Frustration

I never knew exactly what day my mom's birthday was. I knew it was around this time of year, but I could never remember if it was on the 22nd, or the 23rd. I would usually call my mom on the 22nd and just sort of feel her out. I'd ask her what she was doing that day, and if she mentioned birthday plans I knew I had the right day.

Now that she's gone, I don't always notice that her birthday has come and gone (it was the 22nd by the way). Some years, I wouldn't even remember that it was her birthday until I started thinking about what do do for my own birthday, which is in a few weeks.

This year though, I was thinking about her a lot. I go through phases with it.

It's been a little over eight years, and lately I've been thinking about the things that are going on in my life that I'd like to tell her about, but also realizing that if she were here none of them would be happening. Her passing was one of those moments that fundamentally changed the course of my life, and so many of the things that I have now are only because she's gone. She would have been 61 this year.

I did find this great picture of us though, when I was cleaning out my house. I thought I lost it, and it is my favorite photo of us. It was taken about six months before she died.

We were at the Trevi Fountain. I love that you can see a little glint of the coin my mom was throwing.

The whole reason I mention it it is that I was feeling a little sad on the 22nd, and luckily enough, there was an all day sewing event for the Portland Modern Quilt Guild. It was the perfect distraction for the day. The frustration I refer to in my post title is that my computer ate the photos I took that day which I intended to use to illustrate this particular post.

And there were some pictures I really wanted to post! Oh well. Such is life. I previewed some data recovery software to see if I could recover the photos directly from the SD card, but no luck. You'll just have to take my word for it that the event was exactly what I needed that day.

I did get a few photos of an experiment I did to see if I could create some sort of border for my upcoming Baltimore Album quilt that was based on papel picado. These are really rough cut outs, but I think the technique will work. I used paper backed heat and bond to create enough stiffness to fold and cut the fabric.

I think with some work, this could be viable.

It also helped keep my spirits up that my friends Amelia and Jeremiah came over that night. They were running the Zombie 10k the next day, and stayed over so they didn't have to drive up from Salem for it.

It was great watching them put together their costumes. They decided to go as zombie hipsters, and the preparation of the costumes involved a lot of terrifying use of scissors.

It also involved a lot of fake blood.

I missed the race itself, but I gather that they were pretty awesome looking zombies.