slowly she turned

It’s gonna be a hot one today with the heat index well over 100 F. I plan to get my groceries bought right after I write this post and then I’ll settle back into playing in my studio and cleaning house. I did both yesterday and it was really one of the nicest days I’ve had in a long time. I resisted Sandy’s entreaties to go to an outdoor festival and out to eat because I woke up thinking that today is MY day. I’ll do what feels good to me. I realized that I can have more days like this on the weekends if I try. My weaving post will come later.

I couldn’t sleep last night, I guess because “A Gentleman in Moscow” didn’t want to let me go until I finished it. So I gave in at 1:30 a.m. and finished it around 3 a.m., at which time I slept soundly. Now I’ll go back to “The Reckoning” by Sharon Kay Penman, the second book in her trilogy about the 13th century wars between England and Wales. What I love about Penman is that women take a leading role in her books. It’s not just about the menfolk swinging their swords and burning up villages.

TV: We finished Ted Lasso (whimper) and are watching the last season of Better Call Saul and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. We started watching Shrinking, and after we finish that, my Apple TV is canceled. So is Paramount Plus. I’m paring down my budget in a lot of small ways that I know will add up.

I’ve had a project going for several months in which I’ve been using familysearch.org to chart the generations of my family tree back twenty generations. This gets me to some interesting and famous figures in English and Scottish history, which I’m studying at the same time. The men (and at least some of the women) are appalling oppressors and murderers, and the women are breeders, under huge pressure to produce sons. I can see the parallels for our next generations if they don’t start resisting in a very big way. I’m afraid my marching days are over. All I can do is vote and contact my politicians, who either agree with me, or don’t care about my opinion. I feel quite helpless.

I’m wrapping up this generations project mostly because all these people married each other so I am weary of all the repetition in this inbred heritage, and it means that I’m not learning much from it once I get to the “nobility.” Part of the reason I am stopping is because I became addicted to it as a way to ignore everything in the world that is upsetting me. I do the same thing with games and reading. This seemed like a more legitimate way to waste my time but now I see that it’s feeding a compulsion. Now I’m going to try to channel that compulsion into art-making. Thus the weave every day challenge.

Victor couldn’t make it yesterday to give me the work estimate, so hopefully I’ll see him late Monday and I’ll know how much to get the home equity loan for. I have been out of debt for years so this will be an adjustment, but I just can’t wait any more on getting these house issues resolved. I also need to save up for a trip to England and Scotland.

Considering our choices in planning the trips to England and Scotland is overwhelming. Usually I enjoy trip planning and I begin a year out for big trips. But there is so much to see and it won’t be just me and Sandy – I have to account for other people’s preferences and interests this time – so it is making me very anxious. I guess that I wasn’t meant to be a travel agent after all.

I started thinking – with the shrinking window of time we have left in this world – why am I not focusing more on what I need and want to do? When I do, there is an underlying guilt that is not productive and it sucks. I am anxious about whether I’ll be able to travel for eldercare and financial and world war and climate change reasons if I wait much longer and at the same time I kick myself for not being satisfied with a house in a nice neighborhood, heat and AC, and enough money to support ourselves at a reasonably comfortable level.

Okay, I’m spinning down an anxiety hole now, so it’s time to go shopping and then I’ll be back later tonight with a weaving post.

Well, I got way behind on my “special event” postings. I’ve actually been to the Tapestry Weavers South retreat since and finished writing my Mexico travel blogs from Lake Waccamaw over a month later. So I have some catching up to do, which leaves me to wonder – why am I doing it at all if I procrastinate about it?

The best thing about blogging is that it leaves me a record of my life which I can revisit later, if needed or wanted. I used to keep a diary, now I blog. It’s much easier to type than to write. The photo editing is a bit of a pain, but I could upload my photos straight from my phone. I don’t do that because of the size. This blog is almost 20 years old and although I lost a lot of it in transitions from platform to platform and in a virus attack in the 00s, I have a lot of photos and I don’t want to pay more money for storage space, so I reduce the size before I upload. It is also helpful as far as getting my photos stolen for commercial use if I upload in a low-res, smaller format.

You’d be surprised how many photos get filched from artists by unscrupulous companies and for use in magazines or catalogs. I’ve given permission a couple of times for this use, but they never want to pay other than sending me a copy of the magazine (not even a subscription, really?) or a coupon for their product. But I’ve been lucky – I’ve seen other artist work get absolutely ripped off the Internet and copied and sold with nary a thank you, even.

Speaking of Internet theft and corruption, just found out that my old Facebook account, which was active between 2009-2016, was hacked and all my old posts and photos and comments from dearly departed friends are GONE. So I deleted the account. It seems that I put out to the universe the question of why I blog, and here’s the answer. My photos are here, but those priceless comments are gone forever. And this blog, as I’ve found in the past, is not a permanent solution. Nothing is, really.

Today I am focusing on getting my weaving practice going. At least for the month of July, I plan to join Mirrix Looms’ Weave Every Day in July Challenge. https://mirrixlooms.com/pages/weave-every-day-in-july-challenge I’ve got my Jorge the Beautiful Mexican Beetle tapestries to finish, and I’m going to prepare my other travel loom and my floor loom for switching off to when I need a change. I do not lack for looms! So that’s my priority this weekend.

My other priority for the month is to move forward on some house repairs and improvements that are sorely needed. Hopefully I’ll get an estimate for three small projects, including replacing my front door, today. Then I’ll go to the credit union and revive my home equity loan. The front door will not be cheap. It has to be a wood Craftsmen style door, and I have to get it approved by the city staff in the historic preservation office. They’ve worked with me before on this, though, and are very helpful. The prices of these doors are shocking. However, since before we bought this house in 2001, the front door has been a hollow three step window 50s ranch style door, and it is ugly as sin and doesn’t provide much insulation. I could probably kick a hole in it even with my messed up feet. I can’t imagine the reason that the former owner of this house chose this door, or why it was replaced. Our house is 101 years old.

The main thing is to get this dryer vent situation resolved. It is creating a fire hazard and I’m done tiptoeing around it. For the past year we’ve been drying our clothes on racks and finally bought a new dryer, only to have the same problem crop up again. It has to be the vent. I’m getting it fixed.