Monday.

Yesterday started out badly.

Eliot cried when we passed the new CVS in town because they'd taken down the streamers from their grand opening. "Why are the flags goooooooone?" he wailed. "WHO TOOK THE FLAGGGGGGS?"

And that was pretty much how I felt too. The weekend is over. The flags are gone. Who took down the flags? Why isn't everything the way it was? The way I left it? The way I have come to expect it to be? It is Monday and I can't move on because someone took down the flags. Without even asking. Those. Rat. Bastards.

I don't know what's been going on with me lately, but I've been in a funk. A crappy, pissy, grouchy ass funk. And I've been blaming it on everyone else around me. It's what I do. Why? Because it's easier than looking at myself and really seeing what is wrong. Because if I shove the ugly unhappiness further and further down and refuse to feel it, it might go away. Right? Instead of accepting and acknowledging my own faults, I blame them on everyone else and their inability to Make. Me. Happy. What the hell is wrong with them? They are not making me happy. Their job is to make me happy. They are bad at their job. Ipso facto, I will fire them. You are all fired. Every last one of you. The end.

James and I had lunch at a Chinese buffet and we ate quietly and morosely and moodily. I hated that there were no corn nuggets. I hated the sweet and sour chicken. I hated the fried rice. I hated the infomercial about skincare that was playing on the television monitor above my head. I hated that James eats with chopsticks and I use a fork. "Oh, so you think you're fancy, you smug, chop stick using motherfucker?" I grumbled internally. We left without getting fortune cookies. I thought, angrily, I don't WANT a fortune cookie because I don't NEED anyone to tell me my fortune I KNOW what it is and it SUCKS. Clearly. 

But yesterday afternoon, something turned around. I can't explain, exactly. We sat on the couch and I looked at James, and I saw him seeing me. And I cried because I looked like an asshole. I had been an asshole not because I'm inherently an asshole, but because in a moment when I was scared and uncomfortable and unwilling to feel vulnerable, I was mean. I made the choice to be mean instead of open and vulnerable. I thought I was protecting myself. And that moment and that choice turned into more moments and more choices, and I realized that lately I have been choosing to be mean and selfish much too often. I've been whining and complaining about not getting the bear when I haven't even been trying to get the bear. I've just been waking up, dragging myself around, and expecting someone else to get it for me everyday.

I know that's all vague and abstract and probably makes no sense at all to anyone but me. That's okay. The point is, if you want the bear, you have to MAKE AN EFFORT to get him.

It reminds me of the scene in Billy Madison when Miss Lippy is reading the class a book about the puppy who lost his way and while all the other children fall asleep listening, Adam Sandler sits there intently until the end and then says, "Whoa whoa whoa, Miss Lippy. The part of the story I don't like is that the little boy gave up looking for Happy after an hour. He didn't put posters up or anything, he just sat on the porch like a goon and waited. That little boy's gotta think 'You got a pet. You got a responsibility.' If your dog gets lost you don't look for an hour then call it quits. You get your ass out there and you find that fucking dog."

I realized that I don't want to sit there like a goon, waiting. I need to get my ass out there.

By the time I went to bed last night, we had visited the (dubiously awarded) fastest soda machine in the world, a deer wandered into our front yard (I tried, unsuccessfully, to convince Eliot he was about to knock on the door and ask for a grilled cheese sandwich.), I got to hold a precious newborn baby, and I ended the day cuddled up next to James on the couch watching Kung Fu.

Bear = Mine. Puppy = Found. CVS flags = Don't even miss them.

And all the other metaphors and what have you.

p.s. James, baby, if you're reading this...Will you teach me how to use chopsticks? I love you. ;)

Finished beats perfect, every time.

Lessons I have learned (about sewing and myself) while making a quilt:

1. Your seam ripper is your best friend.

2. There's a certain zen moment in quilting that can really only be reached when one is ripping out the same seam for the fifth time.

3. It's okay to mess up while you're sewing. (See numbers 1. and 2.)

4. It is not as okay to mess up while you're cutting the fabric.

5. When your thread is getting janky, check your bobbin. It's almost always the bobbin. (p.s. You have a tendency to put the bobbin in backwards.)

6. Only touch the handle of the iron while you are pressing fabric, not the metal part.

7. The metal part is hot. Like, seriously hot.

8. No matter how patient and understanding your partner, it might not be a good idea to work in the same room with that person if you are someone who has a tendency to get pissed off and take out your anger out on others.

9. You have a tendency to get pissed off and take your anger out on others.

10. If you are a beginner, don't try to use a fancy decorative stitch on your binding, no matter how easy that lady on the YouTube instructional video makes it look.

11. A straight stitch gives you more control, and is much easier to rip out when you screw up.

12. Accept that you are going to screw up. A lot.

13. Finished beats perfect, every time.

14. When the pigs try to get at you, park it like it's hot.