the week in shorts (brrrr!)

A long week, and too much to try to tell in one entry, so I'll cut it as short as I can go home and go to SLEEP, which is one thing I never seem to get enough of these days.

Things I'm happy about:

-Tom's daughter had an operation where they removed a benign tumor from around her ear and down her neck, and it went totally fine and she's ok. He took the waiting on Tuesday pretty well, althought the next day, he had a major back spasm and couldn't move one side at all...hmmm, I wonder if that's related. :| I should have t_ktl teach Tom some good yoga.

-My long-defunct quartet has started rehearsing again, with Geoff and Andrea replacing Rose and Dave who moved to the Cape three years ago. Tom H. is the arranger and manager and sings bass (we sing Scottish folk music). Our first rehearsal was Monday, to prepare for Burns Night, which is tomorrow. I think it will be rough but workable tomorrow, and there are more rehearsals although no gigs yet. It's going to take a while for the whole to become more than the sum of its parts, but that's to be expected. But when you sing in a small group, and it becomes that amazing synergistic thing...oh bliss, oh rapture!

-Burns Night is tomorrow.

-Barbara from the Whistling Crow (a nature-themed store in SF) came to talk to me about making jewelry for the wildlife rehab shows she goes to. She came in right when I was sitting in the co-op with my eyes closed, meditating on what the fuck I was going to do with my creative life this year, and just said, "hey, do you ever do wholesale...?" Talk about instant results from the universe. The kinds of designs she was asking me for lent some bubbles to my otherwise flat thoughts about same old, same old (I should know better than to THINK about new designs; all the best new designs really happen on the fly).

-I had an amazing walk in SF on Sunday night. It was right after the sun went down, and my mood was perfect for cold, twilight, fanciful walking. Very trippy without anything illegal consumed; all patterns and dancing sky energy and shadowlines. It's nearly impossible to describe if you've never actually been in that headspace, but if you can imagine or remember looking at "Starry Night" by Van Gogh for the first time ever and being totally wowed by it--that's kind of what it looked/felt like. Totally cosmic, dude.

-Good violin lesson on Monday

-Fun trip to Northampton on Wednesday with Morgan, as described previously. After the big city, we went to Target to buy stuff for the co-op and then to morris practice.

-An unexpected windfall of money: a craft show that I didn't go to in December because of a heinous snowstorm decided to send back the booth fee. Unheard of. And I need it to pay for the next round of shows, so I ain't complaining, but I was very surprised.

-Art class today was making sand paintings, which was a blast (no pun intended, really) and which I'd never done before. I love how parents and kids get together to do these projects and everybody gets something out of it on whatever level they're working. I'm also starting to warm to a few of my fellow parents. There's finally one dad in the class, and a little bit of easygoing guy energy seems to have seriously upped the relaxation factor among the other parents. Plus all the kids immediately decided that he was the one to beat on, so they're delighted.

Things that I'm not particularly happy about:

-Job. Stress.

-Wishing, again, that I could only work a little bit so that my whole week wasn't gone to shit.

-I had to literally drag Howling Wilderness Boy out of Artspace today because he was didn't want to go even after all the kids had left.

-Having to pull all kinds of financial gymnastics this month because I was sick for one WEEK last month, fer chrissake.

Other news:

Halfway to my parents' house yesterday morning, I became absolutely convinced I'd left the toaster oven on. Dropped G off, late for work, got to work, told Ann, she told me to go home and shut it off; I drove home, the toaster oven was off, then I had this rather ridiculous sequence of events in trying to leave the house that involved me going back in and checking OTHER things (is the door latched? are we having a chimney fire?). I thought, oh boy, I am seriously losing it. But then I decided I was going to stop doing all that shit, and I did and had a relatively normal day after that. Whew, it was exhausting, though.

Still reading _Quicksilver_, he's still smug, I'm still having fun with it, it's still a long book.

Deeper into _Darwin's Radio_ now, and loving it. Creepy biotech retrovirus genetic stuff, great science fiction and some interesting things to think about.

Wondering, as usual, how to make all the things I love fit into my life. But for now, it's off for home.