doin my own thang

Yep, I'm totally not going to be able to keep up with the 365 challenge.  I've just settled for taking photos when we're traipsing around in the woods. 

i love my mil

Yes, I love my mother-in-law.  She is the neatest, coolest lady ever.  She runs a day care center and has a room full of art supplies.  She loves pulling out all her supplies and letting me play and doesn't care if I use things up or screw things up.  She cares a lot, about everyone.  And makes them feel as good as I feel whenever I'm around her.

Several weekends ago, she put together this crafts event as part of a week-long bicentential celebration of the little town my husband grew up in.  She put together several craft areas for kids and adults to wander around and try out fabric-based crafts.

Stop #1:  Flower Pressing
My husband and I ended up being in charge of this one for awhile.  Wow, some kids look so normal but are crazy when they have a mallet in their hands.  Limits may need to be set.  Like, don't hit yourself in the forehead with a mallet.



Take flowers, grasses and leaves from the garden.  Lay them onto a piece of muslin.  Cover with wax paper.  Beat it with a mallet.  Mount on colorful paper.  Enjoy your artwork.  

Stop #2:  Yarn Crafting
Ladies were set up at each table with mounds of yarn to teach crochet, knitting and weaving.  I kept walking around, touching piles of yarn.  Somehow I ended up teaching five lovely eight year olds how to weave on a wooden loom.  We did it by hand, but my husband created a tool to do his weaving (of course). 

The loom you can make at home with a piece of sturdy cardboard.  Cut notches at each end.  Pick a thin yarn, tape one end on the back, and then loop the yarn up, over and down (not around the back).  At the end, cut it and tape it down on the back.  Pick another yarn (the girls loved anything fuzzy, and it felt good to do).  Cut off a length, not too long.  Weave it through.  If you're working with littles, picking up the yarn whenever the yarn goes under was really helpful.  If you need to know how to finish, don't ask me.  I yelled for my mil and she finished everyone's weaving. 

Step Three:  Alpacas!
While we were working the tables, I didn't get to try spinning the alpaca wool!  Still darn cute though.  The little girl next to me called this one Whitey.  The other one was Blacky.  And if there was a gray one, he'd be called Oldey because old people have gray hair. 

travelling not running

Right now I should be working on trying to dig myself out of the mound of paperwork I need to complete for work.  I should be making some art, sewing up my quilt, reading a book, paying attention to the British sitcom we have streaming through Netflix, snuggling with my husband.  But first I wanted to share something.

Today I became eligible to apply for my license as a mental health counselor. 

I've been thinking about this day since I was hired at my job, and have had the date circled in my planner for the whole year.  Actually, I've been thinking about this day since I started daydreaming about going back to school eight years ago.  I've worked hard for this day. 

Today I had to apologize to a client and begin working on healing our relationship.  I had to say goodbye to one of my art therapy clients because she met all her goals and it was time to move on.   Another about her experience in the hospital, another about his children.  Another about losing her children.  My heart hurt several times today.

Whenever I stopped to think, I felt so overwhelmed.   But I wanted to finish the application for my license TODAY. 

To send in the application, I needed a pile of information:  recommendations from my current supervisors, transcripts, forms from former supervisors, application form, a photo, a check.  So today, I walked up to the post office and got a very expensive 2X2 photo taken, chatted with the postal worker about the after hours goings on at the post office, and walked back towards work. 

The day was a gorgeous stunning blue, and I decided that I wanted to take a photo of the train tracks that run past my work.  Every day the commuter rail rattles my windows and reverberates in my ears; the little kids always stand on the chairs and yell "Thomas!"  It felt fitting to mark the day with this.

So I took a quick photo and felt oddly embarrassed like I was doing something wrong.  I thought about the fancy camera I want to buy to celebrate my huge milestone, and how I needed to stop being so embarrassed and just take photos.  And I then heard, "Excuse me!  What are you taking photos of?"

I was always the good kid in school, and already felt weird for taking a photo of the train tracks.  I started waving my camera in the air and said "you can look!  its just a picture!  I just like to take pictures!" 

It turned out that this was a male meter maid, checking the cars and moonlighting as a vigilante, self-appointed to maintain our transportation safety.  He told me a whole story about how the police swarmed the train station just last week because some kids were filming the train tracks and I better be careful but fortunately I don't look much like a terrorist and be more careful next time.  I told him how I felt uncomfortable and wasn't sure, and then I wondered, why can't I take a photo of what I want to take a photo of? 

And I also thought about the drug deals that go down around these tracks completed by the suburban youth, the many terrible things I know that happen in this neighborhood behind closed doors, and how I'm not actually worried about taking a photo of the train tracks.  And how I wish people weren't self-appointed vigilantes but I also wish people would speak up when they see something wrong happen.

Later, I see a ton of police cars outside my work and a client tells me that a telephone pole fell over almost hitting some cars.  

And I absurdly thought to myself, I am in the right place.  It is undeniably ridiculous and painful and filled with a big heaping dose of humility.  I am often uncomfortable and unsure, and afraid of doing what I know I have a right to do.  I am going somewhere, but I don't know where.  But I am here now, and heading in the right direction.  Now if I could just dig myself out of this pile of paperwork, I would feel really great. 

365 ... oops

If I forget to take a picture (or many) do I have to start over from the beginning?  Maybe I'll make my own mission and do 52 weeks or something.  Here's what I have so far...

 September 6th, 2010

September 11, 2010

September 13, 2010

Now, if only I could afford a fancy camera...

Edited:  I realized how proud I was and then worried that my photos could be stolen, and so added watermarks to them which kinda ruins the photos!  Anyone have any good tricks they use to protect their images?

addiction

We cleaned our apartment today.  It was a monumental event, especially since I can't remember the last time we cleaned it.  Or rather, the last time I cleaned it.  (Thank you honey.)

It was today that I realized I have a serious problem.  It began to spiral out of control when our local library closed for renovations.  The next closest one was tiny and junky and had terrible hours.  So I began trolling the internet for cheap books to get my fiction fix.  I stalked amazon booksellers and bought stacks of books from them.  Then I got an ad in my inbox:  get 5 books for $20!  Days were spent drooling, scrolling through amazon wish lists and databases, reading reviews, deleting and re-adding.  I negotiated with my inner accountant, and came up with an agreeable bargain.  And last night I got a package of a lot of books.  My shame prevents me from admitting how many.  But I began to realize that my addiction is more than just having or owning; this addiction feeds on searching and list making and reading about.  

Last week I talked my husband into letting me check out books from the university he works for.  He lets me for a little bit every once in awhile until he realizes that I have brought home thirty books and his work is looking for him to return them.  They have a lot of good books.  Fiction, books on writing, psychology, art therapy, theory.   And they have something like eight libraries.  One whole library for art books.  Let me say that again:  One whole library for art books.  Sigh.  And don't get me started on the Harvard Bookstore.  Stacks and piles and shelves of really good, really smart books for those crimson smarties. 

Today I emptied out the box of books.  Books were pulled out from next to the bed, piles were picked up from the living room.  I have books shoved above every row of books on my bookshelf.  I have books hidden under my bed.  I carry them around.  I pile them up.  I think about them.  I order them by subject matter and then jumble them up again according to how badly I want to read them.  I daydream about owning a library with shelves so high you need a ladder on wheels to reach the top shelves. 

I think I'm currently reading seven books.  At the same time.  This is a problem.  Or is it?  Truth is, I will finish many of them.  I won't finish some of them.  Maybe I'll finish them years from now.  Maybe they were never worth finishing.  Maybe I'll get what I need and move on.  I never lend books, I have a hard time giving them away, and I don't even tell people that I read a lot.  I don't join book clubs, because I can't read a book just because someone else is reading it.  Although:  the best class in college I ever took was on Albert Camus and George Orwell.  We inhaled a book a week and talked about it, Socrates style.

When I think of books, I use words like inhale and eat.  I wish I could just open up my head and dump the contents in.  Or swallow them whole.  My need to read is insatiable.  I am always hungry and there is never enough.  I wish I could still get prizes at the library for reading ten books, fifty books, a hundred.  But there is never enough time:  I have to do annoying things like work or clean.  Or maybe if I put down my computer for five minutes.  But then, I'm still reading, right? 

"Knowledge comes from crafted bindings and pages, Buffy, not ones and zeros."

Some of the books I'm reading:  this, this, this, and highly recommend this.

Sunday Creative: Comfort

I did not complete the creative prompt this week.  I started to write a character sketch but instead ended up with this:

This week I've been teetering between comfort and discomfort.

The discomfort of my childhood and adolescence, with its glasses-wearing, braces-needing, bad haired, uncertain where to sit at lunch, stumbling over words, awkward self.

The comfort of being a woman, being loved and loving.

The discomfort in exploring the possibility of a new job, learning new people, cultures, systems, deciding if I would fit in, succeed.  The discomfort of turning it down; the greater discomfort of quitting.

The comfort of a team, co-workers, clients, my tiny office with its golden light, the predictability of me, knowing my role and my possibilities.

The discomfort of fear and anxiety.

The comfort of rhythm, pattern.

Deciding how much discomfort I can tolerate.  And recognizing how much I already tolerate well.  Knowing that I sit in my discomfort quite often:  listening to and sitting with pain, tears, hurt, hatred; riding through another's anxiety; searching and probing; knowing when I am being lied to and not being able to do a thing about it; talking to people who should be helping who are not.  I handle more than a lot.

I recently read about the transformative power of sitting in something distinctly uncomfortable, like anger, and exploring the intensity, the jagged edges of the feeling, the power.  I'm learning that it tells me that I am alive.  If I can sit in my discomfort, I can tolerate another's.

Somewhere along the way I grew so comfortable in discomfort that I forgot that it was okay to push myself within the parameters of my comfortable boundaries instead of picking up completely and moving squarely into the middle of uncomfortable.  I tend to use that escape to mask the need to focus on something else uncomfortable.  I may change my mind by tomorrow but right now I am going to stay in comfortable, but push some of the other uncomfortables that I have.  That's a new discomfort, staying put.

Sunday Creative: Timeworn

She stepped out of the silent gloom of the train station into the heartbeat of the city, a frenetic pace timed by pinstriped men and sensible heeled women racing against the countdown of the stop lights, a rhythm accompanied by the low grumble that breathed off of the homeless tucked in corners and edges.  A skyline of towering buildings lumbered over her, rendering her dizzy.  Her legs hurt, her heart raced; she felt overwhelmed and stunned.

Her granddaughter reappeared, demanding that she keep up, stay with her, don't get lost.  'I am lost', she thought.  'I belong in the country, why have I come here?'  She gripped the strap on her purse, dry swallowed and took a lurch forward, the buildings weighing her down, bringing her tiny frame closer to the earth.  Car horns, hands on her arms pulling her back.  "Not yet!  I'll help you!"  Impatient, ready to prove that she had conquered the rhythm, that it had not defeated her, her granddaughter glared at the masses around her little grandmother, thinking 'she is eighty, what have I done, inviting her here?  How do I keep her safe?'

The granddaughter glanced around for their third party member, finding him with camera up to eye, proclaiming the magnificence of the architecture while reaching out one hand to find his wife.  A habitual act, one that mimed taking care of while belying his own uncertainty and fear.  In one smooth motion, they were linked.  Sixty years of births, deaths, accidents, poverty, loss, jobs, moves led to this crossing of a busy street in Boston.  Those towering buildings sat back, the car horns grew muted, the business people arced their paths to flow around the elderly couple, faces growing gentler, hands reaching out to hold doors.

She felt her heart return to the rhythm of the wind in the trees in their backyard, the predictable flow of raucous morning bird calls into the silent evening chase of fireflies.  Two lifelines worn into matching patterns, the steady pulse of safety and trust.  They smiled at each other, and at their granddaughter, flitting about trying to prove her competence, and stepped into Boston.

Happy Anniversary.

already solving my dilemmas...

Wow, I solved my first problem without too much effort using this tutorial.  Now all comments can be replied to.  Plus, your comments are on the sidebar instead of only hidden in the posts.  Yay!  Another quick tutorial here.  And, I created an extra page to start listing all my favorite links.  I read a lot of blogs thanks to my google reader, but I want to make sure they get some link-love.

Finally, I figure its a good time of year to start things (hmm, although mercury is in retrograde), so I am going to start the Sunday Creative.  I meant to pick up on the Sunday Creative when the Creative Bootcamp ended, and I of course punked out.  I'm working on something for this week's prompt to solidify my commitment.   And I'm also going to try the 365 photo project.   I only have a tiny little camera but it takes some darn good photos, and for me, its about practice not product.  I took some photos today, but I'll post them all at once at the end of the week.  But first, a teaser...

punking out: a manifesto

I've really neglected this blog, and I've been searching for a way to revive things and get it going again. 

I recently read one of those "10 things to do to be a better blogger" posts, and chafed at the suggestions.  I've been realizing that a big part of me has a problem with blogging in general.  I don't care for the ads, or the lists of things garnished from other blogs, or having to run around and comment for the sake of commenting just to have people come over and comment back.  It feels like business with a sprinkle of b.s.  I'm not on facebook and I don't twitter.  I can't imagine the time it takes to manage all of that.  I comment when I really like something.  And I mean it.

I'm also being fourth grade style lame:  I want people to read me and like me but I'm afraid of being me, whoever that is.  I'm also mega-frustrated with life and am tired of writing about the same things and being nowhere closer to achieving them.  But I do like thinking, and writing, and taking a photo and having somewhere to put it.  It helps me to synthesize my thoughts, so thank you for reading them. 

I originally started this to just do that, to serve as a place to post the process of my 900 projects that never get finished.  Plus, I am bored with looking at the same page.  So I updated it. 

But I'm still frustrated:

• I want to figure out how to reply to a comment.
• I want you to comment.  I love it, and so that's why I want to figure out how to reply to your comments.
• I want a fancy camera (and a bike, and a house).  I want to challenge myself to take and edit better photos. 
• I want to practice writing.
• I want to put a list of blogs I read somewhere on this website.
• I want to decide if using google reader keeps me away from visiting websites. 
• I want my husband to read one damn blog post.
• And I think I better do another challenge to keep me posting. 

listening more deeply

I've spent weeks trying to figure out how to start this post.  So forgive me if this feels a little loose and kooky.  And it won't adequately convey my thinking right now, but I wanted to get something down.