July 24, 2015

So, I made this commitment to finishing up backlogged projects. That's a thing. A thing that I have not posted about in two weeks. I did start a project about two weeks ago. A fairly easy one. I expected it to go by quickly, but something like perfectionism really got to me (which is odd because I don't consider myself a perfectionist) and left me pretty well paralyzed for a while.

Let's talk about The One That Almost Did Me (and this whole project) In.

Here it is:




Yep. A drawstring backpack. There's a whole story to it. It really is a project I've been sitting on for a while.

I like to walk to this coffee shop that is about a mile and a half from my house* on mornings when I don't have to work, but I'm wimpy and don't like to carry anything heavy. String backpacks are the lightest (and most balanced!) way to carry a book and a wallet that I've found, and they're fairly easy to come by. I don't think I've ever actually paid for one; they're usually handed out free at the local teacher 5K where my coworkers and I annually bring up the rear. However, while free is nice, those bags are usually ugly -- made of that material that's not quite fabric but not quite paper and covered with advertisements for local shops. (Oh, but thanks for sponsoring us teachers, local shops! I don't mean to suggest that I don't appreciate it!)

I've had it in the back of my head for a while (like, two years) that I should just make my own out of a prettier fabric, but those plans really started to come together about six months ago. I'd just made myself a different sort of drawstring pouch for carrying my embroidery in since the one I had been using (that I think came around a gift set of soaps when I originally got it) finally fell apart. Making that bag was much more complicated than I imagined it would be, but the end product was nice, and it made me start thinking about finally getting around to making a nice "walk to the coffee shop" backpack.

The purple fabric comes from a dress I bought at the thrift store. Its long, loose silhouette reminded me of the dark mori girl aesthetic, which I really love, so I bought it without really being mindful of the fact that visual kei stuff looks very different on doughy blond women of almost 40 than it does on the waifs who model it. I never did wear it out of the house. I got as far as cutting it into a useable piece of fabric and then stuck it into my sewing box, to be forgotten until I pulled it out to attend to as part of this project.

Ok. So there's even more backstory.

This is my backpack from college:

 It was also my best friend's backpack when she went to college (we were both non-traditional adult students and not the just out of high school kind). I was grateful to her for giving it to me because I could not afford another at the time. It was in pretty rough shape though, and over the four years that I carried it, it burst many seams, especially around the front pocket (that zipper just really wanted to come off.)

Every time a new hole appeared, I'd sew it back together. I knew that my stitching left something to be desired, and I wasn't motivated to even try to be neat, so I went the opposite route, using brightly colored embroidery floss and making my stitches as obvious and uneven as possible.






This was my favorite part:

You can't really see it, but the pink stitches are little X-es.

My original plan had been to do the string backpack similarly, but I realized that I'd kind ofoutgrown that sort of willful messiness. I thought it would look forced if I tried it, so I decided I'd do this one as neatly as possible. Besides, it would give me an opportunity to practice my sewing. I'd love to someday do machine-perfect, even granny stitches even though J says, "If the stitches were perfect, how would people know it was hand made?"

This is a week's worth of effort at making a straight line:

I pulled those damn stitches out and started over SO many times. And they're still not straight.

I pretend like I have a really good handle on the growth mindset. I get it. You have to be bad before you can be good. But I've BEEN bad at this for a LONG time, and I was working really hard at being good this time. It really surprised and frustrated me that I didn't have a magical breakthrough fueled by past failure and good intentions. Maybe someday I'll be a granny-level seamstress, but it will take a lot more work than I've done here.

I wound up stuffing the thing back in my basket, letting my guilt about its unfinished state (and this neglected blog) build until this evening when I threw on my headphones and sewed for three hours straight.

Ha. I have a finished project, a blog post, AND a backpack that is not made of weird paper-fabric. (What is that stuff anyway?)

Now I need to think of something to do for next week.


* The coffee shop is almost directly between my MiL's house and my condo, so this ritual actually went uninterrupted for the year that we lived at her house.

July 9, 2015

Aarrgghh... Saying I'm going to do something means that I actually have to do it or else I'm lame, doesn't it? I was reminded of this while reading today. I'm in the middle of the collected blog entries of Aaron Swartz. (Raw Thought, Raw Nerve. There's a lot of good stuff here, but man, the "a lot" almost overwhelms the "good." My kindle is slowly developing a backlog of books that he wrote about in a way that made me want to read them as well, so even when I'm finished, I won't really be finished.)

Anyway, one of the entries (essays?) I read today was on good management, and while it made me very happy to be a FORMER retail manager as opposed to a current one, it also had some lines that were applicable to my new, preferable, non-managerial life.

For example, "If you're not getting things done, you can always come up with excuses for why. Competent people get things done anyway."

And also, "Just having a list with all the stuff you need to do -- and taking it seriously, actually going down it and checking stuff off every single day -- is the difference between being a black hole of action items and being someone who actually Gets Stuff Done." 

And (best for last), "We procrastinate because we are afraid. We're afraid it's too much work and that it will drain us. We're afraid we'll screw it up and get in trouble. We're afraid we don't know how to do it. We're afraid because, well, we've been putting it off forever and every time we put it off it seems a little more fearsome in our minds. That's why not putting things off is so liberating. We're forced to confront our fears, not let them grow bigger by repeatedly running away. And when we confront them, we find that they're not so scary after all."

I have been putting off step two of the "finish all the unfinished projects" project. With my summer camp work I don't have a lot of free time, and I've been just generally uninspired. It was really hard to feel like any of my incomplete work would be interesting to do, much less to write about.

I had done a few things that felt like making progress. I got a decent camera. I went through things, did a lot of organizing. But the closest thing I've done to making anything this week was some basic seam ripping and stitch reinforcement on costumes for the campers' show next weekend.

After work today, I struggled with what to do. I wanted to be someone who is competent. Someone who Gets Stuff Done. But I also wanted to not do anything. Hadn't I earned a night of doing nothing by working all day? I tried to come up with versions of Nothing that sounded like Stuff Getting Done. (This almost always turns into shopping in my world. See above regarding the new camera. This time, it was bra shopping. I need a new sports bra, so going to the store would be a productive activity.)

I also had this project that I'd publicly committed to hanging over my head, and I was feeling it grow more and more fearsome. 'I don't have any good ideas.' I thought. 'Anything I do is going to sound forced and stiff, and I'm going to be embarrassed by it.' I am afraid that I am going to screw up. I am afraid that I don't know how to do it.

Anyway. So. I did something. I'm not sure if it counts as a "creative endeavor," but it was something I had been putting off, and something that was half-started, so I'm counting it for the project.

**************

When J and I moved back to the condo, we radically rearranged the rooms and furniture. Everything is much more in line with the way we actually use our living space, and a lot of dead spaces have become functional. We've also gotten rid of a lot of furniture that didn't actually serve a function. Being away from the place for a year helped us step away from the idea of what things we're supposed to be ("This is the dining room") and closer to what we actually need.

This is all AWESOME. But. I'm one of those people who collects things.

Oh, I pared down my collections by an impressive margin over the course of this year, but I come from a long line of antiquers and collectors, and there are some things that I just like too well to get rid of.

But with the reorganization, I had a lot fewer random surfaces to put things on. (Every thing is being actually used, so there's no room for useless stuff.) Luckily, the shop that I used to manage sold organization supplies,  so I at least had a pretty good store of knowledge regarding how to fix the problem. I decided to go with ledge shelves on the blank wall above my sewing chair. (I'd seen some gorgeous work with ledge selves on Pinterest...)

Ok. I spent a good chunk of my life promising people who shopped in my store that installing ledge shelves was SUPER easy. I was apparently very, very wrong. I purchased multiple shelves. I hung one, and pretty much gave up. (I decided I'd hang the rest "later.")

Here is the one shelf I got up. It can never come off the wall because the drywall behind it was basically destroyed in the process of hanging it. Also because I stripped a screw (Ok, when the directions say tighten with a screwdriver, DO NOT use a drill) so it will probably come out of the wall never.

The shelf in the context of the entire space. Having only one looked really pathetic.

Does hanging shelving count as making something? I am going to say yes. At any rate, it was hard and (I think) it resulted in something that looks nice.

I wish I could say that between applying the lessons that I learned fucking up the first one and the fact that I'd acquired a stud finder in the interim, this second go round went much more smoothly. Unfortunately, it did not. I screwed stuff up. I didn't really know what I was doing. I now have THREE shelves that can never come off the wall because there is evidence of extreme fuckery behind them.

There is another unfinished project hiding in this picture.

I think they look all right, though. Not, like, magazine perfect or anything, but I have a place for my Holt Howard figurines now, and wasn't that the point?

Again in context. The lamp is so ugly, but a very young me saved up the $45 to buy it, so I'm keeping it in honor of her belief that being pink made it really beautiful and special.

Aaron Swartz also wrote that most people have no idea how to do things right. I'm definitely one of those people. But he also said, "Usually, if you do you give your best shot at something, you'll do pretty well." (I think he was talking about internet startups and such as opposed to hanging shelves, but I'll take it.)

June 30, 2015

Discussed setting parameters and rules for creation/'making' at book club yesterday. Things like deciding to take a picture of yourself every Wednesday or whatever-whatever to force yourself into the habit of just doing the arty things that you're just not doing. S, who is probably the most accomplished of the lot of us when it comes to sticking to creative endeavors, said she preferred to think of such things as "prompts," and I thought there was some wisdom in that. You can take pride in rule breaking, but while prompts are fun to bend or twist, there's no emotional component to ignoring them that would make it tempting (or at least justifiable) to do so.


I've flirted with that sort of thing for this blog, seriously considering a few and going so far as to lay the groundwork for one (only to back way the fuck up when it went in a direction I didn't expect). The problem, I told the group, is that every idea I have sounds trite to me after I've thought about it for a few days. They were all like, "Duh. Did you not even listen to the assigned Ted Talks? You have to just do it anyway." And I guess they're right.


Anyway, the idea stayed at the front of my mind all day today, but every time I considered what my "rule" could be I got annoyed by the thought of all the unfinished projects that I have that don't fit under a larger umbrella "prompt." I decided that I should commit to finishing them before starting any other grand scheme and then realized that, duh again, that was kind of a rule in itself. So that's going to be my parameter for a while anyway. Believe me, there's plenty of content to be mined.


The obvious thing to have done first would have been to pull out the circle tree tapestry and finish the, like, three lines of stem stitch that I have left to do on the thing. It would provide a nice narrative structure to my writing so far. However, I conveniently-inconveniently left the guide for it in my sewing TRUNK which is still at the house (unlike my sewing BASKET which I moved to the condo right away) so that was a no-go.


I actually found "Oh tonight I can't because... " reasons for almost all of my works in progress, but I did have a skirt that I purchased at the thrift store in January with the intention of shortening and never did. It's a mid-calf length Sag Harbor thing, which sounds unpromising, but it was in the deep discount bin and I liked the pattern and fabric. (Fewer and fewer things at the thrift store are made of decent fabric, and this worries me. What will I wear when all that is left is disposable fast-fashion cast offs?)


Anyway, I don't know where the Sag Harbor line is originally sold, but it's fairly ubiquitous on thrift store racks, reliably both well made and frumpy. I pulled it out of the closet, put Welcome to Night Vale 70 parts A and B on my headphones (because I am NEVER going to have listened to those episodes often enough to satisfy my slashy little heart), and got to work.

I have a knee length skirt now! Yeah!

Please ignore the graininess and the fact that it took me and J exactly two weeks to get out of the New House excitement and back into the habit of leaving the drying rack up at all times and a bunch of guitars in the middle of the living room floor. Maybe taking a decent picture of this can be another unfinished project...

Let's add another random rule to my project and say that I have to do this once a week. We'll see where it goes.

June 20, 2015

Moved back to the condo and spent the first week without internet thanks to a scheduling error with Time Warner on my part. (How frustrating. It was my own fault and so I was robbed even of indignation and the right to complain...) But, I'm back now!


I do have a longer post fermenting, with pictures and rambles and everything, but right now I just wanted to stop and notice how long its been since things like going grocery shopping and making lunch have made me happy. I just got back from the grocery store, and I am so, SO happy.


The home we found for my MiL is very different from the facility she had to move into when the doctors first confirmed that she could no longer live on her own. There are only 6 families, and last week the director scheduled a kind of board meeting of primary care givers, just to talk about how things are going, what concerns people have, and perhaps most importantly, what wisdom families of seasoned residents can offer to new families like myself and J. (Yeah, Corporate Nursing Home NEVER had anything like that, and anyway, the residents and staff turned over so quickly, it doesn't seem like there would have been a point.)


A refrain that came up over and over again was how hard it is to let go. How hard it is to 'leave them there.'


Maybe because we've experienced a very different, much less ideal assisted living situation, maybe because K is my partner's mother and not my own, maybe just because I was so, so tired... I haven't found it hard at all.


J has expressed similar thoughts, although in his mind they may be related to the fact that he is a Son and not a Daughter. Everyone else at the caregiver's meeting was a Daughter.


Regardless, I am coming back to simple things like putting together a small salad for lunch with new appreciation. I don't know if I should feel guilty for feeling so relieved, but I do feel SO relieved.

May 29

Missed my book club on Wednesday due to testing related exhaustion. Ugh. Plugging the word "circus" into a search engine supplies the definition, "a public scene of frenetic and noisily intrusive activity," and if that doesn't perfectly describe the end of grade testing cycle, then I don't know what does.

Our group was supposed to discuss Kim Werker's charge to go out on a "date" alone, which was sort of underwhelming an assignment for me as I do dinners and movies by myself all the time without thinking of it, and (did I mention?) I went to a freaking concert alone, so go me. However, this evening I did find myself briefly on my own in a public date space, and I didn't feel entirely comfortable or natural in the scene, so joining my group in spirit if not in person, I guess I'll talk about that a bit.

I made plans a while ago to meet D for an event at the art museum (Hell yes cocktails and crafts) this evening. Driving from my small town to The City during rush hour on a Friday afternoon seemed like a dicey proposition, so I left with way more time to spare than I actually needed and arrived at the museum an hour in advance of D. I wasn't too angsty about this since looking around art museums is a thing that I like to do, and I haven't been to our local one in years.

At first I didn't do a lot of nonsensical thinking. One of the first paintings I encountered was The Beheading of St. Catherine of Alexandria which married two of my favorite things -- excessive gold leaf and heads getting cut off. Mmm.... shiny AND gory....


As I wandered around though, the museum got more crowded. A band set up and started playing jazz-with-horns. Everyone who came in had really nice shoes. High heels with decorative wooden platforms and big buckle-y straps that hooked around the ankle. Bare legs all around. I had on tights and an old thrift store dress and I became very self conscious of being The Girl who was Alone and Looking at Art. Suddenly I couldn't shake the feeling that I was trying to star in a performance of myself, and not doing a very good job of it. I felt like a parody of a girl in a vintage dress at an art museum.


I stopped being able to enjoy the paintings and started worrying, "If I spend too long looking at one painting, then I'm just trying too hard to be a girl who comes to museums alone to gaze at Art. And if I just wander around, then CLEARLY I'm just here to be seen being here and not here to actually see anything." Such ridiculous dithering, and yet I could. not. stop.


Happily, D arrived very shortly after that crisis, and I was able to transition to the event where I had an AMAZING time which I will probably write about later.


 I've written before that I have a lot of hang-ups about the performance side of keeping this blog. There were definitely points in the fun part of our evening, especially when pictures were being taken, when I thought about how much I was going to enjoy it later when I was writing about what I was doing. But shouldn't the point of doing things just be the experience of doing them? This is something I struggle with a lot. I worry that this website is the equivalent of my self-conscious overdressed ass standing in the middle of a bunch of museum goers, thinking about how she looks and thinking that the only way to be genuinely herself is to not be thinking that. And yet still thinking of nothing else.

 

I own no red clothing, and I kept wanting to fist bump the other few people who had done their best with purple.

The best thing about today's sermon (er... collect? homily? I am an Episcopalian by current practice, but a non-denominational "charismatic" protestant by upbringing, and there are times when I feel more adrift in the waters of our current church than J does, and he grew up without religion at all.) Anyway, the best thing about today's church service, which was outdoors on account of Pentecost, was the pinky fingernail sized frog that hopped along the edge of our picnic blanket. It was cute and fascinating! I've grown a lot in the time since I was a kid drawing on the back of my church bulletin, but I don't seem to have matured much in my ability to maintain focus on any kind of preaching.


Other good parts were the music, which was normal singing set to guitar rather than "chanting" led by piano and a cantor, and after church when there was a real church picnic, which I have not been to since I was such a young person and which provided all of the wondrous foods that seem exclusive to picnic lunches. (Oh three bean salad, how I love you! And cut up watermelon and baked beans and pimento cheese sandwiches with the crusts cut off!)


At some point I will have to gather and organize my thoughts on the topic of Why It Is That I Go To Church In The First Place. Largely it's because I do have some vague sense that it is important to focus on living a life that is in line with one's values, and church seems like a good way to maintain that focus.


I started to fall out of non-denominational "charismatic" Protestantism at age 18 when I could no longer reconcile what I felt in my conscience to be true with what my church was telling me I should believe. I was at my friend L's house, and he had a painting on the wall that his boyfriend had done of the two of them in the bathtub together, L's arms around the artist. It was the sweetest, most romantic thing I had ever seen, so pure and good and right that it killed the last shreds of  the "love the sinner hate the sin" bullshit that I had been clinging to as a young Christian with gay friends.


That's why we're at least sort of Episcopalians now. Our congregation anyway is big on social justice, and I get a lot out of hearing the lessons I've known since childhood framed in a way that supports this kind of thinking. There are a lot of aesthetic, decorative things that I would prefer about a less ritualized church experience, but amid all of the incense and chanting here there's nothing that I am ashamed of being associated with.


So there are lots of good reasons for us to attend a weekly service. That said, the real reason that we started going was J's mom. It would be a nice routine for her and good for us to have the support of a church community. ("We pray for all in our congregation who care for family members with dementia," is included in the"cycle of prayer" email that goes out weekly, and I do feel something when I read it. Uplifted.)


K moved into her eldercare home last Tuesday. This was our first Sunday without her. Yeah, we still went.


Like I said, I am still considering and sorting out the reasons that I'm going to church again after a solid twenty years without it. Maybe it will just boil down to picnic lunches and Our Friends Are There. I don't think I'll ever feel like a Christian the way I did as a teenager again. But I do feel like there's something valuable in fellowship with a community of like-minded individuals and being reminded of things like the beatitudes and being stewards of creation.

My favorite is the one where she eats the whole cake.

The pool at my condo just opened for the summer. (In contrast, for the summer at my MiL's house, the palmetto bugs have come back out in force.) Even though J and I won't be moving back for four weeks at the earliest, I took a trip over there today just to get in to the water for a little bit. I sat in the sun reading Hyperbole and a Half until sweat was running down my back and I knew I'd be able to convince myself that it was hot enough to swim no matter how ridiculous-cold the water was.


The water was ridiculous-cold, and I waded out slowly like a wimp, listening to the kinder set make up the rules to their water-football game as they played it.


"Ok, starting now only throw it to a person."
"Ok, but starting now, right? That didn't count."
"Yeah, that didn't count, but now it does."
"Ok."


"No more jumping on people and wrestling them!"
"Unless the other person wants to."
"Well, yeah. Unless they want you to."


Spent about an hour floating and lazily paddling around in the deep end (out of the way of the football game, in case the 'throw it to a person' rule was suddenly revoked). Now my skin is tight, and I'm doubting the effectiveness of my sunscreen. Also, I smell like chlorine.


Also,  I am blissfully content. I'm hungry for signs and symbols that this year is at its end, and this definitely counted as one.