If you need me, you know how to reach me.

Time Machine

..or as close as you will ever get to one! I was feeling the need to do a little cultural research for my book and scored these mid-seventies issues for pennies on Ebay. They were waiting on the doorstep (half in the rain, thanks, idiot postie) when I got home from Charlie's place.  I didn't really have time to dip into them until yesterday morning.

Fuhgeddaboutit CBS Sunday Morning! My coffee got cold as I leafed through the fragile, browning paper. Not digging into any articles just yet, but remembering how life was before the Internet, cell phones, cable TV - all the mostly irrelevant crap available at a touch, most of it free.

If you wanted to know something about anything, you had to work hard at it. Libraries were sacred temples. Pay telephones were everywhere and you better have change. Need to get in touch? You wrote letters! Paper, pens, stamps and greeting cards, even telegrams. Note to a lover? Hastily scrawled, unsigned and left in an agreed-upon location or slipped into their back pocket. Stop and think about all that has been lost.

Rolling Stone - on newsprint back in the day - first hit the newsstands in November, 1967.  I had just started my first year at SVA and  was still commuting into Manhatten from Goldens Bridge.  I was killing time in Grand Central Station when this caught my eye.  It wasn't John Lennon's picture that grabbed me. It was the typeface that pulled me in, promising rock music, drugs and sex. I had seen similar fonts used in concert ads slapped on most any available surface in my wanderings around New York City. It's a wonder I got through that first year alive; I was as green as a Granny Smith apple.

I read lots of other newspapers, whatever I could pick up for free on the train left behind by my fellow commuters- the Times, Post, News, Reporters Dispatch, Amsterdam  News, and oddly enough - Playboy. I guess fellow traveler bought it in the city but was afraid to bring it home. Remember, these were the Madmen years. Double lives were almost the standard of the day! The real bitch was I couldn't actually read anything on the moving train, getting  instantly nauseous if I tried. So everything came home with me.

As a commercial art student, there was not a lot of required reading involved and I didn't have time for novels. RS became my primary source for (my) culturally relevant information and I wallowed in it! Dipping into these, I can almost smell the Maryjane!

Catch up

Oh, my friends! Missing I've been. Not!

Missing leisure time for mental clarity to spare? Some.

Where was I? Paris, checking out April, Rome? Lunching with the Pope? Undercover in prison? I'll never tell. Yet.

Things are, pretty much as they were. Some background machinations grind forward (can you hear it?) and the day-to- day, a lot of them 18 hours long, roll on.

Charlie grows overnight. He has three four teeth now and teething has been hard on the little guy who, in innocent turn, makes it hard on his family. Missy told me that for the first time in ages he slept through the night. The look on her face was as if she had been drifting at sea for a week and was watching the Coast Guard Rescue Helicopter descend, basket at the ready. What was the magic formula, the combination of feeding, napping, and fresh air? Don't bother to write it down because it will be gone by tomorrow.

He's a free range baby and, as such, I like to sit on the floor with him, occupy and protect. Getting up from the floor ten or twelve times a day, lifting a 22 pound human gyroscope, and rasslin' a baby alligator for a diaper change, 8-10 times a day has been physically challenging. I misjudged a balance point day before yesterday and wrenched both my right knee and hip. Not to worry. A day later and things seem stable and the pain has diminished a great deal, but I have been warned.

It scared the shit out of me. From ninth grade through my first year in college I was on and off crutches six or eight times due to knee injuries of the football type. I had to pretty much give up being athletic, including ice skating, which really broke my heart a bit. I went from being a star doer to being a sullen and jealous watcher.

And now, in the last fifth of my time, I'm terrified of losing my mobility and not being able to carry out my primary mission - taking care of my grandson. Serious lifestyle challenges call for serious responses.

Such is my preoccupation.

Stitching? Not so much. 

I have three commissions and the dye season, optimal temperature and humidity, is just weeks away.

The miracle garden is well underway. I'm going to look at a replacement of the  Joseph's Coat rosebush later. 

My main characters have been telling me their stories while I sleep and, working from nightstand notes, I will be capturing them and roping the action into my first rough draft.

And the  cream cheese frosting on my red velvet cupcake (in my dreams of course) is that baseball is back!!

The Braves, although radically transformed, are 4 and 0. Beating the Mets in the home opener last night was bittersweet. I used to share special games with my Dad long distance. Now I've transferred my gloating or moaning to my brother, who puts up with me.

Trade Craig Kimbrel away?? It's OK, I'm over it. We got Grilli.  

New tradition

We haven't done Easter since the boys were old enough to realize that too much chocolate was bad for their skin.

Prior to that, it was a combination of Christmas and Halloween with a few much-coveted, basket sized  toys, colored hardboiled eggs that only Jim and I ate until we were sick of them and the aforementioned candy. It was a completely secular and commercial celebration that I was happy to see the backside of.

There were always gatherings at either or both of our parents homes.
Those  I miss.

Going forward, I'll use the date to test drive the seasons dye colors. The ones above are only the new ones. I have at least this many leftover from last years. Add starting the pool cleanup and maybe some gardening to this and we have a weekend of useful stuff to do that's not drenched in calories or hypocrisy.

Plotting.the moves

..but like a lot these days, it's all about the weather. It will probably be mid-May before it's really warm enough for best results.

These are the last of my own hand dyed DMC floss...Of course, I'm out of the color I was looking for. I'll be putting up 13 yrd. lots again.
Eight yards are just not enough.

When I get home today, I'm finally going to open that case from Prochem so I can start charting the colors of the '15 season. Charging through the spectrum for my patented (not really)  Monkey's Blood, then Aubergine, Ochre-ish, Ghost Copper, Torch Light, Old Canary, Grasshoppers Heart, Bell Green, Anchor, Lush Life...I could go on, but you get the picture.

mystery

To the kind and generous, anonymous person who sent the thank you card -

 I don't feel all that worthy, but the gift was timely and deeply appreciated. It quickly translated to fresh lettuce, oranges and strawberries, bread, cheese, a bag of Braves peanuts, chili makings, half & half, a whole gallon of apple cider, cookies for humans and cats...and many other delightful things.

thanks

vacation day, kinda

I've been on a tiny vacation of sorts. Missy is taking some time off from work making me non-nana for a few days. Although I miss Charlie it's good for all of us.

We thought spring was finally here - Colin has cut the lawn twice in ten days - but it's turned cold again with freeze warnings for the weekend. I covered over the peony shoots popping up in the garden and brought the houseplants back inside. Only the strong shall survive.

Yesterday I worked in the writing chair for almost six hours. Today there was a mile and change in the park although I really didn't think I had a quarter mile in me. Starting out I felt like the Tin Man after a night in the rain, but all smoothed out after a bit and I was surprised at the ground I covered.  Later, there was time in the stitching chair.

Missy got to be the one to give him his first ride on the swing at the park. So right!

read for me

 1. Thesis. The essence of your problem or question.
 2. Antithesis. The obstacle or challenge that you must deal with.
 3. Synthesis. The resolution of the thesis and antithesis.

I'm good with this one.

(If you keep your cards in a Crown Royal bag you might be a redneck Tarot reader)

finishing Vigil

"Just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in."  Michael Corleone

the next step

Me? Coming out of hibernation like most of the country. My UFO's are different these days – books that I'm reading rather than unfinished stitching projects. At the moment I'm going through a list that ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous, but if the author doesn't have me after a full chapter, maybe two, it goes into the “sell it back” pile.

I've been thinking about putting the cloth and thread behind me and clearing out the studio. Boxing up all the raw materials and tools. Out of sight, out of mind. Not to mention all the finished pieces. 

But then what? My studio was my favorite place in the house where everything in it was set up for my comfort and purpose by my husband. I don't need a spare bedroom anymore. Soon, I won't need the day job office. 

It was shitty out yesterday and I forced myself to follow through with what's become a ritual – meeting one of my friends at IKEA in the city. I can take or leave the food, but they don't throw you out after taking up a table for nearly three hours. We hash over family, life and current events and then we tour the store with our wishlists. As much as I like good design, a lot of IKEA's offerings leaves me cold. 

My friend makes jewelry. Beautiful, fashionable stuff, not junky trendy crap. She reminded me that she stopped doing it completely for about two years. She was just out of gas, experiencing a loss of passion for the craft due in part to a frustration with marketing – every artists waterloo. Just recently, she got her stuff out of storage and picked it up again and she is back to enjoying the pure pleasure of just making with fresh eyes and attitude. Pondering the lesson.

nailing it

If you are any kind of creative every now and again you'll step back from what you are up to and go “Yes!” or “Good!” or, in my case “Fuckin' Aaa!” and you'll throw down the tools and get that little chill and be thirsty for a celebration because you nailed it. You won't even feel the need to drag anyone into the moment for their agreement. This moment is for you alone.

Last night I was pondering the demise of the writers group that I've been going to for a little more than a year now. The two founders have drifted away. Life, of course, must take precedence over follies like gathering over bad food with snotty waiters and embarrass ourselves and each other with our attempts at writing and so the group has floundered. It's been a learning experience and my only semi-social connection to the world since my husband died. I will be looking for another bunch of similarly plagued individuals and if I can't find what I'm looking for, I'll found my own.

So I made the mistake of looking over a bit of the book I've been working on for almost a year. I worked on it constantly while I was at the FOF retreat last year in FL. 

The writing was puffy, awkward and self-indulgent. I was bummed thinking how I thought I was closing in on a rough draft when all I really had behind me was clouds crap. I sulked and went to bed. The last thing I remember was that there were a couple of lines out of some twelve pages that were really good. Keepers.

In the dark hour before waking, on a day when I didn't have to get up, I turned that chapter inside out in my head. I had a sit down with each of the characters. Assessed their needs and their wants. Established who knew what, when and why it mattered. Addressed the problems and found answers, all before ever putting my toes on the rug.

I've got this and knowing it feels great.