So here we are again.

Once again, it's November and I'm lagging on this whole blogging thing. I'm usually decent at the outset before eventually petering out, but this time I seem to have failed to even make it out of the starting gate.

Thing is, it's been that sort of a week. Actually, scratch that-- it's been that sort of two weeks. Two Sundays ago, my condo flooded due to a malfunctioning washer next door, dumping gallons of water under the adjoining walls into my kitchen, stairwell, and living room. We got a lot cleaned up that night, but it took four days, a cleanup crew, seven industrial fans, a dehumidifier the size of my stove, and the removal of half my downstairs flooring before everything was finally dry.

...and that was the easy part. Week 2 has been the hard part-- dealing with insurance companies. I generally expect insurance companies to do their job-- wearing us down to avoid having to release money-- but the run-around we've been getting has exceeded even my already-low standards. Luckily, I've armed myself with a trusty notebook full of info-- every name, every phone number, and every single scrap of documentation that might be remotely relevant. I'm also really lucky to have a couple of friends with insurance backgrounds who've let me pick their brains when needed, so I feel well-prepared for our fight with bullshit bureaucracy.

The whole thing, along with a couple of related tensions and frustrations, left me pretty worn out and depressed. I was too tired to do much for Halloween, which bummed me out even further. So after a week of eating my feelings and a beer or three, I went back to my preferred method of coping-- following through with my restoration plan, reminding myself that this will also pass, and making lists of the things I have to be happy and grateful for.

Right now I'm glad to be snuggled under my finished-at-long-last hex quilt. My finished size ended up being slightly bigger than throw-sized at 65"x65". I was originally planning on making a twin-sized piece, but after months of sewing I looked at my quilt where it was pinned on the wall and finally admitted that if I had to sew another hexagon I was going to hurt someone. "A throw would get more use anyway," I told myself while shoving 150 leftover hexes into my fabric trunk, and thusfar it's turned out to be true.