life » creative.mother.thinking

Sitting, waiting, wishing

Jul 282011

I spend a huge amount of my day sitting around and waiting. Waiting for my son to leave for school in the morning, then waiting for my husband to come to breakfast, waiting for my son to come back from school, waiting for work to start, waiting for students, waiting for phone calls, waiting for the time that I finally have time for myself, waiting for that miraculous space in my head that will enable me to make art at last, waiting for the weekend, waiting for Monday, waiting for my life to pass by.

Waiting for the time I lose weight, waiting for the time I suddenly get a grip on my life, waiting for the night so I can get some sleep – the list goes on and on.

And while I’m waiting I’m sitting in front of the computer, reading blogs, checking e-mail, reading and writing on ravelry, checking twitter. I sit there and tell myself that later I’ll surely do something productive, finish writing that knitting pattern, play the piano, sing a bit, finish sewing that skirt, edit that story. And then the next student comes, and I teach, and part of me waits for the lesson to be over, and then comes the time I’ve been looking forward for hours, the one hour of glorious free time that I have all to myself, and I’m all set to do, whatever, one of the things that are so important to me, only first I’ll check e-mail, and twitter, and ravelry, and then I have to go to the bathroom, and then I get hungry, and then there are only ten minutes left, and there’ll be another glorious opportunity, two hours later anyway.

It’s not that I don’t get things done at all. It’s just that a lot of my time and energy goes into the internet equivalent of watching soap operas. And all the time I fool myself, I list the things that I achieve, and it sounds mightily impressive until you see me sitting here on this chair all day long, looking into my monitor.

“I don’t have time for that.” I say. And I’m right in a way but in a different way this is like my son telling me that he has no time to pick up his room because he has to watch his favorite show on TV. Because there are only 30 minutes in an afternoon, aren’t there?

So for quite some time now I have been fighting this feeling that I’m just waiting until my life is over. Until my husband is dead, or my son has moved out, or something. It’s like I’m waiting for some magical transformation of my life, and then, at that point, I will emerge from all the waiting with my life suddenly just the way I’ve always imagined it.

I started to meet with a bunch of other women who meet every other week to help each other reach their creative goals. The last time I went there I told them that it’s not the time that I lack. It can’t be because I have two hours each day to waste on the internet. And one of them said, “Only two hours? But weren’t you the one who put a timer on her router?” Yep. That was me. The timer cuts me off from the internet between 10 pm and 8 am. I also disabled the wireless so I have to be near the ethernet cable to go on-line. Still, that leaves me with a lot of hours to spend sitting in front of the monitor, doing nothing productive.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the internet, and e-mail, and ravelry in particular but the question is how I feel after a day of checking in with my imagenary screen-friends, when I haven’t sung or played, or written, or picked up my bedroom.

So each day I try again, I kick myself in the butt, pick up after myself, exercise, do something productive on the computer, tear myself away from the screen to live my life here, in the moment, right where I am. I turn the computer off, I pull the ethernet cable out, I carry my laptop to the kitchen where I can’t connect to anything but myself. And then I hope that this day I will manage to spend my time with something else but sitting, waiting, and wishing.

(I know that “Sitting, Waiting, Wishing” is the title of a Jack Johnson song, and when I first heard that I instantly thought that line describes my life very well at the moment. I did have to look up the lyrics, though (not the chords by the way, interestingly I know those almost by heart by now) and the rest of the song does not have much to do with me.)

Sunday evening

life No Responses »

Jul 242011

It’s gray outside, and almost raining. I bet this was the rainiest July in decades. It has also been the busiest July, and I can’t quite point my finger on a reason for that.

I’m feeling completely exhausted with one more week to go until summer break. I hope next week will get a little less busy.

These days I’m even too exhausted to knit or spin much. Or blog.

As usual it’s only a lot of small things. Bake a cake, go to a party, bake another cake, housework, students, teaching, exercise, move things from one place to another, meet people, meet some more people, talk to people on the phone, talk some more.

I’m really looking forward to summer break which is probably a mistake because I usually don’t like summer break.

On the bright side I’m reading lots of books, I’m exercising, I’m making music every day again, the never-ending turtleneck of doom is growing. I’m even thinking that I might finish it some day.

I think next week I’ll post the last story I wrote.

I know there’s a reason why I usually only post pictures in July but this year there was such a lot of rain.

See you.

WIPs around the house

crafts, creativity, life 4 Responses »

Jun 212011

So today I went to meet a bunch of women who help each other reach their respective creative goals. The meeting was very nice, and helpful too but I got a little embarrassed while introducing myself as, “I’m a musician, and a music teacher, and I write stories, and I have a blog, and a podcast, and I knit, and spin.” because it always sounds like I’m accomplishing so much. And who knows, maybe I am, and that’s why I always feel so overwhelmed.

And then somebody mentioned the book “Refuse to choose” that I read some time ago, and that reminded me about how I have wanted to do a map of my house showing all the works in progress that lay around everywhere. And since I don’t usually draw I thought it might be fun to take pictures instead. And then I thought you might like to read about that, so here we go (and since this is a very, very long post you might want to grab a cup of tea or something):

I started at the desk in my studio/office. This is the first sock for my soon to be ready for purchase sock design “Meadow Abstract”. I’m currently knitting the second sock, correcting errors in the pattern, and hopefully soon, I’ll translate the whole thing into English. (Underneath is some tax stuff, and random paperwork.)

Left side of the desk we have guitar tabs for “Road Tripping” a song I’m currently learning to play on the guitar.

This one was sitting in a bag right on top of my desk but it does look better like this, doesn’t it? It’s my current spindle spinning project. The fiber was dyed to go all through the rainbow, and I’m trying to preserve the colors while spinning.

On top of the spinning shelf inside the lazy kate there’s a ball of handspun Merino waiting to be swatched for a sweater, and underneath that some weaving that my son did, that I still need to hem. Don’t mind the green yarn on the bobbin, that’s not a project.

Too lazy to pull that out of its bag, here you see in the front my current wheel spinning project, also in the paper bag some red silk that I started spinning but don’t care about at the moment, and some cotton sliver that I started spinning on a suspended spindle. I don’t consider this a real project because I don’t care if I ever get that finished or not. It’s just for practice.

Big, huge, next spindle project. This is actually a sweater waiting to happen. My huge, big, scary project for July. (Two pounds people, two pounds of Corriedale.)

Piano. With some random sheet music. Playing the piano has been an ongoing project of mine since 1979. Still not finished. Probably never will.

Potholders to be. We’re down to only one pair so I bought some yarn today. After taking this picture I put it in one of the yarn storage boxes in the bedroom.

Pile on top of the stereo speaker: notebooks with stories waiting to be typed into the computer and eventually be published somewhere, book I bought to read for a book club that I never got around to open, and underneath the “Zen of Screaming”-DVD that I have been wanting to work with for about a year or so. Already watched it twice.

Stack of paper next to the computer: “How to make your own deodorant“-recipe that I printed out to have it ready for when I go to the health food store next time.

Next up the former guest bedroom, now the place where we watch TV:

Underneath the table there’s a basket with all my leftover sock yarn in it. Well, most of my leftover sock yarn. This will eventually be a blanket. Now to the bedroom:

Denim skirt to be sewn. I actually finished drafting the pattern, and cutting out the pieces on the day before we left for vacation but some time in the afternoon I finally listened to my husband’s advice, and didn’t try to finish it at all costs before leaving. It really only needs sewing by now…. (And no, I’m not a tidy person. This is draped over two dressers, actually.)

As I said. Underneath this mess is the dreaded mending pile. You see: the box the denim came in, the stuffing for another project that I’ll show you later, the finished sample for my soon to be released “Celtic Summer Sock”-pattern (need to fix errors, take fetching pictures of socks on my not-so-fetching feet, translate pattern into English, and such). Under those are my husband’s beloved Wollmeise socks that have a big honking hole in them, some brown yarn for a sweater I’m knitting, and some handspun Wensleydale. I don’t like the project I made out of it, and now I don’t know whether to rip or not.

Shawl waiting to be blocked.

Socks to wash by hand, table runner to be ironed to get wax out, apron to be ironed.

And off to the kitchen:

Green thread to sew the binding of my green corduroy skirt (that I have been wearing for ages) to the skirt itself.

Spindle with the part of the rainbow fiber on it that I’m currently spinning. Books to read on the kindle, episodes of Buffy to watch. (And lots of things to put away, oops.)

My corner of the kitchen bench in bad light.

Books and magazines that live on their own shelf next to the kitchen bench but I thought it would look better if I spread them out a bit. I have been trying to finish reading “Shadowrise” for ages, and the task is no less daunting for the fact that there is yet another part of that story to read after this one. I’m almost through with both spinning magazines, and some of these days I’ll educate myself about color in spinning so I can start dyeing fiber as well.

Spider sock in progress (lives in the red knitting bag).

Second “Meadow Abstract” sock, see above (orange knitting bag). Yes, my knitting projects are color-coded.

Mossy turtle in progress. That’s the project I need the stuffing for. Not all of the stuffing, mind you. It lives in the beige knitting bag that lives in the green knitting bag but that’s only temporary.

Beginning of sock yarn blanket. That I haven’t worked on for about two months. After taking this picture I transferred these bits, the crochet hooks, and the pattern to the knitting basket shown above.

Never-ending turtleneck sweater of doom. I have been knitting this thing since 2009. I’ve even started writing a song about it. I once was almost at the same point as I’m now, only the thing was too big. Now, after more than 1 1/2 years I’m finally starting to knit a sleeve. I need to calculate the rate of decreases now so this will only take a few weeks or months at least. For some reason I never get around to things like that.

After taking this picture I thought I had found all the works in progress but then I remembered. And went back to the bedroom:

This innocent looking broom handle will eventually become a backstrap loom. I now have everything I need.

Another project, I call it “Let’s get Susanne back in shape.” These are my running shoes.

For recording. This is a podcast waiting to happen, also improvisations waiting to be captured.

Four novel manuscript waiting to be finished. Well, okay, three because I don’t like the first one, and will never do anything with it.

Novel waiting to be edited.

You still with me? No wonder I feel a bit overwhelmed. I think I shouldn’t really start anything new soon. What do you think?

Back from our annual trip to my parents

family, life, travel No Responses »

Jun 202011

We spent last week visiting my parents in Northern Germany, and I thought you might like a few impressions from that trip. The weather wasn’t that gorgeous but we only got rained on once or twice. We were unusually active that week, went to the pool twice, borrowed bikes from an aunt of mine, and had a little bike tour on the day before leaving. Of course that was the day it rained but we only got mildly damp so all was well.

So we went to an open air theater and saw a production of Pippi Longstocking:

My mother’s roses on the living room table:

Our son got to play with my cousin’s Lego train set:

And my mother’s garden full of roses (I have a thing for roses but I’ll spare you the other rose bush pictures):

At the place where my parents live (not where I grew up but where my mother grew up), there’s a genuine castle on a hill right at the town center:

Castle entrance:

Inner entrance (whatever it’s called):

The keep (I think):

Courtyard:

Different view:

Where you get your tickets (we didn’t go inside this time):

Castle with sheep (You know I had to take that photo don’t you? And no, I don’t know which kind of sheep this is or where to get the fleeces, sorry.):

Castle from the other side of the hill (I know it looks as if there were a forest but there’s actually a park a bit further down):

And that’s it. I didn’t take the camera with me on the bike ride, I didn’t take any pictures while playing mini-golf (my son’s first time), and I totally forgot to take pictures most of the time.

Now I’ve one week left before resuming regular teaching, and I really hope to pop in here once or twice in the near future.

Just a quick hello

crafts, life 1 Response »

May 262011

As you might have guessed I’m busy, busy again – nothing new.

I wanted to write about vacationing at home some more, put up a story or two, and tell you all about how I’m failing my “one goal for the year”. And I will, eventually. For now I’m helping my husband prepare for a house concert, He will be playing here at our house tomorrow evening, and we’re getting everything ready while doing our usual teaching and stuff. There’s also a friend of mine visiting whom I haven’t seen for years and years. And I’m planning my knitting classes for fall. This is the picture I took today for my “Knitting perfectly fitting pullovers”-class:

See you.

Vacationing at home

family, life 1 Response »

Apr 212011

After a busy sprint towards Ester break we’re now enjoying a somewhat more leisurely pace, my family and I. Now usually at the start of any kind of break I tend to freeze, and get paralyzed with choices, and plans, and such, and this time I thought I’d learn from past mistakes and make the transition a little smoother.

We also, usually, tend to make big plans for projects of all sorts, and then in the end, spend all our time off work and school at home, each of us in his own room, doing things alone. Which is quite enjoyable but then we do like to spend time with each other as well. Even if we sometimes need a little reminder.

So this time we started Easter break even before it had begun by thinking about what things we’d like to do, and possibly when. And fit those things around the appointments that were already made in advance, like my writer’s meeting next week, and my husband’s rehearsal, and important soccer games that have to be watched on TV, and also out wedding anniversary next week. (I’ll be out that evening, at the writer’s meeting. Yes, it’s alright, I got clearance by my husband, and I plan to go out with him some day next week instead.)

Last Sunday we went on out first bike tour for this year. There was a sheep shearing fest at a local museum farm thing, called Jexhof. There were also quite a few handspinners there, representing the local guild. I have recently become a member but have never been to any meetings. So we unearthed the map with all the bike trails, looked up how to get there, decided we’d go late in favor of eating lunch at home first, packed some cookies, water bottles, sun screen, sweaters, and in my case a spindle and some fiber and set off.

When we told my mother-in-law about our plan she nearly fainted. For some reason she thought the museum was so far away it would take us about two hours to get there. Um, no, only a little more than an hour. That’s what we had guessed when looking at the map, and that’s how long it took.

The weather was fabulous, sunny and not too hot. I found that I get easily out of breath when biking uphill due to my asthma but recover very quickly. It’s still a bit weird to me, all the people we meet see a not-young, over-weight woman riding a bike, and gasping for air at the slightest molehill, and I’m the only one who knows that I’m actually quite fit. But I sure don’t look like it.

When we arrived at the historic farm there was a huge crowd. Everybody had brought the children to see the sheep being shorn. We went in anyways.

My son then went to climb trees and do other important things, while my husband was happy to sit in a quiet corner, away from the crowds, and I went to look for the spinners who were sitting in the other part of the yard where the café and most of the people were.

I actually did know one of them, a regular from the other spinning group I belong to, so I stayed and chatted, and watched sheep being shorn, and answered questions of the people passing by. “Look, that lady does crochet!” (No, she doesn’t it’s called spinning, dear.) that woman I knew before even gave me a big wad of Falkland top, very nice and soft and smooshy, and when I ran out of fiber I gathered my family, and we rode our bikes back home.

Sorry, I didn’t take any pictures at all. I’m a bad tourist. Still, it was a great day, very nice bike ride, and it felt like being on vacation for real.

Sunday report

life 1 Response »

Apr 102011

And another sunny day here, I’m getting pretty spoiled, haven’t had to wear socks throughout the day for days on end now. (Weather report say we’re due to get low temperatures and freezing nights again starting Tuesday.)

We did mostly household chores like stripping all three beds which reminded me that we don’t own enough sheets for all of them. We need an extra duvet cover for my son’s bed because we gave him a bigger one than he had before. Having to sleep in the sleeping bag was averted, though, by doing the laundry quite early, and now everything has dried in the glorious sunshine to be put back on the beds again soon-ish.

I spun for about 40 minutes, and I read a bit, and I went for a walk, and I even played the piano for a short while, and now my husband reminds me that I had wanted to play guitar today as well which I’ll better do soon, before it’s time for dinner.

I was also asked about what my favorite kind of chocolate is, and all I could come up with so far is, “It depends.” And so I have been pondering what kind of chocolate I like, and why, and how to categorize that in a way that another person could choose something I like, and it all has become way too complicated. I can’t even say if I like milk or dark better because it’s all about context, texture, and flavor. And there is a place in my heart both for very expensive and fancy dark chocolate and cheap candy bars. Nothing with liquor in it, though, I like my vices separate.

The thing is, I tend to think way too much about what I like, and why, and how to tell in advance because with all things – music, clothes, color, food – I keep meeting people who tell me, “If you like that you will like this.” and then I don’t. And then they point out that it has everything I said I liked, and they are right but I still don’t like it. And this puzzles me. And makes it really hard for the people I love to find suitable presents for me.

It’s like with colors. One can’t usually go wrong getting something for me in orange. And blue is always a bad choice. Unless it isn’t.

So I keep looking at things and thinking, “Why do I like this, and don’t like that? What is it about that that I like, and about that that I dislike? But then there was this other thing that I liked even though it has that quality that I usually don’t like but that time was different, but why?”

And I know that I’m over-thinking things – as usual – but I thought some of you might relate.

School Trip

life 1 Response »

Mar 312011

Today I went on a school trip with my son’s class. We went to visit the somewhat local newspaper. Though I took lots of pictures I can’t show you most of them since you can see so many children’s faces. But I thought this one was safe. On our way back to the bus station we also looked at a very pretty old church. This is a St Leonhard’s church for the patron saint of horses:

The children are all looking at the gorgeous ceiling to find saints that they know:

All journaled out

changing habits, life, lists, self-help No Responses »

Feb 142011

In my quest for self-improvement I have started quite a few journals: morning pages journal, food journal, practice journal, exercise journal, gratitude journal, writing journal, control journal (for housework), tarot journal, weight journal well, I think that’s about it. Oh, and a notebook to capture my project ideas, and then I also have a general notebook, and a knitting notebook, and a small notebook to carry in my purse, and another one next to the computer. And a record of books I buy and read. And a notebook to jot down musical ideas.

I also have to-do-list software. Then I found myself, after running, checking “running” off in three places. And then I thought that my journaling had gone a bit too far.

I started to record all these things in order to measure improvement. I wanted to achieve certain goals and I started of actually measuring whether I achieved them or not. Otherwise one can think that one exercises at least three times a week only to find that, oops, a week has gone by, and then another. That’s all very valid. I also love my morning pages, so I sit down and write them almost daily. And then I don’t for a few days, and then I go back to them. No problem.

I do love putting my exercise time in my calendar, and with the toggle of a button I can see all the days that I exercised in one place, and then I feel all virtuous.

The food journal, that’s another thing. I have started writing down what I eat many times in my life. And I started again on January 1st. At first I was all good, but then I missed a day here and there, then a whole week, and now I find that I’m really not all that interested in keeping a food journal. I don’t count calories or anything. I just write down “1 piece of toast with almond spread, 1 glass of orange juice, 1 cup of black tea with 1 piece of sugar”. Of course food journaling can help when you want to know what’s going on but I don’t need to write down “ate a whole bag of potato chips because I was bored and angry” to see why I have gained weight. There are people who eat better when keeping a food journal, I’m not one of them. I have food journal entries laying around the house from years ago that go, “Was completely pissed and therefore ate a bag of chips, one bag of gummy bears, half a chocolate bar, and two beers. Feel lousy and bloated. Half an hour later: finished the chocolate.” (Just typing this makes me nauseous these days. I think I have come a long way.)

So I try to be good with the food journaling but what’s the point. It helps to show me that the treats I give myself are not exactly treats because they happen just about every day. These days I’m rather good with food, mostly, and so I will skip the food journal.

But you know, every time I write a paragraph here I remember yet another journal of mine, and add it to the first paragraph. It’s clear that the record-keeping has gone out of hand. I’m not quite as insane as that list of journals implies, though, because there are quite a few of these journals that I no longer keep. But right now I’m on the verge of giving up on record-keeping altogether. These journals were meant to be helpful for me, not something to occupy me all the time. I think I might get rid of one or two.

It’s not like I bought about twenty notebooks one day and thought, “From now on I’ll record everything!” I just bought a morning pages book in 1999, well the first of many. And I’ve had general notebooks even longer than that. I remember going into the one big store in the small town where I lived until 1986 to buy a notebook because my life had reached a level of complexity too high for keeping it all in my head. That was about the same time that I started using a calendar as well. Until then there was the family wall calendar for things like doctor’s appointments and that was it.

Let’s see – the morning pages stay because I like them. Having several general notebooks makes it a bit hard to find things later but still I like it. And I have a system. Sort of. So they stay as well. Also the knitting notebook, and the place were I record my reading. I started cataloguing my books when I had bought the same book twice one day. I hadn’t remembered that I already had it. The gratitude journal didn’t really work out for me. When I read back it only made me realize how unhappy I really was. the control journal for housework never really worked either. I do know that I have to clean the house at least once a week. I don’t really need a checklist because a look at the house itself will tell me what to do.

I’m quite attached to weighing myself daily. I even have an iPod app that gives me progress reports on how I’m doing with weight loss. I think I’ll keep that. Apart from that I think I might take some time off from journals. I have taken a bit of time off from trying to improve myself in all areas at once anyway.

So for now I’ll accept that I’m both journaled out and self-helped out. I take a break. And I won’t create a new task on my electronic to-do-list that’s called: take time off from journaling, repeat daily until further notice. I promise.

Random Monday

life, lists 6 Responses »

Jan 242011

I have a kind of blogger’s block because I still think I should have started the year with a “How my year of happiness went”-post, and a “My big goal for 2011″-post. I will do those some time before 2011 ends, but it is starting to get ridiculous.
I also promised to make an English podcast episode, and I will, as soon as I find some space in my head.
We had a very nice weekend, and went to some family brunch thing where we met other gifted families, and it was a lot of fun. But, very pricey, and no housework got done for the weekend.
Which is why my husband have spent the day so far, furiously cleaning all the things. Floors where mopped. With water. Laundry got washed. There is still one load in the washer which I will have to hang up in the next 25 minutes.
I’m typing as fast as I can.
I got a new spindle, and I love, love, love it. Still, to show it I would have to take a picture, and it’s started to snow again which means – no light outside.
I am also a bit grumpy because so far I’ve had my period not once but twice this month. In fact since the beginning of the year I’ve only had a week off.
I went to see a specialist on menopause, and she thought it might be early-onset menopause. Then she asked me if I were okay with that. And what about if I couldn’t have any more children.
I would be totally okay with that if I could please reach some hormonal equilibrum in the near future. Interestingly I’m totally done with having babies, and I don’t think it would make me feel old, and undesirable.
I am quite sure that I have asthma after all. In addition to being triggered by allergies it might be triggered by exercise as well. Fun times! I already have a doctor’s appointment for that the week after next.
I haven’t managed to write much this month either, and that makes me grumpy as well.
It’s snowing like crazy, and I should be shoveling right now on top of everything else.
It was my husband’s birthday last week, and we had a fabulous day, having lunch at an Indian restaurant not far from us, and in the evening we went and had some beer, just him and me. We almost never do this because whenever we go to Munich we think we should be doing something really special, like seeing a concert. But this very low-key celebration was exactly the right thing to do.
I’ll leave you with a bad picture of the spindle. One day, when the sun will come back I’ll take a better one:

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