Saturday, January 26, 2002
in dreams ugh
I'm beginning to question my sanity.
Last night, while my body was fighting off the last of this virus (I feel great today, thankyouforasking.), I had a dream that I was looking at a web page with a 3-d rendering of a barbie doll made out of some kind of skinlike material. Oddly enough, I had one, and it was...how shall I put this...anatomically correct. Large enough and accomodating enough to put your finger in like a finger puppet. I chased Ben around the apartment with it in my dream, giggling maniacally.
I really think I should give up caffeine altogether. My dreams are just BIZARRE sometimes when I've had coffee.
----e
future resident of the
funny farm, obviously.
Posted by beth @ 11:34 AM PST [Link]
Friday, January 25, 2002
mail day
My FreeWords books arrived in the mail today. If I didn't feel so crappy, I'd be downtown putting them covertly in Elliott Bay and Border's right now. I thought I might put them in Left Bank, at first, but the whole concept of a book collective sort of does that free words thing for me.
I did get out long enough to walk down to the local grocery store. Pete's is down the hill, by the lake, so it's got that great rural waterfront feel to it (along with rural prices...yowch!), but it always makes me feel rugged and outdoorsy to go there. I'm not sure why, exactly -- maybe it reminds me of summers at the cabin in Minnesota or hanging out by the river in Fremont, or the summer days at the coast when I was older.
We've got snow here. Well, not -here-. But here in this area. The passes are supposed to be really bad. I'm a little worried about Ben, but that boy could probably cross-country ski his way back here from Canada and be perfectly happy.
Outdoorsy people scare me just a little bit.
I've been art-ing all day, as expected. "How To Alter A Book" is about half-done. I love that. I wish I had a library of all my stuff instead of just a few little finished projects here and there. I want to be prolific.
----e
Posted by beth @ 05:31 PM PST [Link]
Thursday, January 24, 2002
day one: woohoo!
Okay, despite the virus that seems to have nested somewhere close to my lung region, makingme cough like a freight train every few minutes or so, I've been pretty darn active today. This is probably because I'm -determined- to do something with all this time I've been handed like a gift. Four whole days to do whatever the hell I want to.
Granted, I've got errands. I've got to go over to the post office and get some of these IQ out there and in the mail or all this work will have been for nothing. I've also got to deposit a couple checks in my sad little account, and maybe buy some acrylic matte medium, if I'm feeling splurgey. I wanted to get over to the Turtle Arts store, too, to drop off 12 IQ -- even at a discount that's around $50 for me to play with, which makes me a happy little girl. (Then I -would- get the matte medium, and maybe even some green paint and packing tape. Mrrowr. Amazing how little things make me happy.)
There was a lot more I wanted to do today, but Jan, Ben's mom, dropped me a note and might stop by after work. She heard I was sick. Isn't that sweet? So I don't want to up and leave when she might be here and all. But I don't want to sit at home, either. We'll see.
I didn't have email all of last night and this morning. I thought our ISP was down, until I noticed there were no lights on the modem. I'd kicked out the cord without knowing, and almost drove myself nuts trying to figure out the problem.
Troubleshooting 101: Is it plugged in? Doh.
Okay. I'm going to the post office. I just decided. I should be able to get there and back before Jan gets here. I hope. I'd hate her to think I stood her up.
---e
sick and ALONE...
woohoo!
Posted by beth @ 02:32 PM PST [Link]
Wednesday, January 23, 2002
virii
I've come down with a virus. I'm eating echinacea like candy, drinking so much vitamin C that I'm about to turn into a giant pink grapefruit, bundled up in four different layers of clothes and blankets -- and I still find myself feeling crappier by the minute.
Oddly enough, I woke up with quite a bit of optimism going on. I got five full pages done in the Altered Book book I'm working on yesterday, and after Ben came home with a long-arm stapler as a gift, I got quite a few of the issues ready to go out when I can get to the post office without falling over. The energy spurt seems to be over, though, and the brain fog is descending. I find myself staring at the screen with no idea whatsoever what I just read, and not being able to make my hands work to handletter on the AB book.
Sigh. Sucks. Maybe this is the universe's way of telling me to get some rest after the big IQ push of the last week.
What -really- sucks is that I've got four whole, uninterrupted days alone coming up. (Ben's going on that skiing trip to Canada.) With four days of not giving a shit how my hair looks or whether or not I smell or whether there's dirty dishes in the sink or not....man, the writing I could do. I was hoping to have both the AB book(let) done and the creativity book well on its way to completion. Not so sure if that'll happen now.
Woo...I just realized that for the first time in 24 hours, I can breathe out of BOTH nostrils! Damn, echinacea rocks.
Any homespun remedies for the common cold that you swear by? Leave me a comment. I'm desperate enough to try about anything at the moment.
----e
snifflesnufflesnork
Posted by beth @ 11:24 AM PST [Link]
Tuesday, January 22, 2002
cleo ikea
Miss Cleo must have taken a job at Ikea.
I was looking around today, from my vantage on the floor while I was addressing envelopes, and kept thinking, "boy, when I get some money, I need to buy some kind of organization stuff to fix this ever-growing mess I've got going on." I beat myself up about not being able to find some of the few things I brought with me from CA -- I mean, it's not like this apartment is a rambling estate in the country. There aren't many places for my stuff to hide.
So I go out to the mailbox, and under a package of gorgeous art that someone sent me was an IKEA catalog. (*cue angelic chorus*)
All about organizers.
They're so good, they're anticipating your needs -as- you realize them now. It's Miss Cleo, I tellya.
---e
with organizing
urges to avoid
any -real- work.
Posted by beth @ 06:04 PM PST [Link]
sixty-one emails and a new community
Good lord. There are 61 emails in my box, all of which are personal letters that require a thoughtful reply (I flag those, and then procrastinate on writing them. I should stop flagging them in an attempt to trick my subconscious into answering much sooner than I do.). However, Ben's going out of town tomorrow for a ski trip to Canada, so I'm going to have loads of time to myself in which to play catch up and fledgeling writer for the next few days.
I just addressed the lion's share of the envelopes for IQ#5: The Self Issue. I carved a brand new phrenology head stamp for them (the other logo stamp's still in CA, of course, *sniffle*...), and I've got maybe ten envies left to go before I return-address them all and start stuffing. Well, actually, I have to wait until Ben gets home to start stuffing -- he's bringing home a beefy stapler since the one I stole from work doesn't seem to want to go through seventeen sheets of paper. But then I'll be stuffing, stamping, and hoping that people want to resubscribe.
In other creative news, I'm working on a small book about book-altering. It started out as a little offering for the people on the lofibooktrade list, but evolved, and now I'm thinking that if I can make it cool enough, I might offer it here on the site for a couple bucks, too. It's all hand-lettered and hand-drawn, 1/2 legal, and is coming out -really- cool thusfar. All the info you need to learn how to alter your own books and fourteen different techniques. I wish I'd had it when I started out. I just kinda fumbled around until things looked good.
I'm going to have about five days alone, while Ben's off being a snowbunny. I'm thinking that after I get all caught up, I might just either a) write the next IQ so it's out of the way -way- early, or b) take that as my five-day book-writing sojourn, and really hit it. I could, by all rights, have the thing done and ready to lay out by the time he gets home. A couple hundred book orders would make me a happy girl with a nest egg, no less.
It feels like there's a whole lot to say, but I can't think of what it is that I wanted to say now. Maybe it's because the CD changed or something -- does anyone else notice that, ever? How music can pull your thoughts in a certain direction, and when it changes, those thoughts veer off willy-nilly on a course you never, ever expected, never again to return to the same path? Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just easily impressionable.
Unrelated note: I may have found my biological parents. This is big news, but also kind of scary. I may be almost fifteen days older than I thought I was, which would also make me a Gemini instead of a Cancer, which would explain a WHOLE LOT. :) And I might have three biological brothers and sisters. How bizarre would that be? Insta-family. We'll see.
Okay, that's enough for now. You've probably all tuned out by now, choosing instead to watch the paint in the next cubicle dry. Sometimes the inside of a creative mind is about as chaotic as swirling Ovaltine in a glass of chocolate milk, isn't it?
-------e
on a creative
r a m p a g e,
which is
A Good Thing(tm, Auntie Martha)
Posted by beth @ 01:45 PM PST [Link]
