Which is what the whole insurance thing turned out to be. I'm switching carriers and will now be saving myself $38/month and my son's portion will be under $100/month which should be managable for him. So I guess I should be glad, but I'm still quite annoyed -- I just know it jumped like that because of my horrible credit rating. Forget the fact that I've never had an accident (knock on wood) and other than the whole driver's license suspension snafu I've got a pretty clean driving record.

I must say it was a rough day today. I don't know if being off my meds contributed to it or not. I wasn't rude to anyone, but I had little patience with stupid questions. (And, YES there are stupid questions -- the one that comes to mind is "Can I ask a question?" It is unbelievable how many people call and ask that.) I must confess I didn't get much work done and spent most of my afternoon checking the tv listing for movies I want to record (my cable guide isn't working -- wah!). But I think my attitude had more to do with being agitated because I couldn't resolve the insurance issue until I got home. I absolutely hate having something like that hanging over my head.

Anyway. Guess what I'm going to do with my extra $38/month?

I had requested a quote from my insurance company (Gieco) a while back to add my son to the policy. They replied that I had a family policy so everybody was covered, but they needed his driver's license #. So now that he can drive by himself I put that in and my insurance went up $1200!!!!!!!!!! And now they WON'T TAKE HIM OFF unless he has proof of other insurance! Why does he need other insurance HE DOESN'T HAVE A CAR!! I have one payment left for this six months and it went from $138 to over $700. WTF is going on here? He'll be driving the car once or twice a week, maybe 1/20 of the time I'm driving it and it's going to cost 2x more to cover him. This is absolutely ridiculous and I'm about to have a have a total screaming fit. I'm going to have to call up the "are you paying more than $35/mo" insurance place and see what they can do for me.

Well, his girlfriend's father/boss is buying a car that he may give him. He also said he was going to take care of the insurance. So I guess I'll also have to send a message off to his wife and see what's going on with that.

I am so totally pissed off right now. Okay. So, I'll find a comedy to watch... no, even better, I'll watch some Northern Exposure... except I don't think the DVD player is hooked up, and trying to get the stupid thing working again my just make me even more pissed (if that's possible)... so a comedy, probably. And stitch, yes, calming, soothing stitching...

This week I finished up with the first 1/2 of the second page.

If I can continue at that rate, I should be all the way across in 5 more weeks. That seems like forever for someone who has been switching projects every 4 days! And I sure am looking forward to getting pass the dragon's wing. There's a bit of his body there in the upper right, if you look real close you can see the scaling.

Labels: Tower of Stony Wood

Thank you for the supportive comments. Tuesday morning was the last time I took a pill and I seem to be doing okay. I was the only one behind the admissions counter yesterday and things got a bit hectic -- a school counselor came in with 9 apps, eep! -- but I didn't get stressed out or anything. I haven't noticed any withdrawal symptoms.

I've also managed to accomplish something today! I picked up my room, including taking care of the laundry. After that I took a break and I started thinking a nap might be nice, but I got up and got back to work picking up the kitchen. I'm now on another break before I tackle the living room. Normally if I stop after I've managed to get going, I never work up the initiative to get back to it.

I'm supposed to take my daughter to a pool party tonight, which will be a good test because besides depression, anxiety, and compulsive behavior, I also suffer from social phobia. Even with the Paxil I disliked social gatherings and would avoid them, but at least I was able to say my name in a group of people without suffering from a panic attack! I don't particularly want to go now, not because I want to avoid it, but because I want to get done with this cleaning and get on with my stitching! This is actually good news because despite my love of stitching and wanting to do it, I often found myself avoiding it. Once I got going with it, I was okay, but lots of times I'd put off picking up my needle. So being avid to stitch is a really good feeling!

I know I shouldn't, but I've decided to try to quit the Paxil that I've been on for the last four years. I'm aware some people have experienced severe side effects quitting cold turkey, so I'm keeping my eyes open for that. Yesterday was the second day I didn't take it and the only thing I really noticed was a headache. And I slept last night. Which is a withdrawl symptom I think I can deal with, and was hoping for!

I've decided to stop taking it because it no longer seems to be doing me much good. Primarily, I just don't feel happy -- and I have no reason not to. I mean, there are reasons why I'm not content (like my total disaster of a house!), but everything that makes me unhappy is totally within my control to fix. I know this, I even know how to fix it, but I just can't seem to muster the energy to do anything about anything. And this seems to be getting worse. Plus I miss a lot of work because I can't sleep at night, then I oversleep. Or I just don't feel like working that day, so I call in sick. This started a couple of years ago, and I thought it had to do with the job, but I've switched jobs and I'm still having the same problem.

I started taking the antidepressant at a time in my life where I really needed to make a change for myself and for my children. I don't think I would have been able to successfully leave and divorce my ex if it weren't for the drugs (for awhile I was on two).

Now that the crisis is past, maybe I don't need the drug. Maybe it is creating this horrible lethargy that I've been dealing with for the past two years. Or maybe I need MORE drugs. The difficulty with that is the doctor told me to get some blood work done over a year ago and basically told me that it better be done before my next visit, which was this past Wednesday. Well, I still didn't get it done. So I had to reschedule the appointment. How ridiculous is that? And, no, I don't have a problem with needles. The problem is I can't seem to get myself up and moving on the day I plan to do it, and so I leave it for the next Monday I don't have to be to work until 10:30. And this is basically how my life has been for the last two years.

So, we'll see if this helps.

The Tower of Stony Wood.


Stitched on 25 count DMC ecru evenweave. I'm not going to be returning to my rotation for a while since I want to get all the way across the top before I put this away.

Labels: Tower of Stony Wood

I record a lot of movies, if it sounds vaguely interesting on the DVR it goes. And sometimes I get lucky. "We Married Margo" was one of those strokes of luck. Very quirky comedy without being stupid. It had me laughing out loud more than once.

I have a hard time being "professional". Which is probably why I haven't really advanced in my so-called career. Well, that, and a lack of ambition. In my current position I don't get called on it so often, but my last one...

Anyway, today I processed an application from an Australian and a couple of the documents had a signature from an "Australian Consulate Officer" which included a smiley face and an exclamation point! I think I might fit in better there...

I had plans to post a verbose update about my recent stitching experiment, CDC, and my progress on my website. Alas, it is not to be because when I checked out the HAED BB I discovered this: The Tower of Stony Wood. I have been wanting to stitch this piece of artwork ever since I first saw it about two and a half years ago. And now it is MINE!! So I'm going to do a quick post of the last two WIPs I've worked on and then I'm going to dive in.

Here's Cirques des Cercles:



And here's Undercurrent:



Here's a link to the artwork: Undercurrent. I was in a bit of a stitching slump since I was still preoccupied by the website I'm trying to build. I thought maybe an experiment would peek my interest and so I decided to try doing 1/2 stitches on Monaco. I picked Undercurrent because it fit perfectly on the Monaco I had. The experiment was a total success, you can't see any of the diagonal lines that have kept me from using 1/2 stitches on other fabrics, I can use a loop start, and I'm able to do a whole 10 x 50 column in less than two hours.

And now I'm off to get set up for The Tower at Stony Wood. Woohoo!!

Labels: Cirques des Cercles

I'm trying to decide if I should keep the frames on my website, or try something else. I had initially envisioned having links to different projects in the frames, which would be easy to mantain -- add something once and there you go. However I've realized there is a reason I generally hate frames! Primarily the linking issue. Other than setting up a frameset for each project (can you say waste of bandwidth?), I'm not sure how to get around that. So now I'm trying to think of an alternative way to navigate between projects without having to go back to a page of thumbnails or using next and previous. I'd like users to be able to jump directly to whatever they want to view next -- but I don't want to have to edit 50 some pages every time I add or project! So... thinking...