IN WHICH I FINALLY FIND THE SOAPBOX...

The last four days here at CS2 have been...interesting.

Rich was away, and I thought I would tackle a to do list of about a hundred and a half things, but all I managed to do was sit in the Happy Chair missing him or sleeping in the big girl sleigh bed clutching Stewey's little blanket and missing HIM too.  (Can you believe it's almost been a year since he died?)

Physically, I seem to have hit a big fat brick wall hard and head first.  I really do think that it's the kidneys, but I've been saying that for (what feels like) years now.  I will see the nephrologist a week from Friday for a check-in and promise that if she tells me it's time to start dialysis, I won't fight it. 

Mentally, I think I am frustrated to not be as "with it" as I would like, and I am not doing things like reading or puzzles that normally keep my tiny little hampster wheel turning...and as for stitching?  The sound of crickets chirping when I fumble with any progress to show speaks for itself...must remedy that.

But emotionally...

Emotionally, I am...

Well, I don't know exactly what I am.  Overwhelmed?  Sad?  Scared?  Content?  Happy?  Grieving?  All of the above?

Don't know for sure.  But what I do know is that when I get like this, my instinct is to pull my shell a little  tighter about me and to turn off the lights, crawl under the covers, and wait for it to pass.

But this time, something triggered me to say "NOPE!" and to thrust my fist out of the blanket and to grab the mic for a hot second to say the following:

It took me a minute because I'm slower than most, but tonight it finally hit me that everytime I receive a nasty email from "Betty" or I see a negative comment on a fellow stitcher's blog or Flosstube channel, or I see that somebody got a thumbs down or a rotten thing said to them or about them that there is no way in Holy H-E-double hockey sticks that it came from inside the family.

I get my fair share of poop flung my way in the form of super mean email notes that tell me how much I'm hated, how my life is of no value or no interest, and how every bad thing that ever happened to me was karmic retribution.

OK.  If that's really how you feel, please go right ahead and rant yourself right into a stroke about it.  Remain anonymous and come at me during those moments when you know that my big fat white soft underbelly is the most vulnerable.  If it makes you feel better about your world, or fixes something in you that is broken...you just go with your bad self.

But when you go after my family...my stitchy family...that I have come to know, cherish, and love these last several years?

That...I'm just not OK with.

This thing of ours is beautiful.  I know first hand of the gererosity, compassion, kindness, and unadulterated love that flows freely among and between people of every socio-economic, racial, cultural, intellectual, gender, sexual orientation, age, nation of origin, or political affiliation imaginable.  What binds us is our love for all thing needle and thread, and the joy and peace that it gives us is just plain...precious.

So why in the world would anybody feel compelled to smudge the hell out of it with nastiness?  Why do so many of us feel the need to apologize for our unbridled enthusiasm or our need to share ourselves with our people by showing our accomplishments...or our stitchy spots...or the latest big bag of haul from a road trip to an LNS...or gifts that we were showered with?

Why would anybody think it OK to reprimand or criticize or belittle somebody who puts themselves out there in an honest attempt to just matter in this world?

Like I said...it took me a little longer than most, but I finally realized that the "haters" have no place here and are most definitely not part of this thing.  The haters want to tear down out of some perverse need to bully and detroy happiness and spread bad juju.

So, dear friends.  Dear fellow bloggers, Flosstubers, Facebookers, Instagramers....any member of this family who just wants to pull their little chair up to the table for a bit...I say BRAVO and BRAVA to you from the bottom of my heart.  I don't care if you're stitching plastic canvas coasters of unicorns with sock yarn or are hardangering a small village with spun silk or are attaching beads and sequins to a piece of needlepoint canvas with a hot glue gun or the hair of a Mongolian yak.

I'm in.

I want to know the story of your life.  I want to hear and see your kids hollering their little heads off, you slurping your coffee out of mug the size of your head, every single WIP, kit, gift, and rotation plan you've ever thought of, and I want to oohh and aahh over your chair, light, needle minder collection, and organizational plan.  I don't care if you use Ziplock bags or Hermes scarves or whether you stitch in hand or have a gizmo bigger than a Range Rover that helps you stitch...I will love it all and I won't be afraid to tell you that.  If you stitch five minutes a week or nineteen hours a day, you're a stitcher in my book, and that fact means that you are my family and I love you.

Let's let the good drown the bad.  Let's lift up everything that makes this thing of ours so wonderful and not tolerate anybody or anything that gets in the way of it.  Let's just...be...for a bit, and have sone fun and let the big hard things in the big hard world stay out there for just a minute longer.

OK?

That's it for me tonight, Dearies.  Tomorrow will be a full day of all the things I was supposed to have done for the last three...and then my guy will be home again.  I hope that your very own week has been swell and that your Thursday is wonderful.  Do something...you know.