Highlighters

 When can a highlighter give you an allergy attack? It can on October 9, 2012, or potentially any other day when circumstances are conducive to such things.

This is what my planner looks like. I write down things I want to accomplish in a certain day. As I finish, I highlight them. Right now, I am using a pink pen and a pink highlighter. "Why pink?" you ask. Because I don't like pink, I am using them up.

This is the highlighter that I was using because I couldn't find the pink one I've been using. The act of looking for the pink one and resigning myself to using this one brought on the allergy attack.

This is the pink one. Laura found it on the counter. I'd looked twice.

This is my old planner. See the green highlights? Daniel gave me that highlighter (and a blue one) for Christmas in 2010. I was using the green because he gave it to me and I thought of him every time I did. I used it a lot.

Do you see how much lighter it is here? I'd been using it A LOT. This was during the summer semester. I was hurrying to get done so we could go on our trip to Idaho and California. The ink was disappearing.

This is the blue highlighter that Daniel gave me with the green one. I have only used it a few times and it has lots of ink in it.

If I hold the highlighter do I feel closer to Daniel? In a very real way, I do. I think of the thought that went into the purchase (which I know about because Laura was with him at Staples) of it. I remember how he deliberated over everything that he purchased that year. He had so much money and had figured out exactly how much he could spend on each person. He was so happy when he found things for his younger siblings and Ryan for less than he'd allotted. He wasn't sure what to get for Paul (he is very hard to shop for) and finally settled on a gift certificate for ironing shirts for Sunday. Daniel ironed his own shirt every Sunday morning before church.

Like this one.

This little exercise has just been an example of the many things that can begin a certain thought process. It is absolutely amazing how almost anything has the ability, depending upon the mood I am in, to start a though process that leads me to Daniel. I have no desire to change this. In fact, I like to roll with it because sometimes I am led to memories that have been tucked away and their resurfacing helps to keep them alive.

One Year, Two Months

Yesterday was an interesting day. I registered for a workshop called "Compassionate Caregiving When a Baby Dies." I know I hope to be able to use the information I gain there in the future when working with women who may loose or have lost a baby or child. I hope to learn something new. Perhaps I will learn something about myself and how I feel about Daniel's death.

Sometimes, I see a picture of Daniel and it sets my mind to thinking. Daniel was such a presence in all our lives. I am speaking of a physical presence because he still is very  much a part of our lives today, just not in the same way that he was. It is very hard at times to see a picture because when that picture was taken, Daniel was still here. Sometimes I think, "How can he be gone? How can he just not BE here? How can he have been here and not be here now?"

September 21st was an interesting day not only because I finished all of the school work I could and was therefore able to spend the afternoon doing something for fun, but because of little things that just popped out at me. I found a CD/DVD case when I was looking for some tissue paper. This case made the trip to Sioux Falls with us. It was in the accident. The DVDs that were in it suffered no damage. How can this be? How can some DVDs which mean absolutely nothing in the eternal scheme of things survive while a child, my child, could not?

I know that it is just his physical body that was damaged. However, because of that damage, he is no longer physically with us. There are times when I wonder what kind of a mother I am for having let this happen.

Yesterday afternoon, I was going through some things and I found in a pile of blankets a purple frog that Paul gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago. For the longest time, I kept that frog on my bed with its arm around a little pillow that Joanna made for me one year for Christmas while we were in Idaho. My hope was that one day, Paul and Joanna would be able to be reconciled and that we would be able to be a whole family. Well, it worked. After a fashion. Paul and Joanna are reconciled but it didn't happen until after tragedy had struck and Daniel was physically no longer with us. I know that we still can be a whole family, but in this life at least it will not look the way I had thought it would.

 

Sometimes, at night, Joseph has bad dreams. He isn't the only one. Amena has not expressed to me that she does but I know that all the boys do. Cedric surrounds himself with things of Daniel's. I don't know if they help with the dreams. When I was ten, I got a musical teddy bear for Easter. Sometimes at night, I can give Joseph my teddy bear and he's okay. Sometimes I wish my teddy bear still worked that kind of magic for me.

 

I miss Daniel every day. Some days I cry  more than others but still, I believe that in order to miss someone so much, there must have been a mutual love and I believe that love is transcendental. In fact, without love, this world would not exist.

 

I believe that Jesus Christ lived and died for us and that because he lives again, once our mortal lives are over, we will all live again. One day, I know that although we do not have Daniel with us physically now, we will. This knowledge does not take away the pain of missing him and it does not mean that I never doubt. It does not mean that I sometimes wonder why. It does mean that even on those days that I miss Daniel most and I struggle with my feelings of inadequacy and I wonder what kind of a mother I am to have let this happen, I will get through it. As long as I keep going through the teary fog of pain, I will emerge on the other side triumphant, and I will be with those I love.

Joseph and Daniel

This is a picture that Joseph drew in Primary a few months ago. It is of him and Daniel. Perhaps after school I will as for a more detailed explanation.

January 30, 2010

Indiana Jones

This is Lego Indiana Jones (he's the one on the bridge with a hat on). There is a shark under the bridge (check out those teeth!). Indiana Jones shot the bad guy in the mouth and the picture shows him falling down because he is dead. The other two people are the kids the bad guys had captured. There is a "ton of hair" on the girl and the kids are running. There is a nice sun in the corner, don't you think? Joseph did his name with points and then did a pattern of two blue, one brown, two blue, one brown. Pretty cool!
In discussing this after he was done last night, we decided that we were undecided about if Joseph would get in trouble if he drew this at school. It has guns and Seth was called into the office last year for having drawn guns in a notebook. Joseph informed us that someone in his class last year drew a gun in a picture and his teacher did not care. We are still undecided.

Giant Skeleton King

This is a giant skeleton king. The little guy on the right is a drunk guy. The little guy on the left is a guy with long hair. Up at the top is clouds. At the bottom is the ground. The yellow triangle shapes and the black and white shapes and the shape on the skeleton king's crown (blue with black and red squares) are all pieces of a whirligig ball pattern that Joseph colored and cut up and glued on the picture to look cool.

Upcoming Elections

Paul sent me an email yesterday which basically consisted of the text you will find at this link: http://blogs.christianpost.com/the-connecting-link/dems-welcome-muslims-prohibit-christian-hospitalty-in-charlotte-11861/

It isn't just that one link. You can find it at many different ones which leads me to believe there may be some truth to it. Not only that, but it just seems to follow what has been trickling down through the news.

Quite frankly, I will be very glad when this election is over. I hate election years to begin with because there is so much mudslinging and, quite frankly, noone is ever as good as they try to portrey themselves. This one is particularly bad because people seem to be so polarized over the issues. It does not have to be one way or the other. There can be some compromise. In fact, there should be some compromise.

I will admit that I am not an Obama supporter. I do not agree with the whole Obama care issue. I do not agree that we needed out national debt to be added to or that we needed to stimulus package. That said, do I think Romeny would be better? Well, I don't know. I know people who know him and say he's a really nice guy. I'm sure there are people who know people who know Obama and say he's a really nice guy.

I wish that we could just lay out the qualifications and the track records of those who are running and let people decide. Campaignes are just a load of crap being flung out at the public for us to wade through. They are meant to target groups of people and that, I believe, is a form of racism.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

A Well Spent Friday Afternoon

I made one of these (the tan one) out of the black sequin fabric. I like it, but I like the front of another one I'd made better.

The one I liked better I made using this pattern.

I thought it wouldn't be too hard to combine the above two patterns to get one that I really like. I like the fact that there is a sleeveless option for the first pattern, and I like the way the front drapes better for the second pattern. Too hard to combine? No. Of course, I encountered difficulty immediately when I could not locate the second pattern. Hmmmm. Would this stop me? Never. I got the one I'd made using it, and went to work.

The beginnings.

 I found three pieces of tissue paper upstairs. Actually, I knew they were there so saying I found them isn't quite accurate. What I did find (but didn't really because, again, I knew it was there) was a cd/dvd case which is the subject of another post another day.

 Once I had the three pieces of tissue paper glued together, I copied some pertinent information from the pattern I had.

 Over that, I pinned the article of clothing I had and began copying more pertinent information. Always fun when working with this type of fabric--one of the 'silkies' from Joann's.

 It always amazes me how not straight a seemingly straight cut can be. Good grief.

 Here, I need to make the pattern for the arm hole work. The penciled in marks are about where the two corners of the pattern you see need to be. Food for thought. I played with it a bit and decided not to take a picture of every single thing I did otherwise there would be way too many. In the end, this is what I came up with:

 Pretty cool, eh?

 Another bit of amazement: the fact that the tissue paper that you just traded many minutes of your time for, just got folded up and looks like that much of nothing. Definitely not indicative of the time spent.

I just love scraps.

Filling the bobbin.

 Yet another bent needle. I seem to be exceptionally good at making these. I wonder if there's a market for them?

And the finished product. Not the greatest picture (which is why it's small) but you get an idea of what it's like, anyway. One of these days perhaps I'll get one of me wearing it.