It is strange how everything seems to have come full circle in my life. 

I find myself moving back home to Florida for half a year while I wait for my ship date.  I have been accepted as an officer candidate in the US Army, but unfortunately I do not leave for boot camp for 7 months.  How’s that for a devastating delay in paychecks, sigh.  I find I need a cheap place to live for half a year and so I am going to live in Florida for a while and it will remain my place of residence, according the military, possibly for the rest of my career. Despite my resolution to never live in the state again I seem destined to be a Floridian for life. Thus it is that I have lived in my life, in this exact order: Florida, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Florida. Weird, huh.

Other than finding myself heading back the state of un-breathable, liquid air, obscene bugs, and the nearly dead, life is going really well.  I have made it past the soul crushing pain that comes with having your heart ripped out without warning (see last post) and I find the other side of my recovery, well not always joyful, is nearly always exciting.  Divorce suits me well, from a physical point of view.  Left to my own devices I do not feel compelled to watch nearly as much TV just to be social, thus I am much more active in this incarnation of my life and I look all the better for it.  I have dropped enough weight in the past few months that I finally had to purchase an entirely new wardrobe, with these new clothes came a renewed confidence in my appearance. 

Between knowing that I look pretty good and not having a ring on my finger warning off every stranger’s appreciative glance before I ever see it, I am enjoying going out into the world more than I have for years.  Guys may never fully understand this, but as a moderately attractive girl, you become accustomed, from a young age, to people noticing you in an appreciative way.  Even if that notice leads to nothing it is still a constant, reassuring presence in your life.  The minute an engagement ring landed on my finger almost a decade ago that notice was instantly removed from my world.  I had a hard time adjusting to being invisible.  This may be shallow, but to go through my 20’s and not really being noticed by the men around me was a difficult thing on my self-esteem.  For nearly ten years now, they did not really pay attention to me, other than to note I was taken, and so gradually I began to notice them less and less.  When no one is trying to catch your eye, it becomes all to easy to stop really looking at the faces of strangers untill one day you hardly notice who else is in the world at all.  For the better part of ten years now I could not have told you with any great certainty who I passed in the course of my day.  Young, old, pretty, ugly, male, or female…these things didn’t matter much to me.  Without some sort of active interaction spurring me to notice them, strangers were just nameless, faceless scenery in the background of my life.  Remove  my ring, throw a little new found confidence in my appearance, add some nicely fitting clothes and suddenly doors are held open for me again, waiters stop by my table a little too often to see if I need anything, and random guys smile at me just to see if they’ll get lucky and I’ll smile back and maybe stop and talk to them.  It’s like being in a self-esteem feedback loop…I admit, I like it.  Now if I only wasn’t at a specific age where more, often than not, the guy I find myself wanting to catch the eye of is, on second glance, married.  When last I dated, in my late teens - early twenties, ring checks were not the essential part of my life that they are now.  Not every overly friendly smile can be wholeheartedly returned these days…It is sometimes difficult for me to remember that my single status not the norm for my age group and I need to be careful.  Even still, I am refusing to be discouraged by my poor odds, relative to the number of single folks left, and I can safely say I find it wonderful to be appreciated again.

Between enjoying the world in a newly rediscovered way, looking forward to employment which will be challenging, take me all over the world (to both the good parts and the bad, and that’s OK) as well as teach me how to jump out of planes and repel out of helicopters for free, having the unexpected bonus of getting to spend half a year with my awesome dog again before I leave him with my parents for good, spending quality time with my family, and having the all time I could ever ask for (and then some additional time to spare…7 months, really?, really?…), to fully say goodbye to all the good and bad parts of my past before I embark upon the unknown, I can safely say that despite the challenges of my life I am a blessed person. 

Thank you to everyone who has sent me a kind message over the past few months, they helped more than I can ever express.  I just wanted to stop by and let folks know I am doing well until such a time as I will be able to post more regularly again.

-Nikki

You may have noticed that I have not made a post in a while…sorry.  There is a very good reason for this.  Two months ago to the day I caught my husband in very inappropriate contact with our mutual best girlfriend.  I was willing to try and work through this.  He told me that he thought we needed a period of seperation as he needed time to miss me and work on his issues in therapy alone, so off to Nashville I was packed as he could not leave Boston and I had nothing holding me there but him.  Our dog was shipped off to Florida to stay with my parents and we began a very short separation. Within two weeks our separation turned into “I need a divorce,” and within a month and a half the divorce was final.

So here I am today. In less than two months I have lost my husband and best friend of ten years, my dog, my tiny apartment, my best girlfriend and needless to say I am not in a position to do a whole lot of crafting these days as all of my supplies are still in Boston and will not be shipped down here until around November at the earliest.

And although this is not where I hoped to be in life at this minute, I don’t have any regrets.  I tried and never stopped trying until he made it clear he did not want me and was not going to be involved in our marriage any longer.  I deserve to be loved without conditions, I deserve happiness, I deserve someone worthy of all the love I have to give.  Although I can never claim to be a perfect wife, and Lord knows I am sure I can be a pain in the arse to live with, I can say without hesitation I have many gifts to give that are not worth wasting on those who do not want them or crying over when rejected.  Faith, love, fidelity and forgiveness are cores of my soul.  I know this for sure because I still believe in the future and the goodness of people.   I lived to love my husband, and I will live to love another just as strongly.  And the next time I give my heart to someone else for the rest of my life I continue to have faith that, that man will be confident and strong enough to give his love as fully and unreservedly as I do.  Our divorce was handled amicably and  I wish my ex and the woman he is with now all the best in the world.  Our lack of success should not preclude their chance of happiness.

I am looking at either joining the military as an officer or going to law school (maybe both if I am lucky).  I have been spending all of my free time teaching myself math again (it’s been ten years since I cared about word problems or algebra…bleh). And I have been getting myself back in shape.  I have dropped about 20 pounds in this two months through diet and exercise and I must say…I am looking pretty good these days.  (Before you go “Dang girl! You were huge! I am six feet tall, so 20 pounds for me is more like five or ten for everyone else…)  Hopefully, Basic Training will help me kill the last ten pounds that won’t seem to budge.  But it is not a bad way to get back out on the dating scene, all thin and pretty again.  Between traveling to and from Boston, handling the divorce, exercising, studying and hunting down and motivating ten billion people to do what needs to be done to try and fill out my security clearance packet I have been very busy lately.

This blog will likely be on hold for a few months, at least until my life is settled again.  When I reboot, the name of the blog will likely change, but I ask that if you had me in your links…please leave me there.  I will come back I promise.  I will leave all of my old posts up (even the painful ones that have pictures and stories of my ex) as there are still good projects or funny stories contained in those posts.

I have been loved and motivated by many people during these past two months and although some friends have proven themselves to be less than loyal, many more have stepped up and gone much more than the extra mile to make sure that I am doing OK and have everything that I need to make it through this time.  I have done more new, exciting, and frightening things in the past two months than I have in years.  I have pushed myself and have yet to find my limits.  It turns out when the world pulls the rug out from underneath my feet I remained standing…it is good to know I am one of those people.  You never really know until it happens.  I don’t crumble, I don’t whine, I don’t give in.  I wake up each morning with the word courage, and go to sleep each night with the idea of love and forgiveness.  And that keeps me motivated.

I will see you all again as soon as I can.

-Nikki

A friend from high school came into town for a little while and asked what there was to do in Boston.  I listed of the normal touristy stuff and he became interested when I mentioned whale watching.  This is where several whale species come to feed during the summer.  I encourage anyone to take the tour.  It’s worth it to do this at least once in your life.

I am terrible at taking good pictures of whales.  I didn’t manage to take good ones last time either.  I have lots of great, “this is the water just after they disappear shots,” but here is the best one I got.  This is a mother and few month old calf.

Combine large sail boat festival with intense fog and instantly you’re hundreds of years in the past in a ghost story or Peter Pan.  These ships would just appear out of nowhere.  Awesome.

According to a stranger, always the most reputable sources in the world, this is the last occupied lighthouse in the US.

Boston from the water.

I can’t say my knitting skills have improved dramatically since I joined a knitting group, but that is NO reflection on my group.  They are hella-awesome knitters (and infinity more skilled at crochet than I am as well).  Nope, my lack of desire to think very hard whilst recreational knitting is the culprit here.  (Garter stitch all the way baby!  No patterns for Nikki.)

Typical pattern attempt:

“Concentrate, concentrate…think, think, think.”  Knit, purl, knit, knit, purl…Oooh, here it comes… “Ray.  When someone asks you if you’re a God, you say YES!”  Ha, ha! That’s never not funny…wait…knit, purl….purl, knit…? Crap, back up a few steps – pay attention Nikki! (Ten minutes later) Knit, knit, knitty-knit-knit…”CRAP! I remember purling being involved here somewhere. Ugh, time to frog again.”

But hard as I try to remain deaf to the good ideas I hear tossed around at my weekly knitting group, a few inevitably weasel their way into my head in between my bites of Qdoba chips and salsa, and I start to think, “Hey, if I did that maybe this pattern stuff wouldn’t be so bad.”

The first good idea was learning how stitch markers work.  Luckily for my knitting laziness patterns often shift and the stitch markers must shift in accordance to what is going on at the time.  Some thinking still required – Phbisht, I’m out.  You can’t trick me into the harder stuff based on these magic tools alone.

THEN I learned about a Safety Thread.  Dang!  My other big excuse for not working harder is that I often screw up at some unidentified location and I have to frog my project either all the to the beginning or way, way, way back until I reach a point where I know I was doing it right.  Then I have to manage to pick the stitches back up again without hopelessly losing or twisting them. And THEN if I manage to do all that, I have to try to guess correctly what row I am now on… Ugh, kill me.  (Are you starting to see where I might have gotten the notion that a Doctor Who scarf was just my speed.)  A Safety Thread makes that excuse obsolete.

How you Insert/Use a Safety Thread:

At certain intervals (like the end of large sets of repeats) you insert a thread into your work,  along the needle, where you know everything is correct. (Correct pattern, correct number of stitches, correct EVERYTHING.)  Then when you get caught up talking or watching TV and you look down and have a “What the Heck!” moment you don’t have to panic.  You just frog your project to its last perfect point (the yarn will stop the frogging just like you had a needle in there), reset your row counter and use the string as a guide to insert your needles back into the stitches perfectly.  When the project is finished just tug these strings out – there is nothing substantial holding them in.

Big giant Duh here! So simple that I have to say again. Why didn’t I think of this?

Thanks to my friend over at Bareblueskin for telling me about this last Monday at knitting group.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has just never appealed to me as a book, but the movie versions and graphic novels have held up much better for my tastes.  Tim Burton and I have years of a love-hate relationship.  I love his visual style but often find myself hating much of the rest.  (Only Sleepy Hollow and Nightmare knocked it out of the park for me, I loved the full package in those two movies.)  So I am torn over whether to even get excited about this.  I mean JUST LOOK AT this image.

But then three guesses who makes up the cast.  Yup Johnny and Tim’s wife, and double yup, he made them ugly again.  Shocker, I know.   Sigh… Tim, why can’t you and I either stay friends or part ways?  Why must you toy with my emotions?

Here’s the problem with legacy projects and blogging – while I work and work and work, I have very little new to report. 5 1/2 feet into my Doctor Who scarf and all I can say is, “I’m still at it.”

But just look at all of this lovely, never-ending  garter stitch!I am just under half of the way done with the pattern which means that I should really be at about 6 to 6 1/2 feet of length at this point, BUT, I knit tight. Real tight.  Tight like anal-retentive accountants would look at me and go, “Why don’t you chill a little girl?”  I don’t know why I do this, I have tried to knit looser (I knit much looser than I used to…I can now get the needle between the yarn and the other needle without effort…I can slide the yarn freely on the needles as I am working it.  These things used to be an issue.  But, let’s just say I am rarely concerned that my stitches are going to fall off of the end of the needle when I am not paying attention. They stay nice and still until I choose to move them.)

So the bad news is my scarf will most likely be on the shorter side. The good news is it should be nice and wind proof.  I’ll take the trade off.

- You should see how tight I crotchet.  Ca-ra-zy-

My fellow Bean Town drivers,

Let me say first of all I empathize with your sleepiness. I too am tired at the butt-crack of the morning and dodging pedestrians darting out into traffic without a look or a care to catch a train running down the middle of the road is difficult. It is not your fault that the city planners were too lazy to plan a city and simply established permanent roads wherever the cow trails happened to be – absolutely cows have the best judgment about how we should reach our final destination, they are never known to wander about aimlessly. I do not begrudge you the confusion the situation brings when you cannot figure out where to turn as the train sneaks in and out, from the center of the road to the side and you must decide do I drive on the service roads or main lanes? Dear God, am I now going the wrong way down a one way street/service road!…all of this is all tricky indeed. So go ahead, slam on your brakes and vacillate in and out of traffic listlessly as you make up your mind. Lord knows I do too when I am on unfamiliar turf.  If I might make a suggestion, when you are new in an area you might watch the flight path of the herd and not shoot up the (temporarily) empty lane you find yourself in.  We are not weaving for our pleasure and we will save your wheel alignment if you follow us.  I (and the others I see each day) have a carefully mapped out series of lanes changes (and shifts within the lane) that I make every day designed to minimized (although by no means eliminate) the chances of my car falling into what I can only assume are portals to hell. You might call them potholes but I swear I once saw flames licking out around the edges of a particularly deep one, I’ll not be testing them.

Nope, I am, in general, well able to forgive the follies of my fellow drivers because we are all human.

That said. STOP BEING DOUCHE BAGS. When approaching an intersection a football field wide with waiting traffic and a train staring down at you do not presume to pull yourself into the intersection after the light has been green for some time KNOWING it will turn red with you stuck out there through the entire next side’s green light. (I am talking to EVERYONE who has ever entered Storrow Drive.)  When then stuck in the intersection and blocking all traffic have the good graces not to respond to resulting honks and/or fingers with a shrug and a “what can I do about it?” look and a geusture to the stalled traffic in front of you. It was just as unmoving before you put your dumb-ass self in the intersection and in our way. This makes everyone want to kill you for being a double moron. Either stoically keep your eyes glued forward or pretend that the oncoming traffic is in fact an emergency vehicle you must make way for and find a way to get your ass out of the intersection. You could do it if you tried, it just wouldn’t be pretty….you might have to *GASP* leave the line.

And Boston, red means stop. I know this can be confusing as the municipal vehicles do not seem to understand it. You might think because you have seen school buses loaded with children running red lights where other vehicles have already managed to stop not to mention the obligatory every-cop-car-out-there going right through them as if they don’t matter, however, this still does not give you permission to do so. In particular, if I have time to slow my car during a yellow light and come to a full stop at the resulting red you should not feel authorized to change lanes, pull around and continue traveling through the light.

And I know this is going to shock some of you, please sit down before reading, when you are driving down a four lane divided road and you find yourself needing to stop and either conduct business or release a passenger you must continue on until you a find parking space or a turn-off. If the street parking is full simply putting on your hazards does not give you legal permission to turn a normal driving lane into a second parking lane. On my last week in town I am going to drive through Boston in the Bat Tank (from the first Christian Bale Bat Man movie) in the right hand lane of all two lane roads in Boston and I am not changing lanes for any reason.

You have been warned Boston,

Nikki

I was going to do a step by step tutorial on these but then I only had one set of hands and, really, I think you guys are bright enough to figure it out.
I have been meaning to get around to this for a long time.  I have a boat load of spiral notebooks (ten years of continuous college for one or both members of the house will do that.) I HATE spiral notebooks. They must be the ugliest office/school supplies to ever grace the planet.  It pains me to write that last sentence as I have a love for all things sold at Staples and I will even horde notebooks despite their ugliness. However a little Mod Podge and a $1.25 fabric squares from JoAnn’s transforms these notebooks from something to be hidden to display worthy.

As long as you take your time with these they are really easy.  The only slightly tricky part is sizing the fabric to the spirals. But even that isn’t hard. Just measure the circumference of the spiral from cover to cover and that becomes the width of the spine, the height of the cover is the height of the spine. (For a five subject notebook it is usually 2×11 in.) Use your measurements to mark where the spine will be in the center of the fabric then cut and fold a flap down (glue into place) on both the top and bottom so that the fabric at the spine is the exact height of the spirals. (You will have at this point a rectangle of fabric with a notch taken out of the center at the top and bottom, this also helps you to make sure everything is centered as you begin gluing the fabric to the front and back covers.) The rest of the excess fabric will be folded over the inside edges of the cover and glued down but you can’t do that in the center spirals so you have to do it before you glue the notebook to the fabric.

Supplies: Pre-cut fabric squares, Mod Podge or Elmer’s Glue, Spiral Notebooks, Cheap Paintbrush to spread glue, scissors

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If you are interested in how the desk was decorated check it out here.

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This has been a busy, busy week and we have a house guest coming tonight. Am I cleaning and getting ready for her as I should be, nope, I’m writing this.  But it’s OK…we should completely have time to find a place for her to sleep amid all of our crap after we get home from the midnight screening of StarTrek tonight, right? Sigh, I should go get cleaning.

But first I have to leave you with this parting story. We were driving and talking a lot these past few days and the topic of my learning Hebrew came up (I started yesterday, super interesting), this naturally lead to a discussion of religion in general and he asked if we still had a bible at the house.  We did at one point but I don’t think we do any more…I think at some point in out eleventy-billion moves it got tossed along with a whole bunch of other books that I didn’t feel like moving up and down stairs any longer. (I have had to do this on my own a few times, books are considered very carefully come moving day.) So any way, after mocking me for tossing out a bible and making it clear that was the last piece in my one way ticket to hell he busted out this gem of a conversation starter.

“So what will I use if I need to perform an exorcism on you?”

(Snort laughter!) “If we ever reach the point where you must expel the forces of darkness from me, please call an expert. Perhaps a priest, a priest who owns a bible…”

“I have an expert, I’ll Wiki it.”

“Do NOT wiki my exorcism!”

“Sure, I’ll wiki-cise you!”

“Oh dear God, you’re not going to exorcise the demon your going to open a larger portal to hell.”

“It’ll be your fault for throwing out the bible I needed.”

You see how it always comes back to me folks…

Every house has it, the dreaded ugly piece of furniture. (Sometimes this horrific fiend has an entire family of ugly friends clogging up your space.) And like me you walk past it and sigh. You know you should do something about it…but who has the money to replace it or time to deal with it? Then one day your brain snaps and the ugly must be dealt with, but how you ask? Super Cheap I reply.  Behold the ugly desk.  This dark beast labored under my computer and piles of crap in a darkly painted entryway with no windows, relentlessly sucking out what little light managed to peek into that corner. (Whose bright idea was the dark brown paint anyway?…Oh wait, mine…moving on.) Due to drying times this project will require a weekend to accomplish.Something must be done, so I took stock of what I had – you can see it there sitting on top of the desk. Three pretty pieces of paper and some Mod Podge…I’m totally prepared. My plan was to cover the drawer pulls with the gold paper and use what I could of the tiny amount of cranberry paisley paper that was super pretty and super scarce. Off to the store I go with a sample of these two papers. Turns out no paint matches both so I buy a perfect match for the background color of the paisley paper…Salmon.

Newsflash: Salmon is Benjamin Moore code speak for shocking band aid pink. You have been warned.
I determined very quickly that my new giant, band aid pink desk is not in fact an improvement over the previous incarnation. Think, think, think. New plan. Go under the sink and pull out more of the light brown paint from when we first moved in and I was painting the apartment. Using a giftcard to maintain an equal distance from the edge of the desk I tape off a square with painter’s tape and make a brown square.

Hint: for clean lines paint a quick edge inside the tape with the background color and let dry for a few minutes before moving onto the next color.

While watching TV that night I used scissors and an exacto knife to cut out the swirly flowery pattern on one of the pretty papers that I liked. After letting the paint dry over night I traced the edge of the square with a gold paint pen I had left over from an old project. (You can’t tell much but it’s nice up close.) Then I played with the best arrangements of the design for a while and put a thin layer of Mod Podge under the paper and a thicker layer on top to decoupage it to the desk. Let this dry completely, a few hours should do it. I would hit it with another layer of glue to help protect the image.

I also decided to paint the front of the drawers brown (there was still WAY too much pink going on.) the only thing I left pink was the handles which I Mod Podged little strips of the paisley paper onto. It still looked a bit unfinished so I hot glued some mint green buttons on top of the whole shebang after the top and drawers of the desk got a quick coat of Minwax. (Along with everything else in the house I have been avoiding sealing for the past three years.) The fumes…Oh the fumes…

Here it is, my brand new desk ready to handle all of my crafting needs in style, all for the whopping sum of $15 dollars and I still have a TON of Salmon paint left, you know…should you be dying to paint something in your home the color of band aids.

Full list of supplies for non-crafting, non-packrats. Keep in mind this grew out of what I had on hand.  If you don’t have something improvise. I never would have come up with so many pretty things if the pink hadn’t been so unexpectedly ugly.

• Mod Podge (or Elmers Glue)
• Foam Brush
• Paint
• Paint Brush
• Painter’s tape
• Gold Paint pen
• Decorative Paper
• Exacto knife
• Minwax sealant
• Buttons
• Hotglue Gun

First things first, Torchwood is now on my Netflix list because I am not afraid to say this loud and proud; Captain Jack is yummy. I don’t even care if the spin off is terribly good, as long as he is in every scene I will suffer through all three seasons.

Onto scarf progress.

I am so consistent it’s scary. My scarf has followed the same time honored path as everything else I have ever started. Transcript of my life: (Substitute the word that with anything I have ever wanted, it will still work.)

1. Oooohhhhhh, I want that!
2. I WANT THAT NOW!
3. Now, Now, Now, Now, Now!!!!!!
4. Quickly find out everything the Internet knows about that.
5. Purchase supplies in a frenzy of glee, often skipping around the store and/or squirming like a three-year-old who has to pee. (Stupid lines and driving, slow me down from starting my project.)
6. Assuming something shiny has not yet at this point distracted my attention and taken me down a new path of “Oooohhhh, I want that!” I now begin building/drawing/cutting/knitting etc., said desired object which will bring me all the joy the universe has to offer.
7. Get about 1/4 of the way into project and discover I should have maybe taken a little more time to plan, inevitably I do not have enough of something critical and there is no way I can justify this project costing even more.
8. Scrap everything I learned in Step 4 and wing it from then on. Pattern or original idea be damned!
9. After extensive alterations I have something that very nearly resembles that which I wanted in the first place.

We have accepted my compulsive nature and built a system around it. Like handguns, there is now a waiting period in my home for crafting projects (or anything really.) I have to wait a week from the first Ooooohhhh before I am allowed anywhere near a store.  (This helps to weed out the passing fancy shiny and pretty things and makes sure I have less than 100 projects at any one time.)  It also works pretty well for him and electronics…

My scarf didn’t let me down. Right about the second tan section I started to notice something funny, “Huh, I sure am going through this beige A LOT faster than anything else.  I wonder if I will have enough to finish the project? How many more rows of tan are there?”

You see the critical flaw in my plan now right?  This was the FIRST time that I counted and added up the number of rows that each color is expected to cover. (My master plan was I bought two of every color – surely that would be enough.) Ummm, problem.  There are 300 rows of tan, 270 rows of green and 80 rows of brown.  Clearly the colors are not spread out evenly…Slap forehead and rethink.

New plan, completely and radically rewrite pattern to space out all of the colors and salvage the project.  So now I no longer have a Doctor Who scarf…it’s more like a Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor scarf.  Whatever, I still love it. Whoever invented miles and miles of garter stitch must have known I would be born one day.  I know this bores everyone else on the planet, but not me. In my world the more repetitive and thought free an action can be the more I love it.

Ah, and my buttons came in.  Luckily I have been sick and having fun with my scarf or these would have distracted me again.  Sock monsters would have been made, and James would have been sad.  As it is very likely that I would have cut up perfectly fine socks in my hurry to make them and he sure does love having a plethora of socks.  One fight averted by the common cold – thank you Rhinovirus.