A lot of my time has been spent just trying not to be sick! This spring has been awful for flu / colds / allergies. We (me, Nate, Mom, Dad, Mazie) all have had this awful flu thing for weeks and weeks. And we hear from everyone that there’s something really yucky going around. It seems like one of us is over it, then another one will get it again and we all have another round of whatever this junk is.

AND…it’s windy season. We’ve been having 30+ mph winds almost every day. With winds like that, you start to feel battered around the head after a while. Since we’re in the desert, they also carry fine dust, pollen, smoke, whatever is in the air…so allergies are just awful.

I’ve also just been needing a knitting break. I had a major deadline on a project and it really sucked the life right out of me. I had hired a knitter to help and she went M.I.A and I missed my own deadline (I was in charge of coordinating the project) and because she disappeared I was totally screwed. My patterns still aren’t done because I had to spend the extra time chasing her around and eventually knitting her project again.

I think that behind my need to go into a little hibernation there were several factors. One major one was just that every interaction seemed to be really strained. The tutorial I posted started that ball rolling, and then this thing with this knitter (who lives here in town, so it has totally snowballed into a bigger deal than I even want to go into here.) It just really wore me out and made me feel like I needed to take a step back and not think about work for a while.

Want to know one thing that really sucks about trying to freelance in this economy? Trying to get PAID. You do all the work, send your invoice, and then wait-wait-wait. It’s terrible. I just this week was reimbursed by hmm-hmm-hmm (not naming names) for travel that I did waaaaay back in January! (Well over $1000.) It makes it hard to work on their projects when I’m not even paid back for that kind of thing. As much as I try to rationalize that the money is coming from another pot, it’s still really difficult to motivate.

All this goes back to things I’ve written before. I know that I need to step back, focus on my OWN business, and not give so much energy to OPP (Other Peoples’ Projects.) Believe it or not, everything that I’m working on is old stuff. Everything was proposed and decided on months ago. SO, I haven’t been taking on new projects, just still finishing up old commitments.

Any day now, I’ll snap out of this funk and get back to knitting content. I’m still working through it, so bear with me.

Well! It’s been a while. I’m just coming out of a serious case of the blahs. I’m sitting here trying to figure out a way to write about what the cause was without sounding like a big complainer…and I can’t. It was a number of things all adding up to me feeling really overworked, tired and cranky.

So. I’ll just skip that part of it and post a cute Mazie picture:

This is in the back yard at my parents’ house. It’s warm enough to play outside, but most afternoons have been too windy. Yesterday was so nice that we actually got to spend about an hour out playing. Mazie loves to pick up rocks. Mom and Dad have a desert-style of landscaping (which basically means no grass and lots of gravel all over) so she is able to find some pretty interesting rocks. Her current favorites are two almost matching smooth yellow marble pebbles. They really glow in the sun like alabaster and fit perfectly in her fists.

The roses and iris are blooming, so we’ve been enjoying smelling the flowers and talking about them. She picked an iris bud yesterday and pulled it all apart to see what it was like on the inside. It’s so interesting to watch her study things. She’s very curious and thoughtful.

Mazie’s sign language is really picking up. She’s able to not only repeat words that we say in sign language, but is able to converse. She sees the cat sleeping and signs “kitty asleep” or hears him in the morning and signs “kitty eat” because we always get up and feed him first thing. It’s amazing to see her learning process. I’m so lucky to be able to be working from home so that I can experience this with her.

And that’s the kind of stuff I need to think about when other stuff goes south. Somebody remind me next time!