Kitty Update

We went to the vet today, one that my friend Angie recommended (a BIG THANK YOU to her), and he was very nice and helpful. Miss Kitty behaved herself, nobody needed a band aid. He thinks we might be right with thinking it is a hairball that is bothering her. He gave her hairball medicine and some diet food to get her appetite going again. Should she not eat by Thursday we have to come back in and he will do some bloodwork. I do hope she'll be okay.
I was so scared and nervous that I have not eaten all day and I have a whale of a headache. I am going to treat myself to a nice dinner now since I have plenty of calories to splurge on and then I'll probably just fall over and sleep. :)

Stressed out

Today I found out the hard way what damage all the stress from the move and all the worrying about Del finding a job has done to my nerves. My cat is not feeling well and I simply lost it, I can not deal with it. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and I am still not too far away from it now. I don't know what is wrong with her, maybe it is just a hairball bothering her, but all the stress and the worry just came crashing down on me and I spent most of the morning crying. If she is not doing better tomorrow we have to find a vet and take her there, I am not sure I'll be able to handle it. I can't take anymore stress in my life, just as I thought the worst of it was over, here we go again. I need a break.

This and that

My stepper broke! :(
These things are obviously not made for being used regularly, my friend Sabine has gone through a few of them as well. I had two options: fall back into being lazy or go and buy a new one. Being a good girl, we decided to invest in a new one. The one I wanted was not in stock at the store so we ordered it from their central warehouse, I hope it will be delivered soon.
In the meantime I have to get my cardio exercise in another way, today we went walking, it was not as hot as in the past few days so we did pretty good. We broke in our new running shoes, they are very comfortable, but they do get rather hot after a while. We will be walking more this week and hopefully next week I will have my new stepper.
We had a bad thunderstorm last night and it kept me awake for a long time. Even Miss Kitty came into the bedroom and slept under our bed. There was quite a mess in the park today, lots of tree limbs down and the lake sure was full.
I established a new record. I always call myself the world's slowest quilter, but this week I made an entire wall hanging in two days!!! We were invited to a birthday party and I had the idea to make a present, at first I was thinking potholders, using a horse fabric, but I don't have any horse fabric in my stash, Hobby Lobby did not have any either and pot holders are usually something for the whole family. So I decided to make a wall hanging with a poodle instead. The birthday girl liked it. :) A photo of it will follow once the film in my camera is full.
People who have not seen me in a while noticed my weight loss. I have not really lost that much in weight, but my body has changed, all the fat on the side is gone, my butt got smaller and my clothes fit better. I wore a new t-shirt yesterday that fits comfortably but also hugs the curves a bit. I felt good wearing it. And the next time I go walking I am going to wear shorts, it is way too hot to walk in long pants. ;)

Answered Prayers

God has answered our prayers - Del has found a job!
It is difficult to explain but our life here so far has not felt right. I guess we are not used to being at home all the time and we just felt that we are not really a part of society without work. I don't know why we feel this way, it must be our programming. But now we feel that we have truly arrived here and can start to put down roots.
The job is with the DMV in Winston-Salem which means we don't have to move and can stay right here in High Point, the drive is only about 30 min when traffic is bad. That is a big relief, I know I would have worried a lot if Del had to drive two hours to work one way every day.
And according to the USCIS website it can not be too long now until my green card arrives and then I can embark on my big adventure - learning to drive. :)
I know I should feel a lot happier than I am right now but I think the long wait has exhausted me, all I feel is relief that the wait is over and that life can begin now.

Monday

No nightmares last night, just a very hungry cat at 1 am. She was meowing up a storm outside the bedroom door and when we checked on her she ran straight to her food bowl to let us know she did not like what was inside and we'd better give her something else if we wanted to sleep for the rest of the night.
Our cat is NOT spoiled. :)

Nightmares and other bad things

The kittens are gone!!! Someone must have taken them and the thought that they might have been harmed or hurt in any way makes me sick. They were so cute when I saw them last playing on the lawn with their mama. Who does things like that?
I have been tormented by nightmares the last few nights and they rob me of my sleep, my energy and my creativity. I am walking around like a zombie, too tired to think straight. Usually I am in a strange city, meeting strange people (like Amish people in Moscow) and then bad things happen, like floods, my cat running away, I am trying hard to go after her and can't reach her, and one night I dreamed that someone very dear to me had died. I always wake up scared and sad and with my heart pounding like mad. Last night I was dreaming about some trouble with my mother and a lot of people in Vienna trying to keep me from leaving or delaying my departure. That is one dream that keeps coming back, me not being able to get out of there. I know the last few days in Vienna were difficult and the last day was the worst of all, I was all alone with the cat, nobody to see me off or to say good bye, but I have been here for almost 10 months, can't those dreams just stop now? Please?
I made the mistake to call my mother yesterday, I forgot how negative my parents are and how easily they can drag me down. All my life they never encouraged me in a positive way, they never had anything nice, good or positive to say about anything I did. The day I graduated from school I came home to an empty house - my parents were out walking the dog, so important was my graduation to them. When Del and I told them that we planned to get married - no reaction, they did not take part in the planning of the wedding and my mother even threatened to not show up, which gave me a nervous breakdown the evening before. When we told them that we are moving to the US, my father stopped talking to us and obviously put some pressure on my mother as well, because she did not want to take any of our stuff, her stove broke and I offered her mine, which was almost new, and at first she said she wanted it and all of a sudden she did not want it anymore. They never showed any interest in our plans or offered any kind of help, not even moral support. When I called her yesterday all she had to say was that if Del is not able to find work I won't either and what are we living off? Well, if they would have shown more interest they would know that. I felt really bad for the rest of the weekend and I am still not completely out of the hole. I have to learn not to allow other people to drag me down so much.
Del's parents are totally different, they keep sending us encouraging letters and cards and emails and they offered to help out financially, they won't let us go down.
I am very happy here and I am absolutely sure that things will work out, everything happens for a reason, maybe we needed time to slow down and get out of the hectic life the big city forced us into and that's why we got such a long vacation. God won't let us fail after he brought us that far.
I go to bed now and pray for a dreamless sleep, I can't take anymore nightmares.

Fireworks

Mother nature provided us with fireworks all night long last night. We had a thunderstorm with lots of lightning. And when I peeked out the window around 2 am I saw a rather large possum sneaking around our garbage can. We also have a litter of kittens living on the compound, I am not sure if they are completely feral or if they belong to the house across the way, but they look rather well fed and happy, two are black with white bibs and paws and the third one is grey.
Today is hot and humid, but not quite as hot as the last few days. Since we are not really used to the heat yet we decided not to go out yesterday and spent the day at home, nice and cool, watching TV, cleaning, cooking and crocheting.

Something old ...

While cleaning up my sewing corner yesterday I came across several of my old craft projects, like a sunflower cross stitch sampler and some small quilt tops.
I have decided to dedicate the second half of 2006 to finishing some of these old projects. I have not lost interest in my new ones I just feel like getting something finished. I will continue to make afghans for the camp, they need a steady supply because each camper gets to take one home and I will keep up with my RCTQ-BOM (the pattern for the July block is gorgeous).
I am going to start with the cross stitch sampler and I pulled out two little quilt tops that I want to hand quilt.

This and that

This morning I was looking at lots of photos of other people's quilts and I got so inspired, that I went and --- cleaned up my sewing area. ;) I was actually trying to find some patterns and while I was at it, I completely re-organized everything. Now I can only hope that I will be able to remember where everything is. Much to my surprise I discovered a box of scraps. I thought I had left them all behind when we moved but obviously I must have thought some of them worth saving. I found a small bag of squares, a bigger bag of triangles, a bunch of bigger pieces and some orphan blocks. I also pulled out my UFO box and fondled my Y2K-Quilt, for which I swapped 3" squares in 1998/99. I have put the 2000 squares together in blocks of 25 each and then connected the blocks with black sashing into rows. That's as far as I got, that thing is going to be HUGE. I will eventually join the rows and put a border on, and once I can afford it, I will send it off to be machine quilted, there is no way I'll ever get it hand quilted and it is just too big to fit under my sewing machine. I will also send my Round Robin off to be quilted, it is also very big. My plan for the rest of the day is to finish some afghans and watch TV. It is way too hot and humid to go outside.