Moving Along at Glacial Speed

It's been a frustrating couple of days. Lots and lots of hours in my project lodge of a garage. At least I prepped my mood with the expectation that the jigsaw thing wasn't going to go so well. Made it a little easier when it, predictably, did not go so well. Didn't really anticipate spilling half a quart of watermelon-pink latex paint on the garage floor. Maybe it was less. I don't know. 

Wasn't too terribly excited when I realized that I had to gouge out a loose knot of wood and fill it and sand it, three separate times, even after I had already painted, with wood filler. We won't talk about that. And of course there was the touch-up job with the paint that was somehow half a shade off from the original color. I noticed that part a couple hours after I jotted a few strokes on the surface. 

Burnt out light bulbs at 9:00 p.m. always suck, but not as much as the light bulb that burns out 3 seconds after you screw it in. What a charmer. And to think I was all proud of myself for taking all the appropriate measures...in their proper order...to change the light bulb before I went and rifled through the cabinets for it. You know- just little stuff. Moved a few cinder blocks so I could move a couple tables. Had to unplug some things from the outlet that's behind some other things. Walked into the jigsaw blade that I had just taken off the table and set on the ground when I was going to move everything. I was wearing sandals. Went the the backyard in the dark to get the ladder. Fortunately, nothing bad happened during my blind jaunt around to the back of the house. Set the ladder up and trekked to the top [okay, so it's like 4 rungs] and opened the light fixture only to have half a pound of dead bugs scatter all across the fresh paint. It was the piece with the gouge I had to fill 3 times. That thing is cursed by now. 

Screwed in the new bulb, smiled that SOMETHING finally worked, began to crawl down the ladder and jumped half a mile high because of the loud pop of the new bulb dying. Ugh. UGH. UGH. I'm surprised that none of my knuckles are broken or bleeding yet. Punching something crossed my mind half a dozen times. It's not frequent that it does...but seriously. The last couple days have sucked, mega style.

Joe came out at some point and asked how it was going. It took a lot of energy for me to keep myself from turning into the sister of Incredible Hulk and not seem like I was entirely fed up. And it took even more energy to erase the thought that I had just wasted so. much. time. when I'm only 25 days out and I don't have many hours away from other commitments during that period. It's okay, though.

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I'm happy to say that I have finally made some headway [it's the next morning now...] and I think I may be able to crank out 3 pieces today. It's that whole cut/sand/prime/paint thing that takes so dang long. Especially when I mess things up. But, like I said- I did move forward last night by a small amount.  

And that small amount was that I got my beetle carved and printed! It was the first thing that went right all day yesterday...at like 6:30 p.m. And to think that I started my day at 6:30 a.m. The entire time I was carving I kept thinking that it was going to turn out horribly, but when I peeled the inked block away from the paper during the first test print, I pretty much jumped with glee. If I could do cartwheels I would have. And then I went inside to eat chicken apple curry for dinner and try to gather some more electricity for round 3. I went back out an hour later and printed with my new beetle. This morning I went out and got a few more things ready for printing and then cut and glued some scraps.

So I made a deal with myself- if I can finish 3 pieces today, I might drive to Madison to buy a new camera and some red printing ink. Well, I made that deal 5 hours ago and I think only 2 pieces are going to happen, but that's because I am kind of taking it easy. Tomorrow starts a new chain of work days and I'm really, really not ready for it. But I'm not going to think about that because then the pinchy claws come out and I turn into a crab.

Whew. Okay. End of...whatever you want to consider that. Anyway, what have you been up to lately? Any fun plans for the end of summer/beginning of fall? I don't know about you, but I am so looking forward to boots and scarfs and sweaters and cider and donut holes and hockey. Not football. Hockey. Fall = Hockey.