I love all the stories from everyone! It makes me feel less alone that I goofed so much, LOL.
I'm glad to see that the trends regarding mental health and its importance has started to shift to a more positive approach, but I still think we are a long way from completely fixing it. My problem with waiting until almost the last minute was because the last time I went to a doctor about my depression, no matter how many times I told him that my side effects were getting worse and worse, he kept increasing the dose. I finally had enough and didn't go back to him, stopped taking it completely, went through withdrawals on my own and never went back because I felt that the next doctor would do the same. I was so scared when I went to my new doctor, but she was wonderful, we were in the room for a solid two hours just talking about everything and when it came time to talk about my depression, she was very attentive, even held my hand and hugged me when I cried and immediately put me on Cymbalta because I have so much chronic pain and said she would get in touch with the clinic's counselor as soon as she could so I could start talking to someone. What makes it even better is she's allowing me to make the decision on when we should increase the dosage and I have even started a medical journal to keep track of things that come up. Personally, I think that if we had more doctors like her, things would be a lot easier for the majority of people who suffer in silence. I'm due to see her again soon, I think she'll be happy to know that I'm quilting again :-)
I'm thinking about calling my corner "Seventy-two Feet of Joy" - because that's about how much I have all told. It's really tiny and eventually, we'll be converting the entire dining room into my sewing room, but we still have a lot of work to do. I'm looking at getting a used Juki because none of my machines now can handle the quilts I have when it comes to actually quilting them, so I'm going to need some room, not to mention a clear corner next to one of my load bearing walls to handle the weight. We started a kitty last month, I'm up to about $140, the one I saw on Ebay is roughly $300, so I'm almost half way there already. I know by the time I get the money saved, the machine may be gone, but at least I know what I'm looking for, so when one does become available, I can grab it up, quick. I'm really excited.