I’m back in the metal box.

There hasn’t been a recurrence of the Bigass Whining Drama/Post-Returning Breakdown Phase, which I’m glad about.  In fact, I’ve been about seven shades of numb instead.  Even after a couple of macchiatos, I was feeling like none of all this could reach me today — I’ve been completely productive all day as a result.  We’ll get to that.  But it’s been weird…like I never went away.  Like all of last week just didn’t exist in the regular timeline of reality.  Maybe I’m just not acknowledging it all yet.

But I promised stories, and yesterday’s day of returning was chock full of ‘em, so I figured I’d take a second or two to share them before they get too old.   Let’s start with yesterday, in chronological order, shall we?

*  *  *

Against my better judgement, after leaving Starbucks in High Point and making the quickest run-through at Common Threads of all time, since I’m kind of convinced that time runs differently when a knitter enters a yarn shop (no, seriously — I can swear I’ve only been there for ten minutes and the clock will say it’s been two hours.  We have words, me and the clock.  Usually over some Noro.), and found I had a bit of free time left before I had to go return the rental car.

And I had no idea what to do.

So on a whim, really, I pulled out the piece of paper that the lady at Starbucks had given me with the address of her (3 br!) house she wanted to let me rent, and her phone number.  I GPS’ed the address, and, amazingly…it’s, like, six minutes from the yarn shop.  With traffic.  Seriously.

I didn’t want to like it.  I kinda thought that if it was really bad, it’d make leaving a little easier.  Like maybe I shouldn’t be so all-fired in-a-hurry to think something’s all divinely inspired/synchronicitous (made that word up, I think.  Mine now.), and just have a nice cup of coffee and fly back to cow country glad that I’ve got a home at all, blah blah blah.

Remember that entry a few weeks back where I was talking about the little cottage thing?  The one with the red front door and the shutters and the forest out back and the garden and all?

Oops.

(Yes, the front door is white.  It’s paintable.)

It’s been standing vacant for almost two years, because of the owners’ reluctance to rent to anyone they don’t like.  I get that.  And they’re old, so maintenance just simply hasn’t been done on it.  So there are things that need fixing, and the lawn/landscaping needs some serious attention.  So does the carport.  And the back deck needs some help.  But it’s mostly cosmetic, and wouldn’t be all that hard for me to do on my own.

The bedrooms are kinda small from what I could see through the window.  And there aren’t wood floors — it’s a weird berber carpet stuff.  I’m okay with all that, too.  I can get other rugs.  I can paint.  I can get smaller furniture.  (Or any furniture, for that matter.  I need some anyway.)

But shutters, people.  SHUTTERS.

And better?  This is the back yard:

Not all that much grass, but a fence (for the dogs!), and SEVEN ACRES of woodland.  It’s not their property, that I know of, but OMG.  SEVEN ACRES OF WOODLAND.  I would LIVE in a FOREST.  A forest, mind you, that’s six minutes from one of my favorite yarn shops in the area (Gate City and Knit Picky being the other two, and neither of those are far away, either.), several blocks from a Barnes & Noble, a few more blocks from a mall (in case of holiday emergency), and less than a mile from Starbucks, which is almost like having your own personal drive-through, really.

Should I even mention that she wants to charge me $400 a month for it, or would that make you all rise up with pitchforks and light me on fire for even flying back to Iowa at all?

Thought so.  Forget you heard that.  The gel in my hair would go up like tinder, and I wouldn’t look good bald.

Just sayin’.

(And yes, I’m calling her on Monday.  Just to see how long she can hold it.)

*   *  *    *

Somehow, miraculously, having this option made me both less and more reluctant to leave yesterday.  Part of me wanted to stay, like always, but part of me felt…I dunno…comforted, maybe, because this?  Totally doable.  I spend more than that on coffee every month.  And if it’s as easy as just putting it all out there, saying I wanna move and the cottage appears?  Well…leaving didn’t seem quite as permanent.

So I wasn’t sad, really.  My brain still toyed with the idea of cancelling my return flight and calling her right away, but I really do have things I need to get done here.  Things I’d very much like to have with me if I move (and there’s the dogs to contend with, too).  And I kinda need to figure out the situation here before I go signing a year’s lease eighteen-hundred-miles-away.

I’m trying to be all grown-up about it, y’know.

I suppose all the squealing and such kinda kills that maturity thing, but really, I’m trying.

Anyway…

I had two flights to contend with.  I figured the first would be the hardest, taking me into Detroit on some dinky little plane.  I was in the back row against the window, and had wedged myself in with my knitting, when the guy sitting next to me growled something under his breath when he sat down.

Apparently, my laptop bag was over some imaginary line between my side and his, and he angrily shoved his camera bag into the overhead, muttering just soft enough to be indistinct over the engine checks.  I wrote it off, put down my knitting for a second, and looked out the window at the treeline before flipping open my phone to leave a last-minute message for a friend.

The seatmate snarled.

No, seriously.  He snarled.

I looked up.  He snapped something about the stewardess saying to turn off the damned cell phones (a direct quote).  I finished my message.  Sent it.  Flipped the cover shut and put it away.  I figured that I’d be really, really quiet for the rest of the flight, and inched just slightly more toward the window.  Wouldn’t want my aura to be over the imaginary line.  I wondered what I did to this guy, briefly.  Maybe I kicked his dog in a previous life.  I inched just a little further toward the window.

His rage seemed to be unfocused, however.  And it grew through the two-hour flight.  He snapped at the people in front of us, raised his voice at the flight attendant twice, and I really thought he was going to have a meltdown when they were out of tonic water during the whole passing-out-beverages thing.  I was kinda glad I was armed with pointy sticks.

Because of the curving of my body away from him, my back started hurting half-way to Detroit.  I took a tylenol and stayed quiet.  No sense in poking the badger with a stick, really.  But eeegh.

The plus side to this is that a) I got a metric ton of knitting done.  Like, almost a foot on the three-button wrap on the flight itself, a metric ton.  And b) I was too distracted to let the feeling of OMGLEAVING get too strong.  I watched the airport get smaller and smaller while we banked left, and might have teared up a little when the Triad got too far away to see, but I blame that on back pain from the S-curve my spine was in.

When we finally reached Detroit (after a NAIL BITER of a landing, lemmetellya — there was ice, and gusting winds that had us on one wheel, then the other, then back to the first.  We were all like ragdolls inside the plane.), he stood up angrily and pushed someone out of the way to get out.  That’s a man who seriously needs to take up yoga.  Or valium.  One of the two.  Jeez.

* * *

I had two hours til the next flight.  Which was good, since there was roughly EIGHT ZILLION MILES between my arrival gate and the departure gate.   (Furthest gate on Concourse C to furthest gate on Concourse B, for those who know the Detroit airport at all.  I’ve taken shorter hikes to get up the sides of mountains, and during those hikes, I wasn’t carrying five tons of laptop, knitting, and books.)

I stopped about half-way there, at the one smoking restaurant in the place.  It was packed, like always, and I picked up a pretzel and a coke, figuring that I’d be less nauseous if there was something in my stomach besides coffee for the day.  I perched myself at one of the counters, yapping away on the phone to a friend, and happily isolated myeslf a little to recover from the CrazyGuyAnger of the flight.

Half-way through my pretzel-of-doom, a kid flopped down beside me.  I was off the phone by then, and tried to busy myself with voicemail or something to look occupied.  Not that I didn’t want to talk to anybody, but…well…okay, I didn’t want to talk to anybody.  That feeling of dread was starting to build somewhere behind my sternum, and the thought of being back in the midwest was starting to choke my heart a little.  I really didn’t feel like sharing any quality time with complete strangers just on the shared connection of being a person with a nasty black-lung-ed habit.

The kid looked interesting, though.  Messy blonde hair with way too much gel.  Gauged out ears with yin-yang spacers.  All kinds of metal in his face — eyebrows, ears, septum, lips.  And he was tattooed from neck on down, judging from what was visible under his work shirt.  Bright blue eyes with remnants of some kind of eyeliner still in the lashes.

Sure enough, it took him about two minutes to speak up.  He was completely excited to talk to someone, I think, too, because my smile-nod-act-polite routine left an opening a mile wide.

He talked about his job (fixing scientific instruments), and about being on-call all the time.  About being in airports for long stretches of time.  (Apparently, he gets sent all over the place for his job, usually on a moment’s notice.)  About living in the Poconos, and his new tattoo.

He was just hiking up his pants to show me the new one he just got on his leg (a skull thing, just over his right knee, probably 8″ long…ow.  OW OW OW.), when he stopped short, pantleg still in hand, and said (I kid you not), “You’re pretty.  Can I add you to my Facebook?”

*facepalm*

Is this like the modern equivelent of asking for your number?  I’m SO FREAKIN’ OLD.

I just blinked a little and asked him what was this “Facebook” of which he spoke.  Figured a little feigned innocence wouldn’t hurt, despite the fact that I had to bite my own tongue nearly in half to keep a straight face.  He then explained Facebook to me and gave me a card with his email address on the back, as I made some excuse about needing to get to my gate.

Apparently, I’m hot to the tattooed crowd of youngsters.  (He was 23, by the way.  Twenty. Freakin’. Three.  I don’t even remember being twenty-three.  Welcome to Geezers-R-Us.  And no, I won’t link his Facebook.  And yes, I looked it up.  I’m old, not dead.)

*  *  *

Like I said, today’s been all about The Numb.  It’s kind of like a weird, focused Numb, though.  As long as I don’t think about North Carolina or its inhabitants, I’m fine.  I just do what I need to do.

Around noon, though, I had that feeling like I needed to get out.  Like the walls were closing in and the Big Sad was looming, and omg-get-out-right-now was strong.  Not being one to get out much, but also not being one to deny that feeling when it’s not-so-subtly beating you over the head with a wiffle-bat and threatening much heavier objects if not obeyed…I made a list, and got the hell out of Dodge.

And I ignored my list.  Just drove, mostly.  Ended up at….(cue angelic chorus)…the Apple Store.  Mecca for All Things Mac-Geeky(tm).

I went for two reasons:  First, because one of the dogs decided that my bluetooth was a light snack before dinner while I was gone (the Jawbone, no less, not the cheap one.  I take the cheapie with me when I go, because I’m desperately afraid of losing the good one.  They’re expensive.  Much more expensive, I might add, than the dog that chewed it up.  I’d take it out of her hide, but her hide isn’t worth that much. Grr.), so I needed another one.  And secondly, because I needed a new dock for the iPhone so this whole Forgetting It At Home thing wouldn’t happen again.

But as usually happens when faced with Mecca, the Apple Fumes got to me, and I might have started looking at MacBooks.

And as usually happens when I’m petting a nice little laptop, my credit card started subtly reminding me that I’ve been doing an awful lot of leaning on it lately, and if I was even so much as thinking about picking up a new laptop, I might want to take a look at that pile of fiber I just bought in NC.  Or the packages of sniffies that are slated to arrive any day now that I picked up just before I left.  Or the fact that I need to eat something other than Ramen for the rest of my life.

Stupid practicality.

So I might have leaned over and licked it.  The laptop, not the credit card.

Just a little bit.  I didn’t, like, drool on it much or anything.

That one, though?  Mine.  Mineminemine.  I claimed it.

* * *

After the Claiming, I felt a little better.  (It’s the taste of a Mac.  WHAT?!  Quit looking at me like I’m nuts.  Other Mac-freaks’ll get it.)  I dug into the list and ended up shopping at about a zillion different places for a new desk (I need a grown-up desk, not made of particle-board and chewing gum.), and settled on a darkwood, very simple desk, matching chair, three-shelf unit thingee, and rolling filing cabinet that nestles underneath one side of the (freakin’ huge) desktop.

I pick it up tomorrow, if it ever stops snowing here.  There will be pictures when it’s here and placed.  Before-and-afters if I can screw up enough courage to show y’all the full depth of my disorganization.

In a way, I’m looking at it as part of getting out.  Grown-up furniture.  Something not as temporary as what I’ve got now.

Something mine.

Just like my life.

* * *

There’s more, both from yesterday and today, but this is freakin’ long, and I’m getting tired.

Suffice it to say that it’s been a day — a week, really — full of stories.  Some short and isolated, some still being written.

Building blocks of a life in progress.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’m still using the phone to update — forgive any weird predictive text errors.

I found a wifi spot, so I’ll update more tomorrow. It’s been a long, event-filled day worth retelling, but it’s too much to tap out single-letter style. I’ll be writing it all up tomorrow at Coffee & Roses in High Point instead.

Well, provided there isn’t more icy death from the skies. They were predicting 3 to 5″ here, which is apparently a huuuuuge amount. (in Iowa, we call that “a dusting”, but I get it. Seattle’s the same way.). I may be hibernating in the hotel tomorrow for an entirely different reason.

Either way, for those that knew of the impromptu trip today, I’m home, I’m safe, and I beat the snow. (And it took only a miraculous two and a half hours to drive back here from where I was. Made awesome time.)

Wish us all some warm, snow-free thoughts.

It’s been a few days, I know. Sorry for that, y’all.

This hotel claims to have wireless, but the Mac isn’t connecting, so I’m having to tap this thing out on the iPhone. (I love this thing, but for heavy-duty typing, it’s not my favorite tool.)

To be (necessarily) brief, I’m full of words right now. It’s like there’s something really huge coming, either on the horizon or in my head, and I can’t see it yet, but there’s just a ton of things I need to do first, and they’re all two days past due.

I’m hermit-ing in this hotel room in the meantime, licking some imaginary wounds and getting all the spiritual cramps worked out. Sometimes that’s with some concrete planning, sometimes it’s with really out- of-character-for-me sobbing, but it’s working out.

I’m okay with that, really.

When things wanna move, apparently they will really move, on all kinds of levels.

A better recap (and pictures) when I can find a reliable wireless connection.

SMUT, the Valentine’s Day ‘09 collection by us over here at Happy Housewife just went live, a little bit early. (I’m so tired that I probably won’t make it until midnight, so y’all get a few extra hours to peruse.)

If you missed all my earlier ballyhoo, this is the collection I’ve been working on for a few months now: 16 scents, all based on those mid-century tawdry bedside pulp novels…with names like “Too Hot To Handle” and “Scandalous!”. (And yes, I admit that I giggled the entire way through finding the descriptions and coming up with scents to match. Just awesome. I love my job.)

So stop by. Buy some perfume, and get your inner Wanton Wench revved up and ready to go.

* * *

I’ve been running around for a few hours now, packing and booking hotels and buffing myself to perfection. (Well, okay, as near perfection as I get, which is decidedly unperfect at the moment. But I’m all smooth and glow-y from the sugar scrub, at least.)

It’s the packing that’s making me a little crazy.

See, I have this uniform that I wear. Like, every day. Not like a uniform-uniform, but the same general clothes. And I’m so not one of those clothes-girls that when I find things that fit and don’t look all that half-bad, I tend to buy multiples. Long-sleeved button-up shirts. Black pants. A couple pairs of basic shoes with varying heels. That’s it. There’s my whole closet, other than a couple t-shirts, and some ill-conceived pink shirt thing that I thought was kinda cute. (It wasn’t. But it’s nice and cool in the summertime, so I keep it.)

Anyway, I’m packing all of this and realizing that I AM THE MOST BORING PERSON ON THE PLANET. And better, that people that see me a lot must think I never change clothes, ever.

At least wash days are easy.

And I know I match. Which is a concern when you’re too busy thinking about relational character databases to give a flying monkey’s ass what you look like. Just sayin’.

* * *

Speaking of Steve Jobs (which I didn’t, but he’s got that whole uniform thing going on, too, so it sparked the thought), did you see that he’s stepping down from Apple until June to get that hormone thing under control? Leaving the COO in charge (which, I am sorry to admit, I always pronounce out loud as COOOOO, like a dove, and it makes it very hard to take these poor operations guys seriously, even though they’re far more competent than I’ll ever be if I live to be a zillion years old *and* suddenly sprout a whole bunch of IQ points), and a whole buncha Apple investors really, really nervous.

There’s only one Steve.

Someone linked this video of a commencement speech he did at Stanford in 2005, and I’d never seen it until today.

Wow. Go look, if you haven’t seen it. I’ll wait.

(puts on the Muzak…)

See what I mean? The man’s freakin’ amazing.

That whole part about connecting the dots when you look back at them? That’s totally what I was saying a few posts ago. At the time all these random things were happening, I had precisely Zero Clue what I was going to do with all of these weird and varied interests and skills. None. None Clue. They were all just random dots on a very large piece of very white paper with seemingly no connective threads. (I mean, really….interactive/experimental fiction and random studies in how the senses affect one’s brain chemistry? And political science/law mixed with how to tell the difference between sixteen brands of coffee just by smell? And a bizarre interest in why people buy things they do? And, and, and…? Like ANY of that seems to have much of a connection. Or it didn’t at the time.)

But all those dots lined up in a weird pattern that defines my life now. That feed into what I’m doing and fuel it. That spark off completely random and creative tangents that change the way I look at things versus the way everyone else approaches them.

Steve’s a flippin’ genius.

* * *

I need to go get the rest of my (seventeen completely identical) shirts out of the dryer and get the rest of the technology packed up and ready to go for tomorrow.

Plane leaves at 10 a.m., and you’d better bet that I’ll be on it.

Eight full days of temperatures that aren’t preceded with a minus sign, good friends, and a whole lot of Just Me Time.

Can. Not. Wait.

Some days, I’m like a woman on fire.

I don’t sit down, I don’t slow down, I don’t stop.  For anything.  The house could be slowly filling with poison gas, and I’d tell the hazmat team to wait for just one more second while I finished writing that next description or blending that next scent or answering that next email.  (Or the knitters’ eternal lament — just wait until I finish this row….)

I check a lot off the to-do lists on those days.  I get a whole lot done.

Not all days are like that, though.

Today, the story’s about another kind of day:  the kind where I can’t even get out of the gate.

With, effectively, one more day before I’m on a plane, one would think that my inner engines would be on overdrive.  And one would be right, were this a normal day.

But every so often, it’s like there’s an emergency brake lever somewhere near my ocular nerve or something, and boy howdy if someone didn’t yank that sucker today.  I started off strong, picking off quite a bit of what was in my head *and* what was looming in iCal and Toodledo, and got all hopped up to get to writing, since that’s primarily what’s left.  (That, and editing.)

And the words just would not happen.

For nearly three hours, I sat in font of a nearly blank Pages document and typed the same sentence, over and over again, deleting it every time.  My brain was a giant mass of fog, and I was freezing on top of it all.  (It was -3 here again this morning.  By noon, we’d hit zero and were all in shorts and t-shirts having picnics on the front lawn, happy to see the potential for positive digits in the temperature, but noooo.  Stayed right around zero all day long.  High tomorrow is fourteen.  Degrees.  Four. Teen.)

It seems like I go in cycles sometimes.

IDEASIDEASIDEASBIGGERIDEAS….planningplanningplanningnote-takingplanning….DOTHINGSDOTHINGS.

Which, really, is misleading, because it implies that it’s linear.  It’s not.  The IDEAS phase will hit me right in the middle of taking notes, or I’ll be doing things and an idea strikes, throwing most of everything all outta whack for a few hours while I get that up to speed.  I do a lot of thinking during the day, which, I fear, looks a lot like slacking.  (I even call it slacking sometimes, when people ask what I’m doing.  But know this:  I don’t slack.  I have slack days sometimes, where I consciously disconnect, but even then, I’m usually thinking.)

Anyway…

Lately, a whole lot of projects have been all coming to call, all at once.  (Feast or famine, I tellya.)  The Intention Yarns Circle starts in February.  The Spring/Valentine’s Day update for Happy Housewife is going live tomorrow.  The new thing that can not be named for Happy Housewife needs to kick into high gear within a few days, if I’m going to get it done by the end of March, which is when I want to have it beta-ed.  There’s personal stuff that’s taking an inordinate amount of mental energy and oddly-difficult maturity that I haven’t called on in years.  Lime & Violet is difficult to schedule for, and when we record, I’m a little exhausted lately due to the OTHER stuff going on.  And there’s this job that I haven’t talked much about yet.  And other stuff.  Lots and lots of other stuff.

In order to do any one of these things right, I need to focus on it, and only it, for a day or two.  Get myself on the same page as, well, me.  Put the coals to it all and see what burns off.  That kind of thing.

And I don’t have that kinda time.

Which is every bit as constant and repetitive and cyclical as the process of coming up with projects has been.

I think I might be at a point where I have to admit I can’t do everything.

And here I was so sure I was Superwoman.

I’m sure the key to all of this is to find a schedule that works for me, in conjunction with some kind of plan.

I’m dubious of plans, though.  Every time I make one and get into the habit, something explodes.  Sometimes literally (oven, anyone?), and sometimes figuratively (appendix, anyone?).  And I know that, when things like that hit out of the blue (which they always do), the only thing I can do is get back on the horse, get back into the routine, and try to concentrate on repeating the good habits over and over until I’m back on track, or ahead of it, even.

But that’s all much easier than it sounds.

I collect things.  I have multiples of things all over the house.  Little bottles of perfume.  Books.  Skeins of yarn.  A pen collection to rival Imelda’s shoes.  The Handknit Sock Brigade.  (There were more, but I did finally let go of the postcards, most of the Art Stuff, and all the notebooks, so there’s progress.)

I also collect ideas, and I’m not all that good about maintaining the constancy and perseverence to get them all put into play.  There are only so many balls I can juggle before I start whacking passers-by in the head with them, and I really hate doing that.

Following that analogy, then, it’d be better for me to figure out what I don’t want to continue, or what isn’t serving me anymore, and edit those balls out of my rotation on purpose, rather than just dropping them all and trying to pick ‘em up again one at a time.

(I know, my analogy’s a little hard to follow from a perch outside my own brain.  Hey, at least it’s not a poodle analogy.  But you could, I suppose, imagine I’m juggling poodles instead.  It’d probably make a more entertaining visual actually.  So there.  They’re poodles.  Bad haircuts and all.)

So maybe, before I start in with the constants and the repetition, I need not only a plan, but a major editing.

Figure out what’s both productive and happymaking, on a consistent basis, first.

I’m planning a whole string of what I’m referring to as Retreat Days while I’m out in NC this week.  Time outside.  Time at a foreign desk on the laptop with none of the other Stuff around to distract me.  Five very specific things that need to be done for various projects-in-progress, and at least one very in-depth look at how I’m doing things, at my own processes.

I’ll know more then about which collections can stay, and which will move on.

*  *  *

Tomorrow, I’ll likely be exceedingly wordy or completely silent, since I’ll be packing like a crazywoman and trying to patch up any last-minute leaks before I hit the plane on Thursday morning.

I’m nervous, oddly enough.  I’m afraid this is the last time I’ll have any time at all for some months (which is true, really), and that Things will Come Up, as Things tend to do, and I won’t get back.  Or that Things will change, as Things also tend to do.

Things have a mind of their own, oft-times.

I just found me again.  After several years of keeping that little squishy-self in a jar, I found said jar behind the couch and I really don’t want to lose it again.

I’m synthesizing too many things.  One is not dependent upon the other.  Just the same train of thought, rolling all-too-fast down a very tired track.

Today should come with a do-over, so I can try again to get it right, and not get in this little mind-maze in which I seem to have put myself.

I just want to feel like it all matters. Like I matter.

Like I’m not just a collection of collections.

This morning, furious snow blew in from the North. It blustered and accumulated and left everything white and pristine.

By noon, the brief respite was over, and it came back, this time from the South, and the warmer southern air stuck a layer of white on the opposite sides of things.

By three, then, when the wind changed again and the snow fell for the third time, angrier and more quickly, bringing along with it sixty mile-an-hour wind gusts and drifting snows and white-out conditions…well…we were pretty sick of snow. There’s not all that much of it, but what’s here is in the air and drifting on the roadways, and all kinds of things are cancelled.

It’s a good night to stay in, find a blanket and some popcorn, and pop in a movie, or curl up with some wool. Something. Anything that’s away from the (obviously insane) Mother Nature and her icy breath.

* * *

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – H. D. Thoreau

When I was a kid, I wanted to be, in chronological order: a nurse, a teacher like my mom, some sort of fashion designer, a novelist, a herpetologist (snake scientist…hey, I was a tomboy), a journalist (which endured through most of junior high), a novelist (yes, again), an archaeologist (ala Indiana Jones), some kind of professor of religious studies, a Playboy Bunny (and/or supermodel, but sadly, I was an inch too short for either of them), back to being some kind of snooty political journalist, a lobbyist, a lawyer, and back to a plain ol’ writer, of any stripe.

My twelve-year-old self would probably look at me now and give me a huffy little sniff for doing what I’m doing now, in fact. My fifteen-year-old self would tell me I got old and stuffy. And my twenty-one year-old self would roll her eyes and wonder why she was studying so hard if I was just going to go and get myself plastered by the rear-view mirror of a Monte Carlo and lose everything she was learning anyway. (And might go get plastered with the rest of the sorority instead of reading and working all the time, actually.)

I never really intended to end up here. Certainly not for the things I ended up here for. Pulitzer prize fame, sure. Knitting podcaster that talks a lot about boys and boobs? Not so much.

Everything has built on itself, though. I wrote all the way through school, and relatively well. I learned a lot about corporate culture from college, and just enough politics and law to be dangerous to myself and others. Starting IQ gave me a whole lot of insight both about marketing and publishing. All the classes, while using everything I learned before, built a whole lot of organization into everything. And L&V has used *all* of that, plus a bunch of new stuff about a whole host of things I never thought I’d have to know. And without L&V, I wouldn’t be doing what I am now.

Really, my work-life has been as meandering a path as my life itself.

I can’t decide if that’s from a lack of focus, or things falling into place exactly where they’re supposed to be, so I could end up here with just the right skillset to do what I’m doing.

I’m leaning toward the latter, since I really love all this. There are things I wish I could change (don’t we all have those?), and things I wish could be easier, or things I wish I could do more or less or better…but this life? Wouldn’t change it.

Well, at least not where work’s concerned.

Maybe I never did become a snake scientist. (And I can’t say I’m all that unhappy about that, either. Just sayin’.) Maybe I won’t have the Aqua-netted hair of of Murphy Brown and an office in New York. And God knows I’ll never be a Playboy Bunny, unless those come in a geriatric version. (Yeah, I’m squicking, too.)

But I write every day. I get involved in local and national politics. I live life with my hands in wool and a blank journal never more than five feet away, and scent is every bit as much a part of fashion as clothes are, really.

I do what I love. What I’ve always loved, in that little, squishy, unchangeable part of me. It wears different faces, goes by different titles and vastly different pay grades.

Maybe it’s the weather and the cocoon I’m in tonight (literally — I’m cocooned in a mountain of blankets to keep warm, with only my face and the very ends of my fingers poking out so I can type this up.), but it seems to me that I’m very lucky to be where I’m at, doing what I’m doing.

Really, it’s not work at all. It’s getting paid to be who and what I am.

I can’t imagine it any other way.

* * *

I talked to my mom tonight.

Like usual, there was the litany of the relatives’ medical procedures and family scandals, which, by the way, I absolutely adore about talking to my mom. I get nervous if I call and nobody’s had any surgeries or injuries, because then I know the world’s just saving it up and the next time I talk to her? All my relatives will have been hit by a bus. It’s just how it works.

Tonight, though, she told me about my brother’s bronchitis and the huge pills they gave him (five! hundred! milligrams! I didn’t mention the ones they had me on last time. The 1200mg monstrosities that would give the vast majority of women yeast infections just from standing too close to the bottle. Now THOSE were some hefty ‘biotics.), and in the same breath, I got the sigh.

“Do you remember your Aunt Marsha’s brother…? The one with the kids and the guitar that time at the wedding…? Mike…?”

I sat back in the chair. Here it comes.

“He died.”

blinkblinkWHAT?blink

The details were vague (for my mom, who often knows in detail, and often repeats those details in a hushed tone, as if she can’t say them fully aloud or the C-word will find where she’s been hiding all these years), but apparently, there was some kind of gall bladder infection that went septic, and while they induced a coma, in the end, they couldn’t save him.

This hit me more than most of the health (or lack thereof) recitations for two reasons: 1) because there but for the grace of God go I (that appendix thing was pretty close to being an outright tragedy), and 2) because he was pretty darn close to my age. A few years older. Not by much, though. (The guitar at the wedding thing? Until someone told me he was my uncle-in-law, I was all crushed out on the hippie-guy with the nice voice and the guitar. Of course, I was also, like, nine at the time, but that’s beside the point. I think he was only seventeen or eighteen then. Still out of my age range, but really, not all that much older, in chronological time.)

The time we’re here, on this earth, is so short and so unpredictable.

It’s sad that it takes something like this to remind me sometimes to be grateful for every second.

But I am.

Even for moments when I’m all alone in a blanket cocoon, covered in dog hair and half-read books and half-knit projects. For all the chaos and the struggle to do things differently and itching to grow faster than I think I’m ready for.

I’m still reminded, one way or another, to occasionally acknowledge the grace.

Merry Christmas, folks.

I just got back yesterday from what turned into a 28-hour-trek across the country in a rented Caliber (in bright monkey-ass blue, no less) from the middle of North Carolina back to Iowa.  For those who follow this saga elsewhere, this is the second time I’ve been there in just about as many weeks (been there two of the past three weeks), because honestly?  I got home and realized that Home had up and moved on me when I wasn’t looking.

There’s been that subtle perception shift thing going on in my life for the past 18 months or so.  As things have heated up, business-wise and personal-life-ish, I noticed some similarities in the things I was looking for by going Home.  (Anytime “home” is capitalized, folks, you can pretty much assume I mean Seattle, not the metal box in Iowa where I live.)

I found that I wanted a few things:  good friends….mountains…a creative atmosphere…a sense of familiarity.  Something.  Things, though, that had very little to do with a specific sense of place, and a whole lot more to do with more abstract concepts.  Sure, I love the Seattle skyline.  I love the weather.  I love the way you can bike anywhere.  A whole lot of the people.  The water, the sky, the trees.

But it’s not specific to Seattle.  Not the stuff I REALLY want.

I’ve tried, in the past months, to apply that to where I am now.  I really did.  I focused more on the people here than anything else, since (just being specific and honest here, no offense to anyone who finds the plains inspiring, which some *do*, I’m sure), the landscape is much less inspiring for me than, oh, say, an empty cardboard box.

It just didn’t *fit*.  I’m allergic to everything.  The weather literally makes me ill.  The politics freak me out.  The people I know *rule*, but OMG THE CORN.  (I’m allergic to corn pollen.  Literally.)  And the pesticides.  Migraines, anyone?

I need me some mountains.  I can deal with temperature fluctuations and pollen if it means I can still stand somewhere and look up and see the earth all around me.  Trees and green instead of corn and yellow.  It’s just better for me.

Enter North Carolina.

It was kind of by accident, really.  I had other business in Greensboro, NC.  (Big stuff, can’t talk about it much yet.  But big and unrelated to any of this brain nonsense.)  I had plans to fly out, stay in a hotel and meet a few people, do some Lime & Violet meet n’ greet-ing with some folks, and fly home.  I fully expected to think it was nice and all, but no Seattle.

Oops.

After four days, I kinda fell in love.  With people, with the drawl, and the relaxed feel, and the neighborhoods, and the trees.  I extended my trip for four more days.  (And found out there are something like six HUNDRED letterboxes, just in the Greensboro area ALONE.  I kid you not.  The mind boggles, considering there are just over 50 in the entire *state* of Nebraska.  Seriously.)

I flew home with some trepidation.  I mean, really — here I was, cheating on my Home with another place with trees and mountains within driving distance — and I didn’t care all that much.  I hadn’t had the time to develop the iron hooks in my brain the way I had with Home, but I was definitely feeling the infidelity.

Less than a week later, while sitting here in -3F temperatures (no, seriously.  The HIGH for the day was NEGATIVE THREE….), missing some people and freezing my ass off, I made a deal with myself:  Finish the Valentine’s Day LE package for Happy Housewife (ironic, that name…), and I’d get in the car and just *go* for a little while.

Three days later, I was here:

Just between the Tennessee/North Carolina border, with both windows down, feeling the mist of the morning curling my hair, speeding along at 70 mph toward my geographical mistress.

Houston, we have a problem.

It’s cheaper than Seattle.  Housing is less than half what it would be at Home.  I have built-in friends whom I already miss.  I could finally scale back my life to a reasonable level, get some external office/lab/studio space and continue L&V remotely.  I have a new job on the horizon, starting soon(ish), which isn’t geography-specific.  I have some big things coming up, but nothing that isn’t movable based on *where* it’s done, just *when*.

I do have some things I *have* to do first.  I need to clean up the rest of my life here, which is much easier than it was a year ago  (I got rid of so much stuff, people…seriously, here.  You have no idea.  *I* still have no idea.  Huge severings and shuffle-offs and big reality checks resulting in way less physical encumberances.), but is still considerable.  I need to get some things in order so that systems can be put in place to make everything easier.  I need to do some seriously strategic planning so I can balance everything, should I go in that direction.

To be a hundred percent transparent, too — I’d be doing this alone.  Take that as you think I mean it, because you’re probably right.  I’d be on my own again at 37 years old, and that’s a little scary.  I’m used to the Crazy that is my life as it is, even a move toward something less painful and difficult would be a big scary change, so I waffle.  A lot.

Not that I’ve ever backed off a challenge before this.  Especiallly when it comes to geographical changes.  I’m less prone to moving to a new state just because it’s Tuesday these days, but a lot of *that* comes from having so much stuff anchoring me to one place at a time.  And two weeks in hotels, living with literally a suitcase and an office-in-a-bag has shown me in a real, concrete way that all the Stuff is just that…*stuff*.  I can get by with not-so-much of it, and still be happy and creative and productive.

How you do anything is how you do everything.
T. Harv Eker

I tend to live like I knit:  I start things, try on projects and lives for a while, get a feel for them and see if it’s something I want to commit to before I dive in with both feet, obsess until it’s done, and love the finished object with all its mistakes and flaws, all the while trying on other things for size, just to cement the fact that I’m in the right place/time/project for me.

I cast on North Carolina in early December.  Memorized its stitch pattern and the feel of the fabric.  Compared it to both reality and the ideal.

And I think it’s a project I want to take on.

I had other plans for this entry.  The Eker quote, above, left me a little freaked out at the way I tend to do small things and how it reflects the way I do big things, but honestly — that’s not where my mind is.  I’m in a state of redesign, refiguring the stitch counts of my life and the yarn I’m using to make this crazy blanket, and really…there’s no point judging the finished object from a swatch.

2009 looks like it’s going to be onehellofayear.

I was putting off writing this, thinking that I’d get some pictures for y’all to go along with all the words that are swirling around in my skull.   The Iowa weather, however, had other plans for today, and we’ve been getting little balls of ice falling from the sky by the bucketful, and no light of which to speak.

*sigh*

Mother Nature wins again.  She often does out thisaway.

So settle back for a pictureless journey with me.  My brain’s on overdrive, so it’s likely to be long and kinda rambly (as are most of my entries), but I promise, it’s worth it.  At least it’s worth it to me.  (And I might try to find a picture or two anyway, just to spite Ma.)

This past weekend has been one of the most productive of my life.  And not because of the sheer amount of stuff I’ve created (which isn’t really all THAT impressive — a dozen or so scents, all the descriptions, a new plan on how to do some things), but because I had a few of those moments where I could sit back and just *observe* my thoughts, watch them swirl around like the wriggly things they are, morphing and changing and getting clearer  and more colorful as they’re watched.

When I’m creating anything, I go into a kind of trance state.  Which sounds far more impressive than it really is, I’m sure.  It’s Flow — that state of creation where the conscious mind shuts off, the critical voice is silenced and the self is removed, and all that’s left is the You that’s in there in the center and whatever it is on which you’re working.  Ideas flow through, your hands move of their own accord, and you seem to know what to do by intuition alone.

I love that state.  I *need* that state to feel like I’m whole.  When I can’t touch that state for any length of time, part of me shuts down, and I get nervous and self-conscious, like some kind of imaginary wart’s appearing on my forehead that talks to people when I’m not looking.  OH HI THERE, I’M ELIZA’S IDEAS THAT SHE’S NOT ACKNOWLEDGING.  PAY NO MIND TO THE ELEPHANT ON HER FOREHEAD.

(Wouldn’t you just love a picture of that here?  Stupid weather.)

For the past six weeks or so, I’ve been utterly blocked.  I’ve been calling it in when I sit down to the table to think up some new scent or design some new thing or draw some new journal entry.  I’ve shown up to the page, so to speak, but the Flow hasn’t been there.  I blame a lot of that on stress (there are a lot of things going on behind the scenes here at Chez Violet, some good, some scary), and on a sense that something new was coming around the bend.

I’m one of those people, mind you, who needs to know how things are going to turn out.  I’ve been known (she says shame-facedly) to flip to the back of a novel to make sure it’s not going to end badly, and movies with no real conclusion piss me off.  I’m not good at situations where I’m not in control to some extent, even if that’s just the control over how I react to it all.  And with this sense that something big was coming, but no idea what it was or how I was going to deal with it all?

Yeah, frozen.  Like Han Solo in the Carbonite.

(yes, that waves my Geek Flag high and proud.  Hush.)

I know what it is now, that change that was a’comin’.  I still don’t know how it’s all going to play out, or even what it’s safe to hope for at this point.  But just knowing that much, that little bit, was enough to unlock things for me this past weekend.  I was reading a passage in a book of quotes, and the Inspiration struck.  My eyes glazed over, and my brain turned off, and the motions were in…well…motion before I could even blink the glaze away.

Twelve new scents, two new series beginnings, a metric TON of ideas, and a whole lot of decisions and clarity later, the day closed at 4 a.m., talking deeply with people I adore.

This, my friends and blogbuds, was a Very Good Day.

* * *

In the days since (there have only been two), the creative dam’s breaking has done a whole lot for my brain.  Flow’s there again — I can feel her behind my eyes when I see a color I love, or read something inspiring.  And the energy’s back, in droves, bringing along with it a whole lot of unforseen realizations.

For example, I started cleaning out the physical space I’m in again.  I’m a stockpiler of things that represent potential to me (yarn, or books, or office supplies, or magazines…that kind of thing.), and it was to the point where all my Potential was becoming a potential fire hazard.

In doing so, I found that I have THE LARGEST COLLECTION OF SEATTLE CRAP EVER.  Which isn’t all that surprising, given that I’ve been holding onto the thought of going home with a vice-like kung-fu grip, despite the fact that I’m here.  I realized as I was throwing away used bus transfers today (USED BUS TRANSFERS, PEOPLE…) that in doing so, in holding on and clenching down so rigidly against the reality of *today*, which, of course, is Iowa…I’ve been cutting myself off from a whole lot of things.  Six years ago, I hit the “pause” button on my life while I came out here for a visit, and forgot that the CD was still spinning in the player.

As a result, I haven’t let anything touch me.  Not really.  Here and there, things got through, of course.  But by pining for this situation that, clearly, I don’t have right now and won’t have for the forseeable future for a whole lot of reasons (not the least of which is that I just *can’t* go back while things are in such full-swing here), I’ve stuck myself in this time capsule that’s rigid and unyielding, and when life’s offered opportunities to me, I’ve only gone after them with half a heart, because the other half is somewhere near Mt. Rainier, whining that it’s not 2002 anymore.

I am *profoundly* grateful for my life and my experiences.  I wouldn’t be who I am right now if I didn’t have them.  And looking forward, I know that my life only gets better from here, even if there are wrinkles and strange twists and turns involved.

But I know now that I need to let go of an outcome.  Stop pausing that CD, so to speak, and let the music play on, even if it’s not the song I was expecting or hoping for.

Seattle will be there.  My mountains will stand, no matter where I am or who I’m with.

It’s time to let go of all the past and move forward with an open mind and an open heart, and let my life Flow as much as my creation does.

It’s not an easy lesson, and certainly not a quick one for me.  But I get it now.  I get it, and I’m ready to start shedding the stuff that held me in place for this long.

The wind just keeps on blowing.

I keep taking all these blog breaks without really meaning to.  It’s not like I’m not busy, it’s not like I don’t have a metric TON of stuff to talk about, and I have the time, really.

I think I just get blocked every now and again when it comes to the written word.  There’s this kind of wall somewhere in my brain and all the words get all backed up behind it, like water behind a dam.

Of course, then it breaks, and OMG I’M SO SORRY IN ADVANCE for all the babble.  Just sayin’.

So what *have* I been up to?

Still making with the soap, obviously.  I should be, by now, the CLEANEST PERSON ON THE PLANET.  (Which isn’t always true — I’m usually covered in oil and dye and dogfur and Crazy.)  Instead, I keep putting them up on the shop so OTHER people can be all squeaky.

These up here are Hot Process, which is something relatively new to me.   It’s the same thing as my regular cold-process, honestly — the only difference is that you cook the oil and lye mix in a crock pot or double-boilerthing for an hour or so, and it accelerates the saponification process (turning the oil into soap and getting rid of the lye) so much that by the time you spoon the glop into the molds, it’s SAFE TO USE.  I could, for all intents and purposes, take the hot soap glop and rub it ALL OVER ME without ANY fear of burning myself from the lye.

Not that I wouldn’t be one giant blister from the hot soap glop, mind you, but it wouldn’t be a lye burn, at least.  :)

I’ve got two shelves sitting aside right now, waiting for me to get labels on them and letting the fragrance in them settle a bit.  (big shelves, too.  Huge.  Lotsa soap.)

Best of all, Magical Omaha wants to wholesale all the Happy Housewife stuff now, which is a giant squeemoment for me.  For anyone who isn’t into the Sniffage, MO is one of those places that has only the best stuff, and gets a LOT of traffic, both in-store here in Omaha, and online.  All the sniffie-girls order from MO, so it’s a HUGE customer base.  I’ve been thrilled for weeks over this.  It’s GIANT for me.  GIANT.

I’ve also been knitting a bit during my radio silence.  The February Lady Sweater (of which no pictures exist yet) has a full body now.  Working on the arms.  Not sure how it’s going to look on me yet, but I really love the yarn (malabrigo, duh), so it’s been fun to work on.  Soft and squishy, just how I like it.

It’s all part of that big Finish Something push that I’ve been on, I think.  I’m going through something — I’m not sure how to describe it, really.  There’s a change a’coming on the horizon and I’m not sure what’s down that particular tightrope.  (says the girl of mixed-metaphors.)  So I’m just standing at the end of it with my arms open wide and waiting to see what happens.

I’m open to change.

Wow….this has been fully unfocused, hasn’t it?  Catch-up posts always are, I suppose.  There’s so much ground to cover that I can’t get all in-depth the way I like to be.

Maybe now that the word-dam’s broken a little, I can trickle out some better puddles for  y’all.

(Did I mention it’s supposed to freakin’ SNOW tonight in Iowa?  SNOW.  As I read the news earlier, it was almost seventy degrees outside, and I balked, but now?  Temps are dropping like a stone and the skies are getting black, and the rain’s starting to fall.  I’m not doubting it as much now.  Hooboy.)

Okay.  Wordpuddles.  I’ll work on some puddles this week.  Promise.

Thanks for being here, y’all.

A few weeks back now, a friend of mine sent me some polished rocks with a story.  They were from Seattle, had been carried back to the midwest, and when she inherited them, been polished by her and some of them were mailed to me.  I squeed, a lot, and then arranged them on my desk in an arrow facing west.  Figured it was a nice reminder of which way to go when things get squidgy around here.

I kept looking at them, and this one, with its mottled greenness and one flat side, kept asking to be picked up.

(No, I’m not THAT insane…er…yet….but it was the one that felt best in my hand, with a space for my finger. :>)

Figured I’d make it into something to carry with me to remind me of home.  A couple of pieces of 26-gauge wire and six beads later, there we have it.

Do I even need to mention I haven’t taken it off yet?

And in windfall-type-news, yesterday, a listener and new friend sent me a package of four ginormous rocks from just downstream of Mt. Si — the first mountain I ever climbed, and probably my favorite place out there.  Other than Denny Creek — that trail’s *hard*, but so worth it, too.  She sent pictures from where they were taken, and I can *almost* smell Washington on them if I put a drop of water on ‘em.

I think I might be a little homesick.

Or just itching for another road trip.  (Despite the fact that, as I get older and older, the prospect of two days in the car to get there is becoming less and less appealing.  I’m impatient and I get tired quicker than I did ten years ago.  Go figure.)

Maybe I’m just looking back to try to find a missing piece of my heart somewhere.