Feeling Headless

So I'm in this funny phase.  It's one I go through from time to time.  You'd think I'd figure it out eventually.  But it's about this:  What am I doing with this quilting stuff?  I feel like I am all over the place, doing a bit of everything, without ever focusing on any one technique or style or direction.

Do I have a style?  I can't see that I do, in any definite way.  I so admire some of my friends whose pieces have a strong voice and style and a distinctive cohesion. They do what they do, and they do it beautifully, and they push themselves into new places, but their work looks like it belongs to them.  And it looks like they have a path that they know they are on, and they are moving purposefully on that path.

I don't seem to have a path.  I feel more like Gemma at the dog park, rushing in all directions at once and running in circles until her tongue is hanging out.  And I feel like my work looks like a collection of random stuff.  And I'm often dissatisfied at how stiff it seems to me.  I have this idea of what I WANT my work to be -- looser, freer, more spontaneous and joyful ... but how to get there eludes me.

So, you're thinking: "JUST DO IT."  Yeah, I think that's right.  I need to just let myself play.

One of my favorite artists wrote in a book that she posted a list of seven words on the wall in her studio, to remind her of what she wants her work to be.  She has her list of adjectives, like "serene."  "Clear."  That sort of thing.  And with each piece, she runs down her list to see if she has met each of her seven words, and if not, why not.

It's a great idea, isn't it?  But me, I can't even decide on the seven words.

I think this is the mood that drives me to piecing.  Just letting fabric slide through my fingers, pulled along by the feed dogs, allows me to meditate on all of this.  Piecing, at least what I'm doing these days, requires very little brain power or decision making.  It feels good to assemble pieces of fabric and create blocks of color and pattern.  It makes me feel like I'm DOING something and, in fact, I'm getting things made and finished and that feels good.

So I need to choose a path.  For now, not forever. And maybe think about some adjectives to help me stay on that path.  And I need to give myself time to play.

If you had to pick 5-7 adjectives that describe the work you do, what would your list be?

The brain is willing...

... but my body has the flu.  So I lie in bed, and my mind starts thinking about quilts I want to work on, drawers in the house I could straighten, piles in the garage that need loading to go to the Salvation Army... and then I wear myself out and need to go back to bed.

Maybe I'll just take a little rest and THEN I'll be able to get something done.

Or not.

Monday Mis-steps

So, I spent last evening writing a long post listing the best books I've read over the last year, including plot summaries and links... And inexplicably, my computer shut down just as I reached the end. No worry, I thought -- Blogger does that auto save thing now! But when I rebooted, there was no saved message. It's disappeared. Rats rats rats. (That was not exactly what I said at the time.)

This morning, having awakened extra early for no apparent reason, I headed out to the health club to try out a Vinyasa Yoga class. And I remembered what it is I conclude every time I take a yoga class (every 5 years or so): I DON'T LIKE YOGA! I find it boring, frankly. I'd rather be jumping around and sweating and hurting than lying still in some pose and hurting.

After both of those experiences, I think I deserve a morning of quilt fun, don't you?

Keep on going....

Meet Jake, my friend Beth's dog. He's old and has a number of ailments, but we call him the miracle dog because he just keeps on going despite the vet's dire predictions.

But he's here today because this shot illustrates how I've been feeling over the last several weeks...old and tired and draggy and just not right. I swear, there is something cosmic going on that is making things just feel WEIRD, you know? And I'm not the only one feeling this. Personally, I blame George W, for just sending the whole country and economy and cosmos awry. I always feel better after I blame George W. (There's a handy health tip for you.)

Plus we've all had stomach bugs. That's no fun. We're better, I think (crossing fingers) and I've been craving comfort food. Last night's choice was ratatouille over linguine with lots of parmesan cheese and a good red wine.

Perhaps things are looking up!

But now I must get cracking. The Twelve by 12 challenge on the theme "shelter" is due in two weeks and I can't seem to get to anything I like. I've also been invited to participate in an exciting international challenge on the theme of "world festivals," and my assigned festival is a Mongolian festival called "Nadaam." So I need to figure out what I'll do there, too.

And then there's housework... and laundry (I am LOVING the school uniform thing, btw -- makes life so much easier!) and legal work and indulging in my current urge to purge stuff...

Phew. I go from thinking of all the stuff I need and want to do to feeling overwhelmed and exhausted in no time flat.

So here's my theory for today. I'm going to pretend to feel energetic, and maybe I'll fool myself and actually get stuff done. I'm channeling Jake the miracle dog and I'll just keep on going....

Where'd that thing go?

Did you know that you can easily do without your gallbladder?

I am finding this out, as just yesterday I lost mine. Gallbladder, that is.

I discovered, in a startling and rather painful way, that I had gallstones. My doctor recommended that the gallbladder come out in order to avoid potential unexpected consequences such as pancreatitis and other infections.

And you know? I headed over to the hospital at 8am, was in the OR at aout 9:30 am, and was home floating druggedly in my own bed by 2:30 pm. And they REMOVED a body organ in the meantime.

Mind-boggling, isn't it?

At any rate, I'm now in a pain medication fog and will be for another day or two. My folks have showed up to aid in the childcare, my mom bringing tupperwares full of healthy soup. It's nice to have my mom around when I'm under the weather.

I have a stack of novels at my bedside, but every time I read, I find my hazy mind wanders into sentences and plots I make up all on my own.

Anyway, if you don't see me here for a bit, you know why. I'm off floating in la la land.

Um, do I look different without my gallbladder?

O Christmas Tree...

Roger and I generally divide the holiday decorating. He does outside, I do inside. And this works out quite nicely, usually. This is his busy time of year (what with the end of the semester, final exams, and papers to grade) and I care more about inside decorations than he does. Way more. (He still marvels over the fact that we have specific boxes for Easter decorations and Halloween decorations in the garage.) So typically he gets the outside lights up some weekend after Thanksgiving, and I start bringing out the holiday decorations to suit my indoor theme. (I know -- I got inspired to decorate in "themes" by a) getting tired of putting the same stuff in the same place every year; and b) watching all those HGTV holiday decorating shows ever year, culminating in the White House decoration extravaganza that is impressive and beautiful and ridiculous, all at the same time.)

ANYway. We've had all of the decorations up for weeks now EXCEPT for the Christmas tree. We didn't want to get it up too early, as our good friends are coming from Maine to spend New Year's with us and we wanted the tree to have a least a tinge of green by then. And then there's been the flu and what with one thing and another, the tree isn't up yet.

So, while Caroline and I stayed home in our jammies yesterday, Roger ventured out and brought home a lovely tree. A Noble Fir, our favorite kind, not too wide at the bottom. We were going to get it up last evening, but by then Caroline's fever had returned, I was feeling achey and tired still, and Roger had papers to grade.

When I stumbled downstairs this morning, Roger paused as he was heading out the door (briefcase and coffee mug in hand already) to say "Shall we bring in the tree and set it up in the stand before I go?"

Now, I don't know how easily your trees go up, but around here it's a struggle. Aside from the required moving-of-furniture, it's never an easy or quick task. Inevitably the tree is too wide for the stand, or too narrow...or it requires creative shims to make it stand straight. It's not a 5 minute job.

Is that just me?

I tried not to roll my eyes too obnoxiously and sent him on his way. But later in the morning, after I'd had coffee and dressed and gotten Caroline squared away with gingerale and a holiday movie to watch, I figured I'd at least shove the furniture around and set up the stand and get things ready for the tree.

And once that was in place, I figured I could get Caroline to help me get the tree into the stand, if I lifted the tree and she guided it into the stand's bowl. That's where it went awry.

And you know, that's where things go badly every year. Maybe it IS me.

Yep, sure enough, the tree is quite narrow for the stand, so it wouldn't stand straight or balance and I simply couldn't get it screwed into the stand with any sort of stability. There was the annual muttering-of-swear-words while clutching onto armfuls of pine branches...now, there's a great tradition to hand down to your child at Christmas, eh?

We pulled it out. We attached wood blocks to the trunk to add width. We re-inserted. We wrestled and muttered and snapped at each other and pulled it out again. At one point, I dashed downtown to pick up one of those small cheap tree stands, thinking that it'd suit the narrow trunk of this tree better...but no, all that happened was that the tree screws BENT as the tree slowly tipped over. You guessed it -- more muttered swear words.

I tried and tried, with Caroline gamely helping, for FAR too long. I'm talking spending 3 hours doing this. And finally, I dragged the tree back out to the garage, where it is now sitting in its bucket of water.

Roger and I had been looking at artificial trees, thinking that we may have hit that developmental stage where an artificial tree sounds like a wonderful relief, as opposed to a horrid sacrilege. (That's the developmental stage that come right after getting a car with automatic transmission feels like a good thing, too.) I've even selected the tree I'd want (check out the very realistic trees at http://www.balsamhill.com/ -- I've seen these in person and they're pretty darn remarkable for artificial trees.) But they're pricey. Any of the decently-realistic ones seem to be.

And right now? I'm sitting here with some sap and pine in my hair, my back aching, and my hands stained by tree-sap and tingling with pine-needle pricks, and Caroline has been chastizing me about the words she's heard come out of my mouth this morning.

I figure I'd pay $1000 to never have to do that all again. I think an artificial tree would be a bargain.

I'll rest up and be in a holiday mood tomorrow. Once the halls are decked...

The Red Jello and Gingerale Blues

I couldn't find any clever pictures to illustrate the way I've spent the last several days ... shuffling miserably between the bed and the bathroom, aching and shivering with a rather unpleasant flu bug. This thing came along quite suddenly and I'm only now feeling that I can eat a few soda crackers and drink a mug of broth without feeling queasy. Ideal for pre-holiday weight loss, but other than that, NOT GOOD.

Before that, I had two days of serious Christmas shopping... the result of which is heaped in a pile on the far side of the bed with a tablecloth spread over it all so curious eyes won't look. Normally I sort and hide everything quite cleverly, but what with sudden nausea and such, I simply couldn't deal with it.

When I felt ready to venture out of the bedroom, I did make it down to the family room couch to lie around and watch movies. Perfect. I watched Michael Moore's "Sicko," which has me ready to move to Canada... "Love Actually," which I'd seen before but forgotten I'd seen before (and I'd forgotten it took place at Christmastime), "Bewitched" with Nicole Kidman which I found charming and fluffy and just perfect for a fuzzy sick head... and best of all, I stumbled onto an all day marathon of America's Top Model which I'd never seen and which, in this state, fascinated me no end. (Actually, it did make me realize that modelling may be much harder than it looks.)

You can tell I've put my sick time to good intellectual use.

So. I'm hoping to get back to something akin to normal tomorrow. We are late getting the tree up (although all of the other holiday decorations are up) so that will happen tomorrow afternoon after Caroline's riding lesson. Then, stomach and bowels willing, Caroline and I will head up to Sacramento for my best friend Beth's annual cooking baking party on Sunday. I may just park myself in a corner (away from the cookies) and watch. We'll see.

I hope you all have been having festive holiday fun. And wash your hands often, people!

Bali Browns

Not a whole lot of fun stuff going on around here lately. The picture shows the only sewing I've done lately, in dribs and drabs. My MIL, who used to travel a lot, gave me some pieces of batik fabric from Bali some months ago. I figured it'd be a good daughter-in-law thing to do to make her a lap quilt using them. I opted for triangles after seeing one somewhere that stuck in my mind, so I cut and arranged and I've been connecting triangles together in odd moment. I'm not big on brown, and I'm finding that sewing this just isn't very cheery. Ah well. I know Roger's mom will love it and I'm enjoying knowing that this will really surprise her.

Meanwhile, I've been busy with work and family (checking out a new middle school for C next year) and the usual household stuff.

Maybe it's the weather, or maybe it's a swing of the menopausal pendulum from insomnia to constant lethargy and sleepiness, but all I want to do is lie around and read. And I'm not talking about legal journals. I want chick lit and mindless mysteries and goofy romances.

Oh, my aching head...

Every once in a while I get the sort of headache that just fells me. My doctor tells me they're hormonal, and so far I've not found a medication that does much for them, really. But they're pretty infrequent and I tend to just take an Aleve and go nap and 12 hours later I'm fine.

One of these struck yesterday. Unfortunately, on Monday night I'd happily packed up my stuff and gathered my "show and tell" for the Pointless Sisters, my guild's art quilt group, and I'd planned to be there on Tuesday morning. I've not been able to get to a meeting in ages and ages, so I was determined. And then I woke up with familiar feeling of a bad headache coming on ("Frank, it's one of my sick headaches..." Remember Darrin's mother on Bewitched?). And even then, I was going to brace myself and go, still. But at 9am, only minutes before I was going to leave, the lawn-mowing guys (who are supposed to come on Monday and never have come on Tuesday before) opened the gate to get the clippings bin and let Gemma out.

AARRGH. So Gemma had a happy dash up the street (she always heads straight to her friend Sadie's house), and I had to hop in the car to follow her and bring her home. (Note to self: read up on dog training and the command "Come.") We can call until our heads fall off, and Gemma just looks at us, grinning, and then dashes off. But pull up in the car, and she hops right in. Go figure.

So by the time I got Gemma back inside, I was irritable and headachey and I opted for a BIGGER headache pill. So to my Pointless friends? I WILL be there one of these times, really I will. I don't know what it is about the 4th Tuesday of each month, but lately it's been a very uncooperative day. But I keep trying!

I rallied around lunch time to try out the new Dyson Animal vacuum cleaner we agreed to test out. As we have 2 cats, 1 dog, 1 school-aged child and 2 fairly messy adults, our floors are rarely spotless for long...and our old vacuum cleaner is acting, well, weak. Yes, I bought into the idea that the Dyson is MADE to suck up animal hair. So, here's the test I performed: I vacuumed the family room vigorously with the old vacuum ("OV"), as I would for a regular vacuuming session. THEN I unpacked the Dyson (which came with the worst --bar none-- product instructions I have ever seen with any product, ever) and, eventually, gave it a go in the same room. I was fascinated (and then sort of horrified) at the amount of gunk and dirt and animal hair that showed up in the Dyson AFTER I'd just vacuumed to a state I'd thought was sufficient cleanliness. Oh, my. There is something rather satisfying about seeing all the gunk you vacuum up. Makes the task seem worthwhile, frankly.

But the Dyson is BEASTLY heavy, and there appears to be easy storage method for the various attachments...Or maybe there is but I sure couldn't decipher it from the incomprehensible product information.

So we're not sure the Dyson is here to stay. Will we really haul it up and down stairs, with it being that heavy? Or should we keep the OV for upstairs and use the Dyson downstairs, where the floor mess is the worst?

Evening found me back on the bed with a heated pad on my head while I listened to Terry Gross interview Valerie Plame Wilson on Fresh Air. Plame, you will remember, is the undercover CIA operative "outed" by Cheny and Scooter Libby etc because her husband's writings challenged the positions the Bush administration was taking about the Iraq war. I was so impressed by Plame's articulateness. She's plugging a new book, which I will have to read.

Toothless

When I was in law school, my hardest course was Federal Income Tax. And I still vividly remember the nightmare I had the night before the Income Tax final exam: I dreamed that the exam was the teeth chart above, and I was supposed to label each tooth with its official name. My two biggest fears: Federal Income Tax and the dentist. That nightmare pretty much summed it all up. (I eventually made it through the tax course with a B, to my utter amazement.)

Which gives you some idea of the dental phobia I've also had for much of my life. I chalk this up to a truly horrible and creepy childhood dentist and multiple experiences where he started to drill without the novocaine having taken effect. My sister, who of course went to that same dentist, has similar dental anxiety, and we've had many conversations comparing our memories of that weird guy. As kids, of course, we didn't know going to the dentist should be any different, and those were the days when moms didn't come into the room. She had her own childhood bad dental experiences, so she probably thought this guy was normal, too.

Anyway, I'm much better now, thanks to my current wonder-dentist. He's gentle and kind and careful and ALL ABOUT making sure I'm sufficiently drugged so as to be anxiety-free. Nowadays, I sail into his office, settle into the dentist chair with my Ipod and I'm good to go.

And it's a mark of how far I've come that I was totally relaxed and unconcerned about having two teeth extracted this week. It's just another step on my long road to making sure I have my very own natural teeth when I'm 90 years old, and part of the orthodontic treatment I've been getting to straighten my teeth and align my bite. (Ironically, I had straight teeth before I went to law school, and I think that the stress-related teeth grinding and jaw clenching I did in my full-time litigator years are what set my teeth to moving around so drastically. Good thing I didn't practice tax law, eh? I probably wouldn't have any teeth left.)

So, all went well. I listened -- through a sedated haze -- to This American Life on my Ipod during the procedure, then came home and crawled into bed and slept for probably 18 hours, interrupted by Roger from time to time to hand me a pain pill and change the ice packs. It's the best sleep I've had in months.

The dentist tells me I will have a few more days of pain (pain gets more intense as healing progresses, he tells me) and if Advil and Tylenol don't do the trick, I'm armed with some pain medication for some sleepy relief. I guess I won't be operating any heavy equipment in the next day or two. Meanwhile, I'll keep reading my lovely Marcia Willett novel (I do love British novels) and playing Pokemon with Caroline (the ideal mindless game) and planning the fabric I'll dye when I have a full sunny day.

And as a side note to all of this, those Slimfast milkshakes are pretty ideal meals for my current situation. On my new healthy diet regime, I've lost 11 pounds in the past month!

Facing Demons

I've had a rather odd week.

Over the last several months, I've been experiencing insomnia. I've always been a happy, sound sleeper, but in recent months I've been waking repeatedly during the night. It's not due to stress, or anxiety, or anything specific. My doctor tells me that for women "of a certain age," shall we say, insomnia is the number one complaint... before hot flashes, even.

I've been going along, getting tireder and tireder, until I hit a point where I was getting sort of crazed. So, last week my doctor prescribed some sleeping medication for me. The good news? I had the first, sound, through-the-night sleep that I'd had in ages. The bad news? The next day I had a whopping headache and blurry vision. I tried the medication again the next night, with the same result the following day. Okay, the side effects are worse than the insomnia. Scratch that.

Then he proscribed another option. I tried that, and not only didn't sleep but spent the following day feeling nauseated and weirdly spacy and wobbly. Scratch that.

Now, I'm just gonna try to exercise enough every day to make myself tired, and not take anything...except maybe the occasional nap! But today's the first day I've felt actually normal in a long time.

Which leads me to the sea demon above. In one of those "Why did I say that?" moments, I volunteered to make an auction quilt for my daughter's school featuring flags her class drew to commemorate their overnight fieldtrip on a sailing ship in the San Francisco bay. So now, pleased to be feeling back to my tired normal self, I'm working on my "Balclutha" quilt. Thank goodness for freezer paper and WonderUnder!

AAAAAAAh-chooo

Not much to say today. I am in the throes of a vicious cold and spent the day bleary-eyed and sneezing and dozing and bemoaning the fact that my former stand-by cold medicine Dayquil no longer contains Pseudofedrine.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.

I'm going to drink some ginger ale and go to bed.

Quilting is strenuous business

Yep. I'm doing a lot of "still" today.

My back (wrenched during the strenous task of pulling laundry out of the drier) was improving, until I got careless while tidying my studio. My portable Juki machine is rather heavy (have you ever considered the idea that ANYthing is "portable" if you're strong enough to lift it?) and I discovered that lifting it to turn it over and eventually put it in its handy case was perhaps a bit much.

But the activities resulting in the need to turn the Juki upside down were interesting. Inexplicably, while doing the last free-motion quilting on a comfort quilt, the needle broke and I was unable to find the end of the needle. Hmmm. I pulled the bobbin out and undid all the screws to open the throat plate and dusted and even used the miracle magnet wand thingy that I love, but no needle-end appeared. I felt carefully around the quilt in case it was embedded, but no, it wasn't there.

I did, however, find a PIN sewn INTO the quilt, which I've never, ever done. That I know of. See? There's a reason not to pin seams.

So, after the long process of pin-extraction, and a bit of sewing to repair the hole I made to extract the pin, I gave up hunting for the needle end and figured it'd been disposed of in a ball of lint.

I proceeded to make the binding...but when I went to sew the binding on the now pin-free quilt, I found that the lever for raising the feed dogs back up was STUCK. Unmovable. Hmm, maybe that's where that needle end went?

With a bit of internet research, I discovered that the sticking-of-the-feed-dog-lever is is not an uncommon problem on certain machines. I found photos showing how to remove the bottom of my machine and shift the lever-part back into place so it'd work.

Which explains why I was hefting the machine upside down.

I unscrewed the various screws holding the bottom in place, and found the needle end rattling harmlessly around under the machine. Phew. And, gingerly removing one more screw, I was able to fix the machine lever thingie.

Using tools and fixing stuff is so empowering. I am woman, hear me roar. From a sitting position, that is.

At Home

Things have been so silent here because things have been really quiet around my house.

I've had some creepy, crawly flu bug, and all I've done, pretty much, is drag myself from bed to couch and back again. I think I've watched more tv in the past week than I've seen in the past 3 months.

I'm feeling a tad perkier, but I'm still shaky.

And those red houses up there? For years I've had this desire to have a red and white school house quilt to hang in the stairwell in December. Don't ask me why, but I just like this simple traditional pattern. I've been collecting red and white prints for a few years now, and over thanksgiving weekend I figured I'd give it a start. It's another mindless sit-at-the-machine and sew sort of thing, for that little energy I've had.

Okay. That's my endurance for the morning...back to the couch for me with a up of hot tea.