Andy and I went to Woolfest 2010 at Lake Farmpark today. Highlights included:

- Having Andy with me for company and getting to spend a nice day with my sweetie

- Milking a cow!

- Learning to flatfoot from Charlie Burton

- Petting a sheep, a llama, a calf, and a cow

- Amazing gallery of hand-hooked rugs, beautiful work, and a little demo of rug hooking from one of the guild ladies

- Falling in love with the Spinolution Mach II spinning wheel

- A lovely ride out there on windy up-and-down country roads

The sun really took it out of me. Time to go collapse with some kind of cold beverage and dream about buying that spinning wheel.

Tomorrow I leave for Canada to take a 2-day class on how to sew your own bra. I’m pretty excited about it. The bra makers of the world at some point while I wasn’t paying attention seem to have decided that all bras must be padded. Well, all bras for anyone under a certain size. I literally have not been able to find a single bra anywhere that fits me that isn’t padded. It’s tragic. At one point I thought I had found a style I liked and was told they didn’t manufacture it in my size. They don’t even make them.

It’s true that my search might not have been as exhaustive as it might have been, but I think visiting every department store in the area, a slew of outlet stores, and a specialty bra vendor at the sewing expo is about as much time as I’m willing to put in before I give up and say screw it, I will learn to make one myself.

The bra sales ladies tell me that it’s just a little bit of padding “for modesty” or that the padding is only at the bottom “to give you a little lift,” but to that I say, Modesty? Like, I should be embarrassed about the fact that I have nipples? That I am a mammal? That’s something I need to be modest about? and We can’t pick them up without resting them on something so they look bigger? Really? Because I like looking down and seeing the body that is familiar to me, not some different body created when I wear this padded monstrosity.

I remember buying my first bra with my stepmother, and she insisted on getting me a padded one “until I filled out a little.” I did not really ever fill out all that much. And I basically think of padded bras as false advertising, which anyone who knows me will tell you I feel very strongly about. I want no part whatsoever of any false advertising. So bra class it is!

The class is in Canada, and my route to get there will take me through Buffalo, NY where I will get to visit with an old work friend. I’m hoping I’ve got the energy to visit a college friend as well who lives about an hour from the town where the class is held. I doubt I’ll be posting any photos of anything I make, for obvious reasons, but I’m hoping I can at least eke out an account of my progress with the class.

Wish me luck! It’s going to be quite an adventure.

Today I did demolition work as part of a renovation project at our house. After a late start (yesterday’s accidental evening nap kept me up until about 5 am), I worked for about 8 hours with plenty of breaks to drink water, eat, consult with Andy by phone about a couple setbacks and fiddle around on the internet. I’m in charge of demolition when finesse is involved. Hogging through a board with a saw is Andy’s province, but I’m the one who carefully chips away plaster, pulls out nails and pries off lath. I have to say, I’m pretty good at it.

One thing that really helped is that Andy and I have made a schedule for the project that seems reasonable, and having that clear list of all the bite-sized chunks keeps me calm when I might otherwise freak out about Whether Or Not We’ll Get It All Done In Time. We’re working on the guest room, and our first official guest room guests will be arriving on June 24th. Preparation is going into high gear accordingly.

Tonight promises a long hot shower, knitting and watching some nice silly DVDs. And I’m betting after last night’s insomnia, a good sound sleep. Tomorrow, more renovation tasks, all neatly planned out in our happy list. I hope to be reporting more renovation success here tomorrow.

Lately I’ve been giving a fair bit of thought to what are the impediments to getting any given thing done or problem solved. Like with the mold in our bathroom, I try to figure out: what is in the way? Is it something mental or physical? How can I shift that impediment or get around it? Can I figure out a different way to meet the same need? What is the core need in the situation anyhow? Can I completely bypass the impediment by going a different route to get to where I want to go?

One of the problems I’ve been trying to solve for years is exercise. I won’t go on about that again now, but recently one of the impediments I identified is that I want to exercise first thing in the morning (before I get involved in any of the many other things I’d rather do), but I also want to get online first thing in the morning. These two activities were clearly in conflict with each other.

So a solution was asking Andy, marvelously awesome sweetie that he is, to build me a laptop stand for the elliptical machine. He built it, and it was great. I also fixed the wireless network in the house (4 calls to Belkin + a couple more to my cable provider), and Andy loaned me an old boat anchor laptop. I deleted a zillion files and applications from it, bought it a new battery and finally got so it would function reasonably well. It was entertaining enough that I could exercise and barely even notice I’d been doing it for an hour. I think I went for like a week of exercising almost every day.

I soon got frustrated, though, with the way it took several minutes just to scroll down a page, so I got a newer faster laptop. The new laptop is lighter, too, so suddenly the marvelous stand was a bit too wobbly. Not being under a boat anchor anymore and all.

Andy and I had a few head-scratching sessions and were in the process of trying to realize a very elaborate and hard-to-execute stabilizing solution that Clearly Was Not Going To Work. The details of why are hard to condense into a few words, but let’s just say that strange protruding bits of metal were involved.

What was really cool was that in seeing how hard it would be to solve the stability problem the way we thought could work if it weren’t for those darned metal bits, Andy came up with a solution that was so genius, so simple, and it was those very same metal bits that made Andy’s solution work. The new improved laptop stand can’t wiggle at all without moving the entire machine, it’s that sturdy.

I think I’ll be looking at impediments in a new light from now on, seeing if more of them hold the keys to their own solutions. Maybe I will even ponder those issues while I noodle around on the internet and ride the elliptical at the same time.

I spent Domestic Diva Monday yesterday writhing with headache pain, and today I spent helping to prep stuff for sale at the Cuyahoga Weavers Guild Annual Sale that is happening this Saturday, so not much to report here other than wow I have a lot of new yarn, and look at that some shuttles and bobbins followed me home, too, and oooh yay, a bobbin winder and a temple and and and. Helping prep for the sale is dangerous business, because you’re like, oh, I’ll just buy that and get it out of the way. I also said I’d go back and help some more tomorrow morning. Pray for me.

Also, a clarification is in order. When I said I was going to try to post daily again, I really meant daily on weekdays and on days when I don’t have a headache. I had a headache most of last week. Yeah, it sucked. Anyhow, better-ish now, so hoping to tell you tomorrow about all the self-restraint I showed when we priced all that yarn. If you’re in the area, come on over and check it out!

Inspired by the success of Domestic Diva Mondays, I’m experimenting with giving the other days of the week a theme. Tuesday’s theme for the second week in a row was Dilemma Solving Day. Last week the dilemma that presented itself as the most urgent was how to finish a certain weaving project in time for our guild homestudy group, and that took me all day.

This week’s dilemma was I can’t see my desk. So lots of little miscellaneous things have gotten done in the process of clearing my desk: phone calls made, dates scheduled, mysteries solved, data entry done. I ordered a replacement part for the mixer. I can report probably an 80% increase in the amount of visible surface since the beginning of the day. I can also report that sitting in even my comfy office chair all day is going to need to be followed by a nice hula hoop break.

One item worth highlighting: I made a research phone call about the bathroom vent fan and got a couple basic questions answered (Can I move it later? Yes. Do they make any multi-room fans that I need to consider in case we do plan to add a second bathroom in the addition? No. Phew.). As a bonus, I talked to the guy (Mark) about how to choose a new shower head (ours is plastic and has, guess what, mold on it– yes, I’m sure it could be cleaned, but it’s also just old and grody), and he’s just mailing me one they had in their warehouse that had been on a display. For free! I’m pretty psyched. I asked if I could pay him and he just said, no, just remember us when you go to renovate your bathroom. I’m like, absotively posilutely! We should have that new showerhead tomorrow.

Another project at which I am still chipping away: Project Paper Clearing. In the spirit of preventing tomorrow’s clutter today, I made a phone call about something I got in the mail. In the past, this particular document, which I get a version of every year, just freaks me out and floats around on my desk for ages taunting me, making me feel confused and guilty and anxious. Today I was like, you know, those probably aren’t the feelings the sender was trying to inspire. Let me call this person and see if I can get to a better understanding about what to do with this missive. The answer? File it for reference, no real action needed. The reason I was so confused is that it comes with a to-do list on the first page. Yeah, that’s just, you know, a suggestion. Glad I asked.

Okay, hula hoop time, my friends! Tune in tomorrow for Fiber Art Wednesday. Or maybe Don’t Be A Hermit Wednesday. I haven’t decided all the themes yet. Feel free to offer any creative and amusing suggestions for theme days in the comments section below. Blowing kisses of gratitude to you for any ideas that you might share!

Today I made cookies, cleaned the kitchen, did the laundry (precious little since I’m staying on top of it as of last week), and then after a long pause where I tried to postpone what I knew would likely be a depressing task, I went to clean the bathroom.

Last week’s bathroom cleaning was a pretty superficial job, so the despair didn’t have a chance to kick in. This week I did a deeper clean, and it didn’t take long for my mental wheels to start spinning.

We live in an old house. Our tub is one of those nice big old porcelain-coated cast iron babies. If it weren’t positioned against an outside wall in our uninsulated house, it would be a great place to take a nice soak. A soak in a hot tub is my favorite cure-all for the blues. Alas, I have not really been able to partake of said cure-all due to the tub-against-uninsulated-wall thing. The hot water cools so fast it’s not even worth filling up the tub. It’s sad. I miss relaxing hot baths making everything better. The porcelain is also fairly worn off after so many years of scouring powder exposure, making it that much harder to keep clean.

Also due to our house being old, our bathroom doesn’t have a vent fan, just a window, which I honestly prefer. My sound sensitivity can’t stand the tick of a clock let alone the whir of a bathroom vent fan. But when the option to prevent moisture from hanging out in your bathroom after you shower is keeping the window open a little bit all year round, guess what? We don’t. Moisture builds up. And mold. Fucking mold. God how I hate mold.

And I don’t know how to get rid of it. I think that at some point it gets in the caulk that seals around the top edge of the tub/bottom edge of the tiled wall, and then forget it, no amount of scrubbing is getting it out. We’ve ripped out and replaced the caulk several times, but it’s a pretty time- and labor-intensive solution to the problem. Would even something horrible like bleach work? We tend to use baking soda and vinegar for most of our cleaning, but this mold thinks that baking soda and vinegar can kiss its ass, so that’s no help.

And here’s where I get stuck. Obvious solutions: install vent fan, rip out and replace caulk, insulate walls. But. BUT! Of course there is a but. We are planning to add on to our house, and that wall next to the tub? Yeah, it’s one of the ones getting knocked out for the addition.

So it’s like, why do all this stuff to a space with a wall you are going to knock down? And will we decide to put in a second bathroom on the second floor or just expand/reorganize the one we have? When is that all going to happen? How are we going to pay for it? The little bit of research I did led me to find out that we can’t get a loan to do the addition unless we’re either married or I put Andy on the title to the house, something I’d honestly rather not do unless we’re married.

So then I get to this place where we have to get married so there won’t be mold in the fucking tub. It’s not a good place to be. Mondays might not last as Domestic Diva Day. I might rather postpone situations like today until at least Wednesday or so, get a little momentum going for the week before I halt myself in my track with this kind of self-inflicted mental torture.

In happier news, we had a nice cozy weekend, made some good food (leftovers reheating now), and I spent another couple hours on paper culling on Saturday. Time to go eat now, I think that will help.

Today found me chucking more paper in the recycling and shredding bags. Two decent-sized plastic filing boxes are now empty and ready to be filled with, let’s face it, yarn or fabric. What finally made it possible to toss all this paper that’s been dogging me for years is that at last I made peace with the idea of just letting myself off the hook. It was only me who ever put myself on that hook in the first place, so it’s only right that I should be the one to finally let myself off it.

Most of the papers were financial in nature, and I have decided to try being current in my relationship with money. I don’t want to dissect or analyze or examine the relationship I had with money 4 or 5 years ago; I want to look at where I am right now. No need to comb through years of old receipts to collect data on my spending habits. I know what I spend money on: food and books and movies and craft supplies. Eating out with friends and my sweetie. The mortgage on my house. Classes and workshops. Gas for the car. Car repairs. Utilities and insurance. Stuff from the office supply store, the pharmacy or the hardware store. I spend money on the stuff I use for living my life. I know it sounds simplistic, but I think there was a part of me that wanted to try to make it more complicated than that, have some sense of how I spend money that involved pie charts and line graphs. That part is going to be denied, and the rest of me is okay with that.

So if I want to know more about how I spend my money, that’s going to start with today, not with 2005. And let’s please note, part of myself that is disappointed in not getting line graphs, know more does not equal be obsessive. I’m going to observe and pay attention, and that does not mean saving every scrap of paper related to any and all spending that comes into my world.

I already tossed the packing slip that came with an order of weaving yarns I received today. I logged the yarn into my Ravelry stash database, and I flipped that paper straight into the recycle bin. There’s an electronic record of the transaction on my computer: the email confirmation of my order, not to mention that it will show up on my bank statement. That paper was just going to become 2015’s clutter if I kept it around.

There are still a few more stacks of paper lurking, but this letting go of the past jag is picking up steam. I’m digging it.

Getting rid of that small but highly charged chunk of paper yesterday was like pulling the plug in a bathtub. I got rid of a bunch more papers today. Old stuff. OLD stuff. Amusing for sparking trips down memory lane but ultimately not really useful for nourishing me in my ongoing process of creating the life I want to live. Bye bye!

I also want to say, wow, what a lot of work I have done of which I do not have fond memories. It felt good to throw evidence of those times away. I wish I didn’t have to wait a whole week for recycling to get picked up. Maybe a special trip out to the garage is in order, let it linger there instead of in here until next week.

Now I am going to go reward my efforts with homemade mint chocolate cookies and goofy TV on the internet. I already have another paper clearing session scheduled for tomorrow. Imagine how nice it will be to have a working paper filing system again and of course to have so much less now that so many things have gone paperless.

I haven’t had my files in order since 2001. It will be nice to get back to that place where I know where things are and only have what I need and use and can lay hands on anything in seconds. That is going to feel good.

Today’s update is small but potent. During Office Spa Day today, I finally let go of a mess (well, a very neatly organized accordian folder) of old receipts and bank transaction records from 2003 and 2004 and cancelled checks from 2002 back to 1996. What’s more, I did so with barely a moment of self-flagellation. It was finally time.

This small change is so powerful because the containers of checks and receipts were sitting on top of some other containers of paper that also need to get culled, and now the subconscious impediment of moving those two smaller containers to work on the bigger containers is removed. I’m all about removing the impediments these days.