36/94: Undone

Jul 26, 2010 | 94 Days of Summer

paleroses

Day Thirty-six: Undone

I’m still fermenting. But this much I know is true: I’m feeling undone by the past 8 months. Someone needs to button me up.

Last week is still leaching out of my body—I’ve been carrying so much stress that the bank news on Tuesday felt like the something broke in me. A torrent of emotion hit me, water over a poorly built damn—I managed to dash off a few necessary emails and then I just shut down. It’s been a week of stress finding its way out of my body; each day a new way, and each way more interesting than the last. Did you know you can carry stress in your pelvic floor? Yeah, me neither!

Two months ago I decided that the Bank wasn’t going to win. At least not in terms of my sanity. I vowed to stop fretting, stop talking, stop stewing, stop fixating on all the horror.  When we were told that this process could take upwards of a year I made up my mind; we might lose our house, but I didn’t want to wake up a year from now and realize that I’d lost a year of my life too! So, IZ and I agreed to put it on the back-burner. To only talk about it when necessary, and to move  forward with our lives.

Apparently, I forgot to inform my body of this decision! It seems I just clenched up with every foreclosure notice (Yeah!  They can still threaten you even if you are in negotiations for a work-out!), every bank statement, every time IZ adopted that “bank tone” while on the phone  (whether he was talking to them or not! I swear, it’s a distinct sound that wakes me from a dead sleep!). So, when we finally received paperwork, after nearly 9 months of waiting and enduring a humanity shaking experience, my  body caught up with my resolve.

A week later I’m still unclenching and still feeling undone.

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34/94: Lucky Find

Jul 24, 2010 | 94 Days of Summer

luckyfind

Day Thirty-four: I’d pretty much given up the day for lost when I stumbled across this stash at a yard sale. Sometimes, you make a lucky find.

33/94 Baking Brownies

Jul 23, 2010 | 94 Days of Summer

Day Thirty-three: The boy and I baked… it’s a good way to wrap up this whirlwind week.

Hi there! I’ve been trying all week to “blog” words, not just pictures, and failing miserably at it. I like to do things in style. Anyhow, I have words and news and things to say—those are all different things, for the record.

I have music pounding in my ears, and usually that gets me on the road to words. But sometimes I just end up grooving—“faux drumming” the house down,  much to IZ’s chagrin (can you believe actually marched into my studio and said, “That’s not writing!” The nerve!)  Tonight, I’m having a hard time working past “My mouth you’re touching, your mouth is running. . . no loving, for nothing, nobody, knock my body out. . . ” Yeah. Actually, Yeah Yeah Yeah’s!

So, I’m going to keep chair dancing, it’s good for the soul, and let the words percolate for another day. Sometimes, you need to “ferment”, you know? And in the meantime, you can try out this brownie recipe from Dear Jillian. We substituted Agave (one for one with the honey) and they’re surprisingly good. Ignore the sodium numbers listed on the recipe, it’s clearly a typo! But I think the rest is accurate. In our convection oven these baked for 20 minutes and came out perfectly. However, wait until they are completely cool to cut—otherwise you’ll end up with the crumbly mess I got!

32/94: Learning Curve

Jul 22, 2010 | 94 Days of Summer

learningcurve

Day Thirty-two:  After 3 tedious attempts and endless seam-ripping I finally managed to get this trim on evenly. Color me smug. Which was a mistake, because right in the middle of congratulating myself, “No pins! Ha!” I noticed that I’d sewn the trim onto the wrong side of the fabric. Um. . .