what's the opposite of type a?

type z? whatever it's called, i'm it. of the very many personal flaws i have, my disorganization and procrastination are the most discouraging - and of course, counter-productive. i never met a deadline i didn't want to shirk, a schedule i didn't want to get behind on, a drawer i didn't want to stuff ephemera in before going back to read, surf the web, watch craptastic cable, eat peanut butter straight from the jar.

i'm feeling like i need to publicly acknowledge this because it's held me back most of my life, and i'm so ready to move on, but i don't really know how. anything i've accomplished has certainly been in spite of my work ethic, not because of it. it's a marvel that i have a master's degree. as it is, i graduated with less-than-highest honors from my undergraduate writing program simply because i couldn't get my act together enough to show up to workshops with any material to workshop. i'm certain i'll never be an etsy super-seller or a blogging star for the same reason - i can't motivate myself to put in the very hard work needed to accomplish these things (talent and product are other matters entirely). the next fenton street market date for {beatrice + the bird} is twenty days away and i have almost no inventory, per usual. i'll have a lot for the show, but not without the undue anxiety that waiting so long to get started necessitates. i HAVE been dabbling with a kicky, tiered half-apron out of my old standbys, thrift-store sheeting and alexander henry's farmdale fabrics. here's the first pass:

lately i've been listening to the simple mom podcasts, and i've been struck by a recurring theme among the moms interviewed on these smart and thought-provoking podcasts: all say "getting it all done" takes a huge amount of work, that they are passionate about the work, and they make compromises in order to get it done. i think a lot of my procrastination results from a perverse perfectionism: i'd rather not do something than do it and have it not meet my standards - or, heaven forbid, anyone else's. if it had been up to me, i certainly wouldn't have started making and selling stuff on etsy; a partner had to convince me the work was good enough to sell. there are many, many days when i'm still not sure about that. one of the things i struggle with when blogging about my work and my life is my lack of blithe confidence in the material - other bloggers maintain such an overwhelmingly positive outlook about what their posting: "i made this! it's great! i found this on the internet! it's fabulous!" i'm not saying that's misplaced hubris; it just shows an assertive spirit that i don't inherently have. and the sense that i really do have to do it all, without compromise, is absolutely paralyzing.

i am trying to take small steps. for lent, i gave up what i called "mean-spirited reality tv," which i can only define along the same lines as the supreme court's definition of obscenity - you know it when you see it. first to be axed: anything 'real housewives.' i've kept up with it since easter, and the effect has been revelatory. not only do i feel like a more decent, less imbecilic person without those programs in my life, it means that sometimes i turn on the tv and there's literally nothing i'm "allowed" to watch, which means i HAVE TO TURN OFF THE TELEVISION AND DO SOMETHING BETTER WITH MY TIME. like read with my little one. or floss. i also cancelled most of my magazine subscriptions so i wouldn't be tempted to sit down and read martha stewart living when i should be doing my own living. i definitely have less recycling to deal with as a result, and fewer "someday" projects and recipes in my mental and physical files. i need more of these techniques, though - easy, relatively painless ways to channel my time in a more positive and productive way. anyone have any ideas?

bring it

all right, i'll just go ahead and point out the obvious: my last post here was almost a year ago. yesterday, in between a couple of the fourteen (14) loads of laundry i've figured out i do weekly (or need to do), i idly sent a text to brita: "i wish i could give up wanting to have a blog."

anxiety bouquet

there's a lot i wish i could give up wanting. last week, trying to ward off a full-blown panic attack, i made a list of things that are causing me such angst these days. (i've been such a basketcase that d was compelled to bring me flowers one night last week - highly recommended supportive-spouse behavior, by the way.) i stopped adding to the list when it got to 29 items, mostly because i ran out of room on the piece of scrap paper, but also because so many were things i wanted to be different, but had almost no ability to change. for instance, i wanted my nose to stop running. and our dogs to be less excitable at the end of the day. and not to have to do fourteen loads of laundry a week. i wanted not to have bought a white couch. or to worry about trace pharmaceuticals in our drinking water, pesticides in our fruit, lead in our dust, composting, recycling, Haiti, Sudan, Baltimore, peak oil, my inability to cancel our cable tv service.

"actually," brita said, "i'd like to read about you canceling your cable."

"i wanted to cancel our cable," i responded, "but it turns out it's more expensive just to have internet service than to have both. file under 'best intentions.'"

"so write about that," she said.

at that point, i was reminded of the "but i mean well" in last night's leftovers' web address. i guess in a way i always intended this to be a space to air my wants, my mistaken intentions, with the hope of making them...less. just less. that's probably not all that interesting to anyone else, but it's cathartic to me. so i'm declaring 2011 my year of less wanting. we'll see how it goes. in the meantime, i've got a few house and craft projects i want to share here. stay tuned.

a blog in search of a niche

when i first started this blog, i was interested mainly in blogging as a creative outlet, and so my posts were all over the place, with only the slightest whiff of a theme (cooking and crafting) to keep them together. when we moved to portland and began the mother of all craft projects, our house renovation, it made sense to blog about that, especially since so many of our friends and family were 3000 miles away and not able to keep up on the day to day (or even month to month or year to year) changes to our little bungalow. so butimeanwell.blogspot.com became a house blog. and happily so.

now i find myself once again in search of a creative outlet. craft projects have necessarily taken a back seat to this little project. (and frankly, i'm realizing that i'm much less talented at executing projects than i am at conceiving a need and then googling instructions for them. which isn't to say i'll stop making things, but the world probably does not need to see the set of onesie extenders i made last week.

so i'm ruminating about what to do with the space. link to various stories about humanitarian outrages and wonder, rather anemically, what i can do about them? post my favorite etsy shops? crafts i'd make if i had but world enough and time (and talent)? cool projects others are undertaking? the latest in zoo baby preciousness? marvel over hal's every milestone? or our discovery that this is hilariously, riotously true? maybe a little bit of all of the above....last night's leftovers*, indeed.

*last night's leftovers were, in fact, really tasty. i adapted this recipe, replacing the chorizo and fish with trader joe's seafood sausage, and adding corn and tomatoes with diced chiles for an extra kick. it's nice to cook again...

bad, bad blogger

i don't exactly think of myself as a paragon of stick-with-itness, so i'm not terribly surprised that i've let this little space languish so much this fall. but others (i have readers! who knew?) have noticed that i haven't been all that communicative. thank goodness for the Flickr badge that constantly updates photos here, or my readership would be up in arms, no doubt. well, maybe a little doubt.

anyway, i'll end the year with a rambling post for old times' sake, and because i haven't come up with any other viable new year's resolutions, i'll resolve to write more in 2008, especially as it looks like we'll have some real house momentum again. we've got new stairs to the second floor from the dining room now, so drew can begin construction on the master suite (ooh la la) upstairs, starting with the basics, like a floor that isn't composed primarily of ancient wool insulation and almost-as-ancient mouse skeletons.

we're just back from ten days experiencing christmas southeast-style in chattanooga and atlanta (to which we brought good, portland rain and helped them not break a drought record. you're welcome, atlanta). after too many sweets and too much bourbon, i'm looking forward to a relatively low-key new year's eve tonight with friends and x-country skiing tomorrow at trillium lake http://www.trilliumlake.com/, near where we spent a weekend snowshoeing in early december. they've got something like 20,000 feet of new snow, so it will be a gorgeous way to ring in the new year. and a good way to forget, however briefly, about the dustbowl we call home ;-)

much love to everyone we've seen and not seen, talked to and not yet talked to, this holiday season. here's to seeing each other again in the new year!

cheers,
lil

commemoration/memory

a year ago today, drew and i were just beginning our exploration of greece, and of married life. we'd left baltimore on the 11th, flown to athens via london, and missed the last ferry of the evening to the island of hydra, where we were spending the first week of our honeymoon. so instead we were happily, wearily enjoying our first greek meal, in a tavern in the port town of piraeus. like any grand adventure, that trips seems like it happened both terribly long ago and just yesterday.

five years ago today, i woke up with an urgent need to pretend that the day before had never happened - and, of course, it was almost unbelievable, to think that the world trade center was just...gone. on top of the irredeemable sadness that came with thinking about the as-yet untold thousands who were dead and the sudden vulnerability we all felt, i had a boyfriend who had declared it "no big deal." he didn't know anyone in new york, somerset county or the pentagon, and those who had died in the wtc were all rich investment bankers anyway. i doubt he's since changed his mind, even though we now know what a toll that day took on first responders.

it took me more than a year after that to figure out just how much of a misanthropic jerk he was, and almost as soon as i did, i met drew, who is one of the warmest, most genuine men i know, and not at all a misanthrope. thank goodness for him. and for us. and september 11, 2005 as one of the happiest of our days together.

and is it too much to hope that some of those who were much more deeply afflicted by september 11, 2001 then i have managed to make something else, something happier, of 9/11, as well?

appreciation

sometimes i have to remind myself that we live a very good life. like when i'm caught in the throes of kitchen envy at someone else's house, or we're confronted with evidence of yet another rodent invasion. drew would be the first to point out that i tend to lose perspective quickly in such situations, and make as if life were a pure, relentless hell of my own making.

but a lot of the time, i'm too busy living our good life to need to be reminded of it. such has been the case over the last couple of weeks. to wit:

• celebrated my birthday in unexpectedly high style - when drew surprised me with a birthday overnight in st. michaels, md - and comically low style - at medieval times, with 16 friends and family members
• had a gorgeous dinner with my center stage friends at indebleu in dc - indian fusion yum
• had a lovely visit with my mama, godmother and other friends at my mom's the sunday after my birthday
• discovered a new band, tapes n' tapes, thanks to sarah and jeff, who came over for steamed dumplings and tofu (better than it sounds) eaten al fresco before we went to see tapes n' tapes at fletcher's last thursday
• had a dinner and movie date with my st. john's friend shannon and her husband david as a send-off before they move to philly. before we went to see "cars" (completely charming), they came over for dinner - i made a "cauliflower puff" from a recipe found in the baltimore sun and it was so divine, like a creamy frittata, served with roasted asparagus, peppers and new potatoes and a green salad. shannon and david brought an insane tiramisu from whole foods for dessert, and a lovely bottle of pinot grigio. we again ate outside - the garden continues apace, though still smelly, thanks to our neighbors, but that may change, as they've recently come under the scrutiny of child services. we've also recently had a hose incident, as in someone amputated the end of ours and stole the spray attachment. very curious.
• i had six days off of work, because macy's 'rents were in germany and she was staying with her grandparents. i missed her, but loved puttering around the house, getting projects done, or at least started.

and that just skims the surface. to be sure, there are things that are, to varying degrees, not grand. loved ones sick, ongoing war, drew leaving for a week to go to germany (grand for him, of course!) but once in a while, it's good to remember that life is, in the main, swell. at least for now.

the big three-oh

in honor of my birthday, i guess i might as well blog a bit. it's been a while since i've felt writerly, which is of course the case because now i actually have time to write. and it's not as if there hasn't been much grist for the mill, including sailing around the chesapeake for a couple of days with drew's parents and a wonderful surprise birthday dinner cooked up by becca, featuring crabcakes, corn pudding and chocolate fondue - really lovely. and this morning, another wonderful surprise - kim had made a nectarine breakfast cake with three candles for each decade i've been around, and she, joel and i enjoyed it with homemade lattes before she decamped for work. i am so lucky to have such delicious family and friends.

i share a birthday with someone who was perhaps a little less lucky. marilyn monroe would have been EIGHTY today. can you believe it? i knew we had the same birthday but didn't know we were exactly a half-century apart. not that that's really relevant to anything; it's more intriguing to think of what she might be like now if she had lived, whether she might have ever come to be happy with herself.

on a less pop-psychy note, my mom's old friend jon katz has an article in slate today about "grunt and grumble," the patois of rural america. his work is always wonderfully funny - he often writes about dogs and life on his upstate new york farm. my favorite story about jon is that he met his wife, paula span - also a writer - at a vietnam protest. he was playing a war victim on a gurney and she was playing a medic. classic.

stay of execution

i finally finished my paper on lincoln's temperance and cooper union addresses. it was, in a word, shitty. here's another word: scant. i actually had to do that thing with the margins, where you make them as wide as possible and kick the font size up a notch, just to get to the minimum page requirement. very tenth grade.

then, in class, i realized there was a factual error in the paper. and i had two or three moments of clarity as to what i SHOULD have written about. my whole academic life flashed before my eyes.

and then, when someone attempted to hand in his paper, the professor was mystified. "isn't this a week early?" it wasn't. but he let us pretend it was, and those of us who wanted to could keep working on our papers. i was one of only two who opted to. and i actually had to think about it, because it sure was nice, in those few hours between finishing the paper and contemplating turning it in, to feel like it was done, even crappily so. but i decided it would be nicer to turn in a decent paper.

so if you don't hear from me next week, you know where i'll be: holed up in front of the computer, trying to say something that's not yet been said about one of the most well-documented public figures in history. yeah. good luck with that one.

*image from constitutioncenter.org

living in a post-employment world

today is, as they say, the first day of the rest of my life. on thursday, i found out that my contract at the nonprofit where i'd worked part-time since november 2004 was not going to be renewed, and so i wrapped up my projects and left after the weekly noon staff meeting yesterday.

i'm feeling pretty weird about it. as of two weeks from now, the school semester will be over as well, and i'm facing a summer of three days a week nannying (which is so lovely but doesn't really pad the old resume), and nothing else. so i've been trying to come up with ideas to keep myself busy the other two days of the working week.

so far, the viable ones include taking the stained glass-making class that d gave me for my birthday last year, painting the stairwell in our house, hemming some pants, and finally catching up on pleasure-reading. woo hoo. ideas i've ruled out: writing a book. having a baby. finally, once and for all, organizing the basement. that last one is just totally out there.