Wednesday Check-In

                                               (c) 2010 T Webber


This post was written yesterday, but I was in the process of editing/spell-checking when R got home from work...I didn't have time to quite finish...so it was done on time...but not posted on time...

            The happy dance continues here at home today.  It is a huge relief for me to be drawing again, even if the better stuff has not yet been posted.  It’s Wednesday.  I have four drawings done.  I went today and found where I had hidden all my colored pencils…or rather, where I have failed to unpack them from, the poor dears.  I found…everything and then some.  My prismacolor sets were in the tool box in the closet, where I had put them long ago to keep them safe…and of course I have to make a mental note: I must find a suitable container in which to keep them.  In their current condition, I can’t see all the colors at once, or clearly, so I tend not to use them.  This is my set of I think 132 pencils that when the kids broke in to the IL house, they ruined the tin box…hence the nowhere to store them so I can see them deal here.

            What I used, and what I plan to continue to use for the moment, are my dick blick colored pencil set…because I can see all the colors laid out at the same time and can see how they relate to one another in their open tin box…which is exactly what I need when I am working…I don’t want to have to dig through a pile of pencils to find the right color…I just want to be able to look, see, grab, and go.  This tin allows me to do that…only 72 colors, but way better than a 12 pack of crayola colored pencils, or whatever brand the kids have at the moment…

            I am drawing again and it feels SOO good…now I need to color the remaining pieces I have drawn up and start putting the better stuff up…maybe I can even start my ‘perspective’ ATC  series again…not that I can actually find a link to show you which ones I am talking about at the moment, but I did try…I keep the two best ATCs in my dayplanner, so I will be able to look at them and KNOW that I can do things and that I can draw well.  It doesn’t hurt that R is always there to support me and nudge me along when I allow the fears and insecurities to crop up.  I will have to scan them and post them here when I get the chance.

            Whilst scrounging around to find my colored pencils, I found…my SoulCollage ® cards…for some reason, the old external hard drive did not keep copies of every picture of them—which makes me nervous about the pictures of the kids it might have inadvertently ‘lost’ as well…but nothing I can do there…when I first started working on my SoulCollage ® cards, I always meant to take them to kinkos or somewhere and have them turned into my own smaller, personal deck, so that I could use them every day…the size of the cards is prohibitive for me to use them frequently (5in x 7in)…I need something closer to a regular sized deck of cards, or a touch larger, so that I can shuffle and sort and do what I do.  I also need something less tactilely demanding—every image has edges that my fingers catch and feel and notice, which takes too much away from the process for me.  I need everything completely one dimensional so I can focus on the spiritual side of things when I work with these cards.   No edges of pictures touchable, no difference in the weight of the papers on each card, all of that needs to go for me to genuinely use them effectively for me.

            I shuffled through my cards several times.  I have no real desire to create any new ones.  I haven’t had that desire in a long time.  Full Moon Dreamboards and other Dreamboards are more than enough to keep me happy and to propel me forward, over the stuck spots.  As I rifled through these images, however, it struck me again just how useful these cards could be to me on a more daily basis…so, on the list of things to do is to scan and upload each card…and get them printed out as my own deck of cards so that I can use them.  I am still very taken with the beauty and the imagery of these cards, even the ones that seem so plain and withdrawn.

            I updated my artistic exploration blog today, with a story piece, as well as a drawing, so I am feeling good.  After some rocky issues with family this past week-end, I am feeling a little overstressed about posting some of the articles and posts that I have in various stages of completion, lest anyone think I aimed anything straight at them.  R told me not to worry about that, or it, or them…and to just do what I do.  So, even though I will probably work on some revisions, I am going to start finishing off these drafts I have, fleshing out these outlines I have, and posting with my normal je ne sais quoi…and ignoring the existence of most people as I work inside my little vacuum…

            I had a healing touch client last night, in person, for which I am so thrilled.  I honestly forgot how much I enjoy the one on one, hands on interaction.  Soon I will be offering more of this sort of work.  Keep an eye on my work blog for details; they will be coming soon.

            I am also looking more towards personal mentoring sessions of late too…I hate to say life coaching for some reason…it makes me feel too mainstream…but with the work I normally do personal mentoring is such a better definition…so keep an eye out for that as well.  I am still working within the framework of the spiritual training program…I find it very interesting how so many pieces of my work keep flowing together.  The spiritual and the mentoring and the coaching…I pulled all my old files off my netbook today and set them up on my laptop…only to find some amazingly brilliant nuggets of information and delight awaiting me…I had no clue that over a year ago, I was in the process of developing these same programs to offer to the public…but I was.  I have the notes to prove it…I am …both stunned and ashamed…I love that it is all there, waiting for me, but ashamed because it took me this long to get there…but I won’t let that hold me back.  I have plenty of work to do yet.  I have only just begun.

            Last but not least, my favorite Glass Faery has been at it again, with the Musing and the prompting and the little nudge nudge wink wink thing she does…so expect some interesting fibery goodness to be flowing over at the work blog here soon as well…and you thought stainless steel yarn was going to be enough to tide us over for awhile, didn’t you?  *giggle*  Want a tiny hint?  I finally get to work with metals…not just of the yarn variety…there may even be a blow torch involved…which I have been waiting for for a very very long time…I am so excited!

            Have a beautiful day…peace.

Wednesday Check-In Crammed Into Thursday

So, yesterday day I fell of my new writing plan wagon…but it was for a good cause.  I sat down, several times, to try to write, but kept getting distracted.  The urge to start unpacking and organizing is beginning to actually hit lately.  It’s still hit and miss, but at least it is pushing a bit.  It’s about time.

I think I wreaked more havoc in my packing yesterday than I brought order from chaos.  My file cabinets are out, the files neatly tucked inside them, mostly in an order where I can find everything.  However, in order to get to said file cabinets to move them about and get them where they needed to be, I had to move a now unused deep freeze (small chest), a dresser, or two, a wooden bench (it goes to my dining room table), a miscellaneous amount of ikea bags, suitcases (that are empty), random boxes, as well as a large pile of blankets we haven’t quite managed to figure out what to do with as yet. 

Amazing how much better I feel knowing I can reach some of my draft work and scribbles from previous years.  The bulk of my work is stored in several plastic storage containers, which are…somewhere in the basement.  At least this is a start.

I pulled all the yarn scattered throughout the house…did I not say I was not going to buy any more yarn, except for certain projects, for the whole year this year?  Uhm, yeah, that did not work.  When we went to Hobby Lobby the other day for the yarn for E’s jacket (explanation at bottom of post), there was this lovely wool on sale, and some nice cotton on sale…who am I to pass up a sale?  When I checked out at hobby lobby, the woman behind me had two carts FULL of the sale yarn, I mean two carts piled high and near to overflowing…I was envious, to say the least….I had limited myself to nothing more than I could carry.  Luckily, that was still eleven skeins of yarn and three packages of safety eyes (I need blue eyes for A’s cheerleader doll yet).  Some of the yarn, like stuff on the dining room table, on under the coffee table, and tucked into the one end table, that stuff came from my stash…so it’s not as if everything upstairs was brand new…not counting the yarn I recently ordered form knitpicks for my EZ seamless yoke sweater, nor the yarn I recently ordered from smiley’s for several sweaters, including my not Noro klaralund…of course…the real problem is not that I collected all the yarn and it’s all in one place; the problem is…it’s in a laundry basket that is sitting in my bedroom and I don’t know where else to put it all yet. 

That is the problem that erupted yesterday…it’s not horrible or anything…it all revolves around the whole, in order to do X, we need to do Y.  In order to accomplish Y, there’s R, S, T to be done first…but in order to do R, S, T…well…you get the picture.  I finally reached that point where I am saying, fine, I need to do this to do that…if I start doing this, I will have to do that…and eventually this circular conundrum will work itself out, even if all I feel as if I am doing for a week, or more, is sorting through one pile to create a different pile…which is really what it feels like right now.

I did not remove the one dresser from N’s room…but I did move it enough that we could get the other dresser into the room…that is a plus.  I have to change the clothes from one dresser to the other…and then move the smaller dresser to …somewhere…but…it is progress.  At least if I can get all his clothes out and put away…and his knick knacks and whatnot out of the bags in his closet…then I will really feel as if I am accomplishing something. 

R will be gone on a float trip this week-end.  I had a big melt-down this past week-end.  It’s the anniversary of our miscarriage, one year ago.  (I have the post written up…just have to type it yet…please understand why I keep putting that off…it was hard enough to sit and write it…but I needed to get it out.) Add into that, with the utter chaos that our home is in at the moment, on top of all sorts of other issues, and I decided that this is not the state I want to be in to go canoeing and camping with a bunch of people I don’t know all that well yet, with the thought that the ex-girlfriend may show up and show her rump all week-end…especially since she is still furious because  I ‘destroyed’ her relationship with R (do we want to go into the whole how he claims the relationship was dying and near death before I left MO for MD…much less before I ever came back?  Why was the relationship not important enough to her to save in 2006, which is when I left, and it still wasn’t important enough for her to save in 2008, when I came back…yes, he spent all that time trying to ‘fix’ her while waiting for her to leave on her own…it was easier than fighting her… it wasn’t important enough to her at all…not even after he broke up with her, but only after she hacked his email account and found out he was dating me—then the relationship became ‘important’ to her…so don’t get me going there…)…so I have plans and more plans for this week-end.  I need to know where the drill, the level and the sander are…I am hanging things up, including my ‘enchanted’ mirror…it’s big, it’s heavy, it’s lovely…and I bought it w R one day, when N was a baby, if not before N was born…and I know right where it is going…I also want to learn how to make our own yeast using the dehydrator…hmm…yummy plans indeed…

Some days I think this house is really too small for everything we want to do in here…other days, the potential I see is really quite vast…it’s all in how we pull things together. 

While unpacking yesterday, I came across the little spirit doll heads that I had hand-sculpted before this last move…I have three that are actual faces, and one that I made a pretty shape and planned to add the details later, if need be.  I am oft times of the more Waldorf persuasion that says to limit the facial details, usually to eyes only.  When I found the heads though, I knew exactly what sort of doll heads I am going to be making in the future…I am going to stop fussing with myself over the face, over getting the features right, or making the nose big enough, or slanting the mouth just the right way…one little almost diamond shaped piece of air dried clay was all I needed to tell me, the more open to Spirit that I am, the better my dolls are going to be…plus, my friend Kerry somehow triggered something in me during a conversation about me knitting her some jewelry chains, ropes to hang her pendants from, and so on, and I think I have some entirely new ideas as to how to make these dolls of mine, once I am more…unpacked and able to find the pieces to create said dolls…Kerry is always good for things like that…she’s more than an inspiration…

All right.  Let me run through my list from Monday to see what I have accomplished yet.  Oh, scary.  One dresser into N’s room…but as yet nothing out (except some yarn)…although that’s not right—I have moved blankets and some boxes out of his room this week already.  So that counts.  The dreamboard is done and posted.  I have not unpacked any more kitchen stuff, but I did finally unpack the rest of the bathroom closet from the old house…so now we have access to all the bathroom stuff, like the hair dryer we don’t use, the curling iron we don’t use, the steam facial bath that I live for in the winter to help my sinuses…that sort of thing.  I set up a new listing (details coming) for my work…that is a plus.  Except for yesterday, I have held to my writing schedule…and today I think I may be able to reconcile, maybe not all, but most of the writing I missed yesterday…

I call that progress…

Wait—before I forget.  E’s jacket.  E has this somewhat fitted denim jacket that she loves to death.  It has cool fabric buttons and it makes her feel all girly and special when she wears it.  The body is still a good fit…but the sleeves are way too short now.  We had seen this one jacket all winter in a store that had knitted …everything.  It was a lined denim jacket, with a knitted collar, knitted sleeves, a knitted hem, knitted lining for the pockets…E and I both loved that thing…but they never had it in her size, or even a small enough larger size that I would be willing to buy it for her to grow into…BUT we now have this little jean jacket of E’s.  We are going to cut off the too short sleeves…I am planning to knit new sleeves myself, probably in a ribbed stitch…and make them plenty long…because the way this jacket fits she can wear it for years…as she grows, the jacket will still look good when it becomes a cropped jacket…I am using ‘I Love This Yarn’ acrylic, which is a hobby lobby brand…it’s very soft, as acrylics go, with more body than some other yarns…and we like it.  We’ve used it before here and there…and I will take this yarn over red heart super saver any day…

More to come…