Another gap, sigh….

Well, I still haven’t managed to say much again lately, in more ways than one. Sorry!

I have really been trying to get back to this blog, and lots of making, and teaching, and more.

Instead, I have been spending way, way, way too much time (and money….) at one “dentist” or another. Or recovering from having gone to dentist … various specilists … oral surgeon …. Are you starting to get the idea here?

I won’t bore you with details, except to say that all that has in fact been going on since mid-January. Please understand that metal-clay things are still going on too, just more in the background: I have managed to make some new pieces and teach private lessons, at least, and I will schedule public classes and write about all of it as soon as I can.

In the meantime, your good wishes are much appreciated.

Forty-Five Days!

This post is a small diversion from my art jewelry theme, but I figured I should say a little something about my recent absence here…..

When I was thinking about moving back to PA from CA, I went house-hunting as part of my investigation into whether I could make the move work out. I found this place, located very near a large city park: a two-story, brick home from the late-1940s, to which the then-owners had attached a one-story addition in the mid-1990s. (This first photo was just a quick shot taken during the pre-purchase home inspection.) The inside of the addition was great, but I never liked the look of it from the outside, just stuck down next to the original house with no architectural-design tie-ins. Besides thinking the flat-roof was one of several rather unattractive elements, after moving in I discovered that it also leaked on both sides of the corner shown here. Yuck! Plus, though I loved the idea of circulation (both air and human) facilitated by the two sets of french doors added during that construction, I wasn’t thrilled with all the wildlife (both large and small) those large openings seemed to invite. Something had to give.

And this is what I have recently given up a lot of time and money to achieve:

Over 45 days (including much of this past holiday season…) this has involved: repairs to the old flat roof to improve its structural integrity; a pitched roof built on top of that; changes to some windows (around the corner, not shown here) to accommodate the pitched roof; gutters re-hung to drain into a rain barrel (also around the corner, where it can serve a garden bed at the front); a whole range of repairs inside where the flat roof had leaked; removal of the (extremely-solid!) basketball hoop; and enclosing the entire large concrete patio into a screen-porch with ceiling fans inside, intended both to provide a great protected “outside” area and to try to visually tie everything together (at least a bit, given what I had to start with…).

Clearly, mid-winter, this project is nowhere near complete. In addition to all the inside-tasks that remain (two examples: I’ve done some clean up, but have not yet finished all of that yet because I’ve been so wiped out; and there’s lots of furniture to be moved back where it belongs), outside I had also deferred all sorts of landscaping because I knew this project would tear up yard area, which it certainly did. But, at last, in a few months I can move on to that. (And, dare I say it, at some point to remodeling the kitchen next …. which was my other big pre-purchase dream!)

Assuming I can get myself healthy, and somewhat caught up in the jewelry-realm, by then. I’m still trying simply to achieve those…..

I sure hope I can get to feeling better soon!!! I was thinking of health and long-life today, in particular, reminiscing about my paternal grandparents because this day, February 2, was the date on which they celebrated their wedding anniversary. It was always easy to remember that one: perhaps I should note that they were married near Punxsutawney, PA … and all sorts of people (in the colder parts of this country at least, plus some fans of certain US films) celebrate another Punxsutawney-related event on February 2, don’t they?! I do hope groundhog-Phil’s prediction of an early end to winter this year is accurate!

Running Hot and Cold….

Well, there I was, a little over a week and a half ago, planning an “I’m baaaack!” post, and a dozen or more things to follow along fairly quickly when, wham!!!!, I was completely knocked out by one of the “upper respiratory virus” things that has been circulating this winter.

I have a suspicion about where I got it. I’d been pretty much holed-up at home that week until the night the water went out (freezing weather led to a break in a main line one neighborhood over) and someone called me up and asked if we could carpool to a class that evening. Now, I’d been undecided about the class but, with no water and a ride-seeker, I thought, hey, just go. Ten minutes into the twenty-minute ride, she starts coughing up a storm and, when she finally catches her breath, says, “Whew! I was sick a week or so ago, and I really am better, but I just cannot shake this cough.” I didn’t sit near her in the class, but she coughed the whole way back too. Now, it is possible I caught the bug from someone else in that class or someone else in that building, but …. Water was back on by the time I got home, so I climbed as quickly as possible into a long, sudsy shower, but I still got hit. Hard!

I was in touch with my doctor by phone, who gave very explicit instructions:

• Drink plenty of fluids.
• Rest.
• Eat chicken soup.
• Sleep.
• Keep drinking fluids.
• Continue to rest.
• If you feel you absolutely have to get up, then go take a hot, steamy shower, eat some more chicken soup, and then go back to sleep.
• Do not expect to really get up for at least a week.
• Do not be surprised if you can’t actually stay up until two weeks have passed. It might even take three.
• Continue to stay hydrated.
• And to sleep!

Doctor made it clear that two to three weeks is average time to recover from this. And, guess what: even when I do feel better, I am not going out with others until I have the cough under control! I hope I am over the very-worst, but I am not yet feeling better, definitely coughing up a storm. I dragged myself over to studio to water the plants today, and left again right away. Can’t have the plants die just because I’m sick! But I have jewelry to make, workshops to announce, blog posts to write, shows to enter … and, for now, I’m just going to crawl back into bed.

So far, this has been a really loooong winter. I am so looking forward to spring! In the meantime, please know that I’ll be back as soon as I can….

On taking a little break (ha!)

For a whole lot of reasons, not worth going into, I have been going “at full tilt” since the start of the year.

I mean, I was busy back last year as well. In addition to all the usual “holiday season” and “year end” activities, there were the extra “sales opportunities” that took up time both in and of themselves, as well as all the extra time preparing pieces to enter in them. And, as regular readers of this blog will already know, it’s not that I simply procrastinated. I decided to enter a few extra shows only after I’d taken on the rental of the new studio, and then I was hustling to work on both the studio set-up and making more pieces to sell to help cover the rent… Whew! I still run out of breath just remembering that push.

So I pushed a number of other things off until the New Year. And just kept going. And I mean going. Most days started at 8 am and ran until 2 am. It was a hectic pace. But I knew that, within about three weeks, I had a four-day stretch with almost nothing planned, and the very few things for those days were fun and easy.

So, what happened to my four-day stretch? I spent it in bed. Not, however, a four-day vacation spent taking things easy. No, four days lost being sick. Sicker than I have felt in I-forget-how-many years! Saying it was a cold and cough and fever and sinus and splotchy tonsils and chills and itchy eyes and … simply does not do it justice.

Finally feeling a bit on the mend (not over it all yet, but at last feeling like this siege really will end), I insert this note (back) in the space for when I first got knocked out, and will follow it with a few other posts I would have made had I been able at the time….

Reducing Risk.

On January 29th, I’d mentioned the possibility of some follow-up surgery on my eye(s). Well, it was scheduled for tomorrow. Except, I now have a nasty mid-winter cold. Not that I feel too sick to go in; that I’d’ve done just to try to finish getting this problem cleared up (pun intended…).

But a big risk with any kind of surgery is infection, and I got to wondering whether having extra-nasty bugs swarming my sinuses and trying to escape out of various facial openings might increase the risk of infection where my eyelid would again be opened up. So I called the doctor’s office and was told, “Yes, that’s a good question to ask. We don’t do procedures on sick people. We’ll reschedule you.”

In efficiency-mode, I’m glad I found that out today, rather than having wasted time, gasoline, and parking fees finding it out tomorrow.

The eyes have it.

Eye surgery is stressful.

Even if it’s a relatively minor procedure.

For example, yesterday, I had my eyelid-area numbed and the lids clamped to hold them open and steady. So I was awake, and looking out. Then hooded people wearing brightly-lit optivisors approached both of my eyelids (one at a time) with needles, scalpels, coated mandrels (aka Q-tips), and more.

I use the term coated mandrels because then that tool, like all the others, are things I use too!

I tried very hard to not think about how many times one of my tools had slipped even just a tiny bit while using them. The surgery itself was nothing, compared to the stress level from what I was seeing at the time. I tried to think about my breathing instead, as slow and calm as I could keep it. But still….

Afterward, all I wanted to do was to go home, crawl into bed, curl up into a little ball with the covers pulled over my head, shut my eyes, and sleep for a couple days.

Which is what I did, except for getting up every few hours to apply warm compresses and prophylactic antibiotics, and check for signs of infection. But, each time (for the first day), I just crawled back into bed for a few more hours of shut-eye.

I’m a bit concerned because I’m not sure that they got all the blockage that this procedure was supposed to clear up; but the world is still looking clearer today than it has for some time!