I know - it is a NOVEL - not to mention dark and brooding - so move along - no need to read further - just an entry for my blog book for ... posterity? Damn. That's just twisted ...
Well, it is after 1:00am again and here I am up and restlessly roaming the house. I have to admit, Jessie's actions yesterday won't leave me - they haunt me - in many ways. Still sore from where she belted me and kicked me as I was trying to clean blood off her face. She had repeatedly hit herself in the face to get her nose and mouth bleeding ... just for fun. That was just the beginning of a very ugly 3 hours and I am oversharing already ...
She has, since moving out of the house, stopped beating on me and stopped with the bleeding - so this was a severe regression and I don't know what triggered it. Not feeling well, keyed up with the holidays coming, something too disturbing to contemplate going on where she lives (see how fun it is to be me laying awake at night in bed ... with my mind wandering to all sorts of terrifying, dark corners ...).
So ... overshare ... I'm done. Except I am still up ... trying desperately to get a very, very, bad, disturbing day out of my head and all that it could imply with future visits, etc and I just cannot fall asleep. I am assuming I will drop eventually. I plonked in bed at 4:30am yesterday and stayed asleep for a FULL HOUR before haunting dreams scared the shit out of my psyche and woke me up ...
Alrighty then ... aren't I just a bundle of fun this evening?
So - my computer. Ahem. There were a couple of things that flopped on me royally last night and I was determined to make them work. One was the PED-Basic software that lets me take a design I want to program into my sewing machine from the computer and get it on a card, which then goes in the machine (don't worry, there is seriously a demo later in the post). I got a message that the hardware could not install last night, although the software installed just fine. The other was the printer. An older one and it could not ... by wandering cyberspace ... find the correct drivers to properly install it on my computer.
Fortunately, I had a few ideas up my sleeve.
Printer: actually had a folder in my filing cabinet labeled HP Photosmart 7550. So, I got the CD, took it upstairs and then sort of had to still manhandle an install. Stubborn little bugger. But, not to fear, other than being precariously low on ink - I am good to go a printing ....
My PED-Basic (and no, I have no idea what that stands for) software - I sort of remember it saying I had to install it in an EXACT order or it wouldn't work, nuclear war would break out and the end of the world would commence henceforth. Got out the manual and sure enough, I had nearly ended life as we know it on the planet by installing the SOFTWARE before the hardware drivers. Whew! We really dodged the big one there! Uninstalled, reinstalled IN ORDER and it was happy as a clam, world peace abounds (in my craft room ... at least ...).
Here are my two happy campers - all snuggled on the cutest Ikea drawer table top. Apparently not all that stable on carpet. When the printer is printing, the table rocks back and forth - reminding me of R2D2 - just without the whistles (sad) so I shall probably come up with a name for my dancing printer soon.
Well, it is after 1:00am again and here I am up and restlessly roaming the house. I have to admit, Jessie's actions yesterday won't leave me - they haunt me - in many ways. Still sore from where she belted me and kicked me as I was trying to clean blood off her face. She had repeatedly hit herself in the face to get her nose and mouth bleeding ... just for fun. That was just the beginning of a very ugly 3 hours and I am oversharing already ...
She has, since moving out of the house, stopped beating on me and stopped with the bleeding - so this was a severe regression and I don't know what triggered it. Not feeling well, keyed up with the holidays coming, something too disturbing to contemplate going on where she lives (see how fun it is to be me laying awake at night in bed ... with my mind wandering to all sorts of terrifying, dark corners ...).
So ... overshare ... I'm done. Except I am still up ... trying desperately to get a very, very, bad, disturbing day out of my head and all that it could imply with future visits, etc and I just cannot fall asleep. I am assuming I will drop eventually. I plonked in bed at 4:30am yesterday and stayed asleep for a FULL HOUR before haunting dreams scared the shit out of my psyche and woke me up ...
Alrighty then ... aren't I just a bundle of fun this evening?
So - my computer. Ahem. There were a couple of things that flopped on me royally last night and I was determined to make them work. One was the PED-Basic software that lets me take a design I want to program into my sewing machine from the computer and get it on a card, which then goes in the machine (don't worry, there is seriously a demo later in the post). I got a message that the hardware could not install last night, although the software installed just fine. The other was the printer. An older one and it could not ... by wandering cyberspace ... find the correct drivers to properly install it on my computer.
Fortunately, I had a few ideas up my sleeve.
Printer: actually had a folder in my filing cabinet labeled HP Photosmart 7550. So, I got the CD, took it upstairs and then sort of had to still manhandle an install. Stubborn little bugger. But, not to fear, other than being precariously low on ink - I am good to go a printing ....
My PED-Basic (and no, I have no idea what that stands for) software - I sort of remember it saying I had to install it in an EXACT order or it wouldn't work, nuclear war would break out and the end of the world would commence henceforth. Got out the manual and sure enough, I had nearly ended life as we know it on the planet by installing the SOFTWARE before the hardware drivers. Whew! We really dodged the big one there! Uninstalled, reinstalled IN ORDER and it was happy as a clam, world peace abounds (in my craft room ... at least ...).
Here are my two happy campers - all snuggled on the cutest Ikea drawer table top. Apparently not all that stable on carpet. When the printer is printing, the table rocks back and forth - reminding me of R2D2 - just without the whistles (sad) so I shall probably come up with a name for my dancing printer soon.
Don't have any idea why my printer would not auto detect RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE INSTALL - tells me to plug it in and wait for further instructions when it is found. The computer found it - with its telling little ding-dong when new hardware was found, but the install software just sat there saying: "Waiting, waiting, waiting". So - I decided to play crash course with the install software and went out, hit print on a photo sitting on the drive - and hit 'install printer' - whew! It could have gone rather badly, but instead there was some polite handshaking of the waiting install and the actively installing software and no blood or guts spilt. I am sort of rather surprised - things like this don't happen to me - I usually, when I go off script on a computer - end up with bloody gore all round ....
So - since I know you care - here is the software for my embroidery designs. You buy them on CD, download them from web sites, here it is just using some samples that came with the hardware. I just transfer the file with the stitch instructions from the computer ...
... to the card in its reader here
take it out - put it in the sewing machine
and voilà:
An embroidered design.
Haven't used it for much - but it sure is fun!
I did make this quilt for Jessie to take with her to RSS. Well, I made all the white squares, my very good, very talented friend Linda put it together and quilted it - that was going waaay beyond my skill set ...
One reason I don't use it much - you have to be very good - the tension has to be perfect for what ever stitch is currently coming down the pike, the proper needle MUST be in the machine, all sorts of things I am too in a hurry to worry about - thus sometimes they end up like this (a bad batch on a leaf from improper tension on the thread):
So, you could easily ruin what ever you are embroidering onto. These were just practice and I don't know if I will ever get good enough not to make it on an inset instead of the actual item.
I so know you care.
**********************************
And on a side note ...
I realized today that the holidays are coming.
How do I know? Did I consult a calendar? Did I wander into a store and get mauled by Christmas stuff? Did I pay attention to that annoying person on facebook shouting out that it is 40 days until Christmas? Well, yeah, but I pretty much zoned out all of it (see ENTIRE above statements about raising a mentally handicapped person with a great left hook and you can see how I might have just stepped around all these puddles of holiday crap ...)
No ...
I realized that I was hoarding stationary:
It is some sort of warped defense mechanism I have for severe stress. I HOARD OFFICE SUPPLIES. I guess it could be worse - hoarding, say - bigger items - but still weird enough I don't know why I am sharing. Tonight's theme: OVERSHARE!!
But LOOK AT THIS! Aren't these the CUTEST post-it stickers you've ever seen in your life?
SERIOUSLY:
And this little cutie is a 'weekly organizer' - I am SURE I will use it.
Had to move my blue set of girly pile notepads and post its upstairs to my new 'craft office' to make room.
My goal: this is IT.
If I can keep it to some ADORABLE post its, a baby organizer and a box of cards ... my mental health just might make it through the holiday season intact. Well, and by intact for me at Christmas is, well lets just say I try to keep 'kill puppies' off my To Do list ...
Well, here is hoping that I slip into a deep slumber, wake up to discover I have the perfect family, no mentally handicapped child that right now has my heart held hostage, I am svelte, healthy and headed to Paris for the weekend on my private jet with my husband - who is not hurting from, say getting hit by a bus ...
... it could happen ...
... joking aside:
I realize it really COULD happen. You would just be visiting me in a lovely padded room. So, nah - I choose the here and now - with all the hurt, and pain, and scary unknowns, my heart half full of terror and half full of sadness, no CLUE what the future holds, feeling like I am drowning in swirling, filthy, frothy, brown water - I'll take it all ...
its my life and I really wouldn't trade it for anything.
... maybe that padded room is in store for me after all ...
2 comments:
Holy cow, did you ever figure out what was going on with Jessie? Did you ask if she has been acting out at school as well? Hopefully it is just some climate change or anxiety/anticipation of Christmas, not something being done to her at school. What a nightmare.
Ohhhhh. I can't even imagine what this must feel like. Our prayers are with you.
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