victories and setbacks

I've realized today that it has been about 3 months that I have been fighting with my bank to buy the house across the street. I guess it's only been 3 months since I applied. More like a month and a half- two months that I've been fighting. That's a quarter of a year. And I have to be honest, it has been a miserable quarter of a year. I am tense, sad, excited, depressed, despondent, exhausted, snippy, empty. Right now I am completely empty. I got the phone call on December 28th that my loan had been approved. I was thrilled. I had no idea it could be so difficult to go from there.

With all the back and forth with the bank I am really about to lose it. And I've kind of been in this state more or less round the clock for months. It takes up my days, my mornings, my nights. I obsess over every little detail. Will it ever work out? Will the sellers get frustrated and walk away? Will I be able to move out in time for Mike's new tenants to move in? When can the kitty come home? What will I do about the porch? What will I find when I rip off those shingles? The list goes on.

It takes up my thoughts round the clock and tonight, after another day's worth of futile phone calls, I am sorry to everyone around me who has had to deal with what a head case I have been. I am beyond exhausted and completely emotionally drained. I looked up the company's info today and drafted a letter to the president of HSBC. The website gives you the president's name, but not their address. So I called customer service, where I waited on hold for 12 minutes (5 minutes less than last week), where a man told me that the woman listed on the website is no longer president, and he was not authorized to tell me who was. He could instead, give me the name of the representatives manager. I told him I wanted the name and address to the president. He could not give me this information. I asked to speak to someone else, and what do you know, I got disconnected. I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall.

But on to the victories. Let's focus on the positive. Did you know I've been working on this sewing project for my friend Kyle's daugther forever? I finished is a few weeks ago. The picture at the top is the best I can offer. It wasn't finished without struggle.

I'm crafty, yes, but sewing with a machine has never been my forte. I finally figured it out, more or less, but still was suffering from some bobbin issues. Apparently they're pretty common. Well when I went down to Florida, I brough all of my supplies with me and set to work on my mom's fancy pants machine. Soon enough the project was well underway.

I did most of the last finishing touches by hand, and a few machine stitches, but they were done with a bobbin that was pre-loaded by a friend.

This weekend I took on a new challenge. Make a cute tote-bag. Wait till it's done, I can't wait to show off the pictures. But it definitely involved using the machine, and I didn't know how much thread I had left on my bobbin. But, I figured, it's now or never. At some point I'm just going to have to figure out this bobbin thing. So when I ran out of thread, I did. It took me a while. Not to mention in my sewing glory I sewed the handle into the bag and had to rip the stitches and then sewed the bag shut and had to rip those stitches, but practice makes perfect. By the end of the day I had some really good work done, with the help of the bobbin that I had wound and loaded all by myself. :)

Hopefully next week I'll have pictures of my latest project. I need to savor the victories. . .