Two years

Yesterday my husband and I celebrated our two year wedding anniversary (and eleven years together).  We marked the day by splurging on some peanut oil and finally pulling out the wok we received as a wedding present...two years ago.

Since we received it, the wok has lived in its original box at the top of our hall closet, waiting.  We had wanted it badly but we were afraid of it.  Yes, afraid of it.  It lurked on the edge of our awareness, finding it when we opened the closet door to grab laundry detergent.  We would pause to contemplate its existence, thinking "soon" and continuing on.  We almost used it once before.  But for some reason, now we were ready.  [If I were to make some loose correlations, I would say that our experience with the wok is very much like our hemming and hawing around buying a house and having babies.  Meaning, we are ready.  But that is another post.]

The directions dictated that we season the wok, which ended up with my husband yielding hot mitts and paper towels, and a smoky apartment.  Very romantic stuff.  The wok required a waltz of planning and fast-paced multi-staged cooking.  Fortunately, we cook and bake well together.  I do all the preparation, buzzing around, cleaning up, anticipating the next steps; he is precise, patient and thoughtful.  When we work together, we are successful and accomplish things that daunt us.

We spent this long weekend talking and planning as usual.  Right now we are indecisive, gathering the pieces and asking all the questions and doing all the research.  We argue, we discuss, we negotiate, we dream and then we freak out.  And then suddenly, we collectively decide and move forward.  We work very well together.

Happy anniversary...I can't wait to see what comes next. 

Creative Bootcamp!

My husband and I just spent a week wandering the East Coast, gaining some clarity and hopefully reshifting priorities a bit.  I even went through my schedule book and scheduled in exercise AND creative time.  I have a hard time leaving work, usually sneaking home around 8 pm because I'm giving a minute here, an hour here, laboring over paperwork and making one last phone call.  But with each compromise, I lose that minute with myself, an hour with my husband, the chance to make a phone call to a friend or spend some time with a book.  My clients are important; but so am I.  I HAVE to take care of myself.

And then, exciting, I decided to join this creative bootcamp!  I can't begin to say how thankful I am for this ... I'm normally the one coming up with activities, guiding and helping others be creative.  I am desperate for a creative boost, and am committed to this.  Another biggie for me is that I used the opportunity to share my blog for the first time to other people.  Holy jeez, that's scary.  But I want to share what I am doing, and I want to hold myself accountable.  And my blog helps me to sum things up for myself and get excited about making.  Plus, I've been learning and reading for quite awhile now, I think its time to share.  I spent so long making judgments on myself-as-artist, and have worked hard to get to a place where its not about quality of work but quality of expression.  As long as I'm tapped in and expressing myself, that's good for me and I'm glad to share.

Today, we sat on the beach and I sketched out some ideas going forward.  The first is being in control of my time as mentioned above.  I've scheduled Tuesday nights to do creative stuff, and I have some ideas of what I would like to do including finishing all my random projects, working on our wedding and honeymoon scrapbook, making baby things (is that jinxing?).  I am planning to run several art groups next fall, and want to set up the curriculum and experiment with methods.  I plan to make one artist card a week.  Finally, I've been watching the Week in the Life work done here, but I wasn't ready to work on the project then.  I'm strongly considering completing the project during my birthday week at the end of June.  I'm a big believer in being introspective during birthdays, and love the idea of having to be fully present (no pun intended, sorry). It would be cool to do every birthday.  While I was making my plans, it struck me that I haven't even started the bootcamp yet, and already the creativity is flowing.  I am ready; and I am ready for the changes that being tapped into creativity brings.  

I have been doing crafts, I promise

My crafting has been lacking.  Thought I would do the usual and shame myself into keeping it moving by posting here.  I am so determined to finish projects, well, I just can't even say.  It is so much fun in the beginning.  And then it gets boring fast.  I have to be mindful of that while I'm conceiving of projects.  I am terrible at editing and always want to do more.  But I'm tired of leaving half completed projects. 

My California scrapbook project is painfully slow going.  Its fun to work on it when I have nothing else to do and need something mindless and crafty, but I am determined to get the darn thing done this month.  We're going on another trip and I am already hatching something scrapalicious to do for it.  As always I have no clue what I'm doing.  Its so big that I've added a hundred pages and posts, and still have like three sections to go.  I still question what the purpose of this is, but love it and ultimately don't care.  Posts below show a finished page, a page in progress, and a page with random stuff ready to be used.  I think my next challenge is coming up with a better way to document our next trip.  All I have right now is a moleskin notebook and a big fat book on England.  Hmm.

The Winter 25 Scrapbook has also been hard to complete.  I really enjoyed the Fall 25 Scrapbook, but not so much with the Winter one.  The Fall one was novel, whereas the Winter was not.  While the Fall one did the trick to ward off the Winter blues, they still showed up in small little ways.  With the Winter one, I wasn't into the to-do items in the same way, and didn't do them with the same creativity.  And so, it lacks the pizazz of the Fall one.  I completely replaced multiple items, and half did others.  But some things were lovely:  finishing my quilt, capturing Spring and taking a very cold walk along a frozen Charles River all rocked (photos below).  I'm also determined to finish this one by the end of the month because I REALLY want to get started on my Spring/Summer one!

This is all I have for the Spring/Summer album so far.  Its a different size (5.8 X 8) and has a binder inside.  I have a list of to-dos (mostly things to explore in New England - a total road trip all summer!) but don't want to follow them in the same way, if at all.  For the Fall and Winter, I documented according to the items, but for the Spring/Summer, I want to make dividers for each month and document chronologically.  For example, for the month of April, I have a date night, the Boston Marathon, and pictures of the spring.  I want to put together a narrative and somehow document it all together.  And for May, I already have our water adventure that I'd like to put together with a story.  I've been gathering and taking photos, so we'll see.  I have no idea how this is going to work out, just that it needs to be different from the Fall and Winter ones.  Hopefully it will keep me invested and exploring and doing things.

So I promise, I am doing things.  Just very very slowly.

Changes to come...

I have been feeling for awhile that something is about to change.  I could guess as to what it might be, as several things are in the works, big monumental things.  A house, a family, maybe a job change.  Even my horoscope agrees.  Today I saw a rainbow that solidified my belief, and gave me a great deal of peace over things that have been confusing and scary. 

These past few days have been especially difficult.  Our entire area was under a boil water order due to a broken water main.  It continues to come as a surprise at how many things we needed that water for.  Laundry was completed during visits to open houses outside of the zone, and dishes piled up, and piled up and piled up.  For some reason this whole thing made us very agitated, but the truth is, the agitation has been growing anyway.  Every weekend we've been going to open houses, finding scary basements and even scarier mortgage payments; struggling with the concept of "home" and not finding it anywhere.  We've both been frustrated at work, wanting more and working hard, but mainly just holding steady.  We are faced with having to make it work, all by our little selves.  Yikes.  Something had to give, right? 

I've noticed that when things need to give, they tend to give way via water.  For me, water brings change.  A water main break asks us to consider our daily tasks and challenges us to do them in a different way.  Big sweeping storms clear the air in fireworks and bangs, and leave us to breathe more deeply and think more clearly.  Something is about to shift, I am hopeful and watchful.