I just realized while I was doing my 30 minute tidy today that the issue I was having weeks ago of running around all over town has for the most part disappeared. Now it's specific trips, and I don't leave the apartment for full days anymore. I'll go to the library this afternoon before I go to pick up Sara from school, but there isn't this pressure anymore that I should get everything done right now. That must be a hold over from borrowing cars for an evening to get some shopping done. I would run myself into the ground on those evenings just so I could get every second I possibly could out of the loan.

Now it's more of an "Ahhh, I'll get it later when I really need it." response to things. I'm so pleased. It also costs less to be at home. I now grab myself a couple pitas and some hummus for lunch instead of finding the nearest fast food joint and spending money we don't have.

Tonight is Sara's final swimming lesson until the fall, and her best friend's birthday party. So I should have a bunch of time to work on the site for my crew. I've been drafting up the content in a notebook when I have to wait for her. I should have most of the content done soon. Maybe not, since school is done for the year next Wednesday. I'll have to figure out how to keep her somewhat busy and out of my hair so soon!

You know, I don't have much to say today. I'm doing ok with my back and the nerve, my crew is growing, my house is getting clean, things are finally equalizing. Heh.

All good things must come to an end. In my case today, the streak of several days pain-free has come to a fall down in the mud end.

After I dropped Mike off at work today, I decided to try and check out a local card store to see if they had any ideas on how I could maybe get back into playing Magic again. Of course, there was crazy construction on the road right in front of them, so I had to change my plans. I went to Len's Mill to get some lining for Miss Sara's birthday outfit I still have yet to sew. Then I decided to dash over to Chapters to find a birthday present for Sara's best friend. Last night I was talking to her Mom and found out that she loves YA Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Ah hah! Tamora Pierce it is!

All this running around is being done while it's raining, so it's a little slick and slippery. Whatever, no biggy. Until I walk out of Chapters, step on a spot of clay, and find myself on my hands and knees in said clay.

I was even thinking as I stepped into that clay "Better go on the grass, you'll slip on that clay... oh shit, Linda, you stepped inthe clay and you're falling. Moron." To top it all off, I had an audience right there, a car filled with people. The driver is a decent human being who opened her window in the downpour that was soaking me while I was on my knees in the mud, and asked very concernedly if I was ok. I was and told her so. She still stuck around and watched as I dumped my purse in Mephostophilis and went to get rags from the trunk.

I ended up sopping up rain from the roof of Mephostophilis to soak the rags I was washing the worst of the mud off with. Surprisingly effective, by the way.

Anyways, I've been home now for the afternoon since I took my lovely fall and the pain has started. It was first a dull warning ache in my upper and lower back and has now spread to my sciatic nerve. I'm limping. I'm really worried that it's going to flare up to the point of immobility again. Just because I stepped wrong and took a fall. Doesn't that just suck?

See part of the reason I stopped journaling through May was I had a nerve and back flare up that had me in pain all the time, and barely walking for over a week. I dragged myself down the hallway by trying to take my weight through my arms, against the smooth walls. (Note: this doesn't work all that well.) I couldn't go near the floor because I had no idea if I would make it back up. So now I'm scared that it'll happen again. 'Cause I can walk, and carry and move again and I don't ever want to need that ugly ass cane I bought, but I might have to. Poo.

And that's a little more than 15 minutes.

15 minutes then I go do some more dishes. I just finished wiping down the kitchen counters and man does it feel good to see them all clean and shiny again. There's this point with the mess that it just overtakes you and it suddenly takes a lot of work to get it back to clean again. We're coming up on clean now, and it's an accomplishment.

I bought our first real crew ship this morning in Y!PP. Well, it's ordered, we now have to wait 10 days until it's finished being built. It's a cutter, the second smallest ship in the game at 12 crew (sloop takes 7). I'm pretty excited about it because it'll let us do more in the way of forage and pillaging trips.

I was hoping to buy the ship from the shipbuilder I used to make my Sloop. He has posted in his stall that he gives discounts for crew and people that work for him. A couple days ago I caught him in his stall and decided to ask what the discount would be on a cutter. There was a bit of miscommunication, I was looking for info, he appeared to think I wanted to buy right then. I couldn't because I didn't have anywhere near the level of PoE needed, so I thanked him for his time and left.

Since then he's posted an advertisement of his stall on the forums. Included in that ad, was this: "If you don't have the poe please dont bother me."

Dude!

I ended up making a good chunk of PoE this morning on a forage run, more than enough to buy our cutter at standard prices before any discounts. So I debated buying from this guy, or taking my business elsewhere. I ran it past Mike and he said "I felt that way a lot in my business too, but I never stuck a sign in the window telling people not to waste my time."

That decided me. I know it's a game, but I'm coming up on 3 years in business offline, and I would *never* say to a customer to fuck off until they can pay. Information is free, even when it's a pain in my ass, because it makes for good customer relations.

So I quit my job at dude's stall, found another shipbuilder and ordered and jobbed there. And in 10 days, we should have our newest lady.

And that's 15.

So, 15 minutes on the timer as I again attempt to grab hold of the routines that made my life a lot easier before we got Mephostophilis. I just finished a 30-minute tidy and I actually got to the point of rinsing and stacking the dirty dishes. I haven't been able to find the space to do that in weeks. Our kitchen has been a pure disaster area, and !Mike! has been the only person doing any dishwashing.

I have a bit of a get out of chores free pass as I am babying my back and my sciatic nerve as much as I can. I had a really bad flare-up with the nerve a few weeks ago, as bad as it's ever been, and I'm still recovering. It was bad enough that when I saw this tacky as hell cane going for $3, I bought it for the next time I can't walk. There's something very sad in buying a cane so I can simply walk at 29. Ahh well. Not much more I can do about beyond taking it easy, doing my physio exercises and accepting that this is where I'm at.

I've been using the pain as permission to spend a lot of time on Y!PP. If I can't walk, I can certainly sit and sail around a virtual pirate world.

I'm a Captain of a wee tiny crew on there, and it's been such a great fit for me. I was miserable as anything as a pirate in a big crew, I'm too independently minded. So I quit that crew and went on to make my crew, Wings of Aesthir. (10 points if you know how I found the name for it!) I trained myself up to where I felt I could handle other people, and then started taking jobbers. In the weeks since that point I've had 8 people join my crew and 3 leave it. I have a right hand man from one of the first mates to join with me. It's so much fun and it feels damn good to have people actually following me.

So I'm now thinking about making up a website for my little crew to put on all the various things and items of useful info. So far the only thing I have written up are the ideals of the crew. I think I may sit out in the sun for a bit today and write out the way we'll handle money -- personal and crew. We'll see what I end up with.

I want most of all to have a crew of people that have their own goals, their own ideas held together by the ideal of helping each other out under the crew name.

And that's 15.

after spending roughly two days cutting out, and sewing a white dress for your daughter's dance recital.

"That's really pretty Mommy, but why are you making it? I'm not dancing that one."

I almost died. Then I thought back to the detail discussions I've had with her dance teacher and I'm going with the fact she needs this dress. She better.

Today we're having Sara's family birthday party for my side of her family. We're going to Laurel Creek CA and barbequing up some meat, drinking some pop and watching her open some presents. Nothing big, but it's usually a fair amount of fun. Since I seem to leave everything to the last moment, I had to go out this morning to get the food, wrapping paper, and assorted other crap.

On the way to Dollarama, I was making a right onto Albert. The truck in front of me was tooling along at 30 km, so I moved left to pass -- in front of the woman about to jump past me. It was a clean, signalled move over -- I had lots of room. We both made the move at the same time. I didn't cut her off. This is important.

Anyway, I drive pretty fast normally if conditions are good. So I'm clocking it at 70 km/hr in a 60 zone. And this woman is right on my ass. I *hate* tailgaters, so I tap the brakes twice and make a back off wave with my hand. She starts screaming at me and comes up even closer. She's so close that I can see maybe a foot of her hood before the windshield in my rear-view mirror, forget headlights. I figure she's maybe a foot off my back bumper.

So I slow down to the limit. She's flipping out. Just as an aside, this is on a 4-lane street. She could have moved over right at any point and passed me. But no, she's on my rear bumper, screaming and flipping out. My turn comes up for Dollarama, I signal and check for her. She has turned into the previous entrance to the plaza. So I watch her roll up to Dollarama, incredulous. She gets out of her car, glares at me and continues throwing a fit and goes into the Dollar Store.

This woman was in such a massive rush that she was tailgating, speeding, flipping the fuck out, to get to a dollar store!

I wait in the car for a little bit so I calm down, I dislike scenes in stores, and in the mood I was in, I wanted one pretty bad. When I finally go in, she walks past me avoiding my eyes. What's with the bullies in their cars, who become cowards once they're faced with a human, not another car?

So that's today's driving moron update. It's so fucking bad that I thank the ground a good driver drives on when I see them. There's the guy that "pretended" to rear end me when I tapped my brakes at him in Cambridge. I'm serious. This guy got so pissed off that I told him to back the fuck off my ass, that he would slow down then accelerate to the verge of rear-ending me, then slam on the brakes and do it again. Then the one that honked at me for stopping at a red light after tailgating me the entire way down University.

People, I'm not a slow driver. I'm not even a hesitant one. If anything, I drive too fast, I take turns way too aggressively; I like the feeling of power and speed. What I don't do is drive at the cost of the people around me.

Because whenever I get behind the wheel I do so with the full and utter knowledge that I am in control of over a ton of steel. A ton of steel that if for whatever reason I lose control of, I am lucky if I just seriously injure someone. I am lucky beyond imagining if the person I hit walks away. But I can't count on luck. I can count on killing someone. Taking away a future, taking away someone somebody loves, taking away something vastly more important than anything I have to do. I remember this every single time I get behind the wheel.

And if you don't, you shouldn't drive. Period.

I was once a perfect (sewing) size 18. I'd open a pattern envelope, lay out the pieces and cut on the line marked 18. Then I'd sew it together and voila! Clothing. No alterations, no weeks spent trying to figure out how to balance an apparently tiny back with a massive shelf of booage. God, I miss those days.

I've spent the last day or two focusing on my sewing. I went to BouClair yesterday morning and spent a good couple hours looking at the various patterns, notions and fabric. I can feel myself doing the crazy sewer thing. I want to horde fabric just because it might be useful someday. I'm refraining though. No fabric without a matching pattern and planned outfit. Anyway, yesterday I bought a Burda pants pattern, a Simplicity comfy clothes assortment pattern, fabric to sew both and some notions. I cut out the Burda yesterday afternoon and tried to make the tank top today.

I must be a glutton for punishment.

I cut the damned thing big, to make room for the crazy boobage I haul around. So now there's room in the front, and massive gaping armholes and I swear, 6 inches worth of loose fabric at the back neckline. It's another fucking piece to be finished eventually and donated to goodwill at some later date. And I'm now 0 for 4 patterns cut and sewn for myself (tank top, shell, shorts, tank top).

I was talking to my mom about all this yesterday, and I bitched that all I would be left with to sew for myself would be baggy skirts. She said something about getting to a size where that's all that fits anymore. Dude! I'm not that fat! I can walk into any plus sized store and walk out with a sharp, fitted outfit. (I can also walk into Walmart and come out with cheap scary jeans. But they fit!) I can buy off the rack. So why the hell can't I sew for myself?

Mike and Mom both suggested finding a tailor that would make me a sloper. I may do that and bypass this insanity. Because at this point I've spent more on trying to sew for myself than I would have if I had gone into Cotton Ginny and bought myself my summer clothes.

And that's 15 minutes.