We get one nice day and then a storm blows in and makes it cold again. Had to wear a sweater to Easter. Can’t remember the last time I had to wear something warm on Easter. Like the title says, I’m really tired of my winter clothes at this point and I’m ready to move on to shorts for a few months ok?
Also this post is coming to you from my laptop. I think my old desktop computer has officially kicked the bucket. I mean it’s 15 year old computer so nobody should be surprised and I’ve been preparing myself for this day. It’s so old it doesn’t have wi-fi capability, so I had to buy a wi-fi stick to make it connect to our wi-fi, and it’s always had usb problems… and now I can’t get the wi-fi stick to work in any of the usb ports. Getting Blue Screen of Death several times a week. I’m mostly just frustrated because I do find having a desktop easier to work on than a laptop, so I think after disney I may see if I can find a dock for my laptop that I can hook up to the monitors from the old desktop and work like that.
Anyway, here we are in another week where I feel like I accomplished nothing. I did actually do SOME work on Packing Padme:
Did a mock-up for the sleeve shape. It’s close, need to tweak it a little. Good start I guess.
I did also get the under bodice put together and the boning in so it’s nearly ready to start building everything off of.
I’m at a place with Padme where I have my skirt fabric – but not my skirt lining so I don’t want to start on the skirt without having both. I have my sleeve fabric picked out but only the outer fabric and not the lining so again… I think I am going to order the sleeve fabric so I can at least get that expense out of the way and get the linings for both later.
I’ve sent inquiries about swatches to about 3 places now for the vest fabric and no one is responding. Well 1 place responded and said they’d send a swatch “next week” but that was a month ago so I don’t guess I’m getting that swatch. (They asked how many yards I was going to be buying to “make sure they had enough” and when I said 2 yards I wonder if that wasn’t enough for them to bother with a swatch…)
I had a hair appointment on Saturday, so I decided to record a bunch of Leia content before my brown extensions didn’t match anymore, so I did that Thursday and Friday.
Wednesday we had YET ANOTHER tornado watch/severe storms/possible hail and strong winds. It was in the afternoon so I was home alone, and once the news started saying “head to your safe space” I went ahead and took the luggage out of our storm closet, put down some blankets and lured Luna in with some cat grass.
I decided I did NOT want to wait til things “got bad” to try to get her into the closet. Once all the cat grass was eaten though, she did NOT want to be in there anymore. She was crying and basically body-slamming the door. She managed to get the door OPEN twice, I don’t know how, but it wasn’t open enough for her to get out so I was able to lean over and shut it really fast.
Finally the tornado warnings expired… and at that point she came over and laid on me and went to sleep. Like WTF LOL
Like I said Saturday I had a hair appt… I hadn’t been since AUGUST LAST YEAR. My hair looked so scraggly and needed colour.
So much better. It’s really close to the reds I was doing in like 2006-2008.
Only thing is none of my current Leia extensions match now. Usually when I “re-red” my hair I use these:
And when I haven’t dyed my hair in a while I use the brunette:
If I were just going to be recording some tiktoks or something I’d have just gone with the brunette – but for the disney trip where I’ll be outside the bright sun will really be making my roots look red… it wouldn’t look good with dark brown buns. Funnily enough my original Leia extensions from the mid-2000s are a really good match… but I really didn’t want to use them, they are heavy, uncomfortable, and also not in the greatest shape, being 18 year old extensions. (I do still have them and sometimes use them as filler when doing like, Leia’s ceremonial bun when I need a little more hair on the inside of a bun.)
So off to the beauty store to find a new match. I ended up with some extensions that were a mix of a very dark brown/natural black and red —
It’s not 100% but it’s closer than anything I had. Unfortunately these ended up being too short – they were technically the right length, but they thinned out a lot in the last 5-6 inches to the point I couldn’t twist them anymore without them being super tiny, which didn’t look right. So I went back yesterday and found the same colour but longer — haven’t tried them yet, fingers crossed, but at least I have something that will work ok-ish either way.
Sunday we had Easter Lunch.
Mom and I matched.
Before we left for Easter festivities I tried on all my disney stuff for my IG stories:
I hadn’t had all of the dapper Leia look on together yet so this was fun. Only thing that’s left is gluing down the 3d printed piece on the purse.
I did consider doing the buns differently for this look – moving them more towards the lower back of the head – but I tried it out and didn’t like it. It just looked like I missed up my buns. LOL So I guess I’m going with regular buns. I did get some sparkly star hair pins to put in my hair.
The Marvel outfit! Will this be enough to get us on a preview of Cosmic Rewind? I doubt it since it seems like they’ve stopped pulling in random people for previews and now it’s only for APs/DVC/etc, but one can hope.
When I put it on for this I realized I’d made the back too wide. The back is 2 pieces that cross over and you just sew them down on top of each other – I realized they needed to be closer together. So last night I popped the stitches and moved them in closer. All done. Now the shoulder straps don’t want to slide off.
And the Wanda spirit jersey that I’ve put off posting pics of. Really happy w/it.
Last thing I’ll leave you with — i have an under-the-bed storage thing that I keep swimsuits, tights, clothes I don’t need regularly in. I went to pull it out to look for something yesterday and…
This pic was actually later. When I first pulled it from under the bed, she was facing me and she scared the crap out of me LOL. She got out and ran off, so I pushed it back under the bed… I went back about 20 minutes later to look for something else again, pulled it out and she was back in there, curled up. That’s when I took this pic. After she got out this time, I made sure to zip it closed LOL
The problem with finishing all my sewing and projects early for the trip is that now I’m like, ready to go but it’s not time yet. I feel like I’m in limbo. Can’t really start on dcon stuff because I don’t want to spend the money before the trip… nothing else to work on… what am I to do??
So that’s basically the end for this post but now I’m going to go on a tangent that you can skip.
I know it’s become “in” on places like tiktok to talk about ADHD/ADHD symptoms, etc. But I swear the more I see about ADHD, especially ADHD in women, the more I want to get tested for it? At first I was like, there’s no way I have ADHD, but now I’m like… maybe I do? Maybe that’s always been the problem?
Last week I saw a tiktok where someone was talking about how ADHD affects their concept of time and made some stuff click into place in my brain, especially in the context of the last couple of months. Time always must be filled. And my brain says the best use of time is to create. If I’m not creating, I’m wasting time.
Basically since I was a little kid I have had a compulsion to create. Whether it was drawing, writing stories, making up games, whatever – if I wasn’t using my TIME to create then my time was wasted. Excluding things like reading or riding my bike (or any activity where I could daydream) – reading was fodder for the creativity and doing things like bike riding or playing video games gave me time to think about what I wanted to make next, hash out story ideas, etc.
Elementary school wasn’t bad because I could get by without paying attention in class, I still made good grades. But by middle school I was starting to struggle, and in class my brain did NOT want to tune into lessons AT ALL. My brain was saying this is a good time to draw. DRAW DRAW DRAW. Because that’s what is important. So I’d draw. And when I’d get caught drawing when I was supposed to be paying attention, I’d switch to writing so it looked like I was taking notes. But writing was actually worse – because when I was drawing or doodling I was generally still halfway listening. Writing, I wasn’t listening at all. And writing often delved into making lists. My brain liked making lists — usually it was listing out ideas I had for stories, or art I wanted to do. Sometimes it would be “I want to do art of every single X-Men character. So I need to make a list from memory of every single X-Men character.” Instead of listening in class. And then I’d come home and draw or read or daydream. Instead of doing homework or studying. Because my brain was like that dog meme “No take, only throw” — “No learn, only create”
By the end of high school I was a lost cause, but everybody kept telling me how great I was going to be in college, that everything was going to click into place and I’d excel because I’d be doing something I loved. And I did excel in my actual art classes – but everything else, history, literature, it was more of the same as before. “No learn, only create.”
It took a couple of semesters, but I did finally learn a way to trick my brain into listening in those classes. I turned my compulsion for list-making into “listing everything the teacher says” and somehow that worked. Wish I’d learned that trick earlier. And I went from flunking World History in high school to making 110 on history tests in college — I’d regularly make OVER 100 because I’d do so much extra the teachers would give me extra credit.
(Still struggled in math tho. I don’t think there was any way to come back from that)
And then there was the internet. It only put my creative compulsion into overdrive. Suddenly i had an outlet for all the things I drew and wrote. I made my first webpage. I drew non-stop, I drew til my hands hurt. I posted it all online. People liked it! And then that turned into sewing. Now I compulsively make costumes. And if I’m not doing that, I’m not doing anything with my life.
I experienced that feeling over this last winter, when I got into a huge funk and didn’t feel like sewing or doing anything and it was like the 2 halves of my brain were screaming at each other. One screaming that I should just lay on the couch and play sims and the other freaking out that I was WASTING MY TIME. And I really started to feel like if I am not creating, I am dying. And right then I was dying. I finally found my way out of it and back into a good sewing rhythm, but it was shocking to feel that way for a while.
So yeah all of this introspection just makes me curious. Has this compulsion been a symptom of ADHD? Or is it just who I am? I’d like to know for sure. I don’t want to be medicated or change who I am; it’s really more like… I want to know the reason I struggled in school. Was it really just me, or was there an underlying reason?
There are other things I’ve noticed in other symptom lists that I wonder about too. But I dunno. I doubt I’ll ever get tested – as much as I would like to – just because I won’t want to spend the money. So anyway that’s my ramble.