Looking for the little blue line

So for the last year or so, I have been struggling with something and I don't think I can spend another day not talking about it.

 In January of 2012, me and my husband decided to stop using any and all forms of birth control in an attempt to get pregnant and have a baby.  I had stopped using birth control 6 months prior to this and we had been using condoms up to that point.  My body was still adjusting to not being on birth control and my periods would skip a month or so then bleed a little bit for the normal amount of time and go back to business as usual. I was confident that I was ready to have a baby.

Six months went by...and nothing was happening. My periods were becoming increasingly erratic and I was getting frustrated.  After missing my period for 3 months in a row, I decided to finally go see a doctor.  Our first meeting was okay. We discussed my history and exchanged ideas on what could be going on. A pre-diagnosis of PCOS was determined and some blood was taken to run tests on.  Later, we decided to do a glucose test and see where my blood sugars were. After my result were in, she put me on Metformin and Thyroid medicine because my levels were within the normal range but on the high end of the normal spectrum.

She wanted to see me six weeks after the glucose test, but I couldn't afford to go back. I was not prepared for the financial hardship all these tests would be on our budget. I had no idea how much all this testing would costs, and I was somewhat grateful that I had insurance, even though they only covered about half the costs.

There are times when I truly miss my student health insurance.  The only time I ever had a medical bill when I was in college was when I needed an ultrasound and I had to pay for the outside consultant.  I had unlimited office visits (at the clinic), and I never had to worry about the costs for blood work and/or tests. Almost everything was covered. Granted, I was limited to the clinic on campus, but at the time it was all I needed.  With my current health insurance, I am lucky if my office visit is covered even with a $30 copay.

Now that a year has passed by, I am getting more and more frustrated as each day passes by.  Every time someone asks me why I don't have any kids yet, it feels like I have a dagger in my heart and they are twisting it in even deeper.  It is an innocent question, but they have no idea how much it hurts.  They have no idea that I ask myself that very same question every day.

Impulse choices and self-sabotage

Feeling pretty low today. Not exactly certain why. Could be I'm PMSy or it was something I ate, but I have been feeling pretty down lately, and it happens in waves.  Sometimes I really wonder if I have a mild case of bi-polar disorder. But in either case, I'm in a low mood and I'm not sure what I need to do to help me feel better. So here's one attempt at unburdening my soul, and sifting through the muck to find the source of the problem....

Impulse choices: I make them all the time. Sadly it is a product of my crazy brain and one of the things I struggle with daily. They say kids just grow out of ADD, but that is a huge lie. It is true that over time kids develop coping mechanisms to deal with their ADD, but it never really goes away.  As an adult, I still have to deal with some of the more subtle symptoms of ADD. Am I easily distracted, sometimes. It depends on my diet and sleep pattern. On the flip side, there's the hyper-focus, and there are things I have to do before I can do anything else, which is why cleaning my house is such a trial.  I'll start picking up dirty clothes and other junk, then accidentally find a spot that is particularly messy and end up spending hours deep cleaning that one spot, then collapse from exhaustion and still have a fairly messy house afterward.

I am seriously beginning to regret my latest impulse choice. A friend of my decided to open a dance studio, and asked me if I wanted to be one of the first teachers to teach there. At first, I said no. Then after further thought, I talked myself into doing it, with no thought as to who I was going to teach and focused all my attention on what I was going to teach. Now, three weeks later, I still don't have any students and I am not sure I even want to pursue finding students for my class.

If it is one thing I have learned from working in schools, is that I don't have the stamina to be a teacher on a long term basis.  I do just fine if the students are there for me to help and teach, but if I have to go out and find people to teach and convince them to take my class, I am just set myself up to fail.  I have never been good at recruiting people for anything. I am generally not comfortable in a leadership position. I prefer to have the greater responsibility fall on someone else and I provide support. I am a great team player, but I am severely uncomfortable being in charge.

I guess this is the best way to describe how I self-sabotage. I don't try for anything too extraordinary, because a lot of the time I don't like standing outside of the crowd.  It doesn't help when I have talents that draw attention to myself and instill jealousy in other.  Yes, I am good at certain things, and can be really good at learning things, but there are a great deal many more things that I struggle with that people don't see. They just see all the enviable things and ignore all the other more subtle issues. In truth, I can compare my learning curve to a sprinter. I started out really fast, and I maintain a quick speed for a short time then I fizzle out and move at a turtles pace or not at all.

Well, today, I am thoroughly fizzled and I just want to lay down and hibernate for a bit. But I have too much to do, so hibernation will have to wait.

Feeling low...

Have you ever had one of those days where you compare everybody's work to your own and you start to think that you're a tiny fish in a very talented and very large pool, and that everything you do is absolutely insignificant compared to everybody else. That is how I feel today: insignificant and forgettable. 

I know I do good work, but is it really better than everyone else's work? I don't know.

Sad panda

Drafted a T-Tunic pattern on PowerPoint

Figured out an inexpensive way to draft a pattern on my computer. I used shapes in PowerPoint. Granted, the pattern I drafted was pretty limited, and was mostly rectangles but it was the best tool available aside from pencil and paper...but then again I have not been able to find paper wide enough to draft on that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Oh, costume shop how I miss you sometimes. Any way, here's a pic of the end result.

Only took me about 1 1/2 times as long to draft it on the computer than it would on paper-including all the trial and error time I would normally spend. Not bad, not bad.

Another down side though...having to print it on standard paper size then having to tape it back together again...etc. But in the case of this pattern, I mostly needed to figure out all the dimensions and line lengths so that I could just draw it on the fabric directly.

Well, now I'm off to go make this tunic. Maybe I'll even take pictures of the process.

Cheers!

Tick Tock...

Brett doesn't like it when I blog. He thinks that I share too much information about our intimate lives. He finds it embarrassing to have all this dirty laundry out for everyone to see, but I look at blogging as a kind of therapy. I look at it as an outlet for suppressed thoughts and emotions. It seems like the only time I ever really say what I'm thinking is when I write it down. Writing, I guess, is a window into my soul. Brett also hates it when I paint him as a villain. I'm not really vilifying him, I just think he's gets overly concerned about what other people might think of us. I don't really care. It's a blog. It doesn't mean anything.

Sometimes he does treat me like the recalcitrant child, and scolds me like a parent with a child. I tolerate it merely because I do act like a child sometimes. Lately, I have observed that I am very immature for my age. I am almost 30 years old, and I feel like my maturity level is that of a young woman in her early 20's. Ever since we started dating, I never really acknowledged the gap between our ages. I guess I unconsciously adapted myself to him and never really though of the consequences till now. Turning 30 seems to be such an ominous age. I look at most of my classmates from school and realize that they have 3 or 4 children, some of them old enough to be in my first grade class.

I look at my immaturity as perpetual until I actually have a child myself. I want a baby so bad right now that it hurts. A dear friend of mine recently found out that she's having a baby after facing near impossible odds. Her husband had a vasectomy shortly after he divorced his first wife and she lost a ovary about a year ago. But aside from all that, they managed to get pregnant.

As far as I know, Brett and I don't have any physical problems preventing us from having children. Just financial ones. Most of the time, I think it's a poor excuse especially now that he's has a full time teaching job. Granted, health benefits for me were not part of the new job package, but I honestly don't care. I know that the Lord will take care of us.

The only thing I care about is the big gaping hole that I feel in my life. It's matters like this that remind me of the gap between our ages. He's just barely 25 and doesn't even want to think about kids. I'm 29 and all I can hear is the enormous biological clock ticking in my ear telling me I better get busy before it's too late.  I love my husband with all my heart, and I want to bear his children. I just wish he would stop worrying about how much it's going to cost and simply trust that we will be taken care of.

He's going to be mad at me for sharing all this out on the internet for everyone to see, but I couldn't keep this bottle up inside me any more. I've told him how I feel about all of this before, but it never really seemed to come out right. This way, there are no judgements passed until after it's read and reviewed and I can say everything I needed to say. To fight fair, I would share it on facebook. He'll have to find out about it and read about it on his own.

A blast from the past...

So for the last couple of days I have been going through my old sca garb and I am surprised at how sloppy I used to be. Granted- I made some of these when I was sixteen or seventeen, but wow!  I have come a very long way in my sewing. Nowadays every seam has to be perfect and don't even get me started on the sleeves.

When I was younger I didn't really know how to put in an inset sleeve and I hated doing them so I either made my mom do them or I would to take all the fullness and fold it into a dart or something equally bulky and messy. Either way they look really funny. Also, none of the edges are finished.  My mom had a serger, but I didn't know how to use if, so all of my seams are raw and stringy.

I guess I should give myself a break. I was just barely learning how to sew back then and I really didn't know what I was doing. There are times now where I still feel like I don't know anything about sewing, but then I look at my old stuff and I can realize that I have grown a lot as a seamstress.

Here are some pics of one of the old dresses that I made years ago. It look all nice and clean on the outside, but you should see the inside!

But the amazing thing is: it still FITS! YEAH!!!!

feeling a little sad...

So last week I found out that my client's husband lost his job, and has lost their only source of income.  They're getting on unemployment, but I doubt very much they will have any money to spare for fluff stuff like her dress. Well, at least until he finds a job.

I was so excited about this project. I was getting paid to do something I loved. But now that probably won't happen. I gave her the option of splitting up the payment plan a bit more, or I'll send her everything as is and she'll have to make the dress herself.

It was such a great design. I have no doubt that  it would sell. But there is always the question of whether or not I could get the money I want from it. I've had to sacrifice so much on other projects.

I just barely sold the Marie Antoinette dress, and I didn't make any money on it at all. The entire balance went to Party Palace. That whole thing was a bunch of bull sh&*. But its all over now, and all I want to do is look forward to the future.

Now all I have to do is wait with bated breath to hear back from my client on what she has to do.  Lately, her response times haven't been very quick, sometimes lasting more than a week. We'll see what happens. :(