how one becomes a hoader ....

i have always believed that the minute i throw something out because i thought i wouldn't need it or hadn't used it in eons, i will suddenly need it. and today i proved that point. a little while ago, i gave away a bag of stuffing. i didn't think i would need it. figured i was past the pillow making and/or stuffed toy making stage of my life. so i gave it away. i had used a smidgeon of it to make a muffin shaped lion for my daughter and figured that was the end of that.

but said daughter has been chatting about owls a lot lately. this is significant for a few reasons. first of all, her grandmother (my mom) who passed away 22 years ago this june, loved owls. anything with owls. so i had this plethora of owl items in my house that my father basically told me to get rid of after she died and i couldn't bring myself to throw away because they were my mom's. this was probably the beginning of my semi-hoarder stage. at any rate, i kept the ones that had a huge sentimental attachment, and gave a few of the others to a then friend (who was like a sister to me) but who later turned on me during my divorce (go figure). so the fact that said daughter, who bears her grandmother's name as her middle name, and who i wanted so desperately to have the same sort of relationship with as my mom, likes owls is to me -- some sort of sign.

so after i made the little muffin lion (he wasn't supposed to be a muffin -- he was supposed to be an egg cozy but something was off in the pattern and he ended up being too big), i started looking for owl cozies (i never did find one) or little amigurumi (which literally translated means little knitted or crocheted stuffed doll or something close to that) owl that i could make her for graduation. after all, owls r a big symbol of graduation and becoming wise, etc.

i found a pattern and put it aside thinking it wouldn't take long. amigurumi animals r usually pretty small and don't take even a full ball of yarn most of the time. the other day in my cleaning, i found the pattern and decided to start on it. thinking i could probably finish it quickly. then i read the pattern -- 10.5 inches high. right, well, then ... let's get to work.

it hasn't taken me all that long, although its hard on the eyesight as its all done in single crochet with an F hook -- so old eyes have a tough time with that. but now here i am needing to stuff this 10.5 inch high thing and i have no stuffing. and i'm kicking myself for having given it away, because its not cheap stuff. and i have enough plastic shopping bags that i could stuff it with that, but then it would make crunching noises when she cuddled it and she would hate that, so it wouldn't be a very fond reminder of her mom when she's away at college.

now i've proved my point about not throwing things away because eventually u will need them and then what will u do?? of course, proving my point doesn't help me at all with the lack of stuffing issue -- so off to joann's i go ....

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UPDATE: I actually found a bag of stuffing in the closet of the spare bedroom -- so was saved from buying one at Joann's. however, i had to go there to buy eyes to finish the owl. and here's the finished product!

back up!

i've been having an issue with my mouse. first of all u have to know that i don't buy top of the line when it comes to this stuff because sooner or later its gonna blow and i'll be out a wad and will be faced with buying another one. now having said that, i have bluetooth on my laptop for a mouse, so i bought a bluetooth mouse. and its white like my laptop, so it matches (like that is really important in the whole grand scheme of things). but its not from apple -- its from idk who - but it cost me like $20 compared to what apple charges (and we won't even go there).

now as mice go, i am pretty hard on them -- or at least the ppl in this house r hard on them. the last bluetooth one i had went belly up because my daughter spilled juice all over it (and tried to hide the fact, but i'm smarter than she thinks i am and knew it and just waited to see if she would ever own up to it -- which she eventually did and was totally surprised that i knew it was her fault). but even the ordinary every day kind of mice i tend to squash like a -- well -- mouse. so this is like the third one for this particular laptop -- which i've had for two years come june. so u kinda get the picture -- right?

so this mouse doesn't want to click right any more -- and i don't mean right-click -- i mean it just refuses to click sometimes even though its right on what its supposed to click on. and i just have to keep punching the clicker till it makes up its mind to do it. which is pretty annoying, if i do say so myself coz it just slows down the whole "click here" process. and at first i thought it was because the batteries were dying but then i went through a whole string of new batteries and its still doing it, so i'm thinking its probably gonna go belly up soon and i'll have to pony up some cash for one. but it won't be high on the priority list as i need to have the snow tires removed on my car and get the oil changed, etc.

but this morning i was working away uploading stuff to etsy and getting really frustrated with the whole "i'm not going to click now" issue, when suddenly i started hearing this clicking noise coming from the lower left hand section of my laptop. which, if any of u have ever had a hard drive die -- u know this could potentially be the click of death in HD terms. i went into panic mode and decided i needed to back up everything. in the world of bina -- that means like 8,000 photos, and 5,000 bits of music in itunes and a gazillion other bits of information (including all the quicken files, letters to everybody and his brother, all the chats worth saving, and all my blogs and writings). this process is cumbersome and slow and honestly, i'd rather have my teeth drilled without novacaine than do it, but its necessary in the world of computers.

so i did it and we won't talk about how much space i eradicated from my handy-dandy little firelite smarkdisk 100GB pocket drive. but let's just suffice to say that it doesn't even begin to include all the shareware that is on my computer -- and over an hour and a half later we're still copying bits of music and idk what else. when i started the process i still had 80GB left on the drive, now i have 25GB -- so that should tell u something!!

now i've had hard drives fail in the past. we had several fail on the three PC computers we had in our store and backing stuff up is really important and we should all do it often -- but i haven't done it in full since may of 2008 right before i bought my current computer. so u can well imagine just how much additional information i've added in that amount of time. and part of my problem with stuff on my computer is pretty much like stuff that comes into my apartment -- idk when to stop or how or what to get rid of and when. so whatever is on there, just gets transferred and who wants to go through all that stuff anyhow???

i keep thinking about this show that's become popular called "hoarders". could i be considered a hoarder when it comes to my computer??? oh dear ....