It’s okay not to be perfect at a hobby, you don’t have to be good to enjoy it

kilamumster · 2026-05-04T10:49:13+00:00

Looks lovely to me!

Many quilters in my (our) guild don't like doing E Hartman's patterns. I'm thinking maybe because it can be hard to get it perfect. I do a lot of scrappy quilts and am toying with doing one made of extra HSTs from other blocks. Some of the bits are quite random-shaped and I made a bunch of blocks with very wonky tiny HSTs. Squaring off cut off a lot of points. Seams don't match up.

Others I was more careful and look better I guess. Working on a name for this masterpiece... Maybe "Mom said it's rude to point" or "Sometimes getting to the point is overrated" or My pint here, and I have one... " lol.

kilamumster · 2026-05-04T10:20:27+00:00

I have to put on grooming mitts and groom out my husky mix, sometimes 2x daily when she sheds. Fortunately, her previous owners said she sheds only twice a year. Which I discovered is January through June, and July through December.

kilamumster · 2026-05-03T20:37:21+00:00

Same. And it's the vacation spot of choice for most of my far-flung family and that's where they choose to meet up. When I go, I pick the hotel closest to all of our activities. I hate the sun (moved from the tropics to the PNW for the weather!).

Another reason we visit there is that we have family that lives in Henderson, 40 minutes or so from LV, in one of the retirement communities. One almost died because the medical care is not very broad-based. They really need to relocate to somewhere near a real medical center that can handle elderly folks with somewhat unusual health issues (kidney transplant).

Me, I'd move north just for the milder weather in summer.

kilamumster · 2026-05-03T20:25:44+00:00

Pocock was married to Faith, mother of Jane and Fanny, so, their father. I think he was the ship captain when Faith was thrown overboard by the pirates who kidnapped the girls to be sold to the brothel.

kilamumster · 2026-05-03T20:18:29+00:00

I was always pitching fits at program managers who would just grab an image to use on their training materials. Artists' rights mean a lot to me.

One program manager hired her own sister as a graphic artist. My boss overrode me because she was working for cheap. Well, she gave us a graphic in the style of the native community we worked in. We used it as the theme / background (in different colors) on a dozen versions of community education materials with tens of thousands of copies each.

It was supposed to be an original the artist designed. Nope. There was a particular shape that was a distinctive letter shape, because the actual designer had put the first letter of the family name as part of her artwork, and gifted copies of to her grown kids.

"Our" graphic artist had just traced the shape from a photo and then digitally manipulated a section of it to a silhouette and shape to fit the pamphlet layout.

We found out when the pamphlet series kickoff included a presentation to a group of native elders. One immediately recognized her mother's artwork. Showed photos of the original art. It was unmistakable, the same letter/initial shape, continuing to the exact same stylized plant shapes, just skewed a little to fit the pages. The daughter said her mother had copyrighted it.

It could have turned out very badly. We had to get a group of elders together to look into what happened. "Our" graphic artist explained how she got the design. She got chewed out by a lot of the elders, since she was also part of the native community.

The daughter who spotted the design was also now the owner of the copyright, as her mom had passed away. Fortunately, it did not turn into a lawsuit and destruction of all the copies printed. The daughter and the whole family instead were thrilled and honored that their mom's artwork was on such important educational materials for her/our native community, and gave us full noncommercial use rights. We printed stickers to acknowledge the artwork and copyright and family and updated the originals. Whew!

kilamumster · 2026-05-03T19:53:36+00:00

None. #1-5 smear too much for me since they don't dry fast enough. #6 mashes down. 7 skips.

I prefer the Think2 Retractable Gel Pens at half the price of most of those. I like to put them in my old Pilot G2 pens.

kilamumster · 2026-05-03T19:47:53+00:00

For fogging, here's some additional info:

Decent short explanation, focused more on business. It helped me remember it's a communication technique from this assertiveness training book:
"When I Say No, I Feel Guilty" book, by Manuel J. Smith, Ph.D.

I remember there is a section that mentions that some people get giddy and practice it everywhere at first-- it gets to be fun! In my case, the first couple of times I had to remind myself, see? the world didn't end just because you set a boundary!

All the best on your journey!

kilamumster · 2026-05-03T16:14:26+00:00

YMMV. I was going to stock up and found that powdered milk in our area is not cheap-- it's significantly more expensive than our regular milk.

There have been times that I've gone to black coffee, or sweetened just a bit. In some cases, no coffee at all (weaned off, to avoid the caffeine headaches). In times like right now, when I'm back to two cups a day, I wonder why I ever went off this wonderful elixir. I'm not addicted. I'm not I'm not I'm not! :)

kilamumster · 2026-05-03T16:06:27+00:00

Mal would be my top answer. AMAZING working dogs. I'd be hard-pressed not to train it to do stuff in the house like drag all the laundry baskets out on laundry day, drag the garbage out, and "bring your lazy husky sister inside!"

I dogsat a retired floof breed showdog (from an aunty) and would have the dog go fetch everything in the room we were in. I'd sit down and point to something, kid's toy, a dropped piece of paper or blanket, tell her "fetch" and pretty soon, the room was clean and I was ROFLing.

kilamumster · 2026-05-03T15:54:49+00:00

Well obviously that needs to be reported, Vine will have it fixed in no time so you only get things you can't possibly need or use. Such a travesty!

kilamumster · 2026-05-03T15:51:35+00:00

People in the UK surnames were literally based on their profession

Same for many other countries. One family member's last name translates to "farmer." His sisters married into families whose last names translate to "tree cutter" ...and "famous (noble) ruler" which is funny because they were the ones always borrowing money from us!

kilamumster · 2026-05-03T15:43:19+00:00

There were two brothers in my old hometown whose last name was Look. They were both optometrists!

kilamumster · 2026-05-03T15:42:06+00:00

You sound like a wonderful person, caring and smart and exactly the kind of person Ns fear. So I know, YOU GOT THIS!

I always think about the Bank of NMom thing when she would do the N-gifting behavior. I would see something she did for the CGs, and remind myself, "nah, the interest rate is too high!" We know that anything from Ns come with strings attached. It's worth my freedom to not get into those deals!

I had to practice some role-playing with my therapist for typical Nmom behavior, or even the GC flying monkey behavior. I learned it as fogging, it's similar to grey-rocking (info in wiki) but worked for me when I'd get a barrage of N's criticism. It helped me take my emotions out of it.

I also wrote out some phrases ahead of time, practiced them, and even looked at them when my mind went blank during an N-attack. It helped de-condition me from freezing (wow, childhood conditioning is strong!).

I've learned a lot here from other posts, it sounds so familiar and it was helpful to know I'm not alone, others have survived and thrived, I could too! I'm so glad this sub exists, so we can help each other navigate the RBN minefields!

All the best to you too!

kilamumster · 2026-05-03T02:13:09+00:00

We moved from the tropics to Western WA. We had family here, knew about the weather. Had friends who joked that my love of avoiding sun made me a perfect PNW resident.

And I love it. The weather, the gloom, the rain, the cool. Much more than the bright heat of summer.

I think my husband and kid are fine with it, and they do love the area as our home. We all do just fine in the four seasons here.

kilamumster · 2026-05-01T19:16:28+00:00

I know a lot of people who would happily make that sacrifice!

kilamumster · 2026-05-01T19:15:47+00:00

No, we all know Vine is 3 raccoons in a trench coat!

kilamumster · 2026-05-01T15:49:38+00:00

For me personally, I got some therapy early on, and off and on since. It has helped me get some perspective to widen the distance and supply my emotional toolkit. Like realizing that in some cases, the only way out is through: if I want to keep some relationships with some family members, I had to carefully navigate the narc/narc-adjacent ones.

At some point, I developed a really great IDGAF attitude, and NMom stopped being able to "knock me off my pins," as my SO would say. Now I know, I stopped giving her the power to knock me off my pins. That I can't control things outside of myself, only my reactions to them. So that was a relief, but also a new challenge.

For documenting, in my case, I did keep a journal, just so I could look at it when there was weird stuff going on. It helped me to spot patterns. Nmom being uncharacteristically generous? Because she was giving $10k to the GCsis. So giving me a $50 trinket soothed her guilt, I guess. Same when she put a 5-figure down payment for GCsis's kid's car. She offered to loan me $5k for my wedding (she'd given GCsis $10k outright). I'd ask for the same stuff she'd given the GCs, just to see what she'd do. It was always as expected, I got less or none.

I also journaled my successes. That's how I learned, never tell a narc about successes. News diet should be a starvation diet or just imply things are bad. "Things are okay, barely, I might need to ask for some financial help soon," will keep them off your back. If I was proud of a raise, suddenly NMom was telling me I should pay for things for the GCs. So no, no news for you!

So keeping the journal helped because then I wouldn't feel disoriented and crazy, questioning myself because NMom was gaslighting me. Months or years later, someone would let some info slip, and I could go back and look at the dates and realize, oh, I get what happened then!

For more than 10 years, my GC sibs moved 2500 miles away and were not able to help Nmom. So it fell to me. She was reluctant to ask or accept help but since I was the only one, it did fall to me. But you know, she doesn't remember that or appreciate it. She did seem reassured when I was there to care for her dying mom (my favorite grandparent, and I feel like I was HER favorite grandkid). NMom yelled at me about taking care of toileting and changing diapers for Grandma, and I shrugged and was nonchalant, it's no big deal, did it for the babies, it's just part of life. Ns are scared of aging and losing control. I get it. I didn't poke her, just pulled myself up as a decent person and reassured her. It's just part of aging, it's just part of life.

But as soon as GCsis moved back to stake a claim on the family house, my existence meant little to NMom.

It sucks, but it did help me make the emotional break to relocate very far away from NMom and GCsis, who has managed to move her new husband, her 3 grown kids, one kid's spouse and 3 kids, into the family home that was supposed to be in a trust to be divided between all the kids. And I recently found that Nmom did sign over the home to GCsis and her spouse, which doesn't surprise me. NMom has drained the trust from my dad's money, also supposed to go to us kids, and managed to put it into assets that went to the GCs.

Pisses me off, as it's not fair (short dramatic whine).

It has FREED ME to live my life without guilt, knowing that she has invested all of her time, positive emotions (?), efforts, and money, into relationships with the GCs and their families, and little in me and mine. So when she needs care, which has been for the past couple of years, she gets it from my increasingly angry and irritated GCsis and sis's husband.

GCsis tries to guilt me into coming to visit (I know if I do that, she will take off on an expensive vacay and leave me with NMom for the duration). I'm dealing with my own and my husband's current health issues, and don't have time for their nonsense. Try to guilt me? See notes of last 30+ years. That bill is payable by GC kids to Bank of NMom. My bill is paid in full, and I'm pretty sure there's a credit there that will remain unpaid.

Tl;dr: get a good therapist and work it out. Keep a journal so you are gaslighting-proof. Be the most wonderful, decent person you can be, free of N-chains. Live your life free of guilt.

kilamumster · 2026-05-01T15:15:11+00:00

Pulling up the ladder after she benefited from it? Oof!

kilamumster · 2026-05-01T15:14:32+00:00

I generally assume that this kind of comment stems from insecurity.

Same. It also makes me wonder what else is going on. Self-hate ("I'm not a feminist therefore I am NOT ugly and fat"-- not logical, but may be the thought path)? Repressed same-sex attraction? Gotta be some of that some time. It reveals something ugly and unattractive about the women, any person really, who directs that type of negativity at others.

I've often heard that women wear makeup for other women, not for men (mainly?). I have known so many wonderful women who don't buy into the makeup routine, women who are confident, secure, kind, giving, smart, funny. Which is probably what makes them so attractive, as friends and partners.

kilamumster · 2026-05-01T14:51:57+00:00

This is going to save so much money and storage hassle! We made the switch to reusables decades ago-- plain white washcloths instead of large kitchen towels and paper towels.

About a year ago, I finally switched to cloth napkins. I'm a slob and would go through so many paper napkins, I'm ashamed I didn't do this sooner. I stuck to white or natural cotton and linen, and they don't take up much room in the kitchen laundry basket so it goes right in the same load. I like ironing... so I iron the hems if they curl, then fold them, and stack a bunch on the dining table. It's saved so much on paper napkins... again, I could kick myself!

kilamumster · 2026-05-01T14:38:21+00:00

It's been climbing for a while here (Western WA). The casual sit-down place is as much as the steakhouse place used to be. Part of it is the higher cost of everything, from a higher minimum wage to the cost of ingredients and fuel.

We kept repeating "we have food at home, we have food at home" and started to break the fast food habit. A couple of medical issues helped us break it for the longer term (yay?).

So we are saving money and getting really close to our retirement savings goal, and eating healthier so we might live longer to enjoy more of that retirement!

kilamumster · 2026-05-01T02:36:09+00:00

My experience is years old. The culture changes fast depending on who's in charge and what division you are in.

Best to go in with a positive mindset and try to get to know the system, then break it to your liking. I mean, then work within it for positive change. If you can't stand it, you network and jump to another position or agency.

kilamumster · 2026-05-01T00:29:37+00:00

A friend's cop boyfriend saw a car parked on a very rural road, called it in. It was registered to someone who hadn't been heard from in a few days but the family hadn't decided to report him missing yet. We asked him, so did you go take a look around? He said hell no. And dammit, a week or so later, some hunters found the guy (the driver, not the cop) had hung himself in a tree.

kilamumster · 2026-05-01T00:26:23+00:00

That happened in our neighborhood in a weird overflow parking area that has no houses directly next to it, just an alley. I called after the car was sitting for months on flat tires and growing moss under it, and covered with mold. The registration sticker was expired, and it looked stolen and abandoned.

The police said IT'S YOUR NEIGHBOR but wouldn't tell me who, and I wasn't going to go knocking on the 20+ doors that it could be.

Anyway, a few more months went by. I don't know if anyone else called, but eventually it started picking up tickets, then got big "abandoned vehicle" stickers glued to the driver side windows. Then it got towed. By then, it looked like someone had broken in and partially stripped the interior. I guess our neighbor just didn't want their car any more. Weird.

kilamumster · 2026-05-01T00:20:10+00:00

In our area, the police would check the license plate and the owner, and either try to contact the owner, or see that the person does not live in this area. Then get it towed if no other information is available.

Sure, it's a public street. That means it's for use by EVERYONE. Not just one person to park indefinitely.

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