Category Archives: Cogging for Kibble

Five Things

1. The boy and I have library cards. I am a tiny bit disappointed in our local library’s offerings. Of course, I do have to keep reminding myself that the megacity’s libraries are split up into a dozen places, and I can borrow books from any of them. Still, our initial impression was somewhat lacklustre. In other book news, I have finally read The Hunger Games and it was brilliant. So brilliant that I fully intend to abuse the Scholastic book club at the boy’s school and order the next two books at prices much lower than retail prices. My editor sent me a couple of books as belated housewarming presents, both of them fun: one’s a Star Wars memoir, and the other is an unofficial Harry Potter cookbook, which has lots of really good British-themed food in it. I made breaded pork chops from it for supper last night, and while they were not absolutely identical to the delicious ones that t!’s Ukrainian Babas used to make at Easter, they were much closer to them than I’d ever managed before. I’m looking forward to trying the multitude of individual meat pie recipes in it throughout the fall.

2. The weekend saw us sharing a huge Harvest feast with other local like-minded individuals. There was so much food; the courses just kept coming out! I was particularly fond of the mushroom soup, the leek-artichoke dip, and the tomato pesto, all of which I must remember to get the recipes for. The seven different kinds of homemade bread were spectacular. The company was likewise wonderful. However, just as I suspected, it totally killed me energy-wise, not that I had a lot to begin with.

3. I am now officially babysitting Bonnie’s gorgeous 30″ Schacht-Reeves Saxony wheel for a month. ‘Lady Jane’ is a true lady, being very patient with me and working beautifully right off the bat (batt? heh heh heh, a little spinning humour, there). Bonnie also gave me three batts of beautiful black Shetland wool she’d processed herself, and they’re deliciously soft and fluffy. My initial impression of working with double treadle is that I have to treadle very gently. Part of this is due to the fact that the drive wheel is almost double the size of my Louet wheel, so I have to move much more slowly to get a similar result. The other part is, of course, that one foot isn’t doing all the work any more, so I have to divide the movement between the two feet. I also have to remind myself that the heel-toe movement on the Louet treadle doesn’t work on the Schacht-Reeves. I don’t dislike the DT, and I suspect it will come in very handy when I gather up the courage to try spinning Meallanmouse’s cotton again, but it hasn’t been a lightbulb/angels singing kind of revelation yet. It’s just a different technique. The wheel moves perfectly well using only one of the two treadles, too. I have it set up in Scotch tension, and I like it. Double drive is more than my brain can handle right now. Overall, my initial reaction is that getting a larger DT wheel would be a decent idea, to open up a lot more possibilty in my spinning.

4. The stupid sinus cold I have been managing over the past week has been joined by mild gastro, which means I’m cancelling my cello lesson. It’s somewhat difficult to concentrate with this level of nausea. Unconnected to this, the boy and I have our annual checkups tomorrow. My family doctor is now 50 km away. It’s still worth every minute and every kilometre of the trip. Fibro-wise, I am in the process of realizing, internalizing, and accepting that things are going to be bad for a very long time, and my major issue is going to be with feeling useless, which always frustrates the hell out of me. Trying to stay positive has its own energy drain, which is also ragingly frustrating.

5. I’m chipping away at my current contracted project. I think I’m about halfway through the second draft. As there will be about four drafts, I can say I’m just about halfway done, which is great because I began it seriously at the beginning of this month, and as I have just over six weeks to go I’m ahead of schedule. I’m enjoying this repurposing project, where I take an existing manuscript and turn it into something else.

I think that’s all I’ve got. I have to call my cello teacher.

Out Of Step

I’m having a lot of trouble finding my rhythm these days. I’m tired, my focus is spotty, I’m panicking at to-do lists of sensible, manageable length, and oh, how I ache.

Nice things are happening, of course. The boy loves school. We have friends coming over for Settlers of Catan tonight. We have a Harvest ritual and feast on Saturday that someone else is organizing and hosting. On Sunday, we get to go see the Guardians of Ga’Hoole movie. Nothing wrong or drastic is happening. I’m just having a lot of trouble dealing with the fact that the fibro is really, really bad right now. I can’t seem to get a grip on it, and I think that’s what’s really driving me crazy. I feel like I have to pull up my socks now that the move and settling in are done, and I can’t. I’m chipping away at my current contracted project, but I haven’t signed back on to my previous freelance pool because I know it will knock me dead if I try to do both at once. Reading is difficult, because I’m having trouble sinking into the worlds in the books (except for the latest Diana Wynne Jones, Enchanted Glass, which is brilliant and just the thing I needed). And I guess it all comes down to feeling frustrated and useless, something with which I do not deal well at all.

A lot of my day is taken up figuring out what’s the most important thing on my to-do list and doing that and perhaps the second-most important. For example, despite a long to-do list today, I know that I have to go to the bank for a bank draft, to the post office to mail it out, and to buy the ingredients for tonight’s dinner and Sunday’s entertaining. Everything else, like anniversary gifts and present-shopping, can slide to tomorrow morning. In fact, now that I think about it, I may let the bank draft slide to Monday, because I have to buy two and I haven’t heard back from the second individual yet with a confirmation on the exact cost, and making two trips is a dumb idea for me. Actually, yes; that is what I will do. I feel much better, now.

Enough of that.

In brighter news, I was completely blown away yesterday by a friend’s generous offer to lend me her Schacht-Reeves Saxony wheel for a month. I was talking to her about my indecision regarding purchasing a double treadle or single treadle Saxony when the time came, and out of the blue she offered to not only lend me her double-treadle wheel to work with to help me decide, but to drive it over to me from southern Ontario this Sunday. I am continually stunned by the generosity and thoughtfulness of my friends. And I’m so incredibly thrilled to have the opportunity to work with a Schacht-Reeves for an extended period of time. They’re such high-quality, classy wheels, and I could never dream of owning one; they’re just too expensive. This will be a real treat.

All right. If I go do the groceries now, nice and slowly, I will be able to rest once I get home.

Third Update: Work & House

Let’s see, what else. I’ve been working. I started back last Monday, and have been diligently moving words around in a document, making something completely different. Most of the time I think it makes sense, but sometimes I suspect that I’ve totally lost the train of thought I’m constructing through it. Well, that’s what the next step of editing is for: checking to make sure it flows. I did that copy-editing test, so it’s on file now, and unless I really flubbed it I should be good to go. I’ve also been redoing my pro website, which is ridiculously easy with iWeb. So easy that it was almost done the day I began, except I had to run out to cello, and I haven’t been able to finish up. Well, that’s not entirely true; it’s done, I just haven’t trusted myself enough to upload them. I started on the Owldaughter site, too.

The site redesign was co-prompted by Adelina and Debra. I did an author co-appearance with Adelina for the Melange’s nineteenth birthday (nineteen! an independent bookstore turned nineteen!), which was hugely enjoyable. In catching up, we discovered that we’d bought houses within ten minutes of one another! I asked her who’d done her site, and she admitted to doing it herself with iWeb, which spurred me to sit down with it and try it out, since my site hasn’t been touched in over a year. When I went Mac my comfy CoffeeCup software no longer worked, and I didn’t have the energy or focus to teach myself a new Mac-based one, but iWeb is so ridiculously easy that it’s practically magic. Debra then contacted me for up-to-date bio info for the Yule Fair prep, since the bio on the site is woefully out of date, and that was the final kick I needed to get to work on it.

We hosted a lovely birthday dinner here yesterday for my mother-in-law. They brought steak and salad, there was wine, and I made a very delicious cake. (Note to self: Use three egg whites and two whole eggs in this white cake recipe, make a quarter of this recipe for caramel filling and add a teaspoon of vanilla and a couple of pinches of fleur de sel, then do a really creamy buttercream frosting. Simple, tasty, and just what Mom likes.) HRH and his dad ran wiring to the side door, so now we have an outdoor light there and can see to unlock the door. They also fixed the bank of pot lights in the family room that blew when the cats got into the hanging ceiling a couple of weeks ago.

Also on the house front, we have discovered that we do not, in fact, have a heat pump. We have central air conditioning, with forced air that can better distribute the electric heat. But quite aside from the forced-air-not-heat-pump issue, there was a wire disconnected in the thermostat which was why our heat wouldn’t go on even when we tried to trigger it by setting it for stupidly high levels. So that’s been fixed and clarified now, too.

It’s been such glorious weather this month. Mostly sunny days with cooler nights, with that wonderful golden-tone light, while the leaves are only just barely beginning to change colour. There have been a couple of spectacular thunderstorms, too, with glorious lightshows over the seaway that we can watch from our front porch. We’re really loving the house. We’re still trying to find our rhythm in certain ways–for example, I still haven’t figured out where to do my cooking prep efficiently in the kitchen, as we seem to lack enough continuous counterspace–but that’s minor. I’m starting to take photos of the inside to post for everyone who’s been asking to see the interior. A lot of it doesn’t photograph well, unfortunately, and I’m working with an eight-year-old camera that tends to focus on things I don’t want in focus, or doing odd things with colour or bending images.

There you are; we’re all pretty much up to date.

Checking In

Hello, world. I am not dead. I’ve had a couple of the “Are you okay? You’ve dropped off the face of the earth for a week” kind of questions, so I am here to assure you that no, I am alive. (Twitter knows this already.)

Essentially, I went back to work, and have been juggling that, a return to cello lessons, and errands that I can now run during the week instead of jamming them all in on the weekends. And I pack all this into a day that’s shorter than it used to be: I get back from taking the boy to the bus stop at 8:40 AM instead of waving goodbye to the boys at 7:30 the way I used to, and I head out to meet the boy’s bus at 3:45. So my work day is now seven hours long instead of ten hours. Journalling is taking a hit. Besides, I don’t know how exciting “I worked today and moved 30K words around in a document” is to anyone, myself included. And I’m also having a rough time fibro-wise. It was a tough summer, and I borrowed a lot of energy I shouldn’t have, and I’m paying for it now. As I pointed out to someone via e-mail yesterday, I do a very good job of hiding that I’m sick 100% of the time, and it feels like such a cop-out to say that I’m tired. But I am, and if I’m working, that’s brainpower I don’t have left over to journal.

I’ll try to write something soon.

Beginning Again

I feel somewhat aimless today. I walked the boy to his bus stop, kissed him, and sent him off to his first full day at school. I walked home, went up the steps and inside the house, locked the door behind me, then paused to look around.

New house, new school routine. Back to work. Except I’ve never worked in this house before, and I’m having trouble settling in. I have to get used to the environment, to the sounds, the light, the scents, the energy. I don’t know if it’s going to help or not that I’m officially beginning a new project today, having done the prep at the end of July.

I know I’m going to poke at my desk and move things around a bit. What worked before for idle online stuff last week is not going to function well for Real Work. It’s an overcast day, and I’ve already gone from the brilliant illumination of the overhead light to my gentler desk lamp. That’s a start.

Part of it is also coming down after a weekend (really, three solid weeks) of activity. The packing, the move, the unpacking, the beginning of kindergarten, and the housewarming this weekend… it was all a lot of energy-intensive bustle. Now I’m alone in the house, sitting at a desk trying to switch into editing mode, and it’s hard to do. I haven’t worked like this in about six weeks. I have to retrain my mind.

I’ll ease in by writing the weekend roundup. Although even settling down to blog this morning made me skittish, and I got up and walked away several times, making up things to do around the house. I almost went right out to do the groceries as soon as I got home, but I made myself come inside to try to figure out what my new routine would be. A cup of tea, a biscuit, correspondence, news, journals and Twitter… these used to settle me into my workday, but not today. Not here. Not yet.

Weekend Roundup: Yet More Packing And A New Baby Edition

We have managed to exhaust ourselves, and it’s not even the move yet.

On Friday we went to the bank and got the bank draft for the notary, covering the down payment, the taxes, and the notary fee, another huge step that made it all a bit more real. We stopped by the license bureau to renew my driver’s license, had lunch together, bought a new toaster (you didn’t seriously think we could live without one for two weeks, did you?), researched washer/dryer sets, scoped Home Depot for new closet doors for the master bedroom (or at least something which which to cover the twelve feet of mirror that both of us find creepy), packed the knick-knacks, statues, and photographs, and stopped by the yarn store for some weaving supplies. (And good thing too, but that’s later in the story.) I drove hard to finish a freelance assignment I’d begun the day before, but I ran out of time. t! dropped off a slew of boxes for us, bless him, and stayed for supper.

Saturday I packed the wall of books in my office, my altar, and my knick-knacks. Once I’ve cleared the last few lingering things like cables and gloves off the bookcases we should be able to dismantle them, giving us a new place to stack packed boxes. Then pretty much all that’s left in here that I can do is my writing desk and the reference stuff and plastic bins of fibre-related stuff underneath it. Saturday afternoon Ceri called, saying that she was in her local hospital under observation for her blood pressure, and we talked for a good long time about stuff in general and possible premature delivery. We had steak and corn on the cob for supper, our first corn of the year, and it was tasteless and cardboardy. We’ll try again.

Sunday morning we had the upstairs neighbours down for brunch, the last one we’ll have like this. We’d packed our waffle iron (oops) but Blade brought his down to learn how to make HRH’s awesome waffles. There was equipment failure, though: the iron plates had too-small grooves and so the waffles self-destructed every time, so we gave up and I used the batter to make pancakes instead. But the company was good! While brunch was happening I got another call from Ceri, telling me that they were transferring her for possible induction to the same hospital I’d been transferred to, the one with the neonatal intensive care unit. We both got a bit weepy, me because I knew exactly what she was going through, and Ceri because she knew that I knew: I’m not ready yet, I was supposed to have more time.

We packed two-thirds of the kitchen that afternoon, until I had to stop because my back and hips were aching too much and my energy was wiped. Scott called and told us that the hospital was going ahead and inducing. At about four o’clock I brought out the loom and started measuring out a warp with the yarn I’d bought on Friday. I’d been planning a very different kind of blanket experiment to test a new technique I was considering using for my gift to them for the baby, and suddenly the experiment had a focus and a reason. I had the warp measured, threaded, sleyed, and wound, with half a blanket woven by the time we went to bed.

Monday morning we were pretty wiped. HRH took the boy to preschool, and I returned to the freelance project that I hadn’t managed to finish on Friday like I’d wanted to. Scott called around ten to let us know how things were progressing and to ask us to bring the stack of books and the camera I’d set aside on Saturday, expecting to go keep Ceri company before they decided to transfer her. I finished my project, handed it in, invoiced, handled my address change with the company, and officially booked off for the duration of the move. Then HRH and I drove up to the hospital we knew very, very well to drop off Ceri’s things and speak with Scott while Ceri rested.

Once home again, I realised that shoehorning a full workday into the morning had left me too burnt out to move on to packing the books in the living room, and HRH wasn’t much better, so I wove the rest of the baby blanket while we watched the middle part of The Return of the King (we’ve been re-watching the Lord of the Rings extended films at night because we’re too tired after a day of packing to do anything else). With every weft pass I was thinking health and safety, health and safety. I was going to finish it no matter what, because I was determined that this child was going to have something handmade especially for her ready even if she was a month ahead of schedule. When HRH went to pick the boy up I hemstitched the ends and took it off the loom. Since this was a new technique that I’d never tried before, I was worried that it might fall apart. But it didn’t, and it was exquisite; I foresee much potential with this technique indeed. I laid it out on the bed and took some photos (which will be shared in a project-devoted photo post once it has been gifted, I promise!), then prepared for the final step, which included felting it slightly in the washing machine. I used the gentle cycle just to be sure, and good thing. The so-called gentle cycle tore open all my protective layers and ties, leaving the blanket to agitate loose in the hot water, which is exactly what was not supposed to happen. I checked on it in time and rescued it, though, and while it’s felted a wee bit past what I wanted, it is certainly a success and I am thrilled with it.

After I put Liam to bed I drew myself a hot bath, because I have somehow screwed up my lower back and hips as badly as I did around the time I was pregnant (which, I have just realised, is the last time I moved, duh). I have to keep reminding myself to take it easy, but the repetitive motion of packing boxes and reaching up and down for things is doing a number on me. I downed some Tylenol and at the last moment paused, then took the phone into the bathroom with me, just in case.

Well, twenty minutes into the bath the phone did indeed ring, and I was out like a shot, grabbing a towel and the handset. Sure enough it was Scott, with the wonderful news that Ada Emily had been born just before six o’clock, right around the time I was pressing the water out of her completed baby blanket and hanging it on the clothesline to dry. I had finished it just in time for it to be ready for her. He told me to go ahead and tell people, and off he went to post quick notes on Facebook and Twitter from home.

When we got off the phone I sat down and had a very therapeutic cry. When someone else is going through something traumatic that you’ve been through, you worry about them. You know everything will be fine, but you still worry, and you feel for them, and I walked around most of the weekend becoming increasingly stressed and agitated, knowing what they were going through and being unable to help them any more than we were already doing, being a sounding board and support. Also moving a hell of a lot of energy around, through the blanket and otherwise, which is probably another reason why we were exhausted; the last time we did energy work that intense was when our own premature son was in that hospital and we were working for his health. There’s something about babies and births that makes you fight with everything you’ve got.

We all slept in an hour and a half later than usual this morning (apparently we’re all tired, what a surprise), which led to everyone scrambling out of bed in a panic and the boys leaving around the time they usually get to preschool. Today is the living room: we pack the books, an easy task (though long and tiring, because I did two English degrees and I’m a professional writer, and I’m not apologising for it) but one that disturbs me, because once the books are packed the house has officially been torn apart, and I still have another week and a half to live here. And that’s the halfway point packing-wise. There’s more kitchen, the rest of my office, and we’ll do some more of the boy’s room in the next day or so.

I have a double batch of bread rising to bake for Ceri and Scott so they’ll have two loaves in the freezer when they get home, I’m doing laundry, and the dishwasher is about to go on. I’m caught up on news and correspondence. HRH brought me a breakfast sandwich so I’m fed. Let’s do these books.

Stuff

Firefox’s auto-fill function tells me that I’ve used that title before. How unimaginative of me, on more than one level.

Hello, world, I’m really tired. I’ve been doing a lot of work, which is good for the financial side of things (alas that invoicing and accounting department turnarounds are not instantaneous), but draining on the mind and body level. And I’m pretty much just a flopsy, unfocused, warm body right now, which is not good for the current deadlines I’m working on. I find myself just kind of staring into space for longish periods of time. And I have no appetite, as is usual for this time of year, but which doesn’t help matters.

Speaking of work, I signed the contracts for the one-shot editing/re-purposing gig this fall (this is not the copy editing one but the second project to which my networking goddess of an editor at my publisher connected me) and mailed them off yesterday. Basically, I am taking an existing manuscript and cutting it in half, moving things round as necessary for clarity and flow. I’m looking forward to it, because it feels so much more proactive than reviewing manuscripts and pointing out what kind of editing they’re going to need in a very polite way via a 24-page evaluation sheet, but not really doing anything beyond pointing out what someone else will need to do to get it to publishing standard.

I finished a major backup of the Mac mini to data DVDs (because yes, I am paranoid, thank you very much), took a deep breath and wiped my external hard drive (which I backed up a few weeks ago), and then set it up as a Time Machine drive. So now I am backing up hourly, and I should stop worrying about losing stuff. I’m still going to back up writing, new photos, and music to data DVDs every month, because did I mention that I was paranoid?

Moving-wise I’m at that odd sort of point balanced between “I need this stuff for everyday living and working” and “holy cats I need to get all this stuff into boxes,” which is not good for my sanity or equilibrium. Yesterday I started the process of notifying everything that needs to know our address is changing. Bell, your website is annoying, and why bother to fill in an online change of address thing if I can’t confirm it online and you’re just going to have to call me anyway? I’ll save time and call you directly at some point. Hydro was lovely and straightforward, you can hit six fundamental departments of the provincial government with a single form, and the next time I’m at a real post office I’ll pick up a mail redirection form. (The tiny postal counter round the corner where I went yesterday to mail my contracts didn’t have said forms, which I sort of expected, but annoyed me nonetheless.)

I now have an Excel spreadsheet of what needs to be done between now and the move. It is depressingly long, despite crossing about ten things off yesterday.

The major bridge we have to cross between the current residence and the new one is doing weekend work through August and September, and guess which weekend they have chosen to reduce the three-lane southbound side down to one lane for major maintenance and reconstruction? Why yes, our moving weekend.

The boys come home early afternoon today, so I need to get as much crammed into today as possible. All I really want to do is go back to bed with a warm kitten to purr at me.