One of the things I found in San Francisco was a fabric store near Union Square. I picked up some awesome fabric for throw pillows for my new sofa. Yay!
In the meantime, I have made some headway on the sweater my mom started but never finished for me. You can tell where I picked up the knitting; Mom’s stitches are all tight and even, and mine are, um, not.
Time for resolutions I won’t keep!
I’m going to try something different this year and set some concrete goals that will be easier to reach than something vague like “Eat better.” Many of these goals are craft-related, since I inherited my mother’s propensity for starting projects and not finishing them.
1. Speaking of Mom and projects she never finished, finish the sweater she started knitting for me, oh, ten years ago (she died just over eight years ago). Finishing this sweater was the reason I took knitting lessons in the first place, but I kept putting the bag with the unfinished sweater aside, or in a closet. Part of that was due to it being kind of painful to look at the thing after she died, part of it was that I gained a lot of weight after she died and wasn’t going to fit in the sweater even if I did finish it. But now I can look at the thing without getting teary, and I’ve lost enough weight over the years that I can wear it. Plus, it’s motherfucking cold in my apartment and I NEED a big fuzzy sweater. I’ve now got the skills to do it, too.
2. Quilting projects: I’m making a quilt for my sister, and I also want to finish a quilt that my great-grandmother pieced and never finished, both because it would be a great way to honor Babushka and also because of the aforementioned state of motherfucking cold.
3. Home decorating: I need to locate my stud finder, so I can hang the pictures I already have, and then I need to go out and get my other pictures framed and hung. I have a desk to paint, chairs to paint and re-cover, and at some point I should get a few more chairs and a vase or two. Plus mirrors. I also need a filing cabinet, badly. This may not be a year in which I do anything with my bedroom, but I’m okay with that for now since I don’t really have a vision for it like I do with the rest of the place.
4. Sports: I haven’t lifted weights since last July, when I fell on the sidewalk and injured my shoulder, and then re-injured it in September. I’ve decided to go a slightly different direction, doing a combination of yoga, running, and eventually some scaled-back weightlifting. Running has gone very well; unlike in years past, I seem to have resolved some of the issues with my knees so that I’m not wearing my patella in some strange place after only a few weeks of the C25K plan. I’m on Week 7 now (actually for the second time — I’d reached it in September, right before my second fall, which also rolled my ankle) and so far, so good. My knee’s a little tender, but the exercise is actually doing it good. I’d like to do a half-marathon and marathon this year, using the Jeff Galloway run/walk program. Brooklyn Half-Marathon is in May, with the particular day yet to be announced, and I’ve signed up for the lottery for the NYC Marathon. I’m also planning on doing the Bay to Breakers 12K in San Francisco in May, which will probably be the week before the Brooklyn Half. If I don’t get into the NYC Marathon, I’m going to try for Chicago or Marine Corps. All of these will be not only goals in and of themselves, but also opportunities for travel to places where friends and/or family are.
5. Food: I’m back to being mostly vegan, which is pretty easy since it’s a little hard for me to eat out much here if I have to walk everywhere I go; I also work in a place where the lunch options are very very limited. I’ve got access to a really great food co-op and live around the corner from a grocery store, so I can easily get good, fresh ingredients and do a lot of cooking. I’ve got a freezer packed full of individually-portioned meals I can just grab and go, and I’m working hard on using my cookbooks for more than just the old standbys. My big goal this year is to stop eating mindlessly and to pay attention to and enjoy what I eat. I’ve also made a special effort to clean off the dining room table, now that I have a dining room, and to have dinner AT my table with napkins and placemat and candles. Bonus: the dining room is the only room that really gets heat.
6. Appearance: I managed to weed a lot of crap out of my wardrobe just before I moved, so I do wear a lot of what I have. But I’m not wearing all of it, so I need to figure out why not and make any necessary adjustments. For example, if I’m not wearing something because it doesn’t fit, I can make it fit or get rid of it; if I’m not wearing something because I don’t really like it after all, it has to go. It *is* pretty nice having a lot of closet space free. I also want to figure out this year what my style is, so that I can have some kind of consistent look.
7. Financial: I’ve started using Mint to track my money, and my new job has TIAA-CREF, so I’ve gotten started on a retirement plan (matching doesn’t happen until I’ve been employed a year). I’ve identified several areas where I spend disproportionate amounts of money, so I can work on cutting that back. I’m also saving for a car; I plan on spending less than $2500 for a mid-90s Honda or similar that will run for a while. Just like with the eating out, living here has curtailed my spending because I’m not passing stores and places to spend money all the time. I’m also not reading like I used to, so my book habit is not being fed. My book habit really is shameful; I’m a librarian, after all, and I should be borrowing books rather than buying them. And I should be selling off what I have; I see Amazon keeps asking me if I’d like to sell some of the books I’ve bought through them, so I may just take them up on that.
8. Personal: I’m still not into the idea of dating, but I want to make some friends here outside of work. The yoga studio I attend seems to be a good place to meet people, especially since you’re asked to introduce yourself to the people on adjoining mats before class starts. I’m also a member of the food co-op, and that seems like a good way to meet people as well; working there is optional, so I plan on signing up soon. There are also extension classes to take and the local running shop organizes group runs every week, which will help with my half/marathon training and get me out a bit. I’m also planning on taking advantage of the first paid time off I’ve had in about 10 years to do some travel, including a horsepacking trip through backcountry out here as part of the extension classes.
9. Professional: I’ll start teaching legal skills in the fall, which will give me some great experience. I’ve also committed to writing a couple of articles, I’m involved with some committees and caucuses in my professional association, and I also have opportunities to do some outside work for pay and recognition. I’m doing all this partly because I’m positioning myself for a return to New York or a move to another big city for my next job, and partly because I really do like my new career. I made a good choice.
Especially when you prolong the agony by procrastinating.
It’s been a rainy week here in Brooklyn (like, EVERY DAY), so I’ve barely peeked at the garden. But today, I decided to follow some of the suggestions in the thread below and pull out the flowers from the tomato boxes, mix a few coffee grounds into the soil, and pull off any dead leaves.
So far, so good. The cilantro plant’s still being a diva, though. How this thing can sit in the rain for a week and STILL have dry soil is a mystery.
More tomatolettes on the Early Girl and Mystery Variety plants. One tomatolette on the Jersey Devil plant, which is amusing because it’s a plum-shaped tomato and therefore pointy. Not a thing on Green Zebra.
The basil in Box #2 is doing much better than the basil in Box #1, as, really, are the tomato plants. I think the petunias were sucking the life out of the other plants in that box. Hopefully, that will be remedied now that the flowers are gone.
I went to the reading of Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby’s book on Friday night at Re/Dress, a plus-sized vintage/resale boutique in Brooklyn. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of shopping, in part because at my size, it’s difficult to find *anything,* let alone anything fashionable and at the same time age-appropriate* or suitable for my body type (please let the tyrrany of the Empire waist come to an end). But I also get grumpy in stores, which makes vintage shopping kind of a trial (and when you add in the musty smell that is inevitable among vintage clothing and which also turns me off used bookstores, well), because you kinda have to look at EVERYTHING because everything is one-of-a-kind.
Not my idea of a fun way to while away the afternoon. And it’s not like I can even get into shoe shopping, because of my big feet. I do have jewelry, though! Which is important when you wear the same drab old outfit nearly every day. Continue reading ‘It’s good to have skillz’
I made new covers for my pillows!
And somebody likes them:
I finally got around to planting my little window-box garden. I have four varieties of tomatoes (Early Girl, Jersey Devil, Green Zebra and another one I lost the little identifying tag for), two varieties of cilantro, two basil plants, and four types of flowers.
I’m sure everything is too close together, and I don’t have enough soil to support them, but hey, it’s my first try. Pictures when I locate the camera.
So, after two months in this place, I finally hung my curtains (to be fair, I did have a problem getting a ladder around the bed, not to mention problems moving the bed because it’s so heavy). And while I was poking around in my windows, I discovered what’s been biting me — there’s a big spiderweb, with bits of prey stuck in it, jammed up in the window, just where I couldn’t see easily until I got up there on a ladder.
Well, considering that there’s been a damn fly in here for weeks now, I’d say the spider should forget about biting me and get busy getting that fly to step into her parlor. Or else there’s a can of Raid under the sink that needs using.
Tomorrow’s the big day; I’m moving into my new apartment.
Jesus, moving sucks. And this one’s going to be easier than the last one two months ago, since I got rid of a HUGE amount of stuff then, and I’ve gotten rid of even more stuff (mostly papers, non-perishable food, the cable box and socks with holes).
But it would be easier still if I didn’t have so much crap left. My fantasy is to divest myself of enough crap that I could live in an Airstream trailer or on a boat or in a small cabin.
Ha!
Goal for now: Move without hurting myself again. I think it can be done; I’ve got two people helping me move out of the sublet, so I can avoid going up and down the stairs until we get to the new place by doing a fire line down the stairs with me at the bottom, loading the car. Only one flight of stairs at the new place, with all three of us taking the stuff up. The kitties will be the last out of the sublet and the first into the new place, and this time I’ll be able to get them into the bathroom before we start so they’re safe and less stressed out.
Sucky thing: I won’t get cable and internet until Tuesday, and no cooking gas until Thursday. The power will be on, though! So the washer will work.
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