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Exhaustion
My husband has a private practice here in Manhattan that he has built over the last 30 years. He’s extraordinary at what he does — one of those people who was really born to do a thing, you know? A few years ago he built a little website so he’d have a web presence, and it just perked along. Google searches would land people on his site often enough.
Then he became kind of obsessed with Google ad words, and search engine optimization, and now he knows things I can’t even comprehend. Still, though, one little guy with one little static website, you can only do so much. And Google/gulag has its fancy algorithm that does with you what it wishes, and you just don’t get to know why you do and don’t show up.
Well, one thing that helps is having sites linking back to you. And how do we do that these days? Social networking. So I’ve spent the entire day setting up a blog for him, getting him integrated with a twitter account, his linkedin account, an aggregator and interesting sites to follow for a blogroll, setting it all up with his Google Analytics and Google Webmaster accounts, and now it’s 9:17pm. Time to knit.
I’m homing in on the end of Marnie’s wedding shawl, so I ought to be able to knock out a few rows before I have to call it a day. Boy oh boy, I can’t wait to show it to you after the wedding. It’s real purty. Here’s the photo I posted when I first caston:
nupps (unblocked, of course)
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So. On Monday I gave notice at my job, and I didn’t know what to expect. I knew they would be surprised – and they were – but beyond that I just didn’t know. I was prepared for everything except what happened.
They cried. They really did. My boss cried when I told her, and came into my office the next day, sat down, and did it again. Colleagues said the most incredible things, things that were hard to take in. Inside, I imagine myself as just slinking around the perimeter, and not registering with people. I imagined that I’d just quietly slip out the door and no one would even know I left for a while. But that’s not what happened, and it has blown me back off my feet. It’s hard to take in, hearing people tell me what they think of me, what I mean to them. (Remember when you were about 12 years old, and you’d get mad at your mom for something and imagine that you died, and everyone was at your funeral, and they were all so sad, they’d all be so sorry then? This has been something like that, but without the death part!)
They immediately started listing freelance work they want me to do, so they can keep me around and also to help me, which is kind. My authors have wailed, and sent me the most amazing letters that I will absolutely cherish.
I think this is true for most people, and we just don’t realize it. We make an impression, we have an impact on people, people in our lives feel all kinds of things that they don’t ever say, because they think they don’t need to, or they’re shy, or they’ll just tell you tomorrow. I think you’re a very lucky person if something happens while you’re alive and you get the chance to hear it – especially if it’s all at once. So maybe the other side of that is that we should actually tell people these good things we feel about them.
One thing nearly every person said in their little lists referred to my sense of humor. Well, I am a dramatic person, I do have a quick and dry sense of humor, and my reactions can be large and hilarious. For example (you can see that I like you, I’m willing to be ugly in front of you), someone snapped this shot at a birthday party they gave me. I was responding to something someone said. Oh the humiliation….
silly, dramatic me
So anyway, I’ve been silent because I’ve been silenced by all this. Plus I’ve been insanely busy. I did finish the wedding dress and today I bought beautiful little Italian mother-of-pearl buttons from Tender Buttons, which is such a cool store. Only in New York, man. We have a button district, yes we do. In the morning I’ll take it to the cleaners for a good pressing, then get it off to my girl, the bride-to-be.
I promise knitting content will return soon. I’m dying to return to knitting…
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marnie and tom, so cute
It’s getting close, Marnie’s and Tom’s wedding – July 17. A number of weeks. They’re really adorable, peas in a pod, and their wedding is going to be fun. They asked me to make the wedding dress, which really delighted me…..even if it also terrified me. I haven’t done any sewing to speak of in years. Little quilt blocks here or there, straight seams and who cares if they’re ready for others to see them. But I haven’t made clothing since my kids were young.
When they were here over the Christmas break, we went down to the garment district to search for just the right fabric. Marnie had already picked out a pattern, and given the setting of their wedding, we thought a nice green linen would be great. Here’s the pattern she selected – a vintage Vogue 1954 cocktail dress:
this, minus the gloves
It’s a simple dress, but since it’s Vogue and vintage, it’s not as simple as you’d think. There are bound buttonholes, a strange way of doing the straps, and darts and pleats deluxe….which means it’s got a lot of room for fitting it to her perfectly, and a lot of room for error. Since she lives in Chicago, the fitting part was tricky. She came here for a weekend so we could do a rough fitting, and it’s a good thing she did.
So I got it largely done, then hit a spot that totally intimidated me. I couldn’t figure it out for the life of me, and I so want this to look beautiful, not home-made. So many weekends, I’d say and write “and today I’m going to work on the wedding dress” but the fear and intimidation made me think “well…..I’ll do it tomorrow/next weekend, today I’ll knit.”
She needs it quickly, though, so my mission this weekend was to get it done. And except for some handwork, and making the self-covered buttons, it is done.
just a view of the back
I’m going to get it professionally pressed; we chose a relatively heavy Italian linen, and my little old iron, my no-ironing-board set-up, and my lack of proper pressing tools means it needs to have a professional press. Then I’ll put it in a large box and send it off to Marnie, with my fingers crossed for a good fit.
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When I saw today’s word this morning, my heart sank. I could tell it’s an easy word, a potent word, a word that could go in a lot of directions. At least, I could tell that those things were true for other people, today.I dressed, left for work, stood numbly in the subway, unable to understand what I was reading – reading and re-reading and re-reading, trying to make my exhausted brain get it this time. I trudged from Penn Station to my office, my feet heavy, my bags heavy, my head heavy.
I worked, hard hard work all day, never even turning around once to see that it was a sunny day out my window. Never getting up to go to the bathroom. Work work work. Intellectual and creative work today, editing a manuscript, wanting to give my dear author my best work for his own best work. Other manuscripts waiting, other authors writing and calling, other problems all around, no time to stop for anything work work work. My forehead aches from the frowning of hard thinking, and from the pressures of things I did not get to today.
I let this word lie in the back of my mind, hoping something would emerge, some way of dealing with this word, but nothing came. I thought today would just be a pass – I’m not whipping myself, this is an enjoyable and challenging project, if I just can’t do it today I just can’t do it.
And then I realized that this day taught me something about growth. Nothing can grow without space to grow in. A seed from an enormous tree might sprout and grow in a very small pot, but it will never be big, it will always be stunted; nothing wrong with the seed, everything wrong with the pot. Growth needs sleep, rest, food, space.
no growing today
If I want to commit myself to nurturing my own creativity, to growing, something has to change. And change is a-coming.
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So I really liked the madelinetosh eyre light that I received – the reddish orangish skein called jodhpur. But I wasn’t loving it. It didn’t go with anything in my life (except for my memories of Texas dirt). I couldn’t see it on me. I tried it here I tried it there. I tried it in a box. I tried it with a fox. I tried it in my hair. I tried it in my chair.
Nope.
Luckily, there are madelinetosh forums on ravelry, which include destash/trade threads. Within a couple of minutes of posting, I found someone who wanted to trade her skein for mine, in the colorway I wanted – cousteau. Here it is:
cousteau - madelinetosh eyre light
GORGEOUS. And it relates to other yarns in my stash, and to things I wear. Once I’m out of this very intense crunch I can’t wait to get back to madelinetosh knitting. In addition to my more-than-fulltime job, I am trying to finish the wedding dress and shawl, doing the Creativity Boot Camp daily exercises, and taking an online course in preparation for teaching online courses in psychology. And racing to finish my bookclub book (which is amazing). And trying to finish reading 3 manuscripts. And trying desperately to spend time with my beloved husband. And trying to sleep and eat.
So yeah, madelinetosh is waiting for me, and I can’t wait to get back to her.
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The blogger behind Eskimimi Knits came up with a fun idea:
Every day for the coming week, all participants will write about a predetermined set of topics (starting out, an inspirational pattern, one great knitter, stay tuned for the rest). I’m going to try to participate, even though (a) Monday I won’t get home until after 9, (b) Tuesday I’ll get home even later, and (c) the coming weekend, my daughter Marnie will be here for the wedding-dress-fitting etc. In fact, I may go ahead and pre-write some of them, and queue them up for automatic posting.
Anyway – our trip to the Catskills was a mix of things. We were caught in awful traffic heading upstate for some weird reason. It took us as long to go 20 miles as it should’ve taken to make the whole trip. My husband was very distracted by details surrounding our fall vacation to Laos. And then, the thing that’s most reliable – incredible pizza at Brio’s, in Phoenicia – was bad. We ordered baked clams for an appetizer…..clam mush, very gross. Our pizza came within a few minutes of our ordering it, and it was lukewarm. So Friday was kind of a flop. Saturday I had a very bad headache due to allergies, but the weather was beautiful and meds knocked the headache out mostly. We piddled around, ate an ok breakfast at Brio’s, drove to Hunter and walked around the Hunter Mountain Ski Resort, drove to Woodstock and poked around my favorite little shops (but Woodstock Quilt Supply was closed, no sign of where it went! What happened?!), and then spent the rest of the afternoon lounging around. Dinner at Brio’s, not bad.
So home for the afternoon, time to relax and snooze and knit and maybe watch a good movie. I hope your weekend is giving you time for the same!
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A random mishmash o’ stuff today:
* It’s been a hell of a week – 12.5 hour workdays, which were nowhere near enough. By the end of each day, I was still too far behind, how does that work?
* I saw a friend I usually see once a week, and the evening I was on my way to see her, I thought ‘man, it feels so long since I saw her!’ It took me the whole trip to realize that I hadn’t seen her in 2 weeks, and that’s because last week I was on vacation. In Honduras. Last week feels like forever ago. And not real.
* Until this moment: for our vacation, my sweet husband packed the electric kettle, a huge coffee mug, a plastic cone for making one cup of coffee at a time, and a stack of filters (plus a bag of fresh-ground really good coffee). So every morning on vacation, our routine was that he made me a cup of coffee, I got out of bed, and we went on our porch – me, to knit and drink my coffee, and him, to rock in the hammack and think, or talk to me. So this morning, I just made my coffee and poured a cup into that particular mug. The vacation feels real, I remember it. And I wish I were there.
Two sides of me:
* The not-so-nice side – I always get really mad on the subway when an adult with small(ish) children expects other adults to give up their seats so the kids can sit. What??! Kids have all the energy! They haven’t just worked a terrible job all day, they’re not stressed out, their backs don’t hurt! I’m sorry, if you’re 4 or 5 years old and there’s enough space for you to very safely stand and hold onto a pole, I am going to keep my seat. Bite me, adult giving me a dirty look.
* The nicer side – I have a friend who had a major stroke last year and who is currently in the darkest place of suicidal depression. She’s very brave but she doesn’t know that (or anything good) right now. So yesterday I wrote her an email that included this: “The bravery of us poor little frail people in this world, going forward as if we know what we’re doing, going forward as if it’s all somehow guaranteed (until something happens and we’re reminded that it’s not……but we go back to our old habits of thinking it’s all guaranteed). It makes me feel quite tender toward humanity whenever I think about this. Here we all are, with all our troubles, with the pain and trouble that we all bear in one form or another, with our small joys and our fragile hopes and plans. Here we all are, tiny little specks in an unimaginable infinite, on a tiny little planet whirling around a tiny little sun in just one little galaxy, here we all are, doing our best. GREAT. Now I’m starting to cry. I think we are all amazing, and that includes you. And I guess, then, that it must include me.” See? I can be kind towards people. Just don’t ask me to give up my seat to a 4-year old.
Finished the monkeys – will block them and get them in the mail to Katie first thing Monday morning:
one's a little smaller than the other - i'd bet the smaller one is more tightly-knit and therefore the one i knit here in Manhattan. looser = vacation.
blocking the monkeys to make them closer in size to each other; actual color is closer to the photo above this one, which came out weirdly golden.
We have a 3-month plan: I am putting all my ducks in a row, getting everything lined up to quit my job in 3 months. Period. I’ll teach, as much as I can; I’ll do writing and statistical consulting, as much as I can; I’ll try to do developmental work and rewriting on manuscripts for publishers, as much as I can; and I’ll make things and sell them, as much as I can. We’ll pare down our expenses, as much as we can. I cannot persist in this job that sucks the living life out of me. I’ll be 52 in November, and I say uncle. I want to have a life that’s not just bearable and happy on the weekend, you know?
This week, 3 people at work quit. Two of the editors in my group are going on interviews and will leave the second they get another job. Granted, I don’t know everyone on my floor, but everyone I do know is looking for another job. No exception. My boss even told me that she suspects our brand new assistant is already looking for another job. My company is based in the U.K., and there, it really is an enormous honor to work for this company. People stay with the company their entire lives – so very proud to work for this company. And I get it – it’s an amazing amazing and old company! It published the very first book. BUT (1) it doesn’t hold the same cachet here, (2) the Madison Ave experience is 100% different than the experience on that lovely lane in that beautiful town in the U.K., and (3) publishing is under such pressure now due to the economy and the transitional moment between books and online presentation of [free] content, we’re all turning into diamonds from the pressure.
Anyway. Lots to get done this weekend! No easy traveling knitting right now, as my knitting time is turned entirely to the wedding shawl. I’d hate to carry that in the subway – snowy white cobweb-weight wool, complicated Estonian lace patterns. My only other knitting alternative right now is the lettuce-green Ishbel, which is also a bit hard to do on the subway. So this weekend I’ll get back to the shawl, and I just have so much other stuff to do towards my eventual release to freedom. I feel myself getting lighter, just thinking about it.
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sock #1
The second sock is nearly at the heel part, so I will finish it when I’m in Honduras next week. I’ll mail them to you when I get home! It has made me so happy to make them for you, and I look forward to making the next pair, too. I’ll use a different pattern, of course.
As immune systems will do, mine crashes after a prolonged period of stress. It’s been working and working, carrying me through the stress, and when the stress backs off just a little bit, crash. It’s kind of fascinating, if you ask me. My stress is still very intense; I woke up at 4:45am this morning so I could get to work early. But I guess the relief is coming, so crash. So just in time for my beach vacation: a cold, thankyouverymuch. Still, I’d rather be there with a cold than at my desk with a cold. If I have to have one.
Off to have a steaming bowl of tomato soup and an intense regimen of ColdCalm. And early to bed, so I can early to rise again tomorrow.
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Yesterday is done for the year, so moving on! Today we’re going in search of a new bathroom light fixture, and we’ll take a trip down to Chinatown for some eating of Thai food – I think that’s the current plan. I’ll take my camera along, so I may have photos later.
My weeks fly by in a blur of stress – my best intentions to post more regularly are just paving the road. A week from today we’ll be flying back to Roatan – I hope you’ll drop in on that blog now and then while we’re gone. I’ll leave a note here when we leave, so the link as at the top.
Sock knitting is about all I’m getting done, a couple of rows on the subway to work, and a couple more on the way home. Still, a row here and a row there, pretty soon you’ve got a sock! Here’s where I am now:
going down the foot toward the toe!
spread flat, with the heel underneath: a bit of green pooling at the top of the foot
I’m kind of brain dead – do you know how that goes? Too much stress at work, consuming all the ATP molecules and all the attention, leaving a drained little husk of a mind. Maybe the weekend will energize me…..possible, since we have SUN!! Hallelujah!
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Same as last week. Work (and life) are kicking my butt, man. Nothing new on the knitting front, and not much else to speak of. How boring. I bought some fabric to cover some new throw pillows for our living room couch, from Bolt44. We have hardwood floors, and an oriental rug in front of the dark brown leather couch. The rug has dark blue, some tan, a lot of brick(ish) reddish color. Here’s the print for the pillows, then:
So I’ll do that next weekend, something handy-dandy to look forward to, assuming I make it through this hellish week.
I want these pants, from this store:
soft cotton ticking fabric, soft elastic waistband, lightly rolled bottoms. heaven and red!
OK, I’m doing nobody any good here. My brain she is fried – off to have tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. Fancy!
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What a disappointment. As I mentioned yesterday, I was SO excited about the Night of Knitting at the City Bakery Hot Chocolate Festival. All day long, I kept thinking about it with something like glee. I didn’t have lunch, saving my appetite (and calories) for all the yummy offerings in the evening. I brought my knitting, and was excited about getting to knit with others, in a big room full of knitters.
I had an hour to kill before the doors opened at 7, so I walked around. It’s in an area of Manhattan that I rarely/never visit, so it was all new to me. It was cold, and my backpack was extra heavy since I planned to work at home on Friday, so I had my laptop and sheafs of papers in it, along with everything else. By the time I headed over to City Bakery, I was tired and cold. At 6:35, I thought I’d just walk past it to be sure I knew where it is, and WHOA. The line was already all the way down the block. So I scurried over there and took my place, so far away that I couldn’t see the door of the bakery.
Since the event was sold out, one of the City Bakery guys periodically walked the line to be sure no one was there thinking they could just buy a ticket at the door. And then he said these dreadful words to the women standing behind me: “Yeah, there are 220 people signed up.” A gasp went up in the group who could hear him. 220 people?! Really? There’s no way that many people could fit in that space!
But that’s what they did. The event organizers left in enough tables for people to sit in the various workshop groups, and almost no others. I guess they just took the maximum number of people allowed by the fire code and sold that many tickets…..but I’m telling you, that does not leave a space conducive to a nice evening. On top of that, it’s winter, and people were wearing big coats and having to carry their stuff with them, so it was nearly impossible to walk around the place.
The advertisement said you could take a workshop or just bring your own knitting and sit with that…..but there were no tables for people to sit and knit. So you had to stand (if you could even find a place to stand) and hold your food and drink(s) and knit. And expect to be jostled and pushed around by the crowd. I threw down one little shot of lemon pie hot chocolate (gross) and another of banana peel hot chocolate (not my fave) and left. It was such a relief, getting out of that crushing crowd.
I saw other people leaving, too, and when I was trying to make my way through the crowd, people were angry, rolling their eyes and grumbling. Bad event planning, City Bakery. I won’t fall for that one next year. Since it is an annual event, they must count on a whole new crop of people each year, because surely no one who attended last night would want to go again next year.
Too bad……….dashed hopes for a lovely evening. It happens.
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