Back in the Saddle

February 21, 2009 by acrawley63 3 Comments

I haven’t felt like blogging since returning from NJ earlier this week.  Almost two weeks ago we left to be with Eric’s mom and family prior to my MIL’s surgery. Her surgery went well but her recovery has been tenuous at times. Blogging and creating art seemed trival.

It took a few days to get back in the groove. It started with focusing on the business task list and returning to yoga, then getting a hair cut, going grocery shopping, and finally putting my hands on the clay. Where I really felt the stress of the past week release was when I put together several bald, faceless “heads” for my art guild’s polymer clay sculpting demo. Creating these “heads” even gave me an idea for a future moderately priced art item.

Another thing that has helped me return to a routine was taking my goals for the month, breaking them down into smaller steps, and putting those steps into my task and to-do list in Entourage. I can attribute this wonderful suggestion to Leslie Shreve’s teleseminar The Road to Peak Productivity (I’ll blog more about the teleseminar in a future Tuesday’s Business post.)

Today was an art day which included a visit to the Danforth Museum to see their mixed media fiber art exhibit featuring Lisa Call and Faith Ringgold’s Story Quilts, lunch at Bruegger’s Bagels (a gloriously gooey 4-cheese and tomato panini and butternut squash soup), and a visit to Barnes and Nobles. The sunshine and clear blue sky also contributed to the great day.

Oh yes, we had new carpeting installed this week on the second floor. I love the carpet, the color and the pattern. It feels real good underfoot. So it was really disappointing to learn the carpet has a defect which wasn’t detected until the installers started to vacuum it. The owner of Century Carpet, where we purchased the carpet, even came to the house on request of the installers while they were still here to confirm the defect. How often does that happen? Century Carpet will file the claim with the manufacturer. Unfortunately it means that the carpet will have to be pulled up and reinstalled in a few weeks. Century Carpet gets high marks in my book for the way they’re handling this situation. Kudos to them.

Finally I replaced a couple white switchplate covers with switchplate covers I made several years ago. They fit in well with the new wall color.

Silkscreened Dragonfly Switchplate