Sunday 30 May 2010

Ridiculous and sublime

Falling down

Ever have one of those days where everything goes wrong?

Yesterday morning was like that for me.

When we got up, the temperature was hovering around the freezing mark, there was some scattered snow on the ground and our truck, and it was precipitating both rain and snow. And windy.

In other words, a thoroughly nasty day, built for staying home with my knitting and the odd nip of brandy poured into my tea.

But I was looking forward to going off for a day of paper-making at a friend's studio, so I roused myself, collected my lunch, thermos of hot tea, and a change of clothes and headed out to the truck, where my (mis)adventures began.

Couldn't find the snow brush, so I started to clean the windshield off with my gloved hands, and promptly stepped into a large, deep puddle. No problem thought I: I'm off to go make paper, and my feet will get wet anyway.

Started up the truck and turned on the defrost. This was a very Bad Move, as the next thing I knew, there was a loud squealing sound and smoke started to come out of the hood. Our air conditioning unit had seized, and the master belt that runs the electrics had fried. Instead of driving over to paper class, I would now have to take transit.

Well, crap I thought -- OK, there were a few well chosen swear words in there too, but this is a family-friendly blog. I removed all the stuff I had loaded into the cab, took them into the house, and tried to call to say I'd be late.

No dialtone on our landline phone. None.

Dug out my cellphone. It had run out of charge, but worked fine once I plugged it in. Called to explain the situation, apologized, and said I'd be there as quickly as I could (and, in fact, made it within an hour).

Old and new

Decided that I'd skip taking my camera and a bag of leather scraps, and while repacking, dropped the thermos. The glass-lined thermos full of pomegranate/raspberry tea. With the tinkle of glass shards ringing in my ears, I quickly picked it up and tossed it into the kitchen sink, leaking hot tea through the dining room and kitchen.

By this point, I was close to tears, but was determined to go anyway. Grabbed my purse and pack, and headed out the door to get to our nearest bus stop. When I got there, laying in the door of the shelter, was a dead sparrow, who had obviously, and unsuccessfully, tried to take a shortcut. I knew how he felt, and again seriously considered just turning around, throwing myself back into bed, and pulling the covers over my head.

Amazingly, I had barely a five-minute wait for the bus, and although I just missed the train downtown, the bus I would have transferred to was the next block away, and so I had a nice, warm ride the rest of the way.

By the time I arrived, I missed the history of paper part of the program, and most of the let's tear these cotton linters up and whizz them in the blender section as well, but quickly started pulling sheets of paper with everyone else, finishing with a nice collection of small abaca and kozo sheets, some large sheets of cotton, one small layered cotton paper with flower petals, and a small cotton sheet with pulp painting.

Much to my amazement, nothing else terrible happened the rest of the day, except that I now have found yet another hobby I could really immerse myself in (hey, I need paper to make books out of!).

But since I didn't take the camera with me, I don't have pictures of the papers, although I will once they are dried and I pick them up next weekend.

And the truck isn't totally doomed: a quick trip to the part supply store will provide a new belt (this is a recurring problem, so we know what needs to be done) and five minutes of installation later, we'll be back on the road. That's tomorrow's grand adventure.

Four months old

But I do have happy pictures to show from last weekend's walk through our neighbourhood park, and am thrilled that my big accomplishment this week was finally organizing the studio and computer area. I'm not done with the latter, but it's now much more useable than it was.

For today, it's time for some knitting, a few sketches for a new book and an installation, a little French Open tennis, and the finish of the Giro d'Italia.

And maybe a tot of brandy in my tea....

1 comment:

  1. Sorry to hear of the bad start to your day. When I have days like this I always wonder whether the universe is telling me to take a break and lay back, or testing me to see if I have the resilience to soldier on in spite of it. It sounds like you made the right choice.

    Clara

    ReplyDelete

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