Exhaustion
Double, double toil and trouble / Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. ~Macbeth Act 4, scene 1, 10–11
Last night I had dinner with my dear friend. We met in the neighborhood for Thai food, and we’d kind of warned each other in advance that we weren’t doing all that well: she was feeling tired and sick with allergies (this warm winter we’re having in NYC is killing the allergy-sufferers!), and I’m worn down and exhausted and post-migrainey with just a hint of the blues (probably from my continuing inability to sleep). So we met with all this advance knowledge and with our appropriately low expectations. We also both believed that seeing each other would help us feel better. We always talk about our thoughts and feelings, our worries, our plans, we ask for and give each other advice, and we laugh and cry. It’s the best part of life, getting to have that with another person.
So we ate our dinner, and we laughed and cried, and we decided to have a cup of tea at her place rather than at the restaurant, since she lives just a couple of blocks from the restaurant. By the time we left the restaurant, I’d been crying a good bit, and my mood and heart were kind of heavy. (Note: that’s not a bad thing, it’s a relief to share sorrows with someone!) We got to her place with an express mission of making a caffeine-free cup of tea, so she opened her cabinet to see what variety of teas she had to offer.
[sidebar comment of note: we are both women of a certain age, though i am more certain than she is.]
ladies' tea
She said:
“Let’s see. I have FatBuster, Women’s Cycle, and Black Cohosh.”
I fell down laughing. I laugh this morning, remembering it.
She looked at me and she started laughing. I laughed seeing her laugh. I couldn’t stop. And my heart lightened so much.
And so another kind of friendship magic happened, another of those moments that are just a bit of crystalline joy — surprise! You can’t make them happen, they come in the midst of time together. This reminds me of the old “quality/quantity time” argument people will make about time with their kids…..usually as a justification for not spending much time with them, “it’s the quality, you know.” Yes, but quantity is critical too, because connection and life happens in a surprise moment like this, and you need a luxury of time, a spread of it, to give space for moments like this.
Lucky me.
edit: this is post #666. of all things. 
it’s hard for everyone — what matters is how you face it. right?
I’m quite late to the game on many things, including the pleasures of Downton Abbey. I didn’t know anything about it until I saw a facebook post Marnie made about Downtown Abbey, followed by a “stupid autocorrect” comment. Well, I couldn’t imagine what was misspelled – downtown is indeed spelled downtown. Finally I found my way to the program, and I’m consumed by it. Of course there’s the delicious wicked pleasure of the Dowager Countess / Maggie Smith (and I want to be a dowager something!). The dignity of Carson and Mr. Bates and Mary, the savagery of war, the consequences of war for everyone, the experience of war when it occurs where you actually live (unlike the US, which is always so removed from the wars we involve ourselves in; I wonder if we’d be so quick to cause war if it was going to happen on our own land).
But one thing that has hit me about the show is the importance of grace and dignity, and carrying on. Of course that’s a stereotype about the British as a people, but the points are made explicit and implicit in Downton Abbey in such a moving way. It’s something I’ve thought about for decades; I wish I’d been able to be more graceful as a mother, with less thrashing-around. And now, as there are events going on in my life that require carrying on, and helping, and enduring through hardship, I think about it quite pointedly.
In one episode in Season 2, Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham, said that we must help each other carry on, it’s what we must do. And he said something about doing it with grace. I realized this is a value, not just a cultural tradition, or one person’s or family’s attitude. It’s a value. And it reflects a particular belief and orientation to life, that it is worth the carrying on. It reflects an ethical understanding of connection, that we are here to help each other carry on through difficult times, to celebrate with each other, to mourn with each other. That we’re intimately interconnected, because we cannot always carry on all by ourselves.
It’s hard for me to have a good understanding of myself in this regard, as it may be for everyone. We know our innermost snotty thoughts, and whiny thoughts, and the ways in which we wallow and feel sorry for ourselves. We know those things better than anyone else, because we don’t share all the unpleasant things that we feel ashamed of. But we may act differently, and we may be there for others in the way we aspire to be! So our own recognition of our secret thoughts may lead us to misinterpret ourselves overly harshly. I am currently engaged in trying to help someone carry on, and it’s hard. It’s lonely, it’s difficult, it’s taxing, it’s draining. I want to do this with as much grace as I can, and I want to help this person endure it with as much grace as possible. Am I successful? I don’t know. I am feeling sorry for myself, and feeling annoyed, and aggravated, and I bite my tongue, and I sometimes want to shake the poor person I am trying to help, I want to say “come ON.” I feel petty as I desperately long for someone to take care of me for a while, for someone to surprise me with a thoughtful moment designed solely to lift my spirits, to help me.
Perhaps this is just human, this is just me being human, and the important thing is the degree to which I manage these things myself, manage these needs myself and ask for help from others, and just be there and support and help the person I’m longing to help, with grace and dignity and focus on the importance of carrying on. I think of the great AA line: “Don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides.” I try to imagine that the people I admire who do carry on with grace are also troubled by these kinds of inner thoughts, that they also whine and indulge in self-pity in their minds, but that I just don’t know it……as I hope the person I’m helping doesn’t know of my own troubled thoughts.
listen / do you want to know a secret / do you promise not to tell ~ The Beatles (and me, but I’m not telling)
There’s a lot of stuff going on chez Thrums that I don’t write about — of course. I feel relatively free to write about myself, somewhat free to write about my kids, and not at all free to write about other people I know. There are some people I never write about because their privacy is important to preserve for one reason or another, and others I mention in a glancing way because unlike me, they didn’t sign up for this public airing of thoughts business. Still, there is a lot of stuff going on in my life that isn’t getting discussed here, and it leaves me feeling strange about what I do write about, because without the unspoken stuff, what I present here seems like a sham in some way. [this reminds me of that terrible joke: So, Mrs. Kennedy, except for that one day in Dallas, how was your trip to Texas? terrible joke] So I’m finding it a little harder to make regular posts about my life, since the big middle of it is private.
Remember how I had to frog Marnie’s Moby sweater? I frogged it completely and just started over, and I’m finally back at the point I was in the first edition (I’ve decided to refer to them as editions, like books). So here I am:
Ambergris, by Ann Weaver (2nd edition)
I do note with satisfaction that the cable ropes are all done correctly in this edition; there was one error in the first version that would’ve bugged me forever, so you know, you take what comfort you can from a situation like this. I’ve already divided at the sleeves, so now I’m doing the front up to the neck, and then I’ll do the back. Then two sleeves, each with cable ropes up the center, assembly, and a turtleneck. I hope I can finish this while Marnie still has time to wear it this winter; since she lives in Chicago, the odds are pretty good.
Tonight I’m having a date with Will, which I’m really looking forward to. We’re going to a cool little independent bookstore on Prince St. (McNally Jackson) and then over to an Indian food restaurant he loves, for dosas. It’s been such a warm and dry winter, it doesn’t feel like January at all — but I’m not complaining, especially for this evening, as we tramp around that great little neighborhood. One truly wonderful thing about all three of my kids is that we share a love of words and books. It manifests itself differently in the three of them, but I do share something special with each one of them around books, and that makes me happier than you can imagine. I like to think it’s my gift to them.
* * *
Here’s the next writing prompt — a 600-word story (a narrative describing a shared experience) told from the “we” perspective. No first person pronouns allowed! My first thought was to put the couple in therapy and have them telling competing narratives about something, but I got this idea and ran with it instead. It’s a piece of fiction, again, but again it uses bits of real experience for texture. My husband and I did go to Luang Prabang, which means the details of place are true, but the rest is entirely made up:
We woke up very early that morning because we wanted to witness the monks’ morning alms ritual; since we were staying at a hotel on the other side of the Mekong River, we had to get up early enough to walk across that long scary bridge – remember, honey? – and it made us nervous because of the traffic, especially in the dark. We felt so exhausted when the alarm went off, but we both knew how much you wanted to see it so off we went.
Right – it really wasn’t the kind of thing you like to do sugar plum, you’d rather visit the markets and the food stalls, but you were such a good sport about it. We just had no idea how it was going to turn out, did we? We thought we’d go to the main street, kneel at the curb, and watch the Lao women putting little clumps of rice in each of the monks’ baskets, and then get some breakfast on the way back to our hotel – remember how much we loved the breakfast at that one place? But it didn’t turn out like that at all. And you’re usually such a quiet guy, avoiding trouble. Sure, you’ll speak up if you feel you’re getting ripped off, but you never get involved in violence. You just never do that.
So there we were, walking across that bridge, in the dark. Remember how there weren’t any lights of any kind? Not even headlights, since cars weren’t allowed on the bridge? And remember how tiny the walkway was for pedestrians, with broken boards and loose nails? And how quiet the morning was – we heard the river, the cyclists passing on the bridge, the early morning fishermen, and the birds? You were commenting on the birds just as we left the bridge and crossed onto the sidewalk. We had to stop because your long skirt got caught in the clasp of your sandal, and you were kneeling down to untangle it. We were both a little bit on edge – do you remember why, now? It’s hard to imagine why we felt so unsettled, in Luang Prabang. We’d had such a great time, and felt safer there than anywhere else we’d been in Southeast Asia. Maybe it was just the very early hour, combined with the darkness that we’re not used to, since we’re from Manhattan where it’s never dark. Maybe we were just kind of punchy from exhaustion.
Well sugar, you say “we” were punchy, but “we” weren’t really punchy – you were. Remember?
You’re right – you were singing and laughing and commenting on how beautiful the river was in the dark, and how many stars you saw. OK, “we” weren’t punchy, point taken. But we were both a little anxious in the utter darkness, that’s definitely true. And neither of us expected someone to grab you – you have to agree with that!
No, we certainly never expected something like that to happen, that’s true. Did you see him coming?
No, remember how we were both bending over – you were squatting – trying to get your skirt free? The guy just came out of nowhere, it seemed, and leaned over you, saying something we couldn’t understand.
You did overreact just a little bit honey, you have to admit. If it hadn’t been so dark we might’ve noticed that he was wearing orange robes, and had shaved his head. You didn’t have to punch the poor guy, he was just offering to help us! Granted, it was dark and you were trying to protect me, but come on. You punched a monk.
oh-so-very much to do. oh-so-too little time.
Why is life so great, so rich, so filled with opportunities, and we can only partake in them serially? Time is limited, there’s not nearly enough of it, and while I overly-multi-task (to my own detriment; when I’m reading and knitting and watching a movie, what the hell am I doing?), there are some opportunities that must be taken singly. Living in Manhattan presents many more opportunities than time (and money) allow, and it can be overwhelming. Just reading the weekly issue of The New Yorker and scanning through the things going on that week is overwhelming! Hell, there’s enough going on in my own small neighborhood each week to keep me busy, and when I bring in the rest — the museums, the galleries, the parts of town that are just fun to walk through, not to mention goings-on in the surrounding boroughs — I curse my need to sleep. And work.
Aside from my recurring pleasures of poetry group, book club, and dinners with friends, these are just some of the things booked in my calendar in the coming few weeks:
Faust, at the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center:
Aida, also at the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center:
Richard III at BAM, with Kevin Spacey as the hunchbacked wicked king (will he be as delicious as Ian McKellan was?):
The Cloud Gate 2 Dance Theater of Taiwan:
Marcia Ball and Beausoleil (the video is just Marcia Ball; Beausoleil is a cajun zydeco band, amazing):
See what I mean? SO MANY WONDERFUL EXPERIENCES! I’m sticking close to home on certain days of the week to help my husband through something difficult, but there is still so much. I do wish there were more of me, or I could shift myself through parallel paths in some way I can’t even conceive. Because this doesn’t begin to touch the list of books I want to be reading, the list of movies I want to be seeing, the time I need for a book I am writing, the beautiful outdoors I want to be photographing. Life is so precious, and so short, and we’re here to eat it up with a spoon, to get it all over our faces, to let it drip down our chins, to gorge ourselves on it, whatever it is. That’s why we’re here. That, and to be kind to others. To help each other when one of us is down, because our own turn at down will come soon enough.
Friday thoughts on this strange and windy day.
thinking about my upcoming digital sabbatical
As I promised myself, this coming Saturday I’m taking a combination internet/knitting break, and I’m anxious about it. I’m allowing myself to use my computer to write, but not to go online. We’ll see how well I do with this; in the last few days, there have been several great articles (two in the NYTimes, including this lovely piece by Pico Iyer) about people taking digital sabbaticals. There’s something to it. I feel increasingly overloaded by all the information flying in, by my distracted and fractured nonstop word and image consumption — more blogs to read, more long articles to read, more insights to consume, more inspiration to absorb, more fiction to admire, more poetry to read, more thoughts to consider (oh! Must read Fareed Zakaria’s piece on the world.…). I feel wobbly, like I need to stop and make some priorities, and do some quality curating. I need to make time to process, to incorporate. I think this post about going on an information diet might be helpful, but I haven’t yet had time to read it thoughtfully — oh, the irony. Time!! I want more time, need more time. I have too many interests, and simply can’t understand people who say they’re bored.
Last year I grew in a very specific way: I became more self-possessed. That’s a very neat word, especially for someone who has always been other-possessed, past-possessed, history-possessed. Self-possessed means I take my own counsel, I have integrity and take my time, consider myself, pick and choose with the confidence of my true self. But I’m allowing myself to be overwhelmed, and it’s definitely time to stop, to take stock, to turn away from the easy seduction of immediate gratification and instead move thoughtfully and mindfully ahead. Easy to say, hard to do. I hope Saturday’s experiment gives me a start.
On Sunday my husband and I are driving to Atlantic City for a couple of days, to get out of town and keep ourselves busy and distracted while we wait for some news. We’re going ironically, and we’re Atlantic City’s worst nightmare: we don’t drink, we don’t gamble, we intend to lie around the pool or walk on the boardwalk or chill in our room, and we plan to eat.
It’d be much more interesting to go when Nucky was there, and Chalky, but alas. That’s a tv show. We’ll have a good time together making fun of the whole thing, the gamblers, the Snookies, the plastic glam and fake glitz. I’ll be taking my laptop, and since it’ll be after Saturday, I’ll be reporting live. From Atlantic City.
grrrrr. One of those days.
When I was a young mother, I did everything. I made all our clothes, I made everything we ate from scratch, I was the Brownie Troop Leader, I had my giant floor loom and a giant-er Navajo loom and my big spinning wheel in the living room, I played guitar and sang in the elementary school, I was a Maker Deluxe. In this vein, I planted a vegetable garden, a couple times, because it just fit with what I was doing in my life, for my family. Oh, I loved gardening. Except I really, really didn’t. I didn’t like the feeling of dirt under my fingernails. I didn’t like having to deal with bugs and weeds. I didn’t like one thing about it. So my first vegetable garden produced what it produced in its first blush but without the necessary care, it didn’t really last. The following year, oh, I love gardening! I planted another one. And I really hated gardening.
It took me a long time to figure out that what I love is the idea of gardening. I really love that idea. The idea of preparing the ground, planting and watching and watering, seeing the plants, the flowerings, the vegetables begin and then grow. Pulling that food out of the ground and putting it on my table. Love every bit of that idea. I just really don’t like to garden. I wish I did, but I don’t. I felt so much better when I realized this distinction, because it helped me understand this conflict and it relieved me from ever having to attempt to garden again.
Last night I had another insight, though perhaps it is more temporary. Another thing I like better as an idea is Manhattan — definitely the incredible crowds of people in Manhattan. From a distance, the crowds of people pouring through the subway stations, the hordes of people on the sidewalks, they make this city vivid and so alive. From a distance, it’s easy to see that all these people are Manhattan, really. That we all live together, in each others’ faces, in public, and we mostly do it very well. We create whatever private space we need around ourselves as we are crammed together in small spaces. From a distance — the George Washington Bridge, say — all these people on this island are exciting. All these people dashing about, creating the busyness that characterizes this city. I really like all these people from a distance.
But under any kind of stress, as I was last night, my feelings change pretty dramatically. I hate all these people! Good god, I just want to get from here to there. Nothing’s easy. The subways are often screwed up for any slight reason, and if it’s raining hard, or long, everything is just that much more difficult, including subway commutes. Since the subway is underground, obviously, and we’re on a small island, a whole lot of rain at once can bring the subways to a crawl. Once, the trains just had to stop, and we all had to leave. What this means is that (a) it’s raining very hard, (b) hundreds of people are streaming out of the subway at once, into pouring rain, so (c) getting a cab is impossible. No subway, no cab, no luck.
everything's less fun in the rain, here
Last night I went downtown, to the NYU area, for a knitting meet-up. I love and adore all my friends and various groups, but I’m the only person I know here who makes things, and now and then someone says something that makes me feel like I’m seen as weird, because of it. People will ask if I’m making something because it’s cheaper (um, no), and they’ll look at me quizzically. At a minimum, they don’t seem to get the impulse to make things. They do other things, but they don’t make things. When I was a young mother, most of my friends made things, because they were my friends from the weaver’s and spinner’s guild. So I’ve been longing for real-live in person friends here in New York who make things. This one meet-up takes place pretty far from my apartment, requiring two different trains and then a long walk, but it meets on a night that works for my schedule and I’d wanted to go several times before but then had to cancel. Last week I RSVPed for the meet-up and was determined to actually go.
And then, yesterday afternoon, it started pouring rain. Not just raining, but pouring rain. And it was windy. I thought about not going, but I decided to just suck it up and head out. The bulk of the trip is underground, and the long walk in the rain would be fine. I wore my raincoat, took my umbrella, and headed out.
Times Square -- one of the major subway stations on the west side of town
It was nothing less than miserable. By the time I got to my subway stop, which is one block from my apartment, my jeans were soaked to the knee, and my feet were soggy. The wind kept whipping my umbrella inside out. Going down the steps into the subway required tip-toeing through the lakes of rain, and the trains were very crowded. Transferring trains at Times Square nearly done the old girl in; I think everyone gets cranky when they’re trying to get around in this kind of rain, and the rain causes train delays so the crowds are worse than usual. And this time of year the city is filled with tourists, who are taking it all in and don’t know the rules of the road, so they poke along, they stop in the middle of where people are walking, they stand at the top of the stairs, blocking them, they struggle to figure out the Metro Card system, it’s not their fault but they muck up the works even more. We’re just trying to get home, it’s cold, we’re wet, it’s crowded. I finally made it to the second train, only to find out that due to debris on the track, the train I needed wasn’t running. I don’t know that subway line (or part of town) very well, so coming up with an alternative way to get there was mysterious to me, and I nearly turned around and went back home. At this point I was realizing that I don’t like people, I don’t like Manhattan, I don’t like any of it. That maybe this is one of those “gee, I like the idea of it” deals.
But I got there, and after the long walk, I entered the bar dripping wet. My hair was hanging, wet, because the wind kept inverting my umbrella. My pants were dripping, my toes were pruning, my raincoat was dripping. I found the group in the back, introduced myself, and sat down. And not one person spoke to me. They looked at me while I was introducing myself, then they turned their attention back to their knitting, and to each other, and went back to their conversations. I ordered a drink and sat there, smiling, trying to figure out what to do. I thought I’d just go back home. I felt terrible.
Finally two other women arrived and sat by me, and the proximity led them to speak to me. I ended up having a nice time with them, and may go back (but not in January, unfortunately, because the two meetings fall the same nights as my poetry group and my book club meetings). A couple hours later, the group started to disband and I headed home. The rain had slacked off, the crowds were a little less intense, and I was freezing cold because my feet and jeans had been soggy for all that time (and still were!). I got home and crashed, went straight to sleep; I’m so shy and introverted, and it’s exhausting putting myself into a new social setting with strangers.
I’m going to hold off on making a final announcement to myself about how I feel about Manhattan, and Manhattanites. Maybe I like more than just the idea of them, but I need dry feet and pants to feel it.
here I sit in the Chicago airport. what do i do, but put down some words and pick up my knitting needles!
I woke up at 3:15 this morning, though I didn’t need to wake up until the luxurious-er hour of 4am, but since I was awake, I got up and had a cup of tea, packed my electronics, and left my apartment. It was raining, which really sucked, because it meant I needed to bring my umbrella….which I certainly wouldn’t need in Texas, for heaven’s sake. I schlepped out in the dark rainy night and headed to Broadway to get a cab. I’ve done that a lot — cabs on Broadway are common enough, and I’ve been out around that time of morning and had no problems finding a cab.
I must’ve been out just earlier enough to make a difference, because I stood in the dark rain for 8 or 9 minutes, watching the completely empty street. Once a cop drove past, but that was the only vehicle of any kind. Finally, a cab pulled up and I guess the driver didn’t feel like getting out in the rain to help me so I struggled to get my heavy suitcase in the trunk while holding an umbrella and balancing my purse and backpack on my shoulder. It’s hard to lift a heavy suitcase with one hand and do the necessary turn and flip to get it into the trunk of a cab, let me tell you. The lip of the open cab trunk is higher than most cars, so it requires a very high lift before you turn and flip.
Anyway. I got to the airport and got on my plane, took my seat, and started knitting. Sweet. The pilot told us the flight was going to take longer than planned because we were flying into a very strong headwind. This gave me pause, because I had a close connection in Chicago, but plenty of time to make it. Not more, but more than enough. So I thought ‘well, either I’ll make it or I won’t, and freaking out won’t make any difference, won’t make the plane go faster, won’t make me arrive earlier or later.‘ Nice. I can’t always pull this off, but I’ve become increasingly able to do it over the last couple of years.
The view out the window was particularly beautiful; for a long time, it was very dark and the light was that eerie scene of an airplane’s lights bouncing off clouds in the dark. But as the sun rose, the clouds became this gorgeous powder blue, and everything out my window was one or another shade of that color. The sky was slightly darker light blue, and the blanket of clouds below was lighter light blue, but the whole view was that beautiful, tranquil color. I enjoyed it so much.
So we arrived at the airport, the pilot drove the plane in from another town, it seemed, and we finally taxied to the gate where the gate folks fumbled to get the jetway connected. I knew. I really did. I knew. When the doors finally opened, I had 12 minutes until my connecting flight was scheduled to leave. AND! As these things happen, I arrived at the far end of Gate C in Terminal 1 and my connecting flight left from the other far end of Gate F in Terminal 2. I ran. Like Forrest Gump, I ran. I ran and ran, ran and ran, ran and ran. I got to the gate and learned they had just closed the doors. Like, just. If I’d gotten there 30 seconds earlier, I could’ve gotten on my flight.
the tarmac at O'Hare -- my view for a few hours
But luckily I’m me, and have my Kindle and my knitting and my laptop so I can deal with the 5-hour wait. The worst part is just these lost hours with Katie. Boo.
A little change of pace, something I’m dying to tell you! Last night the coolest thing happened, though it was really just a tiny thing. I was standing in the subway, and I noticed a small man walking toward me — I thought he looked like an imp, a little elf or something. He had red-gray hair and he wore these funny wool pants that came to mid-shin, and he wore odd little leather boots. His clothes were strange, and something about him was just so unusual. I looked a little closer, and it was Philippe Petit! The man who walked on the tightwire between the two World Trade Center towers in 1974. It was actually him.
I felt such awe, and could not take my eyes off him. Such an audacious person, such a truly alive, audacious thing he did. Watch Man on Wire, if you haven’t already seen it (it was available streaming on Netflix the last time I checked — I’ve watched it 4 or 5 times). I just learned that he’s Artist in Residence at St John the Divine….which is in my neighborhood, which explains why he was getting in the subway at my stop. Which means I may run into him again.
bold and alive
I so wanted to speak to him. I so wanted to thank him for taking that walk, but I felt shy and didn’t want to intrude. When we were both in the train, at opposite ends of the crowded car, I caught his eye and smiled at him and he looked away. I did it a second time and he looked away, but after that he kept looking at me. I wish I’d had the courage to thank him, but the thing is I can’t even say why it means so much to me and touches me so much that he did that.
[read more: a piece on him in the NYTimes, and a brief PBS biography]
just sitting in the quiet, feeling happy and grateful this morning for more things than i can say
I don’t quite understand this, but adjusting to the 12-hour time difference when I arrive on the other side of the world isn’t that big a deal, really. For the first few days, I crash h-a-r-d in the late afternoon and take little skipping naps before dinner and go to sleep relatively early but that’s it. Then I’m adjusted and that’s that. Coming home, though, is another story. If you’ve been here long, you know this is what I talk about after every other-side-of-the-world vacation. First, I don’t seem to need very much sleep, which is bizarre. And second, no matter when I go to sleep I’m wide awake just after midnight. I crash h-a-r-d in the late afternoon and take little skipping naps before dinner and go to sleep around 9pm, and then I’m wide awake at 1:30 or 2am, and that’s that.
Boring. Real boring. What I realize this time is that resistance is indeed futile. I have these precious mid-night hours, all to myself. I’ve come to really love and appreciate this and will be kind of disappointed when my regular sleeping pattern returns in several weeks (that’s another thing, why does it take so long on this end!). I’ve been up since 1:30, reading and knitting, and feeling a lot of pleasure for these things:
The delicious humor of John Prine, especially in Dear Abby:
The wistful gorgeous beauty of Judy Collins singing Sons Of:
The color red, in all its punch and power and vivid life. I especially loved it this morning in the work of Catherine Ryan:
I just love the quality of color in that piece, but it’s characteristic of her work and the colors all make me feel grateful to be alive this morning.
Stick with me on this one: death. I’m grateful for death. I don’t want my life ever to end, but the fact that it will makes everything matter. Is this what I would be doing, right at this moment, if I knew I had 3 months to live? Maybe, it’s only 3am and I’m enjoying this moment, but keeping the question in mind makes life vivid. I’m thinking about it this morning especially because one of my dearest friend’s mother died on Sunday. She’d been lost to Alzheimer’s for years, and my friend was lucky enough to spend an hour with her mother Sunday, telling her stories of how much she’d been loved, and then other family members arrived and her mother slipped away, gently. Her mother had introduced her to Mary Oliver’s work, and my friend is the one who introduced me to Mary Oliver’s work, so this morning I remember her mother with this poem:
When death comes — Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
I’m also grateful this morning for metaphor and the artistic articulation of meaning. My daughter Marnie just got the first part of her new gorgeous tattoo done:
that's Pallas Athena
See this blog post she wrote about the levels of meaning behind her artistic choices, what these images mean for and about her. Since the image and story are on her public blog, I assume she won’t mind my putting them here.
There’s a lot more — I seem to be feeling extremely grateful this morning! — but this is getting long and I want to get back to my knitting. Speaking of: I’ll be finished with my Wintry Mix sweater in about an hour, and the yarn for my Vodka Gimlet arrived while I was gone and ohmygod it’s a gorgeous color. Another post on knitting-related things to come soon!
[and p.s., posted here for myself, so I don't forget: two nights ago I dreamed I was being held in the back room by the Chinese. That's it. There were no images with it, I just woke up and knew I'd dreamed that. WTF!! It's kinda funny.]
“Sickness shows us what we are.” ~Latin proverb. Apparently I’m a whiner.
Winter colds are miserable, but a summer cold has its own form of ick. The heat makes sneezing and watery eyes feel worse, I think, and the fact that everyone else is cavorting and frolicking around — as it looks to the sick person — just adds a log of ‘unfair!’ to the fire. Yes. I have a summer cold. Boo hoo, poor me.
Today I’m very grateful that I work at home, that I can work at home, that I have enough (but not more) work to make it possible for me to do this. Going down into steaming summer subways isn’t much fun anyway, but with a cold it just feels way too wrong, universe. Way wrong. Instead, I get to sit on the couch, read an interesting manuscript and try to make it even better, drink tea, adjust the air conditioning to meet my changing hot-cold status, wear comfortable clothes (and not wear uncomfortable clothes), moan a bit, and nap if it strikes me. That’s a big thing to be grateful for, so I pause here and say that.
Achoo.
need some distraction today? check out these links.
Having one of those days when you just feel schlumpy, or fat, or slobby, or whatever thing you happen to feel that’s less than your normal — even glamorous — self? Here are 10 quick and simple things you can do to feel a little better, courtesy of Margarita Tartakovsky’s great blog, Weightless.
Or having one of those days of inertia, or flailing even, when you can’t seem to get anything done? Try these 10 simple things, courtesy of Gretchen Rubin’s blog.
Wouldn’t it be fun to do this? Take some of your old photos back to the place they were taken — check out the blog to see what I mean. Wistful and rooted and beautiful.
Here are 29 little steps that help you take better care of yourself.
Corn and black bean salsa! YUM!
Happy Monday, y’all. I hope the week goes quickly. My broken rib is still extremely painful and goofing me up, man.
Learning about what you’re made of is always time well spent, and I have found no better teacher.
I read a post this morning written by a yoga teacher, about the fact that life is always hard, and it doesn’t get easier. Of course it goes up and down, hard moments do ease off, difficult times do end, down goes up even if up does also go down. Our own personal challenges often stay with us for decades, and then of course life and aging have a way of throwing new and exciting difficulties in the path, just to keep things from getting boring. Hey! Now I can’t remember why I came into this room! Challenge! And what’s up with my knees! What? I can’t quite hear you as well…..
It’s always hard, it doesn’t get easier. When I read the title of her post, my first thought was about the thing I most love intellectually about strength training, which is [duh] that it’s always hard, it doesn’t get easier. But what does happen is that you can do more. It was hard to hold plank for 6 seconds (like, shaky quivery sweaty hard) and 10 weeks later it’s that very same hard to hold it for 75 seconds. It’s exactly the same hard. It’s hard. It’s still hard, and it’s not going to get any easier. But I am different, I have gotten somewhere — in this instance, I am physically stronger.
And I guess it’s frequently the very same thing about life, not to get all corny about it…but it is the same, isn’t it? We go through trials and difficulties, and while they wear us down, they build up something that becomes tougher, something that will possibly help the next time we have to face the tough.
There’s so much to learn from strength training. This morning I had to face the lesson of the meaning of discipline. I’ve been a bit glum, slightly blue, nothing serious. And very tired, kind of feeling like a wire version of myself, inconsequential in some weird way. Empty. Again, nothing serious just a current, temporary deal. But today was lower body workout day — squats, kettlebell swings, hardcore hard — and I went in the room with my kettlebell and closed the door, and just thought no, not today. I’m too tired. I feel too puny. I’ll just not do it today. So I thought OK, I’ll just do one rep, one set. One set of kettlebell swings and one set of crunches. That’s it, then I’ll take a shower. Then I thought well, I’ll just do one more. Then one more. Then I got to the squats and side knee kicks and after one rep I was sure I was quitting for the day. I sat there with my phone and read email, trying to get my breath, feeling perfectly justified in not doing the whole thing today, after all I feel puny and not very good, there’s always next time.
And then I realized this is what discipline is — doing it anyway. Not feeling like it, and doing it anyway. Doing what I promised myself I would do, for myself. Marnie sent me this great article (ignore the fact that it’s Henry Rollins, if you need to), and it moves me. So very many lessons to learn from doing a hard thing.
there and back again
Turkey was wonderful — in almost every way, it was a perfect vacation. There were no major problems, at every turn things worked out well (including the weather!), I saw some amazing sites (including the Hagia Sophia, which I was afraid I’d miss), ate some good food, and most important of all, just enjoyed myself. It was so good for me, I needed a trip like that. Life gets hard now and then, and sometimes you’ve just got to get away.
There was one bad thing, I had to take my knitting needles out of my in-progress work, only to be told oops, it’s ok. It was my most unusual Mother’s Day ever, having never spent one in Istanbul. Although I wasn’t bothered by jetlag on that end, it’s kicking me on this end; I woke up at 2am (9am in Turkey) and couldn’t go back to sleep, even though I’d only slept a couple of hours, plus a few fitful not-really-asleep-but-trying hours on the plane. Turkish Air is not my favorite airline, but as always my ticket was free so I don’t complain too much.
I was here just a few days ago! This was shot behind the Greco-Roman amphitheater at Myra, in Kale, Turkey
Thanks for your comments on the Turkey blog, and for following it, and on facebook, and for the well-wishes here, before I left! You know how it is, there’s such a huge tizzy in the getting-ready, I didn’t get to respond so this note of gratitude is for you.
And now, back to my regularly-scheduled life.
crazy weekend in this world.
Dinner with Will and weekly phone call with Marnie. Knitting (with increasingly slow progress because the rows are getting longer of course). Movie-watching. Walking. Sleeping. Earthquakes and tsunamis and nuclear meltdowns. TV watching. Reading. Sleeping. Losing an hour.
progress on LaReine -- my "I need something red" shawl. I came back to my knitting spot with a cup of tea, and the shadows were so pretty I didn't want to lose them with extra lighting.
How to summarize a weekend like that? I hope there was something brilliant in your weekend.
time to be very good to ME, for a change, says me
In addition to my great-great-grandmother Molly — remember her, I told you that she went to bed at age 50 and stayed there for 40+ years because she was tired? — I knew another woman who got tired. She had just 2 kids, a boy and a girl. Anyway, one day when the boy was a late teenager, she got tired. She just got tired and fed-up, and one day announced that from that point forward, she was just going to say no. Whatever anyone asked her, she was just going to say no. And by golly, she stuck to that to the end of her life, many decades later. Even at the end, when her legs were cut off because of diabetes, if anyone asked her something she said no.
- Mom, will you take me to…NO.
- Mom, can I have…NO.
- Honey, do you want to…..NO.
I seem to be constitutionally unable to stick to these kinds of resolutions, but I get the urge to make them. There are days I really get that urge. From now on (which usually lasts until someone asks me for something) I’m just saying no. This comes on me when I’ve felt taken advantage of for too long, like I’ve been giving and have not even been [much] acknowledged, for too long. It’s a sign I need to stop and take care of myself for a while, do something nice for myself for a while. And that time is now, I’m really feeling the no.
sweet little Kiki, holding 2-day old Katie
My former father-in-law, dear sweet Kiki, was a very dear and loving man. He was wonderful to me, like a sweet father I never had, and he loved me a lot. Like, a lot. He’d take me out to the country for whole days, out near Devine, in southwest Texas, and spend the day with me gathering plants and wildflowers that I could use to make natural dyes. We had such a good time together. He was so gentle, and kept careful logs of the purple martins’ lives in his back yard, and the rainfall…he did that for years. His little logs are precious, I wonder who has them now. Anyway — all that aside, he was a major grudge-holder. It didn’t even matter if he remembered why, he’d hold that grudge for decades. And he made what he called “silent secret decrees;” the best example of this had to do with emptying ashtrays. His wife, my dear mother-in-law, was a heavy smoker. Somewhere along the way he’d made one of his silent secret decrees that he was never again going to empty or clean an ashtray. He didn’t tell anyone, he just never did it. Ever. Not once, in a couple of decades.
That’s an amazing stick-to-it-ive-ness, even if it’s not really nice — the “no,” or the silent secret decrees. I don’t know how people do that. I make those vows all the time and they last as long as toilet paper in the rain. They last until the first thing happens that would call on me to stick to it. Then I cave. Are you this way?
not the best, that’s for sure!
Well, given the dark tone of my previous post, it’s pretty clear that my weekend wasn’t my best. Of course, it wasn’t my worst, either — worth keeping in mind, always. I was trying to think what kind of image would best capture my weekend, but there isn’t a photo of it. It wouldn’t be knitting, or baking, or cozying, or wintering, or being outdoors, it’d just be a bunch of white noise or something.
But I did stay up late and finish sock #1, so in the hope of closing my weekend on something approximating a high note, here’s sock #1 of Anna’s 20th birthday socks. The color really is summery lovely, and balm for a bitter winter spirit. Here’s to a much better week!
is there anything worse than babka fail? [OF COURSE THERE IS.]
Continuing in my long series of complimentary advice — you’re welcome — is this one:
Never make babka when you’re upset.
And its corollary:
Never ever make 2/3 of a recipe of babka when you’re upset.
For some reason, babka recipes make 3 loaves (these are good: one, two). Well, we’re just two little people, even though one of us (hint: not me) eats on the scale of a small family, especially where sweets are concerned. But anyway — we don’t need three babkas. So I put the list of ingredients in an Excel spreadsheet, multiplied each line by .66, and bingo: the ingredient amounts I’d need for 2 babka instead of three.
Would’ve been great, it was a smart plan, blah blah blah, but then, inside the recipe would be a statement like “using 10 T of butter” which did not represent the entire amount of butter. So I had to figure out what portion of the 3-loaf recipe 10T counted for, then try to take that portion of my butter. You can see the nightmare. I’m sure.
in case you don't know, this is chocolate babka (not the lesser cinnamon babka, cf Seinfeld). it's a very eggy, buttery bread wound up and twisted around a filling of chocolate, sugar, and cinnamon. RIGHT?
I was not having a great morning, after a bad night of sleeping/not sleeping, and my nerves were shot from too much coffee. Shaky hands, brittle mind, the whole “you shouldn’t be making babka, Lori” shebang. Which, of course, I stupidly ignored.
Hence, this advice post, in which I hope to spare you the similar anxiety and angst and absolute abject…running out of A-words here…failure. (Unless it’s not a failure, in which case I’ll post later.)
in which the wordsmith uses words to say she cannot deal with any more words today
I’ve been doing deep editing of a dissertation proposal, and OH MY. It’s requiring every molecule of ATP in every cell just to keep my mind working hard enough. My brain is so fried, I’m taking a huge risk by picking up some knitting, but I just can’t work one more second. I’m around the elbow of the 2nd sleeve on my Dark & Stormy, so I’m coming into home plate.
About being an editor. When I was in graduate school, when people asked about my research I learned to be cautious in describing it. I studied what we can know by analyzing the words people use. As with most things academe, it was much more interesting in concept than in detail — people who are depressed use the pronoun ‘I’ more frequently than non-depressed people (but then again so do women, and coincidentally women are more likely to report being depressed than men). There are pronoun differences as a function of power status, a particular linguistic profile associated with cognitive complexity, more complicated pronoun differences associated with psychological and emotional change, etc. Really interesting stuff! But when I’d answer someone’s question about my research, they’d often grow quieter and quieter, and they’d frequently say that they no longer felt all that comfortable talking to me because I’d know stuff about them. (Note: you can either listen to someone, or count their pronouns. You can’t do both simultaneously. And you can’t really count their pronouns just listening to them, either. So it’s definitely not a problem…)
Even though I’m not a clinical psychologist, people who don’t understand the different types of psychologists sometimes say that they are afraid I’m analyzing them. I may be, but just in the same casual way you are! I suspect people who are clinical psychologists get this all the time. I’ll bet they also get people telling them their problems, hoping for free on-the-spot therapy.
And now that I’m an editor, people are often quite self-conscious with me about their writing. This one’s a little more complicated than the previous issues, because it’s always been true of me that I notice typos and incorrect grammar in everything I read. Chicken and egg, man. Still, there’s a big difference between noticing and judging, and this makes all the difference. When I read my friends’ writing, whether in an email or a blog post or any other format, I assume my mind registers any typos, but I don’t tend to really notice them because I’m not reading with editing in mind. And I definitely don’t judge them! The only time I do get judgmental and irritated is when there are a lot of errors in a published work. That’s bad form, publishers and authors. Well, one more: THE “INCORRECT” USE OF “QUOTATION MARKS” AND APOSTROPHE’S. (incorrect there for emphasis, as if the all-caps weren’t enough.)
The other side of this sword is that now, if I make a typo or use incorrect grammar, it has dire implications. If a potential client emails me, my email had better not have a single typo, or I’ve lost the job. I live and die by the same sword, not to be all violent about it.
Anyway, my work isn’t typically about spotting typos and incorrect grammar. That’s just proofreading. An editor does deeper work than that, expanding and eliminating, rearranging, making sense and better order, reworking paragraphs and sentences to make the author’s voice clearer and the story oh so much better. You kind of have to hold the whole thing in your mind at once. It’s great great fun, like solving a 3-dimensional puzzle that’s also a 4-dimensional Rubik’s cube. Trust me, that’s fun.
work work work BEANS work work work
Well, you know how they say you should be careful what you do on New Year’s Day, because you’ll do a lot of that thing throughout the coming year? I don’t know if this is good news or bad news, but I worked all day long, like 10 hours. And I did the same thing yesterday. But I did finish the giant manuscript, hallelujah.
A photo that captures my weekend, therefore, would have to be me at my computer. BO-ring. So instead, here’s a shot of Texas caviar, the cold black-eyed pea salad I eat every New Year’s Day. It’s a southern tradition to eat black-eyed peas for luck, but guess what? It’s actually an ancient Jewish tradition. The Talmud recommends eating them at Rosh Hashana for prosperity in the coming year. Many Jews moved to Georgia in the 1700s, so of course that tradition came with them. Southerners recognized a good thing when they saw it, and adapted it to their New Year celebration (and adding the obviously un-Kosher ham hock, but that’s what makes it so good!).
So with no further blathering: Texas caviar. It’s damn good – meaty and spicy and limey and jalapeno-ey.
eaten with tortilla chips, so good it'll make you slap your mama
some of this, some of that, not a lot of snappy gray matter activity.
I can live with the drug and porn spam comments that my lovely spam catcher silences for my dear old blog. I do get tired of reading about drugs and penises, but they’re so routine and boring. Really, spammers? Really? What are you thinking.
But a lot of spam comments are just mean – like, “you can’t do better than this?” or “Real stupid post, you should just quit.” GOOD GRIEF. Every one of them sounds like the mean voice that occasionally squeaks around in the dark corners of my mind, and you know, that squeaky voice doesn’t need any help.
My new camera battery came today so I show you where I am with my really lovely sweater-in-progress:
moving down the body now - sleeves are divided
And the blanket I took with us on vacation, I got a lot done on it, though I’m only about 1/3 finished at this point:
you can't tell, but i got a LOT done!
When I left, I had finished only 2 repeats I think. Anyway. Feeling kind of dazed and stunned right now, so this is a half-assed post. I’m still hit hard by the reverse jet-lag, and the lack of sleep is accumulating; on top of that, I have a lot of work to do – good, of course – and I’ve spent the day buried in it. Now I have to head downtown for my monthly writing group, and I can’t imagine that I’ll write very much that’s coherent.
Oy. Boring myself here.
i’m home from laos and cambodia! what happened while i was gone?
So hey y’all, I’m back! What’d I miss? Anything good? What was the best new thing you saw on Ravelry in the last couple of weeks? What was your best post – I’d like to say that I am going to catch up on everything, read all your back posts, look through Ravelry extensively, but we know that can’t possibly happen. So if you feel like it, leave a link to your best post in the comments so I can be sure to see what I missed.
And in a stroke of sheer brilliance, last year I scheduled this year’s mammogram when? MONDAY. I’ll take my seriously jetlagged and place-confused self to be squeezed and smashed on Monday. Excellent.
I missed you and appreciated your following our travel blog, and really appreciated your sweet comments! Your comments on facebook too, I loved them all. Tomorrow I’ll do a culminating post on the travel blog, but for now I am extremely wonky and tired and hungry and damn glad to be home. I can’t wait to climb into my very own cozy bed….
Theater! Kids! Can! Be! Hard! To! Take! In! An! Enclosed! Space!
One of the only things I miss (and really, just partially) about my old job is the daily exposure to New Yorkers during the commute. The New York stories have always been among my favorite posts to write (which is not to say that the NY stories were always pleasant experiences). Now, I’m in the subway three times a week, tops, and the rides are not very long.
But today I had to go way down to the other end of this island, so I had quite a long trip in the subway. Going down was quiet and quick, and I expected a relatively similar trip home, since it wasn’t rush hour and the train was pretty empty when I got on.
remember the Master Thespian, on SNL? ACTING!
But then, at the Penn Station stop, a thundering horde of THEATER! KIDS!! ran into my car. In their Very! Excited! (and Loud!) Way!
Oh my god! They were just So! Very! Excited! And SHOUTING! And once, a group of them broke into SONG! It wasn’t at all like being in an episode of Glee. One of the chaperons was standing right next to me at one end of the car, and just kept shouting at the other chaperon, who happened to be as far away as possible. Then he shouted at her (and they had to shout very loudly to be heard over All! The! Excitement!) and whatever he said made her laugh her excruciatingly loud and piercing cackle laugh. I put my knitting down and covered my ears with my hands, trying to minimize the feeling of being assaulted.
Thankfully, they got off at 66th, leaving me 7 quiet subway stops to home. I let my hands down and got ready to pick up my knitting when a screaming clattering horde of Puerto Rican teenage girls ran into the car and even though there were only 4 or 5 of them, they were every bit as loud as the 15 Theater! Kids! had been.
I sat there thinking about the shared public space of a subway car. Yeah, it’s a public space, so you can shout if you want to, play music if you want to, do whatever, as long as it isn’t illegal. But it’s shared, which ought to mean that extremes are modified a bit – especially in a tightly enclosed space. We don’t eat smelly food in the subway cars. We use earphones for our iPods (usually, though that’s no guarantee that I won’t have to be blasted by your irritating music). We talk to each other in normal conversational tones, with normal conversational volume (or even a little quieter, if we can). Because there are Other! People! On! the! Train!
geez. I’m thoroughly enjoying the absolute silence of my apartment right now. I think I’ll knit. Yeah.
she really pisses me off. sure, she’s “interesting” and “fascinating” and beautiful, but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD she’s a pain in my ass.
You know the kind I’m talking about – at first you were just crazy about her. She’s so beautiful, interesting (we’ll come back to that one), endlessly fascinating, she adds a lot to your life, you imagine being friends for a long long time.
But then you start to realize that interesting should have quotes around it. She’s “interesting.” She’s beautiful, yeah, and she certainly does add a lot to your life, but the “interesting” and fascinating bits now make you suspect you won’t be friends for a long long time. Consultants call this the PITA factor (pain in the ass), and sometimes add a hidden PITA fee when offering a price quote to a known PITA client. Still, you can’t say this friend is boring. No, you could never say that, that’s for sure. You might say a lot of other things, but boring she’s not. Now and then you throw your hands up and say “that’s it, we’re done. I’ve had it this time.” But you go back…..at least for a while.
That has been the story of my relationship with my Eve Shrugged. At first? Smitten. Totally, totally smitten. Over the moon, endlessly fascinated. And then I hit the wall, not once, not twice, not even thrice (ha, thrice) but many more times than that. Knit frog knit frog knit frog knit frog. Repeat. But finally I got it, thanks to the help of many of you. I made it to the point of adding the sleeve stitches, where you then transition from Eve’s Ribs to Adam’s Ribs, and something went wrong. Knit frog knit frog knit frog knit frog. Repeat. This is why I haven’t been mentioning this project – it’s been in the Bad, Bad Knit Time-Out chair in the corner.
Last night I pulled out my ratty old cursed ball of this yarn and just worked the Adam’s Ribs repeats a few times, and it went fine. No problems at all. I knew the problem must be my haste, so I frogged it all one more time and started anew. Put stitch markers everywhere. Stopped and counted each tiny segment. As the French would say: et voila!
here's the transition point, from Eve's Ribs (on the bottom) to Adam's Ribs
good to go now. for a while.
famous last words.
Anyway. I’m feeling a little more hopeful about the old gal right now, and expect not to have any problems until I hit the next change, which will be (I think) adding the sleeve bells, after the sleeves and body are finished. I think Carol Sunday is a wonderful designer; her patterns are distinctively hers, typically feminine, and quite beautiful. But the way she writes patterns does not connect (like, at all) with the way I think, so they’re very frustrating to me. She’s not a bad designer or pattern writer, and I’m not a bad knitter or pattern reader, we just don’t think the same way so it’s 2 steps forward and 3 steps back for me. Other knitters sail right through.
I haven’t decided whether to take this project or the green tweed ribbon scarf project with me to Rhinebeck (Rhinebeck!!). If you’re going to Rhinebeck, I’ll be wearing my Peasy.
my head hurts, and there’s no way i’m eating a tarantula, even if they ARE deep friend. and no, a grasshopper doesn’t sound better.
New things! A skin for my Kindle, courtesy of Decalgirl. Since I rarely carry it in my purse, seeing as how I’m home all the time, I don’t have to keep it in the heavy leather case. But I don’t want the white surface to get dirty-looking, so voila!
love the little boy in the dunce cap
even the back gets a skin cover
Also: the lace ribbon scarf I’m making for my friend is going much faster than the other two I’d knit in sock-weight yarn. Also, I’m a much more skilled knitter now than I was when I made the other two scarves with this pattern. No mistakes, no need to check the pattern, it’s as easy as falling off a log.
it's going pretty quickly in Rowan Felted Tweed!
Every variety show needs at least one kind of freaky sideshow, right? One thing that’s an acquired taste, not for everyone? Well, this fits the bill in a lot of ways. This appears to be one of the most common street foods in Cambodia. NOT FOR THIS GAL.
deep-friend tarantulas. but hey, the hairs burn off!
tarantulas not your thing? then how about.....GRASSHOPPERS! no? (me neither!)
I might lose weight on our vacation, but there are lots of things to eat besides bugs. I’m counting on it.
Today was one of those lost days, thanks to the terrible low pressure system hanging over our heads. Ugh, the headache, the too-many sudafed, the pressure on my forehead. I’m knitting and watching a yoga video on Netflix. Somehow, it’s helping.
i have been my own worst enemy on this project, and we nearly came to blows. read what a little perseverence’ll do for ya.
ICK and YUCK. As lovely as Saturday’s weather was, today’s is that awful. It’s cold, gray, and drizzly, but not in a let’s-get-together-in-trench-coats-in-Casablanca kind of way. Just in that ick kind of way. The kind that makes the annual GYN trip just that much more pleasant. Yeah.
Here’s the transitional thing that straddles the awful-to-wonderful divide: my shrug. OK, so you would not believe the hell I’ve been through with this thing. First there was the whole oops I did it wrong debacle, resulting in frogging a whole skein’s worth of knitting. OK. Figured it out, cast on, got to the 2nd repeat (where we last left our cheerless heroine) and I made some kind of mistake. Shoulda just looked closely to figure out where I goofed, but I was getting a global sense of despair with this one so I just frogged.
Decided I’d better just try to figure out the stitch pattern before casting on again, so I cast on for 3 pattern repeats plus the edge stitches, and knit through three repeats. GENIUS!! IT WORKED!!! I must have just made an easy mistake the last time, I’m on it. Cast on again – 324 stitches, by the way, screwed up the first row. Frogged. Cast on agai…oh no, too short a tail, by ~5 stitches. Cast on again, got to the end of the row and still had ~30 stitches on the needle. Frogged. Cast on aga….too short a tail, by ~12 stitches (and p.s., how did THAT happen, because I kept the starting point the same as it had been the previous time, when I’d cast on way too many!!!).
Tried again, maybe 2 or 3 more times. It almost became funny. Almost. Maybe later it’ll be like, hysterical. I started thinking it was a sign; my friend Preeti used to see signs in everything, maybe I was just being dense about it. Maybe the universe was screaming at me “RUN AWAY LORI” and I was just sitting there like a dolt, trying again and again. After a couple more times, I finally gave up for the night.
I decided to try one. more. time. And if it didn’t work this time, I was going to cry uncle and decide that me and Carol Sunday, we’re one of those sad couples, the ones who love each other but it’s never going to work, and it’s no one’s fault. I cast on, put a stitch marker down every 10 stitches. Counted again. Counted by the 10s. Counted individually. Counted three more times, just to be sure.
Row 1, WHEW. Row 2, stopped after each 16-stitch repeat and checked obsessively. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16, ok. Next. I knew if I could just get past the first couple of rows, I’d be in like Flinn. AND I AM!
that baby hugs the curve just beautifully!
and look at that dimensionality!
it's right! it's right! it's right!
I know I said I wouldn’t blast you with more photos and stories about this project until I finished the collar and was working on the body, but you can appreciate the sense of triumph I have at persevering to this point. MAN. The good news is that it’s pretty fast knitting, and I know the pattern by heart (and it’s really very simple, despite me).
just call me a turnip – you’ll get no blood out of me!
First, let me be clear: Harrowing is when someone is chasing you, trying to kill you. Harrowing is when you walk away from what could’ve been a fatal car crash. Harrowing is when you lose everything. Those things are harrowing.
Still, I’ve had a small potatoes harrowing day. A quotidian harrowing. I had to go to the doctor to get the vaccinations for our upcoming trip to Laos and Cambodia (yay!), and I needed some bloodwork done. And it was the kind of bloodwork where you can’t eat after midnight. My appointment was at 2pm, which is a l-o-n-g time to wait. No sleep last night, no coffee this morning, and no Cheerios, I wasn’t feeling very good when I got to the physician’s office.
So exam exam exam, talk talk talk, reflexes reflexes reflexes, back to the lab for bloodwork. And here’s where things went horribly wrong. I have (euphemistally) delicate veins. As in, they’re almost not there. They’re certainly not visible. And they roll, which phlebotomists always complain about. It’s not unusual for a blood draw to go from arm to arm, here and there, and even down to the foot, in extreme circumstances. After all that, they usually hit a vein and the vials fill.
Not today. Poke right arm, ooops….twirl the needle around hoping to grab the vein. OK, no good. Poke left arm….oops…twirl the needle. No good. Poke the right hand…twirl twirl twirl, no good. Poke the left hand, same. So she left the room, and the physician came in to give it a try. He repeated the entire journey, including all the twirling at every hole. Once, blood starting coming up the tiny tube, but then it just petered out. I have NO idea what that was about.
the holes in my right inner elbow didn't even BLEED, so no bandaid for them.
So after all that, after the no-caffeine headache, the being really hungry, the pincushion experiences, no blood drawn. I have to go through it again, the fasting, the poking. UGH. Small scale harrowing. You can call me a turnip, because you’ll get no blood out of me.
If this doesn’t destroy your mind and crush your spirit, I don’t know what will. A sentence from a manuscript I am editing:
When we exited the building we found Dracula standing by a prairie schooner with a team of six horses hooked up to it, when he saw us Dracula said, “It’s about time, I have been waiting out here for an hour.”
Continue Reading–7 words totally
If this doesn’t destroy your mind and crush your spirit, I don’t know what will. A sentence from a manuscript I am editing:
When we exited the building we found Dracula standing by a prairie schooner with a team of six horses hooked up to it, when he saw us Dracula said, “It’s about time, I have been waiting out here for an hour.”
It’s not all fun and games, you know. This thing just goes ON and ON and ON.
i gave notice at work, and guess what happened….
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…
the wedding dress is nearly done!
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.
too tired to grow……..
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.
beautiful beautiful yarn
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 to sleep and eat.
So yeah, madelinetosh is waiting for me, and I can’t wait to get back to her.
a little of this AND a little of that.
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 – my trip to the Catskills was a mix of things. I was caught in awful traffic heading upstate for some weird reason. It took as long to go 20 miles as it should’ve taken to make the whole trip. I was very distracted by details surrounding my fall vacation to Laos. And then, the thing that’s most reliable – incredible pizza at Brio’s, in Phoenicia – was bad. I ordered baked clams for an appetizer…..clam mush, very gross. My pizza came within a few minutes of 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. I 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!
a mishmash of thoughts, plus a picture of monkey socks
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 my vacation, I took 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, my routine was to make a cup of coffee and drink it on the porch and knit. 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.
I 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. I’ll pare down my expenses, as much as I 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.
socks for Katie, plus a lesson in stress and the immune system.
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.
whinging about stress, plus socks
Yesterday is done for the year, so moving on! Today I’m going in search of a new bathroom light fixture, and I’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 I’ll be flying back to Roatan – I hope you’ll drop in on that blog now and then while I’m 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!
in which I can hardly put two words together
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!
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.
Continue Reading–3 words totally
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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