Space

I’m working through a process for the fourth time right now… It’s called The Artist’s Way, and it originated in a book by Julia Cameron that a drama professor suggested I read my senior year in college. I read it, worked through it (it’s a 12-step program for recovering your creativity), and it changed me.

Every time I have worked through it, it has changed me.

We just finished Week 2, and one of the things that we talk about during Week 2 is Crazymakers — you know who they are… The people that just bring unnecessary tension to your life. And why they do it.

In my lifetime, I have excised Crazymakers many times. Some very recently. What stinks about this is frequently when you do this, you lose auxiliary friends (or drift away from them) at the same time… But when you make the choice to get rid of a Crazymaker, you have to weigh the risks with the benefits and decide if the auxiliary friends are worth the frustrations of the Crazymaker. In most cases, they’re not.

But I’m struggling with one in particular right now. I miss the auxiliary friend, because we were friends long before I got to know the Crazymaker. I have ZERO interest in associating with the Crazymaker — my life is so much better with her out of it. But I miss the auxiliary friend a lot. A LOT.

I’m also having trouble with the Artist’s Way process this time around because carving out time for myself to write stream-of-consciousness blather every day is proving to be a big challenge for me. I was going to try to hand-write it (as prescribed in the book), but that doesn’t seem to be working. Doing the three pages of writing on the computer isn’t really an option right now either, since the laptop is on the fritz and we don’t know when we will be able to replace it.

So I really need to figure this out. The writing is VERY important to the process — without the writing I won’t get anywhere NEAR as much out of it. And since I’m the facilitator for our Artist’s Way Group on ScrapShare, I kinda gotta stay with it. The last three times I’ve gone through this, I haven’t actually finished. Last time I got the closest — made it to week 9 before I was put on bedrest with Alice and didn’t care anymore. But that second trimester energy surge was seriously amplified because of The Artist’s Way.

Anyway.

Maybe this will count as today’s Morning Pages, since I’m just rambling.

But I miss the auxiliary friend, who isn’t really auxiliary at all. She was my friend first, dammit. But I haven’t been a good friend to her lately. I’ve been sort of absent — pulling away because of the Crazymaker. And that’s not good. I need to cultivate the original friendship again.

Still not sorry that the Crazymaker is out of the picture, though, even though I occasionally find myself spinning my wheels about her, which is stupid. She just sucks the energy right out of my life. OUT OUT DAMNED SPOT!

Heh. That felt good. 😀

Obediah

I think that the very first person named Obediah must have been named by a Southern toddler:

“Alice, where’s your sister?”
“Obediah.”

“Where’s your sippy cup?”
“Obediah.”

“Have you seen my keys?”
“They’re Obediah.”

….. In other news, I’m essentially “computerless” these days… my laptop’s powersource will not stay plugged in, even when I roll up a catalog and wedge it in to hold it in place. That “fix” worked for several months, but even that isn’t working anymore.

So I’m coming in and working on Jerry’s Mac periodically, but that cuts WAY down on my computer usage. Which is good and bad, I guess.

But blame my reticence of late on the computer issues. We hope to possibly have a new computer in the next few weeks, but we’re shopping around now and trying to make sure we get the best deal we can for what I need.

Nashville

Friday, the girls and I drove to Nashville to visit our friend Stacy (who is linked in the sidebar over there), who was visiting her sister in Tennessee. Another axe-murdering internet friend, Amy, met up with us for the day and we had a great time.

The kids (all four of them under the age of 6) were SO good. Helen and Aidan and Ian had a great time playing Power Rangers and rescuing the world from Bad Guys, and Alice just tried to get into trouble, thwarted at every turn. She actually was really good, considering the potential for disaster with three easily-distracted adults and three little kids wreaking havoc all over the place.

There were only two tantrums of note: Alice when somebody pushed her at the breakfast buffet yesterday morning (do NOT push Alice when food is involved), and Aidan as we were leaving. Helen had another fit in the car on the way home (she was mad that the slumber party was over and whined for a solid half hour about it), but there were no witnesses to that besides me so I’m not going to count it.

Only one kid got hurt: the boys and Helen were jumping from bed to bed in the hotel room, and one time Ian forgot to jump and just landed really hard on his left knee. Ian screamed like a banshee and refused to walk, and so Stacy and I were wondering if something really was wrong and our peaceful trip to Nashville was about to take an unpleasant detour to the Emergency Room. Luckily, Amy is an expert in Boy Melodrama, so she checked him for excess blood and then tickled him into submission until he more or less forgot about his mortal wound.

I tortured Amy and Stacy with my latest quilt (I finished it Thursday), as well as “Outside the Box” (Stacy’s favorite) and the 9 Cinco de Mayo quilt blocks I have finished thus far. They patted me on the head quite nicely and then I took them down and put them all back into the car. 🙂

It was a wonderful break from the drudgery of the day-to-day, and I’m so glad we took the time to drive up there, even if I hate driving in Nashville. Aside from missing my exit because of construction and then having to backtrack and figure out what to do when they’d taken all of the directional signs down, it wasn’t so bad. I found where we were supposed to go and we had a good time.

So. Which other of my axe-murdering friends are going to be anywhere nearby soon?

Comedienne

Alice told a joke today. And she knew it. She thinks she’s terribly funny.

Alice: “Mommy, I want some chocolate chips.”
Helen: “Me, too!”
Alice: “Me, THREEEEEEE!” (much cackling)
Helen: “Me, FOUR!”

This interchange went on all the way up to nine. Alice was very amused with her cleverness, as was I.