Couch 233: Nothing’s Ghana Stop Us Now

I could use 4 days off wandering around my house in a bathrobe gnawing on a turkey leg right about now! haha!

on my break I'm browsing free hat patterns on yarnspirations.com and am printing several now, so I have a few to choose from when I get off work today. There's one that uses chunky yarn and will likely be a quick one, so I may do that one first. We'll see.


My car has been making a squealing kinda noise the last couple times I drove it - I suspect I need to get the serpentine belt replaced, the last time they did work on the car they told me it was going to need replacing soon and that's been awhile ago, I so rarely drive anymore. I called the shop we use and they said they can fix it tomorrow if I drop it off after they close this evening, so that's good.

Ugh I remembered wrong. It was the timing belt, our mechanic reminded me, that he said would likely need replacing soon the last time I had my car in - the expensive one. Dang it. My car may not actually be worth spending the $ on to replace that. I am not in the mood to go car shopping but I don't think h is going to want to pay to replace the timing belt. He'd rather get rid of the car and buy a newer used car. Mine's like 15 years old.


Oh well. I need to get out of this doom and gloom mood I'm in!! I want to eat chocolate and all the other bad things but I'm not going to let myself. I'm gonna go crochet instead.

Tonight's long past best-by date frozen dinner comes to you from February 2020. A good month. The last good month, some might say.

(Well, except I think we knew by then that the wave was about to crash down on us.)

Dear lord--how many legs did his turkey have?

Tonight's hat, little-girl sized, super-soft and squishy yarn:

I am putting the final touches on my final presentation for my final project for my final week of grad school, which is next week. I cannot focus. I look at it, and my brain just goes "Mmmm, nope. Let's look for shiny whatchamacallits on Etsy instead. What's that noise? Wonder what that random person I met that once five years ago is up to, are they on Facebook?" I think I am just on so much overload that I've run out of steam. I probly need a nap; instead I am plugging away, getting it done in tiny chunks.

Art, maybe you can drum up some focus vibes for me. Or crochet some. Heh.

I empathize on a deep level, WFS. I have a paper due tomorrow and it’s not going well. I believe in you though! Tiny chunks is better than nothing

I’m currently watching Hoarders rather than theory application for a case study.

It's only 6:30pm here but my eyes don't wanna stay open. I think I'll call it a night early and let tomorrow be a new day. Night, couchies.

My grandmother is feeling a little better today. Thanks for the good thoughts and wishes, everyone!

I'm glad she's feeling a little better Velcro! I'm really close to my grandmother who's 83 and I'd be really worried so I understand.

Mad with my "mother" who is basically supposedly offering me financial "help". Where was that "concern" when she and my father was just constantly berating me, threatening me with homelessness if I didn't cough up money?

(And before you ask why I didn't leave until the pandemic, I work with other survivors and single adults getting strangled still are last priority in a crisis shelter. Most can't leave if they can't afford to rent, which is depressingly common. I've a friend who turned to "escorting" as part of her plans to flee abuse.)

My D and her boyfriend are looking at a rental tomorrow. The rental situation here is hopeless as we have had an influx of people down south trying to flee covid and having to live in hotels. I am not hopeful they will be moving out soon.

Good to hear, velcro. Continued good thoughts that she keeps feeling better.

I got the new christmas tree lights today that I ordered, and started decorating my tree. They have cheered me up immensely!
eta I don't know why my picture is sideways! it didn't start out that way.

I haven't heard from the mechanic yet about my car, though so maybe I will go play around with the different settings on the lights to give myself some extra cheer before he calls

eta: ha! right when i posted the above he called. it is actually the serpentine belt like i initially suspected (because of descriptions i'd read online of symptoms) so it will cost about 300 bucks to fix. Yay! better than if it had been time timing chain or whatever.

I am now off to crochet today's hat of the day.

Done.
I'll clean it up, proofread and format the slides in a couple days once I've got a little space to look at it clearly, but I'm done. I'm kind of in shock.
daisy, hope you made good progress on yours. You've got this!

Here's tonight's hat (minus my face heehee) - I followed a general pattern for the light pink part, then winged it and designed the green and darker pink parts. I love it, h says it makes me look like I'm 80 haha. I told him to zip it cuz I'm donating these, so making them for all different ages! I actually like this one a lot on me. Does that make me an old soul? haha

Good job, WFS!! Proud of you!

That's awesome, WFS!

You'll all appreciate this, as I'm sure I've mentioned the Dr. T wedding ring thing before. He's been wearing it consistently for the past year or so, after getting a new one.

Today, maybe 10 minutes into session, I noticed he wasn't wearing it and was probably sort of staring at his hand (not that it might be noticeable over Zoom). (I didn't think anything of it, just noticing.) Right in that moment, he reached over and grabbed his keys sitting on the desk, took his ring off the carabiner thing, and put it on. I started laughing, then explained. He seemed amused, said he'd taken it off while at the gym the night before, then just realized he hadn't put it back on, that he hadn't noticed my looking.

And his Covid PCR test was negative, thankfully.

Glad Dr T's test was negative, LT. That must be a relief!



In other news I got off even cheaper with my car yesterday than I thought it would be. They changed my oil, the serpentine belt, and a pulley and it was only like $259. H takes his car there routinely and has been since 2015 so they consider us "clients" as opposed to "customers" (as he told us yesterday) and so we get a 15% discount on whatever work they do. This is the best mechanic we've found since we moved here in what, 2008 or whenever it was and don't plan to go anywhere else. The owner is in the process of retiring and his son is taking over, we just love both of them, they feel almost like family with the boisterous greeting we get when either of us goes in over there haha. I crocheted them each a little christmas tree last year, need to figure something out again this year.

Thanks, it was!

And that's great about the car, Artie! It's good when places reward customers for loyalty like that.

I had therapy Monday night with a new Therapist, Julieanne. She is nice. We are in the building rapport stage. She said she has ADHD and I can tell (I have it too) because she bounces from subject to subject and I have to struggle to keep up with her. She isn't great on Zoom. Her camera (on her phone) kept moving around so she was bouncing all over the place so at times I couldn't even look at her because her camera was on the ceiling or who knows where. It was kind of laughable. She's cute though. (Not in a physical attractiveness way--though she is blonde, petite and attractive for a 70 something year old.) But cute in the way she tries to relate to me. I can tell there were times when she wanted to talk over me and had to stop herself so I could talk about what I wanted to talk about. I sent her the payment through Zelle before the meeting and she was like, never ever send it before! What if I hadn't shown up? I was like, ah, you would have credited me. She was like, yes I would have, and you reminded me of our appointment when you sent the payment. I hope she has some new tricks up her sleeve. As someone who has been in therapy for most of my adult life, I know a lot of the tricks and stuff of the trade. I was giving her names of apps that are helpful and telling her techniques that help me and she was writing them down to share with others. So yeah, that part was sort of amusing but sort of scary. I don't want to know more than she does about therapy. We came to an agreement about contracts. And how I don't like them, neither does she. So that's good. She was like, I won't be making you sign any contracts that you don't want to sign. (I had to sign one for aftercare from IOP.) I guess Julieanne will do for now. This is only my second session with her. She's quirky and smart and funny. Things I like in a therapist.

I am so nervous about my session with my art T this friday, The topic is going to be why the ending of sessions is so hard for me. I journaled some, and realized it was for a few reasons. One, weekends are hard for me, so leaving on a friday night sort of sucks.

Two-which is the part i don’t know how i can tell her-is that i already (been seeing her since august) am really attached. This scares the ever-loving s h i t out of me. I am attached with my regular T, but it isn’t as “intense” as it already is with my art T.

I just don’t know how to say all of that without her being creeped out by me. I HATE feeling needy and like I am too much, and these feelings cross those boundaries.