Counting Blessings

rayon chenille sample warp for A Good Yarn: Rayon ready to weave....

Yesterday I threw myself a gigantic pity party and wallowed in the emotional mire for a while.  Why?  Life isn't fair and sometimes I forget that it isn't and rail against the 'unfairness' that we all must deal with when it rears it's ugly head in our lives.

After a day of moping about the house I finally picked myself up (venting at a good friend helped!) and got myself into the studio to do something productive.

Even so, before I managed to get a grip and shake myself out of the doldrums I did something incredibly stupid and then had to deal with the consequences.  Needless to say, dropping the entire assemblage of reed and lease sticks through the beater onto the floor was counter productive in the extreme, but I was able to straighten the warp out and get it onto the beam with the help of a brush.  Now a brush is not recommended as a great tool for rayon chenille but used carefully it helped deal with the resulting mess.

And doing something so incredibly clumsy focused me away from the unfairness of life and back to where it should always be - on the task at hand!

Today is my 4th blogiversary.  When I started this blog it was with the thought that my major health issues were safely behind me, that I could now proceed through my 'golden' years without too much fuss and ado.  After all, I was fixed, right?

Unfortunately such has not proved to be the case.  The reality is that, although I am well past my expiry date, life continues to be a series of challenges.  I have to remind myself that I am not 'special' in this.  That pretty much everyone I know has their own set of 'special' circumstances and I had better put my big girl panties on and just get on with it.

This morning Doug and I talked about the timing of his 'retirement' and I told him that with the way things were going I figured I would be lucky to have another 10, maybe 12 productive years left so whatever it is I feel driven to accomplish, I'd better do it now.  Therefore the trip over the pond next spring - a trip that I can ill afford, frankly - and if I don't get any teaching gigs while over there, well, so be it.  So far I've no firm plans (one tentative booking in Scotland) but hopefully I can spend about 3 weeks in Sweden and the UK and see some of the things I'd like to, meet some of the people in person that I've corresponded with.

(I know that last sentence isn't grammatical but making it so always seems so contrived - 'with whom I've corresponded' - see I do know how to write good!)  :^)

Anyhoo - one of the services Blogger provides is to keep track of things like page views, followers and such.

Therefore I know that this is my 982nd post - in four years.  I know that I have 232 official 'followers'.  I know how many page views each post receives.  It is a bit humbling.  I had no idea who might be interested in my pithy comments when I started this blog or if anyone even would be.  Interested, that is..  It has been heartwarming and the support and encouragement received  incredibly helpful as I have stumbled through life's hazards the past four years.

Part of the challenge yesterday was the fact that after the angioplasty, the broken ankle, the chemo - I really and truly thought that finally life had been 'unfair' enough and that I could now, finally, sail through my 'golden' years without further worrisome health issues.  Apparently not so much.  Right now I am not dealing with anything immediately life threatening, so I'm not sure why the nagging minor issues seemed so burdomsome..  But I sank into the gloom, feeling incredibly put upon, quite unfairly.

Life isn't fair.  Get over it.  Big girl panties.  Need big box of them.