O the horror!

It turns out Monday does exist and it was today. Oh noes!

When the alarm went off at 6.50am I wanted to pull the covers over my head and wait for the angel of death to arrive. It took me a few moments to place the sense of deja vu evoked by this wish: I spent much of my teens doing that very thing.  Unlike my teenage self, I had to haul myself out of bed and not wait for my mother to come in and yell at me.

Some days the only way I can get to work is not to think about where I’m headed, but only what needs doing in the next few minutes. Get out of bed. Bathroom. Get dressed. Tame bed hair, etc, and not focus on the end destination. I try to regard it as a meditative exercise. Some days it works, some days…not so much.

Today the building management had a particular torture in reserve for the worker bees. All the staff in my office spent the entire day swathed in our overcoats, scarfs, gloves, or else risk turning into an icicle. If I’d had any other clothes with me I’d have added them. My fingers and toes were numb, it was so cold. It was actually warmer outside than at my desk. Tomorrow I may take in a knee rug, though it’s just as likely to swing the other way and be tropical indoors.

I did manage to make drawing-a-day at lunchtime:

Meh. Some days they work, some days they don’t. It’s the habit that’s important, not just the drawing itself but thinking about drawing/art/ideas/marks.

“Me!” week, day one

Today is Monday, and I’m counting this day one of my self-indulgent week because the weekend was business as usual: read the papers, supermarket/greengrocer/butcher, sundry errands, laundry, minimal housework. The usual weekend gig.

This morning I woke a minute or two before the alarm would usually scream (6.50am), sighed “aaahhhh” instead of the usual “AAARRRGGGHH!”, then turned over and went back to sleep for another hour or so. Bliss!

Time for a leisurely breakfast watching an episode of Witchblade, and observing my coffee work its temperature magic on the heat sensitive mug printed with a thermometer (technically it belongs to The Bloke, but he likes his tea what I regard as tepid and, turns out, so does the mug and it refuses to perform for him). I also got in some time working on the current sock, a self-striping yarn. The cats were a little confused that I didn’t leave the house at the usual time, but seized the opportunity to complain about the cold.

I made drawing-a-day (see above), which makes three days in a row. The regularity has slipped over the past couple of weeks but I’m hoping to get back into the habit this week and continue it after.

What to do next? I ummed and ahhed, spoilt for choice. In the end I just picked the first thing on top of the fabric pile: a pretty green and blue floral cotton, and paired it with a pale green lining fabric. Right, a wrap skirt. But first…there’s no space to lay out the fabric and pattern to cut it out. I had to cob off the end of the dining table, and succeeded in relegating the mass of newspapers to the recycling, only keeping minimal supplements to read over the week. I must confess much of the other stuff went into a box for later sorting (self-indulgence is the watchword this week, remember?). Cutting out is perhaps my least favourite part of the process of garment sewing, but it was pleasant listening to the snick of the scissors through crisp cotton and this skirt has only one pattern piece cut twice for the body of the skirt and twice for the lining, so it went fast.

I needed to look for thread to match, lost interest and took a coffee and tv break to catch up on a couple of recorded shows. I have ignored the phone, which has rung several times today: I’m assuming telemarkers, as no one left a message. I cleaned out my handbag and wallet, and feel much lighter for it, not just physically but mentally, too. All the clutter is weighing me down, I think, and getting rid of it is cathartic. It’s amazing how much crap came out of my bag/wallet, much of it useless paper.

With a lighter bag, I ventured to the shops to get a pair of shoes mended, but it was a mostly wasted trip. Don’t people get shoes mended anymore? The only shoe repair place left locally rejected my poor old shoes! He told me it wasn’t worth fixing them and directed my attention to the new shoes he had for sale. While my maryjanes need new heels and halfsoles, there’s still a lot of wear left in the uppers and they’re really comfortable. If I was willing to pay for the repairs, I don’t understand why the repairman wasn’t willing to fix them. Odd. I do notice that many of the new shoes around aren’t repairable, with synthetic waffle soles that can’t be reheeled. I’d rather buy a good pair of shoes that last and can be reheeled, but even they’re becoming hard to find. I do have a lot of cheap crappy shoes that I hardly wear, and have resolved the day of buying rubbish is over. Perhaps there will be some shoe shopping later in the week.

I did find a couple of small round mirrors I’ve been searching for to use in an art work. I wanted something about compact size, but they’re not easy to find. These are magnifying mirrors, but I think they’ll suit my purposes. Not an entirely wasted excursion, then.

Home for a nap 🙂

The cats demanded some play, I brought the laundry in off the line – it got drowned in the rain yesterday, but today was such a glorious day. Sunny, almost warm, little breeze.

It has been a lazy evening, watching the Green Hornet movie and knitting at my sock. I had semi-formed plans of cooking a dinner I wouldn’t usually cook of a week evening due to time and energy constraints, but couldn’t muster the motivation. Perhaps tomorrow…

In a sort of runic rhyme

“Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells – ”

from The Bells, by Edgar Allen Poe

I am having one of my semi-regular fits of GET-THINGS-DONE-ness. They come on when I feel I’m going nowhere, when I’m pressed for time and not able to do all the things I want to do. When I’m failing to progress with my writing or artmaking. At the moment, I am both time poor and experiencing an extended bout of fatigue. Not fall-over-and-can’t-move fatigue, but the kind that grinds you down with constant tiredness, dulls the brain and turns the body to lead. Eleven hours every week day away from home, commuting and working, is a major factor in my weariness, but not the only one. It’s a combination of various things. Perversely, the bone-tiredness brings with it a crazed urge to do everything, all at once, as if I’m a fuse on a bomb and the countdown has reached single digits. The temptation to run about like a wet hen, achieving bugger-all, is almost overwhelming. Get-Things-Done syndrome finds me giving myself imperatives:

• Get more sleep!
• Eat better!
• Be more productive!
• Watch less television!
• Don’t waste time!
• Clean the bloody house!
• De-clutter!
• Finish stuff!

Etcetera and etcetera. The problem with imperatives is that while they all sound like simple and good ideas, achieving them is more problematic. Simple is not synonymous with easy. And, naturally, everybody has a grand idea of how I should go about remedying my current flurry of rudderless floundering, but what works for others may or may not work for me (nor may I like someone else’s solution, regardless of its effectiveness).*

Aside – this reminds me of one of my favourite sayings: “Opinions are like arseholes, just about everybody has one.”

As an example, imperative number one – get more sleep (or, if you prefer, GET. MORE. SLEEP!) – should be easily achievable. Just go to bed earlier, right? Hmmm, not so much. Not only am I childlike in my resistance to going to bed despite my eyes hanging out of my head (and an opposing and possibly greater reluctance to get up in the mornings), I have a limited window in which to do a number of essential but mundane things between getting home from work and turning in for the night. Plus I need (yes, NEED) to fit some creativity into the day, or I go mad. No, that’s not an exaggeration. So I try to somehow stretch those few hours, to cram in as much as possible, and – theories of time and Dr Who’s “wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey” cant aside – I have yet to achieve the impossible and actually shoehorn in more activity than there are available minutes (although, slow learner that I am, I keep trying. There’s a little core of me that’s a Tardis wannabe). And because I’m feeling pressured, when I do force myself to retire my churning brain refuses to turn off and composing myself for slumber is equivalent to climbing Everest in my pyjamas (not that I wear pyjamas). My thoughts careen about my skull like scattered shot and refuse to shut the hell up.

Each of those items on the Imperative Menu comes with an added side of similar complications.

Experience has taught me that this running-on-the-spot feeling will pass. Eventually. In the meantime, I am doing my best to turn down the imperatives (why don’t those little – but loud – voices come with a volume switch? Too simple? And why is their out-of-the-box volume always turned to 11?), breathe slowly and deeply, and keep creating stuff. I don’t want to switch those commands off completely, because they are not (entirely) wrong, but I need a quiet brain to break them down into chunks I can actually chew. Instead of, you know, chunks that would choke a horse…

*I’m not asking for help, merely venting. Please do not offer me solutions, however well meant, in the comments. It makes me cranky, and I’ll likely delete them. Cos, you know, I can 🙂

Lucky numbers

The medical technician taking my blood was not impressed with my phone number, which has four fours in it.

“No Chinese person would accept that number. Very unlucky. Four means death in Chinese. Deeeaaaathhhh.”

So much for bedside manner.

Phone etiquette

It has been stiflingly hot in my office this week. The only cool air seems to be in the foyer down on the ground floor, so one afternoon I sought a few minutes respite down there.

I’d barely had time to seat myself and breathe a sigh of shortlived relief when the lift pinged and a woman emerged, talking on her mobile. She frowned at me and said, making a shooing gesture:

“Do you mind? I’m trying to have a private conversation.”

My response: “Then go find somewhere private.”

Possession of a mobile phone does not entitle you to sole use of public spaces. (File this under: Yet Another Reason Why I Hate Phones)

Apparently I am an architect

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I feel curiously unmotivated at the moment. That little voice inside my head, the insidious one with the nasty schoolmarm tone, is whispering away: you’re not…not an artist, not a writer, not…Just not. Perhaps an obnoxiously loud CD will drown her out. Maybe early AC/DC. Or Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps. If I had any Sex Pistols I bet they’d work. Maybe Never Mind The Bollocks.

Now I’ve written the word “not” too many times and it looks weird. Sigh.