Domestic Geek

Happy Veterans Day.

I'm snuggled in bed cross-stitching and watching TV. I just got through watching a version of "Gypsy" on PBS. I've always loved that musical - I was in the pit in high school. It wasn't until tonight, though, that I realized that my mother was Rose. I'm not going to elaborate more than that on the Internet.

I hid or unfriended a lot of people on Facebook and unfollowed a bunch on Twitter. I can't take the hysteria or venom anymore. My life is not dictated by who is in the White House. I feel good about where my life is going and the constant negativity is not healthy for me.

I finally have a cross-stitch finish. It's Let's Sew by Ursula Michael. Not quite sure what I'm going to make with it yet. I'm gearing up to do a Stitch from Stash project for 2017 from a group I joined on Facebook. Basically, I set a budget for myself each month (in my case $25/mo.). You get credit towards your budget for finishes. Since I have my fabric for my Angel of Cross Stitch chart and a complete set of DMC floss, I've got plenty to keep me busy.

Today was my father's Military Funeral Honors Ceremony and burial at Fort Logan. I've been pretty strong though everything up to this point. I knew he didn't have much time left when I last saw him on my birthday in September. I've been expecting it for quite a while and was even a little glad when I got the call that he had passed as it meant he was no longer suffering. Sitting at the ceremony, though, I lost it when they started playing taps. As the next of kin, I also was presented with his flag. That was tough. I really am in awe of the service people who can perform that ceremony with dignity when those in attendance are grieving.

I'll probably go out tomorrow and visit the actual grave. He was to be buried by 4pm, but traffic in Denver sucks so bad and I was so exhausted, I couldn't face going back over today.

I didn't want to take many photos and be disrespectful, but I did take this one with the two servicemen taking the urn and flag from the car to the shelter where the ceremony was to be performed.

What does any self-respecting IT guy do when his house is in a totally different state? He installs cameras so he can keep an eye on the place.

My dear old father o' mine had his 76th birthday today. We went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner to celebrate where we got to finish watching the Broncos win over the Raiders. Dad also got his free scoop of ice cream while being sang to by a group of pretty ladies. Dad just loves people singing to him!

We also went off of Daylight Saving time today. I may have mentioned a time or two or three how much I hate this idiotic practice of jacking around with time. While it doesn't take as long to recover in the fall, I'm still going to be a mess for a couple of weeks. Lame.

I started the cutest little crochet pumpkin pie today. It's called Squeeze n' Sniff Pumpkin Pie on a blog called Crafty is Cool. Here's a link to my project page over on Ravelry if anybody is interested.This will adorn my desk at work later in the week. I was really hoping to crank it out today, but I'm having a bit of trouble with the whipped cream on top. My stupid perfectionism getting in the way again, I'm sure. I also got a late start on it because I couldn't find a darned size E crochet hook anywhere in this house and had to run to Jo-Ann's to get one. I know as soon as I finish this, I'll have E hooks coming out of the woodwork.

I'm watching A&E's Hoarders show on Netflix right now. I've seen many tweets and Facebook posts by friends that watch these shows saying they feel like cleaning after watching. I totally feel that way at the moment. It also disturbs me on another level.

I could easily become on of these people. One of the psychotherapists mentioned that hoarding is hereditary. Both my grandmother and my mother were hoarders. It seems that a lot of these people had a big trigger that started the hoarding. I did start hoarding to some extent after my mother passed. I was always trying to fill the void by buying stuff I know I didn't need. I couldn't let some things go that were obviously crap because they had either belonged to my mother or had some memory attached. I would bring home broken stuff from people's trash that I found while out delivering pizzas. I thought I was being thrifty and saving something from a landfill, but I see now that it was not the case at all. Most recently, I started doing it with yarn. I think I finally snapped out of it and I'm better now and am actually purging stuff, but a major life crisis could easily trigger something again.