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This weekend, my beloved turned 40. To show his true age, he hired a bouncy castle for his party

Pictures here (for now).

I’m typing this because I made an agreement with myself to keep the computer off today. Yesterday I kind of fell apart — which I’m allowed to do from time to time, but I don’t want to make a habit of it.

Craig is away for a couple of days, and I’m not used to being in this house by myself. I get the irony, given that I go to work in Canada for weeks at a stretch and leave him here.

The first night, I didn’t want to sleep in our bed. I don’t know why, it just didn’t seem like the thing to do. And having the place to myself sort of feels like a big stretch of play-time, so sleeping in the living room was kind of like sleeping in a fort. Except I’m a grown-up, and our couch is too short for me to stretch out on, so I slept on the floor. Not comfortable.

So I was already at a disadvantage when I woke up yesterday, red-eyed and a bit headachy. I ended up watching movies and playing a video game for hours and hours — which really doesn’t make one’s head feel any better.

Oh yeah, I also made a “DIY Book Press”, painted the shading into an instruction book to go with it, photographed it, posted it to my webshop, then added a bunch of stuff that I sell to my Etsy shop. I also spoke with my folks and my brother and sister-in-law on Skype. To the inner critic, though, all of this was for nothing because I also wasted time. Like I’m not allowed to have any down-time. (We’ve had words, the critic and I, and have come to an agreement about that.)

Last night, I slept in our bed and really enjoyed it. Not so much determined but wanting today to be different, I got up, got dressed in proper clothes (not the ‘day pyjamas’ I wear around the house), and went for breakfast at the pub. I finished making all the little cards for this year’s projects, then left when they turned up the volume on the enormous tellies throughout the place for some stupid sport or another.

The idea with these cards goes like this: there are domains, which are the major categories of my activities — air (systems and structures), earth (foundations, travel), water (connections, relationships, health), fire (results, products, promotion, celebration), and wood (arts, tying everything else together).

Underneath these are specific kind of activity, general categories like writing, making, art, money, and so on. Then, in each of these, are projects — a project being something that can be completed. (I have to remind myself of this one, and not set myself up with projects like “Figure everything out”.) On each project’s card go the individual tasks involved. At the beginning of the week, I’m going to review all these and add a few of them to my weekly game-plan (not to self: a few). I’ve also come up with a one-day planning sheet, because at present I’m just wandering in and either expecting myself to do everything, or else I have absolutely no idea. Either way, same result: nothing happens. Or, to be more fair, things happen, but at random, and I have a hard time acknowledging or appreciating them.

All of this, of course, counts as activity in The Game, my time management board game. Does this sound tedious? Overwrought? I enjoy making up systems and all the forms for carrying them out, and I’m committed to getting stuff done because it’s important to me to do the things I’m uniquely able to do and not just consume the finished works of other people or, worse, corporations (this is the critic’s big problem with me goofing off).

To that end, I’ve decided to re-read one of my novels — like a reader, not with an eye to editing it. That may sound wanky, but it struck me today that, as I try to get my head back into writing, this would really help me recapture the possibility of it. I’m re-reading Michael Chabon’s The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which is certainly inspiring — he’s a master both of fun storytelling and wonderfully dense and evocative sentences — but that inspiration will only take me so far. Should I end up wanting to write like him? I have to write like myself, so the sooner I cut to that, the better.

It’s time for dinner. After my Slob Day yesterday (which was fine), I set about cooking a bunch of stuff for me to eat during the week so I don’t just eat popcorn. (I will also eat popcorn, which, for the sake of my diet I have declared is not a grain or high-GI food or any of that.) So tonight it’s salad with a yoghurt vinaigrette topped with baked parsnip and sweet potato crisps. I also made muffins, snack bars, and a strawberry pie that I really hope will eventually set.

Edit: It’s now Monday and I’m entering all this into the computer. One thing that struck me this morning as I filled out my daily plan was that all this business with the project cards completely ignored goals as a structure. Asking myself about this, it seems that I fully believe I can complete any project, but when I look at big goals I’m consumed by doubt. Hm.

It occurred to me that throwing my laptop loose into my (often overstuffed) bag may have contributed to its problems, so yesterday afternoon I took a deep breath, carefully followed instructions (inasmuch as I am able to) from a book I picked up in Toronto called The New Handmade, and made myself a laptop bag!

Change purse, version three: this one actually works and doesn’t leak out its contents!

Ahh, Sundays! A big stretch of unplanned time — my favourite thing. I could really use a month of Sundays.

I had another go at sewing. I started with making shorts from a pair of cargo pants. That was always my mother’s trick when my brother or I put a hole in the knee of our jeans. In this case, I got a hole in the trousers from a drop of sulphuric acid — you know, as you do. (Craig and I took a jewellery-making course last year so we could make our own wedding rings, and sulphuric acid is used to clean off the silver after you’ve been blowtorching it.)

Result!

I also put a hidden stitch in the side, because I was forever having to hike these up: a size 32 is baggy on me now, so now they also fit much more comfortably.

As they said during WWII, “Make do and mend!” I’m looking forward to getting to alter and salvage a lot of things now that would have just been waste.

My ulterior motive in doing this was to also get some pieces of fabric to work with. The bottom parts of the legs gave me some nice canvas material to use, so I set about trying to make a better version of the change purse.

The first try came out okay, but the material was too bulky, so the second version ended up as a puffy cube that didn’t fold closed well. (The image this one brought to mind for me was “executive killer whale”.)

I used a button my friend Lisa gave me at Christmas to hide the mess I made while inserting a magnetic snap.

In spite of what I just said about waste, I decided this one was a write-off — sorry, a “learning experience” — and tried again. This time I thought, “Stick to what you know” and made a little fabric envelope. (Imagery-wise, this one is uncomfortably death-camp-ish.)

Sewing that Velcro on after the fact was a b@„¢*ch, and gave me a couple of chances to use the seam ripper that Lisa also gave me.

I put the button on again, this time to make the thing look a little cheerier:

It’s a mess. I’m well aware. Again, though, it’s my mess.

I have a habit of doing this, jumping into a new skill at the deep end because there’s a particular result I want, rather than going through all the lessons from the beginning. At this point in my life, I’m okay with that. It’s how I learn, and I do keep learning.

(I credit my client, Strategic Coach, with instilling that idea in me, that my abilities and my way of getting things done are the perfect ones for me, and there’s no one else I should be trying to be. Last month marked my thirteenth anniversary of working with them, and with each passing year I’m more impressed with the people I work with there and the things the organisation achieves. And I’ve been working with them longer than I went to school — gosh!)

~

I’d got up early in the morning because a friend of ours was scheduled to drop by for tea later, so I made a skillet apple pie for us to eat, along with some muesli bread and then some pancakes for breakfast. In the evening, for supper, I made parmesan aubergines baked in a tomato sauce — mmm!

All of these recipes came from a miracle of a cookbook my mum gave me for Christmas — low-carb, gluten-free, sugar-free dishes that keep turning out really, really well. Instead of making bread that resembles crunchy dog treats, I’m now producing spongey, sliceable, toastable loaves!

Our friend Donald came by in the afternoon, so Craig and I took a break. It turns out he was our first foot, and he’d just happened to bring a bottle of whisky. I’m not generally one for the whisky, but this was an occasion, celebrating a new year with a friend who’d lost so much in the last. He’d brought Clynlish, which is made in a town called Brora, not far from here (relatively speaking), and poured out a measure for us all.

We toasted then had a sip. What a complicated experience for my mouth! A celtic knot of fire wrapped itself around my tongue. When the liquid had gone down my throat, I breathed in and my mouth filled with the chimney-smoke from a peat-fire. Then my belly warmed up like someone had turned the furnace on in a cold house.

I still can’t say I like the stuff, but it’s a lot more interesting and real than, say, vodka and Coke (blyeech!).

For Christmas, the hubby gave me a sewing machine. No, he wasn’t trying to break the last bit of my spirit and turn me into a complete wifey — I actually asked for one. (Well, indirectly, but that worked.)

My intention was to do bookbindingy stuff with it, cover details, notepad spines, and such, but as soon as I got it, I started seeing the world in stitches. It’s amazing how much stuff in our everyday lives is sewn together, and we never even think about it.

The thought at the core of the DIY spirit goes something like “Hey, if somebody made that, then that means I could make one, too.” Of course, what that observation carefully steps over is the enormous talent or capability gap between not having a clue and being able to produce our own version of things we like.

Such is the case here, where even threading the sewing machine took about half an hour of careful scrutiny, gazing back and forth between the machine and manual, whose illustrations followed the last of the repeats of the instructions. So I’d look beneath the Russian text at the vaguely numbered graphic — like a keyframe in an animation with all the vital in-between frames missing — then flip back a page, re-read the English, then go back to the large plastic machine sitting on my desk like a porpoise. I felt uncomfortable echoes back to grade school Home Ec classes, where I constantly received “speeding tickets” for my lead-footed operation of the foot pedal. (This probably explains why I’m having so much trouble learning to drive Craig’s manual transmission Polo.)

In the end, though, I got it! I shortened a too-deep pocket in a pair of Craig’s trousers, secured the little hang-tags in the corners of all our dish-towels, and then I decided to make something I needed: a change purse. (Since we’re verging on me losing every last bit of my testosterone here, let’s call it a “change pocket”.)

Here’s the end result:

It’s somewhere between “pirate” and “steampunk” in design, looking like a cross between a casket and a desiccated mouse.

Still, I love it, because I made it. (Though I’ll undoubtedly be replacing it at some point with another try.)

After a really fun fortnight in Toronto, I’m now in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island with my mum, dad, and nephew. There’s a blessed kind of rest that’s available at my parents’ house that just can’t be had anywhere else — nothing like the complete abnegation of adult responsibility to put one’s mind at ease!

Almost as soon as I got here, we went shopping for food that would satisfy all my weird restrictions. Happily, Charlottetown turns out to be well-supplied with everything I could ask for.

I snapped this picture at one of the local supermegagrocery warehouses — of which Charlottetown now sports at least four, whereas when we moved here there was just one little K-Mart that managed to feed everyone.

Moments after I took a picture of the shop and joined my mum, a manager came up to me to ask why I was taking pictures. Apparently stupid terrorism-think has reached my home town, too. I spun her the story of the tiny little town where I live in the north Highlands of Scotland, blah blah blah… Everyone here on the east coast gets shortbread stars in their eyes as soon as you mention The Old Country.

Today it’s snowing out, which is making everything look nice and festive.

Dad took a break from watching Hitler’s Secret Barber or whatever on the history channel and reading about the Third Reich, and went out to clear the driveway.

(I’m not sure what his obsession is; Adolph Eichmann is more of a fixture here at Christmas than Santa. My nephew’s friends used to visit and remark that they thought Dad was a skinhead. I suspect this all started when Dad began working with Veterans’ Affairs Canada, a big question-mark about humanity he’s never been able to resolve.) Snow-shovelling is an obsession he used to foist on my brother and me. Now I would have gone out and helped if he’d mentioned that he was going to do it. Funny how chores are much more palatable when you’re not asked to do them.

Meanwhile, I baked and baked this afternoon. With my apron on (which was my dad’s, at least), I felt like quite the wee wifey. We won’t get into my excitement about Craig giving me a sewing machine for Christmas. (There’s lots of bookbinding stuff the can be done with one, but now I’m awakening to all the other things I could fix, change, and make.)

Then there was my failed-yet-tasty brownies and successful-if-dry gingersnap cookies:

Happily, I’ve not compromised at all on my food choices. My client’s Toronto office was like a strip-mine in Candyland, with a constant conveyor belt of junk passing by me, yet I didn’t feel the slightest temptation to eat any of it. I guess I’m far too conscious of the after-effect, which is like feeling drugged or concussed for a week afterward.

But that’s not to say I’m being puritan or Spartan: I’ve had lots of food I really enjoyed. It just hasn’t been the default polyhydrogenatedwheatinjectedglucoinvertfructosugar stuff.

~

This trip, I’ve been taking a different tack in being with people — at work and in my social time. Rather than rushing to blurt out all the things I’m excited about, I’ve been pretending I’m interviewing the other person. I listen then ask a follow-up question to something that they said. Sometimes I can’t help interjecting, but for the most part I’ve been trying to listen more closely. As a result, I’ve learned lots of things I wouldn’t have if I’d just barged in when it was my turn.

Funny how people think you’re fascinating when you just listen to them.

So this is the theme while I’m away: I’m here for other people, not myself. I’ll get plenty of me-time when I’m back home.

~

Gosh, I miss my husband. We got married a year ago. A year!

I was out late last night, having dinner with some of the folks from the Movies & Makers show at the old Fox Theatre in The Beaches. It was like doing an acting gig, being geared-up and needing to decompress with other folk who’d been in it.

I met a lot of great folk who really understood and loved what I was doing. And, not to be mercenary about it, it was great to be in front of a crowd who had the money to buy things, too. That more than makes up for the money I’ve spent since being here — much of it on supplies so I could make more “bind your own book” kits when the friends I’m staying with convinced me I should have a lot more of those to display. So I hustled around town several days after work to find the bits then spent Friday night late at work in the Production department cutting up paper. And? They didn’t sell. Still, so much else did that it’s quite alright, and I may still shift a few to people at work who’ve been asking about them.

It’s so hard to decipher what people will like and want, and it’s very different from show to show. I can empathise with my brother-in-law, who’s trying to figure all this out for himself, too, with his woodworking. Do you make a lot of inexpensive things that people will snap up, or do you go deep into your craft and develop things you really care about but have to charge significantly more for?

What was most exciting, though, was talking to people who really understand what I’m doing, and who caught the spark of it themselves. A number of them took the cards I’d made for the podcast, and several bought bookbinding presses (which is a package I’m really happy about — much more tactile and interesting than the book-bits-in-a-bag kits that slide around the table and don’t really suggest what they are, unfortunately). So I’m jazzed to imagine what those people might create, especially after having received so many kind e-mails about the podcast from people showing and telling me the great things they’ve done, which, before, they didn’t realise they a) were allowed to do, or b) were perfectly capable of doing on their own.

So it was a big, exciting day. I admit that life in Wick can be pretty isolating, so it’s nice to balance that with these trips, especially when I get occasions like yesterday to get out in front of likeminded people.

I’ve had the computer off as much as possible this week, ’cause I’ve been working on a new little ‘zine for a craft fair I’m doing (not grandmother crafts, but Toronto hipster crafts!). I did the whole thing by hand — illustration and lettering — and I’m really happy with it. But damn it was a lot of work!

Here’s the initial version, which I’m going to clean up a little (but not get into retouching with the computer too much):

I’ve also been totally engrossed in Stephen King’s latest book, 11/22/63. It was a treat to myself, bought with a birthday gift certificate from the in-laws. It’s bloody wonderful! It’s been so long since I’ve read a good, deep novel, and this thing is a whole world between covers. Normally I read things that I think I’ll learn something from, that will enable me to do something new or better, but this is just pure enjoyment. I’m drunk on the experience.

Even better: I saw a movie trailer this week that utterly gripped me and gave me permission to write about things I’ve been stepping over, which happen to be my life experience. No wonder I’ve been stuck, eh? So between that and enjoying this novel so much, I’ve suddenly found myself excited again by the idea I’d had for my next novel. And I’ve already researched and outlined the whole darned thing!

How to make an even simpler kind of DIY Book Press.