Better!

Last night's sleep plan really did work! I slept like a baby for 9-1/2 hours with no uneasy dreams or tossing and turning. You can bet I'll be following the plan again for the next couple nights until I think I've broken the old pattern. In the meantime, I did more cleaning today, because I think that's one of the things that's weighing on my mind--getting my house in order before surgery since I won't be able to do much afterward for awhile.

Today's task was cleaning the bookshelves in the living room--there are six tall book cases in there, and I like to keep the books I've read and enjoyed, particularly those books that authors write as a series. The cleaning involved culling out quite a few books to store in the garage for the time being, as I'm not quite ready to give them up just yet. Maybe later. Or maybe someday I'll have a larger house and more book cases, and I won't ever have to part with "old friends." In any event, there's room now for "new friends" and the dust is greatly decreased.

Want to see what I did for fun, once I got my chores done? First I finished the binding on this quilt--

Cindy Lou Who on steroids. It's actually a Schnibbles pattern, but I used a more controlled fabric "pallet" rather than charm packs, and I made it larger than the pattern. You may remember seeing this before--I made the top back around January, I think, but I just got around to doing the quilting.

For several months now, Spike has been keeping me company in the office curled up in a basket of wool. When I cleaned the office this week, I came up with different wool storage, and trying to get all the cat hair off the wool she'd been sleeping on all this time was a real pain. I still have a couple baskets of wool, but I want to try to get her to sleep on a (washable) pillow instead. Last night, she tried out the pillow I'd provided, rejected it, and climbed into a basket of wool before I chased her off, so I realized I'd need to devise another plan.

I have a feeling that coming up with a plan to get Spike to give up sleeping in baskets of wool might be as difficult as fixing that oil "spill" in the Gulf, but here's my first attempt--a pillow cover made of wool:

It occurred to me that maybe it's the wool itself she likes, and if that's the case, the new pillow covering might make her happy. Here's a photo of Spike enjoying her new pillow:

See the basket next to the pillow? That's the one she was trying to get into before. She STILL prefers it to the pillow, darn it! But I've been keeping it covered with something to discourage her from trying to sleep on top of it--I hope once she gets used to the pillow, she'll forget all about the basket. Of course, if this doesn't work, the next step is to find a basket to put the PILLOW in. Darn pets!

Well, I'm off to do the warm bath, warm milk, Tylenol PM thing again. I'm glad you stopped by to visit!