By @Sunshynknits for ME!!!!!!!

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Me: Can you make me a sleeveless cowl with an asymmetrical hem that is fitted like a vest that I can wear over a long sleeve t-shirt and not be cold or under a coat but not get too hot?

Susan: Um...I've never made one before but sure! Let's do it!

Also me: I want it to be chunky but with really good yarn stuff so it's soft and not itchy.

Susan: Yarn stuff...Monnie you funny. Color?

Also me too and again: Oatmealish. Me no likey itchy.
Baaaaaaaaaaby...when I tell yall how happy I am with my oatmealish chunky really good yarn stuff vest thingy...I can't even begin! GO ME!

GO SUSAN! YOUR TALENT BLOWS ME ABSOLUTELY AWAY! THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! And thank you for all of my other goodies too!

Contact her via www.Instagram.com/sunshynknits if you're looking for something amazing like this for yourself or as a gift! Or let me know and I'll connect you!

Broke Back

Two weeks before Thanksgiving, I was in a rush to complete some pieces for Small Business Saturday at my shop.  I was rocking and rolling and went to pick up a deceptively heavy piece of furniture.  Nothing I haven't done before, I just picked it up wrong.  I picked it up so that the drawers were away from me and they slid out, quickly, and pitched the forward.  I felt something "give" in my back and the pain started radiating immediately.  I couldn't pick up my right leg or stand up.  I slid to the ground and rolled over on my back with my knees bent and my feet on the ground.  It was the only way I could find any relief.

Actual pic of me on ground waiting on The Robinator.

The Robinator was in his office on a series of conference calls before he had to go to the office and, since my phone was in my pocket, I slipped it out and called him sounding really calm.

Robby:  Hello?  (sounding like...WHY YOU CALLING ME FROM OUTSIDE???????  YOU KNOW I'M BUSY!!!!!!!)

Me:  Heyyyyyy (sounding all casual like I'm just shooting the shit)...when you have an opportunity, can you come outside and help me with something?

Robby:  Yeah, okay, okay...in a minute.

So...I did what any red-blooded American with a smartphone in their hand would do.  I surfed Facebook until he showed up.  Snapped a few pics.  You know...the norm.  LOL!

He came out about 10 minutes later casually strolling.  When he saw me on the ground, his face registered mild confusion because hey...sometimes I just sit or lay on the ground...I'm country but when he got closer and I told him that I'd messed up and he saw the dresser on the ground near me haphazardly, he started moving faster.

I couldn't move.  The pain was getting worse.  He carried me upstairs because, I wasn't about to go to the doctor looking like I was looking, called the doctor and rushed me in.

Link Taylor piece that took me out.  Old super heavy, super well-made nightstand.  Humph.

Doctor determined it was a bad sprain.  Yall...I couldn't move my right leg without severe pain and screaming.  He suggested I get a steroid shot.  I declined.  He gave me some anti-inflammatory meds and muscle relaxers.  Silly me, I thought muscle relaxers were pain pills.

They aren't.

After waking everyone up screaming a few times in the middle of the night because I was trying to turn in my sleep, I called the next morning for pain meds.

I was told that my doctor doesn't prescribe pain meds.  To anyone.  Of any kind.

Wait, what?

This has been our doctor for 3 years now.  Neither of us have needed pain meds for anything.  But baaaaaaaaaby...if we need pain meds...DAMMIT...WE WANT PAIN MEDS.  So I did my thing I do when I'm trying to get what I want and or need.  After going around and around, turns out, the truth is that our doctor (ex-doctor cuz yeah...no) doesn't have a DEA license so he CAN'T prescribe pain meds.

Oh.

And this is how the opioid crisis ends up affecting us.  When we were in for real serious pain...we can't get pain meds. I was incensed.

Once I got some pain meds and was able to start stretching without that severe pain, I started moving better.  The worst part, however?  The drive to and from Houston for Thanksgiving at my sister's house.  SO TERRIBLE.  And the pain meds made me toss my cookies so I had to take half doses after eating two chewable Tums to coat my stomach first.  My body was so filled with foreign stuff I never take that I looked and felt completely different. 

When we returned home, I stopped taking everything to flush out my system even though my back still hurts. I can't deal with that hazy, super swole feeling and truly don't know how anyone can.  So I'm doing yoga, stretching and, to quote The Robinator, "sit your azz down somewhere and stop doing stuff!"

But see...that's hard for me.

The Robinator has not let me pick up anything heavier than my toothbrush.  He has been the most hilarious nursemaid the world has ever produced.  Let's me know what I'm in for as we grow old together.  *sigh*  Pure comedy. 

The whole, no DEA license thing was news to me and something I guess we all need to be aware of with our doctors.  People like us aren't trying to score drugs so to leave us in pain because a doctor CAN'T prescribe something to take us out of pain is just WRONG.

Humph.

Did yall know about the DEA license thing?  Would you use a doctor as your primary care doctor who didn't have one knowing that if you really hurt yourself he/she couldn't get you out of pain using pain meds?

Have you ever hurt your back?  What did you do to fix it?  Do you still have problems with it after you hurt it the first time?  Or did it completely go away?

Praying + Preying: Roy Moore and Rian Rodriguez

I stopped watching the morning news a long time ago because it put me in a foul mood watching a lot of current events go down.  In fact, I got up one morning and started unhooking the bedroom television in a fit of rage.  I couldn't take it off the arm so I had to wait for Robby to do that and he did so quickly knowing I was fed up with the ridiculous noise squawking from the damn thing every morning.

I went for almost a year without a television in the bedroom.

When Hulu Live TV started, we got rid of cable finally (we had to get it again at the level where The Robinator could watch his games because he realized he didn't want to live without his beloved Ravens) but on the day "This Is Us" returned, we realized that Hulu Live TV didn't show NBC Live and there was a scramble to get a television up and running with an antennae where I could watch.

I drove that word train all around the track to basically say...we have a television in our bedroom again and I have been slowly adding morning news, ON OCCASION, back into my diet.

This morning was one of them.

I watched a segment of Roy Moore, Republican Senate candidate who molested 14 and 15 year old girls so much so that a local mall BANNED HIM FROM THE DAMN MALL FOR SEXUALLY HARASSING KIDS.  He was giving a speech in a Baptist church last night.  He was standing at the pulpit and out of his mouth came words like "protecting our conservative values" and "God wants..." blah, blah, blah...

Moore walked up to the pulpit with a bible in his hand.  He opened the bible and started speaking. He spoke of his soul being tried and the soul of the nation being tried.  He praised that dude in our White House and he called upon his work as "God's work."  He disparaged gays, etc.  He spoke to applause.  A church filled with applause.  The pastor of the church got up and said that it is ILLEGAL to interrupt a worship service and that hecklers would be turned over to the police who were waiting outside.  Moore leaned HEAVILY on the Christians in the church.  Christians he considers, JUST.LIKE.HIM.

To me, he represented evil.  Pure, sick evil.  Holding the bible.  Quoting scripture.  Standing at the pulpit of a Baptist church PRAYING. Knowing he'd PREYED upon those girls.

Oh.

That church is DIRTY for that.  Dirty, dirty, dirty.

The very next segment showed a nationwide manhunt, which started in Florida, for 27-year-old, Rian Rodriguez who appears to be traveling with 17-year-old Caitland Friscina.  There is footage of him in a pawn shop in NC and they think they are headed to Canada.  Authorities are asking Rodriguez to turn himself in and the pundits are expecting Rodriguez to be caught within the week.  

You know...cuz he's not running for Senate.

And his last name is Rodriguez.

He won't be invited to speak at the church house.

SIP:  They might shoot his azz...

Queue the music folks! "O'er the laaaaaaand of the freeeeeeeeeeee and the hoooooooome of the braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaave!"

Kitchen Island for Small Kitchen

My kitchen is pretty small and, when cooking big meals, I tend to run out of countertop space really quickly.  I've often wished I had an island so I've been keeping my eye out for something I could use as such.

I ran across this piece recently and recognized that it was the perfect height for what I needed so I bought it.  It is pretty heavy and has wheels so it will be easy to move closer to the electrical outlets in the kitchen for mixing and whatnot.  It's also going to be perfect to roll the turkey out so The Robinator can carve it the next time we host Thanksgiving!  (Not this year.)  It is the PERFECT place to cool cakes as you can see!

But...you know me.  I can't leave well enough alone.  I want it to be more functional like this piece:

So...I have plans for it.  I'm going to add some oil rubbed towel bars and a tray shelf in the middle so that when I roll it around, things don't fall off.  And I might make the tray shelf jazzy.  Too many neutral things make my eye twitch.  I need COLOR IN MY LIFE!!!!!!!  Of course I'll find a great rug to put under it to ground the piece.

What do you think?  Do you have a small kitchen too?  If so...would you consider a standalone island like this?

Furry Coat Fun!

I needed some headshots done so I called this guy:

Josh of JBW Photography

See those looks on our faces?  That's because we'd just finished with some ridiculously good fun!  See...I just needed headshots but I'd recently purchased that fun coat which The Robinator calls my muppet coat.  

Josh:  We should totally do something with that!

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So...once we were finished, I put it on and, before you know it, I was getting my Mary J. Blige on in front of the house!  LOL!  "My life, my life, my life, my life!  In the sunshine!"

I had sooooooo much fun!

He's on the Knot's website too as a wedding photographer in New Orleans so if you need a photographer...holla at him!  Tell him I sent you!  I promise you won't be disappointed!