Birthday! Meh.

It's my day of birth. Horray! Meh. Kinda not feeling it this year. I guess all the craziness & responsibility of running a business (especially with no business training) has turned me into a boring old lady. I was hoping to sleep in today, since I don't have any patients til 11:30. Then I realized last night that I have a zillion admin tasks that *must* get done today, so I set the alarm once again for 5:30. And like a repeat of Tuesday, I kept hitting the snooze til 7, snuggling with the hubby. Oh well.

Yesterday was a bit odd. My one patient of the day didn't show. But that meant I had time to have lunch at home with my man. As I left the apartment, I heard a guy from a moving company upstairs telling his buddy, "Man, I need a chiropractor! Or a new back!" I happily got out of my car, went up to him, told him I could help, & gave him my card. His buddy asked for one too. Let's hope that chance encounter turns into some new patients! Got my knee worked on, complete with a healthy application of KinesioTape to help the swelling drain. I'm loving the KTape! Still waiting to see the swelling go down, but the bruising is looking better, & it hurt less to walk. Though when my man got home, he was very surprised to see a big blue octopus-looking thing on my leg. Got a call from the office during lunch that a patient was going to bring in his son as a new patient for me later that day. Woot! About an hour later, he cancelled, saying his son didn't want to come in & his dad was unable to convince him. Boo. So yesterday was another no-patient day. Those kinda suck. But I was able to spend the rest of the afternoon in my lounge pants on the couch at home with the snuggly kitty, looking at tatting patterns while listening to my training audios in an empty house (for some reason, I hate listening to them when anyone else is around). My knee was pretty happy about that.

Le kitty, Tali. Aka Queen Sheba Tali-kat.

Our artist friend, Radiant Grey, made a mash-up of Tali & Tard, The Grumpy Cat.

Had a dinner of buffalo jerky & a smoothie, then headed out to do a dance demonstration. Happily, my knee held up just fine while dancing, though it was a bit grumbly afterward. After I got home, it was more audios while I played litchen tetris, trying to make my new set of dishes I got for Christmas fit in my teeny tiny kitchen. Made it work, finally, & I managed to consolidate to two different dish sets, service for 4 each. We've had quite the mismatched pile of dishes forever, like 6 or 7 different patterns & types, so it's nice to look in the cabinets & see things that match, mostly. Eventually I'll order another set of the new dishes & swap them out with the old set that's still here.

Today's agenda: Pay bills, make up my marketing calendar, maybe some more audios, compile my office stats from last month, & send them to my business building coach before our phone meeting tomorrow. I never look forward to those things. >_< I'll also be contemplating on tatting patterns for the silent auction. I think I'll call it done on looking for patterns. Didn't find anything that made me want to jump right up & start making it, but I found some that I think look nice. Just need to narrow it down now. To celebrate the BDay, I'll treat myself to some Bread Co for breakfast, a friend is taking me out to Bread Co for lunch (hey, it's yummy!), & I'll probably splurge on a Java Chip Frappucino at Starbucks after dance class tonight. Probably won't be home to see my man again til 10pm. Lame.

Have a great Thursday, everyone!

Adventures in Tat-land

Three days in a row of blogging! Woot! I may still be sucking at getting through my daily tasks as planned, but at least I'm doing *something* I said I would! ^_~

Yesterday, one patient turned into three! Hooray! Today, I only have 2 patients on the book, but one already rescheduled. C'est la vie. Getting my knee worked on today & doing a dance demo tonight, so yay for that! The knee is still healing. Tightened up a bit last night, but it's looking better every day. Yesterday, I managed to get the business account balanced & paid the office bills. I got the pre-made Paleo meal plans printed off, but I haven't looked at them yet to determine what groceries I need to get. Intended to clean out the fridge after work, but the sink is already full of dirty dishes because the dishwasher is full of clean dishes. Asked the hubster to empty the dishwasher for me so I can do the rest of the dish shuffle today. Yes, I'm lazy. But I don't ask him to do many chores beyond emptying the dishwasher, taking out the trash & recycling, & sorting his dirty laundry for me. ^_~ Looking at yesterday's list, my predicted 75% completion was actually more like 25%. Boo on me.

Today will be spent working on the personal accounts, paying more bills, listening to business building audios (NOT my favorite task, but must be done), working on the marketing calendar (I REALLY need to do this one! C'mon, Vicky! Can't get new patients in the door if I have no plan or idea how I'm going to do it!), call to reschedule the two patients I meant to call yesterday, toss icky fridge things, look at the meal plans, & plot the grocery list.

**If you struggle w/ keeping straight the zillion things that need doing, check out www.rememberthemilk.com. I love that site! You can have multiple to-do lists, move items between lists, see ALL your tasks in one place, send tasks to others... Check it out.**

Now what was I up to yesterday that caused me to get so little of my tasks done? Well, partly looking at tatting patterns. Tatting is a form of lacemaking that was big in the 1800s. I discovered it & fell in love with it when I stumbled across the work of TotusMel. Check out her Etsy page here, then see what she's up to at her blog here. A couple summers ago, I learned how to tat with a tool called a shuttle. It's a bit slow for me, but I love it. Recently, I decided to try to learn to tat with a needle instead of a shuttle. I got some tatting needles for Christmas, & brought them along w/ me to play with while traveling to CO on the ski trip. Between a book on needle tatting & TotusMel's videos on Instructables, I picked it up pretty easily. Holy crap it's so much faster than shuttle tatting!!! I'm in love! I'll probably pick up the shuttles again if I'm working on a larger piece, since they can hold a lot of thread wound around them, & with needles you have to use a much shorter, cut length of thread, but I think I'll be a needle tatter 90% of the time now. Needle tatting is also way easier to learn & do than shuttle tatting. I'm a happy crafter. :)

As soon as I learned how to needle tat, I recieved inspiration to do a big tatting project. As I mentioned in a previous post, my Aunt passed away while I was on vacation. Through Facebook posts from family, I learned that in her final hours, she communicated to her daughters that she would visit them from the other side as a hummingbird. I was instantly compelled to make tatted hummingbirds for my family members to remember her by. One of my cousins asked on FB if anyone knew where to find hummingbird lapel pins she & her sisters could wear at their mom's funeral. I was already working on it. Fortunately, I had brought along some blue thread, my Aunt's favorite color. I spent an evening scouring the interwebs for a free tatted hummingbird pattern. Finding none, I found a few pictures of ones already made, which I stared at trying to figure out how to make them. I got close to figuring it out with one design, but it wasn't quite there, so I found a place to buy the pattern & did so. Unfortunately, it wasn't an immediate download, so I kept hunting while I waited for the emailed pattern. In that time, I found another pictured design I liked better, so I worked up a prototype of that one, referencing the pic to figure out how to make it. Eureka! Got it figured out after a 2nd prototype, & started cranking away on more.

Took me between 25 & 30 minutes to make one, start to finish. I posted on FB that I'd be happy to make one for anyone who asked. In the end, I had requests for 35. At the funeral, a few extra people wanted some, so I made about 4 more there. And I have three more to make for family that couldn't make it to the funeral. 42 hummingbirds in all. Everyone loved them.

I feel so blessed that I was able to make these for everyone. I wasn't very close to this Aunt, and her death at 58 was no surprise to me, as she's been in poor health for as long as I've known her & even worse health in recent years. I'm sad that she's gone, & my heart aches for my family who mourn her more heavily. I thank the devine intervention of God, Buddha, the Universe, whatever you'd like to call it, that made sure I had the skills & supplies at hand & the time needed to make these birds. It's nice to know that something you made helps heal a breaking heart.

The tatting continues with other projects! A couple days ago, a friend asked for submissions to a silent auction at an upcoming craft & artist show/fundraiser for her non-profit. I'm currently looking up tatted jewelry patterns. I'd love to make a necklace & earring set to put in the auction & help my friend raise some funds for her cause! I haven't found anything I like yet, but I'm hunting. I'm leaving my tatting books on my work desk as a carrot: finish something on my to-do list & I get to look at patterns for a few minutes! Now if only I can groom myself to have the self-control not to dig through patterns *before* I finish anything...

A final note: I need to make shorter posts! My idea of 20-30 minutes of blogging was more like an hour today. >_< Happy Wednesday, everybody!