– Loaf of bread: check
– Batch of most excellent six-grain sweet rolls wrapped around dark organic chocolate, which has melted and gone all smooshy and delicious inside: check
– Successful cast-on of the beginning of those wrist warmers: FINALLY (with a bonus 1/3 first row of ribbing)
– Tomato-bean-beef stew in the slow cooker: check
I’m being so efficient that I’m kind of annoying myself.
Dear brain:
I appreciate that you’re proud of finished the novel. Really, I am. However, the point in finishing this first draft of novel before the beginning of March was so that it wouldn’t eat up valuable energy that needed to be directed into the anthology and other things. For example, there is a three-hour hearthcraft workshop that you will be delivering to (at last count) SEVENTEEN PEOPLE this Saturday. (I pause here in order to give you the appropriate time in which to freak out, o brain.) The hour-long brief lecture you did at the Hamilton Pagan Pride day isn’t going to work for this. You need to really, really plan out a better-organised and more detailed outline. A craft, maybe? Guided meditations? Break into small discussion groups? Something. Because, really, brain: Three hours. Think of something good.
Also, I am very proud of you for doing as much work as you’ve done today on the anthology. You’re completely up to date. All info you’ve received so far has been slotted into the correct fields in the correct files, submissions have been reviewed, and everyone who has handed in their story has had a contract sent to them. You’ve done everything you can do so far. That’s great. But that doesn’t mean you get the rest of the day off. It’s been a good morning of work, but a good morning and being totally on top of things in one project doesn’t entitle you to an afternoon off the other pending things. (See above re. workshop.)
You can edit the novel when the anthology has been handed at the end of the month. Four weeks. You have to ignore it for one month. Make longhand notes if you can’t wait. But no opening the file.
You may try to cast on that damed fingering weight yarn for the wrist warmers yet again if you need a break. (Yes, I thought that would send you skittering for the workshop files in tears.)
I officially hate fingering weight yarn and tiny DPNs.
I have frogged the cast-on and/or first row five times already. I despise this project, and I’m only a day into it. I suspect I have bitten off more than I can chew, despite telling myself that the only way to learn is to try new stuff. My beautiful yarn is splitty and loosely spun, my DPNs are too blunt, and I want to be using two circulars instead of four DPNs. I want to run madly back to my Aran-weight yarns and throw myself into their arms, promising to never, ever leave them again.
That is all.
Yesterday was, quite simply, an exercise in frustration. It didn’t feel like it at the time, but by the end of the day I’d had quite enough. And it seems to have seeped into this morning, too.
The momentum of the previous day’s writing didn’t quite carry over, so I spent a lot of time bashing my head against the end of the book. Hydro decided to play footsie with the neighbourhood, resulting in intermittent power through the afternoon followed by a solid hour of nothing. I finished knitting the boy’s lightsaber, and then everyone came home and the boy clicked into Irritating mode right around the time I was attacked by a nasty headache.
I got through dinner, packed up, and left for orchestra. I felt odder by the second but figured it was low blood sugar, which would be remedied any moment once dinner kicked in. Didn’t happen. I hung on through the first half of rehearsal, determined not to pass out, and left at break.
Here’s the thing: I remember telling my principal that I thought I should go home, and she told me to do it. I remember being dressed to go and saying goodbye to the second desk people. And then I don’t remember anything until I clicked back in halfway home, on the highway. It was not a good thing at all. Took me about five minutes to get out of the car and inside the house, too. Very shaky; very dizzy. Bad all round. It wasn’t blood sugar, it was fibro reminding me that although I have had months of good or only-slightly-off days, a couple of hours of Very Bad can still wholly and successfully screw me up.
Then this morning, when I was trying very hard to be in a good mood, I got an email that made me absolutely livid (I keep telling myself it’s not my problem, and it really isn’t, but it’s hard to let go when you put time and energy into something and people do things that indicate they don’t value that time and energy), and the boy pulled the whiny poky I-don’t-hear-you act when I was trying to get him going. I treated myself to an iced cappuccino while I was running errands; it’s warm enough, and it was exactly what I needed. (Also, I used a gift certificate to buy it, so I feel smug.)
While I was out I picked up the yarn and needles I need for the music-patterned wristwarmers knit-along I and a bunch of musicians on Ravelry are doing in March. The colours are really lovely: a warm peaty brown for the main colour, and an Irish cream colour for the contrast work. Kind of a reverse of what antiqued ink on old parchment paper would look like. The black and white is so stark; I wanted something warmer.
And now, to work. Once I go rescue the rest of that iced cappuccino from the car where I parked it across the street, that is, because there was a two-foot high and wide pile of snow across the end of the driveway when I got back with groceries. Yay for snow removal; boo for the time lapse between the steps.
Lying awake during one of the long wakeful stretches I had last night, I finally realised something. I’m somewhat shutting down overall. It’s a temporary thing, but it’s what’s happening in order to maintain basic services. I also finally talked to HRH about something that I’d figured out earlier, namely that I’m being immensely stressed by a set of circumstances from which there doesn’t appear to be any alternative other than trashing the whole plan, which is stressful in a different way. (And I did it in casual fashion, too, while we were making dinner on Sunday, instead of actually sitting down and talking about it face to face, which would have been its own kind of stress.)
Saturday morning I had my cello lesson, and it began beautifully. I did a smooth, beautiful tonalization sequence of arpeggios, and it was really even and balanced and in tune and soft and there are lots of other pretty words I could use to describe it because it was almost perfect. My teacher asked me how I felt about it and I kind of shrugged and said, “It was nice. I liked it.” (Which was an understatement, because I had been amazed at how smooth and effortless it had been, but it was a warm-up and I hadn’t been paying very close attention when I did it.) She said, “Well, I have goosebumps! That was beautiful!” And she was partly kidding, and partly not. But then everything started to go downhill, until it hit the usual point about two-thirds of the way through the lesson where it can’t get any worse and I start to freeze up because nothing I do works and I waver between abject misery and anger. I know what happens: my teacher starts pointing out things we need to fix and I try to keep it all in my mind, and the more I try to think about everything (bring the left elbow forward a degree more when shifting up and crossing a string, wrap the bow around the string by moving the right elbow forward or back, pronate hands, caterpillars, tunnels) the worse I play. Adding more things to the list of things I need to constantly check clogs up my brain and I start dropping basic things I’ve already internalized. It’s part of the learning process, but not a part I especially enjoy.
My teacher has an analogy for this: It’s like the drive shaft on a set of train wheels. At first it feels like you’re moving forward, but then the drive shaft starts going through the second half of the cycle and the illusion of going backward is created, even though the overall unit is still moving forward. And if I think about it I’m doing things now that I couldn’t do two months ago. But that doesn’t particularly comfort me at the two-thirds point of the lesson. My teacher told me as I was packing up to remember the tonalization, though, and to remind myself frequently that I have the wherewithal to make that beautiful sound.
It’s also rather frustrating because I’ve been spending so much practise time on the orchestra music and not paying attention to my lesson stuff, and as a result when I played the Lee that I’d played well a month ago it was awful and we had to spend time addressing the problems there. The plan for two spring/early summer concerts has been dropped (not directly related to how poorly I’m doing, but rather to people not all being available) and so I don’t need to worry about having it ready until a month after the original deadline, which after this past lesson is a good thing.
Saturday night we had dinner at Ceri and Scott’s house, where we met Scott’s brother and sister in law who are terrific people. After dinner a few more people showed up for a Rock Band party, although I spent most of my time upstairs by the fire knitting, which was delightful and relaxing and exactly what I needed.
Sunday morning the boy had his Pagan playgroup where they cut out a circle divided into sections to make up the Wheel of the Year, and drew pictures in each section to indicate what holiday or season it indicated. It took him longer to cut out his circle than any of the other kids, but I don’t think he’s ever used scissors for more than making random decorative cuts on scraps of paper. In some of the sections he scribbled random shapes, but in others he drew very specific and recognisable things: a tree for Beltaine, the sun for summer solstice, a loaf of bread and corn on the cob for Lughnassadh, autumn leaves for the autumn equinox, a pumpkin for Samhain. He drew a Christmas tree-shaped scribble for Yule (but in red instead of green), and he coloured the entire Imbolc wedge red and told me it was fire. Ostara was a blue scribble that is the Easter Bunny, apparently. The other topic of discussion was gods and goddesses, and when the facilitator asked who knew what a god or goddess was his hand shot up into the air along with his gods-sister’s, who fortunately was the one called on to explain. While she was talking he turned to me and said, “They’re statues!” Which is a logical answer from him because in our house we do have an inordinate amount of divine statuary, but would have by necessity initiated a discussion regarding representations versus the real thing that probably wouldn’t have been easily understandable for kids. We’ll work on that at home.
All in all, apart from the comfort of Saturday night, the weekend was… well, it’s over. Maybe my sleep patterns will settle into something better than three broken hours a night, and other things will improve as a result.
Yes, hello, Monday, nice sunny Monday. How are you?
Saturday morning I had a cello lesson, which went well. The newly adjusted-and-rented 7/8 performed very nicely. My teacher feels the C string could be even better, but it’s not crucial at the moment. It feels good to be working on nuances in pieces instead of struggling with technical stuff. Except for that one shift in that one piece, which I know I can do but never happens in a lesson. My teacher made a good point: We both know I can play it, so why am I stressing in a lesson? If I played it perfectly every time we wouldn’t be working on it, would we? It’s hard to focus on the things you’re doing right when you do things wrong. I need to work on recognising the successes more than the okay-so-that-bit-wasn’t-perfect-this-time parts. And she also gave me this pearl of wisdom: The next note you’re about to play is always be the most important one. That means not dwelling on the one you just played and criticising yourself because it wasn’t as good as you wanted it to be, because it takes away for the energy you should be directing toward that next note. Food for thought. (I swear, I would be so lost in this new way of discussing music if I hadn’t done years of energy work and meditation in a spiritual context.)
Saturday afternoon HRH went out to pick up my cousin downtown, who had a weekend layover in Montreal. For dinner I tried to slow-roast two rolled rib roasts from the farmer, but it didn’t exactly succeed (see, I am not saying it failed!) for a couple of reasons. One, I doubted the slow-roast instructions and decided to roast it for two hours at 250 degrees instead of one hour at 200 then turning the oven off entirely. Two, the second roast was inedible due to the amount of gristle and sinew marbled through it. Which is a risk one runs when buying directly from a farmer who butchers his own stuff, I suppose, because it’s not regulated the same way supermarkets and pro butchers are. Anyway, the first roast was all right, just half of it was overdone to my taste. The kick-ass gravy I made made up for some of it, though, as did the nice creamy mashed potatoes and carrots half-steamed then sauteed in butter. And there was pecan pie for dessert, except the shell cracked and the filling seeped through to glue the crust to the glass pie pan, thereby ensuring that every single piece had to be pried out in several bits. It tasted good, though, and the home-made pastry was quite acceptable: very crisp and light. And we really, really enjoyed my cousin’s visit. The boy dragooned him into playing with trains and Lego and all sorts of things.
Sunday morning we met the Preston-LeBlancs for lunch at the hot dog and French fry restaurant we love for its artery-clogging deliciousness. I had an ensemble lesson later that afternoon, which was also a lot of fun because we were reviewing the early Suzuki pieces we’re playing at the Sun Youth fundraiser next Sunday.
Than last night we had the second session of the new steampunkian horror game Tal began in January, and I got another two inches of my lap blanket done (I suspect I will need an even longer circular needle to work the size I’m aiming for comfortably). I also started a knitted lightsaber yesterday during the boy’s nap. And I found the missing bamboo circular needle! It was at the very bottom of one of my works-in-progress bags under some books.
So overall a very enjoyable weekend. And I’m bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning and ready to edit at least four more stories today, as well as read a first draft for a new contributor. Correspondence and news have all been handled, so away I go.
I have finally — finally! — finished Bodhifox‘s hat. It sat alone and feeling unloved for two weeks. I finished the second earflap at Ceri’s house on Saturday (to where I gratefully escaped from my House of Sick Persons, feeling temporarily better myself: I did my hair! I put makeup on! I left the house! When you’re sick you feel like this will never happen again, so it was a big deal.) I’d have done the i-cord and tassel there too and been finished two days earlier, but I discovered that I hadn’t brought along the tiny remaining ball of bronze yarn. (Argh!)
So this morning, the first thing I did after checking e-mail was to look up the instructions how to knit an i-cord (how beautifully simple, I may knit nothing but i-cords when I need to relax), then make the tassel, and attach the betasselled i-cord to the hat. Et viola (as Fox himself would say)! One Jayne Cobb style hat, done in Ravenclaw colours!
Here it is, perched on my metronome and stuffed with a tote bag, looking slightly wonky:
I’d wanted to line it for warmth, but it’s late enough in winter that I’m just going to send it as-is and let him decide if it needs lining. So now I will pack it up and get it out to the post office in the next couple of days.
Happy Imbolc, Fox!