Black Friday Spinning

After being brutally knocked about all summer, Little Diana needed some work.   I spent an hour or so tightening, oiling, adjusting and tuning her all up,  then got to spin!

Since my whole thinking about this Black Friday thing is best summed up as “Screw that”,    I was dead set against going out on Friday – but my daughter wanted too, and she can’t drive yet.   Compromise – I drove,  but we only went to two locally owned small businesses.     She wanted to check out Sir Troy’s Toys, and for me we visited  Artist’s Gallery Yarn,   where I found a nice local hank of hand dyed Coopworth!

It was hidden in the back in the fiber room, sort of buried in plastic bags full of other fibers,  and I was delighted to spot it.   It’s got all these lovely sort of autumn wine grape colors.  I  practiced my woolen draw to spin some reasonabley consistent sock yarny sized singles,  and then triple plied it.   Yield – approx. 60 yards of extremely bulky yarn.

After spinning it looks like this –

 

 

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It’s not too late.

One of the most debilitating aspects of depression is the way that it steals hope. The tides of darkness sweep in and out of my mind and heart, leaving a flotsam of despairing memory, so all consuming that nothing else can be felt.

I cannot begin to describe how hard it is to escape from this rip tide. Once I was at the oceanside, and got swept off my feet by a strong wave, and for a brief time lost any sense of up or down or direction. All was spinning stinging lightness. This is like that.

Right now I am holding on to one thought, hoping that it is buoyant enough to serve me as a lifesaver in this thrashing sea. It is not too late. Not too late for anything – for learning and living and loving and reading and writing and breathing. That there is still time coming towards me, that this is not the end of all things.

It’s not too late.

Some days…

…are longer then others. And this has been one of the long ones. The Bee had her first day of school yesterday, and her first full day today. Math, Social Studies, Educational Technology, and state test study. Language arts we had to skip, since our text books haven’t arrived yet.

We’ve been homeschooling for years, and it’s been wonderful, but the wee girl is not so wee anymore, and starting to need more academic education rather than the practicum approach we’ve used. We gave a stab at a formal school a couple of years ago, and she just wasn’t ready for it, but so far this year she’s taken off with a bang! It helps that this school is much better organized and the teacher we have is much easier to get in touch with. I’ve spoken with our current teacher more so far in the past two months then I spoke with the first teacher the whole year we had her.

So there was that – and then a dr’s appointment, and the usual fuss with dasHusand having lost X and needing to find it before he went to work. X varies from day to day, but is almost always lost. Occasionally it’s missing parts, and very rarely it’s the wrong one. Then we had lunch – english muffin pizzas are perhaps the quintessential school lunch food to me, and now I get to share them with my daughter!

So it’s half past four now, and I am finishing a pot of rose congou tea, and finally getting to slow down a little. The Bee has bundled off to her room to read Harry Potter, and I have a little time for tea and blogging and chess. Later I’ll have part of a bottle of very good beer, and try to make a little priority list for my personal spending this month. I have a ton of things I want to do – chess tourneys with entry fees, and it’s the World Tour of Beer buy-in season again, and I need some piano books, and there’s my drivers license temps kit to get, and a couple of books I want (okay, more then a couple. It’s always more then a couple.), and I’m getting a quote on a homebrewing kit, and I’m low on oolongs, and and and.

All in all, a good start to the new year, if a long one.

Morning glories.

Sweet Lady Mother Moon, I had forgotten how wonderful mornings are.

Walking in the early hours today I saw blue jays in the bare black lace branches of the beech trees against the morning glory blue morning sky.

A small girl in a pointed knit cap waved at me as she waited to go to school.

Frostflowers bloomed across every windshield and window I passed, and underfoot the grass crackled like glass.

The long pale morning light slanted past me, casting shadows I haven’t seen in months.

Back home now I sit with hot tea and a playful dog and cold ears and joy in my heart.

RIP Isaac Bonewits, 1949-2010

Blessed be, Isaac. May the Summerlands receive you at your journeys end.

Isaac’s Obituary

Wish upon a star.

This has been a very rough half year for me. I have Major Depressive Disorder, and with the onset of winter last year I dropped into yet another serious episode of depression. I’m one of the lucky ones – my illness is very responsive to medication, so the past months have been more of a long dark night then the endless slide into the pit that they used to be.

It’s been like living above the Arctic Circle. Day after day of shadowy twilight to be endured and waited through, knowing that the light does return.

There is an old saying that things are always darkest before the dawn, which I am not sure is true. But I have found something recently that makes the darkness more bearable. A little truth, that I learned a long time ago, and had forgotten.

The stars only come out at night.

A good day has…

…fresh chicken in the freezer
…shortbread cookies in the oven
…Buckingham Palace Garden Party tea
…and my daughter reading fairytales aloud

Check it out!

I got a new toy from my father in law.    Now I can make myself some proper sawhorses,  and once I have proper sawhorses I can make a proper workbench.

And once I have a proper workbench I can make anything!   Mwaahhhaaahhaaa!

We got campy.

We’re back from a very pleasant weekend camping at a local state park.   There was a bit of a dust up about our reservations – the tipi we had reserved was double booked,  and we ended up having to get a tent from back home.   But the park staff was very apologetic about it, and gave us free firewood and a canoe rental, which was nice.  Constructive complaining will get you everywhere.

Tommy-dog went camping with us,  for his first and perhaps last camping trip.  He did not seem too fond of having to spend so much time sitting on the ground, and was always trying to get into a lap or chair.    He gets a bath later today – his fur is full of bits of pine needle and stuff.      Due to a lack of  foresight on our part, he ended up having to come on our first canoe trip with us,   and did shockingly well – he may not be much of a camper,  but the Tommy-dog seems to be a born canoe-rider.

The canoeing was wonderful – there are great swaths of the lake overrun with water lilies, and the weather was perfect for rowing out and just resting and looking at them.   We also saw two great blue herons, one of which took off and skimmed across the water right in front of the canoe.  It was stunning.

All in all, a wonderful weekend, despite the slightly disappointing tipi-less nature of the trip.

Needs and desires.

Every person lives within categories.   The things they must do, the things they should do, the things they shouldn’t.  Those things they wish for, those things they dread.

What they need, what they desire.

It’s hard when those categories shift on you,  pouring your life into chaos.   Suddenly you realize that a long pursued dream has become something you are pursuing just because you should.

Or maybe its not sudden.   Maybe the realization sneaks up on you so slowly you can’t be sure its true.   You can’t even be sure it’s a realization, can’t tell if the dread in the pit of your stomach is because you’re forcing yourself or because you just didn’t sleep well.

Pretty soon the guilt and the confusion crowd out any idea of desire or dream.    The categories narrow to should and shouldn’t, and the only peace to be found is in silence and sleep.    Consciousness itself becomes torture.

Some days are bad days.