Beep Beep

I found these little buildings at Archivers and thought they would be perfect for my little robot to climb over. I am not quite sure what beep beep means in robotese yet, will figure that out. I am doing this card for my Card Club group. I had to fill in the scene with the tree, sidewalk and fire hydrant. I colored with Copics. The robot is part of a stamp set by Stampendous, the buildings are by Clear Stamps, and the alphabet is Purple Onion Designs. One down only 11 more more to go.

I am doing a monthly ATC swap. The theme for March was By the Sea. Well, I just can't leave well enough alone and do a proper sea theme. I love this little monkey. He is just perfect for a "Sea Monkey". The stamp is a design from Deadbeat. The alphabet is Hampton Arts and the rest is hand drawn by me. Used copic markers to color.

Thanks for stopping by. I do appreciate it.

Sweater in a Weekend - Kinda Sorta

I made two resolutions this year. One was to be a kinder, gentler person (especially at work) and the other was to really learn to knit. I have been taking classes for the knitting. This is working really well, the other resolution - well that is another story for another day.
I love sitting and knitting with others who are at the same skill level that I am. So I took a huge step and signed up for a class where you can complete a sweater in a weekend.
You can if you do nothing but knit. We started the class, Friday at 6:00 pm and knitted until 9:30. Got up Saturday morning, knitted some more, then headed back to the store and knitted until 5:00pm. Came home and knitted some more. Started knitting again on Sunday, left for the store at 12:30 and knitted until I got everything done but one sleeve. My hands were tired by Sunday afternoon.
The gals in the class were awesome. There were four of us and the instructor. Took turns bringing in treats to snack on. Talked about everything. Had a blast. A wonderful relaxing way to spend a weekend.
Here is a picture of the finished product. I did finish the sleeve by the next weekend. It is a very bulky yarn and a heavy sweater, perfect for Minnesota weather. Now if I can just figure out how to adapt the pattern for a baby sweater.

And the results are....

I had my stress test and echocardiogram on Thursday. The results were good. There was no damage to my heart. The MD said that things looked pretty good. He was very concerned about the level of stress and the jump in my blood pressure and recommended that I go get my self a new pair of walking shoes and do some power walking. I am not going to have to take any medication for the blood pressure at this time. He wants me to watch that and if it continues to go up, then we can look at what is needed.

I was so relieved. Thank you for your well wishes and good thoughts. They really helped.

Off to my knitting class. Going to knit a sweater in a weekend.

Got Heart?

Life can really throw you a curve when you least expect it and cause you to lose heart. This is what happened to me.

Work has been really stressful lately and I am not handling it well. Recently, I have been experiencing chest pains. I wasn't worried because 14 years ago, I was diagnosed with a problem that affects, what the MD said was the electrical wiring in my heart. It is like the wiring is crossed or short circuited. This creates an additional beat in my heart. When stressed or I have had to much caffeine, I also get a wobble. I have been able to control this for the most part over the years by limiting my caffeine and practicing relaxation techniques when I felt stressed.

The stress at work is so bad right now that I am not doing a good job with either of these things. The end result, the wobble is back, Blood pressure is elevated and I have been having chest pains that I am not able to stop, because I can't relax enough.

Last Friday, I came home with chest pains and tried to relax, hoping they would stop. They didn't, they kept getting worse. I was also experiencing dizziness. OK - no laughing here, it was more dizziness than my normal dizzy self. Asked Mike to take me to the ER to get checked out.

The good news in all of this is that I was not having heart attacks and there is no damage to my heart at this point. The bad news is that there is a problem in the left ventricle of my heart that is causing the chest pain and my heart to continue to wobble around quite severely in my chest.

I will be having a stress test and an electrocardiogram on Thursday, Feb 19 to figure out what is happening and what I am going to need to do to take care of this. I know that this is probably the end to my coffee habit. I am so going to miss that morning cup.

This whole experience has made me tired. But at least I know why my creative juices have dried up. Hard to be creative when you are just plain tired. Typically I don't share this kind of information about myself, especially on the Internet where anyone can read it. I do have a reason for deciding to do this now.

Life is to short to let people that you have no emotional attachment with get to you to the point that you suffer extreme stress. Work is necessary, but it is just a paycheck. There are more important things in your life and that is what you should focus on. Family is important, friends are important, being able to have a life outside of work that you enjoy is important. I let my work become the most important thing in my life to the extent that it has now caused me a health problem that will not go away easily.

My point here is to remind everyone that in these stressful and uncertain times, don't forget what is truly important in your life. Keep those things close to you. I don't know when I lost track of this, but I am back on track. I got heart.

It's been awhile but I am back

The holidays and work have left me little time or energy to do much else recently. Yesterday when I was looking at my calendar, I noticed that I had missed two birthdays, one of which was my darling niece. I had picked up these fun sentiment stamps last weekend, which was good because I really wanted to use them.

I actually had a spurt of energy last night and a nano-second of creativity. Her card will go in the mail today. The sentiment is Inkadinkado, the cat is Eat Cake Graphics (Thank you very much Keri-Lou), the ice cream cone is Purple Onion Designs. I drew the balloon. Use Prismacolor pencils for the color. For Missy Eiren, the best part of this card will be the check inside. Happy Birthday darling girl. Sorry I am late - again.
This is the other sentiment that I bought last weekend. I had to use this little cat again, he is just so cute. The inside says, "I would give you all of my candy bar." This one will go to a very special friend.

I colored this one with Copic Markers. I drew what is suppose to look like a candy bar. Hmmmmm. Not sure that it actually looks like a candy bar but you get the drift. The sentiment is Inkadinkado and the cat is Eat Cake Graphics. I used a white gel pen to make the stitches.

I am headed to Anchor Paper today and would like to pick up a couple more of these sentiments. They are wood mounted. I would buy them all if they came unmounted. I am also going to have a nice cup of coffee with my friend Suzie today and catch up. It is so wonderful to have such lovely friends. Family is your rock, but friends are the flowers that grow around that rock and enrich your life. My rock had lots of wonderful flowers around it. My life is enriched.