Resurrecting the Friday 5

So I went back to the beginning, 2006 - the first year of Musings from Mt. Vernon St. - and looked up the posts for this week. One of them was the Friday Five. I totally forgot about the Friday Five and thought that now would be the time to bring it back...so here goes:

Hearing: the quiet sounds of morning...birdsong outside, the gurgling of the coffee maker, the cat eating breakfast, the occassional car
Seeing: piles of yard sale stuff, newly priced and ready to go
Smelling: coffee - luscious, glorious, nectar of the gods, motivator of my day...and cinnamon buns
Tasting: cinnamon buns started in my NEW bread machine, as the old one crapped out on me and baked in the oven
Feeling: ready to sell stuff and make a little extra cash to pay for the repairs to my truck

Bring on the yard salers - come buy my stuff!

I hope it's sunny where you are - enjoy the day!

Okay, so I suck

Keeping up with my blog apparently hasn’t been a priority. It’s been a long while since I’ve been here (FEBRUARY!). I’m trying to remedy that.

Since before Christmas, I’ve been feeling very out of touch with my creativity. It’s been so long since I’ve been inspired to take out the camera. I haven’t really played much with fabric. I have started getting back into a painting mood, but even that is sporadic.

I long for a life that allows me to be creative when the mood strikes, not just when I can fit it in. Where I am debt free and with a substantial, steady income from a career that doesn’t require me to leave my house everyday and spend 9 or 10 hours running like a crazy woman, doing work for someone else. I’m not saying I don’t like my job, but I’ve become increasingly distant from doing the things that make me happy.

I know that come June this craziness will all be over and I’ll have more than enough time on my hands to enjoy my artistic endeavors, but right now I think I have cabin fever and the spring itch (sounds like an indie-folk-rock band).

Though things are sporadic right now, I still have done a few things, started a new quilt and painted a mini picture.

I’ve also been craving different music…like Al Green. Why? I don’t know, but I’ve been groovin’ it to the man for the past month and I just can’t get enough!

I’ve taken to writing unstructured journal entries as well…it’s rather freeing. No dates, times, names, places, just random thoughts. I found a great little journal with the artwork of Susie Ghahremani. LOVE!

Anyhoo, I leave you with the mini Easter basket that I made for my mother (made another one for my aunt) and a link to pictures that I took at Easter while visiting the
Fish Ladder in Damariscotta…it was cold and rainy, I was bored at my folks and decided to take a drive.

Cheers and hopefully I’ll be back here soon with another update before the month is out!

FRIG*ID or How I Wish I’d Brought a Hat or How Sometimes a Break is Good

All working titles for this post…couldn’t decide which to use.

I spent some time catching up on blogs that used to be daily reads for me and realized just how much time has passed and how much I’ve missed. Not just in the lives of the bloggers I read, but in the little I’ve had to say in my two month sporadic hiatus here on Mt. Vernon Street. I’m trying to wrap my brain around just where the last two months went. I mean, between campaign stuff and job stuff, yeah, I kinda know where my last two months went, but thinking back on it…it’s all a little fuzzy.
As I read about others creative endeavors, I realized that though I’ve made a few things, the crafty side of my brain hasn’t been in it – things in my creative world have felt mechanical. There was no passion; there was only assembly line production. When I picked up my camera only moments ago and saw the last pictures I took, I realized just when the last time I used my camera was (has it really been a month?). How could I have let myself get so swept up in non-crafty things – I succumbed to the demons of politics and the evil spirits of jobless thoughts. And when I went calm…I also went blank. I didn’t feel the fear, but at the same time, I didn’t feel anything. As I read those blogs, I began to feel the itch to create slide up my spine, down my arms and into my fingers. A gauze of fabric palettes has been pulled down over my eyes making me see patterns wherever I look. And when I became overwhelmed with the need to get back to creating, I stepped outside, where a sharp blast of frigid air slapped me in the face and made me wish I’d grabbed a hat. But that wind cleared the cobwebs and made me see that, indeed, winter is coming. The leaves are gone. Snow is coming. And its time to stop sleep walking through my days in calm-masked fear of being without a job…waiting…waiting to make plans (I’m still holding off on Christmas shopping until I know what my finances look like). There is nothing stopping me from planning my next quilt, finding the joy in finishing that quilt that I started making unpassionately; there is nothing stopping me from drawing and painting and cooking and creating! (On that note, I need peacock feathers, don't ask why - as soon as it's complete, I'll do a show and tell - but I must remember to pick up peacock feathers...and glue...and glitter).
Maybe this break from the norm was necessary…to jump start me…to make me realize that I cannot take for granted all those things that I’ve relied upon, gotten comfortable with, because everything is transient and sometimes I forget that.

Random Happenings

On Tuesday, we had a staff meeting in my office and my boss left his mug behind. Now I could have been nice, cleaned said mug and returned it to his office, like the polite and respectful employee that I should be...but if I started acting polite and respectful to him now, he'd wonder what was wrong with me. So instead, I sent him a ransom note...

It reads:

"Dear Mr. McCarthy,

Please read carefully. We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction (well, not that foreign, but foreign enough). We respectively hosted your staff meeting, but thought your lack of cleanliness and absence of memory was very unprofessional. Therefore, we have your John Wayne mug in our possession. It is safe and unharmed at the moment, but if you ever want to see it again, you must follow our instruction to the letter.

You must bring $10,000 Colombian pesos (about $5.47 US) to the President’s Office by noon tomorrow. Leave the money on the table and your mug will be returned to you within two hours. Do not involve the authorities. If you call the police or tell anyone about this, your mug will come back to you in pieces! For the safety of your mug, you must do as we say!

You will be hearing from us.

Hugs and smooches, your friendly neighborhood mug-nappers"

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Man, I love my job.

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Okay, so I know I haven't been around much, just a little random blogging and practically no visits to other people's blogs or flickr sites...aaaaand I'm about 5 or 6 weeks behind on Mini-Quilt Monday, but soon enough the legislative session will be done and I'll actually have more time to create, take pictures, paint, see friends, have a life, etc. etc.... Anyhoo, despite all the things I need to be doing for work, I have a ton of ideas swirlin' in that brain of mine that have absolutely nothing to do with work...like the tunic and tank patterns I just created the other day and the squeaky snail for dogs that I came up with for my etsy shop and the random doodles that I want to paint on canvas...just because I think it would look funky.

Anyhoo, back to the old grindstone and all that fun stuff.

Hugs and smooches, your friendly neighborhood mugnapper :^)