The Jean Quilt Saga

(On a two hour delay from work this morning.  Yay!  I don't have to chug my coffee like it's last call!)

So several years back, I learned how to make jean quilts.  It's not all that tricky, it's like regular quilting except in squares and strips without any fancy shapes or fabrics or colors and jean quilts are hand tied, not machine quilted.  (Well I suppose you could machine quilt but I don't.  It can be a lot of stress on the sewing machine.)  The thing with starting a thing is that all of a sudden, it's your thing.  People heard I've made jean quilts and they started giving me their old jeans.  Um...

Don't get me wrong, I like jean quilts for various reasons.  First the majority of the fabric is kinda free (old jeans), it follows Recycle, Reuse, Reduce, and jeans quilts are cozy and warm.  But all of a sudden, I had tons of jeans, no time to make quilts and kinda no place to store the jeans.  When we moved into the townhouse, the laundry baskets of jeans ended up in the upstairs hall.  I hate clutter and things not having a place and all these jeans were cluttery and not in a place.  Annoyed the crap out of me for oh, 10 months.  (Procrastination, thou art a bitch.)

Anyway with all the various snow days and holidays and just being stuck in the house more often, I decided to tackle the jeans.  Here are the steps:

Tear all the jeans into usable pieces.
Puzzle piece and place in rows.
Pin and sew all the pieces in a row together.
Sew the rows together.
Iron seams flat.
Trim edges to make straight.
Sew together the backing fabric (fabric isn't sold wide enough so requires sewing two pieces together).
Use basting spray and pins to hold the jeans and backing fabric together.
Hand tie the two layers.
Baste stitch the edges.
Trim the excess backing fabric.
Machine sew one side of the bias tape binding to the quilt edge.
Hand stitch the other side of the bias tape binding to the quilt edge.
Voila!  Jean quilt!

Honestly for me the longest part is tearing all the damn blasted jeans apart into usable pieces.  Did you catch where I said laundry baskets of jeans?  And there were also 2 black trash bags full.  We had A LOT of jeans.  I almost had enough to make 5 jeans quilts.  Well I am making 5 jean quilts anyway and I would have had enough except I decided to make the boys' quilts one row longer than the girls and I'm short ONE pair of jeans.  I think I have an old pair I can sacrifice, I just haven't gone digging in my closet yet.

Anyway here's where I am currently:

Jean Quilt #1 & #2: need to machine sew and hand stitch bias tape on and DONE.
Jean Quilt #3: need to trim jean edges, sew backing fabric pieces together, and so on
Jean Quilt #4: needs one pair of jeans to sew on to finish last row, otherwise it's to "iron seams flat" stage
Jean Quilt #5: ran out of heavy duty jean thread, in the middle of "sew all the pieces in a row together"

(I guess technically I'm out of thread for Jean Quilt #4 as well.)

(Also I don't have the backing fabric for Jean Quilts #4 or #5 yet.)

At least the project is well under way.  I'm actually quite good at finishing projects once started, it's the starting that holds me up for quite awhile.  I hope to be finished by mid-February.  And then, done done done done done.  I kinda never want to make another jean quilt in my life.

tl;dr  I had a lot of old jeans, I'm making quilts out of them.  Also?  No more jean donations ever!

YAY!

I think I might be getting the hang of my post divorce, post nursing school life.

(This is NOT a challenge to the universe to throw a monkey wrench the size of Texas into my life now.  Just saying.)

It just seems like everything up until about now has been me running around putting out fires.  I couldn't get ahead of the craziness to do any preventative fire ditch digging or spraying flame retardant, it was all I could do to keep everything from falling down in ashes. Or going up in smoke?  I'm getting lost in my own metaphors.

I've mentioned before that my finances are finally looking sorta normal.  It's so much easier to balance a household budget with a decent influx of income.  Who knew, right?  It also means I can finally buy some long needed things without having a nervous breakdown.  I still haven't bought much yet though because having a savings account with more than $100 in it is pretty sweet.

Long story short, not spending much on piddly needed things yet but I did put down a deposit for a rental beach condo in South Carolina for the kids' spring break.  YAY!  I've been kicking around some travel ideas for awhile and with all the crappy snow here in Indiana, I want out.  And so do the kids.  I figured heck, I have money, I have vacation days, the kids will be off school and not running in a million directions to camps or grandparent's houses like they do in the summer, so let's go somewhere for spring break!  YAY!  This is almost like a normal thing that families do.  It's so exciting!  YAY!

Besides our crappy towels can hold out for another few months.  The mini-blinds have been fine as window treatments for the last year, we can be curtain-less for awhile longer.  If it's not broke, don't replace it.  I've always said I'd rather travel than "have stuff" so it's time to put my money where my mouth is.  We're going to the beach!  YAY!

Money for Gen X

My poor little generation is so ignored...

Anyways doing some online research (yay, Google!) and found some good links to keep around.

Financial Planning for Generation X and Generation Y

Why Gen X is in trouble and what they can do about it

My Gen X financial advice to my kids

My outlook on it at the moment?  I have my Roth IRA started, I have the beginnings of my emergency fund in a .85% interest earning online savings account (it should be up to the goal amount in a few months), and yeah where do I go from here?  My kids are almost too old to really benefit from a 529 college savings account at this point but I still might consider opening those.  Or go with my current plan of we'll just muddle through their college expenses the best we can with scholarships, grants, loans, and savings.

Interest rates on savings accounts, treasury notes, bonds, and CD's suck at the moment.  I need to read more and determine my long term financial goals before I start jumping into the stock market. And I hate nickel and dime fees for someone else investing my money.  (Apparently I'm not alone, see above articles, it's a Gen X thing)   I'd like to buy a second vehicle (in cash, I'm saving now) soon so I don't want to tie up that money in something long term but it seems stupid to have over $5000 sitting around earning nothing while I determine what I want to buy.  But I figure I have a few months to learn about short term investment options while I'm earning the money I plan to save and invest.

You know, I might actually get the hang on this money thing after all...

Rough Week

I'm not going to sugar coat it, it was a rough week here.

We're all adjusting to me being out of the house for over 50 hours a week (including commute time).  I think I've been doing a pretty damn good job of making sure there's food for snack and dinner and making sure everyone gets rides to and from activities and we've been relatively successful.  We did momentarily misplace the littlest one when she was suppose to be at the dentist on Tuesday (she went to her after school music program, G and I both forgot about that.)

I've been aware of time constraints before but this week, they just sucked.  For example, the boys both need new shoes.  Monday they had scouts, Tuesday I don't even remember what happened but shoe shopping didn't, Wednesday I work late (shops closed), Thursday I was off work in time to pick up the littlest one from school, eat dinner, go to her scout meeting, and then again shops closed, and Friday the boys were off to scout camp before I was home from work.  It's like, fuck how does anything get done?  I suppose I probably had 9pm to 10pm to take them to Target or something but sheesh, at that point of the night I'm honestly in bed.  Oh I remember why I didn't take them shoe shopping on Monday or Tuesday, I had $4.75 in my bank account.  Payday was Friday.  So maybe the shoe shopping was delayed due to money constraints more than anything.

I slept 13 hours Friday night into Saturday morning.

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I need to make time to see a therapist after my new health insurance kicks in.  My most lovely friends have pointed out that I really have not dealt with my break-up with S (there was an incident earlier this week, I had a mini panic attack when one of our mutual friends mentioned seeing him in person)  and I'm probably in the denial stage about my dad's death too.  Sounds about right for me.  Another friend pointed out that I've dealt with a lot more emotionally stressful stuff in the last year than most people deal with in a lifetime.  Huh.  Yeah maybe.  I don't really think about it like that, I just write a To Do List and get back to checking things off.  Since there isn't an easy To List for dealing with emotions, I just ignore them and concentrate on other stuff.  Damnit, To Do Lists, don't fail me now!

Anyway, it's been a rough week.

I took yesterday "off" from doing anything other than talking to friends, eating, watching TV, and goofing around on the internet.  Today I have a To Do List but I'm going to take it slow and not try to attempt to knock 10 things off it before lunch.  The kids don't go back to G's until tomorrow evening (November schedule is a bit goofy) and now that I've realized I'm not 100% emotionally healthy right at the moment, I'm going to take it easy on myself.  No one needs me ending up in a padded room.

I love my kids, I love my family, I love my cat, I love my friends, I love my new job, I love my cute little townhouse in a fun area of town.  Overall life is good, I just need to fine tune a few (major? minor?) emotional things.  I can do this.

Feeling Good Part #3

So considering all the craziness of the last few months, I find myself in pretty good spirits lately.  I've been taking some steps to fix the things I can and accept those I can't.  (Go Serenity Pray!  And Dr. Phil)

Fixing:

Full-Time Nursing Job: Applying, talking to my contacts, picking up as many hours as possible at both the volunteer clinic and as a school nurse substitute.  The sewing gig is enough (barely) but I still don't have benefits (health insurance, life insurance, 401K).  I might be able to get some minimal coverage elsewhere.  It's on the To Do List.

Crappy Shoe-String Budget: Not going to go into all the details but I've contacted people to work on my debt.  The relief from the strain of those monthly bills is amazing.

Accepting:

Teenagers: Currently have 3 and 2 pre-teens.  It's going to be a long and bumpy ride...  Just gotta buckle up, white knuckle it and get through to the other side.

Crappy Shoe-String Budget: Needs versus Wants.  I have a list.  And a plan.  And sticking to it.

Dating:  Not doing it right now.  I'm good with being single at the moment  (I reserve the right to change this mindset in the future)  It's taken some time but I'm finally cool with just being with me.  Plus I have so many amazing friends and family here that any time I really want to do something, I have a great bunch of people to contact.

Townhouse:  It's good enough, it's smart enough, and doggone it, we like it.  I do have to fight an internal feeling of "it's not a house, it's only 1450 square feet, it's not a house!"  It is a little cramped with 6 people sometimes but the other half of the month, when it's just me and the cat, it's perfect.  The location is amazing and I have a gym and a garden.  I love it until the kids want friends over or I have to find an alternative location for my Girl Scout Troop meetings.  I miss having a guest room and I miss entertaining.  The accepting is especially tricky when our current town is known for it's 4000+ square foot McMansions and we're living in 1450 square foot townhouse.  We're kinda the odd family out at the moment.  Like I said, I'm working on the acceptance part.

Quote of the Day:  "Don't look for your dreams to come true; look to become true to your dreams." -Michael Beckwith

August 11th

I haven't been much in a writing mood. I've been in a 'wait and see' mode for the last few weeks. It's not been very pleasant actually.

The sewing gig is going well. It doesn't pay enough and I can't get more than 18 hours a week (I've tried and next week I'm actually only scheduled for 12). I suppose it's better than nothing. I had an interview for the MOST PERFECT RN JOB EVER* about 2 weeks ago and then I haven't received a phone call back. I did call and leave a message about a week after saying that I'd love to have the position and please call back and let me know the status. Nothing. I have another upcoming interview for an assisted living/long term care facility (the new fancy word for 'nursing home'). I don't know much about that job other than where it's located and it's a RN position. I also applied to about 10 other new job listings on Thursday and Friday.

The kids start back to school in a few days. We're buying school supplies today. And doing laundry. And waiting.


* Local (less than 2 miles away), 8am-5pm Monday-Friday, new doctor's office opening in September with a very laid back, patient centered 'peace, love, and medicine' approach. So perfect...