House of the Moon

Screaming kid and a 3″+ slug on my kitchen counter.

Rock star start to the day.

At least the sun is out and I am about to brew coffee.

Derek is at school. Coffee is brewed. I will now sit outside and drink it in the sun for awhile. Then to work, packing up orders, then bikram yoga in a couple hours.

But right now…. sun and coffee.

Need to make an online journal entry of substance.

I need to make the time to do it.

How did my days get so busy, so full, so hectic? Web stuff, straw stuff, preschool stuff, little boy stuff, house stuff, preschool auction stuff, health stuff, DLJ stuff.

Well, I must get back to the STUFF. I will try to write something with decent content in the next few days.

Our insulation was sucking pretty hard, so we went ’round, got estimates and recommendations, and then I made the appt. Yesterday, in the afternoon, they called to confirm coming today at 8 am. WHA?

So we got everything out of the attic. Not that much stuff compared to most people, probably, but the camping gear, scuba/snorkel gear, a crapload of Thomas Dolby t shirts…..

Then DLJ took up the floorboards the previous owner had put in, planning to put them back in his own configuration when everything was done.

HAH.

Our insulation was so woefully thin….the new stuff … you can’t see the studs or where the floor used to be. At all. It looks like a 1 foot+ snowfall in the attic. Sweet, wonderful insulation to help us keep our home warm and hopefully bring down the overall heating bills.

But now we can’t put the wood, or any of the stuff….back. NOW what?

Not exactly a crisis….but a guestroom full of stuff.

Gratuitous Post to show my friend @ThomasDolby something, and give you all a chance to follow him on Twitter. Because he IS awesome. Did you know he has a new album coming out soon? How freaking cool is that?

As you were.

I’m in my studio with a student, supervising her open torch time.

I made this one yesterday, quickly, to test a theory. The swirls are not a glass that is called Aurora, made by Bullseye. I sort of accidentally made my own Aurora, using Bullseye glass. It has a lot more color, I think than the bought Aurora.

Fascinating. Wish I had more time to play with it, but life is hectic these days….only more so soon, when I start my yoga classes twice a week. That will cut into studio time, for certain, but good for the soul in a different way.

I tried making my grandmother’s fudge recipe today for the first time ever. I think I went too far past soft ball stage, so I tried again with the batch, and it improved slightly in consistency, but is still grainy. Still, a good first try. Derek will like it no matter what. Next time, a little less long on the stove…
Derek has a cold, so we are hanging around home instead of our original plan to go up on Mt Hood this weekend. We never told him, so he doesn’t know what we aren’t doing, and we will try again next week. Hopefully both of us will avoid it, or get it mildly.
Last night I went to my little sauna place I like with a groupon I bought last year and used it for two hours of wet and dry sauna, relaxing. It was different to be there in the evening. My only complaint is there was no area light enough to really read a magazine while waiting and cooling off between sauna sessions.
For about 40 min I was the only one in there, and after that, only a few more folks came. I was back home by Derek’s bedtime.
I signed Derek up for a cooking class through the local park and rec. It is only for a month, but I hope he likes it. It will be his first park and rec structured class without me. *sniff* But good at the same time.
Not sure what we will do with the rest of the day. It is Sunday, so it is pizza day. I need to drop some money off at the bank. I made a bead yesterday after letting my student have her “open torch” time. I have been so busy…so little time to just sit and play with the glass. Which makes development into new things hard, as I just don’t give myself the time to evolve. But I had better do it before summer, when I don’t have Derek in school…even LESS time!
I wish I had news. But I don’t. I have some health stuff going on that needs to have a test in 2 weeks. I’m concerned but trying to not be overly concerned. If you are so inclined, throwing some positive, healing energy my way in the next 2 weeks can’t hurt. I’d rather not have help on the day of the test….whatever is there is there at that point, but good juju directed at me and my body now, before the test….that would be keen.

Snow might arrive this week, I kind of would like a snow day for Derek, so as long as we are stocked up on coffee and snacks…I’m good for a bunch of the white stuff.

Happy New Year!
I hope everyone had a good twist of the Earth into the new decade.
DLJ and I went to see Pink Martini play in Portland, a tradition for us for a few years until Derek came along. This was the first year we ventured out again on New Years Eve, and we had a very good time. It’s a special night with a special, local band, and they play two shows. We always go to the one that encompasses the actual midnight hour.

This year it was special fun, since it was our first year since 2006. It was a nice end to 2010, which was in many ways not my favorite year of late. There were many good things, and in the big picture, not many bad, but….it was a mostly off-kilter year. Can’t win them all.

One nice bit, though, was making a new friend in the band’s trumpet player. For years I had admired his work (and that long hair) onstage and after over a year and a half of emailing, convinced him to hang out in early May. Since then, we have gotten pretty close as friends. He is not around much, with the touring and various other travels, so instead of seeing each other regularly we would carve out like, 8-10 hours in a day, and just do it all at once, roaming from activity to activity, meal to meal.

So seeing the band, and now, seeing a good friend up there, spending NYE with him from the darkened Schnitz, was a lovely ending, and beginning of 2011.

Today we took down the tree, after Derek and I had slowly removed ornaments during the last part of last week. DLJ says it’s too cold to do the outside lights, but I like work like that, so I will venture up the ladder tomorrow to get them off the house, so we can pack everything back away in the attic and I can turn my sights to Spring. I know, winter just started….but I am always eager for it.

In the world of glass, often one starts working in the colors of the future. If I made glass hearts, I would be well into that for Valentine’s Day, already. So Spring will come to me, soon as I shift my working colors, to a degree, to the vibrant new growth colors of the coming longer days.

Tonight, it is cold. Brr. I hope to get close to the end of a sleeve on a sweater I am knitting for Derek, perhaps a small cup of cocoa, and a little tidying up. I’m reading William Gibson’s latest effort and the first chapters were a tad confusing, but I am now hooked in for the ride. So a little nightly reading will end my first day of the this decade.

I have some “resolutions,” but I will post those in a few days. My resolutions are really more like goals, I guess. Not promises to keep, but things to work and strive towards with optimism.

May the new year be blessed for all of you!

-Simon LeBon really kinda goes overboard when he decides to have a Twitter session, makes me page just a blur of blue eyes.

-Lots of WordPress messing around right now. Come the New Year it will be time to get back into Joomla, methinks, for other projects. I still kinda like Drupal *wistful*

-Derek and I just drove back from the coast, where the weather was wet and wonderful and wild. The sea was ragingly gorgeous, I wish I had had more time to just sit and watch it.

-I came home to find some glass goodies, some odd lots that I want to play with when I have time. Which will start again next week, hopefully when preschool gets back into swing.

-At the same time, I hope to start some yoga soon, I got some classes cheap, but It might be a good idea to let the New Years resoluters get their inertia sheen a little tarnished first, maybe. I don’t know.

-There is herring in sour cream in my fridge. Kickass.

-I need to go to the knitting store! So close to finishing my sweater, yet…I have issues, beginner knitter me. But so close to finishing!

-NYE is this Friday! Pink Martini and drinks with friends beforehand! Yay!

-Rain, rain, rain. My house still has a leak, but we are closing in on it. Yeah. Like we were 3 years ago.

-With only two cats now, we are letting them upstairs during the day. Ankimo is the only one right now who ventures up. It’s nice to have roaming (sorta) kitties again.