Finally...

...a finish.

This has been languishing for years needing only binding and a hanger.  I am DETERMINED to finish projects this year.  What had been holding me up on this one was that I couldn't find any more of the barnwood fabric - or anything that would go with that weird greenish-brown color - for the binding.  Then I took the time to carefully go through my stash and found some leftover pieces of it from when I made the quilt.

 Pattern was from Bee Creative Studio - Nancy Davis Murty - but I just checked the site and she doesn't seem to be offering it now.  I'm happy with this finish.

Now, if I only had an empty wall to hang it on.

Trapped.

in Barnes & Noble.

This morning I was left alone in the Barnes & Noble. Trapped for two hours.  With feelings and words blowing through me like a balmy spring breeze.

With a credit card.

I went soul shopping.

My sister-in-law, who enriched my life Saturday when she handed me Anne Lamott's Grace Eventually, delivered her stack of Lamott novels on Wednesday.  And I had already finished reading Bird by Bird (which is, according to SIL - a writer herself - in the top three books for writers) on the kindle. 

Sometimes it's frustrating being so kinesthetic.  I'm grateful for the kindle words, but my skin screams for paper nap and the faint fragrance of ink and paint.  So I am delighted that I was able to put my sensually deprived fingers on a hard copy of Bird by Bird.  I can't wait for the re-read with highlighter and sticky tabs.  Also added Lamott's Traveling Mercies and Plan B to the stack.

At this point I was starting to feel pretty emotional about the day.  It was about 10:00 AM and already I had scored good news at the ophthalmologist in Santa Barbara (healthy eyes, stable vision, good conversation with the man who has been caring for my eyes for thirty years now) and my heart's desire in the bookshelves.  I headed downstairs in B&N to go see if they had a copy of my favorite cross stitch series from the UK and again struck gold.  The current issue (at least here in the States) of Cross Stitch Favourites is devoted to baby designs.

By now that spring breeze of emotions and words had picked up velocity. I was craving something to write in.  I headed over to the journal section.  Nothing expensive, mind you.  Just a tablet, really, something to tuck into the cafe with for the duration of my imprisonment.  Just something cheap to dash a few words onto.  That's all I wanted.

Until I saw this.

from The Spirit of Flight by Josephine Wall (Paper Pauper Press).  Journal available at Barnes & Noble.

I recognized the new myself.  The new me that fills sometimes with joy and thrills with life.  The me that feels that energy from around me blow through, dropping words and feelings and images off on its way.  I recognized my space, filled with butterflies and dragonflies and faeries fly.  And birds and other things with wings.  (Like the ladybugs who have decided that my overgrown front yard is the perfect place to raise their young.  The city may send us a nasty letter, but ladybugs come first.)

This is a yes journal.  I picked it up and the deal was sealed when I felt that it was embossed - front and back covers.  The eagle. The butterflies and dragonfly and faeries fly.  Leaves and flowers.  All a gift to the fingertips.

She is mine.

I think most of the people who know me would be surprised that I have all that color and movement and delight inside me.  I come across as pretty quiet.  Looking at her, there in the bookstore, I was reminded of a friend at work.  We share our struggles with weight.  Her story is not mine to tell, but I will note that she has her reasons for hanging onto her excess weight just as I had mine for most of my adult life.  We share a frustration with others who don't bother to look past our size to see all that is inside.

I celebrated my first day of Spring Break at Disneyland, and made a point of going to get a photo taken with Mickey.  I celebrated a weight loss milestone.  50 pounds lost, halfway to my goal.  I had given myself three years - at 30 pounds a year - to get down 100 pounds and I'm halfway through the journey.  Some progress photos for myself, but you are welcome to check them out, too.

Ready, set...

GO!

Getting there.  Feeling so much better.  More energy.  More stamina.  Back to clogging, which I didn't think I would ever be able to do again.

 50 pounds down!

 For what it's worth (and it's worth a lot to me), the key was figuring out that I wasn't unhappy because I was fat, I was fat because I was unhappy.  I used The Artist's Way to get to the why, and continue to write to work my way through it.  It's not always fun and it's not always easy, but it's always enlightening and empowering.

 Progress amazes.

Lost: Friend

Sad.

So, I lost a friend Monday.  For once and for all.  For good.  Irreversibly.  Forever.  Finis.

Finale.

This doesn't happen much.  Actually,  aside from one boyfriend who dumped me for another girl who would put out when I wouldn't, I don't think anyone has ever not been my friend anymore.  Oh, I've grown apart from friends.  Moved away and lost touch.  And I've had people get mad at me (as I have with them), but we've usually been able to work our ways back together eventually.

For the most part, people think I'm nice.  I have always been nice.  So nice that another boyfriend let me keep the watch when I tried to give it back.

Which is why this loss is more confusing than anything. I have no idea what the real problem is.  I mean, when someone is telling you on one hand that you're nice and they like you, and at the same time they are practically making the sign of the cross with their index fingers, it's hard to figure out the comings and goings.  And when they alternate said sign on one encounter with cordial conversation on the next, it's impossible to interpret.

I do know this, however.  I hurt.

How did I deal?  I pulled spring grass and planted gerbera daisies and lobelia and violas.  I deadheaded the roses.  And filled the hummingbird feeders for the first time this spring.  Poor babies.

And I wrote. Writing has helped the most.

I finished Artist's Way recently, and one of the last things Julia Cameron said was to do the mending.  I replaced buttons on a blouse and am mending the garden.  But I wondered if mending the clothing was a metaphor for mending relationships, and I tried with this one.  It didn't work.


This, too, shall pass.

Part Two

Want more.

I love it when this happens.  I have finished Anne Lamott's Grace Eventually.  (See prior post to learn how it came to me and how this is absolutely my book and thank you, Ms. Lamott, for writing this book just for me.  I don't know how you support yourself and your son on what you make creating books for one person at a time, but I am appreciative.)

What I love about this happening is that there are already more books out there for me to read.  To catch up.

I couldn't wait, though.  I ordered this one...

...for my kindle and took it to Disneyland with me yesterday.

Yes, can you imagine?  I spent the late afternoon and as long as the light held (because the kindle does not have a light) between ragtime piano sets reading.

The Magic Kingdom is open to all the various forms of magic, you know?

Relief

in literature.

My sister-in-law loaned me a book.  She said it is perfect for me.

This is scary.

I love my SIL.  In many ways she is my best friend.  My champion.  We have much in common, not the least of which is a life-long love of reading.  But our reading (and movie) preferences are much different.  I hate it when I don't like something she recommends, or when I recommend something she doesn't like.

After all, when we recommend a book to someone, aren't we saying, "I loved this.  I want you to love it, too, and then we can spend delicious hours in conversation about what we loved."

And so we're disappointed when it doesn't work out.  Kind of like a blind date gone wrong.

I have an added fear when someone recommends a book.  I seem to be losing my ability to become immersed in what I read.  Nicholas Carr writes about the phenomenon in his book, The Shallows.  Or maybe it's just adult onset ADD; I will look forward all day to crawling into bed early - 9:30 PM, 9:00, 8:30 - so that I can read for a while.  Within paragraphs my mind wanders, flitting from the latest cross stitch pattern to the flowers blooming in the Fairy Garden to the school papers still to be graded to plans for the weekend.  Hours later I wake up with the book still propped in front of me, light still burning.  I check the page to see where I left off and realize I lost it after only two or three paragraphs.

Sigh.

Imagine my delight when - relatively done in (having only had a few hours sleep the night before, thanks to my idiot dog) - I picked up my newly borrowed "perfect for me" book to put in my usual two paragraphs before dropping off and found myself saying "Just one more chapter" for the first time in years.  And then, on a glorious SoCA spring morning with the siren's call of a happy list (the length of my forearm) of garden chores echoing through the room, I found myself heeding the other echo instead.

Just one more chapter.  And then another.

And the winner is...

Maybe there's hope.

Here's the stack from the nightstand.

Summer reading?  The next several summers, probably.  There is, still, that tempting garden.  And the gym.  And the road.  And people I love.  Music to hear, fun to be had.

But the stack sings its own song.

Someday I will post how the dominoes of synchronicity toppled and led me to Deepak Chopra's The Way of the Wizard.  For now I will simply say that because they fell as they did, Mr. Chopra will be next after Ms. Lamott.


Choosing from the rest will be a challenge.  Some were begun, loved and interrupted.  Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle will be among the first, I think.  All the Julia Cameron books are workbooks for me, to continue the journey begun so happily through Artist's Way.  Gregory McGuire (of the fabulous Wicked) caught my $$$ as I browsed the first three paragraphs of The Next Queen of Heaven, only to lose me to strife-of-life issues; it may be time to see how her majesty is doing.  Some on the stack - like The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak -  are recommendations that I would love to love so that I can enjoy those conversations.  I bought Sam Houston by James L. Haley to learn why his marriage to his first wife was so short-lived, only to fall in love with the man;  I would like to finish that biography.  But, it's hard to resist the colorful Calamity Jane.

On top of the stack is my kindle, a device I never wanted but was a thoughtful and generous gift that I am learning has its advantages.  Its portability can't be beat.  It's loaded with classics that I am just now, as I approach a milestone birthday, starting to appreciate.  All the poetry of Emily Dickinson, essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the novels of Jane Austen (I've read Pride and Prejudice a dozen times, but none of her others.)  Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson was recommended by a respected friend and I'm loving it.  My Cameron-to-go is God is No Laughing Matter.  And now Ms. Lamott's Bird by Bird nests there, ready for my next unexpected pause on the run.  The nice thing about the kindle is that I can have in my purse at all times something that will suit my mood.  If Austen doesn't, perhaps Anderson will.

So, what would you choose?

OMG OMG

OMG

If you take the time to watch the Eric Whitacre TED video I've just posted you'll get the joke.

I missed this when it went viral on youtube.  In case you did, too, here it is for all of us.

I think this is what hope for our world looks - and sounds - like.  I like it that the geeks will be the ones to save humanity.  (Tip to Matt Harding, too.)

Eric Whitacre: A virtual choir 2,000 voices strong | Video on TED.com

Eric Whitacre: A virtual choir 2,000 voices strong | Video on TED.com

Reflections on my brain...

and the joys of the internet.

I was a silent child.  It was in the days when "children should be seen and not heard," so I was considered perfect.  Just ask my mother.

For most of my life I have preferred to listen rather than participate.  I've checked it off to being incredibly shy.  But recently I've come to another conclusion.

Education is in a crisis around the world.  I tend to focus on what's happening in my own district, but when a friend in France talks about what is happening in her children's school district it sounds eerily familiar.  Recently I overheard our special education teachers talk about new certification that will be required of teachers who wish to work with students with autism.  Because of the expense and time required to get this certification, most of the SPED teachers are saying they will not take the coursework.  Amazingly, regular education teachers - like me - do not need this certification.  So, students with autism can, apparently, be removed from the smaller SPED classes and placed in larger regular ed classes with teachers who have NO training to work with them.

Brilliant.

In an attempt to get some clue to how to help these kids if they are so "fortunate" as to be assigned to my class, I went on an internet hunt to learn about autism and ran across an article about adults with (high functioning) autism.

It was describing me!

I was actually quite relieved.  It has always bugged me that I'm no good in a word fight - my brain just shuts down.  Random thoughts bounce around inside my skull and I can't  collect them together.  I've learned that some people with autism react by bursting out inappropriately, but my response is to shut down and retreat.  Oh, give me a few hours, a few days, and I'm ready to get back in the ring (as long as my opponent stays on my script).  But unplanned verbal altercations?  Uncle.

And I have not been able to conquer my shyness.  Am completely socially retarded when it comes to mixing and schmoozing.  Am much happier by myself than in crowds.  Let me loose on something that appeals to me for an hour and I may come back in five or six.  And I love to organize - it's one of my strongest gifts, in fact.

I'm better than I was, thanks to friends.  One of my friends turned me onto Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way and I've written myself into a much happier place.  Put me into a stress situation, however (like reading in front of a couple of dozen future Pulitzer winners in writing class) and it feels like all the wiring is short circuiting in my head.

The article said that adults with autism prefer writing to verbal conversation.  Are more comfortable with email and text messages.  yesyesyesyes.  Which is why I'm addicted to facebook.  My friends and family are there and I can "visit" in a way that gives me the few seconds I need to organize my thoughts into something coherent.

I've been amazingly lucky to build friendships with people who have been willing to overlook my social awkwardness long enough to recognize my good points (yes, they're there).  I am well-loved and am so appreciative.

I went hunting for an image for this post (I like colorful blogs) and had to snag this one.  For one of my writing class assignments I wrote about growing out of the box (I've listed some of the blogs of people who are helping me continue this process).  Clearly I'm not alone in feeling this way.

Don't know...

...why this.

But, choose it I did.  A little progress tonight.

森の木琴