A Much Less Depressing Update

I'm at a crossroads. 

I'm pregnant again; Holden is a year old, and Burgundy's almost done with high school and suddenly in love with all her opportunities. Yesterday she got herself appointed to the prom committee; today she picked up an application to join student council. Her Gold Award project is gathering its own momentum with one of the Assistant Principals now advocating with the district to allow her to use its facilities and advertise district-wide free of charge. She's spearheading an effort to get an elected student advisory committee for the Class of 2013 booster club, and she joined the district's robotics team, the Robonauts.

Meanwhile, we're trying to decide where to allocate our meager funds for traveling to potential universities over spring break. Rice remains her first choice university; she plans to apply there for early admission. Her second choice is Harvard, and Stanford and University of Chicago are tied for her third choice. After that she's lumped Princeton, University of Colorado, University of California, Abilene Christian University, University of Houston, Southern Methodist, Vanderbilt, and God Knows Where Else into her pile of, "Sure, we can try that," options. Since we live next door to Rice and they're already involved in her Gold Award project, we can tour there anytime. Her remaining, "OMG MOM I HAFTA TOUR THERE," options are in Massachusetts, Illinois, and California. We do NOT have that kind of money, so we have some tough choices. Harvard also is involved in her Gold Award project, so it seems prudent to tour there, and we can hit Princeton while we're at it.

I didn't mean for this entry to ramble on about Burgundy's school stuff, but I suppose that's the brain dump I needed.

How does all this put me at a crossroads? I guess because I don't know what to do with myself (other than survive). I would really like to bring in $500 a month regularly in home-based income by the end of the year. There are so many ways for me to make this happen that I feel like I can't possibly make any of them happen.

My options: Let me enumerate them for you:

1. Pampered Chef. I've done it before; I like their merchandise, and I like doing the parties. It feels crazy, but the tools sell themselves, and I really love cooking and teaching others how. 
2. Continue selling my bread. I have a couple of customers who would buy regularly if I baked regularly. So far, I haven't been able to make myself churn out a batch a week, much less the batch a day I would need to sell $500 in bread every month. It's do-able, though.
3. Tutor high school and early college students in English and writing.
4. Teach a class on finding and cooking local, sustainable foods.
5. Freelance writing and editing.
6. Prostitution. Ha ha, just checking to see who's reading.
7. No really, prostitution. Without a pimp, I could make a killing.
8. Okay, that took up three numbered options; any respectable list should have 10; surely I can come up with two more.
9. Home inventory: basically, I would help people inventory and document their homes' contents for use in the event they need to file with their insurance for hurricane, flood, or fire damage.
10. Life coach (because mine is going so brilliantly well). I seriously think the world could do with an attitude adjustment about fat people, and it needs to start with us fatties. Fat is not the problem; self-image, love of others, and poor nutrition and health are the problem.

Things I WON'T do:

1. Prostitution. Jeez, people. Give me a break. Nobody's going to pay a fatty for sex. I mean, I have WAY too much self-respect for that.
2. Knit for money. Just to make minimum wage, I'd have to charge something like $250 for a pair of socks. Too much work, not enough dollars.
3. Substitute teach. I am not a fan of other people's children at large. I love lots of individual offspring of other people. I do not want to endure abuse from the population of children at large in return for bureaucratic nonsense and $8/hour. Christ, I could do better with less abuse at Starbucks.
4. Work outside the home. I am qualified to make pretty decent dough working in the professional world, and I voluntarily gave that up to stay home with my children.
5. Ghost write someone else's blog for $.01 a word. Seriously? I can't even keep up with my own damn blog.

I have some pretty consistent problems (personal problems) that get in the way of making any of the money-making ideas work.

1. Follow-through. I no can haz. Really. My last order for bread (pizza crust, actually) was in October. I still haven't delivered. She's being very patient.
2. Enthusiasm. I get really sold on an idea really fast, and then I realize that in the grand scheme of things, I don't actually give a flying fart. See also #1.
3. Everything Else Life Demands. I usually don't have the energy to wash diapers and cook dinner in the same day. Running a business, even at 10 hours a week, seems a foolish idea if I can't keep the basics taken care of.

The foregoing lead me to a second conclusion: I have to do something about my energy and fitness levels. Please don't mistake this for, "I have to go on a diet and start exercising all the time because I'm FAT OMGWTFBBQ!" However, regular exercise contributes to better sleep and better energy levels, and I know it will make my next labor and delivery less agonizing. Better eating also contributes to better energy levels and improved overall health, and given my near brush with gestational diabetes during my pregnancy with Holden, it's imperative for health reasons to eat well right now. 

I hesitate to say, "From now on, I will take a 30 minute walk every day and eat only wholesome, local foods." I won't do either religiously; however, I've cooked every night this week, and tonight I made a delicious quiche with homemade crust and mustards harvested from my backyard five minutes before they were needed. 

Thus my crossroads. It isn't as easy as, "just commit." Even with healthful eating and daily exercise, sometimes I just don't give a rip. However, I only have two real resolutions this year, and both of them require me to be better organized, to increase my energy, and to put some routine and self-love into my day to day life. We'll see how it goes.

Why Homebirth, Part I

So I'm pregnant. Very exciting news, isn't it? Even more exciting is the news that it's sticking (for now); we're officially out of the first trimester, making it much easier to grin and announce the coming baby with gratitude and joy. That trepidatious sense of impending doom recedes a little more each day, and as my tummy begins to grow (only the faintest hint right now), so does the thrill and anticipation. Soon I'll feel movement (the quickening), and soon after that, Mark and Burgundy will be able to feel it from the outside. I'm making a baby.

Given how long and dearly we've wanted this child, some people have asked, all incredulous, why we would take the risk of a homebirth attended by a midwife. After all, isn't a hospital safer? Isn't a doctor more knowledgeable? For those who have been in my home, there's the gingerly asked (and possibly quite valid), "Um, is it sanitary enough?"

In a word, No, No, and NO. I mean Yes. The answer to the last question is definitely YES. No Freudian slips here; move along.

I want to spend several posts exploring these questions and the scientific evidence in favor of midwifery care (as opposed to obstetrical care) and home or birth-center-based labor and delivery. Childbirth is one of the most important rites of passage in our culture, and the way we approach care for this event in a woman and family's life has implications for safety, maternal and infant morbidity rates, cultural assumptions and attitudes toward life and toward the value of people. Childbirth is a fine example of the interconnectedness of life, love, science and progress. Childbirth is my soapbox, my love, a saving grace (for me). Healthy, normal childbirth is a passion, its promotion almost a mission for me.

These posts might be far between because I want to present them in a way that demonstrates the interdependencies of the childbirth process (for example, the well-documented "cascade effect" of our technological advances that has lead to our inexcusably high Cesarean rate in the US). I often find that when a person asks me about one thing, for example, electronic fetal monitoring, I don't do a very good job of presenting the big picture, the whole argument.

I begin discussion logically enough. Unfortunately, as I connect the dots mentally, I get a little rabid. I stumble over my own words; I get "Libertarian Eyes" (a term for the slightly wild-eyed look of a zealot in full-on Preach-the-Gospel-of-My-Cause mode coined by my friend Hannah in discussion of, um, excessively passionate people), and apparently, I lose my ability to form a coherent sentence.

When I come back to my senses, I'm out of breath, spluttering, and whomever I've just assaulted with a vitriolic denunciation of anything short of squatting in a rice paddy backs away slowly and refuses to return my calls for a month. As they back away, I follow them, saying things like, "And that's not even the half of it! I once discovered a coven of obstetricians mired in a Ritual Cesarean chanting insurance codes! I DID! And they are the reason that our society is crumbling! It’s the Demonic Obstetricians of DOOM! You must birth [spittle flies on the heels of birth; I pronounce it like a televangelist] NAKED! Do it for the CHILDREN [I begin to shout because they're running now]! JESUS WANTS YOU TO RECLAIM YOUR FEMINIST POWER! WHEN YOU BIRTH YOU BECOME A SUPER WOMAN; YOU ARE CAPABLE OF ANYTHING!"

So yes, I want to write something coherent and accessible. I want to write something that friends can read without thinking, "Christ on a cracker, don't tell her you're pregnant!" Most of all, I want it to be effective. I want people who read me, who stumble on my journal, to understand that there is a better way than epidurals, episiotomies, and cesarean sections. A safer way, a gentler way. A loving way.

The Anti-Pop-Tart Post

Aside from The List, I have personal goals and changes I want to pursue regardless of the impending crisis. I have posted a few times about our local eating efforts, and I want to expand that to local living. My friend Hannah and I talked last weekend about local living for hours while we drove to and from Brenham, Texas to buy fresh, local meat.

I concluded that I want to try to live and shop only in my own hemisphere, preferably only in North America. Yes, this means no more Belgian or German chocolate, and it means no more Ethiopian Sidama coffee. However, I can buy sustainably farmed coffee from this continent and hemisphere without paying for the tons of petrochemicals involved in transporting the Sidama from Africa. Sure, we still pay for oil to transport the coffee from Columbia (yeah, I know. Not my continent) or Central America, but it's certainly less than from Africa. And before you suggest it, no, I will not stop drinking coffee. Mother Earth can kiss my Heiny if she thinks I'm taking that one for the team.

This also means I need to shop for American-made clothes, shoes, electronics . . . you name it. I might not succeed all the time. Given the job situation, if I need a car part and it costs twice as much for American as for Asian, I might have to buy the Asian-made part for now. I feel I must at least make the effort, though.

Here are my proposed guidelines and challenges to myself:

1. The experiment will last six months: the period of time remaining before we enter the Season of Unemployment Armageddon.
2. 90% of food should be raised and grown within 200 miles of Houston. The only reason I'm giving myself such mileage is that most ranches and my source of raw milk are between 90 and 100 miles away. The only reason I'm giving myself a 10% freedom to buy from farther away is for items like coffee, chocolate, and avocados. I don't know if avocados grow within 200 miles of Houston or not, but I want to make sure I can have them.
3. 90% of consumer goods should be made on this continent. Again, I'm giving myself room so that if it turns out that the ingredients of my homemade laundry detergent are only made in China and I can't find any other US-made detergent, I'm not screwed. I want to make sure that I still can buy toilet paper, you know? Oh, and DH thinks I'm being dumb, so I need room to not have to fight with him about every little thing.
4. When we eat out, we suspend the experiment for obvious reasons; however, we should try to eat only at locally owned and run restaurants. I want to limit eating out to twice a month.
5. I want to prove a corollary theory: That while shopping only locally is more time consuming, it should be cheaper. It's true! Local, humanely raised chicken might be more expensive per pound (a lot more!), but if you eat less of it (a common surprise when people begin eating locally and in-season) and dress it with locally grown, in-season vegetables, it's practically the only expense of the meal. Our $12 chicken with $5 in vegetables from Sunday before last fed us for four days. That's about $4.25/day or $127.50/month. Um, that's cheap. The average American family spends about $289 on food prepared at home. Our current grocery budget is $90/week or $360 - $450/month for food and non-food items. I want to show at least a 10% reduction in food expenditures over the next six months. That means I should have $9 left at the end of each week. I'll put that money into an envelope and keep it in the desk.
6. I want to prove (for myself) another corollary theory: That eating locally is more healthful. I do not believe that weight loss is a good indicator of physical health, nor are body size and BMI. After thinking a lot about how to prove this, I've settled on bloodwork. I'm going to ask my doctor for a blood panel to figure out where I am right now. I'm not going to do anything differently than I do right now. I will not restrict calories or intentionally up my exercise. I won't not exercise either. I'll just do whatever comes naturally. I enjoy soccer, and the season is starting; therefore, I'll play soccer once a week if I feel up to it. At the end of the six months, I'll have another blood panel done. I'll publish the results of each panel here.

If any of you smart people out there can think of a better (read: less expensive) method to prove the healthful theory, please tell me in the comments.

As I re-read this for publication, a co-worker brought me a Pop-Tart, and I devoured it. I might have snorted the icing without ever once considering the irony of what's displayed on the screen. I might have, but I will neither confirm nor deny such an allegation. I have avoided bringing snacks and food to the office because I work only half-days. Clearly I need to change my approach. Pop-Tarts do not meet a single criterion listed above. They are everything that this effort seeks to remedy about my life. This post is my Manifesto! My Master Plan! My Anti-Pop-Tart.

Running: Week 3

As posted last week, I really didn't think we were ready to handle week 3 of the couch to 5K. For one thing, week 2 involved 90 second runs with 2-minute walks.  We could barely complete the 90-second runs; Burgundy kept cramping up, and I checked the timer on the iPod more obsessively than a condemned man with a watch.

Week 3 called for 3-minute runs. Twice as long as week two. I didn't think we were ready.

Thursday after posting my concerns, we didn't seize what would turn out to be our only opportunity to run that day. I felt mildly guilty, not because I feel like our running is tied to a particular daily schedule, but because I feared that I would make excuses all week, and then it would be too late.

So Friday after school, I picked Burgundy up, and we changed and headed out the door immediately. During the warm-up walk, we talked about strategies to handle the intervals, which were thus: 90-second run, 90-second walk, 3-minute run, 3-minute walk; we were to repeat these once for a total of 4 running intervals: 2 at 90 seconds and 1 at 3 minutes. 

We talked about how we would regulate our breathing, not run too fast, and generally take special care not to exhaust ourselves in the first 30 seconds of the long intervals.

The first interval flew by, and as we finished the follow-on walk, we internalized our concerns and pep-talked ourselves. The three-minute run started. For my part, I noticed that it didn't start to truly hurt until the two-minute point. At the end of the following walk interval, we realized that we were halfway done. We stared at each other in amazement.

It felt easy. Energizing. The rest of the run flew by, and we felt good. Now put that in your pipe and smoke it. Day 2 (Saturday) also was easy even though we had to do it back-to-back with day 1. Skipping on Thursday really did throw off our whole rhythm, though. We have to run on Thursdays from now on. Thursday, Saturday, and Tuesday. We can do that.

We skipped Tuesday, too. A cold front blew in, we could hear the wind howling outside, and the thought of braving the elements for a run sounded almost as appealing as spending the night in a used iron maiden (photo courtesy of TravelJournals.net.

Yesterday I regretted that decision a little when we started our final run of the week after a three-day hiatus and enjoyed a light sprinkling of rain from start to finish in 50-degree temperatures. We did it, though. We finished week 3.

For what it's worth, I don't think I've lost so much as an ounce of weight since starting. I couldn't say for sure because I won't replace the batteries on my scale and haven't weighed myself since December.

I'm honestly relieved, because I feel such peace about loving my body just where it is, skinny or fat be damned. I feared that by taking up running, which I genuinely enjoy, I would start to lose weight, get excited about that, and lose this peace I feel. I'm also relieved to find that I don't feel any disappointment about the lack of weight loss since starting. 

Mmm, Bacon and Marshmallows

With a big deadline here today, my management has asked me to work a "double" (an 8-hour day instead of a 4-hour day) and take Friday off. While on the one hand, I was looking forward to getting into the routine of half-days, my routine of the last couple of days indicates I probably will be safer at work.

Monday: Left work at 11. Called Tabby for lunch, but she didn't answer. Drove home, wandered around the house for a few minutes. Found some marshmallows. Ate the marshmallows. Opened the fridge and saw bacon.

On the pretext of needing to eat lunch, heated up the last of the corn and potato chowder from last week. Made bacon. Ate a piece of bacon. Grated some cheese. Ate some cheese. Ate another piece of bacon. Resisted temptation to eat more marshmallows.

Poured the soup into a bowl and used bacon and cheese as intended: to garnish lunch. Ate the chowder.

Tabby called back and came over with her daughter. Made more bacon. Ate the bacon. Tabby left. I napped.

So let's see: Eat, Cook, Eat, Nap. Not good. Maybe day 2 will be better?

Tuesday: Left at 11:30 (ish). Came home, wandered around the house. Called Hannah to confess unreasonable desire to eat bacon and marshmallows. Found bag of M&Ms on the refrigerator. Ate M&Ms. Called Mom. Grated laundry soap, and made a box of mac & cheese. Ate the mac & cheese. Picked up Burgundy and friend from school; took them to McDonald's. Bought them lunch. Bought a chicken nugget meal. Ate the meal. Washed it down with a Dr. Pepper. Came home. Wandered around the house.

Eventually called Mark in hopes that he would say something like, "I'm out of clean underwear; could you process a load of whites?" Instead, he said, "I don't know, what needs to be done? Maybe you should take a nap." I decided we'd been long enough without balancing the checkbook, so I worked on that.  So diligently that I worked right through the 3:00 PM doctor appointment I'd set for Burgundy, not giving it another thought until about 9:00 last night.

This can't go on. I love bacon; I love marshmallows; I love macaroni and cheese and m&ms. But eating them all together because I can't figure out what I'm supposed to do for myself is both a recipe for expanding the budget to include new clothes (not on the agenda) and for feeling really terribly physically.

So yeah. I'm staying at work all day by request, and I'm kinda relieved.

Fatty Fat Fat

I am hungry. It’s 8:30 AM; I ate breakfast two hours ago. And I’m ravenous, which is hilarious considering how fat I am. How does a person who stays hungry all the time end up fat? It’s the worst possible catch-22. I’m miserably hungry while dying of over-nutrition.

Well, not literally dying this very minute. Factually speaking, I’m healthy as a horse, low cholesterol, etc. But “dying of over-nutrition” sounds a lot catchier than, “at increased risk of various nasty diseases due to over-nutrition.”

I’ve been pondering this conundrum a lot lately. I’ve discovered several bloggers (starting with Kate Harding* and Jezebel; Kate Harding seems the most . . . rational) who are decidedly fat-happy, who insist that our culture is more fat-phobic than it is actually concerned with healthy living. To support themselves, they cite scientific studies that supposedly disprove the links between heart disease and obesity, diabetes and obesity, high blood pressure and obesity, osteoporosis and obesity, etc. I only say supposedly because to be honest, I didn’t read the cited studies.

Why not?

For starters, I’m lazy. There, now you all know my dirty secret. Dirtier even than the fact that I read all three Twilight novels. Dirtier even than the way Soren eats only my and the girls’ underpants, not Mark’s. I’m lazy, and I don’t want to wade through the studies myself. But you know what? I’ve never read the studies that supposedly prove the links either. Why should I take the media’s word for one side of the debate but not the other?

Add to that my current reading project, Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, and I started to think that the “Fat Acceptance” (FA) arguments make a whole lot of sense. For starters, no one I’ve read in the FA community argues the correlation between obesity and the various diseases. They’re arguing the common belief in causation. That’s basic statistics: Correlation /= Causation.

For general hilarity, see XKCD.

To me, this makes perfect sense. The idea that highly processed, genetically modified, mass-produced foods could cause a host of diseases and problems in the human body, including obesity, makes perfect, genius sense to me. The idea that a person can exist outside the Government-defined normal body type and be healthy also makes sense to me.

For years, I have told myself that dieting is about my health, not my weight. Yet when I have been at my healthiest, I have continued to berate myself for not making the scales move. I rode the MS150 twice, and during that time I believed I was unhealthy because I weighed 30 pounds more than the top of my acceptable weight range. That is simply delusional. One can not ride 167 miles on a bicycle in two days if one is unhealthy.

It made me think: What if I say, “To hell with dieting?” Some of the healthiest people I know eat real butter. Drink whole milk. Feast on nuts of all kinds, fatty avocados, and choice cuts of beef. They eat bacon and eggs for breakfast and put real butter and homemade jam on their homemade bread. Likewise, I know incredibly unhealthy people who live on Taco Bell, Wendy’s, and peanut butter *cough* my husband *cough* who are incredibly skinny.

An aside: Actuarial tables don’t lie. They’re used by insurance companies to price life insurance. DH is 70 pounds underweight, while I am about 50 pounds overweight. DH’s insurance is significantly more expensive than mine specifically because he is underweight.

It’s a frightening decision for me to make. I don’t want to get any fatter, but the truth is, I’ve been dieting for years, and I’m still getting, well, fatter. I think what I’m really afraid of is the problem at the heart of any success: personal responsibility. I’ll have to be responsible for my food choices.

I’ll have to make real changes that look an awful lot like a diet but actually fly in the face of dieting “wisdom.” I’ll have to eat things like avocados and walnuts instead of Powerbars and diet sodas (with which I have never defiled my body, but that's a post for a different day). I’ll have to stop drinking the soy milk I’ve loved for years and convert to raw, whole milk (I can't drink the pasteurized, homogenized stuff). I’ll have to cook daily and pack my lunch; no more Lean Cuisine. I’ll have to make my own sweets to get the corn syrup out of my life, and that means no more Kit-Kats, 3 Musketeers, or toffee from the candy bowl in the secretary’s office. Because if I’m feeding myself poison, what does it matter if I do it in moderation?

The biggest decision I have to make is, “Am I willing to be fat if I am healthy?” Because there’s not much chance that eating only whole, unprocessed foods will make me thin. No more chance than there is that dieting will make me thin. Because seriously? Diets don't work. And I don't want to go there. I want to be healthy, and I don't want the size of my ass (large or small) to get in the way of my pursuit of health.

I have no answer here; only thoughts on where to go. I like the idea of eating whole foods exclusively. I don't know that I like the idea of accepting being fat, but I'm so tired of fighting it.

*Uh, fair warning: Kate Harding comes with a healthy dose of obscenity. Her points are cogent and well made. And laced with profanity. Right, carry on.

Damn Achilles! Stupid Weaknesses.

I had a plan. Plan development is Dangerous Business in my world. It invites Uncle Murphy over. He likes to mess with plans.

I play soccer with a team called the Dirty Leprechauns. Betcha can’t guess what our primary team color is. Anyway, I play defender, and day before yesterday, our team had a game at 10:30.

I’m not a natural redhead, by the way.

Last week when I played, I developed a nasty cramp in my left calf due to inadequate stretching and warm up. I had to sub myself off the field, stretch it out, have Mark rub it down, and although I continued to play, I took it easy for the rest of the game.

Notice the significant weight loss over the previous week. The camera lies.

This week, I was smarter. I started with a good, long stretch of each leg and a brisk walk before the game. I started this week, and went out there and worked myself up. So far, so good. After a little while, I subbed off to catch my breath and stretch a little more. After maybe five minutes, I went back on to play right defense. It’s apropos of nothing, but I usually play left d.

Anyway, I jogged back onto the field and made a few runs. After about five minutes, my calf suddenly seized in the same spot very painfully while I was running. I slowed my pace, and at the end of that play tried to stretch it out a little without leaving the field. A couple of minutes later, I began to sprint downfield to support; on the second step, I felt a significant “pop” inside my leg accompanied by a sound that in my head was a cross between a “thock” and a snap. I might have imagined this, by the way. I was on a field by a major road with lots of yelling teammates nearby. I put my foot down and promptly died of the pain.

Yes, death totally flattened my hair. And my butt really is that big. This stands as my most life-like self-portrait ever.

I had to be carried off the field by teammates, and K (the one I mentioned before? The one who’s trying to get away from sick people?) had to come and drive me to the Urgent Care (after driving me to the high school to let them know I wouldn’t be able to keep my commitment to judge at 12:45, then home for my phone charger, then to Wendy’s so I wouldn’t die of starvation [is not impossible], then back to the soccer field so I could get my purse out of my car and pay for the urgent care, noting on the way that I had forgotten to get my purse, but not my knitting).

Urgent Care confirmed that nothing broke, but the doctor thinks I tore my Achilles tendon. He said we’ll have to see an Orthopedist and get an MRI to know for sure. In the meantime, he put me in an Airboot and gave me crutches. I have a standard transmission car, so I can’t drive. Poor Mark has become my personal chauffeur, which is seven levels of awesome in my book. Mark doesn’t necessarily agree.

Are you laughing at my crutches?

Rethinking My Approach

Warning: This might be a little TMI

I've recently experimented with making my own menstrual pads, and I think I've found a design that I genuinely like and will stick with. It's very simple, and I think I can just layer terrycloth between two layers of flannel, draw the shape onto the top layer of flannel, pin it all down, then use my sewing machine's "overlock" stitch to stitch around the outline on the flannel.

This will allow me to use the overlock stitch more effectively. If I cut the pieces out first, the overlock stitch bunches up the edge and looks bad. I'm looking forward to trying out this new plan when I get more free time.

Meanwhile, while looking for design ideas and options, I stumbled across a thread where people were discussing the use of cloth handkerchiefs. I have always preferred cloth hankies, but I've never been willing to shell out the money to buy them. So I'll make them.

I don't know why this never occurred to me before, but my house is crawling with large scraps of fabric. I have a nice cotton bedsheet that ripped a while back and has been waiting to be repurposed. I have half a pillowcase likewise waiting for a new purpose. I can't count the number of quilt fabric scraps that are too large to trash but don't really "go" with any of my projects.

I plan to whip out some nice, pretty hankies for my girls for Christmas using the quilt fabric, and I'll use the pillowcase and sheet to make them for me and Mark. The pillowcase was a new one, so I'll decorate those carefully and give them to Mark for Christmas. The sheet hankies will just be for regular use and to get the family used to the idea.

I hope my family doesn't get angry with me for making so much of their Christmas. I have a few really exciting handmade gifts for my girls.