Thursday, January 24, 2013

nothing is what it seems to be...

this morning... albeit much later than i wanted it to be, my husband announced two things. the first was that we were out of milk and that he would go get some. so there would be coffee on my horizon. (yay!!!). would i mind waiting until he came home from his tennis game at 6 pm.(GRRRRR!)
 the second was that the dog had thrown up on the kitchen floor (sigh...) AND that it was weird looking, so he had saved it for me to examine. so he softened the blow of my not getting coffee simultaneously with letting me know i had already managed to sleep clean through a laboratory kind of hazmat situation. 
in that moment i saw hundreds of dollars floating away to unspecified vet bills in my future. 
sigh...
naturally, the dog threw something up that was unidentifiable to the male of the species. meaning the dh dared not look at it closely. 
i took one look at it and saw clearly that the pattern from this week's roll of paper towels was in the mix. no wonder he did not know what it was. the evidence of shredded saran wrap at the base of the open kitchen trash was not a distinct enough clue. and yes, i buy a different pattern on paper towels to help identify the age of the upchuckage. it is a little bit of domestic CSI. or ambient carbon dating. at least i knew when the offensive paper towel had been used/eaten. 

the dh  has NO idea that i make dinner here every night, (ok, maybe he has some clue) and that spectacular and delicious rolled tenderloin of pork filled with baby spinach, feta cheese,  a pesto of sundried tomatoes, kalamata olives and a little bit of lemon zest  served with a raspberry mustard balsamic vinaigrette on raw spinach salad (so it's a theme park here) and a side of white plain unembellished basmati rice (for the picky ass teen and her bff staying over)
did not come out of thin air. 

it required that i pat down the pork tenderloin before placing it into a hot cast iron pan before it went into the oven. thus ensuring a surface crust would form. insuring inherent the flavor going over the taste buds would be appropriately intensified. 
of course THAT was what the dog ate and threw up. 
he would not know that, since he did not participate in anything other than telling me i was grouchy that evening. it was simultaneous to having our 15 yo female house-guest explain the game of football to him. 
 i hate to say exactly how many times i have done this very same task. 
so maybe he is not a guy hardwired with a football comprehension gene. 
maybe he thinks we eat takeout from down the street every night 
maybe he thinks i enjoy working around all the weirdnesses of people who eat here. 
maybe that dog is a cat. 

see, if the dog was a real dog, he would have re-eaten the disgusting mess on the floor. 
i would not have had to clean it up. 
ok, maybe that is only labs and golden retrievers. 
i can give him a half pass cause he is only half golden retriever. 
maybe the poodle half is what separates him from the disgusting riff raff of doggery?
i just don't know. 

so the man is not always manly, he is too sensitive. he has a fake laugh for sharing when he is flirty and trying to get out of doing something like putting the double hung window sashes back into the frames that he took them out of about 15 years ago. 
i have carbon dating on this too. 
it doesn't matter to me that he bitches so loudly that my ears hurt when Spring rolls around and the gas company comes looking for some payment on a jacked up bill from our non-energy efficient house. 
oh the bitching is loud and whiny then. 
consistent too. like the sun rising in the east and juliet is the moon...

so let's keep track here. 
husband does not understand football. 
does not replace windows. 
is a carpenter... and a really good one i am told.
the dog is not a retriever. 
the dog is a cat. 

then there is the teen aged girl. 
she thinks she lives in a dorm or something that is not here.
she has had the same water glass in her room for months. not cleaned or used... so that is a wash, pardon that bad pun. also a bowl with the entrails of orange slices. another empty bowl with the entrails of salsa. she will not under virtually any circumstance eat tomato on anything from a hamburger to a salad. however before she can get the jar of a salsa open, she is drooling. lest you suggest it is because the tomato product is cooked in the salsa, i will counter with a claim that she enjoys her pasta sauce on the side. because, it is a tomato product. 
and then the general mess of her room... 
it is lead off by the extra mattress in the middle of her room. upon which she has no countable number of books and papers in piles. they remain until the dreaded mid-terms have been completed. 
while the bff was here for 3 days and nights... 
she slept on this disgusting mattress and had her own piles of study materials. 
of course the child had not migrated her crap onto the mattress until the bff had vacated. 
still there were movable piles of paper, books, and other unknown substances. 
i cannot even begin to think of why there are occasional spider or bug bites on the kid. 
she has been asked to clean this room unnumbered times. 
the thrill of dusting and vacuuming is not one i hold dear, however i do feel it needs to be done every decade or so. if the kid would move some of her crap out of the way, i would do this. 
 i have done it for her siblings before her. 

i also would like to say that she is an enigma wrapped up in a convoluted pretty girl package with some deeply seated guy stuff in the mix. 
she belches so loudly, that she has stopped football practice at her school as she has passed the team midway through daily practices. the team members were penalized by the coach for not doing what drill he was barking out one day. the team thought he had said something, which they couldn't understand. 
it disrupted the flow of the exercise. t
just the girl 
belching. 
true story. 
never ending, but still true. 

i could not be prouder. 

i know others have lovely children. 
they enjoy sitting at meals on occasions with their families. 
i know that some husbands come home and do not groan as they cross the threshold and wonder what happened all day in their absence. 
i know all of this. 
still i think that my people somehow think i am a magician. 
if i poof hard enough, their fantasy or expectation will become real. 
a home smelling like snickerdoodles or hermits 
and clean as can be. 
with fresh linens everywhere they ought to be, 
a home with furnishings that looks like a page from architectural digest or something. 
(that magazine sucks by the way).
it would all be completely doable, if only a few of the folks here were exactly what they thought they were. 
 a lot wealthier. 
it could happen, 
just if i could  hire an actual carpenter to show up and replace my fucking air-sucking, wind tunnel in the kitchen, double-hung sashes that let out all the heat on the east side of my house. 
yep. nothing gets done here. 
and it is because i think in my real life i am a princess. 

what i really am is a bad mom. 
i just don't care to wear myself out anymore with this crap. i would rather make stuff like this. 
a pair of funky floral cuffs from old belts i snagged one of them at the local thrift store. 
i made the top cuff  from my son's belt and i am keeping it for myself. 


or this version of the red and purple one

or a bracelet/necklace


or a few flowery charm bracelets

or this tray of rings.

or 
my bed to sleep in. 

well nobody is perfect. 
i am going to sleep soon and consider who i really am in my other world. 
tomorrow is day two of mid-terms and that much closer to cleanliness in part of this house
(i am not holding my breath here, you know?)

and the dog will continue to think he is a poodly prince, 
the husband will continue to think he is a king, 
and the teen gal will continue to think she is in college. 
perhaps my son will begin to realize that he IS in college and 
my oldest who is working and being paid for something she loves, will continue to be the only grounded one around here. 

like i said. 
i can dream right?

g'night all. 
xo.
w.


Tuesday, January 22, 2013

late nights upside down

i only really know two jokes. telling either of them makes me terribly self conscious. it may be because they both are making fun of populations of people that i easily could be part of, but for one reason or another i am currently not. so as my way of attempting to be politically correct, i will apologize up in front. i am sorry. truly, i know it is an american thing this silly little joke. and it is not the kindest of things to pose as questions. it has a corollary in my insular little world.
  here goes...

question:
what is the difference between a tornado and a divorce in the south? 
 answer: 
not much, either way someone loses a trailer home. 

so why did i go out of my way to ask such a silly thing?
well, i have a little trouble fitting in with the rest of my world. i don't sleep regular hours and sometimes i am completely upside down on those. right now, my australian period is in play. the one where i fall asleep as the sun is rising and awaken just before the phone call from my high schooler comes asking where her ride home is. 
i really hate that phone call. 
it embarrasses me... as does all of these weird hours  of wakefulness and sleep do. 
of course, my doctor and i have spoken about it and she seems to feel it is fine if it affords me time to be productive and comfortable enough in daily stuff that i feel needs doing. 

so this has been going on in some form or another most of my life. i am happy at night. late at night. when there are few other folks out there in the world enjoying productive lives. 
if i were prone to calling it something that others could understand, it would be that its the third shift. 
luckily, with the internet and other entertainment, i am never really alone during these hours. 
i have a sweet friend i chat with on a pretty regular basis, and she is from australia. 
her world is exactly 12 hours off from my own. 
well i mean i know what part of her conventionally experienced day we can chat and overlap with activities of child rearing, jewelry findings and grocery shopping. i really enjoy our time together such as it is. 

why did i tell you the silly joke? 
well it is because often i try to re-set my internal clock to coincide with my family members' biological wavelengths for more harmonious living. it is not easy. having had the flu the last couple of weeks, i was tired out beyond reason and did little more than change the tv channel or sleep. so my own habits reverted to this upside down schedule. i am back to trying to get into a more daylight driven experience, but it is not always easy. no matter what time of day or night i put myself into my sleep coma, i am pretty sure my darling dog is going to wake me up between 1:30 and 3:30 a.m..
it is inconvenient at worst. but it does happen. nearly every night.  sometimes he just glares at me out of his pretty brown eyes as if to say, why can't you turn out the lights? i am trying to nap here.  so i have to try to be kind about our stealthy sorties in the darker hours to do a quick neighborhood check and piddle. i check, he piddles. 

he is likely to do this in the middle of the night as a long standing habit, since when we brought him home to live with us, he was not yet housebroken. i am enough of a hippie, that crating him to teach him when he could go outside seemed sort of inefficient and cruel. instead, i spent a lot of hours when it was dark outside, out in my back yard with him. he was housebroken in just a few days. my family took credit for this in their usual way, not having had much to do with this process.  it wasn't a terrible hardship on me, since the 4th Harry Potter book, The Goblet of Fire had just been released. i needed to read it to keep abreast of my daughter's progress with consuming it. also, you literally can read by the light of the street lamps in my neighborhood. 

after all is said and done, it works out for everyone, in spite of my quirkiness. this family has NO shortage of quirks in each member. so i am just gonna have to keep rolling with the needs that are expressed regarding late hours and when the puppster wants out. 

this is why i do it. 
he is adorable and my buddy. 
in spite of what the kids say. 



he is a good companion and scares the snot out of anyone unwanted on our front steps. 
two perfect reasons to have any dog ever. 

for the most part, he is delicate and misses all of my clutter, i mean my work areas, like he is picking his way through a mine field. only when his tail feathers are too long and he is excitedly wagging, do things go out of place. they can get caught in the mix and get relocated across the room. i can deal with that though. 
here is what he is able to move around without missing a step. 


i have trays like this all around the living room... with projects in some phase or another. things rarely go amiss unless i am involved. that is of course a much different story and one of terror for sharing around a campfire some night. 

so i am going to give this ole weird sleep thing another go ... since the pup has had his 2 am constitutional in the snows of new england. i need to rest up, because my daughter's school has set their clocks during mid-terms for a two hour delay of the start of school. the premise was that it would be risky with the amount of snow predicted by morning. it has started and stopped. the accumulation is about an inch, maybe two inches. last week we had significantly more and there was no kind of acknowledgement of any commuting/traffic inconveniences. 
so in their mighty foresightedness, the school dept. has not only delayed the start of school for two hours, but also the exam schedule for another day. 
my daughter is much like water... always finding a way into any crevice. she interprets these events as an opportunity to stay home from school to study. 
this looks a lot like something else when she does it. one hand on her iphone, one on my computer, some chocolate snack on her lap and gossip girls in the background of either the tv or the computer. 
while she studies. 
yeah. 
right. 
i am best off not watching this, because somehow it becomes my problem. 
her feeling is that since i use the computer while watching t.v., she ought to be allowed to as well. 
this is not a good syllogism. 
she lives dangerously. very dangerously. 
i am often editing photos, surfing the wily outpost of facebook, or even in a pinterest fugue state. 
i am not writing critical essays that will be evaluated by some of the most casually insane teachers of this century. i have met them and they really are so very deeply perplexing, frustrating and troubling, i find anything other than the best imaginable focus to contend with an outcome of any interchange with any of them is a scary thing. it requires consistency and deep attention. 
none of which, if i were in her place, i could attempt in this age. 

it was harder when i was in school, as the internet was probably a fantasy of the then 8 year old Al Gore. not the functional life blood of every red-blooded american teen these days. 
you know who they are... the ones that say in very condescending tones,
"mom, it is intuitive. why don't you get this?"
 shut. up. you . little. shits. 
i can reupholster a sofa, make a roux, and still answer 2/3 of the jeopardy questions while offering directions to get somewhere by car on one ways streets. pretty much all at the same time and you still do not know how to load a dishwasher or that women have TWO ovaries. 

i keep my temper in check as often as possible. 
and sleep to offset the deficits that conditions like these offer daily. 
and when i snag that few moments of light that will be coming my way in a few more hours, i will photograph the fleet of rings and bracelets i made last night. 

cheers! mates... see y'all soon i hope. 

xo.
w.



Sunday, January 20, 2013

domestic skirmishes... aka life amongst my savages

mrs. hilary clinton has the same job as president thomas jefferson had. not the main one that she really vied for, but almost a more important one. she held it and performed the hell out of it with great diplomatic skill as well as effectiveness. she did this until a concussion intervened. oh that and a horrible tragedy putting all of her amazing work under a microscope. the horrible, fatal and somehow unstoppable embassy attacks of 2012. 
i would have gladly voted for her as a presidential candidate, if she had made it as far as to hold that spot on the election ballot. i am of course thrilled that mr. obama threw his hat into the ring and became our president not just one time, but on the edge of his second term.  i say all of this in mind of the horrible breaking down of reason and sanity all over the world. especially as a footnote to hopefully the last acts of random violence that occur specifically upon domestic soils. i want never to live through any other atrocities such as the Sandy Hook murders, the outbreak of wrong doing towards Batman lovers in Colorado, or the plethora of other horrible activities that are war-like in all of their aggressive and unkind results everywhere. 

at heart i am a pacifist. a Quaker almost even. perhaps even for lack of a better description, a teensy variation of a peace-loving hippie from the sixties. it may simply be the case of not wanting to experience any more unkindness of one human towards any other. i survived sibling rivalry, so i keep thinking does it need to keep on going at any scale or level. it is just a wheel spinning activity if you really look it in the eye. 
this having been said, and not said to be dramatic or trivialize the "troubles" flowing throughout the world around me, i am in the land of domestic unrest. the violence of the world is growing  generally. man is a bellicose animal, without the means to resolve his issues without bloodshed. i remain suspicious that it is safe out there while all this ire is rubbing against itself to create some spark and a bigger, more pronounced bloody result. i just do not understand any of it. 

what i also do not get is the ongoing war that exists within my own small part of the world. i refer to the oddities of household passive aggression. the inexplicable itchiness inside my little red home.
i have so little understanding of why it is in fully blown expression here. really, i just don't get it. 
i gave up what could have been a seriously mediocre pastime or as others refer to it, a career as an architect. i studied years to complete the undergraduate level of college training to do this. it took me six whole years on top of an already well recognized B.Arts from a well viewed college before that. i studied at night, while i held a full time job during days to aid in my training. i even went so far as to take an exam which puts the C.P.A. exam in its place like the whiny little bitch it really is. i worked and worked as a nanny, bartender, knitting salesperson and garment finisher to support myself as i attempted to achieve this basic level of training and a legal right to wield a rubber stamp with my professional license number upon it. in this, i find myself twenty-odd years later in a place where passive aggression is the mode, not any passing form of professionalism or peace.  i am losing the conflicts daily. 

these losses are very minute. sometimes i see how they add up. like a single drop of water can be additive to more and collect into a small trickle. then form a watery force large enough to cut a magnificent swath through some stone and call itself a Grand Canyon. the small notches of activity that run through my psyche are teensy. normal people are not bothered by them. it is not that i am decidedly abnormal, i just have my ways. i do not enjoy my ways being disregarded or simply ignored. i am a person and would enjoy some respect. a little logic and love thrown into the mix would serve my interests well also. 

here is one of the skirmishes. i like socks. i like when i wear them, that i have them match. they wear better that way. i like when i have matching elastic rings on my legs and bilateral similarity of pressure applied for better circulation to my limbs. it is possible i missed the memo that said socks are sold as redundant one-offs. not that they are paired to suit your bipedal design. i am frustrated by the fact that i have a sock eating monster living in my washer or dryer. it is hungry enough in its hidden placement, that it prefers only one half of my paired foot-warming hose. it is perplexing, yet i feel bonded to many, many others in the world. there are dryer or wind+laundry line  locations world-wide that experience the mysteries of sock loss. it is not anything anyone can pinpoint the origins of, because if they could there would be a NOBEL prize awarded for its discovery. 
i had the flu the past two weeks. going to the basement was a profoundly energy sucking experience i avoided. it took more effort than to switch sleeping positions or change the tv channels. so i was more lax than usual about it. 
eventually, there were no children at home to do some of my laziness or health initiated favors. i had to go myself to ferret out some socks to warm my oddly mismatching cold feet. the level of poor circulation to my feet is causing me great worry. any educated person living and fighting with diabetes is on this page along side of me.  nobody wants to lose any part of their body, especially a toe or a foot. so keeping that circulation going well is a very important part of daily maintenance. 
i have been horrified to see that doing the laundry for my husband is a beloved part of his household task participation. he likes to say, he does the family laundry. i know he does. it is a white lie though. he does it really poorly, just so he doesn't have to think too hard about it. surely my whining has covered this content before? if not, that is for another day. my most recent and deeply unexpected discovery was that the same trash bin that corrals the lint from the dryer, random washed papers in a post laundered papier mache state, soap bottle caps etc. also contains my socks. 

what the hell?

this is a fresh page in the war of passive aggression that i need to investigate. already the skirmishes are being lost. i keep buying new pretty striped and dotted, wildly colorful socks to entertain my feet with. they are being tossed into that bin willy-nilly in solitude. rendering brand new sock pairings useless one mate at a time. 
WHY???????????????
what did my poor six pack of Betsy Johnson orange and pink roses ever do to you?
why are my recently accepted ankle high stripey numbers turned away at the pairing station?
who would be offended by turquoise and kelly green ankle high socks with a cute picot edging?

who is responsible for this act of unkindness;
a domestic war?
is it a counter-attack against the solution to subtle doctrines on the color-free greigeness of the system? 

i am appalled. i want my feet to be cozy and remain at the other end of my body. 
i want them til i get done for, permanently. 
why is this a reasonable act?
i am sad that i am living through a fresh take on dealing with domesticity. the last invigorating strike against my sanity was the unnecessary roughness call of eating all the store-bought pie and leaving the eating utensil in the entrails of the packaging of a small, sweet fruit whispered through bakery item.
(according to my grocery tape). 

left on the stove in all of its empty glory with a knife inside the box. 
pretense of future dispensing pie pan in a rinsed condition to the overflowing recycling is not even a whisper of possibility. 


the what's up of the innocent...

and the deniability of the guilty party 

this war is only one. 
it wears me down daily, in all of its myriad of presentations. 
i find myself looking towards running away someday. 
hobo-stick and bandana filled to its edges with jewels leaking from its corners. 
i can see it in my future. 
in my ultimate cessation of fighting a good fight. 
of letting go of the dream. 
the dream of two matching socks... and a fully cut pie. one without the telltale marks of many fork tines  pricked directly into the pie pan without formality and diplomacy of a sliced wedge portion. 
the civility of it all is gone. 
dentente is a poof of smoke. 
gone. gone. gone. 
adieu. 

with mixed socks and bruised feelings, i offer these visual bon-mots. 
re-tweaked bracelets for a client. one who has unwittingly and patiently been waiting for me to deliver some goods. some bracelets, charmed and uncharmed styles; 
some leather cuffed ones, 
and some rings. 
just some items to flaunt in their boutique or at their place at "Styleweek RI".
the flu kept my productivity down to the barest level manageable. 
one that was interwoven with mysterious sock related losses. 

charm bracelets

necklaces & bracelet interchangables
(rolled into 3 turns)

laid out for a necklace application

there are other items, but they await my resurfaced effort from the sleepy crypt. 
my interest in surviving another day of single sock to foot interfacing needs to be made a passing fancy. 
it is all a silly undesired game. 
i am bigger than this and a lot nicer
than to fret about it all on most days. 
perhaps i can rely on some rodman-clintonesque diplomacy to achieve domestic detente soon?
it may be worth the effort. 
my feet are still a smidge colder than i like them to be. 

xoxo. 
w.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

flu season: 1 vs. me: zero.

flu season is here. early and surly.
i have been under it's pall for days.
so many days already. almost a week's worth of fever on and off. i have not enjoyed any of it.
it does allow me the luxury of drinking in the flavor of nyquil if sleep is elusive. it is probably my favorite thing about cold season. of course there is NOTHING i really enjoy about having a cold. somehow having some nyquil to look forward to during that period of discomfort is a big plus.
a really huuuuuge plus.
were i able to resist being drunk all the time, i might consider keeping a bottle of french liquor(pernod) in the house that is used to make pastis cocktails with. oh yeah and some ouzo too. of course, i am a weenie these days and the entire premise of dealing with the sugars in those alcohols and the inevitable head aching results any next day, tempers my interest in regular indulgences.

somewhere in the midst of my flu season, my son had some college stuff to deal with. this is so he can remain in his major course of study. i am beyond peeved with him. i think he had a secret decoder ring in use when he filled out his college applications. the subtle text hidden in the common application must have said, "if you want to blow off studying and be a total gomer, here's where to go to do it. only a few immature nitwits can read this and have the cereal box based jewelry to find it with.  exclusivity is a big selling point i think.
seriously, i am really totally pissed. so if you see him, ask him to hand over that ring and let him know he is only fooling himself... what. a. dumb. ass.

and the big girl is kicking butt at her new job. i love it. she continues to evolve nicely.
if only her roommates in their entries into colorful and home cooking would lay off the onions.
they seem to like to saute onions all the time in their little suite. for the onion defective gene-pool, you must look to me. poor halley has inherited that dismay over  an excessive use of onions. mea culpa.
i think when you are starting to learn to cook and are figuring out what tastes go together, style can be simply too heavy handed... and let's face the obvious. onions pack a wallop of taste and a wallop of flavor in a pretty small package. inexpensively too, which suits a college student's grocery bill and tummy simultaneously and nicely. well most of the college based eaters. just not my progeny.

as the flu has had its indelible  grip on me over this week... i have been relying on facebook too much for my entertainment. that and netflix. so now i am going through british mystery series for a second time. i know, a new hobby should be coming soon. i am getting a tad bored with my interests. also i am not all that excited about a lot of FB postings.  then again, i would be somewhere tropical if i could be right now... i should not be so cranky about my pals getting to go away for a break in the winter's back.

pinterest is a rabbit hole that i find myself easily falling into. no surprises there. what is kind of cool, is i am enjoying looking at some blogs i forget to check more regularly. i do enjoy the jewelry related ones as well as those dedicated to home style and repurposing junk. one of my go-to faves this week has been about all sorts of nutty embellishers and techniques relative to jewelry making.
http://fancifuldevices.blogspot.com/
the artist who writes it is full of vigor and experimentation and colorful commentary. i love it. it really shows how much grunge and great materials all worked in ways that one might not expect. the results are gobsmackingly pretty and rich and funky with a capital "F". also they are refreshingly original. a very nice thing these days.

so anyways. there were a few other things to be done while i was in the funk mode. slowly, they have been getting finished. perhaps i will take some clever photos tomorrow in the light of day.
a few charm bracelets, floral on leather cuffs, flower rings and other funsies. i need to finish this group  to mail out manana. i am in between naps all the time and they are a lot of what i see when my eyeballs are propped open.


anywho, my world is weird and it is time for yet another nap... aka bed for the night.

later  sweet potaters. 
xxoo. 
w.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

adjustments.

there are many things in any marriage that can keep it or break it. one of the keepers in my own is that as annoying as i find my husband, he still makes me laugh.
the annoying stuff is the crap like telling me something important before he goes to sleep or walks out the door to get somewhere important. i never have time to respond except as a shot from the hip. of course, he also leaves saltine crumbs in the peanut butter and only eats the center stalks of a head of celery so the ones peeled from the outside are wasted often. still we start and stop pretty much in the same place. he is a nice fellow ordinarily... but i have trouble adjusting to some stuff.

the other day, he said as he went to bed, that our son is interested in staying at his college over the summer. this is purportedly so he can work more months of the off college season. now i freaked out.
and as it would happen, my husband thought that i was nuts. my problem is in the timing of these little game changers that require conversations. he had been mulling it over since the early morning hours.
he also buys cars and trucks without discussions or participating input from me. i get it. he does not want me to sway his thoughts. evidently, i am the game changer more often than not. i have more info on the subject to make an educated response to things. the only real difference in this ability to get more info, is that i ask a lot of questions. i probe. i posit different ideas and scenarios. i want to have as much info to make a reasonable stand that i can live with forever. i kind of do most things this way. once i have decided, i pretty much don't change my mind. UNLESS more info makes for a better solution.
my wheels rarely stop the grinding process. it is not as if i am intractable... i just want to settle into something i can live with. i really dislike living with regret.

so the boy wants to live in maine this summer. i was kind of het up about this. and then i had my epiphany. ok, i rationalized it. when i went to college, i went to school a semester later than my peers. this was awful and it was really hard. i just wanted to go to a really nice school far enough away from home to make a difference. my family life had been so chaotic and full of crap up til then, that it seemed a safe and enjoyable solution. i came home from college for exactly two summers after that. it was as awful as i remembered it to be and i was always a rather independent critter. so graham will be on the cusp of being 20 yrs. old. i have NO idea why i am mentally keeping him at home with us. he is a total know-it-all and yet he knows so little. i have done my very best up til now and it was in my own opinion, pretty good. i only have my own experiences to rely on. so it is clearly all relative... (no pun intended).
i think he can be fine on his own, yet there has been so much expectation that i am bound to balk, that neither the ole dh nor my son wants to discuss it with me.
i might add that it is harder than usual to do, since i have a horrid case of laryngitis.

now this is along with my daughter working on her first co-op... timing-wise. she is traveling back and forth from Boston to New York City. she is so unbelievably happy with this new turn of events. most of her work will be accomplished in boston as she lives with her suite-mates and roommate. as things go, her partnered co-worker also hired through a series of interviews by the same people, is also her actual roommate. killer huh? so funny. she also has been working in food service for almost 2 yrs. at the same place. she has transferred back and forth from the providence and boston stores each time she needed to change her living/school placement. i am unsure if she is coming home this summer to live here with us again.  just when i almost got her to being a real live human gal. head smack.

so like i said, i am not one who rolls with the punches easily enough. i truly wish i could be more willing to let go. it just seems unfair that i do all this heavy lifting for so very long... and now i am saddled with a betta fish. none of the kids i labored over intensely and now i got the stupid hand-me-down fish instead. the one that graham brought home from college and left me with in sept.
how freaky is it that the fish is also named graham? gosh life is just too crazy for me to roll around with right now. maybe in another day i will be 100% confident of these changes.
after graham gets his health insurance instated as a citizen of maine.
and he gets a new driver's license through the state.
so perhaps if he gets his shit together i may be more relaxed.

as for the stuff that i am truly excited about, i have some fresh ideas for my 'new' line of jewels. not that it is totally "brand freaking new" but it is stuff that is changing as my own interests evolve. i plan on several new approaches and styles... but i also have been making some nice new statement necklaces.
it has been a really nice respite from what i was doing just before the holidays... since i was on a small hamster wheel those days. making things i KNEW should sell. now i am honing those items into seasonally appropriate palettes and styles.

bright resolve

 sentiments for kasey

spring fields

istanbul

granted, they may seem a little formulaic, but i had a great time putting them together. it is so much of what i would make more time to do before the holidays hit the fan. now i am going to keep making stuff like these as my new year's resolution.

anyways, thought i would babble on a smidge. i needed to get some stuff out of my head.

xxoo. 
w. 

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

happy new twentythirteen

i am almost resurfaced.
after months of participating in at least one crafty style show over each weekend since last june, the toll of it all has taken me apart. i have not been as tired for a long time. of course, the result of the movable store experience is that i had a chance to fill some custom styled requests and  fill in some etsy store sales as well as sleeping a lot. there was the big cahuna of time use...  called the children returning home from college. as an embellishment, there was as well as shopping for gifts or schlepping the kids around to make some holiday gift giving purchasing (as well as support it financially). surprisingly, i have managed to snag some cool stuff in brief sorties from my tables at shows. very interesting and handmade finds from these events, along with the actuality of cash in my pockets, allowed me to make impulse purchases for my kids, husband and friends. this whole experience allowed for the lessening of stressed out buying at my end.

as for the holidays themselves, they were delightful. thanksgiving was remarkably low key. it featured the annual kennel show which my kids and i adore. the dog is completely non-plussed by it all, but appreciates the opportunity to get special treatment in the way of oven roasted sweet potato chunks. the rest of us ate madly and enjoyed our meals... i think that they stretched for hours. just as soon as one of us finished a little something, another plate was pulled out to capitalize on another item emerging from the fridge or the oven. i will say, that having a ham instead of turkey is a huge and delightful stress-buster. no long tending of a turkey and all that entails is nice to skip.
my fave part of the meal,  was a homemade apple pie , still warm from the oven, with melty vanilla ice cream melding into its slices of plump apples and the creamy yet flakiness of a handmade buttery crust.

as for hannukah, boxing day and kwanzaa, they kind of took a back seat to some of the more time consuming two day holiday shows. christmas was a lot less crazy this year than past ones. husband had some stomach bug. he was tucked away in his bed so he could get well soon. that and hugging the toilet to keep the flu he had, somewhat contained, kept him segregated from the family.
it was nice and peaceful, in spite of his absence in the fray. later that week, the boy got sick and hubby did his big gifty unwrap... it seemed balanced in the level of inevitable craziness.

now we are in the midst of the eldest's first internship. it is a real first job. not the ad hoc ones that she has been doing to keep that tuition money coming in... and her ridiculously long tenure at Au Bon Pain... as she blithely calls ABP. she headed out to NYC to her first job as a digital artist. Luckily her roommate and friend Jen was also starting along on that journey aside of her. the inevitability of  start-up nerves and a need for fresh office-worthy clothes has also been dealt with as delicately as is possible during this period in spite of being fraught with seasonal excitability. i am really so proud of the girl. she has more gumption at her age, than i think i had at twice her age. it is truly as neat to witness as the miracle of when reading happened for the first time. i am thrilled she and all three of her roommates who are all beginning their own internships simultaneously, are able to keep their rooming situation intact also. so there will be some shuffling back and forth between Boston and New York City... but if they keep their heads about them, this will add nothing but a sense of accomplishment and maturity to their skill sets.

as for the others here, things after the vomiting and gift buying... (not at the same time) have passed, it is all sorts of relatively normal. i do not underestimate that delightful peace that may settle upon us as a cozy blanket. thank heavens.

now i am trying to figure out what my own new year promises.  the need to start planning for the upcoming year is raising its head. blech is all i can say. how do i balance what shows to do with how much they may cost? how do i decide on which ones were actually profitable enough or just barely vs. how much they cost to do? how do i integrate in the price of hotel time, foods support and other items against everything else about the shows?
this is all in contrast to the wholesale orders that my rep brought my way last year. i tried wholesaling at a variety of stores... some of this entire process. it was a very difficult year to predict. work came and went. orders came in droves and were non-existent. i had a gamut of relationship experiences with my rep as well as store owners. let's just say, the whole learning curve for the process was a huge straight line upward. it was harder to keep organized than i would have thought.
as for earning money in a regular manner, it was really nice. i enjoyed that. however, the ability to predict when and how much might be available dependent upon my work, was erratic as heck. it is hard to live a life without steady income... to pay for groceries, orthodonture bills, and all else needed to keep things on track.

as many things have changed, i have felt a great amount of personal growth. the need to deal with my own health has also played into the mix. getting my shit together is easier to say than do. just like it is for everyone else... still i am having a time trying to keep myself on track. the alternative is not good. over-indulgence in chocolate, may lead to horrific loss of circulation to my feet, kidney failure or significant heart disease. so it is better than not, to keep my need for sugar in check. in reality, my sugary need is just an addiction and i best keep that in mind. i really still want to do so much more in this life i lead.

while i am feeling much more happy and satisfied than morose, i have plenty to substantiate how nice and pretty my world has been this year. here are a few flowery highlights of the productivity from my work bench. 

mixed beady chain flower necklaces

beady chain flower necklace

kasey's necklace

gemmy bubblemania necklaces

mixed lockets without chains

mixed earrings and pins

cotswold cuffs

cotswold cuffs in the round

mixed flowers

bright resolve, 
a statement piece

plumstones

seven sisters necklaces

sheri's necklace

lighter fares

magnolia rose & pearls

drawer pull necklaces

thistle, 
a statement

heartful of blossoms

                                       

well that is a sampling of what i have been up to over the past couple of months. 

happiest of new years' starts to all of you out there. 

my plan is to try to keep more in sync with real life, real time and blogging as i start the fresh year. 
perhaps that is a resolution that is possible to keep. 


xxoo
w.