Thursday, April 12, 2012

Relaxation = Stitching

My computer mouse is not working properly. For an online gamer like myself, this is not a good thing. I use the mouse for 75% of my gaming activities from combat to simple movement. When movement becomes hop stop hop stop, I'm fairly worthless.

It also affects the whole browsing experience. There is something wrong with the front two buttons of the mouse. Clicking on the scroll bar on the right side of the screen will, sometimes, result in being stuck. All I can do is frantically click while the bar goes up and down and hope the thing will release its grip. Or, other times, it won't grab the bar at all. I was clearing photos from my desktop after uploading them to Flickr and the mouse grabbed everything on the desktop and moved it to the trash. After screaming, I carefully removed all the icons and folders one by one and put them back on the desktop.

Monday night was terrible. I couldn't do anything in the game and just simply navigating through some of the news web sites I read was a huge chore. You know how frustration feels when it builds and builds? That's what it was like. I tried everything I could think of, but neither right nor left clicking worked to get into or out of screens. When I felt like crying, I knew I had to turn off the computer and go find something else to do.

Cross-stitch.

I plopped down in the recliner with a mug of tea. I turned on the light and the bulb popped. Why is it that when you are stressed and at the end of that proverbial rope, little things, like light bulbs quitting, happen all the time? It's a 3-way bulb and I don't have any in the house. No matter. I stuck a 60 watt in the lamp and will get a 3-way later.

I sat there and stitched. Pilchard wanted the lap a couple times and then became content to simply sleep next to me. Mija jumped up onto the back of the recliner, sort of near my head, and purred herself to sleep. I concentrated all my frustration into those little "x's". After a couple of hours of stitching, the light yellow and light blue are completely done and I'm on to just yellow.


I know it still doesn't look like much when you don't know what I'm trying to stitch. As I worked, cats within scratching distance, I felt peace return. No, the mouse doesn't work. I spent the weekend performing computer maintenance which did nothing to help the mouse issue. I had to ask my more tech savvy friends for advise before calling the manufacturer. But, Monday night, I just needed to relax. I needed to de-stress. I needed to calm down. That's what cross-stitching did for me.

This is the 10th day of work on this. I might be half-way done. The yellow that I've started will be the most used color on this design. It's to be a rainy weekend upcoming. We desperately need rain. It's so very dry. Rainy weekends are perfect for afternoons spent stitching. Expect more blocks of color next week.

Beverage: Lady Gray tea

Deb

No comments:

Post a Comment