The Doldrums

I've been absent, I know, but I didn't realize it's been almost a month since I last posted.  Life has been piling on to the point I didn't feel like saying much.  

I mentioned in an earlier post about the cloud no longer accepting my photos.  No sooner had I gotten that situation resolved than I learned my computer memory is nearly full.  So my sweet husband purchased this external drive to store my photos and other stuff I don't need daily access to.

(Don't you love my cool mousepad?)

Then I got a message on my phone that the memory is nearly full!  Thinking the daily dose of great-grandbaby photos might have something to do with that, I asked my techy son and he advised that I should check my phone storage in settings because that message could have been spam.  Indeed, I have only used 1/3 of my available space!

But, really, things have been going downhill since late April when I developed a severe pain in my left side.  I was so convinced that it was a gastro-intestinal issue that I was actually looking forward to the dreaded colonoscopy at the end of July!  Not only was there no GI issue, but I had complications from the procedure and spent nearly two days in the hospital.  The upside of this is I lost 10 pounds! And I'm doing my level best not to put the pounds back on.  

The consensus of the medical community is my problem is in my back.  Medicare won't pay for an MRI until I go through PT.  And while I was considering whether I wanted anyone messing with my back when we don't know exactly where the problem lies, I came down with Covid (along with almost our entire small church congregation).  Yes, we've all been vaccinated and boosted so fortunately most of us only had a mild case of whatever variant is going around here.  

And while down with Covid I developed tooth pain, probably not related.  The upside is I now have a new local dentist -- no more 2-hour drives back to Nashville.

I was able to get a few things accomplished in the sewing room with what little energy I could muster.  

All of the Christmas Cross blocks are finished and the strippy columns are ready to be joined together this week at Devo and Sew.

I also stitched the Zinnia blocks into columns.

After a good pressing, the columns will go together soon.  As is, it's about square so I'm debating if I want to add borders and, if so, how big?  

The big push right now is preparation and packing for Quilt Camp class in a little more than a week.  I have all the students' kits ready to go.  Now I need to make sure I have all my supplies, plus a project of my own to work on while I'm proctoring the Studio on the last two days.  There will be three of us going in my van, so we need to pack efficiently.