Battling the worrywart

I've been a worrier for longer than I can remember. Most times my mild worrying has beneficial outcomes that outweigh its costs. I'm punctual because I worry about being late. I'm rarely injured because I worry-wonder whether the proposed activity will cause injury. Worrying about the possible negative outcomes has enhanced my logical thinking, and I'm a pretty good strategist.

I used to worry if you'd think I was smart and/or pretty. I would worry that I hadn't read enough books, or I'd say something "wrong" or that the IRS would come after us, or someone would discover something about me that would make them not like me anymore.

The other day I realized I was worrying while baking the scones. I have rarely baked from scratch and I worried if the butter was cold enough, if the dough would come out right or not. Once I realized I was worrying about scones, I also realized I need to take a more proactive approach to battling the worrywart.

I don't need to worry about whether the scones will taste good, or if the other people in my swim class will think I'm oversuited if I wear my brand new swim goggles AND brand new swim cap.

Actually it was the anticipation of my swim class that got my mind off the fate of the scones. Once I became aware of the worrywart, I just imagined myself floating in the pool when I visited my brother in November and in turn imagined how I could let all the stress float away when I got to my swim class today.

The trick is to cultivate a way to let go of the worries that you can't do anything about/ don't matter. A while back I had a "worry jar." Back when I had a daily sit-around, I would write down my worries and put them away into the worry jar. Every-so-often I'd go back through and read and sort them. The worries about events that had passed or I no longer worried about got torn up and tossed in the trash. Worries I could do something about transitioned, and worries that were still worries just got put back away into the jar.

I need a portable system, something that can go around with me for all those worries that just come up along the way. You know, the ones that you think about when, even if you can do something about the issue, you can't do anything about it right then. You think of it and then it fades just out of reach when you are sitting down and ready to tackle the world. You still feel the oppressed by it, in your subconscious, but you don't realize it.

With all this in mind, I decided to make a worry envelope. One day passed, then two days passed and I'd not made one yet. "I need to make this simpler," I thought to myself. Afterall, I haven't done any papercrafting in months, yet I have a ton of little notebooks. "Maybe I can just add an envelope to the inside of one of those."

And that's what I did. Using an absolutely gorgeous palm sized notebook my mom gave me, I added a little clear sticky envelope to the back to store the worries in their "put away" stage. I broke a pencil in half to make it fit the same pocket size and wrote my swim class worries down, folded up the page and put it away into the envelope.

"worries about swim lesson: i won't be any good, i'll look foolish, i won't stick with it, i'll get sick from the bike ride (wet hair), my bike will get a flat tire on my way there, i'll be late"

 I did check my tire pressure (good enough), and I left early (first day of school and all), but other than that I'm pleased to say: the happy anticipation of swimming and floating totally canceled out the rest.

And now I'm tearing up these worries! See Rachel, no need to worry! Everything turned out fine! You took care of what you could (bicycle maintenance, leaving early) and the rest didn't matter.  Oh, and the scones were delicious even with burnt bottoms.

Now it's time to go bake some oven fries and spicy cod fillets for dinner.

bonus crafty -- more little boxes

I still have a cache of things to mention from the time of my mom and step-dad's September visit. On my mom's to-do list for her trip was to learn how to make a box like the one I made for Paola's samples.

Because the box would have been delicate in traveling back to Michigan, mom said she would like to make one that I could use and leave it with me (bonus!). I decided I could really use some organization for a set or journal signatures I had made and written in a while back. After 10 minutes of dedicated searching, I finally found them and I set out to take measurements and figure out the dimensions for our new boxes. I originally used a template found here (which is a little confusing when they talk about cutting off corners, yet gives a good run-through of the basic technique). After making Paola's box, I have a good grasp of the steps and can free form with ease.

I made two sets of all the bits so mom and I would be making the exact same box, and we set to work.

we had to keep adjusting the table top because it's still just resting on the shelves below "oh! I forgot we can't lean!"

Bonus crafty -- mom's mini quilt no. 2

My mom and I had several crafty projects in mind when we planned their trip to Portland. One of them was for mom to make a mini quilt like the one I made a few weeks ago. (A funny aside, even though she is one of my few frequent followers on this blog, she missed the part about my giving the quilt to her, so it was a pleasant surprise when I reminded her she'd get to take it home)

In like fashion, we decided to make hers for her mom (my abuela in mexico!). We used two more photos from our trip to Mexico years ago. It took some figuring and adding to figure out how to fit the two photos (the original design calls for just one). The quilt in general is a nice grid and with some scrap grid paper we got it all worked out.

This part reminds us of the song bird in my grandparent's courtyard.

Benefiting from my experience, we made sure mom quilted the design on top before we put on the trim.

The quilt hanging. We used materials I already had around. Now this lovely wall decoration just has to make it to Mexico.

l to r back row: graciela dominguez underwood, mariano contreras front row: Tio Cuco, abuela dominguez, rachel.db, abuelo dominguez

bonus crafty -- embossing powders to-go

My mom arrived and right away I got presents! Including a few cards I had given her with a bicycle stamped on it, that she embellished and gave back for me to send!

A glittery bicycle, collaborjamma between daughter and mom.

And then she got to work right away making over a dozen cards utilizing all my crafty supplies and extras.

These tags were extra from a project I made for everyone who worked at Paper Zone.

mom rose to the challenge of making good use of my fringe scissors.

After all that glitter (some that I hadn't even opened yet, I just LOVED the color and had to have it around) I thought we needed to send her home with all the colors she didn't have yet.

I knew we were looking for some small containers, maybe ones similar to what the glitter (and embossing powders) come in from the store. Promptly forgetting everytime we were out and about I would remember when we got back to the house. "Oh! We need little jars for the glitter!"

Then on an impromptu run to Fred Meyer for bacon, we popped up to the craft aisle and found the (almost) perfect set!

We got home, and mom used a paper funnel to transfer each of the colors into her new kit.

little containers in a container! Us Dominguez women love containers!

Glitters and embossing powders! She used my collection of Japanese Washi tape to label the embossing powders.

bonus crafty-- mini quilt no. 2

"crazy quilt" style, adding pieces as you go. To be truly a crazy quilt there would be much more embroidery along all the seams.

Perhaps it was all the nervous energy from anticipating my visitors' arrival. Perhaps it was a little left over procrastinating the last bits of cleaning the apartment. Perhaps it really was the fact that there were a couple of extraneous holes in my wall from trying to put up the final curtain rod (and not knowing there would be sheet metal to block my progress) and I just could not get them out of my mind.

I made a mini-quilt yesterday and I love it! It is mostly scraps from my tool rolls which means heavy canvas and this quilt is, like a good garlic, heavy for its size.

Ian thought it looked right at home, forgetting all about the unsightly holes behind it!