*Sigh*

Are you wondering why there's no picture? Hm...so am I...LOL I've had a perfect Monday...full of chaos and mania! The local TV station in Baltimore always has people gathering in a public place on Monday morning singing "It's Just Another Manic Monday". I should have been out there singing a solo because that suited me to a T today!

A few days ago I started a new sampler. I love this sampler, it looks so pretty on the blog that I found it on! I know I should have the website listed here, but at the moment, I can't recall the web address. I'll post it when I post a picture in a few days. Anyway...as I said, it looks so pretty on the blog. The pattern isn't that hard to follow. I decided to stitch this on a hand dyed fabric called Meadow Rue to give it an older appearance. The colors they called for didn't really suit the fabric, so I substituted. They looked great lying there on the fabric! Really they did! And then I started stitching....and one of the colors disappeared! Yikes! I stitched a few of the other colors to make sure I liked them stitched into the fabric and they seemed fine...so back to the LNS I go this morning, driving 30 minutes one way in pouring, torrential rain. (I'm desperate to start this one, can you tell????)

I guess I should pause for effect here and tell you that I haven't had much sleep in the past few days. I'm not sure why I'm not sleeping well, but I have been waking up from dreams that I can't recall later and then taking a long time to fall back to sleep. And we all know what sleep deprivation and rainy days does to a person...I feel like a walking zombie, so hopefully I'm making some sense here...LOL.

I get the opinion of two of my friends that work at my LNS and we agree on a skein of floss two shades darker, hoping that it's lighter than the other darker green I have already stitched. I race home (again in the driving rain) to frog all the lighter green I had stitched, which isn't easy when you are stitching on evenweave fabric over one!! It takes a lot longer to frog than to stitch this piece I must say! I begin to stitch a few stitches with the new color and you can barely distinguish it from the other color. I wanted it to be subtle, not invisible or overbearing...and I had got it wrong again! Back to frogging...but fortunately I realized my error only after a few stitches (that was the one good thing that happened today! LOL). Now it was too late to go back to the store before DS came home from school....so I wait, and wait, and wait.

Finally he squishes through the door (still raining cats and dogs out there) and I ask him if he wants to run to Michaels with me (it's closer than the LNS) and he says, "Are you kidding me Mom? Have you seen it raining out there? And besides I have homework, and going to Michaels with you is worse that torture, that's just plain inhumane! It's the equivalent of spending time at Guatanimo Bay!" I promise him I will not look at anything along the way to the floss, I know which colors I'm going to get, I'll use cash and we'll be out of there in 10 seconds flat! His response "Yeah right Mom, I've heard that one before...forget it, I'd rather stay home and do homework!" He knows me too well!

So off I go alone in the pouring rain once again (praying I won't nod off)...and I realize on my way that it's that time of day when EVERYONE is on the road. People rushing out to pick kids up from school, or drop them off at this or that activity and Maryland drivers are not known for their patience in inclement weather. I should have listened to DS! Anyway, I'm out there now, and of course, I can't resist looking at each nook and corner of Michaels, I mean after all there might be something on sale that I can use at a later date! And indeed I did find some bargains, but I limited myself to $20.00 because that's all the cash I had on me. LOL I got some ribbon, a glass canister, some metallic thread, some fabric, and...oh yeah, the floss I needed! I'm such a shopaholic!

Finally I make it home after the battle of the beltway but by now I'm a wimpering mess. I'm drenched, I'm exhausted, I'm chilled to the bone, and I have three hungry animals looking at me wondering what I'm going to put in their food dishes for dinner. I'm talking about DH, DS, and Thomas the cat! LOL With a huge sigh of exhaustion I scream "Fall out for dinner!" then throw open the refridgerator door and sandwich meat and hotdogs fall out. I know....not at all healthy, but the best I can do in my current state of mind.

With dinner and dishes out of the way, the homework wars finally ended and the dust settled, I'm finally able to sit down and put a few stitches in my new piece. The color is as close to perfect as I think I'm going to get so I'm happy with it now....but as I'm stitching.......I discover a MISTAKE! *Heavy sigh* More Frogging! EGAD! My head is spinning with all the frogging, restitching, frogging and restitching again. I've finally placed it gently (after barely restraining myself from pitching it across the room) near my stitching chair, all the mistakes PAINSTAKINGLY removed and ready to begin anew tomorrow. I have nowhere to go and nothing to do, so tomorrow I'm going to put my feet up, watch a movie I recorded the other night, and be one with my new project. After all, Manic Monday is over and tomorrow is going to be Tame Tuesday.....Right? Please tell me I'm right...or they'll have to have me comitted!