Yesterday morning I took a walk. #2 daughter and I talk on the phone while I stroll the neighborhood and she works out in the gym in her building. It’s almost like going to the gym together.

I had three proper meals yesterday, away from the computer. Also Hallowe’en candy, which was completely unnecessary but there you have it.

I watched the second part of The Color of Magic with #1 son while knitting #2 son’s Christmas sweater.

Definite movement toward having a normal life.

Last night I made a pot roast. I put some of those pretty habanera  peppers in — you can just see them by the apples in this picture. They look like little lanterns.

My husband picked one up from the pan and popped it into his mouth.

He assumes that any peppers I’ve gotten will be mild compared with his.

This was not the case. He stomped and flung himself around the kitchen grimacing horribly and keening. I could tell he wasn’t having a heart attack because it was such an athletic performance, but it was some time before he could explain what had happened. I tried to get him to drink milk, which is all I know to do for someone who has casually eaten a habanero pepper.

The roast was good, but I suggest that you not eat peppers whole. Try a little bit first and see whether you really want to eat it like a grape or not.

I made it to the gym yesterday. I did only the treadmill, half an hour of climbing uphill while reading Inc. and Wired, but that was enough. I had a proper lunch. I stopped working at 5:00 and made dinner before going to rehearsal. After rehearsal I sat down with #1 son and watched The Color of Magic.

He played his guitar all the way through the movie.

Even so, I conducted myself as though I had a normal life. I am so far behind I can’t believe it.

The Computer Guy is in another spell of accepting no new work. He’s behind on our current shared project, which naturally makes me look as though I’m behind as well. I look at this and think he’s crazy not to hire someone. He should have hired me. He has an office, he could hire somebody, accept the work, and grow his business. On the other hand, I have hired some people, am accepting new work every day, and feel very stressed about it. So maybe he’s right.

I finished up one skein of yarn for #2 son’s sweater. Dividing the remaining time till Christmas by the time it took me to get that skein knitted up, considering the other knitted gifts I have planned, suggests that I need to knit faster.

I did very little work yesterday — a meeting with my girls to try to get our business plan in shape, an hour for the Aussies, emails, grading papers. Probably not more than three hours all told.

It’s Kitchen Week at the HGP. I slacked off a bit for the past two weeks, since it was Kids’ Rooms and Guest Room weeks, but my kitchen definitely needs its annual reorganizing and scrubbing. We have the ongoing stuff again:

• Make one batch of Holiday Goodies.
• Make one extra meal for freezer again labeled HOLIDAY MEAL.
• Buy two canned food items from menus (get 2 of each item, one to use and one to donate to food drive).
• Buy 1/8th of TO BUY gifts. Save all receipts, note return policy before buying. Ask for gift boxes.
• Wrap and label packages. If needing to ship, get some shipping boxes now and store packages in them.
• Work at least 1 hour a day on homemade gifts.

This is also the week to buy a pumpkin and plan Hallowe’en costumes.

And it’s the week to consider your homemade gifts, and whether they’re actually going to be ready in time. If not, it’s time to set them aside and think of something else.

We had a gorgeous fall day yesterday. The small ensemble in church went very well. I read quite a bit of  Pratchett’s new book (about football, but of course that’s rugby or soccer or something, so I think I don’t get all the nuances, thought there’s a nice Shakespearean subplot) and made some progress on #2 son’s sweater, scrubbed the kitchen a bit, and didn’t go for a walk as I had planned to.

I’m beginning to get alarmed about my physical health. I can just see myself becoming a decrepit old lady. Maybe this alarm will translate to some action on my part. I woke up to a new assignment, but I’m still taking my gym bag to class, and I hope I’ll go to the gym after class. Last week on Monday, having taken some time off over the weekend, I not only skipped the gym, but also skipped rehearsal. Sometimes I think: I’m a smart, capable woman, I’ve accomplished lots of things, surely I can manage to fit regular exercise, sleep, and healthy meals into my life. How hard can it be?

I’m still playing around with video-making. I hope I’m getting better at it, but am not sanguine. This one is supposed to be for a client’s blog. Here’s the recipe“>Here’s the recipe, by the way.

This client has expressed dissatisfaction with one of my blog posts and has suggested that I run them by her before posting. I never mind doing that, of course. However, I know from experience that doing this almost always results in sporadic posting.

The client intends to check the blog every day and approve the posting, and for the first few days, does so. Then they forget, and the posts sit there waiting for approval. Then I start posting them anyway, because it’s my job. After a while, the client notices and starts watching again, and we continue the cycle. Sometimes the client fails to check but doesn’t want the posts going live without approval, and the blog languishes and dies, and I get blamed.

Apart from this, yesterday was quite a nice day. I did the shopping, including a pair of shawl-collared black pajamas from Ralph Lauren at T.J. Maxx  which made my evening of reading Terry Pratchett in bed seem quite luxurious.

I got a good bit doen on #2 son’s sweater and did very little work. This meant that I was up at 5 am to get my Aussies taken care of, but it did make for a nice Saturday.

Now I had better skedaddle or I’ll be late for the singing.

Yesterday was a classic stressful day.

It began with a note from #1 son that there wasn’t enough gas in the car for the drive to my 8:00 class. At least he left me a note. But that meant I was in even more of a hurry than usual on teaching mornings, and I didn’t get any blog posts done.

Back from class, I got to work with multiple interruptions, and then took off for a luncheon with speaker Luis Urrea. Quite a story teller, and I really enjoyed catching up with friends, but as we were driving to the luncheon, La Bella and I, my husband called to say that we had to have a set of documents to his HR dept by 5:00 or we would lose our health insurance.I also had a phone meeting set up with a particularly demanding client for about an hour after the beginning of the luncheon — a meeting for which I had to be at my computer to refer to files.

So, when Mr. Urrea told stories for two hours, it was increasingly stressful for me to think about the client and the documents. It was also stressful to rush La Bella away from there; she’s retired, and would probably have liked to stay and talk with Mr, Urrea and have him sign a book for her.

I called the client on the way back, and also called the boys directly upon arrival when I saw that my car wasn’t there.

Then I got back to work, hoping the boys would get the car home in time to take the documents.

#2 son returned, with car, at 3:00, which was plenty of time. I brought him along on the errand so we could have a little more time before he left. On the way, he realized that he was being picked up to return to school at 4:00.

My husband’s workplace is a 20 minute drive — except when the factories and schools all let out at 3:30. Then, it can easily be 45 minutes.

So, if we got there and dropped off the documents without incident and dashed right back, then #2 son would be at the house when his ride arrived. Otherwise, not.

At the factory, no one would open the visitors’ door and none of the phone numbers helpfully posted there would answer. When at last we got in, by dint of pounding and shouting, we were not allowed to go anywhere by ourselves, and had to wait for ponderously slow people to take us to the right place. Once we got to the right place, we found that we needed one more paper — which my husband, who got off work at 3:30, had.

We stood in the office fretting and trying to call my husband until 3:30, when he picked up his phone, came to the office, and took over. #2 son and I had to be escorted from the building, of course, and they chose a very slow-moving person to take us. It was 3:36. We raced home as though there were a storm chasing us, and #2 son texted his friend.

We were ahead of the worst of the traffic, so we arrived at the house only a few minutes after the friend did, and all was well.

I got back to work, but of course I had missed a lot of hours, and I had more work than week anyway, so it was tough to choose: do I finish up the Brits, in deference to their time zone, so they would at least get the stuff I had promised them for the week before their midnight, or do I take care of the East Coast Orthodox Jews, for whom I am not allowed to work after their sundown on Fridays?

And of course I had phone calls and emails — the chocolatier being alarmed about his rankings and me trying to suggest that if he quit calling me four times a day I’d have time to work on that for him, the new website getting a thumbs-up on the mock up so it needed to be sent along to the designer, two new inquiries about website building, a realization that I hadn’t done the midmonth invoices…

I think that in some ways this sort of relentless small stressful stuff is worse than actual problems. Worse in the sense of being stressful, I mean. Adrenaline surges and stuff like that. Obviously, I’d rather have that kind of thing than problems, but getting tensed up over and over during the day is tiring.

I try very hard to quit work at 5:00 on Fridays — the one day of the week when I have my computer set to remind me I should take some free time. I should have put something into the crockpot early in the day so that dinner would have been taken care of, but #1 son was willing to go out for Chinese food after only twenty minutes or so of whining. I guess that was marginally better than calling out for pizza.

#1 son and I watched the Numb3rs marathon and I worked on #2 son’s sweater. It’s a Christmas present for him, but we did measurements and worked out all the details while he was here, so I can make it confidently.

This morning I am of course working, but I’m also going to go to the farmers market and get apples for Gloria’s Apple Cake. It seems to include a lot of sugar, but #2 daughter and I are trying these recipes out and making YouTubes of our experiences with them. I may also make Gloria’s Pot Roast with Beer and Onions. I also have grocery shopping to do. And the new Terry Pratchet to read.

Sounds like a nice day.

Apple pie.
 
#2 son’s new sweater.

I’m out of time now!

Ozarque suggested that Toby needs to see the vet. I think he’s just naughty. #2 son came home yesterday and Toby spent the evening lying inhis lap blissfully with his paws in the air. He might have occasionally been looking over at me with a “See? You don’t do it right” kind of look. Then he whined and carried on all night and is still doing so now, because I’m too angry with him (and sleep-deprived, of course) to want to let him out of his room to start his day of hanging around with #2 son.

Said son is still asleep anyway.

He’s been traveling with his ultimate frisbee team and has won T-shirts and also needs more BruiseMD. Classes are going well. He’s thinking he wants to be a macro-economist rather than a micro-economist, though so far all he can tell that macro-economists do is write books.

I got an email yesterday from a guy who writes books. I interviewed and wrote about him for a magazine, and he liked the article enough to write and say he could tell I was a real pro and let’s keep in touch. I was chuffed. I also did well on the press release for the PR firm which is my newest client. She says she has lots of work to send to me if this goes well. I got it in by deadline (thank goodness for West Coast clients), made the changes fast, did it in half the time she estimated, and she said she liked my writing style.

So that’s good. Meanwhile, #1 daughter is working on our business plan.

Rehearsal last night was… hmm… there was an air of fatalism. Yes, we’re doing this piece Sunday whether it sounds good or not. Lots of whining and bickering, but that’s typical for this choir. We had a new chorister for a couple of weeks, and now she has stopped coming. People were wondering about it. She sings with the tenors, and the Oldest Member thought that might be it.

“Peggy,” he said to me.

My name isn’t Peggy, but he has called me that for years, in spite of the occasional reminder that it isn’t my name. I answer to it readily.

“Peggy, maybe she has a jealous husband.”

“Ah,” I agreed. “He sees her up there with you devilishly handsome fellows and complains.”

But it could be the whining and bickering. I’m about ready to give the whining dog away, after all.

Right now I don’t like my dogs very much. The little one, Toby, whines much of the night. The big one, Fiona, smells even though I’ve bathed her in pomegranate shampoo. Both scratch themselves even though they have flea collars. Oh, well.

Here was my day yesterday:

5:30-6:30 check email, see husband off to work, blog
6:30 dress, breakfast
7:00-7:30 walk and phone talk with #2 daughter
7:30-8:45 make video blog post for chocolate blog
8:45 help panicked former client with tech trouble, blog post
9:00-9:30 update content for chocolate website
9:30-9:40 post for cookbook blog
9:40- 10:30 grade papers and respond to online class discussions
10:30-11:00 phone meeting with client
11:00-11:15 IM with The Computer Guy
11:15-12:00 emails back and forth for all kinds of stuff, accept new job
12:00-1:00 bank, grocery
1:00-1:30 lunch, email
1:30-1:45 IMs and calls
1:45-3:00 IM meeting with client
3:00-3:15 help current client with tech trouble
3:15-3:17 call to new client
3:17-4:00 site analysis for prospective new client, phone with #1 daughter
4:00-5:30 content writing for British clients
5:30 call from friend with invitation which I turn down
5:30-6:30 cooking, dinner with menfolks
6:30-8:00 continued with British clients’ stuff
8:00-9:00 grading papers, chatting with #2 daughter

A couple of very interesting new projects there, and a new client for a small job which could lead to more. She wants it “late this morning.” I told her it depends on her time zone, but since she’s on the west coast rather than the east I think I can do it.

I went up and taught class yesterday, sharing the exciting mysteries of the annotated bibliography with two classes full of people who may or may not have grasped it.

“The point is that people should be able to find your sources if they want to get more information,” I explained. “You get no points for creativity. There are as you can see 49 different items listed, so you just decide which kind of item your source is and do it exactly the way it is in the textbook.”

We then had numerous questions.

“If it’s a journal article, do I have to put the pages?”
“How did they do it in the book?”

“Is there supposed to be a period at the end?”
“How did they do it in the book?”

“Do you write down ‘pages’?”
“How did they do it in the book?”

“Is Amsterdam a city or a country?”

Then I sped off to meet clients. They are shared clients of mine and The Computer Guy, and I am showing them how to use their analytics. I’m a better person to do this than The Computer Guy, because I do less wizard-like zooming around on the screen and more explaining. I think. Sometimes I fear that I have fallen into Computer Guy habits, but I try.

Anyway, I drove confidently down the road I’d been told to by Google maps, not seeing the necessary cross street, till I found myself way out in the country. I had left my phone at home, so I had to stop at someone’s house. I interrupted her piano playing and yet she was kind enough to let me call the clients — they didn’t pick up — and also to print out Mapquest directions.

They offered a different set of cross streets, and I didn’t find any of them, either.

I stopped for directions repeatedly, and called the clients every time someone would let me, but didn’t in fact arrive at my meeting till an hour after it was supposed to have taken place.

It turns out that recent construction has made all computer directions wrong — those cross streets don’t go through to the main road any more. And the client I was calling had left her phone in the bathroom and didn’t hear it ringing.

They had called The Computer Guy in search of me, and while I no longer think of him as my employer, it was still embarrassing. The clients gave me a check, so I had to stop by his office, and he mentioned that they had called him. In one of those “I’m not going to ask you why you were late, but I’m going to look at you long enough that you’ll have to tell me” ways.

His new minion was there. I’d heard a bit about the minion, who was I think part of the spoils of a grant, but had never met him before. The two of them had been working fiendishly all weekend, and hadn’t shaven in days. Female computer guys may look tired and unkempt, but we don’t have the problem of beards.

I had another meeting after that, interviewing someone for a blog post. This post has now been retweeted a record number of times (for me — a very small record, but still), so it was worth the time it took. However, I had to skip rehearsal just to get everybody’s blogs posted and my Northerner’s Monday report completed.

On the upside, this meant that I could have dinner with #1 son and watch The Big Bang Theory before getting back to work.

We had a nice lunch of chimichangas, fruit salad, and key lime pie before #1 daughter left. 

Then I set out to felt the first pair of Christmas gift slippers.

It is, by the way, Guest Room Week at the HGP. Buy 2 extra nonperishables at the grocery this week, one for the holiday box and one for the charity box. Get one meal and one batch of cookies in the freezer. Buy 1/8 of the gifts you need to buy. Continue spending an hour a day on your giftmaking. And do a little fall decorating.

So, anyway, I set out to felt the slippers.
 
They were identical, and correct in every detail, as far as I could tell.

I always feel some trepidation when I felt things. It’s hard to get over the feeling that I’m wrecking my knitting. And in this case, I was, because they ended up completely different from one another, as the sad pictures below will show you.

Also, the upper edge was too loose.

I did all kinds of extra felting on the larger one and then took a crochet hook and elastic thread and fixed them as best I could.

They actually turned out pretty cute, but I won’t be able to give them as a gift.

These will have to be mine.

That’s not so terrible, of course. But it doesn’t bode well for the overall holiday slipper project.

These are the Ballet Slippers from Felted Knits, and I thought they’d be a good choice for the ladies on my list.

I had one more completed besides this pair — one more slipper, that is, not one more pair.

I took a much smaller needle and added a row and bind-off to the top to cinch it in.

This may end up creating a completely different look and feel from the pretty little ballet slipper.

It may end up making the upper edge so tight that the slipper is entirely unwearable.

This is what’s wrong with felting.

Or, perhaps, why I ought to stand there near the washing machine and check on the progress every couple of minutes, so I can catch these things before they get out of hand.

Or possibly why I shouldn’t be felting things, given my constitutional inability to be accurate.

Sigh.

It was nice to have #1 daughter home, but I did sort of feel as though we were always working and had no fun.

#2 son is coming home in a couple of days.

I don’t know why that is. It seems like midweek  is an odd time for him to come home. However, he may just be catching a ride with a classmate who is coming on a brief visit for some significant reason — a family event that makes it worth driving home just overnight or something.

We’ll be happy to see him, regardless.

I think the dogs miss him. #1 son and I were speculating on this, as we are both skeptical people.

Are dogs intelligent enough to miss people? Or maybe #1 son played with them more than the rest of us. They seem kind of neurotic since he left.
 
The dogs, and also the cat, come into my office and sit at my feel all day while I work. The cat doesn’t sit at my feet, actually. She walks around on my work surface, sometimes settling in front of the monitor. Not a popular move. I would in fact prefer that none of the animals come in here. I don’t need company. But they seem to feel that this is now the happening room, so there it is.