Atheism

So, I'm going to venture into a controversial topic - religion.  Woo hoo.  As you may have guessed from the title, dear reader, I am an atheist.  I am 27 years old and I've been an atheist longer than I have not been an atheist, if that makes sense.  And, in all honesty, I'm not sure I was ever not an atheist.

A little bit of background to explain where I'm coming from:  I was raised in the Catholic church by my mother's foster parents.  (I always just think of them as my grandparents, and from this point forward will refer to them as such, but the distinction is important.)  My mother was not around (I think I've mentioned this before), so it was up to them to raise me, and they were devout Catholics.  I mean, they really had faith, they believed ardently.  Every day at the same time, my grandma would sit down with her prayer book (what even is that?) and pray for an hour.  They always prayed before each meal.  They prayed before bed.  They went to Mass every week.  And they sent me to a Catholic preschool and a Catholic elementary school.  I didn't even know there was another religious option besides being Jewish until I was in 3rd grade, when a new girl came to school and she couldn't take communion with our class during the weekly Mass and I assumed she was Jewish and she looked at me like I had 3 heads.  (I'm pretty sure I only knew Judaism was a religion because of Jesus.)

I don't remember ever feeling that certainty that other people seem to feel in their religions, that knowing that their god is definitely there watching over them.  I had children's bible stories to read, and to me they were just nice stories, like Cinderella.  I'm not kidding, I felt exactly the same way about the bible stories as I did about fairy tales.  And I was a child being raised by devout Catholics.  I think my atheism was always going to happen.  Anyway, it never felt real to me the way it seems to be to the people I know that believe in God, and I started questioning it to the adults in my life sometime between 3rd and 6th grades.  I can remember specifically one of the teachers at my school reading a statement to our church one day, talking about Roman Catholic this and "our monotheistic" beliefs or something along those lines.  I do remember she said "monotheistic" and how much it confused me.  How can we be monotheistic if we believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? I wondered.  What about the saints?  We prayed to them, too, so didn't that make them gods, making Catholicism a polytheistic religion?  And even if you ignore the saints, how do you reconcile the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit style of worship with the statement of being monotheistic?  Obviously, I didn't ask these questions with this wording (at best, I was 11), but these were the kinds of questions that I was beginning to ask.  I didn't even know what atheism was, I didn't find out that was a thing I could be until I was about 13 or so.  I wasn't shy about it either, and I got bullied pretty badly for that (among other things) in middle school.  (Also, what the fuck is up with that?  Jesus says "love one another" so let's go persecute this girl who has no friends because she doesn't believe in Jesus or our God!  That does not make any kind of sense whatsoever.)

Anyway.  That's where I came from.  I did try, but I felt like I was talking to an imaginary friend, which, for all intents and purposes, I was.  I'm learning how to be comfortable with being "out" about the state of my (lack of) beliefs - it's very hard to allow people to see this part of me without fearing that I will be persecuted or thought of as a terrible person, which is what has usually happened in the past.  Here's the thing - while I was taught that not being religious meant that person was not a good person and they were going to hell, that is so beyond wrong.  I am a decent human being.  I care about people.  I try to help those around me when I am able.  I think it's wrong to treat others badly, or unequally, or to maim or injure someone for any reason other than self-defense.  I think children should be allowed to be children and not forced into work, marriage, war, prostitution, or death by those around them that are supposed to be there to protect them.  There's so much more to me that makes me a good, decent person than whether or not I believe in your god.  And then I wonder - why do you believe in god?  Why do you think that there's some sort of all-powerful omniscient being "out there" somewhere who benevolently watches over the humans on this planet?  If I was an all-powerful omniscient being, I don't think I'd care about one tiny little planet when there's a whole galaxy, a galaxy of galaxies, a universe of galaxies of galaxies, a universe of universes.  The world is bigger than our world, and we don't even know how big it is, and you can't tell me that all that is out there and expect me to believe in a god that was created to explain things before people had science.  That is really what religion is, that is the origin of religion in general.  I can't see how it's ethical to teach your children to believe in god but not teach them that there might not be a god at all.

I'm not sure I've actually made a point with this, but I felt I needed to say it, so I guess I said it.  I could probably go on - the universe of universes that I mentioned, for instance.  For all we know, that universe of universes is a teeny little speck on some world somewhere out there, a little dust mote, completely, utterly microscopic, and the world it floats in is just a tiny part of another universe of universes.  It could go on infinitely.  I cannot reconcile all of this with the concept of a god.  The two things cannot coexist in my head.  *shrug*  I'm not sorry, though.  I am happy with the way I am.

Evoked

I'm laying in bed right now, trying to settle before my final tomorrow morning, and grabbed my phone so I could make sure I had alarms set. I still had the camera app open, on selfie (hush), and noticed something different about my face now that my jaw is more prominent. (I'm still losing weight, my face is getting skinny.)

I took a couple pictures and looked at them and realized I could see the way my mother holds her jaw in the way mine was in that moment. I don't see her terribly often when I look at myself, which is a relief since that would be painful, but I have these little moments where I miss her, or more that I miss the her she was, the person she is not. I miss the concept of a mother, I think, more than anything else. It would almost be easier if she had died - there would be sadness and closure, instead of knowing that she's out there somewhere and knowing that there will come a time when I can no longer keep track of her and she will disappear forever. It's tough realizing again and again that I lost the relationship with her that I deserved to have, knowing that she either missed or didn't care about most of my milestones growing up, and now that I'm an adult, she's not here to watch me go to college, or promise me that I'm still a worthwhile person when I fail every test this semester (this semester has been delightful, by the way), she's not going to be around when Matt proposes, or to watch me get married. She won't be here to get excited and cry at the thought of becoming a grandmother when we start expecting a baby. She's missing everything, and I'm missing the conceptual her that lives in my head, that holds me and gives me advice and tells me she loves me no matter what happens because she's my mother and that's what mothers are supposed to do. It just breaks my heart, especially when I see other women and their mothers and their closeness and it hits me again and again that I will never, ever have that relationship, no matter how much I wish, and even if I try to ignore that missing part, it's there, reminding me that she's not there and never will be. 

Skittles Blanket - Quick Update

Not going to be a lengthy post, but I just finished construction of the skittles blanket.  I still have 203 ends to weave in, though.  But the time-consuming part is completely done!!!  Here's a picture I took a few minutes ago, and then this post is done.

I also chose to make an edging all the way around, and I'm really glad I did, it looks much more finished than my other completed granny square afghan.  (Why are they called granny squares, anyway?)  It's also quite heavy, I wasn't expecting it to have so much weight.  I am now going to try to weave in all those ends tonight in the hopes we can take it to Matt's parents' house and give it a quick wash tomorrow since we're going to be out that way anyway.  (It needs to go in a washing machine without an agitator so it doesn't get mutilated.)

Woo hoo!!!

Rainbow Fibers

This post isn't going to have anything to do with the weather.  Or politics (I'll get into that later, I'm planning a rant at a later date).  This is gonna be all about the projects I've been working on since I last posted stuff about my projects.

Since I last posted, I finished my own Christmas stocking, an entire set of coasters, unmade the two placemats so I could remake them (the pattern I originally chose sucked), completed a placemat with the improvised pattern, finished my Christmas tree skirt, and started yet another blanket.

Placemat with PS3 controller for scale.

The story with this placemat is that I realized how much I hated the pattern (since I couldn't get it to stop buckling), so I made this one and unraveled the pink one since I hadn't finished it yet.  Unfortunately, I had to toss the purple one because I'd already woven the ends in and I couldn't unravel it without having to cut it into little pieces, making it useless to crochet with.  So I bought more purple yarn.  I don't think Matt actually knows I bought more yarn.  At the moment the kitchen table is more of a catch-all than a place to eat, so having the placemats isn't terribly important right now.  That situation probably won't change until at least after this stupid, stupid semester is over.

Both Christmas stockings.  I may revisit the stocking situation at a later date because I don't love these.

These are the Christmas stockings.  They look okay, but I'm not in love with them.  The one that is mine is definitely not what I would call "me" - it's a little more traditional than I would like, but I couldn't decide on a color scheme that was still kind of Christmasy while being a statement of my personality.  So I'll make a new one at some point down the road when we actually have a mantle or something to hang them from.  I still haven't figured that one out.  We have stockings for Matt's parents' house at Christmas that go with their decor, so these are exclusively for our house.  Might look up some ideas on Ravelry or something later.  These will do for the next few years, though.

My completed Christmas tree skirt.  It is 48" from point to point.

This is my Christmas tree skirt.  Finally, finally done.  I only started it in July, so I guess that's less of a finally than some other projects.  (I have a blanket I started in 2007 and finished in 2013, and another I started in 2010 and I still haven't finished it, among other projects.)  I love this Christmas tree skirt, though.  It's sparkly and awesome, and it's not the shitty fake snow with the crappy glitter that I've been using as a tree skirt.  The package on the fake snow may have said "Christmas tree skirt" but it is horrible and I hate it.  Which is why I wanted to finish this project so badly - then I can not use the one I got for $2 at Walmart.  But yay!  It's done!

So, just under two weeks ago, I got very upset at my homework (there was about 3 hours of crying involved and no progress made), and said something along the lines of, "Fuck my homework, I'm making a blanket."  So I started making a blanket and it's basically taken over my life for the last 11 days.  I think maybe this blanket was meant to be made or something, because I can't stop working on it.

Composite of the progression of this blanket.

It has never taken such a short amount of time for me to get to this stage of a project this large.  This is also the largest thing I've ever made.

Current progress as of the writing of this post.

That is the Skittles Blanket, as Matt has so dubbed it.  It is currently 5 ft square.  I am on the final color, but I'm unsure of how many rounds I'm going to do of the really, really intense pink I'm currently using.  I love this blanket.  I feel happy just looking at it.  Maybe that's why I needed to make it.

It is also already big enough to cover pretty much my entire body head-to-toe, and I'm not even done making it BIGGER.  As you can clearly see, it's already almost large enough to use as a bed blanket.  This thing is a monster.  I love this blanket and can't wait to finish it.  Of course, I still have to weave in all those damn ends (this is the only thing I'm waiting on for another blanket I made), but I don't think I'll mind so much because it makes me feel so happy.  I think I might make a rainbow hat or something just for grins and giggles so I can take the happy with me wherever I go (at least when it's cold outside).  That's a definite possibility, actually....

Anyway, that's about all I have to talk about.

Grammar. Use It.

It is so frustrating to be reading an article somewhere and have these glaring grammatical mistakes - you know the kind.  Your vs you're, that kind of deal.  So here's my rant.

When you are writing, especially when you are writing for an audience, it is always, ALWAYS prudent to double-check what you've written before you publish it.  Standard spell check is not going to catch grammatical errors and I'm not sure MS Word's grammar check would catch these types of errors either.  Below is a short dummies' guide to how to grammar, because apparently nobody actually paid attention in school.  (I am not an English major, so this isn't exactly going to be perfect with how I describe it, but hopefully it will be accurate enough.)

Pronouns that mean possession:

your
yours
their
theirs
my
mine
her
hers
his
our
ours

Sentence examples for selected words:

Your wallet is on the table.  Their car only has 5 seats.  That is my house on the left.  That sandwich is hers.

Pronouns that are action-oriented:

you're
they're
I'm
we're

Sentence examples:

You're going to be in the third car of the train.  You're potty training your child.  (There's an example with the two most maddening ones.)  They're not on the baseball field.  We're going to the park.

Other words that I'm not sure how to categorize (many homonyms):

there - He is over there, playing on their trampoline.
here - Here comes the bride!
you - You live in a dwelling.
me - Help me memorize polyatomic ions.
him - I have to take him to the doctor today.
it - The box of rocks is with it.
its - The cat isn't feeling well, its stomach has an ulcer.
it's - I'm going to be late, it's too snowy to drive at a normal speed.
to - I'm going to the park.
too - We're going to the park, too.
two - There are two more people at the park.
are - You are my sunshine.
oar - You use an oar to row a boat.

Hopefully I've made my point.  I'm so sick of reading grammatical errors constantly, even in what I thought were respectable publications, like Time magazine or USA Today.  Fucking learn grammar, people.  I learned this shit when I was 7 years old.  It is not difficult.  AND PROOFREAD. For fuck's sake.  Stop abusing the poor apostrophes.

Liquid Oxygen and Silver Vapor

Hi.  So, it's been awhile.  Before you read any further, I just wanted to say that this is a science-heavy post.  I will be using technical terminology, which I have attempted to explain, but if you're not all that into science or don't want to hear a whole lot about temperature scales and states of matter, you might want to skip this one.

Anyway.  Today my chemistry lecture started the subject of gases and gas laws, so my instructor (who, sadly, is a temporary one who is leaving after this Friday to be replaced by the person who was originally supposed to teach this class) did a demo showing what happens when a balloon is cooled rapidly.  (Obviously I understood the gas law stuff VERY well.)  And she showed some other cool stuff that had nothing to do with what we were covering but it was AWESOME so whatever.

Anyway, she started with 3 balloons and did the same thing with each one in succession.  These balloons were not filled with helium, though.  They were filled with oxygen.  I'm going to assume anybody reading this knows what oxygen is, and if you don't, bless your heart and go Google it.  For those not in the know, it is possible for oxygen to exist in a solid and liquid state as well as the typical gaseous state, but it has to be very, very, VERY cold.  To explain how cold it is, I have to explain absolute zero and the Kelvin temperature scale and how it relates to Celsius and Fahrenheit.

Absolute zero is a theoretical temperature (I think it's been done in laboratory conditions) at which all molecular movement stops.  What I mean by this is that when water freezes, the molecules are in a solid formation, but they are still vibrating.  Not so with absolute zero.  Absolute zero is typically used along with the Kelvin temperature scale.  The degrees of the Kelvin scale are the same size as the degrees on the Celsius scale, so going up 1 on the Kelvin scale is just adding 1 to the converted number on Celsius.  0 K is absolute zero.  That is -273.15 degrees Celsius, or -459.67 on the Fahrenheit scale.  That is unfathomably cold.  Anyway, if the temperature on the Kelvin scale was 1 K (degrees are not used in the Kelvin scale), the temperature on the Celsius scale would be -272.15 degrees Celsius.  Conversely, 0 degrees Celsius is 273.15 K, and 1 degree Celsius is 274.15 K.   I think I've made my point.

Oxygen exists as a gas at room temperature (22 degrees Celsius is considered standard room temperature, it's about 72 degrees Fahrenheit), that is something that is taken for granted.  The freezing point of oxygen is 54.36 K (-222.65 degrees C), and the boiling point is 90.19 K (-182.96 degrees C).  This means oxygen exists as a liquid between 54.36 K and 90.19 K.  In case you haven't caught on, that is VERY VERY VERY cold.  On this planet, oxygen cannot exist as a liquid or a solid except in laboratory settings.  I saw liquid oxygen with my own eyes today.

So, back to the oxygen balloons, which, by the way, do not float!  How cool is that?  Pure oxygen is heavier than air, since air is about 78% nitrogen, which has a lower atomic weight than oxygen.  (Oxygen only makes up about 21% of our atmosphere.)  Anyway, she took a balloon and placed it on a table at the front of the room, then grabbed a jug of liquid nitrogen (exists as a liquid between 63.15 K (-210.00 degrees C) and 77.355 K (-195.795 degrees C)), poured some into a styrofoam cup, and then took that and poured it over the balloon, which shrank dramatically before our eyes, because the volume of the gas inside of it had decreased with a decrease in temperature.  They didn't put anything to catch the nitrogen, either, so it beaded, rolled off the table, and sizzled and steamed as it fell to the carpet, where it made very solid plopping noises as it boiled its way back to vapor.  Coolest thing I have ever seen, I could have watched her do that all day.  Anyway, she very quickly cut the balloon open, and poured the condensed (liquid) oxygen into a beaker to show us.  It was boiling and sizzling.  Apparently it is paramagnetic, which I didn't fully understand, but it followed a magnet she ran along the underside of the container and even stuck to it (sizzling and boiling the whole time) when she dunked the magnet in there.  AND IT IS PALE BLUE.  How cool is that?!

Anyway, she did that twice more, only she dunked cotton balls in the liquid oxygen this time and set them on fire.  They sparked like sparklers on steroids.  Seriously, this was one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life.

As an aside, I'm pretty sure things like metals can also exist as a vapor.  Silver, for instance.  Silver is kind of the same thing as ice - all ice is is solid water, it's a state of being.  The point at which silver becomes a liquid is 961.93 degrees C (1763.474 degrees F), and the point at which it boils (in other words, becomes a GAS) is 2212.0 degrees C (4013.6 degrees F).  Silver can exist as a vapor.  (For reference, the sun's surface temperature is 5504.85 degrees C or 9940.73 degrees F.)  So for silver to exist as a vapor, it would have to be about half the temperature of the sun's surface (the core of the sun is 15.7 million K).  That's pretty hot.  BUT IT COULD HAPPEN.  Somewhere out there in this big, big universe, there is a place where silver exists as a vapor.  Hell, there could be a place with beings living on it that BREATHE silver.

Anyway, I've pretty much exhausted my science excitement for tonight.  I needed to share this whole thing with liquid oxygen, though.  Because seriously, that was cool as hell.  (I'm not changing my major, though.  I would be a horrible chemist.)

Music Post

This is not a real post and will have no useful information.  I have acquired my own transportation (not in my name, but that's another matter) and must therefore have tunes for when I'm finally not scared to have the radio on.  I wanted to share my playlists (I have to make CDs because the stereo doesn't have an aux thingy), so ... I'm sharing them.  Yay.

Happy Playlist
Meghan Trainor - All About That Bass
Pharrell Williams - Happy
Three Dog Night - Joy To The World
Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
Marianas Trench - All To Myself
Lady Gaga - Born This Way
Wham - Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go
The Proclaimers - I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)
Dexys Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen
Jimmy Eat World - A Praise Chorus
Sublime - Santeria
John Mayer - No Such Thing
Lifehouse - Hanging By A Moment
Josh Turner - Would You Go With Me
Bruno Mars - Just The Way You Are
Backstreet Boys - As Long As You Love Me
Jason Mraz - I Won't Give Up
Mandy Moore & Zachary Levi - I See The Light (from Tangled)
Idina Menzel - Let It Go (from Frozen)

Nostalgia Playlist
Goo Goo Dolls - Slide
Eve 6 - Inside Out
Tonic - If You Could Only See
Semisonic - Closing Time
Robyn - Show Me Love
Everything - Hooch
Tom Petty - Free Fallin'
Tom Cochrane - Life Is A Highway
Hootie and the Blowfish - Hold My Hand
Matchbox Twenty - 3 A.M.
Third Eye Blind - Semi-Charmed Life
Chumbawamba - Tubthumping
Smash Mouth - Walking On The Sun
The Wallflowers - One Headlight
Soul Asylum - Runaway Train
Jewel - Foolish Games
The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony
Eagle-Eye Cherry - Save Tonight
Dave Matthews Band - Crash Into Me
Sixpence None The Richer - Kiss Me
Tal Bachman - She's So High
Train - Meet Virginia

Silly Playlist
They Might Be Giants - Why Does The Sun Shine?
Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins
Voltaire - The USS Make Shit Up
Bruno Mars - The Lazy Song (Radio Mix)
Jonathan Coulton - Re: Your Brains
The Lonely Island - I Just Had Sex (feat. Akon)
PSY - Gangnam Style
O-Zone - Dragostea Din Tei
The Lonely Island - I'm On a Boat (feat. T-Pain)
Katy Perry - I Kissed A Girl
Right Said Fred - I'm Too Sexy
Voltaire - Screw The Okampa! (I Want to Go Home)
They Might Be Giants - Istanbul
Moosebutter - Star Wars (John Williams Is The Man)
Jonathan Coulton - Chiron Beta Prime
GladOS - Still Alive
Voltaire - Death Death (Devil, Devil, Evil, Evil, Song)
Psychostick - We Ran Out of CD Space

Rock Playlist
30 Seconds To Mars - Closer To The Edge
Incubus - Warning
Coheed & Cambria - The Running Free
Eve 6 - Here's To The Night
30 Seconds To Mars - Hurricane (feat. Kanye West)
Depeche Mode - Enjoy The Silence
Muse - Starlight
R.E.M. - It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
Journey - Don't Stop Believin'
Everclear - Santa Monica
The Refreshments - Mekong
Owl City - Fireflies
Daughtry - Home
30 Seconds To Mars - From Yesterday
Coheed & Cambria - Feathers
Incubus - I Wish You Were Here
Serj Tankian - Sky Is Over
Coheed & Cambria - The Suffering
30 Seconds To Mars - Kings And Queens

I'm very musical today!

Bad News

I've had a lot of bad news in one particular area the last few weeks.  I'm not sure I can take any more and right now probably isn't the best time to decide to write a blog post about it, due to the sensitive nature of the topic and the potential eyes that may be watching.

For now, until I have clearance to give a bit more detail and I've gathered my thoughts a bit more into something coherent (and perhaps done a little research on the topic), that's really all I have to say about it.

I'm going to work on the post (saving as draft for now) now.  No crafty pics, no cloud pics.  I'll be around.

Gigantic Update Woooooo

I wasn't kidding when I said I suck at the whole "keeping up with a blog" thing.  So, things I didn't talk about when I posted last was actual life stuff.  So I'm going to start with that before the other things (I have pictures to post).

For those not in the know (so basically anybody who doesn't talk to me regularly or doesn't actually know me IRL or isn't my friend on Facebook), Matt and I are staying with his parents for the summer.  We moved in May 18th, and we move out August 7th.  We have 23 days to go!  You better believe I'm counting every second.  Honestly, it's not horrible, I just feel a little more restricted than I like, and I'm not used to living under someone else's rules, being 27 and all.  We had some initial bumps, and now we're either smoothing out or nobody is communicating anymore.  Not sure which.  In any case, that's the current living situation.

A few days before my last post, Matt and I were involved in a car accident.  Thankfully, we weren't hurt.  The truck also was not hurt.  We hurt some grass, though.  And we totally went on two wheels before we got very friendly with a ditch.  I thought we were going to roll and die, and since I'm not a ghost, I can tell you that neither of those things happened.  Basically, some girl (who I think was probably playing with her phone instead of paying attention to the damn road) randomly came into our lane (we were on a 2-lane highway going 65 mph), Matt swerved out of the way, and then she hit the two cars behind us.  She had to be medevaced to the hospital, and both other drivers also went to the hospital.  Here's what two of the cars looked like:

Red car is the girl who caused the accident, black SUV was the unfortunate guy who rolled.  Matt's dad didn't take photos of the other car or our truck because they were quite a distance away from where these two ended up.

It was a pretty scary experience, but we're fine and life goes on.  We still haven't used that road since that day, though, except when Matt's parents have been driving.

Moving on to happier things, at the beginning of June I went to a Backstreet Boys concert with my friend Erin.  We've been friends for about 18 years now, so it was a pretty cool experience.  Here's a photo:

We had a blast.  We've decided next time we have the opportunity to do this, we're taking Matt as our DD and we're going to get a little trashed and really let loose.  We totally acted like 14 year old girls instead of grown women, screaming and jumping and the like.  It was a fabulous night.

Also this summer, we went to our friends' daughter Vivian's first birthday party, which was pretty neat.  The birthday song freaked the birthday girl out and made her cry.  Aww.  We also took home from the party our other friends' daughter, Aubrey (all our friends are also friends with each other these days), who we were supposed to keep for five days and then give back, but we ended up with her for nine (and it was supposed to be like 18, but her mother couldn't stand being away for so long).  There were some family health issues Aubrey's parents were helping with, and it would have been very complicated to bring her into that situation, so we kept her since she was already with us.  Got to try on the parenting hat again and all that jazz.  We miss having her and plan to steal her again for a weekend sometime after we move.

After Aubrey went home, I went to visit Heather again for a few days, partly to get my curtains made finally and partly because we like hanging out.  While we were on the way, we stopped at a Sonic to get drinks and stuff, and we saw this:

I love classic cars.  They are just awesome.  They don't make them pretty like that anymore.

When Heather's grandma found out how much the fabric I bought cost, she decided to just do all the sewing herself, so I learned all about pinning.  Pinning takes longer than the actual sewing.  I spent probably five hours pinning, and I think she spent maybe a total of 30 minutes sewing.  But they're done and they're gorgeous and it is just killing me that I can't hang them until August.  And I kind of need to buy a curtain rod still.  Ha.  Here's a picture of the curtains hanging up:

I still have to iron them (oh goody) before I can hang them, so I'm going to have to leave them here until we buy a curtain rod and then I'll have to come back over to Matt's parents' house and borrow their iron because we don't own an iron.  I don't iron anything!  I love these curtains, and even though they cost a bazillion dollars, it was money well spent because they should last a long time and they're exactly what I wanted and I'll use them forever.

Speaking of things I'll use forever, I'm almost done making my Christmas tree skirt.  I underestimated how much yarn I'd need and need to buy another skein of the sparkly green I've been using to finish it off, but I'm just about there.  Here's the process (begun June 24th, last picture taken today):

Here's some other projects that are either finished or near completion:

Matt's Christmas stocking, two ornaments, purple placemat and matching coaster (all of these things are finished), and the pink placemat is nearly finished.

In terms of crafty things, it's been a pretty productive  few weeks.  I need to get a move on on the placemats, though, because I'd like to have those ready to go when we get moved.  I also want the tree skirt done before school starts so I don't have to scramble to finish it when it comes time to put the tree up for Christmas this year.

I guess I've exhausted the topics of life stuff (not much is happening so not exactly a whole lot to tell) and crafts (I still haven't finished that pillow, either, because I'm afraid to mess it up), so I guess I'll move on to weather stuff.  I'm still not paying a whole lot of attention to things, but I will say that it's currently unseasonably cool for Kansas right now and it's amazing.  I should be outside enjoying it but that requires wearing real clothes and I don't wanna make the effort.  I might try later though, when there's less sunlight.  What a vampire, ha.  I do have a lot of cloud pictures to show, though, since it's hard not to pay attention to the sky with that whole always being there thing.

June 25, 2014 - I took this because the clouds reminded me of the clouds Pixar uses a lot in their movies and it made me really happy.  This was the best picture I could get, since we were going 70 mph on the highway and things like trees and hills kept getting in my way.

June 26, 2014 - Not weather related, but we had an inch worm in the garage and he excited me greatly.  I made Matt take him to a plant (he was climbing the doorjamb) so he would have a chance of survival.

June 29, 2014 - Believe it or not, I actually took this picture with my cell phone camera, since that's all I had with me.  These mammatus clouds were part of a supercell that produced a tornado (I don't think it did much damage if any) later on in the evening.  I took this at about 8:30 PM.  Best mammatus cloud picture I've ever taken.

July 7, 2014 - Even with the edit, I can't make the picture look like it did in person.  The clouds were gorgeous.  The weather wasn't anything very special, just kind of wet and then just stupid hot because it's Kansas and it's July.

So, overall, nothing particularly special, looking forward to the next 3 weeks hopefully going by very, very fast.  Next week, we're going to see about getting my favorite ring repaired.  I haven't been able to wear it in 3 years because the band snapped (thankfully palm side) while I was vacuuming.  Yay.

Other than that, nothing exciting going on except laundry and crocheting until August gets here.  (Laundry never does seem to have an end.)

Project Overload

So I am not very good at making the time to formulate a post. See, it takes away from the crocheting, and that’s primarily what I want to do right now. I never get to make pretty things during the school year because I’m so focused on school and everything and being exhausted and cranky and I can’t work on an involved project during that time. But this summer… this is the summer of the projects. (I’m going to need to write another post later about stuff in my life instead of just crafts and weather.)

So many projects. I’m making Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon for my friend Heather, I've already made a Pinhead pincushion for Sondra (she’s actually paying me for that one because she’s giving it to someone I don’t know), I decided I’m making all those Christmas decorations I've been wishing I could make, I currently have 5 blankets in progress at the moment, I made mittens for myself to match a scarf I made, I made mittens for Matt’s mother, I’m making Matt’s mother a potholder (possibly 2), I’m making bookmarks for Heather (and maybe even myself), placemats, coasters, and I made myself a pincushion today and started Matt's Christmas stocking.  Here's a picture of all the smaller projects (some are completed and inaccessible and I didn't feel like digging all the blankets out).

These are all the small projects I'm in the process of or have completed recently - Matt's Christmas stocking, a potholder, a pincushion, a Pinhead pincushion, coasters, a placemat, and Toothless.

This is what all the parts of Matt's Christmas stocking look like right now.  I'm starting to worry if it's going to be way tinier than I expected.

Aside from all the crocheting, I’m also learning to sew this summer with the goal of making curtains for the sliding glass door in our apartment. Because I hate blinds with every fiber of my being and I’m sick of living in places with blinds. So my solution has become to make or buy curtains and move the blinds to where they can’t really be seen. I still need to buy or make curtains for the living room and office for the new place, but I need to be there so I can measure those. To the end of learning how to sew, Matt’s mother suggested I take some of my smaller pieces of fabric and make a pillow with them. I think she was expecting me to make something really simple because I’m pretty new at this, but I made this instead, and I think it’s pretty fabulous.

Hark!  A pillow!

Only problem is I didn't sew it in the right direction and the corners are all open and I don’t know how to hand sew at all yet so I can’t close it up. Here’s a view of the predicament this thing has ended up being in.

It also ended up crooked when it started out straight and with all pieces being equally sized.  I don't know what happened.

At least it's pretty, right?

Hopefully Matt’s mother will either have the time soon to help me or my book will arrive and I’ll be able to work independently. She’s not giving me as much instruction as I was hoping she would, so I think I might forego learning how to do it on the sewing machine and either just sew all three curtains by hand or have Heather help me at her house. I don’t know. I was hoping this project would be a chance to kind of get to know Matt’s mother a little better or maybe help us communicate more effectively, because I often feel a little shut out or brushed off by her, and I don’t know if it’s because she’s keeping me at arm’s length because I’m just her son’s girlfriend or if I’m just being crazy. Her method of teaching pretty much involves a quick rundown of where the parts go on the sewing machine and a quick “good luck!” before she runs off to do her own thing. And I’m left alone with this terrifying, daunting project. By no means was I expecting her to do any of the work, but I was expecting her to be a little more involved when she agreed to help me. But it’s okay. I’ll do it on my own and it’ll be fine. I’m probably being oversensitive, anyway. It’s not like I know how to deal with mother-type people in the first place. Anyway, here’s the fabric I’m trying to turn into curtains.

  

And I even artfully draped one of the sections! 

This is what it looks like when the sun shines through it.

On the meteorology front, I've gotten some pretty nice cloud pictures lately, taken a few videos. I feel like I’m forgetting everything I learned over the last several months, which scares me because I don’t want to end up with an empty head all over again. Especially not now that I’ve transferred schools and I’m going to the big, scary one instead of the small, laid-back one. Maybe I push myself too hard during the school year and that’s why I don’t want to look at or open any of my books during the summer. Or maybe it’s because I have horrible study habits from high school and I suck and don’t want to do things I need to do to get the things I want long-term. Ugh. I’m also thinking of double majoring, so I’d be majoring in both atmospheric science and mathematics. Because I’m totally insane.

We've been having some decent stormy weather of late, I don’t remember it storming this often at all last summer. I’m hoping we’re finally leaving the drought we've been in, because I really don’t want to experience Dust Bowl conditions first hand. Reading about it and watching videos of it was plenty. My weather radio even went off today right before we got the severe thunderstorms, though I think the chunk of the squall line that went through our area wasn't actually severe, it wasn't very exciting. Lots of lightning, though, so I’m glad I chose to stay in the house this time. I need to buckle down and make time to read my meteorology textbook from last fall and make sure it’s all fresh before school starts, since I’m only taking the lab and not the lecture of the introductory meteorology course. I hope I’m actually good at this instead of crappy at it like I feel right now. I haven’t been paying attention to the weather and I forgot everything I learned about the forecast models so I haven’t even tried looking at them and I have been pretty much entirely focused on crocheting lately. I’m allowed to have other interests, right? So if that’s true, then I shouldn't suck for not paying attention to the weather every single day. I hope. I don’t know.

I’m done with my crisis. Here’s some cloud pictures and stuff.

Still Alive!

Sorry I suck at posts.  It's because I'm laaaaazy.

Going to try to make a real post soon.  In case anyone cared or was wondering.  Since I'm not an exciting person at all.

Decided to change the name and url of the blog to something that fits me like a glove.  Even though technically I'm not a meteorologist yet, I'm a meteorology student, but this title was catchier.  :P

Expect the next post to be about crocheting projects and storm photos/videos.

I'm out!

Ah, Memories...

The NYPD just had a feel-good hashtag campaign completely backfire on them.  This reminded me of a situation I was involved in where a police officer had less-than-stellar behavior.  Let's enter the way-back machine...

When I was twelve years old, my mother called 911 on me because I was refusing to do the dishes.  I kid you not.  She used to call the cops on me anytime I argued with her.  When the police arrived, instead of lecturing my mother about abusing the 911 system, one of them backed me into a corner in the kitchen while I sobbed hysterically (this being my first interaction with the police beyond the D.A.R.E. thing we did in 5th grade).  He informed this frightened twelve year old that she had better do the dishes and obey her mother or he'd hear about it and come arrest her and take her to juvie.

And, shockingly, this initiated a lifelong fearful mistrust of police officers.

Thanks a bunch, random Kansas City, Kansas police officer.  I'd rather do pretty much anything than have to deal with a cop because of you.

I suppose I could also thank my mother, since she was the one who called 911 and caused the traumatizing situation in the first place, but that was pretty mild compared to some of the other terrible things that she did to me over the course of my time with her.

Just felt the need to get that out there.  Why not, right?

Tenuous Family Ties

I'm finding myself in kind of a tough situation, which thankfully is not affecting me directly, but that I feel I should be obligated to be involved in despite the fact that I want nothing to do with it.

Of course, anytime I write anything like that, I'm obviously talking about my mother.  Who else could cause such uncertainty and confusion?  Who else could cause me to simultaneously feel disgust and intense guilt over her situation?

I've never talked about her much because I don't want her in my life (there's a point where the crazy is too much), but basically this is the short story: she moved 60 miles away when I was 5 years old, leaving me with my grandparents (actually her foster parents who raised her from the time she was a baby), she married my stepfather when I was 8, and I moved in with her and my stepfather when I was 12 because my grandparents were too old to care for me properly (they forgot to feed me and stuff).  Within 6 months, she and my stepfather started abusing me because apparently I was a bad child.  My stepfather also started drinking quite a bit.  I wound up in foster care for a year when I was 14 because my mother decided she didn't want me anymore, but then she changed her mind by the next day.  Of course, by that point, I was in the system and she had to jump through their hoops to get me back, which is why I was in for a year.  I ultimately made the decision to return to her home because I knew that while she and my stepfather would abuse me, I could at least fight back with them, unlike my foster parents, who would just kick me out if I defended myself and say I was violent.  I moved back in with her at the beginning of my sophomore year of high school and moved out a month before I turned 18 because I couldn't take the abuse and drama anymore.  The weekend before I graduated high school, their house was foreclosed and they were kicked out with what belongings they were able to save.  (My stepfather stopped paying the mortgage so he could fund his whiskey habit.)  My stepfather's brother, one of the nicest, most decent people I've known, helped them find a trailer to live in that they could afford.  This would have been in 2005.

I had almost no contact with her until late 2006, and saw her periodically for a couple of years.  I actually thought our relationship might eventually improve to the point where it would be like having a real mother, like the kids on TV had.  I decided to stop talking to her in early 2009 because she was mean to me constantly, but within a few months I let her back in at the insistence of the boyfriend I had at that time.  She still seemed to be mostly okay in 2009 the one time I saw her - I knew she'd been forced to resign from her job because of her crazy behavior, that similar had happened with my stepfather because of his lack of hygiene, and that their trailer had roaches, or at least her car had them.  I knew they had two cats and a dog, and that they were surviving on my stepfather's Social Security benefits, pension, and my mother's student loans, since she'd decided to go back to school.  I had never been to their trailer, and for the most part played a part far off the sidelines of their daily lives.

Between 2009 and 2011, my mother's appearance and apparent health began to decline - she lost a dramatic amount of weight in a very short time, and soon it was difficult to sit near her on the rare occasions we would visit with her (this was when I was living with Sondra and company, so Sondra and the kids would accompany me on these visits), because she reeked of a combination of animal urine and the underlying scent of cockroaches.  She was helpful when I was unable to find a job, and this was one of the reasons I continued to tolerate her, despite her crazy behavior and mean comments.  (This is probably not the most honorable reason to continue a familial relationship that is otherwise completely toxic and messy, but it's the honest one.)  During this time, I went to her trailer twice, once to pick up a package, and once to give her a ride home.  I could smell it from the outside.  I remember that the cement blocks supporting the structure were badly cracked and leaning, and everything about it looked horrifying and completely neglected.  I could not imagine living like that.

After I moved to Emporia in 2012, I grew less and less tolerant of the verbal abuse she spewed across my Facebook (one of the few ways she could communicate with me, since she's deaf), or the outright lies she would send me via text message, and eventually created a secret Facebook so I could hide from her.  The lying got worse, the best one being where she told me she had colon cancer, in the hopes this would cause us to develop the closeness that other mothers and daughters had.  Unfortunately for her, it all blew up in her face when I caught her in the lie, and that began the planning to find a way to get her out of my life - the only reason I was still in contact with her at that point was because I was on her cell phone plan and could not get a plan on my own.  I finally managed to get a house phone in December 2012, and promptly sent her a letter explaining that I never wanted to hear from her again, and enclosed the SIM card from my cell phone so she'd know I meant it.

Other than occasionally looking through her Facebook profile to see what she's up to (because I'm a sucker for punishment, I guess), I have kept my resolve to keep her out of my life.  I remain in contact with my stepfather's brother's family, because they're kind, decent people and I genuinely like them, and their daughter is the same age as me.  A few months ago, she informed me that my mother and stepfather are (finally) getting divorced.  (They've been going in circles around that since 2001.)  What was more, my stepfather was now halfway across the country, living with his other brother in his house, and my mother was in some sort of "adult care facility" in Missouri.  It is impossible to explain exactly the combination of feelings I had with regard to this news.  Relief, amusement, derision, disgust, disappointment, guilt, so much guilt.

Is it somehow my fault that they ended up in the situation they were in?  I was pretty much your basic teenager when I lived with them - I was selfish, I didn't think about the future, I wanted stuff when I wanted it - but I was never the adult in control of these things, as far as I was concerned.  Being under 18 and all.  According to my mother and stepfather, all their woes, financial, marital, were directly caused by me.  I caused them to be behind in bills, I caused my stepfather's alcoholism (I will admit to probably not being terribly helpful with recovery from it because I was at that frustrating attitude stage), I caused them to hate each other, I caused the foreclosure....  All of it was my fault.

My stepfather is actually in the best living situation he's been in since he met my mother (in fact, that's the point where I can see his life spiraling into the pit it is now), but my mother... I unblocked her on Facebook today (until Tuesday, when I can reblock her).  I have my stepcousin's shortened explanation of what happened (and I could call her dad if I really wanted to know the details, but I'm not sure I do), and now I have the convoluted explanation straight from my mother, since she wrote it in a blog post on her Facebook and made it public.  From what I can extrapolate, her dog disappeared, and so did my stepfather at about the same time.  I'm assuming that someone came to get my stepfather and the dog was aggressive and that's why they were both gone.  I could pick the whole thing apart, but basically she ended up in a motel after the trailer was condemned, and then in a care facility because no apartment would take her with her eviction records (well duh), and basically her whole life has fallen down around her ears.

I feel incredibly guilty because mostly my stepfather's brother's family has been dealing with the fallout of this situation, and has never once asked me to help them deal with her.  I feel like it's supposed to be my responsibility to deal with her and her situation because she's my mother.  But it's not a responsibility I'm prepared to handle, nor do I want it.  I like my life now.  It's peaceful without her.  I don't want her in my life at all.  She seems to have this incredibly destructive power to just mess everything up for herself and everyone around her, and I don't understand her.  Even if I were willing to deal with her, I wouldn't even know how to help her.  I don't think there is help for her at this point.

I hate how much uncertainty is wrapped up in this.  I wish there was a nice, easy answer that made all of it better, that it could be packaged up neatly and organized and fixed.  I don't think there's a way to fix her, and I don't want to waste my energy trying when I'm still trying to recover from the trauma of being her child.  (I would also like an explanation as to why the hell I'm so normal when I came from her.)