Out of the Box

In order to keep things organized in my sewing room, I decided to box up some of the fabrics in groups for projects.  Some of these are blocks that were swapped with the guild and I wanted to keep them separate for future quilt projects.  I may be able to combine some of these--like the bugs, birds and dots--for a fun kids quilt.  These boxes are from our Friday night pizza orders!  Of course, these are *clean* boxes that we get our chicken wings in, not pizza, and the wings are first wrapped in foil, so if the boxes are greasy at all, they get pitched; they are not used for fabric storage if they're at all dirty.  Of course, recently the pizza place recently reduced the number of wings from 10 to 8, so they also reduced the size of the boxes.  Not something that is very useful now...not really.  Maybe I'll have to order larger boxes of 16 instead of just small boxes of 8.  The kids will eat them all, so it's not a worry about waste of food, and chicken wings will keep in the fridge for a day or two if they don't eat them all.

It's been a weird week for me--I started getting a pain in my neck a couple weeks ago when Ben was in the hospital that still hasn't fully subsided...it's better, but not completely gone.  Then about four or five days ago, my back suddenly started to hurt.  I was just sitting in a chair, minding my own business (waiting for the kids at karate or something) and it just started to ache then grew to discomfort, then eventually to pain over the course of 30 minutes or so. Over the next few days, it was troublesome getting up stairs, in and out of the car, and simple things like getting dressed.  Sleeping hurt.  The walk in clinic doctor suggested I take some pain pills and go see a rhumatologist.  He also ordered a blood draw to do some tests, and the vampire who stuck me hit a nerve.  It hurt closer to my wrist, just a couple inches below my thumb.  After a couple days, it hurt MORE and started to cramp up.  I went back to the doctor this morning to make sure it wasn't anything to worry about.  He thinks it'll slowly repair on its own.  Let's hope so.

I also went to the chiropractor today who worked with my back for 20 minutes and although I'm not "cured", I sure feel better.  He was able to unkink my hips and back that were so frozen that even the Miracle Balls couldn't fix it.  The only thing that irritates me about this chiro is that he's chronically late.  I either have to assume he's going to be 15 minutes late for the first appointment of the day or make an appointment later in the day so his tardiness doesn't piss me off.  My friend, Jade, tells me that I need to tell him so.  I should...after he's done working on my neck.

With a kink in my neck and my back tied in knots, I sure wasn't feeling like doing any holiday decorating.  The younger kids took the initiative to do it.  Kelly pulled the boxes out of the garage, and they pulled out the tree and assembled it, then decorated it by themselves.  They did a great job!  They even put on some of their new hand-made decorations that we did in Girl Scouts the other day.  Way to get into the Christmas spirit, kids!  We still have a bit of decorating left to do and the necessary tidying up--putting the boxes away, hanging the Christmas quilts, and hanging the lights outside.  The other neighbors have gotten their lights up on their houses, which looks festive and lively...twinkling in the breeze...especially when the wind is blowing like it has been for the last few days.

Emma's hexagon quilt is coming along quite nicely.  Since my back was hurting over the last few days, I needed to do some sit-down projects, so I got the pieces sewn into rows. Hanging the rows up every 30 minutes or so helped stretch things out after sitting, but kept me from doing anything too strenuous, like lifting, bending, or standing too long.  Just 22 more seams to go on the body of the quilt...although I have to add 30-60-90 triangles on the ends of these rows to make them square.  THEN I can sew them into a quilt top and add borders.