#27 Heading into the Last Weekend Before School Starts. Sigh.

Was up on and off all night.

In the morning I sewed. I pieced half a dozen quilt blocks using scraps on a muslin foundation. I thought about why that particular technique would have developed.  I also did a bit of cleaning, washing some decorative stuff in the kitchen and putting away a basket of clean laundry and making the bed and so on.

In the afternoon, I ran errands with my brother. (On the way out, I ran into Kelly and she offered me some Thai eggplants, which are very tasty in curries so I took them.) My brother and I went by the grocery store and then we went by the fried chicken place and I didn't get the four-piece fried chicken that lasts for three meals. Instead, I got two pieces and had it for lunch and then again for dinner. Fried chicken will be my undoing. Maybe it already has been my undoing.

My brother gave me a pineapple.

When I came home, I ate my fried chicken lunch and then washed my hands and went back to sewing. I turned one of the blocks I had made in the morning into a quilted coaster to sit on my newly cleaned desk. I need more practice using bias to bind the edges of things. My mitered corners look alright, but I'm allergic to hand stitching, and my machine finished bias looks like a monkey did it on a treadle machine. I couldn't find my batting though, so I used a bit of material from a pair of sweats I cut into shorts (this, a couple of terms ago when I needed shorts to wear when other students were practicing assessments on me). The mail had brought me a pack of 5-inch pre-cut squares in a rainbow of colors so I used pinks and reds and made a traditional heart block from a youtube tutorial I watched during the night when I couldn't sleep.

Dave texted to say he was on his way home.  We had planned to go to Costco and did and spent way, way too much money on way, way too much stuff. We bought fruits (bananas, raspberries, blueberries) and veg (green beans, red peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, avocados and on and on) and cheese (a big block of sharp cheddar) and yogurt (two huge containers of Fage Greek yogurt) and all the paper goods (toilet paper, paper towels)  it takes to run a household and a pack of fifty disposable to-go cups that I take my coffee to school and clinicals in (since I have ruined or lost many, many travel mugs) and a case of liter bottles of water (which costs $4 at Costco, but $1.79 per bottle if I buy them a vending machine at school and I should carry a refillable water bottle but see also my history with travel coffee mugs)  and nuts. Lots of nuts. Mixed nuts for Dave and pistachios for my brother.  Dave also bought a mattress topper that we thought was going to freak out Gray Kitty (he doesn't like change at all), but after Dave put on the mattress topper Gray Kitty jumped up on the bed, realized it wasn't rock-hard as per usual, and immediately started kneading and kneading, showing his love for this new cushy landing spot.

I texted back and forth with a school friend while we shopped. We go back to school next week and she's already started on the reading and online assignments that have been posted. Have I? Lol, no.

While we were at Costco, I realized that I hadn't put on any lipstick. I found a lip balm in my pocket and put that on instead.

We had dinner (a strange melange of things including some healthy-ish junk food from Costco (these sort of veggie-laden tater tot knockoff things) with guacamole, sour cream, and salsa).

After dinner, I went back to sewing. I found my batting. (It was properly put away for once, which means I had no idea where it was until I went digging.) I made Dave a little quilted basket using a fabric he had picked out, a pattern of winged, wand-wielding sock monkey fairies interspersed with bright red, poisonous Amanita muscaria mushrooms, all on a pretty pink background. It is the perfect girly print, as far as I'm concerned.

I slept for a few hours and woke up around 3:00 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep so I had a snack of an apple and some sunflower seed butter and I sewed myself a little quilted basket made of a vivid orange paisley fabric--also a Dave pick--and a purple and pink polka dot print that I picked out at a quilt shop in Santa Fe last summer. I put the detritus that floats around on my desk in the little basket (hand sanitizer, eye drops, eyeglasses cleaner cloth, and so on) and then I went back to bed.