Or should I say, "TOE-rture"? No, probably not.

Um, have you noticed that Christmas is looming? Every year I have panic attacks starting December 1, because every year I find myself in a situation where there will be no Christmas unless certain parties who owe me money cough it up in a timely fashion. This situation was aggravated four years ago, when my chosen method of birth control failed around tax time and our second daughter was born 6 days before Christmas. Even though we had David neutered a couple years ago, I still won't let him near me in April. Or May, just to be safe.

So, once again, I am biting my nails and hoping for the best.

In between working on the next articles, I have been staring at the dresden plate table runner and wondering how the hell to quilt it. I have done nothing beyond stippling yet, and I really wanted something different, so I went back to my Virtual Quilting Mentor, Leah Day, and let her words of wisdom convince me to try a paisley design in the area surrounding the dresden plates.

Here is what I did, on a practice panel:

Not great. But not so bad that I'd have to wad it up and use it to scrub toilets. So I was all ready to start in on the real thing when WHAM. I smashed my right foot against the leg of a chaise in our (to quote Git Down Kitty) "fo-yay."

This was not an unusual occurrence. I smash my toes on furniture legs all the time, and so when I hobbled into the kitchen and announced what I had just done, pretty much everyone just rolled their eyes and went, "Again?" But I knew something was different about this time because usually I'm in blinding pain for about a minute and I say lots of bad words and then it goes away. This time it was oddly numb, but I still felt panicky and I wanted to say lots of bad words, but I didn't need to. Harper helpfully reminded me, after noting my unprecedented restraint, that I could say the word Ramona came up with in "Ramona and Beezus": guts. So I sat in the kitchen with ice on my foot shouting, "GUTS, GUTS, GUTS!"

Then the pain set in. And the swelling. And the colors! Such pretty colors. 

I suppose I could have gone to a clinic or the emergency room, but since the toe wasn't pointing in an unnatural direction and the pain wasn't more than I could bear (as long as I didn't actually, you know, move it or walk on it), I elected to just buddy tape it and stay off of it for a day or two. This of course meant that I got to read all day yesterday, and that meant I plowed through the last book in the Outlander series in record time. And of course she leaves you with the most tantalizing cliff-hangers in this one, when I have to wait for her to FINISH WRITING BOOK EIGHT. I suppose I should be glad I have something to look forward to, but WHAT IS JAMIE GOING TO DO TO LORD JOHN? Or Claire, for that matter? And God only knows what will happen to Roger. He'll probably end up blinded and castrated. 

Or forced to wait years for book eight, because that, my friends, is torture.