Goings On

Ok, so I’ve been awol for a couple weeks, right? Here’s the scoop (anti-scoop, maybe?) –  I’m working on a project that I can’t talk about just yet (it will be revealed over the weekend, and then I can talk about it), and it’s just killing me. I’ve actually been picking away at this for about a month now (ok, almost two months), and it’s all I want to talk about, but I can’t, so instead I haven’t been talking about much of anything. Except the day-to-day business of being around here, natch, and that doesn’t feel really blogworthy. But then I realized that, indeed, things are happening. So let me tell you about things that are happening (that I can talk about)!

Let’s start with the part where I got adopted by a slam team. Nono, I didn’t make it onto a slam team.* The 2013 Worcester Slam Team asked me to be their coach, and I couldn’t be more honored to work with such an osm group of poets. Watching them come together with their writing has been really great. Also, I would love these people, even if they weren’t writing super poems – they’re just really great people, and I love being in their presence. I feel a little gifted, really – two of them are housemates, and three of them are the ladies with whom I meet to write on Monday nights. It’s been lovely to reconnect to the slam while not having to actually compete – totally fun!

And I’ve been working on a scarf thing. So I saw this really sweet scarf on Pinterest, right? All made up of tiny little crocheted hexagons – so dainty! So pretty! And I was hoping for instructions at the pin’s website, but alas, it’s a picture of something that a blogger had just purchased. And I don’t know how to make hexagons. So I started to dig around to learn how to make hexagons, but in the middle of researching** I had this (somewhat related) idea that I could make a scarf from different sized circles.

And, whoa – surprise! This has been the Most Relaxing Thing Evar. See, I have issues with relaxing, across the board. I always feel like I should be doing something.*** And having something to do with my hands while Screwing Off On Purpose (what most people call Relaxing), calms that business down like no other thing. Guilty pleasure admission: I love to watch teevee and do needlework. So I’m making this scarf, and all of yesterday was spent in front of Hulu, watching episodes of comfortable junk-food teevee like Merlin, and crocheting circles. I’m about half way to Scarf, and plan on showing it off like whoa when it’s all done.

And gardening. I’m still gardening. Because cucumbers and tomatoes, right? And salad greens! And bell peppers! And radishes and carrots! Oh, hells yeh – I’ll post pix soon.

And the Yoga Journal 21-Day Challenge starts again today (last year’s was osm)! And I’m re-reading William Gibson novels because I read Zero History and Spook Country out of order, only to find that I don’t remember what happened in Pattern Recognition, and also, I think the character I’m trying to remember is actually in All Tomorrow’s Parties.† And Man Cub is trying to figure out his summer, which may include small construction projects! So, really, things are happening, and it’s good, it’s good.

So how about you? What have you been up to, dear reader? How does your garden grow?

*I don’t compete in slam anymore. Consequently, I find my blood pressure is much closer to what it ought to be. Also, I don’t feel like vomiting nearly as frequently.
**Which, actually, is a bit of process. I’ve been crocheting since I was eight and my grandmother set me on a task that would keep me quiet and out from underfoot. But in all that time, I never actually learned to read a pattern >.< So in the process of researching, I’ve been looking for video tutorials and scrawling notes, and at the same time looking for instructions on how to read a pattern. Which, in itself, is tricky, because I never really learned the names for most of the basic stitches that I know. Which leads to more video tutorials to see if I have the nomenclature to go with the stitches. And, um, I’m a little distractable, so, um, while I’ve been looking for those things, I’ve also learned to knit a righteous herringbone stitch, started to understand how to knit cables, and developed a keen interest in something called naalbinding. See what happened there?
***Or Something Else. Holy carp, I can get paralyzed by it! Here’s what happens: I start onto one thing, and if I don’t hit a groove (you know, that medatative in-the-zone place?) while I’m doing that, I’m pestered by thoughts of another project I could (“should”) be working on. Then I stop what I’m doing and start that other, pestering, project, only to be pestered by thoughts of the project I just put down – or, worse,  by other projects. Eventually this conundrum takes place before I even start the first project, and I can’t even decide what to even embark upon – then it morphs into feeling like head-exploding pressure, and then finally into, Fuck it, let’s just sit here on the couch, or, Omigod, I NEED to clean all the things do the dishes!  Gah. My brain.
†Other delicious semi-guilty pleasure: reading and dozing. I love love LOVE to read in bed and let myself doze off, and then surface and read some more. Once upon a time when I was single, I could spend entire Sundays in that fashion. Now it’s more confined to the hour before I actually go to bed for the night. Luckily, Dearest Will doesn’t mind a bit if I sleep in our bed with well-known science fiction writers.