Pulling Off a Bandaid

About quitting smoking--or probably any other type of addiction--a couple people said they, a spouse, or another loved one have been trying to quit, and I wanted to throw a couple thoughts out there.  There are SO many ways to quit these days, that sometimes the hard part is chosing a way that will be successful.  I think maybe the most important thing is to know what type of person you are.  Look at the analogy of the bandaid:  Some people prefer to remove a little bit at a time because it seems less painful; some people prefer to just rip it off and be done with it quickly; and some people would rather have someone else do it for them.  Quitting smoking is a little like that.

In making my own personal decision, I felt that cutting back slowly would take much more willpower than I had.  Whenever I tried to cut back, it felt like all I was thinking about all day was when I could have the next cigarette.  And thinking about smoking constantly make it much harder; soon I'd give up on cutting back at all!

And I had worked with a woman who swore by the nicotine patch; but she'd been using the patch for a couple years.  To me, the point of quitting was to QUIT--not just to change the method of delivery, although changing to the patch meant not inhaling smoke into my lungs, and that definitely was an improvement right there.  But when I thought about it, I didn't want to trade one habit for another.

So for me, it came down to ripping off the bandaid.  I was pretty crazy for those first five days and I tried to sleep away the time as much as possible, but I knew that if I could just wait it out, it would work for me.  Just think--what were you doing five days ago?  That would have been last weekend.  Does it seem that far in the past?  No, probably not.  And I bet all the other important things in your life have taken much, much longer to achieve, right?  So I say go for it, if that's what you want--but you have to really want it and make up your mind that anything else is failure.  But also, decide what the right method is for you--there are many more ways to quit and aids than I've even mentioned, and the right method for you might not be the same as the method I used.

Enough of that though--I know it doesn't really apply to many of you, so here's something different.  One of the ongoing projects I started last year but didn't finish was the Merry, Merry Snowmen pattern by Bunny Hill.  When I set everything aside last fall, I only had the last of the nine blocks left to make, so a couple weeks ago, I prepped the block and then I carried everything back and forth to work with me every day--but I never got around to working on it!  Finally, I'd had enough of carrying my stitching case around, so I made the last block my main project these last couple evenings.  Now I can say that last block is done--woo-hoo!

I have a couple of those corner snowmen left to applique to complete the quilt and I'll need to press the blocks before I put them together.  Then there's the border, of course, but I'm getting very close!  Tomorrow I'd like to get the blocks up on the design wall and see how everything looks.

If this is a quilt you've been working on, you may notice I made one small design change--in the original pattern, the body of the snowman "chef" was sort of straight up and down; I decided with the feminine looking apron, my chef needed some curves, so I made the chef like the traditional "three-ball" snow figure.

My 4th of July will probably be spent mostly in the Sweat Shop with a few breaks for cooking, barbecuing, and hanging out with Hubby.  I hope you have a great day planned too!