Sweet Dreams?

Alright, my wise doctor decided that since I'm pregnant, I need to sleep sometimes.  Preferably every night and preferably for more than like 3 hours.  And I've tried.  Oh yes, I have.  Counting sheep won't work because if y'all know me, I'm all examining the fiber quality of each one that jumps the fence wondering if maybe I really should get a spinning wheel.  Because I'm pregnant and responsible and because Nyquil even when not gestating a human knocks me on my ass, a glass of wine isn't an option either.

So he suggests....FOUR benadryl every night.  Uhm, 'cuse me?  WHAT?  FOUR?  Two make me feel like Dopey and Grouchy's love child so there was no way in hell I was taking four.  I tried two.  I got sleepy and then it felt like I had WWIII going on between my legs (OMG, I seriously just read that back...that sounds bad.  So bad I simply must keep it here to give all the other sick, twisted minds out there a giggle.)  But what I MEAN (you sicko) is that my legs just fight each other and themselves for hours after the benadryl kicks in, which I think is restless leg syndrome, but if I had to name it I'd call it "cut off your legs so you can sleep" disorder.  All around SUCK.  So....next attempt to do that sleep thing was Unisom.

Oh.  My God.  Is Unisom derived from 'shrooms or what, because y'all my dreams on that crap are CRAZY.

And we aren't talking the typical naked in front of a classroom, falling from a hot air balloon or running circles crazy.  I'm talking so weird that I can't even remember enough details in a logical order to explain them after I wake even though in my slumber it all makes sense and I'm fine and dandy with all the psycho crap happening.  I am SO OVER IT.

My kiddos love to sit around and talk about their dreams and what they mean, which by the way is apparently a science or some shiz, but I have no idea where to even start with mine.  Lots of airplanes, lots of weird shiz falling from the sky, doomsday, while I'm over there still knitting like "Eh, just a few more rows before the end of the world, I'm good."

I don't think I'll find that here but whatever
Is there anyone out there that can give me some very serious suggestions on how to get to sleep and stay alsleep without falling down rabbit holes of weirdness or wanting to perform my own amputatoin cause y'all I AM SO TIRED!! HELP?!!?!?

UFO? You mean awesome. pre-started project right?

It starts with an apology usually.  "And yeah, I have a ton of UFOs" lamets the yarn artist, apologizing for his or her obvious failure to take that project from A to Z in one sitting.  Pffft.  Get real.  UFO?   You mean awesome pre-started project right??

Let's have a little chat about this shall we?  Let's get logical for a minute because y'all know that's where I feel most comfortable.

First, why are we apologizing for not meeting some standard no one actually put on us?  Are we doing this for a JOB?  (If you are, get on it girl, don't make that customer wait!!)  If we are making stuff for the pleasure of making stuff, or even to make something we need eventually, let's lose the apologies for not doing in on sweatshop timelines.  Live long and enjoy the process.

Secondly, technically any project you start is a UFO the second it's begun, so the stigma of having even one UFO is silly.  To get philosophical, even WE, ourselves, are unfinished objects and there's beauty in that.

But lastly, and my favorite part of UFOS, specifically a massive quantity of them is the aforementioned "awesome, pre-started project."  I LOVE looking through my yarn [-]hoard[/-] er, stash and finding all sorts of stuff I started and abandoned out of boredom.  It's like "Oh wow, what a cool project.  BONUS, it's already started.  Hey look at that, this new awesome project is like 75% done."  So really, it's like WIP Christmas.  Right?

I no longer feel guilty about stuff I've started and left behind for later.  It's like leftovers, but with yarn and leftoevers are always awesome right?

Today's revisited UFO started back before Christmas....

Something kind like this:

But with my own little spin :)  This one will take a long, long time.  And I'm okay with packing it away when I get sick of the green monochromaticness of it all.  

Long live the UFOS.  A yarnies opportunity to make something awesome in itty bitty stages and cheers to the all the UFOs out there lingering in storage boxes waiting to be rediscovered as "awesome pre-started projects!"

My Poor Orphaned Blog

You know how you start something and dedicate yourself to doing it very regularly...then that old four letter word inserts itself into your best intentions and screws it all up??

LIFE

Yup.

But life also demands the cathartic nature of writing if you're a writer, even if you can't yet articulate everything you need to write about.  Life changes so fast and furiously sometimes and you don't even know how to do the basic things anymore, let alone put a bunch of words in any logical order.

So I guess I'll break it down.  I still have kids and stitches.  As a matter of fact, my 10th little bean will arrive in the next few weeks.  This time around it was a bit of a shock which probably makes most people laugh, but it's true.  There was some active prevdention happening, but I suppose fate had other ideas.

Since my last blog I've started a charity Matthew's Gift which donates boxes of infant memorial items to loss parents.  We made our first official donation on Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day and are slowly reaching out to the community more and more to give parents the gift of dignity for their stillborn babies.  I'm still trucking along with my Jamberry business and loving that (for the most part!!)  I've traveled to Austrailia and back home again and have started a few new projects that are still in development but super exciting.

On the yarn front, my most loved project right now is my "Opus" recycled sweater blanket.  I spent over a year collecting merino and cashmere blend sweaters from thrift stores and they have been carefully processed and wound into balls of watercolor beauty.  It's the warmest blanket I've ever touched and I absolutely adore each minute I work on it.  I chose the Attic 24 Neat Ripple because it's simple and easy!

So very warm and cozy!!  Of course I'm working on a couple things for the "new one baby" (that is SO cute and not sure where it came from, but all the kids are calling him that.  Yes, it's a boy!!)

Farm life has been absolutely devastating.  Our three Nigerian Dwarfs had their first babies from the new buck.  All three delivered triplets.  The first birthing only saw one survivor out of 6.  The last to give birth had one stillborn, with the second dying within the week and the next being fatally wounded by our male Pygora during a nursing visit with Mom.  It has been absolutely crushing and I haven't fared well emotionally during all this.  Having babies on a farm is the best part and seeing such loss has really been a blow on my heart.  We've decided to ixnay on the goats for now.  We simply have too much going on to keep up with it and we are all very tired of the, well, bullshit, associated with having them.  We plan to sell them soon.  I guess part of being a grown up is knowing your limits!!

Yarn.  OMG.  I have bought SO MUCH YARN in the past couple months.  Knit Picks Black Friday deal brought over 300 skeins into my house, then Little Knits about 100 and Goodwill, eh, we won't talk about that.  But no, I haven't gone yarn hoarder.  Getting yarn into the hands of volunteers for Matthew's Gift has been a something important to me and the price point of $1 or less per skein makes it really cost effective, so when the sales hit, I jumped.  I have a handful of steady volunteers that enjoy the work and I am so blessed to have them.  Unfortunately I have also had a few people take large boxes of yarn and just disappear, ignoring all messages asking for progress.  Live and learn and then create a system that still allows me to give yarn to volunteers on a trial basis until they prove they will actually return it in the form of finished items.  I still have a hard time with the injustice of anyone taking from a charity, especially in light of what we are doing, but I have to let those people live with that choice.  

For now, life really is in a HUGE flux and I have no clue where it's going anymore.  So much has changed, so much is happening, so many choices and decisions laid before me and the idea of taking each day one at a time has never been more poignant.  The balance between happiness and sacrifice is a hard one to strike and lately I look at it all and just sigh.  There's only so much compromise a person can make before they are no longer the person they actually are, you know what I mean?  

Since writing is the place I can actually find that person, that I am, it's pretty important to start it up again, even into the wild blue yonder of blogging to the unknown world out there.  Just the act of spitting words out is healing, so hopefully in that, there will be a small measure of peace and comfort.

How is everyone out there?? What are YOU up to??