Tackling the Biggest To-Do

Crocheted Quilter's Tote

It was my intention from the moment I started the travel jewelry kit in June for my sister that I would give it my disciplined focus until it was done--hoping that meant in time for her birthday in mid July--and then transfer that same discipline to this Quilter's Tote project that was my Secret Santa gift for my sister-in-law in 2012.  Well, tho I did manage to maintain the disciplined focus on the jewelry kit and gave my sister half of it the week of her birthday and the other half the last weekend of August, too many unforseen things happened with it (just like with the quilter's tote) and multiple rethinks and redos became necessary as reported in earlier posts and the final handover to my sister did not take place until this past Friday afternoon.

The weekend was all about the read-a-thon but on Monday I cleared my craft table of the tools and materials from the jewelry kit project and got out the quilter's tote.  I layed it all out for this photo but also to re-familiarize myself with its current status.  I got out the to-do list for it and re-read it.  It is in a small notebook that travels with the project and the first page reads:

• Prep mobeus strip (in blud basket above)
• Prep wraparound panel (folded on left side above)
• Prep back/front flap panel (folded on right side above)
• Crochet 5 4" x 4" squares--4 for pockets on the carry strap 1 to wrap around the twist in the top of the strap.
• Crochet 3 small flowers for buttons to secure flap on front of bag
• Crochet 1 large flower for the strap wrap
• Assemble tote

Except for the squares and flowers which have patterns, each one of these items require multiple pages of instructions and task lists broken down into sub tasks and dependencies (tasks that must be done before another task can be started). Those lists were disorganized and missing some things I'd thot of since writing it so I tore them out and started over.  
Assuming I've thought of everything...

But if there is one thing this project has taught me is that it isn't likely that I've thought of everything.  In fact it might not be possible to think of everything before beginning a project and that has too often been my reason for procrastinating or quitting after encountering an  unforseen snag in my plan.

I've done the same thing with my creative writing...

But if there is one thing that sticking to it thru all the snags with the jewelry travel kit (a three week project that became a three month project) taught me it was that I'm clever enough to figure out a way around or through the snags.

I think I've solved the structure problems I encountered a year ago when I tried to assemble the tote with the original plan and ended up with a flop.  Literally a bag too floppy to be useful.  Who wants to always have to depend on having someone hold a bag open while you put somethng in or take something out unless the bag is already stuffed to the gills?

I think my solutions are going to work--installing cord on all the edges and lining the bag bottom and sides with microfiber pads. I'm in under no illusion that there will be no further snags but I'm confident I can work them out too.

Tho it's possible that I'm going to be late for this Christmas too having gotten such a late start and that kind of disappointment has often tempted me to procrastinate.  Not this time.

This will be my main focus for every day that it is possible.  It's not always possible--appointments outside the house, company, illness, Mom's needs--life sometimes has its own ideas.  But it will become north for my mental compass and my attention will keep returning to it.

One difficulty it presents is that it is not portable.  It's a long time since it's been a lap project let alone a purse project.  It has to remain on the craft table.  Another difficulty is that very little of the work left to do is of the type that I can do with only half an eye on the work while I'm watching videos.  Much of it is more like sewing than crochet and except for the 5 4" x 4" squares even the crochet is meticulous, detailed stuff in which placement of the hook cannot be by touch.

So I can't watch videos while working on this but I can listen to documentaries and audio books and daydream my own stories.  In fact I better take advantage of the fact that many of the hours spent on this project were coupled with daydreaming my storyworld.  Thus the very act of handling it again triggers the memories and puts me right back into the scenes I was working on when working on this or that section.  Since I am hoping I have only a short time left with it, now is the time to get as much of that out of my head and onto paper or screen as possible before I hand it over.  Or I may have to start another one. :)

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A Round of Words in 80 Days Round 4 2015 Goals

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 4 2015

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

I'm back after dropping out for Round 3.  It's been a rough year.  Life threw some new curves.  One of which was the diagnoses of high-functioning autism aka Asperger's Syndrome in mid September.

Apparently one of the crucial things for someone on the spectrum is a highly structured day which means that participating in things like ROW 80 can only be of help.

The fact that I've had the experience of ROW 80 since 2012 is helpful as I it has given me the tools I need to create that structure.  Now tho it needs to apply to my whole life and not just writing.

ROW80 ROUND 4 GOALS
similar to Round 1 and as always they are time investment rather than word count.

• Storydreaming with note-taking tools at hand. 15min Daily (until about mid summer this year I never lost this one since instating it in my first round in 2012.  A ROW80 win!)  --this had become an integral part of every day for me. I never really stopped the dreaming but I wasn't taking notes.  But even with notetaking it's not enough if it never leads to more than jotting notes as I live inside my story.
• Read/Study Craft 15min Daily Average -- This is one of the writing tasks I hung onto all year.  At least a significant amount each week if not always daily.
• 7.5 hours of sleep daily --  the last two years have taught me the importance of this for keeping my anxiety low and energy high, weight down and creativity sustainable.
• Move/Breathe/Meditate 15min Daily  -- I never got this back after the respiratory illness last winter.  I know it is crucial to health.  Both physical and mental.  And most especially creativity.
• Personal Journaling 15min Daily  --has not become a daily habit yet.  in fact i've not even reached for it since late February.  I feel serious resistance to it which probably means I need to be doing it.  Especailly to help me assimilate the autism spectrum diagnoses and how it affects my writing goals.
• Read Fiction 30min Daily Average --this is one thing I kept up even while sick except for a few of the worst days.  And continued right up through mid September when I began the big research project I've discussed elsewhere after my autism spectrum dianoses..
• Social network activities 30min Daily (writing Joystory posts doesn't count only social reaching out like reading/commenting on other blogs, guest posts and posting to fb, twitter, pinterest etc) --another thing I've a strong resistance to.  The autism diagnosis helps explain this but doesn't let me off the hook.  If anything it makes it more important.  
• Engage with the Blow Me a Candy Kiss structural rewrite file 30 min Daily*  --  except for November when I'll be working on the companion story from husband Greg's POV called To Embrace a Funny Bunny.  These two likely belong to the same novel but I'll be pretending they don't for the durration of NaNo. 
• All of this in service to the overarching goal for 2015: Regain the joy in writing that I lost sometime last year.  The Joy/joy meter hovers around 7 out of 10.this week.

*I've been struggling with this structural rewrite since my first Row 80 Round in 2012.  The autism spectrum dianoses helps explain why I have no problem accumulating words but can't seem to hang them on an appropriate plot scaffold.  Apparently issues with cause and effect are common on the spectrum.

I'm hoping that working with Dramtica Pro will help address this issue.  Using it for NaNo prep this year hoping it will prevent the creation of another mess.  Am concurrently running Candy Kiss through it's paces to see if it will also help me fix an existing mess.  If it does then there is hope for the over two dozen WIP messes.  Or at least some of them.

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Sunday Serenity - Travel Jewelry Box

This is part of the travel set I made my sister for her birthday.  Which was last July.  I finally handed this over for the second time on Friday.  The first time I gave it to her was labor day weekend but I had to take it back to fix a couple things.

I'd given her part one the week of her birthday.  That was the first version of the earring wallet made from the same plastic needle point canvas as the box and meant to fit inside it.  But the same day I handed her the box she gave me back the earring wallet because the hook earrings would not stay put.  I had to comepletely rething the concept and start over and the result doesn't even fit in this box.  She has decided to use it for make up instead of jewelry.

Now she is asking me if I can install some plastic loops on the lid to hold mascarra pencils and I sad no problem.  Hope it won't take me another month.  :)

The clasp is what I forgot to install the first time and my original concept didn't work and I had to rethink it.  What I settled on was sewing a button on the bottom and attaching elastic loops to the front edge of the lid and the top edge of the polar bear picture which is opposit the front edge of the lid.  Not shown in these pictures is the vinal pocket on the back of the polar bear picture.

It took me an hour to prep the pictures for the box and there are more pictures for the earring wallet so I'm going save those for another post later this week. I just don't have it in me to prep the pics and write about them.  I'm still read-a-thon hungover.  Six hours of sleep after forty awake was not nearly half enough.  To be sure I would sleep again at a fairly decent hour tonight in spite of waking up at one I denied myself all caffeine and even my perscription Adderal today.

You can see pictures of it as a work-in-progress here.

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My Brain on Books XVII

I am reading for The Office of Letters and Lights the folks who bring us NaNoWriMo today as I love what they are doing for literacy with their Young Writer's Programs and because I've participated in NaNo every year since 2004 and will again next fall.  I have been blessed to have it in my life and would like to give something back if only kudos and link love.  I'm putting this plug at the top in hopes some who stop by will check out their site and see all the great things they do to foster love of reading and writing and story in kids. If you happen to be doing NaNo this year you can find me there as joywrite

This post will be organized like a blog inside a blog with recent updates stacked atop previous ones. I may be posting some updates on Twitter @Joystory and the Joystory fb fanpage. But this is where I do anything more than a line or two.  Including mini-challenges unless required to have a separate post..   

Be sure to scroll to bottom of this post for advice on how to ward off those scary nap attacks. You won't be sorry.

Ode to Dewey

by Joy Renee

vote, fav and share for Dewey

We Miss You Dewey

3:00 AM - Where did all that time go?
Still awake.  Not even struggling.

Well maybe a little.  Not having any trouble staying awake but am having trouble staying on task

I've done more reading on the blogs and social media following the thon activity and reading Dewey's archives than in books since last eveing's vid chat with Ed.  I opened a lot of books.  Mostly eooks but a few tree books and skimmed around in them.  Reading table of contents and other frontal matter--intros, epigraphs,  acknowledgements, and such.  It's one of my favorite things to do with non-fiction.  It may not be very productive in terms of stats but it's fun and that's the operative word for a thon is it not?

Besides it can be very productive in terms of comprehension, retention, and connecting the dots when reading them later.  I call it 'Einstein whispering sweet nothings in Emerson's ear'  or is that visa versa?  At any rate I wrote an essay on that theme in the late 90s.  I've shared it here before.  Not sure I feel like hunting the link right now.

Ambition is at low tide.

 Awake for over forty hours.

I mostly lurked on the blogs and social media.  Played the videos, imagined how fun this or that challenge might be, admired page layouts, followed comment threads and drooled over images of books.

But my ambition would not rise to the level of leaving more than a few comments with already familiar names.

One little project I accomplished was sharing the image of my Ode to Dewey poem on facebook, twitter and google+.  And while I was on fb I stumbled on my neice's posts in the newsfeed and discovered Im a great-aunt again.  Since October 1!  How did I let that get past me?

I spent half an hour at least drooling over baby pictures.

Well, because I've not been on social media much in the last month.  And even when I was it was only on my blog's fan page after the rare blog post.  My focus has been on autism research, NaNo prep and the fiber art project I finally finished Friday (original due date July 11) that will probably be the subject of tomorrow's post.

Very little of what happened conformed to my plan for the thon.  The only thing besides sticking to the dual theme that I adhered to was my intention to be OK with a pliable plan.  No shouldas or any other mental shaming tactics.  I kept the entire thon more than 90% on thon related activities.  And I had fun.  Now that was the plan.

The hardest part was staying away from Netflix and Amazon Prime.  The quick story fixes that resolve in 30 to 90 minutes that have consumed the bulk of my blogging, writing and reading time for most of a year before mid September when my Asperger's diagnoses shifted my obsession.  I've done more reading in the last four weeks than in all the weeks between last October and mid August.

I never did start that audio book this afternoon.  I think I'm going to go grab a quick snack and run the thon out listening to Carley's Voice.

3:00 PM - OK I think it is time to start the audio book and get on the mini-tramp and then pick up the crochet hook.  My afternoon slump is on.  I've been floundering for three hours.  Was reading the hub blog and discovered a link to Dewey's archives and got lost there for awhile and then I started writing updates and and editing them obsessively until so much time has passed I feel the need to start another update before I post.  And thus I've accumulated everything since 8 without publishing.  The 8 AM opening meme was left hanging at 9 for vid chat with my husband and I didn't get back to it until after 10 then decided to do the 11 AM  before posting and at some point got sidetracked by hunger and then the hub and Dewey's archives and then when I came back to the post I needed to check a fact in one of the books and ended up reading for i'm not sure how long.  Then...

Well you get the picture.  Its what I'd have blamed totally on the ADD two months ago but now I'm seeing autistic aspects to some of the behavior.  Afterall both ADD and autism are all about attention issues and information processing.  A high percentage of those with autism diagnoses also have preceding ADD diagnoses.  I'd be interested in seeing a brain scan showing neuronal activity to see if it is possible to differentiate between them.  Is ADD on the spectrum?  Or is the ADD diagnoses wrong for those who eventually get the Autism diagnoses?  From what I'm picking up in my reading so far I don't think there is consensus on that.  In fact I've seen no evidence the question is even being taken seriously by today's 'experts'.

All those question could be asked of Bi-Polar as well.  I was nearly diagnosed with Bi-Polar in mid 2013 and again a year later but it was finally ruled out when it was determined that the anxiety coupled with insomnia and sleep deprivation accounted for the symptoms.  And now I know the source of the anxiety is the autism related sensory processing issues.  The OCD and perfectionism is also as they say co-morbid with autism.  Meaning, I gather, they are often found holding hands.

And I'm rambling....
When I could be reading!!!

It doesn't help that I hit 24 hours awake at 8:44 AM.

Yeah I know.  I said as I prepared to post last night that I was headed to bed.  And I got there in time to get almost 7 hours but I never made it past the hypnogogic stage and gave up at 3AM and started reading.

You know what?  I'm going to post without editing this update.
Take that perfectionism.

11:00 AM - Here's my promised comments on Neuro-Tribes.  I'm a bit over halfway and his overview of the history of the autism diagnosis has reached the 70s.  Here's why I'm now glad my diagnosis took nearly 60 years:

• First off the name autism itself is based on the Greek root for 'self'  as in autonomous and reflects the bias of the early observations of toddlers as self-involved, self-stimulated, 'lost in their own world' and 'preferring' the company of their self or things over that of other people.  This of course raises the specter of 'selfish' a definite implication of a character flaw.  They're off to a rip-roaring start these 'experts'
• Before WWII and into the early 1950s the likely diagnosis would have been schizophrenia especially if there was language deficit.  
• During WWII Hitler gassed us.  
• During that same decade and into the 60s America forcibly sterilized us, guilted our parents for causing it (refrigerator moms!) and shamed them for not institutionalizing as recommended by the 'experts'.  
• In the institutions well into the 60s (and beyond?) they chained us to the wall or beds and kept us sedated. 
• In the 60s and 70s they finally began to recognize it as neurological rather than emotional but aversion therapy became popular and was gladly incorporated by the institutions--including hair pulling, poking, slapping, shaking, shouting starvation and cattle prods.  

America doesn't torture, right?  Right!

It would be an interesting study to explore what role this permeation of aversion therapy in our culture (autism wasn't the only deviant behaviors it was advocated for) in the two generations preceding 2005 played in the choices made by Americans at Abu Graib and Gitmo.

i also find it interesting that more than one of the 'experts' who developed or advocated the use of sterilization and aversion therapy grew up in the German influenced areas of Europe where they got most of their education and cultural biases.  Could that have had any influence on their perception as they 'objectively' observed these children put in their care?

You think?

I'm afraid to find out what the current consensus is.  How can I trust that it is any more worth depending on than that of just 25-30 years ago?  Why should I even entertain the idea of giving them the benefit of the doubt?

Just asking.

OK that was probably an example of the way my autistic brain works.  I see relationships and patterns in data that no one else sees.

8:00 AM - Well I read the Donna Williams memoir for the entire three hours.  No switching as planned. But plans are pliable today.  I'm going to read the Thon blog for a bit and do the intro meme tho it is too late to be included in the giveaway.  That will probably take me thru til 9AM when it is time for my daily morning vid chat with my husband who is 300 miles away.  We have two a day and I'm not giving them up even for this.

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?

Longview WA USA.  A port town on the Columbia river between Portland OR and the coast.  This is my birth town and where I lived until I married at 21.  I'm living with my Mom and sister, unwillingly separated from my husband for financial and health reasons since January 2013.

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

Carly's Voice by Arthur and Carly Fleischmann.  It is an audio on CD from the library and I plan to  get on the mini-tramp and then get my crochet fix and rest my eyes while I listen during one of my circadian rhythm slumps in the afternoon and wee hours.

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

spicy avocado dip with corn chips, rice cakes and/or veggies.

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

I was diagnosed with high-functioning Autism aka Asperger's Syndrome last month.  I will be 58 next month!  I was a little perturbed that it took so long to figure out.  Until I read the chapters in Neuro-Tribes covering the decades between WWI and my high-school years in the 1970s.  Now I think I'm grateful.  Talk about clueless!  I'll expand on that later on today and probably develop it into a post in the near future.  Meanwhile I'm in the midst of one of my obsessive research projects and would appreciate any input/recommendations--resources, info, support groups, etc. Web based and not.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?

Treat plans as written in soft clay not stone.  It's about pleasure not perfection.  About community not conformity.  About honoring Dewey and literature not stats.  You will notice I don't post numbers of pages or books.  With my visual impairment I couldn't compete anyway and besides I like to graze.  Especially non-fic.  I seldom read a book cover to cover during the thon.  Those I finish were usually begun days, weeks or months earlier.  So I seldom get to entire my titles in the data base.  Thus the thon stats are ot accounting for my typical 3-5 hundred pages spread over ten to twenty books.  I wonder how many more like me there are and what the ratio is between us and those who read whole books. I bet the stats are biased towards YA, children's and light genre.  I wonder how that info might affect the industry peeps who contemplate contributing prizes or otherwise supporting the thon.

Just thinking with my fingers.  What do you think?

5:00 AM - and so it begins.  I'm excited and would rather be reading than blogging at the moment.  Besides I'm cold so I think I'll crawl back in bed with my Nexus 7 until the house heat comes on.  Tho that could be risky as just like last April I did not really sleep last night.  I dozed off a few times but could not get past that hypnogogic stage.  I was awake before 9am Friday so making it the full 24 could be a challenge even for me for whom all nighters are as natural as breathing.

As I stated in last night's pre thon post, my focus today will be on NaNo prep and autism spectrum.  I'm participating in NaNo in two weeks and a month ago I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome.

Thus the first four books I'll be switching between this morning are

• Dramatica -- the book on the theory behind the fiction writing application I am using to prep my NaNo story.
• Best Boy -- a novel narrated by a high-functioning autistic man in his fifties who has been in an institution since he was about 12.
• Nobody Nowhere by Donna Williams -- a memoir of a woman who, like Temple Grandin, was profoundly autistic as a toddler but eventiually graduated college ane went on to develop a career in which she makes a difference.
• Neuro-Tribes: The Legacy of Autism and The Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman -- written by a Wired journalist, this traces the history of the autism spectrum disorders from before it had was named less than a century ago.  His theory as to why there has been a spike in autism spectrum births in areas like the Silicon Valley is startling to say the least.

[I have this scheduled to go live at 4:44am.  But if this bracketed paragraph is still here on top after 5am I don't have my eyes unglued enough to check in yet.  I will be here soon as I can.]

 

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Read-a-Thon Rev Up

Ode to Dewey

by Joy Renee

vote, fav and share for Dewey

We Miss You Dewey

It's that time again.  The fall 24 Hour Read-a-Thon.  

As I type this now I've got exactly ten hours before my 4:44 alarm goes off so I can get up and unglue my eyes in time for my 5:00 AM Pacific Coast start time.  So if got two hours to get to sleep if I intend to have a solid 8 hours to bolster me for the full 24 hours.  If I make it that would be a first.

My tendency to insomnia is triggered by upcoming events.  All my life I've had trouble sleeping the night before a trip, the first day of school, my birthday, a family get-together, a doctor appointment, shopping excursions.  Basically anything with a social element or anything I'm highly excited or anxious about.

For the April thon this year I did not sleep at all the night before and made it the full 24 so I was up from noonish on Friday to after 6am Sunday.  Because of that there were several stretches that were a struggle to stay awake and even when fully awake my abillity to focus my eyes and mind were so compromised the pleasure of the event was severely curtailed for me.  I swore I'd not let that happen next time.

So I'm getting ready to wrap up my day.

I limited my caffeine today so that should help.

I've got my Thon post My Brain on Books XVII all ready to schedule for 4:44am.  I've got my Nexus 7 loaded with ebooks and audio books and I've got a pile of library books incuding one audio and I've got several talking books from the Washington Talking Books Library.  I plan to listen to audio a good deal while I crochet.

Tho I'm not going to hold myself to it like a rule, I've got a general dual theme going for my reads: Autism research (including novels featuring a character on the spectrum) and NaNoWriMo prep.

That has been the theme of my reading for the last month.  September and October have been NaNo prep for me for a decade but the autism research began in earnest for me in late August when my councelor and I decided to pursue an Asperger's diagnosis for me which was then confirmed in mid September.

Yikes!  it's almost 8pm.  I better post now so I have time to get my thermos of coffee made before I go to bed.

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Sunday Serenity -- Having a Ball

Blue Muse Having at It
she seems a bit bemused but she's game

My Blue Muse and I were having a ball today playing with ideas for this ball of lace weight yarn. There's 420 yards so I believe that's enough for a scarf and hat set and maybe a vest or prayer shawl as well.  I think we settled on an infinity scarf to begin with.

One of the gems I got on my birthday binge last November, it's a blend of superwash wool, silk, and nylon with a metalic silver strand.  I first got it out to make a scarf in February but when I undid the hank and began winding it I ended up with a snarl:

Snarls
click to see post from February

The night it happened I managed to untangle enough to create a ball from each end the size of golf balls and over the next several months with occasional fussing with it I increased the balls to tennis ball size.  Since Wednesday I took them both to softball size and then wound one onto the other.  It is shotput size or the size of a large grapefruit.

Hank
That's how it looked last November when I brought it home

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Upside-Down Nachos

Upside-Down Nachos
Ready For Chips

 One of my duties here at Mom's is to make her lunch but since I'm usually reading aloud to her while she eats I wait until after she's eaten to fix my lunch.  Nachos are one of the few lunches where we eat the same thing but since I"m not eatinc until as much as an hour and a half later it is still like fixing two separate meals.  So I devised a variation on a theme that makes putting together a nacho plate for a single person quick and easy.

First I paint the plate with refried beans straight out of the can or the fridge.  Then add any other ingredients that are already pre-prepped which also need heating up, including the shredded cheese and heat that in the microwave.

Next I add any uncooked or cold ingredients--salsa, sour cream, olives, green onion, tomato, avocado.  Only the first four are on on this version as the others were unavailable that day.

Upside-Down Nachos
Chips Ahoy!

Last step is to add the chips.  I usually just pile them on but I stopped to take this picture while the bean goop was still visible.  Sometimes for Mom I'll take the time to slide the chips in along the outer edge until the cirle the plate then add a second an third row behind that, pushing the bean goop towards the center.  It looks a bit like a sunflower.  But that takes at least another ten minutes and I seldom have that kind of time to spare.

Because this is a quick and easy way to make single-serving nachos this way of making them is handy on the weekends when Mom is with my brother's family and I'm responsible for all my own meals.

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Fiber Art WIP: Jewelry Travel Organizer

Jewelry Travel Organizer

The craft project I've targeted for dedicated focus until it is done is this jewelry travel organizer kit that I am making for my sister.  It was meant for her birthday in July and I did giver her one part of it the week of her birthday--the earring wallet with a postcard picture of a baby polar bear for a cover.  It had three sections of plastic needlepoint canvas joined on the short sides and it folded accordion style.

The jewelry box, also made with plastic needlepoint canvas, has a top cover with a picture of a mama and baby polar bear.  The picture has a vinal pocket on the back and is attached on its bottom edge to the front edge of the lid so that jewelry can be mounted on the inside of the lid.    I have a tiny mirror mounted with decorative electricians tape but it is coming loose so I'm going to have to rethink that.

I actually gave Carri the box two weeks ago thinking that the project was finished and I was free to move on to the next target (the nearly three years past due Secret Santa project for my Sister-In-Law--the Quilter's Tote) but Carri handed back the earring wallet telling me it wasn't working.  I took back the box too because I'd forgotten to attach the clasp.  Then I spent that weekend rethinking the whole project.

I decided to turn the postcard sized wallet into something that can hold loose items and to crochet the earring wallet.  I spent the whole weekend crocheting the fifteen inch piece seen above.  Then Carri brought me her earring collection so I could mount them for her.  And Lo it did not work!!  The two-chain mesh I worked with size 5 thread was too big.  So after some more thought I decided to put an Aida cloth lining.  That did seem to work.  Especially with the crocheted back putting pressure on the hook keeping them from sliding out.  The lime green ribbon will serve a double purpose--to protect the earrings from scratching each other when the wallet is folded and as part of the clasp holing it closed.

The lime green border on the purple crochet is done in lace weight yarn that I created by pulling apart the four fibers in several yards of Carron Simply Soft yarn.  i put that border on last weekend and during last week spent two days trying to find a way to mount a 15x2.5 inch piece of Aida cloth on a jerry rigged stretcher frame so I could put a backstitch border around the edge to stop fraying while being decorative.  I spent hours and hours untangling the sewing thread I was using to attach it to a loom I'd made from my Martha Stewart loom set.  I finally realized in the wee hours of a morning after extricating myself from the upteenth game of evil cat's cradel I realized that in the time I'd spent on that I could have backstitched around the border four times.  Plenty of time that I could have worked slow enough to stay mindful of my tension and thus prevent the puckering of the cloth that stretching it on a frame is intended to do.

So I spent part of this past weekend doing that.  The remaining steps are:

• attach the crochet, aida and ribbon pieces together
• make the buckle for the clasp out of a 1 in sq piece of plastic canvas
• mount the earrings
• take the mirror off the lid and attach it to the back of the baby polar bear
• create an enclosed wallet with that postcard and the three plastic canvas pieces
• add clasp to jewelry box 

I'll post pic when it is finished.  I'm hoping by Sunday night if not sooner.  Idealiy I'd like to have it done by Friday afternoon so I can get back to work on the Quilter's tote

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Sunday Serenity -- Movie Review: OC87

OC87:The Obsessive Compulsive, Major Depression, Bipolar, Asperger's Movie

Bud Clayman, having had his dreams of a film making career interrupted by mental illness some thirty years ago, reaches again for his dreams by making this film portraying his struggles with mental illness.  We watch as he and those who witnessed it reminisce about the darkest moments of the major depressive episodes.  We are given glimpses into what a typical day looks and feels like for him with his Asperger's social awkwardness in full view and his OCD circular thoughts provided via voice over.  And as the story progress we watch his coping skills increase as he implements a makeover of his life with the advice and help of friends, family and therapists.  Along the way we witness the healing of relationships, including that with himself, a significant triumph in light of the challenges imposed by Asperger's aka high-functioning autism in which social engagement is severely impaired.

In one scene he acts in a script he wrote based on an episode of Lost in Space that moved him as a child.  The one where John Robinson encounters his evil anti-self in another dimension.  In Buddy's version he gets to verbally chastise and overcome the bully side of himself that has tormented him for decades with harsh judgement and belittlement.

As I watched that I flashed on the Star Trek episode in which a transporter accident split Kirk into two extreme opposite personalities--docile and aggressive.  Kirk learns that neither one of them can survive without the other but only the docile Kirk comprehends this.  The aggressive Kirk will accept nothing less than docile Kirk's annihilation so he must be rendered unconscious and held in docile Kirk's arms as they make the trip through the (hopfuly) repaired transporter to me melded back into one complete person. That is the scene I'd want to reenact with my inner bully.

I need to thank Buddy for this monumental achievment and congratulate him for the follow-thru (so difficult for him) in bringing this project from concept to reality.  But especially for his courage in giving us this intimate view into his heart, mind and life when one of the major issues he struggles with--high-functioning autism--makes intimacy nearly impossible.

A few year's older than Buddy (HS class of 76) and female, I've struggled with major depressive episodes, chronic anxiety, panic attacks, OCD and ADHD, since before kindergarten.  Bipolar was considered several times because of hyperfocus, insomnia, agitation and rapid speech but ruled out because I never had a manic episode not induced by medication and anxiety or sleep deprivation explained the rest.  But less than a week ago I was diagnosed with high-functioning autism and my search for more info led me to this film which could not have reached me at a more momentous time.

If for no other reason than the profound effect his story is having on me, OC87 was worth every penny, every minute, every ounce of effort and every emotional angst and personal risk invested in it by everyone who participated.  Thank You all from the bottom of my heart.

Based on other reviews on Netflix, I'm sure I'm not the only one so affected.  This was important and successful work even if no other metric seems to confirm that.   So you tell that to those OCDemons Buddy.  And keep telling them until you believe it.

OC87 is for anyone either curious or with a personal need for insight into living with mental illness--yours or someone in your life--including therapists. Buddy and his team have given a spot-on portrayal of what it looks and feels like from inside and out. It humanizes him, revealing him to be much more than the sum of his symptoms and elicits compassion rather than pity and admiration rather than condemnation even when he isn't coming across as very likable.

In the end it is profoundly uplifting because Buddy is obviously on the right path forward, having made visibly significant improvement by his efforts and dedication to 'make over' his life and already had a huge win over his inner demons just by conceiving and following through to the finish with this gift of a film for the community at large--however large you want to define that.

The fact that he was in his mid forties when he made this childhood dream come true shows that it is never too late.  Especially if you start believing in the possibility of what seemed impossible and then take the necessary steps toward it in defiance of the demons of doubt--both inner and outer.  Right now, in this moment, while still under the influence of Buddy's film I'm again feeling the possibility of reaching for my childhood dream, ending the currently six-month hiatus from writing and finishing one of the dozens of fiction WIP in my files-or a brand new one.

More importantly I understand now that finishing isn't the most important thing--the effort itself is worthy and potentially transforming as I just witnessed.

If I start to doubt again, I will return to watch OC87.  (So please, please, please leave it up on Netflix.)

Tho some of his experiences differ from mine, for those that are similar I can testify to their accuracy.   I will be referring some of my friends and family to this film for insight into my struggles.  Especially the Asperger's aspect.

The only significant difference is in the way my OCD circular thoughts manifest.  Instead of fear of acting out on thoughts of violent acts against others, I have an inner tyrannical taskmaster continuously berating me for failing, never allowing me to enjoy a sense of accomplishment by interpreting successes as failure because they never meet the impossibly high standards (like having completed only ten percent of a day's to-do list that contained six weeks worth of tasks) and using these failures as proof that I am a failure--and an excuse to give up.

There are ways other than thoughts that my OCDemons manifest for which I saw no reflection In Bud's experience so I'lll save them for future posts.  But I can say that like Bud's mine have nothing to do with hand washing, germs, counting, or checking locks and appliances so well  portrayed in culture media to seem synonymous with OCD.  There are a myriad of ways obsession and compulsion can manifest alone  and together and more than a few have plagued my life.

Keep making films Buddy.  I will be watching for more of your work.  You are so talented, insightful and honest.  The industry and film community needs you and your unique way of seeing the world.

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I Can Relate: An Asperger's Girl on TED Talks

Alix Generous: How I learned to communicate my inner life with Asperger's

Thanks to my sister Jamie for bringing this one to my attention.

Alix Generous's description of her visual thinking and vivid lucid dreams are very like my own as is the shyness and social awkwardness.  But I can only wish that I'd founded a biotec company dedicated to autism assistive technology by age 22 or developed the ability tounderstand humor well enough by then to perform what amounts to informative stand-up comedy.

She is amazing.  As is her vision for a future for those on the autism spectrum in which they are welcomed and integrated in society, their talents and contributions to culture and technology valued and the road blocks to their success removed.  I love her vision and if what she has already accomplished is indicative of her future success I've no doubt she'll have made it real by the time she is my age.  If not a decade sooner.

-------
I hope I don't wear out my visitors on the subject but my OCD and hyperfocus has kicked into overdrive since my diagnoses on Wednesday with high-functioning autism and I started collecting online resources.  Storing some of the most meaningful to me on my blog makes more sense than hiding them among the bushels of bookmarks on my browser.

Expect more but I promise I will diversify at least a bit.  There were quite a few nearly as significant developments during my six month hiatus which I can share--books finished, craft projects done or begun, thinned waist, thinned wardrobe, yardsale, a dire diagnoses rescinded, an ER visit, other health issues tended to, videos watched, room makeovers, items purchased, sorting and organizing projects progress, mood improvements, lots of reading and research, aspirations and insights.....

About the only one of my usual activities neglected since April was writing of all kinds and I think that is back now.

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With Respect to the Spectrum

The Big Give for Autism

How ironic is it that this week seems to be the annual fundraiser for Autism and I received an official diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder on Wednesday.

I'm 57 and 10/12ths.

Essentially I self-diagnosed a couple months ago while reading aloud to my Mom The Best Kind of Different: Our Family's Journey With Asperger's Syndrome by Shonda Schilling wife of Boston Red Socks Pitcher Curt Schilling about their experience with their son Grant.  As I was reading I kept finding myself identifying with the behaviors she was describing.  After the first few evening's readings I went back in the ebook and highlighted all the incidents for which I had memories of similar incidents.  There were already over half a dozen and as the days progressed I continued to highlight something nearly every day.

So after stewing on it for a week or so after finishing the book I got up the nerve to ask my counselor if we could look into having me assessed for Asperger's.  It turned out she was already considering the possibility.

And now it's official. Well autism spectrum anyway.  She was unclear whether the psychologist who evaluated the questionnaires my sister and I filled out was specifying Asperger's or not.  And I'm not sure if high-fuctioning autism is synonymous with Asperger's.  Since I never had a language deficit and tended to excel in most academic skills that seems to fit the high-funtioning criteria if not specifically Asperger's.  Most of my issues are in the social, sensory, emotional, and perseverating behaviors.  I guess we'll be fine-tuning all that going forward.

Meanwhile I find myself feeling enormously relieved in so many ways by this diagnosis.  It explains so much--like:

• Why as a child I had few close friends and got along with adults better than my own age group and as an adult I continue to have few close friends and gravitate towards children and teens as my confidants.
• Why at nearly 20 months I spent the entire night following the July 4rth fireworks until past dawn screaming "BOOM! BOOM! Mama. BOOM! BOOM!"
• Why my first and only attempt to attend a high-school pep rally ended with me hiding in the girls restroom in the school library with the lights out (until I heard Mr H. lock the front door) in the grip of a full blown feels-like-a-heart-attack panic attack that overcame me just seconds after entering the gym where the band and cheerleaders were warming up and the bleachers were full of nearly 900 students all talking at once.  I'd always avoided crowds and had previously spent the pep rallies in the library but they made attending them mandatory so after that first time I made sure to be in one of the library typing booths with the light out-sometimes hiding under the desk-until I heard Mr. H. locking the front door.  Or I'd be conveniently home sick that day.  (I usually wasn't faking it as severe anxiety created symptoms that mimicked illness like sore skin, low-grade fever, sore throat, nausea.)
• Why I tend to get intensely focused on one topic or activity to the exclusion of others like watching all five Star Trek series inside of four months or all ten seasons of Criminal Minds inside of five weeks or crocheting for twenty hours straight or spending most of forty some hours writing a short story or listening to the same album twenty times in a row or until my brother threatened to break it if I didn't give it a rest...ad nauseum.
• Why I research every subject that catches my fancy like I'm going to be writing a master's theses on it.  Wanna lay bets on which subject will be getting that treatment next?
• Why I dislike being touched
• Why I like handling things with different textures and shapes and feel a compulsion to touch everything in sight
• Why I get lost in a zone while staring at something--or nothing.  "Earth to Joy!"  (which may have resulted in the loss of my first close friend in sixth grade after I refused to respond to her calling my name during a rainy-day-recess hide-and-go-seek game in the classroom.  I suspect just like the pep rally I was in sensory overload and had gone into my version of a virtual closet )
• Why I resist meeting peoples eyes.
• Why I'm such an extreme perfectionist I prefer to not do it at all than to do it wrong.  In grade school I'd start the assignment over each time I made a mistake because even the erasure smudges offended my sensibilities.
• Why I have OCD tendencies
• Why I'm ritualistic about tasks, liking to do them in a certain way or having difficulty doing them at all if some element of that ritual or the ability to establish a ritual is denied me.  But sometimes the ritual for just setting up to do the task consumes the allotted time for working on the task.
• Why I have difficulty following oral directions without needing them repeated--several times.
• Why speaking on the phone is nearly as difficult as attending pep rallies
• Why I'm clumsy
• Why I jiggle my leg, tap my fingers or pencil on the desk, swivel my desk chair side to side, tap my tongue on the roof my mouth or teeth (one of the ways I learned to disguise the compulsion into socially acceptable behaviors along with rocking babies, bouncing on the mini-tramp or exercise ball, sitting in swings or rocking chairs, drumsticks...)
• Why I like to collect things and hate to give them up--even things most would toss in the garbage without a qualm--like the old asbestos bathroom floor tiles I hid under my mattress when they put in new linoleum when I was six.  I was heartbroken when Mom discovered them and took them away.  I'm still saving weird stuff but nothing quite as disgusting as that. :)
• Why I dislike change.  Even transitioning from indoor to outdoor, from dry to wet, from awake to asleep...and visa versa. Switching tasks, changing clothes, changing routines....
• Why Mom's favorite refrain was 'Why can't you be consistent?'
• Why it took me nearly ten years to earn my bike via the star chart devised by my mom in which completion of each day's chores without reminding and with good attitude earned a gold star and for each gold star Daddy would put a dollar in the bank for our bike.  My baby sister whom I had a seven year head start on earned her bike several years before I did.
• Why I dislike any social gathering but especially of more than three or four people.  One on one is my preference.  Well...not counting one on none which I suppose doesn't count as a social gathering anyway.  :)
• Why I cover my ears and feel tempted to tantrum when sirens or trains go by within a block.  Alarm clocks are barely more tolerable.
• Why I have such massive startle reactions anyone standing too close can get hurt.  More than once someone coming up behind me or touching me unexpectedly got an elbow in the gut or ribs.
• Why even listening to conversation takes so much effort and wears me out. And participating is a whole other level of angst.
• Why I think in images and struggle to translate them into words before whoever is listening loses patience.
• Why my thoughts go into a free association at lightspeed in which I see patterns and relationships I can seldom convince anyone else are relevant
• Why conversations with me can wear out the other person trying to follow my train of thought all over the map of ideas.  And that's even if we started out discussing the menu for the next meal.

Nearly all of those examples can be explained by the existence of a neurological condition that makes processing multiple streams of information in real time impossible.  Each of the five senses is at least one separate stream.  Verbal content another--one stream per person speaking.  Non-verbal content yet another--one stream per person present.  Spatial relationships yet another. Time yet another.  Emotions yet another, if not separate streams for each emotion present in the environment--mine and theirs.  This creates the anxiety which leads to the 'unacceptable' behaviors like social isolation, rituals and rhythmic movements, OCD, inconsistency, getting stuck in a groove, the appearance of self-involvement or selfishness.  All of which are manifestations of information overload and/or attempts to soothe the anxiety or control what seems a chaotic environment.

Some of the relief this diagnosis is generating in me relates to the pervasive sense of failure as a human being I've carried for decades because of what seemed to be character flaws preventing me from conforming to expectations--mine or other's.  This sense of failure feeds the depression I've struggled with since at least age 7 and possibly age 4.

Forty odd years after earning my bike I'm still expecting gold star days of myself and never achieving them.  But the chart I've created for myself contains dozens more requirements than Mom's did for me back then.  It's probably impossible for a neuro-typical.  But for someone with the issues I just described above its just cruel.

Now I'm getting a glimpse of a future in which I've forgiven myself for the failure to accomplish the impossible.  For isn't it as unrealistic to expect someone with sensory processing issues to be at ease in a crowd or capable of accomplishing each days tasks to perfection without reminding and with good attitude as it would be to expect a blind person to drive a car or a person with only two limbs to jump rope? 

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Winding Up [ROW80 Check-In]

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 2 2015

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

I'm still having issues stemming from the weeks of infections.  The worst one is the dizziness verging on vertigo related to the ear infection.  Along with irritating tinnitus and, I hope, temporary hearing loss beyond what was normal before.  Energy levels are getting better but still iffy.

Like an old fashioned tick-tock watch my energy winds down frequently making everything feel slow-mo.

So for now, patience with myself is still the watchword.

ROW80 ROUND 2 GOALS
same as for Round 1 except for the last one and as always they are time investment rather than word count.

• Storydreaming with note-taking tools at hand. 15min Daily (I never lost this one since instating it in my first round in 2012.  A ROW80 win!)  --this has become an integral part of every day for me.  But it's not enough if it never leads to more than jotting notes as I live inside my story.
• Read/Study Craft 15min Daily  -- easily triple that this past week. Before factoring in Saturday's read-a-thon.
• Move/Breathe/Meditate 15min Daily  --getting back into it after two months of illness has been a challenge. baby steps for now but should step it up soon.  
• Personal Journaling 15min Daily  --has not become a daily habit yet.  in fact i've not even reached for it since late February.  I feel serious resistance to it which probably means I need to be doing it.
• Read Fiction 30min Daily --this is one thing I kept up even while sick except for a few of the worst days.  I've even finished several novels since the first of the year
• Social network activities 30min Daily (writing Joystory posts doesn't count only social reaching out like reading/commenting on other blogs, guest posts and posting to fb, twitter, pinterest etc) --another thing I've not yet got into the swing of since recovering.  but it's been a challenge just to keep the daily posts going since I started them up again a week ago.
• Engage with the Blow Me a Candy Kiss structural rewrite file 30 min Daily  --hanging head in shame.  can't remember when I last opened either Scrivener's or WhizFolder the two aps the story's material resides in.

All of this in service to the overarching goal for 2015: Regain the joy in writing that I lost sometime last year.  The Joy/joy meter hovers around 5 out of 10 this week.  Except maybe Thursday thru Sunday it spiked a bit for the read-a-thon from the wind-up to the wind-down. I spent a lot of time during the thon with writing-craft books hoping to wind my enthusiasm for writing back up to stand even with that for reading which I do seem to have back.  Maybe JuNoWriMo will serve the same purpose for writing as the read-a-thon did for reading.  It's time to start winding up for it already!

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Book Review: How to Avoid Making Art (or Anything Else You Enjoy) by Julia Cameron and Elizabeth Cameron

How to Avoid Making Art (or Anything Else You Enjoy) by Julia Cameron and Elizabeth Cameron

The 80 odd cartoons illustrating some of the creative excuses creative people come up with for why they aren't creating are the spoon full of sugar that helps the medicine go down.  The medicine being the little shots of reality disproving the excuse and the sugar being the LOL hilarity in seeing your excuse enacted by silly dogs dressed up as humans.  It takes the sting away while keeping your gazed fixed on the sharp needle of truth embedded in the contradictions between what you have said and what you have done and what is the reality.

Paraphrasing, here are some of the excuses I identified with the most:

• Demanding 15 hour blocks of free time before considering getting started while using scattered 15 minute chunks for frivolous things.
• Preferring to watch the movie on the screen over watching the one on the back of your eyelids. (your story)
• Feeling depressed you don't have time to write.  Then turning on the TV to make yourself feel better.
• Over-committing your time and energy elsewhere--people, jobs, organizations, housework, make-work.... 
• Acquiring high-maintenance relationships that suck time and energy and overload you on drama that doesn't belong to you and leaves no room for the drama of your stories.
• Surrounding yourself with negative naysayers.
• Setting yourself up for failure by planning a project too big and complex for your current skills.
• Talking about your WIP more than you work on it
• Getting stuck in the planning/research stage forever.

This was the one and only book I read cover to cover during the read-a-thon Saturday.  I'm still feeling haunted by some of those images and challenges.  And I've reached for it several times in the last few days for booster shots.

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Möbius Dick?

Möbius Dick?
The  8ft Möbius strip to form the bottom, sides and shoulder strap of a crafter's tote

Back to work on the crafter's tote project.  The 2012 Secret Santa project.  I'm beginning to wonder if this is my Möbius Dick, my white whale, my nemesis, the thing that is going to take me down with it.

It is getting harder and harder to hang on to the shining vision this project was when first conceived the summer of 2012.  But I am still at it because I did not have the skill set to do a project like this.  I am developing it tho.  On the job.  Trial and error.

So much error.

The gross underestimate of the time it would take even if all went well and there were no unexpected snags was the first but not the worst miscalculation.  Underestimating the amount of thread it would take (and thus cost in money and more time) is in that same category.  Both of those are minor compared to not understanding the physics of the design.

When I finally had all the panels in a state where I could pin them together last fall and see the bag in 3D I discovered that it would be the tote from hell for anyone trying to use if for its intended purpose.  It would take two people to load it--one to hold it open.

Who would want a duffle they couldn't load without help.

I spent months brainstorming concepts for solving that issue and I think I found the solution. It is just going to take more time and materials.  I finally got all those materials in place.  Now for the time.

One of my concepts didn't need extra materials so I've been working on it while I shopped and waited on orders.  That was to double the Mobius strip over at the ends to re-enforce the four corners of the bag's bottom a bit.

This involved finding the exact center of the bottom of the Mobius and marking it by running a grey yarn through to the exact center of the other side. Thru the mesh without catching threads so the yarn can be drawn out once no longer needed.

Next count the joining loops on the bottom of the front/side panel strip. Then split that count in half and start counting the loops on the Mobius from the center, marking with the grey yarn where the front corner would belong--first on the right then on the left.  Then mark with another grey yarn the line two inches out from that and then fold that over and stitch it with the same brown thread.  Had that much done on one side when the pic was taken but have the other side caught up.

Now I'm crocheting the joining loops across the fold where the ends of the front panel wrap around the sides to form the pockets.  I'm about half done with one side.  Working brown on brown is very difficult.

Next will be sewing a dark brown grosgrain ribbon along both front and back inside edges of the bag bottom which will serve to re-enforce a bit but more importantly serve to hold the microfiber pad in place on the bottom which is one of the three such pads intended to firm up the 3D form.  There will be one on both the front panel and the back panel as well.  The back panel will also be strengthened by the doubling over of twelve inches of the panel to form an inside pocket along the back wall.

Once I have that ribbon sewed on and all the tails tucked the Mobius will be ready to join with the two panels.  But there is a lot of similar prep work to be done on each of those panels before they are ready.  But at least the pastel colors will make working with the panels much easier.

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Sunday Serenity

I made it the full 24 hours again.  First time in 2 years.  Before spring of 2013 doing the 24 hours was easy breezy.  It was my thing.  The thing I could still do with the best of those who could.

With my visual impairment it is no longer possible for me to excel at reading fast or reading long so my metrics on number of pages or completed books are sad.  So I would always, since the first Dewey thon in 2007, take pleasure and satisfaction from being one of the few who could breeze through the 24 hours.

After all I'd had a lot of practice since my tween years.  It's always been my thing, staying up all night.  And usually gone hand-in-hand with reading.

But spring of 2013 I was put on a new antidepressant, Trazadone, which made me groggy and kept me that way for 8 to twelve hours.  Skipping doses would have nasty repercussions--headache, dizziness, vision issues and anxiety attacks--so for the last four thons I had to quit two to four hours before the end.

The end for me here on the Pacific Coast was 5am today. I made it.  As I hoped I would the moment I got the OK from my med nurse to withdraw off the Traz.  But when I was unable to sleep the night before that put me already 17 hours awake when the thon started for at 5am Saturday.  Thus I've been awake for 41 hours and it looks like it will be at least 42 before I'm actually asleep.

I did manage to read one book cover to cover for the thon: How to Avoid Making Art (or Anything Else You Enjoy) by Julia Cameron and Elizabeth Cameron (artist). 80 odd cartoons illustrating quite LOL the many excuses artists use to explain why the aren't doing their art.  Too many of them too true of me:

• Demanding 15 hour blocks of free time before considering getting started while using scattered 15 minute chunks for frivolous things.
• Preferring to watch the movie on the screen over watching the one on the back of your eyelids. (your story)
• Feeling depressed you don't have time to write.  Then turning on the TV to make yourself feel better.
• Acquiring high-maintenance relationships that suck time and energy and overload you on drama that doesn't belong to you and leaves no room for the drama of your stories.
• Surrounding yourself with negative naysayers.
• Setting yourself up for failure by planning a project to big and complex for your current skills.
• Getting stuck in the research stage forever.

OK that last wasn't in the book but it should be.  It is one of my things.

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My Brain on Books XVI

I am reading for The Office of Letters and Lights the folks who bring us NaNoWriMo today as I love what they are doing for literacy with their Young Writer's Programs and because I've participated in NaNo every year since 2004 and will again next fall.  I have been blessed to have it in my life and would like to give something back if only kudos and link love.  I'm putting this plug at the top in hopes some who stop by will check out their site and see all the great things they do to foster love of reading and writing and story in kids. If you happen to be doing NaNo or Camp NaNo this year you can find me there as joywrite

This post will be organized like a blog inside a blog with recent updates stacked atop previous ones. I may be posting some updates on Twitter @Joystory and the Joystory fb fanpage. But this is where I do anything more than a line or two.  Including mini-challenges unless required to have a separate post..   

Be sure to scroll to bottom of this post for advice on how to ward off those scary nap attacks. You won't be sorry.

Ode to Dewey

by Joy Renee

vote, fav and share for Dewey

We Miss You Dewey

5:00 AM - And it's done. I did manage to read one book start to finish during the thon: How to Avoid Making Art (or Anything Else You Enjoy) by Julia Cameron and Elizabeth Cameron (artist).  The 80 some cartoons depicting artistic people making excuses for not doing their art was hilarious and struck way too close to home way too many times.

4:00 AM - With an hour to go I feel I could do another twelve. In the last hour I spent some time with:

SURFACES AND ESSENCES: ANALOGY AS THE FUEL AND FIRE OF THINKING by DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER & EMMANUEL SANDER.  Very intriguing concepts.  I'd try to explain why but Thon fiatigue has settled in my head so that I'm having a worse time than usual putting the heavily visual/emotional based language of my thoughts into words.

I think I may have been dipping in and out of the hypnogogic state in which images from memory and dreams swim with the fragmented images of the things surrounding me including the book, the cat and the 'puter.

Words are crawling on the page and screen

Well less than half an hour to go.  I think I'll take Dexter to bed with me.  Not exactly a bedtime story but I'm still needing the book to substitute for the Netflix stream I was so addicted to last week. and will be again as soon as I've slept.

So this is goodbye until the fall thon.  I really think I'm going to make it

I've been awake since noon Friday and am once again feeling the turmoil of the surf reflected in my own eyes.  [surf?  I've no idea what I really meant to say there.  maybe I was already asleep?]

1:00 AM - Having a productive night so far.  Since around 10pm I've spent significant time in each of these novels:

A Dual Inheritance by Johanna Hershon
Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
Missing Melissa by Alretha Thomas [ARC from Inde Author]

I generally don't like to have multiple novels going at once but A Dual Inheritance is the novel I have been plugging away at for months. It's comprised of long stories from different points of view separated by years following three generations of the families of two men who were unlikely friends in college in the 60s. It is literary, complex, deep and needs occasional savoring or simmering.  So several times I've broken away between stories to read a short and often light genre novel.

Missing Melissa is an ARC that I'd targeted as the novel to read start to finish for the thon but was when I thought I'd have finished A Dual Inheritance  beforehand.  And I would have if I hadn't been streaming hour on hour of Netflix for the last three weeks.  Which brings me to...

Darkly Dreaming Dexter is my bribe or reward for resisting the urge to watch an episode of Dexter on Netflix.  I've been on a Dexter binge since Early in April.  Began with season one and just began season 8 Thursday night.  It has been soooo tempting to go back to it.  Just one episode maybe.  Ha.  I can't do just one.  The book is quite different tho.  I'm not sure yet whether it is different good or different bad.  Maybe it's neither.

Just under three hours to go as I prepare to click update.  I think I'm going to make it.

Going to grab snacks and fluids and maybe start an audio book while I eat. But something non fic. Not the Sara Gruen novel I was anticipating in the intro meme.  I was intending to start and finish that during the thon too but know I can't have a forth novel going as I move into the thon hangover week.  None of them would get a fair deal and one or more would likely get dropped indefinitely...

9:00 PM - Still going strong.  Had  a slump between 4 and 8.  Had to get active to stave off the nap attacks.  What with the yawning and the tearing that triggered I couldn't see the words.  Do you realize it is nearly impossible to keep your eyes open in the midst of a yawn.  And then the tears blur your vision.

I did a little declutter of my area, fixed snacks and drinks, got on mini-tramp (after clearing it off of the bags of yarn, thread and fiber art projects which should have been done yesterday!)  I drank a half liter of water.

And finally,shortly before 8, I reached for the Adderal.  Don't worry.  It's a prescription (for ADD) and it's for two a day but the second is optional and most days I try to avoid taking it and especially avoid taking it after 2pm.  But today I knew I would need it and wanted to push it as late as I could towards 9pm but no later.

I really intended to update more often and maybe even do a mini-challenge or two by now.  But the updates I did this morning and the lurking on the thon blog and a few others ate up my morning so from 10am to 4pm I was focused on reading.

I did finish Laura Stack's What To Do When Theres Too Much T'o Do shortly after noon and after that I flitted and fluttered among several NF and short story collections, reading a single story, essay, intro or preface in each, advancing my bookmarks in:

From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler
No Plot? No Problem! A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Chris Baty (founder of NaNoWriMo)
A Scream Goes Through the House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life by Arnold Weinstein
Reading Like a Writer: a Guide for People Who Love Books and For Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose
The Mindful Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself From Chronic Unhappiness by Mark Williams
Collected Stories by William Faulkner
Managing Your Depression by Susan J. Noonan
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
How to Avoid Making Art (or Anything Else You Enjoy) by Julia Cameron and Elizabeth Cameron (artist).  80 some cartoons illustrating the excuses creative people use to not create.
World Famous Cults and Fanatics by Colin Wilson
Literary Fables of Yriarte by Tom S de Iriarte
Little Black Book of Stories by A. S Byatt

This is something I love to do--graze in a plethora of books comprising a variety of styles, genre, subjects, eras.  It's ultra stimulating.  The ideas and images and stories stew in my simmering brain for days and weeks.  I once wrote an essay about this titled Emerson Whispering Sweet Somethings in Einstein's Ear.

Hmm. I just reread that for the first time in nearly a decade.  I think it is time to rewrite and update and repost it here.  That link is to Joyread one of the web pages I started in the late 90s and abandoned soon after I started blogging.  The other was called Joywrite which featured my fiction, poetry and musings on writing but it's host is now nothing but a ghost in the ether and only a few of my Joywrite pages are wisps in the Internet Archives.  Of course I still have all the HTML pages in folders on my computer.  I still dream of putting Joywrite up again and adding all the new material produced in the last decade and reposting all the Joystory book reviews on Joyread....

Time to rehydrate and a get a snack...


7:00 AM - Introductory Meme
1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?
Longview WA USA

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?
I think probably the audio of Sarah Gruen's Water for Elephants which I'll read while crocheting or winding thread or yarn on my crank yarn ball winder.

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?
  It's always the chocolate isn't it? See last night's post for more on my thon snacks. 

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!
As a child I would frequently read all night.  I would hide in the bathroom after my folks were in bed so they wouldn't see light coming from my room.  I would read by moon light or the street lamps or take my little high intensity desk lamp under the covers. One time I'd bent the gooseneck on that little lamp until the bulb was less than half an inch from the surface of my beside table.  The light reflecting off the light blue cloth was enough to read by but I hoped not enough to be visible from my parent's doorway at the other end of the hall.

But one night I fell asleep reading with the lamp like that and Mom found me and woke me to show me the round scorch mark on the cloth.  She didn't punish me.  She didn't even raise her voice then or ever on the subject.  She just asked me in a soft voice that wouldn't rouse my baby sister, sleeping next to me in the double bed we had just recently begun to share and would share until I was 19 and our brother left home to go to tech school, "What if I hadn't found it before the bed was on fire?" She looked pointedly back and forth between my eyes and my three year old sister's sleeping face. My eyes filled with tears.

I never did that again.  But I continued to read half the night away several times a month all through my childhood, young adulthood, and right on through to the middle of my sixth decade.  Yes.  Still.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?
This is my 16th Dewey Thon.  I'm excited that I don't have to take the Trazadone anymore as I did the last four Thons. Thus I get to stay awake the full 24 again.

5:15AM -I'm awake.  Still.

  Guess I was too jazzed, too wound.

  I woke at noon on Friday after apprximately six hours of sleep split by a half hour attempt to establish a vid chat with my husband at 8:20.  Connection issues frustrated us and triggered another episode of vertigo for me sending me back to bed for another three hours.

Waking at noon probably played a role in not being ready for sleep before the wee hours.

I dont know what not sleeping before the thon is going to mean for my hopes of lasting the full 24.  But before the Trazadone became one of my daily antidepressants it was common for me to be awake upwards of 24 hours several times a month.

Now that the Traz has been stepped back to an occassional sleep aid that means I dont have to take it by midnight or risk nasty withdrawal symptoms so after four Thons interrupted by involuntary sleep at both ends--nap attacks at the start while the Traz is wearing off and lights out at the end after taking it again--I was hoping to have another true 24 hour thon experience.

I probably should have used the Traz to get to sleep last night but wanted to avoid the 3-6 hours of grog noggin upon waking.

We shall see.  I will probably abuse caffiene today.  And go ahead and take that second Adderal.  And get on the mini-tramp more often. And drink lots of water...

Yes, water I learned recently is an energizer! Our bodies afterall are hydroelectric machines.

I am going to start off the morning with Laura Stack's What To Do When Theres Too Much T'o Do.  It is one of the books in which my bookmark is less than 100 pages from the finish and it is below average difficulty level. And an eBook so I can have fonts whatever size my eyes need.

I'm going to stay in bed for the next several hours. Fewer distractions. I have my Nexus 7 for posting, my Blaze cell and Nexus both loaded with books and music so I can read on one while listening on the other, and coffee and tea in thermoses to drink while nibbling on a protein cookie.

All set.


[I have this scheduled to go live at 4:44am.  But if this bracketed paragraph is still here on top after 5am I don't have my eyes unglued enough to check in yet.  I will be here soon as I can.]

 

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