Thinking of winter | Your name is a splinter inside me

It seems like most of my posts these days begin with some sort of lame apology or excuse for not blogging. And here's another one! I guess part of the problem is deciding what's blog-worthy and what isn't. is it better to post a bunch of boring stuff frequently? Or wait for something cool to happen and write about that?

I don't know either.

But I will tell you where I've been. I've been over on Facebook, my newest time-waster. I update in these little blurbs, which is way more succinct. You only have a set number of characters, and you really have to think about how you can word your thoughts in that number of characters. I try not to resort to things like u=you, 2=to or too, b4=before, ur=you're, your, or you are. Same with Twitter. You really have to cut things down for your updates to fit there. It's very frustrating, because I can be can long-winded at times.

Facebook rocks though. I have found my long-lost cousins. Some of them anyway. So that's been fun catching up with them. See, we've never been super close to with our cousins or aunts and uncles on either side of the family. The cousins I've found on Facebook are the ones we were closest to, even though one family lived in Delaware. But we have cousins aplenty, I'm sure, but have no way of knowing how to find them, where they are, or even their last names. I envy families that are close-knit. I've always wanted to have that.

My attempts to draw my own siblings together has failed. Two of my sisters and I speak often, my brother is close with my younger sister, my oldest sister doesn't return phone calls or emails. It's a lost cause for now. I know, I know. I've dug down deep and obsessed over my decision and it's basically that I can't do it anymore. I just have to hope that at some point they will get over the past and come forward and realize that we need each other before it's too late. My Grandma died recently. Right before Christmas, some sort of freak medical thing. I don't think anyone really understand what happened. I surely don't. It really didn't affect me much, maybe I'm a robot. Or more likely the lack of emotion is due to the fact that she barely tolerated my siblings and me. My point is that I think the hospital and funeral were the first times in a zillion years that my mom even saw her own siblings, other than two of my aunts.

Early in December I had disagreements with some of B's & my family. It may not seem like it on the outside, but I'm extremely sensitive and I took both of these things very hard. There were times (even now as I type this) that it feels like my heart will break in two. One of the situations involves someone holding a grudge against me for 13 years, and analyzing everything I said or did during those 13 years. Somehow even the good things I did were turned into negatives. I can't do it anymore. I can't do the little nice things I liked doing, because I know now that no matter what, they will never be seen in the light I hoped they would be.

The other incident involved a series of misunderstandings and inaccurate retellings. This one especially hurt. It came out of nowhere. The other people involved had been harboring these angry feelings towards me for I have no idea how long, and all the while saw everything I did after the initial misunderstanding as rude and careless. Anyone that knows the real me (which I am gathering at this point is very few) knows that I agonize over every little thing I do or say. Any decision I make that involves other people has been carefully obsessed over in my mind, trying to see things from all points of view. If I go ahead and do the thing, it's because I've determined it to be the right thing. Why do I do this? Thirteen years of being relentlessly judged by the family members in the previous paragraph. Another reason it cut me to the core? I was not given the benefit of the doubt. They didn't say "hey, maybe she didn't mean that" or "let's talk it out and see what's going on". It was automatically assumed that everything was the truth. That felt like a knife in my heart.

Anyway, I better move on or I will cry about these things again as I have done about once a week since December.

I have been doing some sewing. I finished a quilt for my sister-in-law Kacy. I was nervous as hell to give it to her, for fear she might not like it. But she did. The quilt is just so her, you know? And now I've moved on to a quilt I bought the supplies for last February, which consists of many Valentine-themed fabrics. I LOVE hearts and lovey things. I already love it and I've only done some of the pieces. I fell in love with the finished sample at the quilt shop, and was tempted to just bribe them to let me take it, but I decided to just make my own. I cannot WAIT to just wrap myself in this and have already decided to name it "Lovely". I name the quilts I make. Laugh if you want.

Well, I guess I better end for now. It's late, I'm sick, and I probably need some rest. I promise promise promise to blog more so that I don't end up with epic blog posts like this one.

Click on the pics for larger versions if you so desire.

And a parting thought:
Come on people now
smile on your brother
everybody get together
and try to love one another right now