I’ve been hovering on the edge of migraine country ever since my head exploded last wednesday night.  The 90°F temps over the weekend — when i was taking a papermaking class that was outside almost half the time — really didn’t help.  My most reliable migraine trigger is heat+light.  Yes, i moved away from the East Coast to escape the hot summers.

Earlier this week i began to have a sinking feeling that i’d chosen the wrong paper for the cover of Cipher #2.  The more i thought about the paper, the more i realized it’s much better suited to what i have in mind for Cipher #3.  (Yes, i’m already thinking about Cipher #3.  But then, i’m often thinking about what i’m going to do with my next zine, and so far i don’t think the “next zine”s have ever been what i once thought they might be, altho’ the ideas always go on the back burner for some future project.)  I thought i’d just push thru’ this hesitation since i’d already had about 25 copies made of the inside covers.  But today i finally copied off a few of the outside covers and i knew instantly that, yes, this is the wrong paper for this zine.  It’s hard to explain why, i just knew as i picked up the cover from the copier that it was wrong wrong wrong.  I think tomorrow’s scooter ride is going to include a stop by Paper Zone so i can pick out something different.  I’m thinking maybe something in a grey tone.

Tonight felt like a night for sewing.  A few weeks ago i’d cut out the pieces for a new skirt, so i sat down at the machine and started putting it together.  Andy had a party to go to, so it was just me and my sewing and my music.  (And the cats, but they were off doing their things at the other end of the apartment.)  My goal was to get as far as both side seams before calling it quits.  Naturally, when i switched over to the zipper foot the machine stopped cooperating.  I slightly loosened the tensions (upper tension and bobbin tension).  Nope.  I changed the needle.  Nope.  Not only would it not sew on the zipper, it wouldn’t even sew the piece of scrap fabric i test stitches on.  Sigh.  Thanks to complaining on Twitter, Andy and i already have a date to sit down with the trouble-shooting guide tomorrow to try to figure this out.  Please don’t conk out on me, 50-year-old sewing machine!  I’m sorry my usual sewing machine mechanic died!  I miss Gma, too!!

On the positive side:  I never did come down with a full-blown migraine, and my zine really is finished except for the covers, and this skirt will be as awesome as i thought it was going to be.

Now i’m going to curl up with one of my new papermaking books and just expect that tomorrow will be awesome.

PS:  Tinnitus still sucks.  This horrible shrieking in my ears can stop any time.

The older i get, the more the genetics i inherited from my grandfather kick in.  Namely:  I just am no good before 10am.  Work is especially bad because i need to be there at 8am, tho’ fortunately i’ve gotten everyone trained to leave me the fuck alone until at least 9am (and my morning work is kind of a drudge so it’s not like i need to be awake to accomplish it, thank goodness).  But even weekends are hard.  Today i have to be in Wallingford — which is just the next neighborhood over! — at 10am, but i’m sitting here wishing i could just go back to bed.

You know how the common wisdom is that the older a person gets the less sleep they need and the more they become morning people?  Not my grandfather.  After he retired, he’d sleep in until 11am every single day except sunday (church, of course).  He’d happily stay up until midnight, 1am, 2am catching up on the programs (usually sports) he’d recorded.  During the 6 months i lived with my grandparents before i moved to Seattle, i’d come home from working on the night obituary desk at the newspaper and settle in on the couch to watch TV with him.  We’d each have a big bowl of ice cream and enjoy “The New Yankee Workshop” together until past midnight.  Come morning we’d usually wind up waking up at the same time, and then it was a race to see who’d get to the shower first.

My grandmother, of course, would have already been up for about 4 or 5 hours.  Good gravy, i have absolutely no idea how she could do that.

When i’m coming down with a head cold, or even when i’m already full-blown sick, invariably some genius will say, “Maybe it’s just allergies.”

Here’s a newsflash:  I do actually know what a head cold is like!  Furthermore, it seems obvious — to me, but apparently can’t go without being said — that i do know my own body far better than you ever will.  Are you my doctor?  No.  Are you my spouse?  No.  Are you one of my best friends?  No!  Are you ME??  NO!!

Both head colds and allergies are fairly common things.  And i am 38 years old.  Why would you assume that by now i would not have a concept of how my body acts when i am either sick with a cold or dealing with an allergy attack?

I know people have this urge to keep a conversation going, an urge to say something in response to whatever has just been said.  Here’s a tip:  When someone says, “I have a head cold,” just say, “I’m sorry to hear that!  I hope you get better soon.”  Because second-guessing their understanding of their own body is just fucking insulting.

This month i’ve been working fairly steadily on the final push to finish Cipher #2.  It seems like every zine-maker since the dawn of zine-time feels as tho’ they’re not putting out zines fast enough — how many intros have started with “I’m sorry this zine is so late?”  I had to squash that urge myself when i wrote the prologue to C2.  But what i’ve come to realize is that my pace, right now, is 1 zine every 2 years, finished in time for the Portland Zine Symposium.  I guess that’s not too bad.  I do kind of love having my zines debut at PZS because the Symposium was so instrumental to turning me into a zine-maker and it’s definitely one of the high points of my year (tied only with Wiscon).  I wish i could be debuting a zine at the Symposium every single year, but it does take me a long while to produce enough articles to put into a zine, and the editing/layout process is always a slow, tedious crawl thru’ Hell for me.  I think Dante went thru’ Hell faster than i can paste together a finished zine.

I guess i’ve always been like this — wanting a greater output to my name.  Back when i was writing poetry way more seriously than i am now [read the article in the forthcoming Cipher #2! (heh)] i’d complain to my dearest friend that i wished i were capable of producing as many poems as some of our other poem-writing friends.  She always gently reminded me that quality was infinitely to be preferred over quantity.  This is probably true — i’m sitting on enough crappy poems in my backlog as it is.  Why would i ever want more?

Talking so openly about working on C2, by the way, is making me slightly nervous.  One of my very, very few superstitions is that talking aloud about anything sensitive or important like this will instantly make the universe give me the exact opposite of what i was hoping would happen.  Want Cipher #2 to be ready to debut at the 2010 Portland Zine Symposium?  The surest way to have that not happen is to talk about it on my blog!  When i did the final layout and copying on Paragraph Girl i didn’t even tell Andy i was working on it — he was out of town on a business trip and i didn’t whisper a word to him when we’d talk on the phone.

Except this time i think that might not happen.  I’m actually feeling extraordinarily positive about putting together my zine.  The writing is finished except for 1 piece that has taken some serious editing (altho’ tuesday this week i think i found the final fix) and the epilogue.  I know exactly what i’m doing with the layout and design (for a change!).  I even have an idea for what i’d like to do for the single element of hand-touched design i like to add to my zines (each issue of Paragraph Girl and Cipher #1 had some rubber-stamping that was hand-done for each individual zine).  I’ve been so excited about working on C2 for the past few weeks that i’ve been blabbing about it on Twitter anyway, so it seems silly to leave wrdnrd.net out of the loop.

So i guess i’ll hit “publish” on this post and see what happens.  You better not fuck with me, universe!

Of all the labor-saving home appliances ever created, my favorite is the washing machine (followed closely by the electric refrigerator).^[1] I am really grateful to be spared the onerous chore of having to wash my laundry by hand.  I base my clothing acquisitions around whether or not they require hand-washing.  I do not want to have to fuss over laundering my wardrobe.  I also don’t buy dry clean only clothes for the same reason.

Doing the laundry is also my favorite chore because no matter what i’m doing while the washing machine is running, i’m still being productive. Watching a movie?  Still being productive!  Vacuuming while the laundry is spinning?  Double productive!

~

[1]  The dryer, however … FEH.  I dry most things on drying racks.  One of the few reasons i can think of to ever have a house is the opportunity to have space enough to have a clothesline.  I miss the scent and feel of bed linens dried on a line.

The Andy(tm) and i are on a mini-vacation in Oregon.  We took the train down wednesday so that i could see Caravan Palace (Last.fm, MySpace, website en Français), a French electro-swing band, on one of their few tour dates in the U.S.  Andy’s (step)brother was working the concert as a photographer for the local paper, so we got to hang out with him for awhile during the concert and then went for snacks and beer afterward, which was great because we hadn’t seen him in exactly a year.

Hawthorne Hostel ecoroof

We stayed wednesday night at the Hawthorne Hostel, which was quite nice.  Our room had a balcony that projected out onto the hostel’s ecoroof!  The hostel also uses rainwater to flush the toilets, which i found pretty exciting because one of the few reasons i’d love a house of my own is so that i can set up a water recycling system.

i managed to spend only $6.50 here

Wednesday afternoon and part of thursday we had some time to wander around Portland’s Hawthorne neighborhood, which was the whole reason we decided to try the Hawthorne Hostel instead of staying at the hostel up in the northwest area like we usually do.  Wednesday was a late lunch at HotLips Pizza (”East Coast style” pizza, tho’ i thought the sauce was bland) followed by a visit to Cool Cottons.  Cool Cottons was a completely accidental — i noticed it as we went by on the bus on our way to the hostel — but utterly delightful find.  It’s probably a good thing i have not yet gotten my pattern collection uploaded to my Evernote because otherwise i might not have made it out of there having spent only $6.50.

Thursday we had a late breakfast at Paradox Cafe (very tasty), then shopped a bit at Powell’s Books for Home and Garden [my take: 2 papermaking books & 1 book on sewing from / altering a pattern (by Nancy of "Sewing With Nancy")].

After that, Andy’s grandparents met us in town and brought us out to their place, where it’s been nothing but delicious food, reading books, watching the last 1/2 of the 2nd season of “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” and listening to coyotes howl at night from the ravine behind the house.  It’s sufficiently rural out here that there are few lights to get in the way of stargazing, so i’m hoping to lie on the grass tonight and not get eaten by coyotes while i brush up on identifying constellations.  Naturally, i (yet again!!) forgot my Galileoscope, which is worthless in Seattle and so hasn’t seen a lick of use since i put it together last year.  It’s 1st on my list of things to bring with us when we come down on our scooter trip for the Portland Zine Symposium in late august.

Home via train tomorrow.  I miss the cats.

PS:  Here’s “Suzy” by Caravan Palace.  There’s also a video on YouTube for “Jolie Coquine”, but it was “Suzy” that caught my attention back in late winter and turned me on to the band in the 1st place.  Dancing giant outerspace robots and pretty flapper ladies?  Do want.