Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Soon to be Live From Joe's

No coffee, no music. It's Wednesday, it will be live from Joe's in a few hours. In the meantime I have the order for two galleries to sign (I engrave my signature on all my work), pack, invoice and ship. Out of the four firings I had scheduled for yesterday I did two--the slumps of the gallery pieces in the medium kiln. However it is not the case that I did nothing on the book projects. I am still slogging through loading the big kiln with the eight projects listed yesterday and when it is full, I will turn it on. For a brief moment last night I thought about taking the two hours tonight while Dave is at a cooking class learning to make espumas (foams) and working in the studio, but I am a Mommy and that is just not going to work: Child to feed, cuddle, bathe, read stories to and get to bed.

I woke this morning from dreams of Christmas. What does it say that my dreams every night (well, for the past two nights) are now propelling me past the time when the book is due to the publisher? Am I subconsciously trying to escape the pressures of the me in the now? If so, why am I dreaming of other stressful times? Have I forgotten what life without stress is like? Sure, dreaming of Christmas sounds good, but I was running around a big warehouse building with the associate director of J's school assessing which fluorescent lightbulbs needed to be changed while figures from ancient pagan winter solstice rituals cavorted and drank in the falling artificial snow inside the building. Who were they? How should I know. Ask Neil Gaiman. I got it all from primal memory or reading too much weird fiction.

And not to be a whiner, but it is still dark! Bill said something yesterday about it worsening for the next four months and then getting better. What I am worried about is what it's going to be like when we do the whole "falling back" thing in October. On October 29 it is going to either be a lot darker when I struggle from bed at 5:30, or I am not going to be able to get up at all. It is almost 6:30 right now and I am looking out the window and it is really, really dark! There is only a faint lightening of the sky and I can now make out the neighbor's shed in the next yard which I was unable to do an hour ago. OK, maybe worrying about how dark it is going to be in two months (three days before the book is due to the publisher) is a bit whacked, but it fits with the overall futuristic stress of the day.

At least I found 6" metal rings for the windchime supports yesterday. I was thinking about having part of the project be the construction of glass rings from which to hang the chimes, but this is a beginner project after all. I also thought about offering making the glass ring as an optional design in the project, but it would probably require too many instructions to be able to layout well. Not like the paisley clock where I can offer using squares instead of circles in the design if you want an easier project.

I picked up several hanging panels and the fountain plates yesterday from Dixie Glasshoppers where I have them drilled, and I may also have picked up a new apprentice--just in time to grind the tabs off the 5544 circles I am having waterjet cut for paislies. My former apprentice Maggy was only with me a short time before she moved back to Michigan. She is here visiting now but soon to depart again, and my Mom is tired of doing shows with me so I really should be looking for someone else to step in on a regular basis. It might even be a good idea to have an assistant for this winter's One of a Kind Show in Chicago in December. I was toying yesterday with increasing my booth size--people actually couldn't get in last year because it was too full and writing up orders myself I lost a few because I couldn't write up fast enough.

Wow. Yet another problem IN THE FUTURE. Yesterday I couldn't focus on anything, today I don't seem to be able to focus on anything immediate. Time to go pack up glass. In keeping with the futuristic theme of the morning I am not going to get paid for this work for 60 days. The other side of that coin says that's just in time to use the payment as a return of the advance to write the book. But as we are not going to go to the place where the book is not finished on time (and we are being very careful here not to go there), we are certainly not going to go to the place where it is not finished at all.

PS--The spellchecker for blogger thought "lightbulbs" should be "lustfully", but that would've been a whole 'nother dream.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That wouldn't be a Christmas dream, though Neil Gaiman might have had something odd to say about that, too.