I’ve mentioned over the past few months that Scott got a new job, is now working crazy hours and is gone a lot more than he was.  What I haven’t so much mentioned is anything about his old job.  He and a few partners owned a civil engineering firm.  It was a wonderful opportunity for a while, but after the housing bubble burst here in the USA things changed.  (Civil Engineering is designing subdivisions,  roadways, pipelines, sewer systems, etc.  All things that are in about as much demand as new subdivisions.  Which lately has been zero.)  Their firm layed off a lot of employees just a few months after Creamie was born in 2009.  That allowed them to keep the company open and still give a few people work on a contract basis, but still save a lot of money in taxes and medical insurance premiums.  They had some good projects.  We were surviving.  Barely.  But making it more or less.

Things went along for better or worse for two years.  We always felt like we were still doing what we were supposed to be doing. We still felt like we were on the right path.  They were working hard.  Constantly trying out new projects and areas.  Solar, Hydro-power, all sorts of awesome new things.  They always had a few good projects in the works the kept us all afloat.  And then this past spring things changed drastically.  Work was scarcer, clients had gone bankrupt or disappeared leaving us with piles of open invoices.  Lots of interest in the new kinds of projects, but no money to fund them.  And everything was hanging (and still is) on one last big project that has been pushed back and postponed for one reason or another for the past 3 years.  (On December 19th cross your fingers for us, we are getting closer to seeing this one become a reality, just a few more hoops to jump… I hope.)  By the beginning of summer we knew we had to look for something else.  Now.  Things quickly got worse at work.  Then worse again.  Who knows how many paychecks we have skipped over the past few years, but this spring and summer were particularly bad.  For the first time ever we knew we had to find something else immediately.  Scott applied for jobs.  Lots of jobs.  Applied for jobs for 8 hours a day.  And we heard nothing.  I cried a lot.  I ate a lot of Oreos.  Standard coping mechanisms.

And then the first of August he finally got an interview.  One interview.  He aced it.  He was hired out of 140 applicants and 11 interviewees in a unanimous board decision.  It was not a moment too soon.  (And perhaps a few moments later than I would have preferred.)  But the Lord works in mysterious ways and looking back we can see that He prepared us for this opportunity for a long time.  Anyway, his new job is awesome.   His coworkers are awesome.  He loves his work.  We have great benefits.  Good insurance, with zero out of pocket premium for us.  I have dental insurance for the first time in my life.  I might get my wisdom teeth out next year! (Yep, all four are hanging out in there hurting and driving me nuts everytime I brush my teeth.)  But the best part?  He goes to work every week and they pay him for that.  Like, hand out paychecks on Fridays and stuff.  But wait, get this, the money is magically already in the bank.  They just stick it right in your account.  It is amazing.  And then two weeks later They. Do. It. Again.  And then again.  It’s a beautiful system.  Really, an amazingly beautiful system.

Anyway, that was four months ago.  And things are better.  So so much better.  But there are still those three-ish years of missed paychecks and bankrupt/dirty-rotten-no-good-corrupt clients to deal with.  And it will take time to be out from under all of that.  This Christmas was looking to be really lean.  Leaner than any other we’ve had in our almost 8 years.  I have enough craft supplies and fabric that Creamie would never know the difference.  She is all set to wake up to a child’s dreamland of handmade toys on Christmas morning.  And Scott and I were OK deciding to forgo gifts this year.  We have each other, we have a warm home, food to eat and clothes to wear.  We have a good job and a lot of faith that all things will eventually work out for our good in the end.  But I knew that there wasn’t any extra money this Christmas.  None, not even for little things.  We got slapped with a $300 HOA fee from our less than awesome condo board a few weeks ago and it had to be paid.  (Everyone under our HOA board jurisdiction had to pay it.  It’s not because we didn’t clean up our patio or had weird crap hung in the windows or anything.)  And there went Christmas.  To the HOA board.  Lame.

I don’t care about the presents, neither does Scott.  What I really want for Christmas is a whole weekend to work in my craft room and sew and make pie.  And like I said, there is enough fabric stacked up in my house that Creamie will have the best handmade Christmas a girl could hope to have.  But what it really meant was that there was no money for a tree this year.  Not even a little one.  I arrived at this conclusion the day before Thanksgiving.  It was horrible.  I cried.  And cried.  And then I opened the pantry and made seventeen pies.  I am not joking.  I tried to pretend it didn’t matter, but by that weekend I was sobbing. A lot. At the smallest thing I’d tear up again.

Creamie has been asking for a Christmas tree since we took it down last Christmas.  That girl has a memory like a steel trap, nothing slips through that little mind of hers.  We looked into a few cut your own tree lots, because they are usually a little less expensive.  And we looked into a few programs to cut a tree from government land, but all the permits were all sold out already.  I even looked at fake trees at thrift stores, but they are almost as much as a cut your own lot.  And I had pretty much come to the conclusion that there would be no Christmas tree with popcorn garland and gingerbread boys in my living room this year.  I thought maybe on Christmas Eve I could convince my favorite tree lot guy (we get our trees from him every year, and have since I was a girl) to let me have whatever he had left and we could decorate it then.  And it would be fine.  And Creamie would love it.  But I would have felt like Christmas was missing at my house for the whole of December.  And that made my heart sick and it made me cry.

And then a small miracle happened.  One that restores my faith in people, faith in Christmas, faith in love and goodwill toward men.  Friday afternoon there was a loud knock on my door.  REALLY loud. And the doorbell at the same time.  I looked out the peephole (because that is what you do when someone pounds on your door) and there was a miracle on the porch.  A big green miracle that brought tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. Our Christmas was at the door. We have been doorbell ditched with a huge beautiful Christmas tree.

We had to snip off the top to fit it in the house it was so tall.  Creamie saw it and freaked out, screaming in pure joy.  I just stood there and said a silent prayer of thanks.  Even thinking about it now it makes me cry.  We pulled out the Christmas things.  I opened box after box.  I tested lights and mixed up gingerbread boys and made popcorn.  We spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday stringing popcorn and baking cookies into gingerbread ornaments and hanging candy canes and jinglebells on our big beautiful tree. First thing out of Creamie’s mouth every morning is “Can I do some more Christmas things on the tree?”

It takes up a whole corner of the room, and it looks like it is on fire what with the 1600 lights on it.  (I could have used 700 or so more.  I didn’t do any lights on the bottom half on the side facing the wall.)  And everysingle time I look at it I am reminded of how good some people really are.  And how if we pay attention to the feelings and nudges we have we can work miracles in other people’s lives.  I am so grateful for this small miracle in mine.  I know it is “just a Christmas tree.”  But more than that it is a reminder to me of new life.  Of hope.  Of love.  That no matter how hard or crazy or crappy things are right now, that it will change.  We will get through it.  If pine trees can survive the harsh cold winters year after year and stay beautiful and alive surely I can do this right now.  Things really are going to work out.  Somehow.  Things are going to be “OK”, whatever that means.  Christmas is here in our little house.  And thanks to the kindness of our Christmas Angel it is in my heart too.

But she’s not.  She woke up from a much needed afternoon nap by running into the bathroom, and has been in and out of there all afternoon.  She can’t keep anything down.  I’ve put her in the tub five times today.  She’s almost ready to go back to bed, and I hope that by tomorrow her little body has recovered.  A lot of laundry today, and I don’t think our bathroom floor has ever been so clean.  Scott has washed it six times today.  Thankfully the carpet has remained unscathed.  For now.

Yeah, that’s my story.  Not always, but today.  This nice little stack of fabric was supposed to be a really cute fabric bunting, like this 4th of July one, and the pink one I made for my pink week giveaway.  But, I did something stupid.

I picked the total wrong thing for the binding.  In my mind it looked a lot cuter.  In reality it looks like a big old mess.  And I realized it as soon as I finished the last stitch and pulled it out of my sewing machine.  Failure.  Crafty Failure.  So I threw it on my desk and ate a lot of cupcakes and today I feel much better about it.  But I am still going to unpick all 20 feet of stitches and redo the binding with navy blue or something not quite so stripey.

Oh, and that exciting thing I was going to tell you about… it happened.  It was lovely, and I didn’t take a single picture.  But Amy did.  And as soon as I can steal pictures from her I’ll post about it.

[ image source ]

I haven’t even wrapped her present because I want to save it for the day that really feels like her birthday.  So today we “celebrated” with one blue grocery store balloon.  And I didn’t even think about it until we were waiting at the grocery store pharmacy for the prescription to be filled.  Sigh.  She is finally asleep, and hasn’t woken up in a coughing fit for two full hours.  And for that I am grateful.  But I kind of feel like a terrible mother tonight.  I know there are lots of reasons to not feel terrible.  She is sick, she doesn’t know what she is missing so it isn’t hurting her, it’s not like she has been anticipating her birthday for months and months, so it’s not like you are stealing her birthday from her, I’m exhausted from not sleeping more than 30 minutes at a time for a week, she wouldn’t enjoy it anyway because she’s sick, I have plans for a real birthday as soon as she is well, blah blah blah.  It doesn’t matter.  I still feel like my little girl missed the one day of the year that is hers.  And it makes me sad.

I’m going to take a little break from blogging.  I have things in my real life that need some serious undivided attention for a little while.  Thank you so much for all your wonderful support of what I post here.  Thank you for the comments, and for the little bits of kindness that you have shared with me.  I’m grateful for those of you who have introduced yourselves, and for the friends I’ve made in the past little while.  Thank you to those of you who read but never comment, and those who comment often.  I’ll be back soon.  And I hope it is with some awesome pictures of a belated birthday party.

I might revisit this idea next year.  But for now, 60 yards of sequins, 25 yards of tulle, 10 yards of polysatin, and all my carefully planned out pattern pieces are going into this suitcase and I’m going to shove it under my bed.  And I don’t want to talk about it.  Actually I think I’m going to cry.  And then I’ll eat myself into a coma.  And when I wake up in 100 years tomorrow morning  I’ll feel much better.  And that one year I totally botched my Halloween costume won’t matter so much.  But right now, it matters.

Sometimes  you see something in your mind, and when it comes to life it is even better than you could have hoped for. But not always.

And we both got pedicures in the living room.  I consider it a raving success that there is no hot pink toenail polish on the floor, rug, couch or my pants.  Now when she looks down at her sore legs, she sees her pink toes and says “Pink! Pridy!”  Here’s hoping that lasts.

*Also, I’ve never had any issues with my feet until I was getting ready to post pictures of them on the internet.  It’s the summer, everyone has sandal/flip flop feet in the summer, right?  Right?

[ source unknown ]

I’ve been working on the stacks of paperwork that have been accumulating in my husbands office for more than a year.  That’s right.  A YEAR.  Monday I spent more than 12 hours shuffling through stacks and stacks of paper.  And now all those stacks are at least organized by subject and date and some of them are put away.  I am happy to announce that 2009 is officially organized and labeled and filed.  And only 7 months late.  Today I’ll be working on 2010.  Wish me luck!

[ Three generations: Grandpa who just turned 95, Scott and his Dad on our wedding day. 2003 ]

I do want to say how thankful I am to have my family close by right now.  I am so thankful for Scott’s family, I couldn’t have hoped to marry into a better group of people.  I am thankful for all those who have showed so much love and concern for us these last few days.   I am thankful for my faith, and prayer, and for the peace that I feel in my heart.  I am so grateful for my sweet husband and the incredible man that he is.  I am grateful that I have my daughter.  She brings such a wonderful sweetness and joy to my life.

I know that there is a reason we are here, and I know that all those trials we have are for a reason.  We learn valuable lessons dealing with all those hard things.  Lessons that can help us throughout our lives to be better people.  Lessons that will help us to  help those around us who are facing similar trials.  Trials give us empathy.   They make us humble.  Trials are a great source of growth.  Trials  force you to realize that you can’t do everything on your own.  We need each other.  I can’t do it all on my own, and I am grateful for the people in my life who lift me up and carry me through those really bad days.  Sometimes it’s just a few words, or a much needed few hours of babysitting.  Sometimes it’s warm apple crisp, or a cup of sugar.  Sometimes it really is as simple as a smile- an acknowledgment that you know I am here, that you are thinking about me.  To all of you- Thank you.

UPDATE: My mechanic-ing work is finished! Pretty post here The car….. well, the jury’s still out.  We aren’t hoping for any miracles.

Dear Steve.  Rest in Peace.  Actually, don’t rest in peace.  You would be lucky to end up in this pile of very cute little Euro cars.  You don’t even deserve it.  We should send you straight to the smashers.  If I could push you off a cliff and into a lake I would, but I kind of have guilty feelings of polluting the environment thinking about it.  But the smashers?  I could totally do the smashers.

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Yeah, that’s right.  The smashers.  There is no more resuscitation that is possible.  The  last time Steve acted it up it was super inconvenient.  I was ready to plan the funeral and be done with him.  But, after a few days of poking and prodding (and a new $1,200 internal computer) he perked right up and started paying attention.  And we went on our merry way.  Until today.  That last time was what I hoped would be the end of a long series of Steve starting to lose it.  Let me just give you a short recap.  Since Christmas, which has been 8 weeks:   Twice to the mechanic, thrice to the dealer.  Towed 4 times.  Grand total? Four thousand two hundred dollars. Give or take. Gulp.

Tonight we went to use up a giftcard at one of our favorite Aussie restaurants for dinner.  Food was great, Creamie was charming, weather was too warm to snow and too cold to rain so it was that icy sleety yucky stuff.    But, no matter, the food was great.  We got done and on the way home Steve started freaking out.  Gages dropped, weird lights came on, headlights flashing.  We pulled into home, let him rest a few minutes and then tried him again.  And again.  Nothing.  No life.  We drove him home to die.  This time there is no more mechanic, no more dealers, no more tow trucks.  This time it is over.  Pulling the plug.  No more.  Just no more. *

I sold my car, that I have had for nearly 8 years last October.  It still ran fine, but had a few issues I didn’t want to deal with anymore.  We’ve been a one car family since then.  Which has been fine.  Until today.  Now we are a no car family.  It is actually too depressing to keep thinking about.  I’ll be back tomorrow with something pretty to look at.  Sigh.

* Pretty sure anyway.  I mean, unless he is alive in the morning, or something amazing happens.  But you just have to know when to stop pouring thousands of dollars into a toilet.  Enough is enough.  The End.