With no new news in AdoptionLand, I have no choice but to proceed as if travel will still happen as (I) scheduled. Haha. I figure, based on my Ideal Timeframe* I have a good two weeks of lackadaisically preparing for baby Addy-Mai before The Rush To Travel begins wherein we need to do things like gather medications, luggage, prescriptions, airline tickets and the like.

So today I finally did it - I broke into my box of quilt squares I have been methodically and somewhat obsessively collecting for months. I have well over my goal of 100 fabrics and wishes for Addison's 100 Good Wishes quilt. Many of these squares were still in their envelopes so it was like Christmas, but a lot more work and less fun. So maybe more like opening a lot of envelopes. But, of course, the harder part is actually squishing those pieces of fabric together into something that might, at some point, resemble a quilt. Have I mentioned I don't actually know how to sew quilts? Nothing like starting big.

Along the envelope-opening journey I stumbled upon a few really special quilt squares. One is from my Aunt who sent me a swatch of cloth from her scrubs she wore taking care of babies in the NICU where she worked for decades. How special to have such a healing piece of cloth on Addison's quilt. Then I opened the envelope from my stepMom who hand-painted this beautiful picture of a bird with a wonderful inspired quote to go with it for her quilt square. It is too big to cut down so it will take up two squares and will be the centerpoint of the quilt. I cried, I loved it so much.

I have a pattern all picked out but decided, today, that I didn't like it after all. I like parts of it, however. So I'll keep the border and piece together a sweet Vietnamese girl at the top. But the main body of the quilt I ambitiously decided to reconstruct from my own vast wealth of knowledge. Haha. I picked the hubby's brain and we settled on a pattern we both could live with. Then we spent about 2 hours debating how to best lay out the various colors. We thought maybe we would lay out the colors in a sort of rainbow gradient pattern but - yeah - no. So in the end we ended up going with a boring random variation of colors throughout the quilt. Except I don't *do* random so I had to lay them all out and pre-design my random blocks. Haha.

With that finished, the real back-breaking labor began. I have a really wonderful cutting mat and some great cutting tools (rotary cutter, various transparent quilting rulers, etc) but nowhere to put said equipment except the floor. Let me tell you, hunching over a rotary mat for hours on end? Not good for the lower back. At one point I crumbled to the floor in agony and begged my poor husband to put his entire body weight on my hip bones chiropractic-style. He had no idea what I wanted and kept pushing them the wrong way until I screamed "No, not in! Down! TO HELL! Toward HELL! DOWN!". This is pretty much the way my mood went. The 200 lbs of weight on my hips did not a thing, I'm sorry to say. He's no chiropractor, it appears.

I'm not done. I'm about 2/3 done cutting out my squares and about 1/10 done cutting out my sashing. Don't know what sashing is? Me neither!!! haha. Eventually I gave up for the day when I accidentally found another 30 quilt squares I need to figure out how to incorporate somehow. Hrm.

Having rested my back long enough to scarf down dinner, I decided the pain was in my head and went back to cutting, this time a new project: a baby sling. Not just any baby sling but a reversible baby sling. I envisioned a sling one day with a nice neutral khaki cotton on the outside and a funky brown and pink and green polkadot fabric inside. Ok, so I also have never made a baby sling. I knew I needed some fabric and some sling rings. That stumped me until I remembered that I own two old slings that I can't stand so I'm going to steal the rings from there. Woot! Except I can't even wrap my head around how to make this sling, even after buying the fabric and reading the directions online. This should be interesting. After spending another 15 minutes cutting 5 yards of fabric to a width of 36", I decided to set that, too, aside for the night. Back. Now. Throbbing.

Moral to this story? Nicki takes on more way more than she can chew in some idealistic vision that she possesses more talent than she has and more back muscles than she has built in a lifetime. And also? Save the money on the endless fabric projects and buy a damned proper sewing table.

* Ideal timeframe conveniently located above on everlasting adoption ticker