Sarah Incredible

I am so glad I didn't try making this. The boot covers, the gloves, the mask, the logo--it would all have driven me totally batty. The whole thing is a little baggy, but it should be fine with long underwear underneath, and if it looks like it'll be really cold, I'll make a fleece cape to go over it. By the way, this is her "force field pose."

Lauren keeps going back and forth between Pirate Captain Dora and "a princess." I'm going to get a few pictures together, and have her choose, and that will be the end of it.

Attitude Adjustment

No word yesterday about Gibson. But I realized that I'm really lucky, and am making too much of this. I have a job that I like that I can go back to, and if it doesn't work out, I have another potential job that I would also like. So instead of stressing, I'm glad that I have a good backup, and will wait and see what happens.

Today, it's swimming with Grammy, so I'm off to get everything ready! Thanks for the good thoughts, everyone!

Anxious

So I think I'm a little stressed out. Yesterday, I took Lauren to the ped to talk about potty training, and I started crying. Not big sobs, but a steady stream of waterworks. (Note: I'm a very emotional person, and cry easily at stuff on tv or in books) I got embarrassed and said I didn't know why I was so upset. Luckily, she totally understood. "It's stressful!" She had a reluctant potty trainer, too, at just about this age. She worked on potty training for a year and a half. Dear God, can you imagine? I'm going crazy after two months. Anyway, I got some good tips, and will start trying them soon - we have a busy weekend, so we might wait to start in earnest next week. Or not.

My big stressor right now is work. I should find out today if Gibson (the school I worked at last year) will be back this year or not. Apparently, their whole future hung on one person who could give them an endowment that would keep them going for another year or not. The meeting was Monday night, and my friend who works at the Professor PC office (Professor PC is the company I work for - they send me out to the various teaching jobs) is going to find out today. Could I call Gibson myself and ask what happened? Sure, but I don't want to.

I'm torn about going back to Gibson. There are a lot of good reasons to go back:

• I enjoy working with the kids (it was so sweet, a couple of the middle-schoolers signed my yearbook last spring with "please come back next year!")
• it sounds like they got the TV monitor working, so teaching would be a lot easier
• it's very close to home
• it's six hours a day, twice a week
• it's guaranteed work through June.

Unfortunately, Gibson is also a lot of stress. In addition to having to come up with my own lessons (don't get me wrong - I like writing my own lessons, but it is a lot more work), dealing with kids is more stressful than teaching adults.

And since it looks like Professor PC is going to start having day classes again, that could be a good alternative. Working with adults, from a textbook, requires considerably less effort. But the office is farther away, I'd only get four and a half hours a day (also twice a week), and once a session is over after a month, it's not a guarantee that we'll have more people sign up, though it looks good right now.

So if Gibson didn't get the endowment, the decision is taken out of my hands, and I don't have to feel guilty about maybe wanting to do something else. I do want them to get the endowment, of course. I want the kids to have the school they need, and the teachers to have their jobs. I'm just not sure what I want for me.

At this point, I'm hoping I can go back to Gibson. Of course, if I do that, then I have to make the decision about working nights. Working two days and two (or sometimes three) nights a week doesn't sound like a lot, but it exhausts me.

But I'm not going to think about that today. I need to take this one day at a time, and stop borrowing stress. The interest rate is too damn high.

When Jeff comes home from work . . .

he'd better have either a large bottle of liquor, a large bottle of pills, or a large box of chocolate.

I can't wait to go to work tonight.

Just a comparison

The pictures in the top row are from last year’s State Fair. Riding the Dragon Coaster, and catching fish at the DNR pond. The bottom row shows pictures from yesterday, doing the same activities.

If you click on the picture, it should take you to a larger version.

As promised, here is Sarah's first major sewing project. We made a drawstring bag for Sarah’s dance shoes this afternoon (of course, Lauren already wants to know where hers is, too—I told her that once she gets dance shoes, she’ll get a bag). It took about an hour, and Sarah sewed the bottom and side seams by herself, although I serged them after that. She also did about half the casing seam. She did a really good job, and really enjoyed it. Now I just need to figure out future projects, hmmmm . . .

Is that another gray hair I see?

I think I'm going to write a book called The Continuing Adventures of DangerGirl.

In our backyard, we have a child-sized table. Plastic top, metal legs, about 15 inches tall. Coincidentally, our concrete patio is also about 15 inches off the ground. Funny how no one ever noticed that before.

Today, Lauren noticed. While the girls were out playing, I heard a crash and a scream, and went running to the back door. Lauren came running to me, crying. She had set up the table right next to the patio so she could walk onto it. Isn't my girl just the cleverest little thing?

I'm sure falling hurt, but I didn't see any blood, and she seemed more scared than hurt (and upset that the table broke), so I cuddled her for a while, then made lunch. It was during lunch that I saw a huge scrape/road rash on her inner upper arm. I don't know what exactly she scraped it on, but it's relatively ugly. I washed it off, and she got some Kid's Tylenol & went to bed.

I'm hoping that she's learned from this. Yeah, I know - not likely.

We went up to a nature center today for the girls to have their pictures taken. Lots of cute poses, and I'll definitely take them back when the leaves turn to do my own shots. I got a few "preview" shots, which the photgrapher didn't seem to mind. Well he shouldn't, because I know mine won't turn out nearly as well as his. I still have a really hard time getting them both to look nice in the same picture, and had a lot of trouble with the exposure.

This sundress pattern is McCall's 4761, and I'm never making it again. It was something of a pain to put together, and the girls can't put them on without assistance. They were really cheap, though - $10 for the pattern & fabric, and $6 for the trim on the bottom (I'm probably the only one who will ever notice that trim, but I do love it).

Sewing on the Brain

Butterick 6659 + Purple, blue, green and white seersucker = totally the easiest thing I've ever made.

I'm going to get my Serger rethreaded today, so I'll be able to polish off the seams and they'll be all tidy. Both girls said they didn't like them yesterday morning, but both wanted to wear them last night. Good thing, because they're so big, I figure they'll be wearing them for the next five years or so!

I'm already thinking about Hallowe'en costumes, Christmas jammies (flannel backed satin, I think) and Christmas dresses (Daisy Kingdom makes some sweet patterns {4511 & 4901}, but even the smaller sizes take about 7 yards of fabric, eek!).

And in the true spirit of overachieving idiocy, the girls are getting their pictures taken at a nature center next Saturday. Wouldn't little eyelet sundresses be cute in an outdoor setting like that?

In spite of this "thinking ahead," I know I'll probably still be working on anything and everything at the last minute.