The Art of Cleaning

I don't think there is anything quite as depressing as cleaning the bathroom and the kitchen. If ungratifying was a word (and its not), that would be the best way to describe the two chores. It doesn't matter how much effort I put into it. It doesn't matter how many hours I spend cleaning (when I could be stitching instead). The kitchen and bathroom will remain clean for a grand total of 30 seconds before it gets messy again.

The bathroom isn't so bad. Its a smaller space and is easier to keep up with. I love that we don't have those awful sliding doors for the tub in this apartment. So cleaning the shower/tub is quick and mostly painless. The floor on the other hand is a constant work in progress (along with the floors in the rest of the place). My hair is still shedding. Its been chopped off (removed approximately 13 inches, maybe more), but it is still shedding. There is always hair everywhere. There is hair falling off while I'm cleaning off the hair that's already on the floor!!! It drives me absolutely nuts!

Is it just me? Surely this isn't normal. I'm hoping that there are kitchens and bathrooms out there that remain relatively clean during the day. And I'm talking about real kitchens and bathrooms here, not showrooms.

What are your kitchen/bathroom/overall cleaning secrets?

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In baby news, Ayame has decided that she is done with sleeping through the night. Ugh. This started on the 13th. She got spooked Friday night and didn't sleep until midnight. The next day I had to wake her up early because we were going to Gloucester to meet up with MIL, Grandpa, Grandma and Aunt M. She was grumpy all day, grumpy all night and hasn't slept through the night since. She still takes her regular naps, but now just wakes up in the middle of the night. Last night was probably the craziest one yet. She went to bed around 10 (usual time), but woke up several times. She woke up around 2 and was up until 3:30. Then woke up again around 4:15. This usually isn't bad. I'll change her diaper and feed her and she's happy. Well last night, she was so ridiculously happy that she had to tell her friends, the stuffed fox, the stuffed elephant, the stuffed butterflies and the rattle all about it. Baby just talked and talked. First it was cute, then it got louder and louder and louder and she was waking up T who had to go to work in the morning. So I took her outside and laid her in the bassinet which we kept in the living room. I slept on the couch. I think she finally slept around 5:30. I thought that was it and she was going to sleep until 9:30. WRONG. Woke up again at 7:30, back to sleep then up again at 9:30. She's taking a nap now. I hope she sleeps at least 3 hours. Babies need sleep and mommy needs quiet time!

Baby ready for Halloween!

Android Hell

"The Enrichment Center once again reminds you that android hell is a real place where you will be sent at the first sign of defiance."

T got The Orange Box and has been playing Portal. I even gave it a shot. It's really fun and absolutely funny! "Please note that we have added a consequence for failure, any contact with the chamber floor will result in an unsatisfactory mark on your official record, followed by death." LOL. If the darn game didn't make me so dizzy I would love to play more.

"The Enrichment Center would like to remind you that you will be baked and then there will be cake". LOVE IT!

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In stitching news, I am working on my next LHN project. It's off to a wonderful start. That's a sarcastic remark, by the way. The margin on the left is bigger than the margin on the right. It is driving me absolutely nuts, but I refuse to frog so much stitching and start over. REFUSE! Hopefully the top and bottom margins measure correctly.

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Work is going great. I've completed 52 hours as of today. And a bunch of people already tinkered around with a spreadsheet that took me forever to figure out and format. HA! That's why I keep the updated copy on my PC at home and just save a COPY on the server. It is now password protected and I am pretty sure that at least 2 guys hate me now. Oh look, I care. :P

Number 16!

This is my 16th stitched project for 2007. Its Pumpkins by LHN. I loved working on this design. I stitched it on 28 count light gray Jobelan using the Crescent Colors floss provided in the chart pack. I wish there was more contrast between Brandied Pears (wagon) and Cocoa Bean (wheels), other than that, I like the results.

Happy Dance!

I finally finished Spot of Coffee. It took me almost a month, but then there were some days when I didn't get to stitch at all. Also, having multiple projects slowed it down. I stitched it on 28 count tea-dyed Charles Craft linen using DMC floss. I did not like the linen at all. The weave was very lose and the texture was a bit rough. I really like the design though. I haven't decided where to stitch my name and date on the piece.

TW's Beginner's Whitework Ornie V2

As promised, here is Version 2 of TW's ornie. I used some cream ribbon for the handle and the bottom bits. I originally wanted to have a bow for the bottom, but my bow making skills aren't as good as I would like.

I also wanted to thank you guys for the comments on Inspiration. I have a couple more designs in the works. I have a basic idea of what I want them to look like but the execution part is a little bit tricky. And some parts of the design are still stuck in my head!

See you next time!

Working Girl

I have a job!!! Whooohooo!!!!!! My old boss sent me an IM yesterday asking me to call the office. He said that if I was interested he had a job for me. So you're offering me a job that I can do from home, working with people I like... of course I'm interested! Its nothing glamorous or exciting. I will be doing a lot of grunt work (research, Excel sheets, database stuff), but its work. I have never been so excited to look at an Excel sheet before. :) I started today and it was really good. I worked for 4 hours while Ayame took a nap. It feels so good to have a job again. My ego really needed this.

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In stitching news... I worked on the back piece for my TW Ornie Versions 2. I chose the letters used in TW's Birth Announcement, charting it over 2 instead of over 1. I really like the result. I finished stitching the ornie in 2005, so that's the date that I put in. Tonight I will work on actually turning it into an ornament. Come back tomorrow to see the final product! :)

Inspiration!

Lo and behold! Happy Dance number 14 for this year!


I stitched it on a piece of hand dyed linen purchased from The Needle Hive using DMC 3865. The design is called Inspiration and ***I*** designed it! :) Yes, I am so proud of myself. I originally designed it to be a little bigger, but I excluded the outer bits. It looks so light and delicate right now and the waffle stitches that I was going to stitch on the outside would just make it too heavy, distracting from the delicate center. Anyway, I had so much fun designing this piece. I have DH to thank for inspiring (yes, pun intended) me to design. :) He encouraged me to try it and I did! Sooo much fun! I have a couple more designs in the works. They still need a lot of tweaking though. What I really love about this is that I am trying out new-to-me stitches and I get to experiment with textures.

No, Spot of Coffee isn't finished yet. It sat on the scanner until I had to take it out to scan Inspiration. Oh well. I will try to work on it some tonight and this weekend.

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Noreen, I buy generic diapers from Stop and Shop. Each pack costs $6.99 (48 pieces for size 2). Sometimes I buy Pampers or Huggies, but only if I have a coupon and if it comes out to be less than $6.99. I've also tried Walgreens' generic diapers, but SNS is still cheaper. I tried generic wipes, but I didn't like the ones from SNS. They tore easily and even the unscented ones still smelled a bit. I much prefer Pampers Sensitive Wipes.

Shh... Baby is Sleeping

Bassinet: $125. Formula: $25. Diapers and wipes: $15. Baby who soothes herself to sleep: Priceless!

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As promised, here is a progress pic of Spot of Coffee. I didn't get to stitch at all last night. A design idea popped in my head and I had to focus on that before it went away.

Ta Da!!!

As promised, here is my TW Whitework Ornie. You can get the chart here. I stitched this in 2005 and finally *finished* it properly over the weekend. As you can see, I chose the simplest method of finishing. I didn't know better back in the day and didn't leave much room for margins. I purchased the ribbon back in 2005 after all the stitching was done. I think it needs a bow though. It looks to plain. It's missing something. What do you think?

I have 2 other versions of this design. I will probably work on finishing them next weekend.

I didn't get to work on Spot of Coffee yesterday. I will try to work on it a little bit tonight as soon as I finish all my chores. I will post a progress pic tomorrow.

See ya!

Weekend Recap

We didn't go to Salem but we did walk around the mall and had dinner out. It was so much fun to get out of the house. Ayame loved the mall and was just fascinated with everything she saw. She did really good and wasn't fussy at all. She fell asleep when we got to the restaurant and I was looking forward to a nice dinner. Ayame had other plans. She woke up and was sooo fussy. I ended up changing her diaper twice and she ended up drinking 3 servings of 3 oz of formula one after the other. I still got to eat so it wasn't bad. And the entree I picked (steak tips) was really good. We even managed to get some dessert! It was a bit frustrating that Ayame started fussing, but I still had fun. :)

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DH and I tried Brunswick Pro Bowling for the Wii. To say that I was disappointed is an understatement. This game has nothing on Wii Bowling. Yeah , you can customize your character, but you can only play your character in career mode. If you want to do 2 players, then you're stuck with a set of characters. It was also very frustrating to play. My character didn;t swing when I wanted to, and it was difficult to control the swinging and releasing. It was not worth buying.

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I stitched a little this weekend. I still haven't finished Spot of Coffee. But I worked on 2 projects. One is my attempt at designing and the other was finishing TW's Beginner's Whitework Ornie into an actual ornie. Photo coming soon! I stitched it in 2005 back when I had no idea how to finish ornies. There wasn't much fabric to work with, but I managed. :) I like the end result and I will be finishing all my other unfinished ornies soon.

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Have you ever had a Pluot? I tried one for the first time last week. It tastes really good! Its a hybrid fruit made of 3/4 plum and 1/4 apricot. It is very very sweet and very juicy. The skin is very smooth and the fruit itself is very fleshy. I can't really compare it to a plum or apricot though as I don't think I've ever had a fresh apricot and I can't remember the last time I had a plum.

The fruit was developed by Zaiger's Genetics in California. They have also developed Aprium (3/4 apricot, 1/4 plum), Plumcot (1/2 plum, 1/2 apricot) and coming in 2008 to a grocer near you... the Peacotum (peach, apricot and plum). The Peacotum is supposed to taste like fruit punch. Can't wait to try that one!

September 11, 2007

Susan's blog reminded me of my first ever visit to NY/NJ. It was the summer of 2001 and I had a wonderful time. My dad's cousin in NJ took me on a tour of Liberty Island. I'm not sure exactly where this photo was taken (I think it was before we got on the boat going to the island). I remember being absolutely upset that I couldn't get a picture of me with the Empire State Building in the background. I didn't even know what the WTC was and I didn't understand the big deal or why everyone was crowding the area trying to get a nice picture. Little did I know that in a few days, the WTC would be all over the news. :( This was taken on September 2, 2001.

Spot of Coffee 1

My current WIP is LHN's Spot of Coffee. I am stitching it on a piece of Charles Craft 28 count Tea Irish Linen using the recommended DMC floss. I am enjoying the project so far despite cutting the fabric wrong. There seems to be enough margin on the right side, so its not so bad. One thing though... I am not too fond of this fabric. I only bought a small roll to try and I will not be purchasing anymore. The fabric is rough and the weave is very loose. I much prefer Charles Craft's Monaco which is soft and has a very tight weave. Anyway, I hope to finish this project by the weekend.

Spot of Coffee © Little House Needleworks

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I signed up for the Attic Needlework newsletter ages ago and it has been absolutely horrible. Every week I see something I like! LOL. The latest newsletter is no exception. I am drooling over these two charts:

Cappuccino © Little House Needleworks

Black Dahlia © Examplar Dames Design

*Drool drool* I love, love, love both designs. Both have found their way into my ever-growing wish list of course.

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Ayame is doing great. She is now sleeping through the night, 8 hours straight! Yay SLEEP!!! She does get REALLY FUSSY before she finally falls asleep though. A nice feeding helps a lot. She smiles all the time and is talking so much! She loves to look at Daddy and its just so adorable. DH plays around with her and tries to hide and poor baby would probably turn her head 180 degrees if she could just so she can see Daddy. :)

Arabesque Alphabet Take 2

As promised, here is Arabesque Alphabet A by Passione Ricamo. I stitched it on 32 count Queen Anne's Lace Jobelan using Iris Waterlilies.

I am still working on my LHN project. I think its going well considering I don't have as much time to stitch as I used to. I'm hoping to finish that in about a week.

Postpartum Hair Loss

Before giving birth, I read somewhere to expect some postpartum hair loss. Fine, whatever. No problem. I've been told more than once that I have enough hair for 3 people. I pity the poor girl who has to wash my hair at the salon, and I feel totally horrible for the poor girl who has to blow dry my hair. But I digress. No one told me CHUNKS would fall out! I'm not even exaggerating. I showered and there was hair EVERYWHERE. Really scary. After doing some research, I found out that an insane amount is to be expected. I still have a lot of hair, but I think it would be less scary if my hair wasn't so long... the clumps falling out wouldn't look so alarming... I hope.

In stitching news, I am still working on LHN's Spot of Coffee. I realized last night that I cut my fabric wrong. I went by the measurements given on the chart. The only problem is the model was stitched on 32 count. I'm using 24 count. My right and bottom margins will be smaller than I'd like (about an inch), but it should still be okay. *fingers crossed*

A New Look

I decided that it was time for a new look. I'm sticking to the coffee theme, but the look is completely different. I also did a blogger upgrade. I kinda like how you can just drag and drop blog elements.

I know I promised a scan of my latest happy dance, but I'm still waiting for UPS to deliver my new power supply. The old one died back in Buffalo and I mailed it back to Antec a couple of weeks ago. Thank goodness I have kept all our receipts since getting married. We bought the power supply last year and its still under warranty. I cannot wait to get my PC back.

Not much is going on. I'm currently working on LHN's Spot of Coffee. This chart went AWOL on me several months ago. I looked ALL OVER for it. I finally found it last week while looking for a different chart. Somehow, this tiny chart decided to join all my kits. I have no idea how it ended up there as all my charts are on a hutch, and the kits are in a chest. Oh well. I'm just glad I found it. I also found the other chart that went AWOL a couple of days later.

Oops! House is on. See you guys next time!

3 Months Old!

Can you believe how big my baby is now? Time is going so fast. It seems like only yesterday that I gave birth.

A few hours after birth

One month old

2 months old

3 months old

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I finally finished Arabesque A for Ayame. The last 3 rows on the right side took me about 3 days to finish! I can't really stitch while holding a baby. LOL. The picture is crappy, but I promise to take a proper scan later today. I stitched it on 32 count Queen Anne's Lace Jobelan using Waterlilies in Iris. I would love to stitch her whole name, but then that would mean purchasing more Jobelan and more Waterlilies. Maybe next year...

SMILE!!!

I finally got Ayame to smile for the camera. She's been smiling for weeks now, but has been terribly camera shy until today. :)

I'm Alive!

I'm alive and doing well. I have been very busy though, that's why I haven't posted in forever. BTW, we are moving to Boston!!!

To see Ayame's latest pics, please see her gallery. She's so big now!

Stash Lust

Oooh. I am in love with this design! It's ABC Tapestry by Rosewood Manor. It is GORGEOUS! I wish someone would post a better picture. I would love to see the details on it.
I am really lusting over all the monochromatic designs that are coming out. Now do I really need to buy all of them? No, but its not a question of need anyway. :)

I also recently purchased Long Dog's Paradigm Lost. I haven't decided on what color to use yet. I love purple, but do I really want to have another Gigantic Purple Project? Maybe. If I found the right floss.

Right now I am working on a mini Purple Project for Ayame. Its the letter A from Passione Ricamo's Arabesque Alphabet Collection. I am stitching it on 32 count Queen Anne's Lace Jobelan using Waterlilies in Iris. How appropriate (Ayame is Japanese for Iris). I love how its coming along. I would like to find a nice frame for it, though I haven't decided on the color yet.

Before I Forget...

... I better blog about the details. This will probably be horribly TMI, so don't read if you're squeamish.

Sunday, May 27th - At around 3:30 am, I woke up because I felt a trickle of pee. I jumped out of bed feeling horrified that I had lost control of my bladder. So I went to the bathroom and "finished peeing". But when I tried to get up, there was more pee. Fine, whatever. After a few minutes, I go back to bed. I sat down on one of my flat pillows and there was a GUSH. Maybe a couple of cups worth of fluid came out. I was a little worried but I wasn't 100% sure that it was amniotic fluid. I go back to the bathroom and try to clean myself. Crap, there's a tinge of blood. So I call my doctor's office. Answering service girl takes the message. Almost forever passed, and the doctor finally calls back. She said answering service idiot wrote down the wrong number, but she had my papers in her car (luckily). I told her what happened and she said to go to the maternity wing of the hospital ASAP. Its about 4 am now and I try to wake up DH.

Me: Hun, wake up. We have to go to the hospital.
DH: (No response).
Me: Hun, my water broke. We have to go now.
DH: WHAT???!?!!!

So we get dressed and go to the hospital. At this point, I'm not having any contractions, just a dull back ache and still fluid coming out. I was more worried about making a mess at this point. So we drive to the hospital and I start feeling weird. I feel cramping, but no contractions. DH drives up to the ER entrance and goes in for help. Someone with a wheel chair came to get me and I could barely get out of the car at this point. They take me upstairs and DH goes and parks the car.

The maternity ward nurses said my doctor had called ahead and they were expecting me. They bring me into a room and I go and change into a gown. At this point, my legs have turned into jello and I'm feeling very weak and there is a bit of cramping going on. The nurse puts this extremely tight band around my belly. Think of a horribly tight tube top going over a very pregnant belly. NOT COMFY AT ALL. I told her it was too tight and I needed a bigger size coz it really hurts. She said I'm probably having contractions. She helps me into bed and starts hooking me up to stuff.

DH arrives and holds my hand. At this point, the cramps are really horrible. I told DH that I can't do this without drugs. I mean its just cramps right now and they're painful. What's gonna happen when the contractions start? I NEED DRUGS. The nurse says she needs to check me, so she does and tells me that I am 9 cm dilated. WHAT??? How the heck do you go from zero to nine in half an hour?

So at this point we're waiting for the doctor and they're poking me and hooking me up to an IV. I'm laying on my side and I'm clutching to DH, completely freaking out. My doctor arrives and I beg her for drugs. She said its too late for drugs and she doesn't want me groggy. ACK!!!!!

The nurses asked if I felt the urge to push. I did. So they helped me get into position. A nurse on my right, DH on my left. Me with eyes closed praying that this will be over quick. I'm not really sure what happened next. I kept my eyes closed the whole time and pushed when I felt like I had to. I was screaming like crazy initially, but the doctor and nurses said to hold my breath and focus on pushing. The nurse on my right was a GREAT labor coach. Too bad I didn't get her name. She had a calm, soothing voice and I focused on that and on DH rubbing my ear and neck. It did not feel at all like I thought it would feel. I really thought it would feel like I was being ripped open. It wasn't like that. It felt like I had to do number 2 REALLY BAD and I was horribly constipated. Several minutes of pushing later, out came our baby girl. She was bloodly and mucusy and slimey and screaming like crazy. They put her on my chest and let DH cut her umbilical cord. They then whisked her away to the baby table to clean her off. Meanwhile, my doctor is digging around inside me. Casually she goes, "Okay, the placenta is out." I opened my eyes and I saw what looked like a big deflated, bloody balloon with the umbilical cord dangling from it. She said the umbilical cord was really long. I closed my eyes again, completely exhausted, thinking that its finally over. WRONG.

The doctor orders one of the nurses to give me Nubain. What the heck? I asked for Nubain earlier and you give it to me after the worse is over. Or so I thought. One of the nurses starts PUSHING down on my belly and I felt like my insides were getting ripped out. I SCREAMED LIKE HELL. It HURT. OMG. I cannot even begin to describe it. I could feel myself shaking uncontrollably and all I could do was scream and hold on to DH. This went on for an eternity. I had no idea what the hell was going on. I hear the doctor say, "I'm sorry, but we need to remove all the clots." No one told me about this part of labor. This wasn't mentioned in anything I read. I didn't see this in any of the videos. No wonder they don't tell pregnant women about this. It was absolutely horrible. It was the worst pain of my life. They finally stop and now I feel the doctor start to stitch me up. UGH. I have never had stitches in my life. This was not a good first time experience.

I basically collapsed after everything. I was still shaking and was semi-out of it thanks to the drugs. DH tells me that they did an episiotomy. "They did?" Then he tells me that the doctor was literally grabbing the clots from inside me. "Ick! She was?" Good thing I had my eyes closed the whole time. That's one thing I did NOT need to see.

After leaving us alone for a while, a nurse came in and said that I can get in the shower and get rinsed off. They had a chair for me to sit on, which was good because I had to energy to stand up. I get rinsed off and get into a clean bed and rest. They also brought the baby to me and had me nurse her. It was weird, but I managed to get it done.

After resting for a bit, DH and I start making phone calls to people. This was probably around 6:30 - 6:45. I called my mom and told her the news. DH called everybody else. FIL came to visit that day and I made more calls after taking a nap. I got transfered to my room while FIL and DH were having lunch so I called them to let them know where I was. The rest of the day was spent resting, making more phone calls and spending time with the baby.

Here are some pictures taken by DH that day. The pictures in the previous post were taken on Monday, May 28th by Mandy.