Rachael

I have identified and named my main goblin. (For those of you just jumping in the creative-process-talk that’s been going around some of these blogs, a goblin is that little voice that keeps you from doing your best work. Or any work at all.)

My big guy, my biggest problem, is the Tomorrow Goblin. Oh, he’s slick, all right. Today’s not quite right, he says. Sure, you’re a good writer. You’ll finish that novel and you’ll start another one. I have no doubt about that. But today you have to work a twelve hour shift and stop at the grocery store when you get off. Write tomorrow, you deserve a break today. – Or – Today you’ll barely have time to blog and do the morning pages before you have to be at the dentist and then you’re meeting the girls at the movies, you’ll have so much more time tomorrow. You’ll do such a great job tomorrow. Just relax today. – Or – Today you’re just in a non-creative mood. You’d do better to sit on the couch and knit and let the writing well fill up on its own. Tomorrow’s going to be such a fabulous writing day for you!

You see? He’s a flatterer. I eat that shit up. Yeah? I’ll do good tomorrow? Okay, today I should take it easy, then. All right. Who’s going to feed me those grapes? Concierge! *snap*

(And to those of you not involved in deconstructing the creative process, we are not crazy. These aren’t (in my case) actual voices we hear coming from grizzled little guys with pointy ears and curled shoes. These are the things we say to ourselves in rapid, mostly unnoticed thoughts. Mighty effectively, I might add.)

I’ve got other goblins that come to visit, but I’ve been dealing with them for years. I know what to do to trick them. To the Editor Goblin I say, have a seat. As soon as I’m done with this, you can tear it apart. And then I lock it away while he sulks. Most of them sulk, come to think of it. But the Tomorrow Goblin is crafty and makes me feel good. If I were on a diet, he’d be the one telling me that because I witnessed that fender bender on 3rd Street I deserve that ice-cream sundae for my stress – I can always eat better tomorrow.

But you know what? Yesterday, I kicked his ass. I dragged him kicking and screaming down to the tea shop where I made him stand outside in the cold while I got a huge chai and wrote sitting in one of the deep couches. He didn’t wait for me – when I went outside he had left for parts unknown. Probably out on a goblin bender, tossing back the spiked antifreeze. He’s getting closer today, I can feel it. I have to go get a flu shot this morning – he’s whispering that I might feel funny after it, it might be better to plan on writing tomorrow.

Hey. Today’s good. It’s that simple.

Oh! Big shout out to Steph – I’m working on the sleeves of the Must-Have (doing it in the wool called for, Paton’s Merino Classic Wool, in Natural Mix, a nice oatmeal color ) and I got to a line that I COULD NOT DECIPHER. I sat and fought with it for half-an-hour, almost coming to tears over it. (Thank god I did my writing early yesterday. The TG would have won, right there.)

The instructions were, over a 3 st group, K1, yfwd, K2togtbl. Hey, here’s what they left out: WTF? Yarn forward? Huh? If I bring the yarn forward, how the hell can I possibly knit 2 together through the back loop? And that makes a decrease, and I’m not SUPPOSED to make a decrease! I was ready to stab the carpet with my bamboo needles. I sent an SOS to Steph, who’s making the same thing.

And she saved me: It was a language barrier! Who knew? In Canada and Britain, yarn forward means yarn over! That tiny detail cleared it all up, and this is where I’m at:

Ain’t it fun? I’m in love with it. Sleeves always seem to take so long, but I know I should just enjoy the ride. Off for a flu shot. And then to write. Yup.

Yep. This is the reason I’m still sitting here.

I only got 72. We didn’t have cable when MTV came out. Okay, we never had cable.

Man, today I was going to say: Hey! The signing for the new Stitch ’n Bitch book is tomorrow night in San Francisco, let’s go! I had images of meeting up with some of the San Francisco bloggers and putting names to faces. I had already planned to meet up with friends afterward to knit at a bar downtown, so I thought it would be perfect.

Then Kira pointed out that the San Francisco signing is in Walnut Creek. Whatever. The one time I’ve already made plans to be in the City, something cool is happening in the East Bay? Lord. But I figger I can buy the book anytime and I’d rather have a beer and work on my Must-Have Cardigan that I’ve finally started, so I’m foregoing the signing tomorrow.

The Must-Have:

FMS. Fear of Missing Something. One of my girls (Cari, Em, alison, can’t remember which one) said they had that, and I got it bad. What FMS leads to is overbooking, which leads to exhaustion, which leads to flaking. No one likes a flake. But at least I try to admit it when I think I’m going to. Brooke called me the other night to try to get me out to a Halloween party. I was soooo tired from working all day and I did that whole, “Cool, I’ll try to meet you there. Don’t expect me, but I’m hoping I’ll get there.” She said, “Don’t flake!” I said, “Oh, it’s highly likely that I will.” There. Warning given.

But I do promise the girls (Kira and Rachel) so often that I’ll come see them in the City and then flake out that I’m not giving this one up.

FMS. Hey, sometimes you really DO miss something. You know my Stitch’n’Bitch that I used to lead? I held it on the first Sunday afternoon of the month at the gay bar down the street from my house. I’d have anywhere from three to fifteen people there sometimes, and it was great. I had to cancel the whole damn thing when I switched shifts – I’ll be working Sundays for the next six months. I took the listing off all the bulletin boards, off the websites where it was posted. I felt sad.

Then Tara said, “Hey, I’m going to the SnB this Sunday.”
I said mournfully, “I’m sorry, I cancelled that. I can’t lead it anymore.”
“No, my friend who owns the yarn store is holding it.”

Okay. Now I’m replaceable. AND to add insult to injury, I asked Tara later if it was fun. “Yeah, it was great. You know, the editor of Bitch magazine came.”

Sometimes you do miss something.

Oh, well. Ain’t gonna miss nothin’ today. I’m going to start my laundry here in a minute, and that’s my cue to sit on the couch for three hours while it washes and dries. I sit and knit and read all the blogs I haven’t had time to read all week. I LOVE laundry time. Then I’m going to walk to the local coffee shop and do some writing. Maybe I’ll do that whole writer-angst thing and dress in black and try to look soulfully pained. Or maybe I’ll just stay in what I’m already wearing, sweatpants and my Lo-Tech and be a comfy East-Bay writer instead. Or just be Rachael. I like that the best.

It’s hard to type with a large, heavy, needy, kneady, somewhat smelly body trying to suck the front of your sweatshirt. Digit is the terror of the neighborhood (thus the smell of dirt on his coat) but is the quintessential pansy at home. He hisses and spits and acts like he hates Adah and is going to send her on to her maker in about fourteen seconds, and she just rolls her eyes and walks right by him to the food bowl.

So Digit’s on me right now. Adah, however, is on the bed, still sleeping off last night’s indignity. She a bathtub cat. I know. You can hear it coming, can’t you? Every night she sits on the edge of the tub and I pet her with one wet hand and hold the New Yorker with the other. Two years we’ve done this. Never a problem.

Last night, the bath was WAY too hot, so I was edging myself in, and she thought it was petting time. I gave her a cursory pat while trying to breathe through the scalding heat. She thought it was a real pet, leaned in and slipped.

Luckily, she wasn’t injured. Luckily, *I* wasn’t injured. She managed to hurl herself up and out of the water without using me for purchase, thank god. She started to bolt and then stopped, standing completely still in the middle of the bathroom, water running from her soggy legs and bottom. I think she was just trying to make it all go away. I laughed so hard for so long that Digit actually walked into the bathroom (he generally avoids that room). He stared at me laughing, put his tail down and stalked out. I laughed ‘til I cried. Am I terrible? Adah still isn’t over it. I hope she does get over it, though. There’s nowhere nicer to pet a kitty who drools than in the tub. You can wash your hand right off and start over.

Off to work today – yep, it’s a day off, but they needed a quick 8 hour slot of OT filled because someone called in sick, and I’m happy to do it. Christmas is coming and the purse is slim. Need to money.

New knitting update tomorrow, I promise. Happy y’all have found the secret. It’s like a big blog scavenger hunt, no? Happy day to you.

I finished the secret project! And it’s up on the web! Those of you who know where I love to buy yarn, it’s there. Those of you who don’t, or are possibly related to me and don’t know what the secret project is, DON’T SNOOP! If you can’t figure out where it’s posted and you don’t think I made it for you, email me. I’ll tell you where to look.

Hee! Makes me happy.

Thanks for all the positive comments on the Sweater I Hate. Maybe I’ll wear it sometime….

It’s raining here tonight – just started as I was driving home. I love the sounds I’m hearing right now: Digit’s rough tongue washing himself, the hiss of the gas heater next to me, the people upstairs thumping about (somehow homey), the rain falling in large enough drops outside that they’re making that plopping sound, the occasionally great THUMP as Adah hurtles her little body at the bathroom door, hoping to get out so she can steal Digit’s food. Okay, that last isn’t a nice noise. It’s a pretty funny one, though.

Look! This is cool. Adah has her own little doppelganger. This is Adah:

Shelley in England (from Jane):

I had a migraine yesterday. A real one. I was at work, and the headache started up and just kept getting worse. I have new respect for all you sufferers out there. It sucked. Understatement. Not only did I just want to lie in the dark and/or die, but I got snappish and teary and all out of sorts. I also turned stupid and refused to go home sick, preferring to play the martyr. How annoying I must have been. I woke up this morning feeling completely sick and hung-over. The hang-over with none of the fun. Shite.

And today I started training a new person at work. It’s kind of big deal for me – I’ve dodged the trainer bullet for a long time. Scared, I guess. Dispatching is just such an impossible thing to teach – it generally takes about three to five months, sometimes longer. It took me three years to start to get comfortable with the job, and training feels like stepping back to the beginning, somehow. Reliving the agony. I had a dream last night that I was trying to talk to the trainee and she wouldn’t listen to me and when I looked down I had forgotten to put on shoes. It was awful.

I talked constantly for almost ten hours today, until I was hoarse, and I said almost nothing. For everything I taught her, I thought of forty-seven other things that she absolutely had to know right at that very moment. Frustrating and difficult, but somehow satisfying. Don’t quote me on that.

(But training is going to be so all-consuming for the next month that I won’t be posting as often. Or as well, for that matter. I’m sooo brain-fried right now. I feel like I’ve used my allotment of words for the whole week, just today. And it doesn’t really allow for me to take a break, so no writing on my lunch break. MUST WRITE AT HOME. Must not rely on work breaks to get my writing done. Hold me to it, kay?)

Off to make a lamb chop (wish me luck) and take a bath. And off to bed early tonight, ‘cause I’m gonna get some writing in before work tomorrow morning. Yippee! Hope you’re as happy and warm and dry as I am tonight. I lurve fall, don’t you? Knittin’ weather if I ever felt it.