Pure Therapy

Sometimes life gets so busy and complicated that I feel like someone let a hive of bees loose inside my brain.  Everything gets sort of foggy on the outside because of the constant buzzing inside my head.  Do this, do that, don't forget about such and such, is this child really doing okay? are we really already out of milk again? blah, blah blah.  I'm a worrier in case you didn't catch that.*wink  I finally had a couple hours tonight to sit down again and do some hand quilting and wow! did I need that time.  (I say 'finally' because it felt like it's been forever, which okay, I KNOW is not true.)  The husband and I chatted for awhile until he got bored with me and fell asleep in his recliner, but I just kept on a quilting--needle in, needle out.  This is probably the sloppiest quilting job I've done in years because I keep zoning out on the details of my quilt while I'm processing the myriad details of my life, but WHO CARES?  I'm about to move on to the third partially used spool of thread (not an exact match), which I would never have done even three years ago.  Am I losing my high ground of quilting expectations?  Maybe.  Mostly I just think that I'm just giving myself permission to use this quilt for pure therapy. I remember reading one of Mary Lou Weidmans' quilting books years and years ago about how much quilting she got done during the teenage years of her kids life.  I think I'm starting to understand.  I wonder if I'll look at the quilts finished during this time of my life and be reminded of our roller coaster days of (hopefully) yore.  Hmmm, is pink fabric actually code for crazy, unrelenting days of dealing with teenager demands +/- moodiness on a severely reduced household budget (hey, I still own the same couch I bought used just before my 15 yr. old was born) during a era of 'it's really scary to be self-employed'????