Another New Challenge

They say when it rains it pours. Well, it seems that I am caught up in the storm of my life. On Monday, I was told that there was no longer enough funding for my position. I was given until the end of the week to help my team adjust to working without me, to notify my clients and to make sure all my files were transferred off my computer.

The organization has been dealing with some financial problems for a while now, but I was still blindsided. I never thought that with 7.5 years there, and all the work that I did, I would be the first to be let go. I guess I was too confident. I spent the rest of that week in shock, really feeling nothing at all; and then the negativity started to creep in.

In college, I had a huge fear that I would not be successful. I worried that I would spend the rest of my life on SSI, unable to find someone to hire me, living with my Mom and feeling sorry for myself. For me, a job wasn’t something that was a guarantee; it wasn’t something that I could count on. A job was privilege. A job was the difference between the life society expected me to have (and the one I feared) and the life that I wanted. In short, a job meant everything.

When I managed to land the VISTA position at the Ann Arbor Center for Independent Living, I thought I had hit the jackpot. Not only had I found a job right out of college, but it was at a place I had always wanted to work with, doing work that actually meant something. I was so proud of myself, and the whole world seemed to open up in front of me.

Not surprisingly, when I lost that job, those old feelings started to creeping back. No one else would ever hire me; I was pathetic and would spend the rest of my days watching soap operas in my pajamas and napping, and then I snapped out of it. Yes, I am jobless, but my life isn’t exactly that pathetic. I am married to a wonderful man. I held the same job for seven and a half years. I have skills now, and tons of talent. Now that I don’t have a job, I have options.

I realized that this is not the end of something, but the beginning. Without a job, I have time; time to focus on my dreams. The dreams I forgot when I became employed. As of today, it has only been a week since I found out my job was gone, but I am already looking for new work. I have updated my resume and I am applying for jobs, but I am also focusing on me. I have a writing project that I am really excited about, and I am working on creating an etsy site for my quilts. I thought the world opened up when got my job, but now that I have lost it, anything seems possible and I am excited to see where this new adventure takes me.

Yes, life has given me quite the storm, but no storm lasts forever. When they are over and the sun comes out, everything is greener, the sun is warmer, the flowers smell sweeter and the birds are always sing.

Quilting is Good for the Soul

Once again, it has been a while since I posted. Things have been up and down for me for the past month or so. For much of February, my hemoglobin levels with so low that I could barely function. The doctors adjusted my Ribavirin dose and put my on folic acid. The number is still quite low but climbing. Then we found my liver enzymes had spiked and I had a brief moment of panic where I thought the virus might be back, but it turned out to be a fluke.

I will tell you, that one little step up on my hemoglobin has done wonders though. I feel like a new girl again! I have gotten 4 quilting projects done in the 3 weeks! I can't show most of them to you because they are gifts but I do have a few pictures.

New quilt for the bed

A quilt for my husband

I am currently working on a postage stamp quilt made with all the scraps from the quilts I have made over the last 3 years. I got the pattern here, and I am almost finished with the second step. I will post a picture when it's finished.

Today, I finally found a simple pattern (no applique, paper piecing, or complicated patterns to cut out) for a sunflower block and am so freaking excited. I wish I had a car so I could go to Joann Fabrics today! I am going to incorporate it into a simple pattern and make a throw.

Sunflower Block!!!

I am also going to make a friend a T-Shirt quilt.

I love quilting. It really has giving me something to focus on besides this disease and it really makes me feel good to see my pieces finished and being used by people I love. I plan to start selling some soon.... stay tuned.

Crossing the Finish Line Never Gets Old.

Stephen King, who happens to be my all time favorite writer in the entire world, said once about writing that the "scariest moment is just before you start. After that things can only get better." I happen to think that this is true for almost anything. The payoff for all that fear is the moment, after a lot of hard work, when you can finally throw up your hands in victory and shout. "I did it!" I got to do this yesterday and even though only the dog and cats were the only ones there to witness it, it still felt awesome. It always does. If starting is fear, than finishing is like turning on the light and realizing the snarling monster in th corner was just a floor lamp.

I finally finished my sister’s quilt. I posted a picture of it earlier in this post. I have been working on this quilt for at least two years now, and I sewed up the last of the binging yesterday afternoon. My fingers hurt, but I managed to get the binding done in about 5 days. It turned out much better than I expected:

There a few spots where I had to hand sew. I am not sure what happened, but it didn’t catch all the layers in a few spots of the binding when I sewed it on with my machine. I am trying not to beat myself up over it, because by the time I sewed then binding on that quilt was bigger than me, heavy and really hard to guide through the machine one handed. Still, I am slightly disappointed. There are also some spots that didn’t line up exactly, which is more noticeable on this quilt than my others because of the pattern. I know my sister will love it, but I really wanted it to be perfect for her.

Oh well, I guess I am still working on perfect. I'll let you know when I accomplish it. Then we can put on out party hats and call Guinness because that'll be a first.

In other news something really exciting happened for Disability and I Do that a few of you might know about. A few weeks ago, I was contacted by one of the writers over at Etsy who was doing a feature for the Etsy Blog on planning accessible weddings and wanted to include Disability and I Do as part of the article. Those of you who have been reading awhile know how much I love Etsy, so of course I said yes. The article can be found here.  The result of this article is about 2,000 new hits and 10 new followers. (Hi, new readers!)

It’s probably not a big deal for many people, I mean, there are bloggers that get 10,000 hits a day and have hundreds of followers, but it was really exciting for me. I never meant for this blog to be something just for me and my family and friends. I wanted to reach out to as many people as I could. I did a lot of work to make sure that it would show up on search engines and on other websites so that it might actually help someone, and I am so glad that I was given the opportunity to reach an even wider audience.

I am feeling a little more pressure now, I hope I don't fail hopelessly...

That shadow in the corner is just a floor lamp, right?

Disability: An Ingenious Way to Live

My favorite quote is from a man named Neil Marcus: “Disability is not a ‘brave struggle’ or ‘courage in the face of adversity.’ Disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live.” I first read it sometime during college when my poetry professor, after hearing some of my poetry related to disability, suggested I look at the work of some well-known poets with disabilities. That quote has been with me ever since.

After college, I even got a tattoo inspired by the quote and designed by my best friend:

It's a stylized handicap symbol with the word Ingenuity as the wheel. This was taken right after it was done. 

But even before I knew who Neil Marcus was, Ingenuity, process of applying new or inventive ideas to solve problems or meet challenges,  had been the key to living my life as independently as I could. All my life my other friends with disabilities would remark about how I was able to do things that they couldn’t do. It wasn’t that my disability was any less than theirs or that I was any better at being disabled. It was just that I knew that there was always a way, you just had to be willing to find out what that way was.

I think my Dad was the first person to show me how ingenuity could change something from impossible to possible. I think I was maybe three or four when my twin and I got big wheels for Christmas. Of course I couldn’t ride it, but I liked to store things in the seat and push it around the yard like a crude walker. Sometimes, when she was feeling generous, my sister would push me around on it. Then one day, my Dad used screws to attach a pair of old sneakers to the peddles. It didn’t work exactly the way we thought it would, but it was the first of many designs that eventually got me riding an adult tricycle by middle school.

Since then, I have been using a little ingenuity to get through my daily life. A few weeks ago, I came across a situation while sewing that required a little bit of ingenuity. For me, the hardest part of making quilts is the cutting. I used to do all my cutting while standing at the kitchen table, but recent back and hip pain, mixed with a new, higher kitchen table made cutting this way difficult. My solution was to take my cutting mat upstairs to my sewing room and put it on the floor, then cut on my hands and knees, giving me better leverage on the cutter and more control over my ruler and the fabric. I quickly realized that that position was helping me cut easier, but it was also putting too much pressure on my hips, so after trying a chair, and then a foot stool I finally came up with this:

A sturdy laundry basket, flipped over and covered with a towel for cushion. Please ignore my mess!

It’s almost perfect. It allows me all the benefits of cutting from the floor without putting pressure on my hips. But it does cause a small kink in my neck if I am at it for too long.

How I use it. Please ignore my hair. I think my next blog will be called Bad Hair Days, in which I post the crazy things my hair does on a regular basis.

Here are the fruits of my labor: 200 8x8 inch squares. Which now have to be cut into triangles. Oy.

What are some of your most ingenious solutions?

Update on Training and More New Projects

My back hurts. Isn’t that fascinating? I don’t know what it is, but back pain has been almost a constant in my life for about six months now. I am not a fan. On Sunday, I apparently broke myself while doing the dishes of all things. The rest of the evening was spent, crying and being carried and helped off the toilet because I could not stand up. At least I’m back at work. For the last two days I have been at home, whining. My back still hurts but I have gotten over the pity party and moved on. I am sucking it up like a boss. It’s one of my best skills. Tomorrow, I have an appointment to be fitted for a new wheelchair. I will hopefully see my doctor and be able to ask her about the pain. If not, I have to make an appointment. Yippee.

That’s enough of that, yes?

Taden is coming along in training okay. As usual I am sort of slacking, but all the snow and rain isn’t helping and then the back issue. I did finally get around to teaching her “Wait.” She used to charge passed me up the stairs which is sort of dangerous.  I trained “Wait in order to get her to wait patiently at the bottom while I go up.  As usual she learned it fast, but I did have to climb up and down the stairs 16 times on the first night of training before she waited until she was released. (She kept charging up as soon as I hit the top step, instead of waiting until I said “Okay.” I think our next thing needs to be eating on command. This dog is notorious for her strange eating habits.

Last night, Tom shouted from upstairs: “Why did Taden bury her food in my clothes?” This is not unusual. She often hides bits of her food and then later after she eats the rest of it will go hunting out the rest. Only sometimes she forgets. Other days, she won’t eat all together and never once has she eaten as soon as I put the food down.

I am not sure how to train this; my training books talk about over excited dogs, but not dogs that just don’t care much about their food. (She is fine medically, I’ve checked.) Does anyone have a suggestion?

In other news, I am taking a quilting class. I took one a few years ago and made this lovely quilt for my bed:

I made one more quit after that and started on one for my lovely Seester, but I didn’t finish because I got all wrapped up in the wedding. Signing up for the class motivated me and I finished the blocks on Saturday before my back started to hurt:

This one has a few obvious errors. The pattern was a little difficult for me. I picked it after being told it was hard because Seester loves stars! It goes fast but require perfectly straight cutting and sewing and since I sew one handed (I have to use the other to work the peddle) this is really hard. (The cutting I have no excuse for, I just suck. LOL) Seester is an awesome seamstress, so I am a bit nervous about this one!

I am making the next quilt for Charles. In this class we are actually doing two so the other will go in my spare room. or give it to Tom. Then, I have requests from Stephy and my youngest nieces and nephews! Classes are Wednesdays so I will try to do my quilting update on Thursdays from now on. I know, you’re terribly excited.