I laughed when I read Ann’s entry today over at Mason-Dixon.  Tomorrow I will add to my middle-agedness.  I don’t even think about it, having convinced myself I am somewhere in the 30-something age group, which of course is a lie.  I’ll be 44.  Imagine my surprise on reading that Paul Newman is 82.  No kidding?  Who knew?  Acting career aside, I love his Newman’s Own food products and if you’ve never tried any, run out to your local grocery and grab some salad dressing, or any other number of great things (cookies, for example), that bear his label.  The civic mindedness is what really brings it home.  Loads of money donated to charity from the sale of these products.

I’ve been knitting for so long that I’ve never ever considered it an activity reserved for the senior crowd.  My grandmother knit her whole life, and if it weren’t for her health and vision considerations, she would continue on knitting, one of her favorite activities.  She has never seemed old to me, despite the fact that she is now 94.  I used to smile inwardly when she spoke of other residents in the assisted living home as “the elderly folks”, as though she were in a completely different age category.  Her knitting, quilting, painting and other activities were “art” and “craft”, not hobbies.  She engrossed herself in these activities and executed beautiful things.  My daughter wore the dress she knit for me when I was 7 (carefully put away in my mom’s cedar chest until she passed it back to me a few years ago).  It still looks beautiful, and still gets compliments.  Timeless.  Classic.

Mom was never big on needlework, preferring woodwork and gardening to showcase her talents.  I recall once, when I was young, picking up a small woodworking tool, one used to help carve, and promptly sliced my finger with it.  As for gardening, I have a lovely crop of thistle and dandelion in the place where my flower garden should be.  But hey, they’re flowers too, right?  Mom will never age for me either.  Stuck in time, my whole family. 

It’s just the kids I see changing.  Hard not to when they go from 18 inches to 4+ feet in 8 years.  And where did that time go, by the way?  I always update friends on their ages, but qualifying it by saying that I’m still at the same point.  Haven’t aged at all.  I notice their growth in particular when I make things for them.  Sweaters that seemed to only fit for about a week.  Socks that were outgrown in 2 months.  I try to knit things on a larger scale, hoping to get just a little more life out of my creations.  This never works.  I just try to take pictures of them wearing these garments so that I know that they actually wore them at least once, looked good in them, and will now have a growing stash of handknits to pass along to their own children.

As for my birthday tomorrow?  I’ll forget about my age (because I always have to really think about what my age actually is), and enjoy the day, being grateful to have been born into this world to a family that loves me and for my own family and the joy they give me every day.   If I’m lucky, I’ll work a bit on Alex’s sweater (the sleeves!), and hope he gets to wear it before winter is over, or he outgrows it.

I promised myself I would utilize my time in better ways – less television, more time spent on business planning, designing – all those well intentioned sentiments.  And then over the weekend, on Sunday afternoon after battening down the hatches for what looked to be a significant ice storm, I saw the ad.  Right there on the internet – big news for fans of the series “24”.  The season 6 premiere began Sunday night at 8 pm.  Two hours Sunday night, and two hours on Monday night.  That’s a four-hour season opener! 

Last year I was channel surfing and happened upon “24”.  It is an adrenaline rush of a show.  Totally implausible, mind you, but it keeps you on the edge of your seat.  It plays on all of our worst fears – conspiracy theories, terrorist attacks, government working against us (oh, wait, that really does happen).  I could literally feel my blood pressure rise as I watched last year’s story line unfold.  Before you think I turned into a “24 junkie”, get this, I missed the final 2 episodes.  You know, when everything is revealed – missed them, even missed the re-runs. 

So I told myself I had better things to do than watch “24”.   At 8pm, the kids were still up, enjoying some extra time since Monday was Martin Luther King Day.  I quickly flipped to Fox.  The scene looked a little too intense for children to catch a glimpse of.  I don’t even like it when they watch the local news (because you have to get through the rotten stuff that happens all around before they tell you what the weather forecast is).  They headed up for bed around 8:45, and then I couldn’t help myself – I turned on the tv.

Knitting in hand, Alex’s sweater making great strides, I worked the seed stitch rows – all 3 of them before I couldn’t stand it any more and got completely sucked into the program.  Turns out that I could pretty much catch up on things despite missing last year’s season finale, and also missing most of the opening first hour.

Monday night was more of the same.  Missed most of the first hour, did catch the second hour.  I didn’t even bother to pick up my knitting while watching on Monday night.  I figured I would just drop a stitch or reverse what I was supposed to be doing.  Better off enjoying this drama without trying to multi-task.  I do enough of that all day, and let me tell you, I don’t do it very well.  I’m a focus kind of person.  One thing at a time, done with my full attention – this is how I am most productive.  Regrettably, this type of single minded work rarely happens.

Will I continue to watch “24” this season?  Time will tell.  I’m going to try to forget about it.  I really have better things to do with my time.  And I’ll probably miss the season finale anyway.

Here in the northeast, we are still waiting for winter.  It is apparently supposed to arrive sometime during this long weekend.  The forecast has changed about 3 times since Thursday, and has caused us to delay travel plans to see family.  We intended to travel down to the southern tier in NY state, but the predictions of ice for this evening made us rethink the trip until later in the weekend.  Instead, I made a trip to our library to pick up some movies and requested books, then restocked our dwindling food and beverage stock. 

Just as an aside, everyone should patronize their local libraries.  These are the greatest places to browse for the latest titles, listen to new music, watch the latest dvd’s.  AND IT’S ALL FREE!!  It just doesn’t get any better.  And if books are one of your addictions, as they are mine, the library will save you a bundle.  I was all set a few days ago to purchase some books from Amazon.  Before I hit the “purchase” button, I had the bright idea to check the library’s catalogue first.  They had 2 of the titles I was looking for, plus some of additional interest.  So I was able to cut my purchase cost in half!  There were still 2 titles the library did not possess, so I then felt completely justified to purchase them.  Because knitting has become so popular, I bet your local branch has a lot of great titles that you can borrow.  If you’re like me and you find a book that’s a “must have”, you can always purchase it for your collection.  But it’s always nice to take things for a test-spin before committing.

But I digress.  The forecast has changed again.  Nix on the freezing rain/ice.  Now we’re going with a “winter weather advisory” which means we will get a mixed bag of tricks starting during the Sat/Sun overnight hours.  That will wind down Sunday afternoon, only to be replaced with another wave of unpleasantness Sunday into Monday.  It is always difficult to plan for travel at this time of year because things change at the drop of a hat.  Perhaps the storm systems will change course, increase in speed or linger over us for an undetermined length of time.  In any event, had we traveled today, the conditions would have been just fine.  Don’t worry, family, we will get there sooner or later (things usually stabilize, weather-wise by May).

In the meantime, I have books to read, knitting projects to be worked on, children to play with, food and drink…  Travel tomorrow?  Monday?  Who knows.  The only thing I’m relatively certain of is that the forecast will change again by tomorrow morning. 

Peace & Love

In my former life, I worked as a real-estate paralegal and had a fairly orderly day.  You know - get up, have a nice cup of tea, shower & dress for work.  Then the day at work would be productive, accomplishing lots of calls, typing up documents, attending closings.  Even after returning home, preparing dinner, household chores and errands all fell in line.  Things got done.

Now with children ages 8 and 6, and assisting in the management of our alternative heating business (see us here), things don’t get done quite the same way.  (I wonder how much this has to do with aging, but let’s leave that out of the discussion for the moment.) 

I am still the first person up each day.  I usher the children downstairs for breakfast, whisk them, one after the other, to the bathroom for handwashing, toothbrushing, hairbrushing and whatever other tidying up needs to be done.  Appropriate bundling for winter weather, packing of shoes or sneakers, what’s on the agenda today, do you have your snack? your homework?  Hurry, the bus will be here in 30 seconds. 

Now I have several HOURS to accomplish all sorts of good work, yet I seem to fall short.  There are the days of volunteering at school – this sort of chews up the day so that there isn’t quite enough time to start something.  I hate to leave things in the middle, so I tell myself I will start this next project when I get back, or tomorrow when I don’t have to go out.  Can you guess what happens?  Things start to get shoved from day to day, always with the attention of addressing the task.   Perhaps prep work has even started, but it seems to take FOREVER to accomplish what should be manageable tasks.

Yarn dyeing?  Design work?  All in my head – color combinations, different fibers, the latest jacket creation for Alison…

Since we are also in the process of tying things together for our year-end accounting, I’m giving myself a little breathing room.  That’s important stuff, so it comes first.  And the kids’ schedules are what they are, so those hours are devoted to dropping off or picking up as the case may be.  But I’m going to take the advice of the lovely Ellen Rohr (I was so impressed…) and manage my time as it exists.  I’ve rearranged my calendar on the computer – now I can see the entire week, hour by hour.  I can see where things are blocked out, and for how long.  This simple tool has given me a completely different perspective on my week. 

Now I can see that I have a 3 hour block of time Tuesday and Thursday mornings, or (get this) a 7 hour block of time on Friday.  I can get a lot done in 7 hours.  And if I slot in an hour to mix dye, and another hour to soak the yarn, and another hour to dye just 2 pounds of wool, and another hour to steam it – there will still be 3 hours leftover!  During that time, I can return calls, eat lunch, drink a couple of cups of tea and send out whatever correspondence needs to go out the door.

I feel more organized already.  I feel more “in charge” of things.  If I put it on the calendar, it means I need to work on it.  Just like at the office. 

Now I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that one of the kids doesn’t get sick…

Peace & Love

This past weekend, Bob and I headed off to Springfield, MO to meet up with the Rohr’s.  Back in October, Bob was notified that he had won a contest to spend a weekend with radiant heating guru Hot Rod Rohr.  Since hydronic heating is our thing, this was quite a prize. 

We left the children in the care of the very capable Tina and headed out on our grand adventure.  The only glitch in the trip was a lengthy delay in Chicago’s O’Hare airport (bad weather seems to have affected incoming flights which happened to be carrying the crew that was supposed to be flying our plane to Springfield).  But we did meet up with John Mesenbrink, the editor of PHC News, the publication that had sponsored the event, who was on our flight as well.  As the hours ticked by, we struck up conversations with fellow passengers.  Sonja in particular kept us entertained – she had come from her hometown of Frankfurt, Germany to visit friends.  It’s funny how a common cause (or aggravation in this case) allows people to strike up conversations with complete strangers.

Our hosts were a total blast – fun, energetic and full of information.  We clicked in big way.  While Bob and Hot Rod headed off to discuss the technical aspects of radiant heating, Ellen and I talked about finances.  Ellen Rohr is a business consultant with a mission of educating people on basic business financials.  She’s passionate about it, and this enthusiasm literally sparkles out of her.  For anyone in business for themselves or thinking of starting a business, go check out her website here and order her books.  It will be well worth your money.

We enjoyed Springfield.  There’s a great downtown full of galleries and restaurants.  We were lucky enough to be there for Art Walk – where the galleries are open late on the first Friday of each month.  Great stuff.  There are so many talented people out there.  I walked away inspired.

As for knitting – not too much accomplished this weekend aside from playing with mitered squares on the plane ride.  Counting the decreases kept my mind off the fact that we were 36,000 feet over the surface of the planet.  The trip home was “uneventful” as they say.

I’m energized from my discussions with Ellen.  Setting goals, creating a schedule, working towards those goals - whether it be for our alternative energy business or for an indie handpainted yarn company, the tools are there and the sky’s the limit.  Go dust off your dreams and business ideas and know that the only limitation is you.

Peace & Love