Cold...Cold...Cold

I truly hate winter.  I will never understand how I ended up living my life in Upstate New York where if your lucky summer last's 3 months and the rest is just cold!  I guess fall is okay but each winter, which seems to last forever, bothers me more and more.  It is 13 degree's outside and I don't even want to get out of my pajamas because it is the only way I feel warm enough.  Oh well, we know I am not going anywhere, at least not for a very long time!
I did a lot of thoughtless stitching over the holiday time.  When I say thoughtless, I mean I did not set out to make a particular item.  Did not create with the thought in mind of Can I sell it?.  Thoughtless beading means I just grabbed a handful of supplies and started stitching.  Some times when I get back into a business frame of mind I rip my project apart because I just need those beads for a saleable item, or sometimes it is something I just keep for myself, usually just as a decoration.  My holiday beading created this amulet.  It is bigger than the impression you get from the picture.  I am so very pleased at what turned out of my playtime!  I have named it Ariels Treasure.  I am not one of those people who ordinarily name my pieces but this one just called out for a name!  I used one of my polymer clay cabs as a focal point on the front of the peyote stitched bag.  The seedbeads were a handful of different shades of blue left over from other projects that I was sort of at a loss for what to do with.  Strangely enough, adding them all together in random order just seemed to work for this bag.  I wanted really full fringing so went with branch fringing and used tons of fake pearls and blue glass chips to make it sparkle.  I just love it when mindless playtime produces something I love.  So now I must decide whether to hang it in my room or put it up for sale in my shop.

Happy New Year

How is the New Year starting out for everyone?  I am feeling okay because I made it through Christmas and New Years without completely falling apart.  No doubt this was a very emotional time for my dad and I.  Our first Christmas and our first New Year arrival without mom.  But it is now behind us and I think we have covered all the major "first" holiday's since we lost her.  I look forward to the next year coming up being just a little bit easier.  I doubt this pain will ever go away, my mom was truly my best friend, I am so totally lost without her.  But I do hope for more acceptance, I do pray it gets a little easier.  I hope to get to the point that when I think of her each day my thought brings a smile to my lips quicker than it brings the tears.  One day at a time.  I have not accomplished a whole lot over the last few weeks.  I get tired easy and the fact that everyday is the same makes for a bit of boredom which adds to the tiredness.  That said, I watch my dad decline just a little bit everyday.  Just little tiny things, things no one other than me would notice simply because I am here with him day in and day out. 
Now I have to settle in and start working again, and thinking.  I seriously need some new ideas, I need to get to the point where I am doing something that will begin bringing me in a regular income, even if it is small, it needs to have regularity.  I feel like I have spent hour after hour after hour on my Etsy shop this last year with no good results.  I tried Ebay once again, that really has changed so much it is never going to be a working venue for me.  So I have to continue thinking until some brilliant idea strikes!  If my crafty friends out here have come up with anything new that is working for you, I sure would like to hear about it.  I have looked at other selling sites and they just don't seem to be any different.  Time for innovation.  I have not given up hope of the brick and morter teaching shop but it seems I get just so close and something new gets thrown in my path so there is just no knowing when we will ever get there.  Well in the meantime I am making key rings this week and listing them in Etsy as I get them done.  Also working on a very elaborate Amulet bag that I am really having a good time with but have a lot more hours to invest in it until I can call it done!  Happy New Year, Happy Sunday, everyone have a great week!

The day after

I truly hope everyone has had a wonderful, joyous Christmas.  I know it sounds bad but I am glad our holiday season is almost to an end.  Only because after New Years we will have gotten through all the major holidays for our first year without mom.  Of course we have tried hard but the emotions have gotten the best of us.  I truly look forward to working on healing to the point that next year I can enjoy the holidays with my children and grandchildren as I always have.  Even when there has been little or no money we have found a way to have fun and be together. 
I just started back to school last week.  One week of class and then we went on Christmas break.  But that is truly okay, I am out of practice on the school work and the week was a bit overwhelming.  But I look forward to getting back into the swing of things in January.  In the mean time I decided to stop worrying about my shop but while I spend hours sitting with dad everyday I have been stitching a nice stock pile of new pieces.  Sometime in January I will start posting them and filling up all the empty spaces.  Or not.  I am truly spending a lot of time thinking about what I could do different.  Etsy has not worked for me the last year.  All the changes they have been going through are very unhelpful to small shops like mine.  But from what I am looking at there does not seem to be much better out there so maybe this will be the time to work on putting my items up for sale directly on my website.  This will require a bit more thought.
Now that blogger is allowing me to post pictures again I will start showing you some of the new work soon.  In the mean time Everyone have a great New Year!

Sunday's

Well I could not do it again.  Shut down the GoFundMe page this morning.  I just do not have it in me.  I want to earn what I have and use my own common sense on how to handle things in my life.
So now I am brainstorming again.  The problem with my brain storming is that I am just not creative enough and the ideas do not flow freely.  But I have a few forming. 

What do you know!!!!! Blogger let me post a picture.  I love this one because I have so many family members in the service,  this morning my nephew Cory posted pictures of himself, He left in October to spend another year in Afghanistan.  He has been oversea's so many times but he has also been in the service for almost 20 years.  I feel really bad for my niece.  She and Cory have 2 boys, one is 13 and one is 7,  how hard it must be to constantly face a holiday or significant day such as birthdays and anniversaries knowing that dad will not be there to celebrate.  All they can ever do is pray he gets home safely to them. 

Things are quite here, dad is declining, little by little.  One of the Hospice Nurses told me yesterday he could be going into renal failure.  That is not fact, just an educated guess.  I hate getting up each day and not knowing what to expect next.  I wish I had a crystal ball that would tell me what is going to happen day by day so I could make a plan with my life.

In the mean time I will keep stitching away at my piles of beads while I come up with my next idea on how to raise money to fix everything. 

Have a great Sunday!

True Desperation

This week I hit a new low.  All the issues I have tried to be strong and deal with on my own for so very long have hit me upside the head and left me taking desperate action.  Last year, I opened a go fund me account,  I felt so very guilty.....I don't ask for handouts, I don't ask for any one to do anything I can try to do for myself....I shut it down within a few days.  Well the brave act has faded, the strength and willpower to continue trying on my own has been totally exhausted.  I can pretend all I want that my sense of humor will carry me through anything and my good upbringing will help me find the way to fix everything eventually......those thoughts have completely disappeared.  I am giving up because I am beyond tired.  I am once again reaching out for help.  I have started a new go fund me account.  With a bit of a twist this time that makes me feel a bit better about it.  I let it be known that if any one donated to this account I would send them one of my hand created items.  I will let them have choices of what they receive.  So in my mind, I am not really asking for charity...I am still working for every dime just like I was taught and just like I always have.  Of course it's only been up a few day's but I haven't even got traffic yet to look at it.  Would you do me a favor.....would you go take a look, read it, then come back and tell me what you think?  What could I do to make it more appealing?  Just a bit of feedback would help because I can't walk away from it this time.  If I do not get some help I am going to lose it.  I realize people that raise a lot of money on places like Go Fund Me have many family and friends that help raise the money.  I don't have either.  My family or what is left of it is not in a position to help.  My friends,  well I consider myself lucky in a way, I have many online friends.  But that is not the same as real life friends that really know me.  There is a difference when it comes to a situation like mine.  So please, if your willing to do what I am requesting,  go read it, come back and give me your thoughts and advice.  If you like what I have done, share it.  This is probably the most desperate cry for help I have ever made at what is probably the lowest point in my life ,   I thank you.  I know this is not the type of blog post to cheer up any one's day but I just do not know what else to do.  I have officially tried it all starting with working my butt off to market my business and then down the line to organizations and agencies that are supposed to be there to help, down to any one I know that might have a few dollars to spare.  But of course it is Christmas time so even those people have nothing to spare right now.   Any way here is the address of the post, I will be waiting with fingers crossed that someone here in blogger land will have some good advice to share:

http://www.gofundme.com/ijeltc

Still ticking away

Several more weeks have passed, the clock still ticks along and I wonder where the time goes.  My thoughts go from one extreme to the other because time is going by quickly and I wonder how is it that I feel like I have accomplished nothing.  Yet the time drags, day after day, dad and I have our routine set and we have the same things on our schedule every day.  Truth be told I have a lot of time on my hands to create that I did not have when at home with my normal day to day things.  I seem to be always working on a tray of beads, yet never seem to have much done.  My common sense tells me this is not true, beadweaving and stitching is a very time consuming craft, which means if I get several items done in a weeks time I have actually done a great deal of work.  So why do I feel like I am not accomplishing?  Maybe it is just the isolation, having no one around to talk to, share my progress with, bounce ideas off of.  Lets face it, living with a sick person who can not hear means there is never any type of conversation or interaction that will speed my day's along. 

The fact is I am settled with our routine for how ever long it lasts.  When it changes I will truly be ready for changes.  I am accomplishing things and if blogger would let me figure out how to put my pictures in, I would show you! 

For now I will continue to trudge through our days, follow our routine, miss my mom a bit more every day, and spend time thinking about what I want out of life in the months to come.  I do hope each and every one of you are looking towards our holiday season!

As the months roll by

Well many months later I still can't put a picture up.  I don't understand because I am doing the same things I have always done plus trying different things when the "right" way won't allow it.  Oh well.


Yes I have been missing for many months again.  A great deal has happened and once again life has managed to put a stop on all my ideas and plans.  For the last year I have been spending several day's a week at my folks house because they became more and more ill as the years has gone by.  Last July, I had just gotten there to spend my usual 2 or 3 days and my world got pulled right out from under my feet.  I had only been there an hour or so doing my usual pick up, clean up, wash some dishes routine.  My mom had been sick for a few day's again and I was questioning her when all of the sudden she hollered out.  Within seconds I knew mom was having a heart attack and had 911 on the phone.  Seconds seemed like hours while they talked to me, having me try different things while waiting for medical help and within 10 minutes the first para medics arrived but it was too late.  We lost mom that afternoon.  I am still in disbelief, I am still in denial.  I still sit and cry every single day because it just should not have happened.  Mom had so much ahead of her.  Yet it did.  No warning, no planning for it, no expectancy that it might happen.  I along with my siblings lost our mom, our hero, my best friend and here we are 3 months later and I am still totally lost and devastated. 


In the mean time she left my dad who has severe diabetes, an amputee because of it, with serious heart problems.  In June he was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer.  At 78 treatment was not an option between just his age and his already poor health.  Chemo would do nothing but make him sicker.  Radiation might give him a few more months but more likely would just make him sicker.  So here I am.  I know my mom dad knowing I would take care of dad.  I will not let her down so I moved in to stay with him.  We have hospice help, we have our routine, I have one sibling living here in the same state that helps where he can. 


Obviously this has made huge changes to my way of living.  I basically walked away from my home and belongings, leaving my kids and grandkids to attend to not only my belongings but my beloved Chihuahua.  Dad will not allow an animal in his house even a 4 lb cuddle bug.  I don't see many people, I try to maintain contact with my kids and grandkids on the phone or facebook, a sporadic few minutes visit here and there. 


What really bothers me is I have seemed to have lost my way with everything I normally do with my life.  I took a leave of absence from college.  I just cannot concentrate and do my work.  I seem to have little desire to create, my beads just sit there, silently, they don't even call to me.  I did start making my sequined Christmas ornaments because I want to do a long term fundraiser.  Hospice is amazing.  We all know what Hospice does in helping those with terminal illness stay at home if possible until life is over but they do so much more.  And they are dependant on fundraising and private donations for a great deal of it.  Any way I decided I wanted to find a way,even a very small way to pass it on so I will try to maintain a good stock of sequined ornaments throughout the year designating 10% of each sale to hospice.  I want to know that someone else will receive the caring attention that we are receiving now. 


So now I have shared my pain with the world once again.  I must just move forward.  Right now my attention needs to stay focused on dad, I have to forgive myself for not having the energy or desire to do much else but in the mean time plan.  I know I keep planning goals that for one reason or another I do not reach but I also know that I must continue to create and reach for goals.  Figuring out why blogger will not let me post my pictures needs to be one of them.