After yesterday’s long day out, I awoke today grateful to be at home… but soon found myself confronted with exactly the same situation: being stuck in one place all day long. I wrote as my Facebook status this morning:

The day stretches out before me like a sandy shoreline. I have never been a beach person. There’s lots to do and see, but it’s such a long walk with no end in sight. At what point do I turn around and head back the way I came? When do I just give it up and lie down with a book?

This metaphor came to me freely after reading Yoav Ben Yosef’s atmospheric short, “Not Calling Attention To Ourselves,” but it strikes me that it is very apt. The feeling I got yesterday at the library is very similar to my emotions on this day last August. Long days at the beach trouble my body: I burn so easily, I eat too much, my books blind me, the beach restrooms always seem so unclean. You’ve already heard about my library woes. Yet today, faced with another uninterrupted long work day, I also had trouble getting started even though I was at home. But before long I remembered how much I’d longed for home yesterday, and the chance to do all the things left undone in the house: dishes, laundry, and so forth. So I set about doing those things, and that gave me the momentum I needed to get going. Maybe this is the hidden blessing of spending long days outside the house — they make me more grateful and productive when I am here!

I devoted most of the afternoon to putting in the background on my Drawgasmic piece. Ouf, my hand is dying again from all the hatching (all those tiny lines). I think it has an interesting look, but I’m not so happy with the colors. The greens and blue together don’t really look fresh. But I do love the hatching, and the torn-tissue-paper effect of the colors’ edges. I still need to hatch the two upper blue areas, but my hand has firmly informed me that that will not be happening tonight.

Detail

You know, often when I look at my friend Mo‘s beautiful miniature work, I marvel at the level of fine detail and think, “That’s insane! If I had to do that, I’d go nuts.” Well, this piece just goes to show I’m already nuts, I’ve just chosen a different medium than Mo has. (Or media, if you count embroidery. Which we should.) To each our own!