Working from Home

The rhythm of working from home is hard to accustom myself to. Some days are empty of appointments and full of time for me to structure on my own. Other days are busy, jumbled, full of classes with students and voicemails and driving to appointments to places that I've not been to meet with people who are new to me, and broken up into many, many tiny elements. I look up and it's dinnertime.

I've mentally assigned an appliance to each kind of day. The slow, quiet, solitary day is my refrigerator. Every day I intend to clean it. It really needs to be done: it's in that state where vegetables have died off and the drips of milk from the gallon jug and the indecipherable stream of something unknown beneath the vegetable drawers is noticeable. And almost every day, as I make my lunch, I'll say to myself, today is the day to clean the refrigerator. And then, it does not get done. I am productive, but in a desultory fashion: I study, I prepare the lecture for my class on Yoga and Weight Loss, I work on outreach for the yoga therapy work, I answer emails from prospective clients, and I try to get some exercise/walk the dog so that we both get some fresh air. Dinner time rolls around. I start to cook, pour myself a glass of wine, and consider that I have managed to make it through another day without cleaning the fridge.

The other kind of day is my cell phone. Never before have I been so linked to a cell phone. Last month we had a HUGE bill, and when I mentioned this to two friends who have teenagers, they were like, well, it was time way back to go for the unlimited minutes and texting. Who knew: I've never used my phone for much beside the possible emergency use or the do-we-need-milk-on-my-way-home call. Now, the busy days seemed centered around answering the thing, checking the voicemail, trying to return the calls I've gotten, and always a few stray calls that I realize, just when I think that I'm done, that I want to try to get under my belt. The thing follows me around, physically or mentally, and I think, this is one of the things that I did not relish about academic life: the difficulty in separating work from home life.

At the same time, it's exciting to be talking with people who are themselves excited about what I do.

Other good things: I am a winner! I won a prize from Twist's first anniversary contest. It's a square knitting needle (I know, I haven't tried it yet, but the packaging insists several times that they are ergonomically engineered to reduce stress on the hands), a free pattern (not yet chosen), and a lovely postcard. And I am trying to get out from under the few last projects not finished. Below, a detail from Moriah's Wildflower cardigan in Cascade Eco. I had the brilliant idea of trying to steek a cardigan for the first time without directions. Now almost done with working on the fronts, I've bailed - among the problems was that I didn't know that the button band gets picked up after the steeking, as well as plenty o' mistakes in the seed stitch band, the buttonholes, and that the sweater seems wide enough (no waist shaping in this pattern...) that I may be able to jury rig a different finishing. My plan is to just sew up the front sides, cut away the seed stitch and pick up a new edging.