Around Here

For the first time in a while, tonight, I have a sense of well-being.

Don't get me wrong.  Things have been good!  I've had peaceful moments, happy moments, wild-ass moments, hilarious moments.

But walking out of Addie's room tonight, having kissed her good night, I had the feeling of everything being alright, Bob Marley-style.

I re-arranged my office, which I like to do after recovering from a stretch of over-work.  This bout of over-work was stressful but fulfilling, and I'm getting better at telling myself that there's only so much I can do.  I'm also, finally in this fifth year on the tenure-track, maybe getting a little better at what I do.  The little bit of confidence helps.  But it was a rough few weeks, nonetheless, and two of my best friends are having a heck of a time of it, and I wanted to be there for them and couldn't.  My kids needed me, and I wasn't really there for them, either.  The balance just tilted toward work for a while, as it does every now and then, and am so now I'm digging out.

I also sent out the email telling interested folks I have given up on reJuJu for a while, which I needed to do, because it hadn't really worked out the way I wanted to (I didn't have the time to commit, and it didn't gel enough to work out).  And when you're stuck with something that's not working, I think it blocks up your creativity flows like a plug.  Your big creativity butt has a plug in it.  And everything you make feels like a big, stuck poo.

Something like that.  Clearly I need to work on my metaphors some more.

The point is, when you fail, it's best just to look at the failure, acknowledge it, say your sorry's, and move the hell on.

Anyway, the studio is opened up, cleaned out, moved around, and I finally want to be in here without having a sense of guilt or of things undone or of piles of messes around.  I'm actually knitting again.  We're headed into the final third of the semester.  Addie lost her second tooth in two days today, and Nolie has impetigo (go google image that one, if you'd like some nightmares).  Or at least that's what the doctor said.  We're somewhat unconvinced.  It snowed five inches this morning.  I'm reading Twilight, because I'm finicky about seeing movies before I've read books, sometimes, and the disc is up first in our queue.

That's the update.  All is well.  I have Halloween pictures to post soon, and the calendar has magically cleared for a few weeks.  So there may be some hunkering down and cocooning and preparing for winter around these parts.