Pages
Stay In Touch
ALL content on this site is the property of, and copyrighted by, the blogger at Thrums. If any content is presented elsewhere, I will pursue action. Just ask me, for heaven's sake! I'm very friendly.
Vigilance
greek yogurt with greek honey - luscious
It’s so strange, going from having too little (time) to having an abundance. From having too much (stress) to having almost none. I don’t quite know what to do with myself.
I know what I want to do with myself! I want to arrange a life of balance, that’s the big picture. I want to do yoga regularly, to strengthen my very bad back; I want to walk regularly, to be outdoors and to benefit my heart; I want to lose a bit of weight and eat well; I want to write; I want to line up enough work so I don’t feel frantic about it; I want to make things; I want to stay connected to people; I want to keep my house clean and neat. Balance.
If I’m not careful, though, I piddle away time without doing anything at all. I sit with my laptop, just checking this site one more time and oh yeah let me look at that one and oh wait I need to respond to this and after I look at that I’m shutting it down and getting busy and then it’s time for dinner. That’s what happened yesterday.
I tend toward Prussian organization, which then collapses and I’m back to wasting. In other words, I get way too anal about it, like this: On Mondays from 8:30 to 8:45 do this. From 8:45 to 9:45 do that. Tuesdays and Thursday from 7:15 to 8:45 do that. Every Wednesday afternoon from 3:00 to 4:15 do that. Rigid, strict, entirely structured. And all it takes, when you’re set up like that, is one fail and then the whole thing can wash down the drain. (Of course it needn’t, but if you’re a person with these tendencies, that’s what happens.)
So I think instead, well, how about if I just say “3 mornings a week I’ll spend an hour doing yoga” etc. But what I do in reality is this: well, right now I’ll just finish my coffee and poking around the internet, then I’ll get up and straighten up the living room – I’ll do yoga tomorrow.
Maybe, instead, I need to deconstruct the beginning – do what alcoholics have to do when they’re trying to learn how to stay clean. Break up the routine that supports the addiction. Right now, I get up and make a little pot of coffee — 2 mugs’ worth — and then I slowly drink my coffee and feel justified in poking around the internet. Just while I drink my coffee, you know? That’s all. Then I’ll get busy. But I take a long time with it! I may take 2 hours drinking those 2 mugs of coffee. A little sip, poke poke poke. Sip poke poke poke. Sip poke poke poke. It’s really really hard to break up that very slow start to my day. Every night I think, as I drift off to sleep, “in the morning, don’t open the computer, just take your coffee to the table and write by hand for 20 minutes. Just do that.” But then I don’t, because I’m tired. Or whatever.
My life has been entirely structured, forever. Babies’ nursing schedules, naptimes, picking up kids from school/snack/homework/dinner/baths/tucking in. My own college and grad school schedules. Work work work work work work, always at jobs that are intense and draining and never the kind that nourishes me in any way.
So now, here I am, for the first time in my 51 years of life, with time. I can’t squander it. Do you have any advice for me? How do you manage your time?
Related posts
If you live in the south, you have bugs. Roaches. You just do, and you know it. If you live in Manhattan, you have to deal with mice and you have to see rats scurrying around in the subway, or even hurrying down the sidewalk. You just do. It’s gross, but it’s just the way it is.
Our building was built in 1900. It has incredibly high ceilings – so high that most people (including us) have dropped them down a bit. That leaves a pretty large gap between the floors. For the last week or so, we’ve been hearing something running around, scratching scratching digging, right above our ceiling….which means it’s in the space between floors, trapped. No idea how it got in the space, maybe the upstairs neighbors have some kind of hole in their floor or something, but there it is. This has happened before, but the thing died, and it was hot, and the thing (and therefore our entire apartment) reeked. It was awful, gag-inducing, rotting animal. It lingered in the corners long after the full smell faded away.
So we didn’t want THAT to happen again. But what to do. It’s been crawling around up there for so many days, the scratching has been getting weaker, and we hear it less often. Finally, this afternoon, my darling husband took action. The coat closet in the living room has a ceiling that goes up to the very next floor, higher than the dropped ceiling. So he sawed open a hole large enough for a mouse to emerge, and taped a piece of paper next to the hole with a big schmear of peanut butter, to lure it toward the hole. We’ll leave the closet light on, to illuminate the hole – easily seen in the darkness, we hope. But would the mouse just leap out of the hole into space? Probably not. So my clever husband made a little ramp for it to run down, using a wooden yardstick.
Sounds complicated. Here it is, in pictures:
-
- the big picture – one ceiling corner of the closet
-
- enlarge to see the detailed explanation
I have never wished so hard to see a mouse.
Related posts
my spirit animal must be an ostrich. i know that’s not a fancy spirit animal, or an elegant one, but it does seem to be mine. if everything is A-OK, buddy i can face it and do what needs to be done. but if anything gets a little bit wobbly, i just hide my head and do a bit of psychic fingers-in-the-ears ‘la la la i can’t hear anything’. and then the hiding takes on a life of its own, and i begin to feel so awful about having hidden, and having avoided people, that it just gets harder and harder to do what needs to be done. and doing what needs to be done becomes increasingly heavy, since – you know – it’s not being done.i love the spirit of amy herzog’s ‘fit to flatter’ series, for a great many reasons. the reason that’s relevant to this post is that she says ‘here’s what IS, and here’s how to work with it.’ that’s right: this is how i actually do look. actually. not how i wish i looked; not ‘how i’ll look when i lose 10 pounds;’ not how i used to look; not how the victoria’s secret models that i walk past every morning look (well, how they look with a lot of airbrushing and photoshopping). no. this is how i look, right now, and it is.
i’ve enjoyed the fit to flatter posts, every single one. i’ve enjoyed seeing actual photographs of real women, and how real women actually look – and they look great, they look like regular people. like me. on top of the ridiculous blight of advertising and overly skinny models, i also live in manhattan, which seems to have a greater-than-average percentage of fancy people. i am not a fancy person. i am an average-looking person, an average 51 year old who has given birth to 3 children, who has had major abdominal surgery, who has less-than-perfect posture, who can be lazy and just throw on whatever is convenient, who could certainly benefit from more exercise.
facing what actually is requires either a bit of courage, or an attitude stripped of judgment. i think it’s the stripped attitude that helps the most. step on the scale and just look. open your eyes, really just look at that number. ok, that’s what is. and open that email and just look at it – that’s it. and go ahead and open the envelope, open the mail, look at what it actually is. what’s amazing – and i do already know this – is just how powerful it feels to go ahead and do that. i always feel so righteous, like i can just keep doing it, it’s so much easier – working is always easier than not working – and from now on i’m just going to do it. i’ll adopt a new spirit animal, something that Gets. It. Done. i wonder what that would be. 
Related posts
I know what you’re thinking – this post is going to talk about how itchy wool is. Well you’re wrong! Sorry, didn’t really mean to set you up like that. Instead, it’s about how my fingers and mind are itchy to knit with that pink Felici yarn. Or that new soft Noro. Itching, itching, itching. My mind, too, itching. Can’t stop thinking about it. Just want to cast on, see the stripes unfold, feel the softness.Don’t do it, Lori. Don’t start something new. Satisfy yourself with touching the yarn, looking at it. Keep it on the table next to you so you can …. NO! Put it away! Go put it in the stash bins so you’re not so sorely tempted all the time! Do it now! Just get up, step away from the laptop, and store the yarns out of sight!
But it’s so pretty, that pink, and I don’t even like pink. The caramel colors of that one skein of Noro, so seductive. And the madelinetosh pashmina, bali hai come to me.
NO – finish at least one thing first. You know you have a lot of work to do, finishing the wedding dress, and don’t forget the shawl – not even halfway done with that and time’s a-ticking. The baktus, the blanket, the cardigan. You’ve got your train knitting project, you don’t need another one. Focus Lori, focus.
But just a little bit, just a swatchNO! NO!
help me……
Related posts
Maybe New York City mothers tell their kids about days like this, people like this. It’s not like I’m unaccustomed to some of the more colorful people one runs into in this city; we have our neighborhood schizophrenic who used to do push-ups in the middle of Broadway, and who once ran up and tagged me. There’s the schizophrenic who ‘lives’ in front of my office, the poor man you can smell before you even round the corner. There are drunks in the subway, not all that uncommon to see. Oh, and the occasional weirdo who picks up 2 reciprocating saws the workmen left untended, and starts sawing people on the platform. (That last one is really rare, I mean really rare, but it did happen at my subway stop so that makes it notable to me.) 
But today was a real doozy. The trains were strangely empty; as we went along, there were always empty seats throughout the car. Weird, for “rush hour” on a normal week day. I get on at Penn Station, and the next stop is Times Square. Well, a totally drunk dude got on at Times Square. I wasn’t sure he was going to be able to stand up, or to stay upright in his seat. And I was afraid he was going to lose the contents of his stomach like the last majorly drunk guy I encountered. He wobbled, he wavered, he drooped, and he kept getting up and lurching around, back and forth. And he was right in front of me.
He rode along for 3 stops and then he got off, and I felt a wave of relief. For about 10 seconds. Another guy boarded, and he was happy! Like, really really really really happy – cackling and slapping his leg. Throwing his head back with his mouth wide open so we could see all 3 of his teeth, cackling. Then he’d jump up and down, then do this weird thing where he’d kind of squat and move up and down in a squatting position. Then he’d jump up! Turn around! Windmill his arms! Cackle cackle cackle! Maybe he was doing the hoky poky for all I know. Whatever reality he was in, there was a happy party going on.
Still, there’s something frightening about insane happiness, and he was so physical and all over the place. And – like the drunk – he was right next to me. What gives, drunk and crazy dudes?!
He finally got off at the stop just before mine. Today, apparently, I was aboard the crazy train. It’s not really all that much fun.
Related posts
Stopping all at once – from following 435 blogs to not reading any blogs at all – that is tough. Since Google Reader doesn’t provide a suspend option, I just eliminated the gadget from my iGoogle home page. The choices are either to quit following, or see all the posts. I wish they’d provide a vacation option or something, but they don’t. So I know they’re all there, accumulating, showing up in the Reader that’s there but just not on my home page. They taunt me, the posts. I know there is beautiful knitting, gorgeous quilting, interesting thoughts, amazing design, fun and happy and curious and melancholy, all there just behind my screen.But I am not reading. It’s hard. I wonder what you’re up to. Not reading hasn’t yet transformed my mornings, although I have done more knitting. I’ve also done a bit more writing. I think I have to overcome the thing underneath, the thing that made sitting and reading all the blogs so appealing, such a good alternative to doing. Inertia, laziness, general procrastination, fear. And that last one is such a funny thing – fear. I’m afraid to try toe-up socks. WHAT? Afraid to try toe-up socks? What is there to be afraid of? Afraid I’ll sit at my table and start writing and … what? It won’t be good? Does it all have to be good, and perfect, and finished, with my first effort?
Of course the answer is no, and of course the answer is yes.
Related posts
Not the corpus callosum, the crack-like division between the two brain hemispheres. Not crack cocaine and what it does to your brain. No, the ‘brain crack’ of the post’s title is a phrase my daughter the artist uses to describe the way a creative person might get so involved in figuring out everything involved with a new project and never start, preferring instead to continue planning, tweaking, thinking. That process is kind of like brain crack, it’s fun, nothing is at risk, it’s a way of doing “work” without having to face the blank canvas, or the blank page, or the raw materials, and enduring that difficult process and the potential for risk and failure. “Don’t get stuck on brain crack, mom.” Because that’s what I do. (And here I’m not talking about the actual prep work, the swatching (though that could be done in a brain crack-like way), the material testing, the sample creation, etc.)I’ll just answer these emails that are coming in, and after that I’ll get going. I’ll just organize my knitting bag and then I’ll get going. Oh wait, I should really read this book about design before I get going, it’ll probably save me a lot of trial and error. Oh wait, let me just clean the kitchen first. I’ll just run through my Google Reader real quick and then I’ll get started. I’m sure this is very common; I’ve read all sorts of pieces by writers who describe this kind of process they wade through when they’re having trouble writing. It doesn’t feel good to do this, there’s a kind of building desperation, you know you’re stalling and the thing is waiting, waiting, getting further away rather than closer.
During the week, I get up at 5am and spend about an hour (more or less, depending on the daily situation with my hair and how tragic it looks) sitting on the couch, drinking two cups of coffee, reading my Google Reader, and knitting. Some days I don’t knit, but usually I do. I leave the house absolutely no later than 6:30, and shoot for 6:15 as an average. I relish this quiet hour all to myself, and if I don’t get it I feel cattywampus all day. My husband sleeps in the next room, the street is usually very quiet, and I don’t listen to anything, no music, no podcast. It’s precious and necessary and I love it. I have aspirations of other things to do with that hour, and I continually plan to do them but the morning comes and I think well, this morning I’ll just do my usual. What I’d like to do instead:
yoga and meditation
writing
actual work on creative projects
walk in Riverside Park
explore my neighborhood and take photographs
I really want to do these things! I really do. Obviously, I couldn’t do them all each morning, and my silly tendency would be to regulate them in some kind of rigid fashion: yoga M and W; walk on Th and Sat; write on T; etc. What stops me, as silly as this sounds, is Google Reader. I subscribe to 435 blogs. I have them categorized in ways that let me skip to specific ones (knitters, NYC, food, art, photography, entertainment, fabric, design, creative multi, etc). If I’m in a real time bind, I always just read the knitters and the fabric (which means people who work in some way with fabric, sewing or quilting or dying or weaving), and try to fit in the creative multi – the people who knit AND sew AND do photography. I tell myself that one important purpose of looking at all the blogs is inspiration, and that does happen! There are some amazingly creative people out there who not only do good work, they write about it in inspirational ways and take amazing photographs. Of course, inspiration is a two-edged sword, because it can also make me feel like I’ll never be that good at anything.
I daydream of a balanced life, where I do yoga and walk, and have time to write, and have plenty of time to make things, whatever they are. Where I am careful about my food, and eat with the seasons, healthy and yummy all together. In this fantasy, I’m also calm and content because of the balance, and those two – the calm and the balance – feed each other. And me. Those weekends where we take a little adventure somewhere, Queens or Chinatown or somewhere, and where we take a little walk in the park, and I actually do some housework and also knit, I am much happier in a strange way than I am at the end of those weekends where I have just knitted on the couch for the whole weekend and watched good movies. It’s that balance thing, obviously. Of course, I don’t live in fantasy land, I live in a life that is mostly taken up by my job, that includes a husband whose company I relish, family I enjoy talking with on the telephone, unpleasant tasks to do like laundry and cleaning up after dinner, etc., and then the obvious need for sleep. Not much time is left. Still, I do have that hour five days a week, from 5 to 6.
For a while, I’m taking a blog reading break. I hope you will still read mine even if I am on a temporary hiatus and [very painfully] not reading yours, though I understand if you unsubscribe. Blogging is a community thing – we get to know each other, we comment on each other’s posts, we follow the parts of our lives that we share. I find myself wondering how Jocelyn‘s class is going, what’s going on with Kty, over in Paris, etc. We are real to each other in a funny and kind of unreal way, so I feel bad turning away from reading all the posts I enjoy. But I’ve realized that I’m reading about others’ lives at the expense of living my own. You wouldn’t want to do that for yourself, either. I will continue to write on this blog for my own pleasure and documentation, and hope you stick with me. I’ve just got to get off this brain crack and get busy.
Related posts
Do you know the blog perches in the soul? I can’t remember how I found her blog, now, but hers is one of my favorite blogs in my blogroll. When I see her blog in the old Google Reader, something settles inside me, and I can reliably expect to read something that makes me happy, and to see pictures that make me smile – not least because her beautiful son is usually right there in the middle of it, with his big smile.Here, on this last day of February, she writes:
In the month of March, we will be following light, reflecting in pictures and words on the details that light reveals in different hours of the day.
I’m in! My spirit fades and gets pretty thin this time of year. My genes are so profoundly Texan, I’m completely hardwired for a very brief winter; the long period of cold and gray up north just wears me down, man. And yet I do know that you can find what you look for, if only you look.
Another blog I follow is needled – the blogger (Kate) lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. She’s a professor specializing in textiles, she knits, and her blog is always fascinating. And one month ago she had a pretty serious stroke. Since my dearest friend here in NY had a stroke a year ago, I’ve been closely following Kate and her progress. It’s impossible to make fair comparisons between two people, no matter what – and just as true when people are grappling with what looks like similar problems. Kate has the benefit of much better health care than we have here (so obvious it hardly needed to be said), and I obviously don’t know the extent of what she is facing, AND she’s in the early stages. But I have been so struck by her attitude of ‘ok then! time to work hard.’ Today’s post is about her gratitude for the various tools that help her regain independence. Those things are there – and what they give her – but she is looking at them, and that makes a lot of difference. She could just as easily look at her need for them, and come away with a different sense of things.
So join me, join perches in the soul, let’s follow light. The middle week of March my husband and I will be on the island of Roatan, off the coast of Honduras, where the light will be oh-so-easy to follow, but I still have the remaining weeks of March in Manhattan, where following light will require a bit more looking. I think wherever you are, though, there are days when following light requires an effort.
Happy last day of February, happy Sunday.
Most active commenters!