Genius Idea(s)

So a few weeks ago I got the idea that the 1950's grey on grey tile pattern in our bathroom would actually make a kind of cool quilt pattern, and it might look kind of modern and sleek instead of old fashioned-y and if I kept it in its current color pattern it would hide our cats shed fur and be palatable to Sam as a bedspread (in like a year when I get around to finishing it after the other QIP's I have).

It is alternating 3" by 3"sets of pattern that would easily be broken down into quilt squares of that size or bigger or smaller. One of the 2 basic patterns is a traditional 9 patch all of the same color like a tic tac toe grid. The other has an offset 2" by 2" square and in the opposite corner a 1" by 1" square and then along the edges left by them two rectangular pieces that are 1" by 2". These two basic designs are then laid out in a checkerboard pattern.

Now there is less color variation in them than I would want in a quilt, and depending on how you squint at them (and yes this idea came to me just where you would expect because you have some time to look at the floor) different squares are made to seem the 'center' of the repeated pattern and could make it look even more modern and interesting particularly if they were played up not just with placement on the quilt but fabric selection (lighter, darker, solids, patterns, even gradations of grey).

That sounds like I will be making a lot of mock ups of squares to see how it goes. Or using graph paper, OR I could figure out a way to make excel do this for me. I suspect this will take some research and some fiddling to work out.

Sewing Machine Joy

I have a sewing machine that is older than I am and heavy and it has not been sewing well lately, but I really really like it (plus it was my aunt's). In part because it predates the computerized models that are all the rage now, but for quilting I don't want a computerized model. I want an easy does it machine that will take a licking and keep on stitching.

It is like the machine featured in this ebay listing.

However, it has been losing its mojo lately, and I was scared. Scared that it was in its death throes. Scared that I would have to buy a new one, which would mean figuring out what kind of new one I wanted and pricing out one that wasn't obscene (although now I kind of want a 1930s of 1940s featherweight if I ever get a room big enough to just be my sewing room which would mean we had a house big enough to also have a music room).

This past weekend I took it to the Singer factory outlet/repair place. I filled out a big form and they said that they would call me on Monday with an estimate. I was Skkkeeeered! I figured this is going to be minimum a couple of hundred bucks and I wouldn't get it back for the better part of a month.

This morning in came the call. It needed a big time tune up. It needed to be torn apart and all put back together again because a needle had broken and the tip of it was floating around inside it and gumming it all up.

But for $90 I can have it back in two or three days as good as new!! And it won't need another tune up like this for 20 years! They were running a special so I wouldn't have to be billed hourly. STOKED! I am stoked. Oh machiney, I cannot wait to have you back!

What a Beautiful Chicago Day

I started it by riding my bicycle to the Lincoln Park Zoo where I volunteered for a few hours doing interpretive education, and having a wonderful time!! Then I cycled around the southern edge of the new Nature Boardwalk also in Lincoln Park to shop for tomatoes (from city farm) and raspberries (from Michigan) before cycling along the lake back home.

I finished my day with a quick trip to the oral surgeon (to prepare for extraction of my wisdom teeth at the end of July) where I got a super cool 3-D x-ray taken of my whole head and some M Burger (a Rick Tramonto burger joint which has a window into the kitchen of Tru). Then a nap. Now some quilting!

Happy Birthday to Me!!

Today is my birthday.

I am 31-which as I type that seems unrecognizably older than how I feel. And also younger than I feel, and also exactly right.

I feel hardly more than a teenager really, just old enough to drink. I feel fresh and inspired. But I also feel the fear that comes from living and being jaded paralyzing that inspiration, as I fret that I have waited too long to start what I want to do. Even as my new motto for my own art is two lines of a much longer manifesto, "Begin anywhere; don't be cool." And I feel as if I am what I am, the product of exactly the life I have lived at this point.

I am lucky to be healthy and safe and secure in a time when I know that isn't exactly true of many people across the world and many people of my own acquaintance and in my very own city.

I am also lucky to be at a turning point in my life that is actually swinging the good way on the pendulum. This will be a very good birthday, and I think 31 should shape up to be a wonderful year.

(Plus tonight I get dinner at Graham Elliot who charms me on top chef masters every season).

Back?

So I said I would update around my birthday (which is Monday), and here I am.

Sam is doing wonderfully. I am also doing very well. Getting used to everyone being functional and healthy at our house is oddly harder than it seems like it would be. It is amazing what you get used to when your 'normal' gets turned upside down by an addiction. Anyway, we all seem on the right path and even the world's angriest kitty seems to be dealing better with everyone (although I still think he would trade us for our housekeeper any day).

That will be the end of my speaking about that.

I said I would decide what to do about blogging. And I haven't totally decided. I miss having this blog as a forum to talk about things, but I also think it was really good for me to reboot on healthy privacy because quite frankly there are some things that should be kept to myself and if once upon a time I knew that, it has been a very very very long time since I put it into practice.

Right now, I think I am going to continue to blog, BUT it won't be about my personal life. It will be about my life but more thoughts about art and media and about restaurants and concerts and activities I participate in. Definitely more about my quilting. Quilt #3 has been started (it is the same pattern as the other two) and Quilt #4 has had the fabric selected. It should start to get cut out tomorrow.

In order to sort of reboot my blogging life, I am also going to make a major effort to post more pictures to the blog. I like blogs that look like that and the only reason mine does not is that I am a lazy person. I can fix that.

I will also likely blog an upcoming project that I am doing with a few friends. There is a book called "The Artist's Way" and it is like a 12 week life realignment to get you to say more yes to art in your everyday life. I had never heard of it or done it, and my friends all have. I think it will be super interesting and very helpful. I am however terrified of the 'Media free' week. No TV, no internet, no movies, no books!!!!!! I might actually physically die.

I am not as bad as last night's post sounded!!

Today there was laughter and love and I might have adopted myself a little sister. I am hopeful for the future, but as an assist to myself and my recovery and by extension Sam's I have made another decision.

I am taking a hiatus from the blog. I will check back in two months from now around my birthday. I just need to focus on me and keep my writing a little closer to the hip and to my heart and on paper that I haven't published into the universe yet.

There is a possibility that this hiatus will mean the end of this blog as it stands now. I don't think it will be the end of my blogging. It is possible that the hiatus from this blog will result in a less personal blog that gets worked on going forward or just in the meantime. If that is the case, I will link to it here. But in order to recover myself, I think it is in my best interests to keep off of here because I am not capable of keeping the recovery thoughts out of my confessional thoughts here or keeping this non-confessional enough to do that.

I got here and it is kicking my ass

12 hour days, three of them in a row, sitting a lot in weird chairs and I haven't cried this much since I was in a workshop with Kelly Q. In fact even then I don't think the whole workshop cried as much as I have all by my lonesome at the two day point!

That is all I am going to say about recovery as the first rule of recovery is you don't talk about recovery (not really, that was a bad fight club joke, the real thing is that it is anonymous so you shouldn't advertise you inclusion in it or anyone else's).

I am still both scared and hopeful, but I have seen Sam and he looks well and seems committed.

We also decided that in the service of repairing our life and pursuing our mutual and individual recovery, we are not going to be setting a wedding date until this time next year and we will do NO wedding planning until then either. It will be stressful enough to get through year one of his sobriety, and choosing to add wedding planning stress voluntarily on top of that seems STUPID. We are still 100% planning to get married, so don't get worked up or start rumors.

Now I am exhausted and will watch a little tv and fall fast and hard asleep.

Very nervous

Tomorrow I drive to Minnesota to start four days of 'the family program' at Sam's rehab facility. I get back sometime on Monday, and then Sam comes home on Wednesday.

And all of that has me scared. I am scared of the program at rehab. Scared that it might be unbearable or preachy or that I have no idea what I will uncover or that I will be asked to do something as support to Sam that I would be unwilling or unable to do (Ok so I have no idea what I mean by that but that no idea is the problem). I am scared that the hard part is about to start because let's face it, this next part will be harder than the part I am in now.

Next week Sam comes home, and I don't know what that means. Obviously I don't think he will be magically ok and we will all be happy and light and perfection. It would be naive to think it would be that easy. Not only is it likely to be difficult for Sam to get back into his life while also staying sober, but it our relationship had suffered due to the alcoholism, and I imagine it will go through a bit of a reinvention as a result of sobriety. Now I am super hopeful that it will be an all positive reinvention that fixes some of the most troubling bits (as they were troubled directly by the alcohol abuse), but I don't think that will be easy or very much fun even if Sam and I are committed and flexible people.

These last few weeks have been like a vacation within my own life and Thursday when the class starts, my vacation comes to an end. And I am worried.

Yesterday started out crappy in an amusing way

And I intend to write it all down here, but I haven't yet. Because I am a lazypants. Maybe tonight after work (which has been crazy busy with what I have called archive-a-palooza) and after the play reading I am staging for the theatre company I am in. I also need to upload the quilt pictures from two months ago. Ugh. Better yet I need to figure out how to post those from my phone. That would be awesome.

Although I finished my sister's quilt yesterday, well not finished-finished. Finished the first portion. I got the quilt top and quilt back pieced and ready to go. I did not take a picture because I dropped it off within a very short time of finishing it. In a month and a half or so I should get it back. Then I have to bind it, and THEN it will be finished.

Passion and Motivation

I have totally scuked at motivating myself lately. To do anything. I haven't sewn my sister's quilt top together. I haven't worked on the pieces that Tim Miller's workshop inspired me to follow through on. I haven't attempted to create anything for a storytelling program that would help nurture my writing for performance (and you have to have work for the application). I haven't really exercised. I haven't been eating better. I haven't been writing in my 'artist pages.' I haven't done anything to look into auditioning.

I just haven't felt like it, or if I have felt like it, I let myself talk myself out of it or I procrastinated my way away from it. Instead I have watched 2 and a half seasons of Bones on Netflix on demand since Sam left. Well, and I went to an al-anon meeting and am going to one tonight again.

I am going to respect the structure and anonymity of al-anon and not talk about it here any further than the two things I just said. I just feel this isn't the right forum for it, especially knowing my penchant for anecdotes.

I am also going to take that same tack on Sam's recovery and keep it off here. It just doesn't seem like it will be helpful to him to know that I might be writing about it here. I won't be quite so circumspect about it as I will be about al-anon simply because this blog keeps me in contact with the Bitch Barn crew, so I will continue to reach out to them using this forum.

But as to motivation again, I just don't feel as passionate about things as I used to. Or I do, but I don't know how to parlay that into motivation for the things I feel passionate about. Now that I write that, I am not sure that is true. Maybe I just mean that I have higher personal standards for what should come from my passions, like I expect instant wow factor from them. Or something. Or that my passions are kind of varied and then dillute themselves and make all of my motivations less successful. Or something?

I don't really know what I mean.

Anyone have advice or tips or tricks on how they motivate themselves? About anything? Or tips about following your passions? Why do I feel like an Oprah show or a self-help discussion group?

Good news!

I just spoke with Sam on the phone, and he knows what his ongoing treatment reccomendation will be and it is an outpatient treatment a few blocks from our house that he needs to attend three to four times a week for a few hours in the evening.

So, as of sometime on April 27th, Sam will be home. Come over and help me drink all the liquor up before then. Or wait until closer to then and come and collect what is left.

I am a crazy fool--for haircuts

So a gabillion years ago it seems, my old college roomie Laura (who is a curly headed girl just like me) sent me some links on going shampoo free and how to take care of curly locks. These links led to a deal of trial and error with products and styling ways but led me to where I am today mostly. I have a good way to get easy, wearable, nice, even curls that are relatively tamed (in the good not frizzy way not in the bad ironed into submission way).

But in all these links and research there was one name hanging above them all. Ouidad. Ouidad is the guru of curly hair. She invented a supposedly brilliant way to cut curly hair that eliminated the triangle head while still letting the curls show. Of course this haircut was expensive. Of course you could only get it in like New York, LA, San Francisco and like a handful of places that I never lived. She also had expensive product that you could get shipped to you and a fancy method of applying product called 'rake & shake' but I was too poor to risk ordering a bottle of something expensive that I had never touched and was not sure that I would even know how to use.

Then I moved to Chicago and was certain that I could find the products or the haircuts (even if I might still be too poor to get either). But nope. There was one salon out in a burb that could give a Ouidad cut. The products were available still on line. The magical Ouidad was still elusive!

Last week I went to Sephora and oh look you can buy Ouidad stuff there, nice, maybe I will try that. Then yesterday while in a fit of lull at work, I googled Ouidad, went to the main site and used the salon locator 'just in case' and lo and behold, what popped up alongside the suburb salon? A salon on the North side of Chicago, off the brown line and a stylist named Jenny who was Ouidad certified.

I was intrigued. I clicked to see how much it would cost and OH MY GOD that is a lot of monies. But not techinically more monies than I could afford, and this kind of cut was supposed to change my life and rock my world and my curls would never be the same again say the Gods of gorgeous curls. So, should I?

Hmmmmm, it is a lots of money. If I go for this, this haircut better be freaking fantastoriffic amazing, and seriously I mean A-mazing!.

So I called.

I was looking for an appointment in a few weeks, but there was an opening that very night, and I wasn't busy, and I need something to fill my time other than watching episode after episode after episode of Bones on Netflix on demand. Okay, yes sure I will be there tonight.

And I spent the afternoon wondering if all this money for 'beauty' would be worth it.

It took two hours of salon time (because I added a deep conditioning treatment) for a wash, a deep treatment time under dryer, a rinse, the cut, applying all the product, pinning things away from my head to sit me under the dryer some more AND then (finally) diffusing and adding a tiny bit of pomade to finish off.

And the verdict, the final moment: Possibly the best my hair has ever looked my entire life. I looked like a freaking salon commercial with bouncy, well-defined, smooth, shiny locks that sat up and away from my head and seemed full of life!

Then I walked out into the night which was one of those Chicago nights we get in the spring and the fall where we have a light fog that is almost more of a pervasive mist than anything else. So of course it frizzed up a bit and fell down a bit, but it still looked pretty good at home in the bathroom when I took
this picture (the face look is because I was having a real time getting things to focus and get my whole head in the picture).

So far, success I think. I mean the real test will be later this week when I do my hair myself with my own product and an air dry instead of salon grade everything. I mean it was by far the best head of hair I have ever had, now whether is was a really spendy 20 minutes of great hair or a whole new way of my head living, is still to be seen.

This has been my day

Usually I have Wednesday off, but this week it is Tuesday because of a big fancy meeting at work. So today I was home and left to my own devices.

First thing in the AM I called maintenance to check out an odd sweet smell that I thought might be coolant leaking in the fridge and freezer and poisoning Steve and I. Two guys come up with equipment to tell me that the fridge is fine and I should look for something rotting. So, yup, I felt quite stupid. And when I got around to looking the smell seemed to be originating from a liquid oozing from a very old and open container of heavy cream.

So I clean out the refrigerator and go to take out the trash, and as the door slams shut behind me, I realize that I had not unlocked it and I did not have the keys. I was locked out. And I was barefoot, and I was wearing grubby covered in cat hair workout pants/jammy pants. And a grubby tshirt with no bra. And horrific hair that hadn't planned on ever leaving the apartment. And BO that hadn't planned on leaving either. But there I was in the hallway, locked out.

Which meant I had to go downstairs (again I was barefoot) and ask the doorman to let me in, but because it was during office hours, he sent me to the main office. Where I arrived a few minutes later to announce that I had locked myself out. The office woman found it pretty hilarious, especially that I was wearing no shoes. I got the key and the reassurance that I was not the only one to have done this.

My day was clearly awesome.

What do I do with my time?

Since I am solo. Although I have been solo for just a few fleeting moments (basically yesterday) as I was lucky enough to have my dear sweet Chrissy with me until yesterday morning.

I had sort of decided that Netflix and quilting and I would get real up close and personal. Basically I would use the lack of Sam and his complete and utter boredom with most movies and many of the TV shows I enjoy (basically Sam oddly dislikes procedurals--which you would think the lack of a thru-line would make him like them--although the violence and gore related to them are probably why). He doesn't like anything British (goodbye Coupling and BBC America). He doesn't like SciFi (Doctor Who--which I tried to compare to Back to the Future to get him to watch because it is gore free, Caprica, BSG--which I would like to start, Firefly). He doesn't like gore or cops (CSI, Bones, House, Cold Case, Criminal Minds--suck it Sallyacious I like it and I don't care, Laws & Order, Castle, Human Target).

I had recently become a fan of Bones thanks to Hulu and my old roomie Renee. However Hulu only has season one and the most recent episodes (Season 5). I thought they might show season 2 after they finished season 1 and like cycle through the older shows that way, but no! Hulu has season 1 on a permanent repeat loop. Which is total crap. So I put Season 2 in my netflix queue. But it had stayed down near the bottom for a month or so as I tried to figure out when I could fit it in. Then this weekend, actually I think Sunday as I watched some other shows on Hulu, all of a sudden all the earlier seasons of Bones were available on demand!!! At my house that means on TV. And in fact in the living room that means in a higher quality than they would be available to me on DVD as we just have a regular schmegular DVD player and it was streaming in HD!

I have watched 6 episodes since midafternoon yesterday. I will watch more. I might try to power through seasons 2-4 whilst Sam is away.

I also found out from him that most of the people there are not reccommended to cycle from treatment straight back into their old life. Which I guess is actually reassuring since it is a much better idea than just plopping them back in to where the problem was. It is possible that he will be reccomended a stay in some sort of sober residence in Chicago for actually I have no idea how long. I am hoping just a few weeks or not at all (for my own selfish missing him reasons and how much worse will it be to have him away but so close come May), but I do also want the best for him, so I will try to sort of adjust myself to the idea of that in advance.

Rehab (but he said yes yes yes)

So, pre-rehab I had to have an intake interview with a case manager to make sure that Sam was an actual candidate for their program. And that took like an hour.

Then today, a counselor (or member of the team of staff that are tending to him but not a med staff or a psych staff) called me to speak some more about his situation and progression and get more info about his problem. And I would gladly give that all, so I did. In detail (because obviously the more detail the more helpful). And because I am an actor and study motivation and look for hints about those things, I suggested what I thought may be coming in to play and detailed my evidence for it. I spoke of the times he had tried to cure himself and how that succeeded and failed. I spoke of the fact that I ended up calling his parents and going this route once it became apparent that he was not doing fine even when it seemed like it, but that he was kind of hanging on to mildly, nightly drunkeness by a thread and that that was not ok. I tried also to limit it to helpful info and not ramble and stay on track and cut out the convo when I got repetitive and to time date things where possible.

The counselor was floored. Not because Sam's problem was so awful or so unique (it really isn't either of those things), but because I was so thorough and grounded and insightful about it. I mean I didn't cry, I reported what happened, and I tried to hit the important points. I guess the other people he speaks to must be weeping masses of jello or deep in denial of reality or worse. Or incapable of setting up background facts and info. He said I was the best one he had ever talked too. Well, either that is true or I was his first.

Living Alone

It occurred to me this morning that for the first time in like five years I will be living alone, even if it is temporary. It is kind of strange, and it is oddly nice (not that I wouldn't obviously pick Sam being back over this but still and who knows what tune I will be singing in two or three weeks).

However, the cat seems to be much nicer when no one else is around. Apparently he only likes humans in individual doses.

And here is why. . .

Part of the reason that I haven't had much to blog about in the last week or so is because I was bursting with a bunch of information I needed to keep quiet and patrol temporarily, and I don't blog like that.

I told Sam's parents about the severity and degree of his drinking almost a week and a half ago now. As I type this, Sam is checking into the airport with his parents for a flight to Minneapolis where he will be met by the staff of a rehab clinic.

We had an honest to goodness intervention. It was very weird and felt oddly not like my life. But it wasn't terribly long and Sam seemed to be quite okay about going. Especially when he discovered that we had covered all of his bases with organizing it with his work, making sure all the bills are going to be covered, and just doing the hard part for an individual to do. In fact, he said via IM that he was kind of relieved that we had done this.

So, everyone send good thoughts and prayers his way!

I have a month home alone, well with the angry cat too.

Okay, later in the week

I should get back into the writing groove, I just have not quite felt it of late.

Not 'Just' an Actor

For a long time I have been very dissatisfied with the state of my art. As an actor I felt not just limited but purposefully constrained to not being able to do anything unless some big and wonderful director were to pluck me up and insert me into her piece. And if I were so fortunate to ever be chosen I should feel damned lucky because I am just a tiny an dinsignificant cog in their large, complicated, and beautiful machine. Not only a cog but the least skilled and the least valuable piece.

This is a sucky way to feel. Now I don't assume all directors feel like that, but the way most theater and most casting works seems to support and encourage that kind of thinking. And a tiny, unskilled, insignificant cog could never possibly have anything of value to offer to the creation process of work.

But I always felt that I had more. I didn't always know that this was what I felt, and even after I identified the fact that I wanted to create some of my own work, I really had very little clue how to go about it from knowing what or how I wanted to do to figuring out how to start.

The Tim Miller workshop was great for me because not only did it inspire me, it also really showed me how much is inside me and waiting to get out, and it showed me the way that I could do this. I, me, myself could do this with just me.

So, as of now, I am not 'just' and actor. I am a writer/performer. Step back.

Juices of Creativity

They have been released like a flood by this wonderful and amazing workshop that I have been participating in. However, I was inspired to channel them in a certain direction, and I would like to keep that momentum strong and not diffuse it with blog stuff for the next little bit.

I likely will post a lot less then for a few weeks (or not I never know what will happen when I say that) especially because Chrissy is about to be in town to visit me and other stuff and for a few other reasons that I can't get to right here yet.

Of course now that I say that I will blog more because that is how it goes. I will for sure post a final version of the text from the performance that I am giving tonight. Probably on Wednesday around my hot stone massage.

But that is the business.