasty, because you're going to be removing the basting stitches. I've been using up a bunch of little spools of cheap thread that came with a sewing box. They're actually perfect for that, because they're thicker than regular thread, so it seems easier to tie knots.

Then, once you have a bunch of little fabric hexes, you can start sewing them together. I take two of them, place them right-sides together, and sew them with little stitches along the edges.

My stitches show, and I'm okay with that. Especially in this particular instance, where I'm using primitive fabric. And I'm not a machine, or a robot, and if I wanted to try to make something perfect (or aspire to), I would use the sewing machine. But I really enjoy doing it this way. It's meditative, and it's something that I can do while watching television or listening to an audio book, or just sitting and thinking, which is what I mostly do.

While we were on vacation I sat out on the deck and sewed a lot, and I loved that. Once a hex is surrounded on all sides, you can remove the basting stitches and take out the paper template. Removing them as you go makes it easier to hold the whole construction in your hands.

Once all my hexes are sewn together, I will make a "quilt sandwich" with some batting and some backing fabric, baste them together, and do some quilting. Then I will bind it. I've never made a full size quilt, just very small ones, and I kind of doubt if I ever will. I'm much more inclined to make small pieces. For one thing, I'm easily distracted and/or bored.

I really love this fabric. The line is called "Snowman Gatherings," by a company called Primitive Gatherings, and produced by Moda. I used two mini charm packs to make the hexes for this little quilt, and have, I think, four more, because I love it so. I haven't decided what to do with them yet, but I'll think of something. I bought a half yard each of these two prints, which were my favorites of the line.

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I also read while we were on vacation, of course. I read: Doctor Sleep, by Stephen King--a sort of sequel to "The Shining"--The Cuckoo's Calling, by Robert Galbraith, aka J. K. Rowling; The Sound and the Furry, a Chet and Bernie mystery by Spencer Quinn, and Open Your Heart, by Neal Pollack, a yoga mystery.

I also finished up a new website for author Susan Wiggs. So I was pretty busy!

Love letter to Levenger

I don't have fine china, I have everyday dishes (Fiestaware), but I know that there are people who have china that they love, but they keep it put away for special occasions. Maybe that's a good idea, I think it does make special occasions just that much more special when you get out things that you don't use all the time, like silver. I have my grandmother's silver, but the only time I ever use it is on Thanksgiving.

But that's one of the things that I've tried to get over--not with china or silver, but all of the beautiful, everyday things that are maybe too beautiful to use. Like paper. One of the guys at work came to me yesterday and said that we were out of legal pads, and did I know if we had any more. I told him that I would order some, but in the meantime, I had one that I would give him. He asked, didn't I need it myself, and I said no, I buy my own paper because I like the really expensive stuff. I think he thought that was kind of dumb, and it is, to an extent, but as we're fond of saying at work, it is what it is.

I enjoy writing by hand. It's a different thing than typing, writing makes your brain work in a different way, I think. It flexes different muscles. So if I'm going to write, I'm going to use tools that make it a pleasure. In my case, it's Levenger Circa paper (letter sized shaded annotation ruled paper, $16 for 100 sheets or Action Method Dot Grid Refills) and a Pilot Precise V5 Extra Fine Rollerball pen. Bob sometimes makes fun of me for having "special" pens; if he needs a pen, any old pen will do. If I'm just scribbling down a phone number or something, sure, any old pen and a sticky note will do. But if I'm taking extensive notes, or writing a to-do list, I want a pen that is a pleasure to use, and that makes the notes a pleasure to read later.

He has also made fun of me for having favorite eating utensils and favorite/special juice glasses. I don't care. Everyone has favorite things, and if using them makes the day better, why not? I'm always reminded of a quote I heard once--I don't remember who it was attributed to--on the order of, if you're going to eat chocolate, eat the good stuff. I apply that to just a few things in my life--sock yarn, candles, purses, and office supplies are the ones that come to mind.

While I was perusing the Levenger website, I ran across this review of their Circa Task Pads:

When I originally purchased these pads, I used them sparingly because of the cost. At some point, I realized that whatever it was that I wanted to address at a different time had a value that for me was far in excess of the 9 to 11 cents of each sheet.

I have some of those task pads (you can see one in the top photo, in a Compact-size notebook), and I, too, have felt like I needed to conserve them, but how dumb is that? If something is useful to you, use it. When I die I'm going to leave a houseful of pens and notebooks anyway, I might as well use some of them up. I stick a half dozen of these list pages in the front of my larger notebook. Then, if I'm in a meeting and think of something that I need to do, I can jot it there and move on. It's easy to remove it from the big notebook and stick it in the notebook that I keep in my purse.

I'm a big fan of Levenger Circa, if you can't tell. Everything is interchangeable, and I have a portable punch that I can use to make any paper fit into a Circa notebook, or make custom flyleaves out of scrapbook paper. It's very exciting. (I know, I'm weird.) There are three sizes--Letter (8-1/2 x 11), Junior (5-1/2 x 8-1/2), and Compact (3-3/4 x 6-3/4). The picture above shows two notebooks, a Junior size and a Compact. I switch between a Junior and a Letter size one for notes at work, and the Compact one is the one I keep in my purse. They don't really make that one anymore, or at least, they don't make much in the way of accessories for it. I just ordered 300 refill sheets in case they stop making those, too. I also keep knitting and sewing patterns in a letter-size one at home.

Oh, and you can buy 3x5 card ones, or punch your own 3x5 cards . . . This is a "swatch book" I made using a Circa 3x5 Jotlet notebook. I can drop it in my purse if I'm going to the fabric store and need to match something.

Here's a deal: Buy the Levenger Simply Irresistible Sampling Kit for $40, and get a $40 Levenger gift card that you can spend for more Circa stuff (or anything, really). Virtually free!

And here's a great article about lists and notebooks: James Altucher - How a Waiter's Pad Saved My Life