Not Prepared for the Cold

As a native Minnesotan, it feels strange to admit that I’m not ready to deal with the upcoming cold spell. But there are a couple of reasons why I think I have some justification for this feeling of dread:

It doesn’t usually get extremely cold in early November

Typically there are nights that get below freezing (32F) and some snow happens. But the days generally have highs in the 40s and occasionally a pop into the 50s. Next week, I’m looking at single digit lows, and highs struggling to get to 20.

PTSD from Last Winter

November and December 2018 were lovely, weather-wise. Then all hell broke loose January 2nd, and we were hit with snow, then cold, then more snow, then unbearable cold. Rinse and repeat through the end of March. That type of weather leads to “hunker down and hibernate mode”. It’s not a bad thing.

However I had a hellacious professional start to the new year. I was “in charge’ of The Project With an Impossible Deadline, working 60 hour seven day weeks and going insane with the internal politics of the situation. There was no hibernation, no hunkering. Just working my ass off during the bleakest part of the year.

I cracked. I had the worse case of depression that I had ever had. But I still got my ass out of bed and worked like mad because I had obligations. When I finally broke at the end of March, I was the lowest I had ever been and was considering if life was actually worth living. I didn’t start feeling more like myself until a couple weeks ago.

The original project got delayed, re-done, and implemented this summer with much less involvement on my part. It’s been a struggle. A struggle I don’t want to repeat again.

So, what now?

I am on an off-shoot of The Project From Hell.

The new project has some sketchy deadlines, but I’m no longer suffering the consequences. Those above me are noticing on their own some of the issues and/or amplifying mine. But other things are changing and the politics of it I wish I could drown out.

The days are getting long and dark. Now it’s getting cold. It feels like the 2.0 version of last January without much improvement. And I’m scared most of all of falling back into that deep depression. Last winter showed me that either the dependable drugs I have been taking aren’t working as well anymore, or that I need to find other ways to deal with the stress.

The Battle of the Fruit Flies

In high school and college, I spent a lot of time upclose and personal with fruit flies courtesy of my Biology-heavy major. I knew just how much ether to apply to knock them out for a few minutes to do culture audits. I also knew how to snuff them out, if needed. You knew when it was fruit fly study time, because there would always be some escapees and people trying to slap them out of their way. The most certain thing I knew about fruit flies is that eventually, they will die and go away.

For as cluttered as I am, my apartments in my single days must not have had sufficient breeding grounds for fruit flies. They’d be around for a week, then no more. If I didn’t want to deal with fruit flies post-college, I didn’t buy bananas, the fruit fly’s favorite habitat.

Thanks to a recent series of banana purchases on behalf of the DH and Youngest Daughter, our house is teeming with fruit flies. Doesn’t help that dirty dishes collect in odd places in the basement, and are brought upstairs just in time for a hatching.

I’ve killed about 50 fruit flies with the apple cider vinegar and soap trick. Just when I thought I had the upper hand, I found about 50 more hovering around the tomatoes I picked this morning. Yuck. The most infested tomatoes got tossed, and the others got a good scrubbing and put into the refrigerator to ripen.

I’ve loaded a fresh vinegar and soap trap, but I think these buggers are going to be with me a while yet.

Staycation Time

It’s Day 2 of my Staycation, and I’m hoping it goes as well as it did yesterday. Unlike most days, time seemed to c-r-a-w-l. That’s a good thing. Lately it feels like everytime I look at a clock, 3 hours have passed.

It’s 8:30am. I’m up and dressed, partially caffeinated, and waiting for the DirecTV service tech. Our main box started doing out in spurts yesterday – randomly going offline and coming back online.

Other than the service call, my agenda calls for a trip to the bank, a detail car wash, and rearranging the furniture in my workroom. I am turning my eldest’s former bedroom into a sewing space, so things will be moving around. Fortunately I have a lot of empty Rubbermaid tubs to put things in. I’m also looking forward to adding a second monitor to my tech set up.

On the creative side, I’ve been working on 30 Days of Lists. I’m back listing after doing the 100 Days of All About Me list and thinking I would swear off list-making forever. I’ll work on today’s prompt after I submit this post.

I also made a training video for my fantasy league — how to use the ESPN app. It’s not bad for a first attempt — my instructions were clear, I paused appropriately, and I broke the video down into four sections covering different topics. Things to work on in the future: more variation in my tone, less bouncy camera work (it was hand-held), and cut down on those filler words and sounds.

Time to finish off the coffee and continue on with my day. Hope you have a good day, too.

Grateful

I have almost all of my content back from my old blogs, and posted here. There’s just a handful left to post, then I can go back and make it look good again.

I’m grateful that I have the ability to research and experiment to solve a problem — like appearing to lose all of my old blog posts. WordPress stores the actual blog content in a database, not the directory called WP-Content. I suppose if I had taken actual classes about WordPress and it’s inner workings, I would have known that. But I’ve been flying by the seat of my pants for the last 10 years, learning as I go.

The panic I felt when I couldn’t find my posts changed into uneasy acceptance. I could get some more current content back through The Wayback Machine — at least screenshots of the blog posts. I didn’t really need all that old content. It would be fine. Really.

A couple days later I got curious about where those blog posts would have been stored. The answer: in an SQL database. SQL databases are something I don’t get into at work because it is not my place as a non-programmer to look into those things. So I asked a co-worker about how to read data from an SQL database if you didn’t have the appropriate software or even MS Access at home. He told me “its just a fancy set of tables”. I know how to read tables and dump tables into something so I can read the insides. It’s something I’ve done many times, usually using Word or Excel.

The next day, I’m looking through my site for all the databases, copying them, and dumping them into a text reader to scan. Low and behold, I found a lot of old content — including content from a blog I thought I had deleted a long time ago. I’ll be merging that content in next!

After the third database dump — there is was my old blog, code included. Links to pictures, some still available, some not. I spent the next four hours moving the database content into this new site, and recovering some gems in the process.

That brings me to the present and my gratitude for my ability to research, ask questions, and think through possibilities. And that I don’t have to leave those abilities in the office at the end of the workday. They are ingrained in who I am.

Revisiting the Past

I’ve moved the posts from my previous Family blog “The Walls of St. Paul” over to this site. Eventually that site will be archived.

A note about the various “authors” of posts: it’s all me. But you’ll see different author names based on the origin of the content.

  • EmDashMama – content comes from “The Walls of St. Paul” blog.
  • Write and Teach – content comes from original “Scrapping Thought” blog.
  • Carol Anne – new content on this site, or content from my predecessor scrapbooking blog “A Scrapper’s Thoughts” from the days of BlogSpot.

Facelift Needed!

t is certainly time to give this site an overhaul.  I no longer have three dogs, my hair is mostly gray, most of the podcasts I list no longer exist, and I’m not really in love with the color brown anymore.

I am still happily part of Simple Scrapper, making pages for the Washington DC 2010 album and looking forward to my first 30 Days of Lists project.

A Very Happy Me

Things are going well for me in Scrapbooking Land.  So far in 2018:

  • finished the China 2012 Trip album.
  • started Project Life monthly updates using the new Project 12 kits.  All Januaries from 2006 through 2018 are finished.
  • started a twice-a-month Low Tech Crop on the Simple Scrapper Members Facebook group. 
  • surprised at how popular the Low Tech Crops are.
  • starting on Washington DC 2010 Trip album.
  • ordered a new reburbished Epson Picturemate 400 printer to be delivered Monday. 
  • doing Stash Bash Month on Simple Scrapper.
  • saved enough funds for Crop & Create Thunder Bay.

I joined Simple Scrapper in March 2017, and it has been worth every cent of the membership fee.  I get so much out of it and I am finally out of my scrapbooking lull and am very productive.  Being part of a supportive, fun group has been terrific too.  I enjoy the monthly book club, the crops, the challenges, and especially the quarterly Refresh retreats.  Best yet, my family is enjoying my productivity. My husband doesn’t say it, but I can see that he is happy I am scrapbooking again.  He’s my #1 fan in that arena.

I’m very excited that I already have saved up enough money to fully fund Crop & Create in November.  It’s all Cathy Zielske‘s fault that I found Scrapbook and Cards Today and signed up last year for the Thunder Bay Crop & Create.  Cathy is the art director for the magazine and talks a lot about how nice everyone is there.  I signed up for the retreat last year and felt like I met my real-life scrapbooking tribe. 

Between my online (Simple Scrapper) and real-life scrappy tribes, I am a very happy scrapper.

I hope things are going well for you in Scrapbooking Land.  Let me know!