Surviving Long Distance

Pinterest is one of my favorite places, certainly.  For someone like me, who loves to bake and craft and frequently needs to surf endless funny pictures on my phone in order to fall asleep, Pinterest can be such an interesting place of discovery.  And it is a great place for bloggers.  You can link your articles there, and with the right keywords, people from across the world may find themselves in your writings.

But sometimes Pinterest (and bloggers) get it wrong.

Stuff about long-distance relationships always comes up on targeted pages for me.  It's not a surprise, I've been in an LDR for about 3-1/2 years now, and I read, write, and talk about it a lot.  People blog about LDR a lot, which isn't surprising.  In the world we live in, where technology connects every corner, where the job market is what you make of it, where finances control so many decisions, a vast number of couples find themselves separated by distance for a least a little while.  And what most bloggers want you to believe is that there is some kind of recipe for surviving being apart, because that is what readers are looking for.  Couples who suddenly end up launched into the crazy mess of "how do we behave apart?" are looking for answers and methodologies and testimonials that show you exactly how to survive.

That's crap.

All of those articles are basically going to tell you the same things - don't rely on texting, Skype x number of times per month, include each other in decisions, be 100% honest, countdown to the next time you'll see each other, etc., etc.  None of these posts understand individuality, though.  None of them will tell you how awkward timezone transitions play in, how having a job that isn't M-F 9-5 can totally mess with together time, and how sometimes you just won't have a clue when you will be together again.

I haven't had a phone call from my other half in over a month.  We haven't Skyped since 2012.  I haven't seen him in about 18 months, and I couldn't even hazard a guess as to when I will see him again.  Sometimes we've both told white lies and had to apologize for them.  Sometimes we've had misunderstandings and screaming matches and angry silences and had to fight our way back from them.  Even with all that, though, we are still 3-1/2 years strong and committed to staying strong. And therein lies the secret.  The only thing that will get you through a long-distance relationship is wanting to.  It doesn't matter how "good" you are together or what your work/financial life is like or which timezones you inhabit.  If you are both committed and connected and try to be there for the other person as best you can, you will make it through to the other side.  You will be battered and bruised, yes, but you will be tougher as well.

Stay strong, all you long-distance lovers.

Quilt Designing

Like most females my age, I have an addiction to Pinterest. While I think Pinterest is fantastic with its sea salt body scrub recipes and fastest way to fit abs workout routines, one of the drawbacks of Pinterest is that your pins don't necessarily go anywhere.  This is especially true of my favorite Pinterest subject, quilting. I pin quilts because I love the picture – whether it's the colors, the pattern, or the textures that draw me in – without regard to where that picture leads. 

A couple months back, I spent an afternoon searching through my quilting board, looking for just the right pattern for a childhood friend's wedding gift. I finally found what I wanted in this Flickr picture:

photo credit

Unfortunately, that's all it was, just a photo with no link to a pattern, credit to a designer, description, or even a size.  That left me with few options, now that I was feeling like this had to be the quilt for them.

I decided to design my own pattern for a quilt inspired by the picture.  There are many upsides to making your own patterns, one being that you get the size you're looking for (my best guess would be that the quilt in the picture is twin- or full- sized, and I wanted a queen-sized).  Pattern making in quilting is easier than you might think, especially for a quilt that contains only basic shapes, in this case squares and half-square triangles.

These two items are my quilt designing must-haves: graph paper (any size you choose) and a fabric calculator.  Graph paper is essential.  At the heart, almost every single quilt is based on a series of squares and rectangles manipulated and arranged into beauty, and the graph paper helps get all those shapes into proportion without hours staring at a ruler.  I always have my FabriCalc with me during designing sessions, purely because it's faster to calculate yardage than using a pencil and regular calculator.  I highly suggest buying a fabric calculator only during sales, at a JoAnn/Michaels – my mom and I did so on Black Friday and got ours 50% off.

Other items you'll want to have handy:

• pencil (I think mechanical work best) with an eraser that won't smear
• colored pencils
• a pen to help differentiate between different areas where colors are similar
• scratch paper to write down yardages, do math, or whatever else you might need

With only those supplies and a short amount of time, you can have the pattern you want!  I finished my pattern in less than an hour – it probably wouldn't have taken that long, but I rearranged the stars a half-dozen times or so.

The final product

I will post pictures of the finished quilt in about two weeks, after my friend's wedding.  Right now, it is complete except for the binding, and I am very proud of it.  Here's hoping the happy couple loves it!

Leave any questions about my pattern making process in the comment section, and I'll be happy to answer them!

A Lesson in Patience

About two weeks ago, I packed up and took off to Montana for a week.  My best friend J was getting married, and there was obviously NOTHING that would stop me from being there.

I had prepared myself for the the emotions that were going to come with it.  You see, J's husband is in the Air Force, currently stationed in England, so a lot was about to happen.  In just a few short days, I got to see J again, met her husband for the first time, did everything in my power to help take some of the wedding chaos off her shoulders, put up with some of the more...colorful...guests, spent many many hours alone in the car with another of my close friends, and said goodbye to J before she jets off to her new home outside of London with a question mark where her return date goes.

And yet, weirdly, one of the most painful things to happen that week was a picture message from my mom.

About ten years ago, my dad and I built a nearly 200 sq ft flower bed for my mom, and ever since, she (with, okay, minimal help from me) has been turning it into a perennial garden, which means we spend the spring and summer waiting for everything we've already planted to pop up and bloom again.

I wait for the tulips and the lillies.  Those are "my" flowers.  This year has been a strangely soggy one for us here in Minnesota, and under the average temp too, so the growing season has been delayed.  My lillies still had not bloomed. And then a day after I arrived in Montana, they did. 

This has been a recurring theme for me, this feeling of missing out, of feeling the world's time slipping out of sync with my plan. It's a disaster. Despite my best efforts, at heart I am still a control freak. Losing my place feels like heartbreak – and getting back on track takes more than just hopping on one foot until the hitch in my ankle cures itself.

I cried about it, I did. Not just about the flowers, but about life and angst and feeling lost.  Then I got back on my feet, wiped my face, and moved on – talked to people, put together the wedding, danced the Cupid Shuffle and YMCA. Pretended I was on the right track. 

And when I got back home, I found this. 

The 52 Week Challenge Ends

This weekend has been awesome for me motivationally, because Friday was the end of the 52 Week Challenge.  After a week of hyper-emotions related to realizing it has been a year since my college graduation, getting to take the money out of my challenge box was just what I needed to feel like I'm making headway.

The Challenge is easy to start, but can be hard to stick to for one simple reason - once you get about halfway through, the amount of money going in your box (and out of your budget) every month gets pretty high, especially if you're not making a whole lot of money to start with.  My celebration on Friday when I went to the bank, though, was so worth it.  Not only am I now set for my best friend's wedding, but I added to my vacation fund AND got to write a check for six months of my student loan payments.  It is the best feeling to knock out so much debt in one fell swoop.