A different perspective

It's the neatest thing.  My brother-in-law and his girlfriend had gotten me the Austin Family Chronicles books 1-3 for Christmas.  I had only recently found out that a book I've loved since 5th grade, A Ring of Endless Light, was actually part of a series, and so they got me the three books that precede it.  I have just finished reading the first one, and it's put me into such a nice mindset.  I'm feeling quaint, and old-fashioned, and lovely.  The books are so timeless.  That's when I always enjoy a book the most - when you can read it, no matter the decade, and still feel that it is relevant.  When authors fill their books with specific designers or gadgets or other here-and-now information, they become outdated so quickly.  Whereas other books you can pick up 50 years from the time they were written and still feel as though you could live in them.  The family dynamics in these books are ideal in my mind and I love it.  Although, it does make me second-guess myself again about the whole work situation.  This family, they are so happy with all being crammed into one little house, and they don't have fancy things but they have all they need and are happy.  I know they are only fiction . . . but they are based on real life, and really it seems like what we should be aiming for.  My son will tell me, if something is lost or broken or we are out of something, that we have to go get a new one from the store.  He thinks everything comes from "the store," and doesn't think about anything beyond that, and it sort of bothers me.  I don't want him to be materialistic - and yet, my husband and I are both working full time so that we can have nice things, and new gadgets, and a big house . . . I still wonder if our priorities are in the right place.

And yet, I don't work just for the money.  I re-realized this the other day, when I had to go into my mission integration meeting.  Though the meetings are tedious, and I have mixed feelings about the hospital sending this message even though its actions sometimes seem contradictory, it is a good message, a good ideal to aim for.  Compassion, both for our patients and our co-workers.  And it is for our co-workers that we need it the most lately, it seems.  In any case, they talked about nursing being our calling, how we serve God through caring for others.  I'm not deeply religious and I'm not very open to others about my views.  I'm quiet in my faith.  But I do pray, and I do believe, and it feels right to say that I express this through my nursing care.  I am doing important work.  I am serving others.  I am teaching my children compassion.  Before, whenever my son would cry about me going to work and ask why I had to go, I would tell him, "To earn money.  So we can buy food and clothes."  Now, I tell him, "Because Mommy needs to take care of sick people.  There are people that need her."  This, I think, is a much better message - and much closer to the truth.  Yes, we could live on my husband's salary, if we sold both new vehicles and stayed in our small house and gave up a lot of things.  But quite frankly, it is good to feel safe.  To not worry.  And I could go part time - there have been part-time opportunities to do so,  but they have just never seemed to fit quite right.  I think part of me just knew that I belong where I am.  I enjoy my job.  I enjoy caring for others.  It is difficult at times - nurses take a lot of abuse from patients.  It can be physically and emotionally draining.  But then you get the one patient who smiles at you, squeezes your hand and says, "thank you," and completely makes you forget about the last 10 that cursed at you or treated you as a personal servant or refused to help you help themselves.  And really - those 10 patients make me a better person.  I am only human, and I can only take so much.  But I am also a nurse.  It is my job to care for any patient that comes in the door.  To see beyond the exterior and find out what they need.  To be there for them, no matter what.   

So yes, we could live on less money.  But I would be losing much more than my income.  I would be losing the opportunity to serve.  I would be losing a part of myself. 

And yes, while working I am missing my children.  And I know that they are missing me.  But they are gaining one-on-one time with their father.  They are gaining time with friends at school.  They are gaining perspectives other than my own.  As I learn to be a better person through nursing, so too can I teach them to be better people.  And that is all that I want, what I pray for each night - to raise my children to their fullest potential.  We may not be the Austins - I don't know if anybody could be, this day in age.  But the idea of the Austins, and that loving, nurturing, humble environment - that is something to remember.  Something to aim for.

I finally finished Princess Zelda last night.  Actually, I had finished her a few weeks ago, figured out what I did wrong, re-wrote my pattern, and completed my second attempt last night.

She's still not perfect, but she's a far cry from attempt #1:

Not only was I making it the wrong size to begin with, I was trying to include way too many details.  The more I do this the more I learn, and I'm finding that too many details really don't translate very well into crochet.  Simpler is better.  She's a little creepy looking yet, I think I'm going to put some points of light in her eyes and probably make a mouth (my son is insisting that she has a mouth, even though I'm pretty sure the Zelda I was basing this on didn't have one pictured).  Just for comparison,

See?  No mouth.

I am just a bit sad - there's no way this is going to be done in time for my husband's 30th birthday in a few weeks.  Or even by his birthday party a month later.  I have 4 panels done now, and I don't even know how many more to go.  2 of the panels I have left I still haven't written out the patterns for, and the ones that I have written I'm going to have to re-do, based on what I discovered while crocheting Zelda here.  Plus, I'm trying really, really hard not to rip out a few of the panels that I DID complete, because I see another way to do them.   But, my husband knows me pretty well by now - the first blanket I ever made for him still needs half of its fringe applied.  He's waiting, very patiently, hoping that I will have it done by the time he's 40.  I think I can do that.

A Moment in Time

After my daughter was born, I discovered something very exciting.  More exciting than the fact that she slept through the night within the first week (babies do that??)  More exciting than her rolling over when she was just 4 days old - twice.  I have it on video.  More exciting than seeing how much her big brother loved her, immediately and completely.

Well, OK, maybe it wasn't more exciting than all that . . . but my inner geek insists that nothing could be better than this:

My daughter was born in the very same hours that Brandon Sanderson finished writing A Memory of Light.

Whaaaat?!?  I know, crazy, right?!  I was thrilled when I read this on Brandon Sanderson's blog. Unfortunately, no one else really seemed to appreciate just how amazing this was.  Even my husband, who is a Wheel of Time fan as well, just admitted that it was "kinda cool."  And when I blurted it on Facebook, unable to contain my excitement . . .well, it was the online equivalent of everyone smiling-and-nodding.  For those of you who don't know, the Wheel of time is a series that Robert Jordan began writing in 1984, with the first novel, The Eye of the World, being published in 1990. It is an amazing, epic series, and the 14th and final book in the series was completed by Brandon Sanderson on July 30th, 2012.  My daughter's birthday.  Oh.  Yeah.

The funny part is I had sort of wanted to name her Aviendha all along.  I knew I couldn't really do that to her, but part of me wanted to anyway.  Luckily my husband is the voice of reason.  But she was Aviendha to me in my heart - my little Aiel warrior.  I thought we needed to pay homage to this amazing connection she shared with such an important landmark in history, so we did the following photo shoot.

Of course, A Memory of Light wasn't actually published yet when I did this.  I just couldn't wait though, I needed her to be sweet and sleepy for it.  I do have a vague idea of a shoot with the proper book, and once I work out the details will share that as well.  Hopefully someone out there will appreciate it as much as I do.  

Tugging at my heartstrings

I get home from work at 7:30 this morning to find my 3 year old son cuddled up in the recliner, clutching his "blue blankie" and his "spider-man blankie."  He's recently discovered that he does not have to stay in  his room until we come get him.  And, so far, he doesn't seem to realize the mischief he could cause before we find out he is awake.  So, here he is, cuddled up and waiting patiently.  The dog is loose in the living room and, because we keep him locked in our room with us at night, this would have me think that my husband is awake and getting ready.  Further investigation proves otherwise.  The light is on in our bedroom, my daughter is sleeping soundly in her bassinet, and my husband is snoring softly with a pillow over his face.  I gather my pajamas and softly close the door. 

I ask Mason, "Honey, did you let the dog out of our room?"

He nods.

"And did you turn the light on in our room?"

Another nod.

"But you didn't wake up Daddy?"

"No, Mom.  You weren't sleeping! (he sounds distressed.)  I went to sleep last night (which he pantomimes by folding his hands under his head) and I woke up, and you were still at the doctor's and working and fixing people.  And then I started crying because I missed you."  His voice cracks, he pouts, and he covers his face with the blue blankie.

And my heart breaks.  Just a little.  Just enough.  I had a terrible time going back to work after my daughter was born.  With Mason, it wasn't so bad - he was a crabby, colicky baby, and though I hated to leave him, I knew he was going to cry either way.  Then, with my daughter, I got to thoroughly enjoy my time with both of them.  Madison has been a happy, easygoing baby, and Mason is just fun.  His imagination and the things he comes up with are amazing to me.  Spending 12 weeks with them, on a normal, day shift schedule, made me realize the time I'm missing out on.  The time I won't get back.  And I was determined to, if not completely stay home, at least find a way to go part-time.  To get on a normal day shift schedule, and be home in the evenings, and on the weekends.  

Madison is now 8 months old and I am still working full-time midnights.  A few part-time spots became available but they didn't seem feasible at the time.  Then my husband got a raise, but we still are unsure what to do about insurance if I lose mine by going part-time.  And the part-time opportunities have passed, at least for now.  And I have to admit, it's nice being comfortable right now.  We don't really have to worry about much.  And we are hoping to sell our house this year and move into something bigger.  And we'd like a camper.  And there's just always something. 

And in the midst of all those meaningless somethings, there is my son's voice, saying "I cried because I miss you."  There is my daughter, attempting to crawl for the first time.  How did material desires become more important than these moments and memories?  These soft baby snuggles, and brief hugs from my whirlwind little boy - I have such a short time to enjoy them.  There will always be time for things.   I need to remember what is important now.

Spring is in the air

We don't get much of a spring here in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.  It's one of the things I still miss about living downstate.  To me, March means trees blooming, birds singing, and finally being able to get back outside.  You'd think that after living in the U.P. for 11 years I'd be used to this all being delayed until May (no joke) but it's still hard.

And then, yesterday, it happened.  In the midst of all of this . . .

There!  Do you see it?  Bottom picture, a small dark spot . . .

GRASS!!!  I know it's not much, but it's enough to give me hope.  It was close to 40 degrees yesterday so while my son "dug for worms" in the snow, I attacked the thick ice still coating our walkway and driveway.  I'm that much closer to wearing flip-flops.  Though they may look a little silly with the snowpants . . .

Doing it right

I've had a vague idea for an epic crochet project floating around in my head for about a year now, and last month I finally took the steps toward making it a reality.  I'd been inspired by a Mario-obsession blanket by Gegecrochet (www.gegecrochet.blogspot.com) and wanted to make something similar for my husband for his 30th birthday.

I began searching images of Mario, but was having some difficulty.  I'd grown up playing Super Mario World for the SNES, not for the original Nintendo.  I found, however, that images from the SNES version that I so love are too detailed and don't convert well to a crochet pattern.  It just wasn't working for me.  So, I texted my husband, "What do you think is cooler, Mario or Zelda?"  And he answered back, "Zelda, of course."  It was the answer I'd been hoping for, and the ideas started flowing.

I'd never graphed out my own crochet pattern before, and my experience with Tunisian crochet was pretty limited.  I got the hang of it pretty quickly though, and after hours squinting at little tiny images of Zelda characters (before realizing if I brought those same images up on my iPad, they were much easier to zoom in on) I ended up with a pattern for a 6 foot by 7 foot epic afghan of Zelda-amazingness.

Now, the only problem is that I have no time whatsoever to actually work on this project.  I work 12 hour midnights, and off-time consists mostly of taking care of my kiddos, cleaning, grocery shopping, and doing all that other stuff that piles up while you're at work.  And with all the color changes, I need so many skeins of yarn hooked up to this project at once that I can't bring it anywhere.  I did find these amazing totes from Mary Maxim that help keep my skeins separated, but they are much too large to bring anywhere discretely.

So, I just had 2 weeks of vacation, and I pictured myself crocheting the days away and making huge progress on this project.  We went to Kentucky to visit some family, and I started one of my larger panels on the way down there.  It's the Triforce, and is 120 stitches wide and 120 stitches tall.  With the color changes the most skeins I need at once are 5, so it's one of the more portable panels I have to make.  I worked on it the whole way down, and the whole way back north again - it was a good 10 hours or so of crocheting.  At about row 16 I realized that there was a flaw in my graph, and there was a better way to do it.  But I told myself no, it will be fine, and kept crocheting.  At about row 30 I thought, wow, I'm not sure about this, but again told myself it would be fine and kept on.  When we finally made it back home I was on row 51, and I asked my husband his opinion.  This is what I had to show him.

He didn't even have to say a word - the pity in his eyes spoke volumes enough.  I said, "I knew it.  I'm going to have to rip it apart."  He protested half-heartedly, citing all the work I'd put into it already.  But I could never be happy with this long term.  It would bother me forever if it wasn't done right.  So, an hour later, this is what I had.

It absolutely killed me.  I know I'm not going to get another 10 hours of straight crocheting any time soon.  When I made my original graph for this panel, it looked great.  But each square was 6 stitches.  So what I didn't realize was that, instead of going up 12 and over 6, I could go up 2 and over 1, and end up with a much smoother angle.  Sort of a lowest common denominator thing.  It was March 8th that I tore it all apart, and as of March 14th I was back up to row 43, and very, very happy with the results.

See how much better that is?  I'm so glad that I sucked it up and did it right.  I would never have been happy with the results otherwise.  As of last night I surpassed the rip-out point too - I'm back up to row 54.  And it's easier than ever because I finally found a Bates crochet hook in the size I needed with a cable on the end.  My fingers were really getting sore trying to cram all those stitches onto a regular afghan hook.  I'm really glad that I realized the problem on this panel, too, rather than one of the more complicated ones with many more color changes.  I can adjust the rest of my patterns accordingly and not make the same mistake twice.   I'm still not sure this project will be done in time for my husband's birthday in May, but whenever he does get it, it will be done the very best I can.