No focus

I have absolutely no focus!

 I did it again- thinking I'd pick an unfinished, but already started project, finish it, and move on to the next.  NOPE!  I started to work on a sweater I started 2 years ago, and was all proud to have gotten 6" done, when I realized
A)  I had a messed up row about halfway down, and
B)  I just messed up the pattern stitch, and have NO idea how to fix it.
RRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPP out the whole damn thing to try again some other day.
I had started a lace table runner.... I'm gonna need to rip that out because I don't think I marked the rows I was finished with...
And a pillow cover from a stitch I wanted to try that I'm now thinking I chose TOTALLY the wrong yarn for, because you can't see the pattern.

I gave up on every one of them. 3 weeks, three projects, and now I'm just making granny squares for the lap afghan I had planned.  Wish me luck that I don't give up on that too!  I'm kinda proud of it since it took me over 20 years to wrap my head around how to make  granny square. The thing most crocheters learn first, I just *couldn't* get.  But I counted everything out, came up with a plan-a-gram, and now all that's left is to finish the border squares, and hook it all together. (:

I love that stormy sky!  That first pic is my new passion.... coasters!  Because I'm hoping to start selling things, and those are useful, pretty, and easy to make.  Whatcha think?  I'm also planning on making some more bathroom tissue covers, and later on, hat and scarf sets.  Not a lot of people make sets, you can get one or the other, but they don't always match.

That, is Myste.  Remember the the tiny kitten? She's now a whale! (:

Well, sorry for the lag... And as usual, 

Thanks for Noticing me!

2012!

                                                        

She's at it again....The mixer? Really?  I guess she figures since her brains are already scrambled, she's in no danger. (:

And some more notes from the bizarre world of retail...

People are crazy. 

...A bag of some ridiculously expensive apples, 5lbs bag (that's average, usually it weighs more, not much, but...) for 7.99, about 10 apples.  Customer didn't want to pay *that* much for apples! So she went back and bought 5 of the same type of apple, and paid 4.69 per lb.... So she paid .69 cents or more per lb *over* what she would have paid for the bag!  Duh.

...In October.  A girl wearing jogging pants, (not sweat pants) knee high black rubber boots, a warm up jacket, and it looks like she got her makeup tips from her great grandmother.  BIG blue eye shadow, spider leg lashes, bright pink lipstick, and pink circles of blush.

...Impossible customers.

Some little biddy is on the u-scan, not listening or following instructions, rolling her eyes at the machine, and getting nasty at me.  Then she asks me about garbage tags.  Around here, you need to buy tags to put on your garbage bags for the company to come pick them up. She wanted to know if I could get the service desk to send me some so she could add it to her order.  I told her I didn't think so, but I'd ask.  She finishes, and I told her that sorry, no, they cannot leave the desk, she *had* to buy them there. "But I asked you!" Well, yes, and I told you I'd ask, but they told me it can't be done. I never said that it could.  "*Looks at long line* I asked you to add it to my order, I can't stand on that long line, my husband is in the car and he has Parkinsons Disease!"   Seriously lady?  Unless your husband is the one waiting in line, I don't see what that has to do with anything.  You left him in the car long enough to shop for 50.00 worth of groceries from one end of the store to the other, and then to stand around yelling at me.  I don't see what a little longer is going to change.

We had an interesting New Year.  We watched most of the Harry Potter movies all day long, until the last hour when we watched the Big bang Theory, both boys made it to Midnight, and not 10 minutes more. (:
What did you do to ring in 2012?  The beginning of the end!  At least, it is if you think that the Mayans should have kept going forever. (:  As usual...

Thanks for Noticing me!

Awesome!

Because I am....

You can't really tell, but it's an apron made from the boys old jeans for their Titi, with an aqua, and pink dragonfly sparkly on it.   And one of the slipper socks for #1 son.

 My pride and joy.

 Hat and scarf from the *yummiest* yarn for mom.

 Skipper for my penguin boy................................................>

 A pink Domo-Kun for the pink boy. (: Yes, that's knitted!

 Although you can't see it, the ends of the scarf have the same edging as the brim of the hat.

So, how were *your* Holidaze?

As Usual, 

Thanks for Noticing me!

More reasons to shake my head

I am *so* going to get out of retail, if it means throwing myself in front of a bus.  I have 2 sites that I used to love to read, written by retail workers, for retail workers, about all the craziness that happens in the retail world.  I used to laugh, I used to sit with my jaw on the floor in amazement.  Now I want to cry.  It just never occurred to me I guess, just how far down the evolutionary scale we've slid.  Most of my stories make you want to shake you're head, but I do have some few that just make you wonder where the world will be in the not so distant future.

4 *very* quick stories...
I've explained the u-scan before.  The items have a weight that is entered into the computer with their bar code and price.  The scanner is a scale, the bag area is a scale, and all the #'s better match, or you have to wait for the attendant to see why they don't.
A woman comes up with an armful of things, she starts scanning, and then her small child starts leaning on the bag scale. When she *finally* looks up to me, I explain the whole scale thing, and she says, "Oh, that's a scale?! So sorry!" and pulls her kid off the scale,  (no I'm not kidding here) when she stood back up from that, she frikken put her purse on it!  And had the nerve to *ask me why it wouldn't work!*

A guy places his few items through the process, then puts his bag on the floor.  The weight needs to stay the same on the scale, I told him so, and he said... "I guess the camera didn't catch the fact that I put the stuff in a bag."  "Scale", "camera" ... um?

Then the people that just plain make no sense at all.

Like my little old Russian guy.  Speaks about 5 words of English.  He comes in and spends a fortune on scratch offs, and he's *SO SLOW*!  it takes him, literally, 20 minutes to put his money in the machine, choose his 5 or so tickets, and scratch them off.  But he has no idea if he wins. He doesn't read enough English to know if he did. So he brings his entire pile for us to scan into the lottery machine, because he doesn't believe us if we just throw the ticket away.  What is the point of scratching them off?  If you don't know if it's a winner or not, just buy the ticket and have us scan it for you. (not that I enjoy that either!)

The store I worked for does a gas promotion.  Every $1 you spend on grocery items is a point, every 100 points is .10 off each gallon of gas, and each promotion lasts 8 weeks...  6 weeks to earn points, 2 weeks to use them up, and then it all zeros out and starts over. To make it easier, it's just like every other sale, it always starts on Sunday and ends on Saturday, and your points, and the dates of the promotion are on all your receipts, plus the dates of the promotion are on every door, register, circular, and gas pump.
If I had a nickle for every time I heard, "What a rip-off!"  "How was I supposed to know when it ended" and "Why does it have to be so difficult to understand?!"  I'd be a really, really, wealthy woman.

I think I'm burnt out.  I never wanna be on the other side of another register for the rest of my life.

As usual...
Thanks for Noticing me!

Finis!

Wooooohooooooo! All main gifts are finished!  Almost all cards are delivered.  Now just for fun, (and making myself nuts) I'm going to attempt secondary gifts.

And it seems the Department of Labor has caught up with me, and I am to bring myself, and a copy of my resume to a meeting.  With one small problem.  I've had 3 jobs in the past 17 years. *sigh*.  I don't *have* a resume!  No one wants to see that.  I always dread the "last 3-5 jobs you've had" portion, and in interviews, the "Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years" part.  I don't plan that far ahead. I'm not that kind of person.  I've never had much in the way of ambition, I just want to live my life.  I just do my job.  If things progress from there, YAY!  If not, fine too.

So, with 15 days left to craft, here's hoping I can finish what I want to, and look forward to pics of the finished projects!
Silly kitty time!

 As usual folks,

Thanks for Noticing me!

Pain

I don't like to complain much in public, it isn't really my way. Usually I can just suck it up, and deal, and show the world, if not "shining smile" then at least not "tear soaked mess".

I was never really a fan of the mainstream holidays after Halloween.  At least, not once I got old enough to get over the whole "OOHH!! Shiny presents!" portion of my childhood.  I feel we expect too much of ourselves, and those we invite into our lives around this time.
  This has been a particularly bad season for me.  In the course of this month, I was unjustly fired, accused of theft, did not receive all the pay due to me from that unjust firing, my unemployment benefits seem to be in limbo with no human to speak to about it, my car is in the shop looking at, on the cheap side, 5-7 hundred dollars worth of work, I have little money in the bank, and now, to top it off, my sister has told me "You're a BITCH!  I hate you right now" all because she said "I have lost everything I cherish in the last 3 weeks" and I was hurt by it.  Yes, I know it sucks to break up with a guy.  I know it sucks to be broke.  But as long as I have my family- my kids, my parents, my sister, and, distantly, my friends, a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in, and all that implies, I have not lost *anything* I cherish.  And to imply that because she and her boyfriend broke up is so much worse than what anyone else has to deal with, implying that this part of her family is not cherished, is hurtful to me, insulting to us, and quite frankly childish.  And for telling her that I was offended that the people she knew less than 5 years were more cherished than the people that have been here for her her whole life, she called me a bitch, told me she hated me, and when I blasted her for that, (and admittedly, told her the truth which normally I would have kept to myself to spare her feelings) she unfriended me from fb, and I haven't heard from her since.
http://youtu.be/BpIUr7WjjRs
So great, I shouldn't have lost my temper, I know that.  Maybe I'm here seeking validation that what I'm dealing with now constitutes enough stress that I was temporarily insane.  I must've been because in 35 years, I have never told her the truth about how I feel.  That she is a one upper, that if I hurt, she glosses over it and tells me how *awful* everything has been for her.  That she's acting like a child,  that (and this is the unadorned truth) if I put her fb statuses next to the ones from a 15 year old I know, I can't tell whose are whose.

I think the term "temporary insanity" was coined for just this situation.  Or maybe, just maybe, I was finally sticking up for myself in our relationship.

Okay, I promise. Done with the drama now.

Thanks for Noticing me.

Still at it.

How was everyones Thanksgiving?  We had a quiet day here.  Just the same 4 diners as every other day, and my sis stopped by after for dessert. (:   I must say, if you're going to step away from the norm, and try new things, then doing it while you have no company is definitely the time to do it!   We had the nastiest sauce for the broccoli, and the sauce for the potatoes disappeared into them leaving no trace of flavor behind.  Next year it's back to plain veggies and mashed with gravy!
Also, if  you like broccoli, try this if you can find it...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanesco_broccoli
It's a Christmas tree! LOL!  And it *does* taste exactly like broccoli, I wouldn't lie!  Now it's the boys second favorite veggie!

I have so many ideas to make, and no time to make them!  Now is the time of year I make those orange air fresheners, you know the ones, with an orange, cloves, and ribbons and bows? (:  We had one hanging in our coat closet for *years*, before it finally lost its scent.
All holiday gifts have been started, and all but 2 are "done", in total 4 still need to be "finished".  Done meaning made, finished meaning all the finishing touches are added.
 Ddasha has been behaving extremely odd lately, I mean, even more odd than is her normal odd... (:

  

The little fruitcake.  

Well, that's it for now... 27 crafting days till the big one!  And as usual,

Thanks for Noticing me!