February Notes

Well, it has been a long, gloomy month in my neck of the woods. A few weeks ago, I broke down and invested in a SAD lamp for my winter blues, and either it really works or I'm highly suggestible. Okay, I am highly suggestible, but that doesn't mean the lamp doesn't work. Could be both.

Whatever's going on, I've only had one or two days of feeling lackluster and sort of "Oh, what's the use?" I think one of those days was because I hadn't been sleeping well, and the other was because I live with an adolescent who believes himself to be God or one of His close associates. You'd have to sit in front of a SAD lamp for days at a time, maybe years, to not feel depressed after dealing with a cranky teenager.

***

One of the great things about being a writer is that you can go down all sorts of rabbit holes in the name of "research." Recently, I've gotten very interested in quilting in the 1930s. It all started when I watched a wonderful PBS documentary called "A Century of Quilts: America in Cloth." Quilting took off like a house on fire after the Great Depression because it was something a woman could do that didn't necessarily cost a lot of money. Newpapers printed patterns and ran columns such as "Nancy Page's Quilting Club"* (Nancy Page being the nom de plume of Florence LaGanke). There were quilting bees and lots of contests, and you could buy yourself a copy of Needlecraft magazine for a dime.

Domestic history has always been one of my favorite areas of study. I like learning about how families lived throughout history, and what women's lives were like. I especially like reading about what women cooked and what they made. Last week I bought a couple of books about quilting in the 1930s, and both of them are chock full of amazing, beautiful lively quilts. Hard times, yes, but sometimes I think the greatest art is made when life is less than easy.

***

I'm about ready for spring, aren't you? Do you have any spring dreams? I think my spring will revolve around writing and quilt making. My mom and I are going to the big quilt show in Cincinnati in April, and I'm set to make quilts for the school director and the administrative assistant for Our Fine Lower School. 

 

This is our last year at Our Fine Lower School, and I'm feeling sort of sad about it. I went to a lunch at the lower school library last week for a visiting writer, and all the teachers there told me funny stories about Will and wanted to know how Jack was doing. It's such a loving, nurturing place, unlike Our Fine Middle School, which is a jungle. Okay, not a jungle. Maybe more like a big city where no one knows your name.

Anyway, I'm going to make springlike quilts and plant some flowers in my garden and look forward to May, when I can go strawberry picking. These thoughts, I hope, will carry me through the next few gloomy weeks. What will help you make it over to the other side of winter (or summer, for those of you suffering through the heat down under)?

 

*for an interesting video about Nancy Page, go here: http://vimeo.com/28386634

Lent, etc.

"To discover what you really believe, pay attention to the way you act--and to what you do when things don't go the way you think they should. Pay attention to what you value. Pay attention to how and on what you spend your time, your money. And pay attention to what you eat."

--Geneen Roth, Women, Food and God

***
So Lent begins today. I have decided to give up snacking--i.e. mindless eating. It's funny to think of snacking as a spiritual problem, but I believe for me that it is. It's eating as a way of not feeling--not feeling bored, not feeling sad, not feeling whatever feelings are inconveniencing me. Instead of lifting my problems, fears, and anxieties up to God, I hand them over to a box of Wheat Thins. I believe this to be a spiritually unsound practice.

Sometimes I snack to shore myself up through the making of dinner, the last burst of the day's activity before relaxing with a book or my knitting. Most of my snacking, in fact, takes place between 3 p.m. and dinner. It's like I need little pops of pleasure to help me make it through the day. If I were a smoker, I would be lighting up, but I'm an eater, so I eat.

I think it's safe to say that food is a crutch for me, and so this Lent I'm dropping the crutch and seeing what happens. I'll keep you updated.

***
My S.A.D. lamp just popped off, and now the room seems dark. I bought the lamp last week and have been using it since Friday. It's very bright, and the first day it gave me a terrible headache, so the second day I wore sunglasses. Then I read that it's all about the light going into your eyes, so now I sit in front of it unshaded, thirty minutes every morning.

You've heard of S.A.D. lamps, right? They're to help with Seasonal Affective Disorder, i.e. the winter blues. Is it working? Well, I can say that I've felt perfectly fine, even a little bit perky, for a good stretch, and we've had a lot of gloomy weather since I plugged in, so maybe. Or possibly it's the placebo effect. It may all be magical thinking. But I'm not moping around, and that's good, especially for February.

***
One of my teeth has almost straightened out! Well, actually, it was my only crooked tooth, and it's been that way since I was ten. Very strange, almost forty years later, to see it as God intended, a vertical little number to the left of my front teeth, not overlapping anything. My neck may be sagging, my knees wrinkling, my age spots multiplying, but my teeth are finally getting straightened out thanks to these confounded braces. I'm new again!

Winter Survival Tips

My latest quilt top--an Irish Chain.

Every winter is the same--two days in a row of gloomy weather, and I'm in a funk. This winter I'm trying to be proactive and practice the habits that keep me from getting too down. In the name of the sisterhood, I'm going to share some of them with you in hopes we'll all make it to spring with smiles on our faces.

1. A walk a day will cure what ails you. I start most of my mornings by taking Travis for a turn around the neighborhood. No matter how cold or overcast it is, there are always birds singing in the trees and plenty of beauty to go around. I've decided if I ever start a New Age Celtic band, I'm going to call it Wintervine. Branches make me happy, as does watching Travis in all his canine aliveness.

2. I'm not a Buddhist, but sometimes I play one on TV. When I'm in a funk, I try to do as my buddhist friends do:  Practice awareness. Find the source of distress. Chop wood, carry water. If my mind is going down a neurotic rabbit hole, which happens a lot this time of year, I make myself stop and sit down, preferably with a cup of tea. I say the Lovingkindness meditation ("May I be filled with lovingkindness/May I be safe from inner and outer dangers/May I be well in body and in mind/May I be happy and at ease), first for myself, and then for the Man and the boys and whoever else comes to mind. I breathe in deeply through my mouth and let the breath out through my nose.

After I'm done with that, I've usually calmed down enough to pinpoint what's really bothering me and come up with ways of dealing with the problem. After that, I go chop wood and carry water--which is to say I do the dishes and pay attention to how the warm water feels as it washes over my hands in their yellow gloves, or I practice being aware of the feeling of the stairs on the bottom of my feet as I carry up the laundry. There is something about paying attention to your own life as you're actually living it that's amazingly therapeutic.

3. If you can't make it happy, make it beautiful. I got this notion from Sam Wells, who was Dean of the Chapel at Duke before he left us to go to St. Martin's in the Fields in London last summer. "If you can't make it happy, make it beautiful" was the theme of the sermon he preached on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. He was talking about large tragedies, but I apply this to smaller sadnesses as well. Some days will simply be gloomy and sad, and there's not much you can do about them ... except do your best to make them beautiful. Clean the house, move the art around so you can appreciate it anew, make bread, work on a quilt ... And straighten out your altars. I wrote about this last year here, and it's still one of the best ways I know to settle my mind. There is something about uncluttered table tops that is a balm for the soul.

4. Remember: God is your co-pilot. Now, for those of you who aren't religious, or at the very least aren't Christians, you may think me quite mad when I tell you that one thing that lifts my spirit is pretending Jesus is in the car with me. There's a prayer I wrote down once (and now can't find anywhere) that begins, "Jesus, my good brother." So that's what I call Jesus in the car. "Jesus, my good brother," I say, and Jesus raises his eyebrows as if to say, "Hmm? How can I help you?" Then I ask him to keep us all safe and to keep me from despair and to make this a day where no children are harmed, and, while he's at it, if he could keep me from overdoing it with sugar, well, that would be nice, too.

It's very cheering to have Jesus in the car with you. If that's too much of a stretch for your spiritual (or nonspiritual) sensibilities, may I suggest imagining the Dalai Lama riding shotgun? I think he would be a boon companion as well.

5. Write notes to yourself and carry them in your pockets. Last week when I was feeling gloomy, I remembered Sam's story about making all your tables into altars, so I wrote the word "altar" on a tiny piece of paper and put it in my pocket. I don't know why it made me happy to carry around the word "altar" with me all day, but it did. I also write down bits of poems and Bible verses and songs and shove those in my pockets, too.

Those are the main steps I take to shake the winter blues. I also work on quilts and knit socks and dream big dreams of sunny days. And drink a lot of tea. It all helps, and when it doesn't, I go to bed early and remember that tomorrow is another day.

So what do you do to keep from feeling blue?

Friday Report

Travis, a delicate flower in his own right

It's Friday afternoon, or, more to the point, early evening (5:25). Outside the trees and the roads and the sidewalks are slick with ice after a lovely afternoon storm that sent down sheets of sleet. Fortunately, the storm seems to have passed, and with any luck it will warm up enough tomorrow to melt the mess away. Nonetheless, I rescheduled my 10 a.m. hair appointment, because who are we kidding? I am a southern weenie who spent four years in Massachusetts refusing to drive in snow. I do not get in my car if there's the chance I might skid four or five inches on a slick spot. I refuse.

Anyhoo.

My efforts to purge continue ... and I have found the most wonderful way to get rid of stuff! Have you ever heard of freecycling? This is where you offer stuff you don't need anymore to an online group (to find one near you, go here), and if someone wants it, they email you and you arrange to leave it out for them to pick up. All sorts of things are offered on the Freecycle Durham listserv, including, today, an opened box of Celestial Seasons herbal tea. Which, by the way, got claimed almost immediately!

The great thing about freecycling is you can say, "Listen, I've got a big box of Legos and Duplos and what-have-you-o's, and they're all in a big jumble and I don't have any sort of instructions for putting them together and at some point my then-four year old drew on most of them with magic markers; do you want 'em?" And as far as I can tell, someone always wants them.

Yesterday, I decided to put my toe in. I'd joined our local freecycle group a couple of weeks ago and had been standing on the sidelines, seeing how it all worked. And then yesterday, vacuuming the Man's study, I noticed the bag of fancy deluxe gourmet dog treats my mother-in-law gave Travis for Christmas. Now, it was lovely of her to think of him, but the fact is, Travis does best on a simple diet. If you get too fancy on him, his stomach rebels and then there you are, googling "how to keep dog vomit from staining your carpet."

So I decided to freecycle the doggie treats--and, Reader, it worked! I posted my offer around 4 p.m., and by 7 p.m. I had two takers. I emailed the first responder and we made arrangements for the pick-up. Then I put the treats in a Target bag and hung them from the rosemary bush by my mailbox. This afternoon I received an email that the responder had in fact picked them (I haven't ventured outside since the ice started falling at 2, so I had no idea). Done deal!

Freecycling, my friends, is going to be the answer to my attic prayers. All those doods and dads I would never take to Good Will because what on earth would Good Will do with them? Freecycle! The box of craft supplies (including four HUGE jars of glitter) from when I used to teach Sunday school? Freecycle!

It makes me happy that someone came up with this great idea--Freecycle!--and that it works and that we can find new homes for our old stuff. And it reminds me that stuff I might not find valuable (HUGE jars of glitter) might come in very handy to someone else. It's good to ask, right?

Have a great weekend! Stay warm! Or cool!

Tuesday's Just as Bad

It's another gloomy morning here in Winterland. I need to go invest in special "happy" lights to keep the blues away, or else go to the gym every single day for the bump in endorphins. Actually, this time of day, post-breakfast, my daily cup of coffee sitting to one side, my loyal canine companion snoozing on the other, is not so bad. The afternoon is when I need some relief from the overcast skies. Mostly I just wander around like an ancient Bette Davis in some haunted Southern manse ... there's a movie where she does that, right? I can't seem to settle on one task--work on a quilt, fold the laundry, make lunches. No, I just float around as though I'm searching for something I lost years ago, but I just can't remember what it is.

***

Last week I had my colors done. As it turns out, I'm a Summer. For the last thirty years, I've been under the impression that I was a Winter (if you're not familiar with the Color Me Beautiful system, you can check it out here). The Winter message says: Your coloring is crisp and distinctive. Winters are rich and intense in hair and eye color. You receive compliments in bold shades, black white, red and jewel tones. 

Summer? A whole 'nother country: Your overall coloring is the most delicate and understated of all the seasons. 

Summer is the serenity palette, so you should always avoid harsh contrasts by keeping the entire look calm and in complete harmony. 

You receive compliments in pastel shades of rose, periwinkle, sage.

Who knew? I'm delicate and understated. I can wear pale yellow. The stylist who did my color chart held up a light, light brown swatch to my face, and it looked fabulous. All that black I've been wearing for the last thirty years? Totally wrong (although it worked for the punk rock look I was cultivating back in the day).

So now I have to completely revise not only my entire wardrobe, but my self-image as well. All my life I've thought of myself as a brightly-colored bull in a china shop, and it turns out I'm a delicate flower. Lovely.

***

I went out to lunch with an old friend last week. She's someone I used to work with before Jack was born, and we've stayed in touch over the years, but haven't actually socialized much. She was definitely my favorite coworker back in the day, but as I was driving to meet her I couldn't remember if she was someone I'd just liked an awful lot--and I did like her an awful lot--or if she was someone I loved to talk to. You'd think I'd remember something like that, but I'm old and my memory's not what it used to be.

Here's the thing: there are people in my life I think are fabulous, but I don't actually have that much to say to. There's a woman I used to go to church with whom I adore--she's bright and feisty, the sort of person who actually lives out her values instead of just yapping on about them the way I do. I admire her and like her immensely. But the few times we tried to get together socially, it just didn't work. She's brightly optimistic, I'm darkly somewhat hopeful but also pretty pessimistic. She doesn't read much; I panic if I have to wait somewhere for five minutes without a book. She's an extrovert, I'm an introvert. You get the picture.

So, driving to meet Anne, I worried that all my fond feelings for her wouldn't actually translate into good conversation. Anne's very creative, but her background is in business. She comes from money, I come from the U.S. Army (my dad was career military). Maybe we would discuss the old days at work and then lapse into silence.

Well, I'm pleased as punch to report that we had a grand time. We talked about our children of course, and we talked about work. But we also talked about quantum physics and our wasted college years and the best recipes for deviled eggs. When it came time to go, I hated to say goodbye. It was one of the best conversations I had in years. And we didn't mention the old days once.

The best thing of all? I felt like I'd made a new friend. Who happens to be an old friend. Who happens to be as obsessed with deviled eggs as I am. Life is sweet.

The quilt I made for my SIL this Christmas. She liked it.

How's the attic purge going, you wonder? Well, admittedly, I've lost the teeniest bit of steam, but I have accomplished two things on my list: I organized the big plastic bin of DVDS (which probably shouldn't be stored in the attic, but so far they've survived) , and even more importantly, organized my wrapping paper bins.

Why is it important to have a neat stash of wrapping paper? Why does it feel so good to walk into my attic and see the wrapping paper rolls standing upright, all the gift bags nested together, the ribbons and bows tucked away in plastic bags? This is why people make fun of Martha Stewart, isn't it? For caring about neatly ordered gift wrapping supplies?

But, my dears, I can't help myself--I feel better having done these two small tasks, organizing the DVDs and the gift wrap. I feel like my life makes sense in this one tiny corner, if only there.

Anyway, if you open the attic door and look straight ahead, the attic looks neat and orderly. Just please don't look to your left. Please, no---arrrggggghhhh! 

***

I've mentioned that I'm volunteering the the N.C. Folklife Institute. Yesterday, I proofread a document that profiles traditional artists, musicians and crafts people from three of our northeastern counties. Interestingly enough, the profiles included a beekeeper and two cantaloupe farmers, expanding one's notion of arts and crafts in a way that I like. I learned that there's a cantaloupe festival every July in Warren County, and I could not be more excited. I would like to spend my summer trekking around to various fruit and vegetable festivals, wouldn't you?

Do you have interesting festivals or pageants where you live? Tell me about them! I love the idea of getting everyone together for a parade or a festival or the Miss Halifax County Hog Queen Pageant. At the New Year's Brunch I went to last week, I suggested we should have an annual neighborhood parade. We could all just walk around in a big group chatting, or else we could make the parade about something. The First Tomato of Summer parade, or a Winter's Finally Over, Thank Goodness parade.

***

Okay, I'm going to the gym. I don't want to go to the gym, but it's time to get back on that pony. Wish me luck! More soon, if I survive.

Yes, it's me again

See, I told you I'd post more often this year! Aren't I good?

I'm sitting in my study, which for the last month has been ground zero for Operation Christmas Madness. Today I spent several hours putting it to rights while the boys were as lazy as they could possibly be, tomorrow being the first day of the spring term. None of us is ready to go back--or at the very least, none of us is ready to get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning. It won't be pretty.

My study is a small, upstairs bedroom that for the most part serves as a storage area for my books and papers, though I'm thinking about making it my actual work space. Normally I write on the living room couch, Travis by my side, but after a very serious effort at finishing a draft in November, many hours a day spent hunched over my MacBook, my back protests at the very thought of sitting anywhere other than a proper chair at a proper desk. As it happens, my study has one of each--a chair and a desk--plus a comfy club chair on loan from my friend Danielle if I need to kick back.

I should take a picture of my desk, which I'm quite fond of, even if I don't ever work there. It has cubby holes where I put my mail--such as it is--and other bits of paper that I collect. Today I went through all the cubbies and sorted and recycled and generally made my desk look like the place where a girl could sit each morning and peck happily away at her computer. Sadly, I did not get to the drawers, which are filled to the brim with decisions to be made--should this paper be saved? Recycled?  Shredded? I try to be ruthless, but it's so hard.

Next up is the study closet, which is jammed with all sorts of nonsense, including several half-finished sweaters and lots of yarn ("wool" to you UK gals) that I will never actually use but don't know what to do with. I feel like my whole house if filled to the brim with things that we don't use but I don't actually know what to do with. That would describe 95% of the stuff in my attic. It's the figuring out the proper disposal which puts the kink in the system. I wish I felt okay about just dumping all of Will's Star Wars figurines and all the plastic flotsam and jetsam he's collected over the past five or six years. But I feel I should re-purpose it somehow. In fact, one idea I've had is to systematically box up every bit of junk--here's a box of Star Wars figures, here's a box of plastic building blocks--and then sell the boxes at a yard sale, cheap. One buck a box of fun stuff your kid will love. My guess is there are lots of families with little kids who would eat this stuff up. Food for thought ...

I know, I know, I've mentioned my attic, and now you're all snickering. "Oh, here she goes again, like she's ever going to get that attic cleaned out." But I proclaim that 2013 will be The Year of the Attic. My friend Amy has offered to help me with it in exchange for quilting lessons, and I might just take her up on it. I need to purge! I want to get rid of stuff and then--and here's the big thing--not replace it. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I say, Watch this space. It will happen, ladies. It's only a matter of time.