Archive for October, 2011

Bedside manner…

Monday, October 31st, 2011

I had the total knee replacement two weeks ago today. After 3 days in the hospital and 8 days in a rehabilitation hospital, I arrived home last Friday to my nest. Home never looked so good!!!

I have had my wings clipped for a month. I can walk around the house but cannot leave the house! So my world is small but I am working each day towards expansion. My bend is currently 90 degrees with ultimate goal of 120 within two weeks. My other new goal is to drive myself to lunch on my birthday in early December! We all know how fast time passes. Having goals helps break the monotony of new day, same story.

Meanwhile I am surrounded by beautiful quilts! When I first began to quilt I made lots of work inspired by traditional patterns of wild batiks and my own hand-dyed fabrics. Three grace the walls and one bed. Another has migrated from another room to be folded 8 fold to make a small stack on which to elevate my foot. All these glorious colors inspire my recovery!

Posted in knee surgery | 1 Comment »

the greatest lessons…

Saturday, October 15th, 2011

Some times the best thing we can learn in a class is that we never want to EVER do that (fill in the blank) again! That is me and watercolor.

For years I have admired and purchased watercolor art. And I longed to take a watercolor class myself although now I am not sure what the longing was about! This spring I took a short course on-board a cruise ship. I thought maybe it was the instructor as it just did not ring my bell! So I decided to dabble more and take an online sketching/watercolor class from Jane LaFazio who is an outstanding water-colorist and colleague. Her work is gorgeous! She truly has the gift!

My brain however does not do depth perception. My husband has tried valiantly over the years to convince me to see it as if I am just stubbornly refusing to ignore it!!! I can see it; I just cannot replicate it. As much as I try to stretch myself by dabbling in other media, it is just not happening. The only stretch is a growing dislike of painting in watercolor! It is so contrary to the feeling of play and passion I get when painting cloth or designing textile art.

Since I have a few laid back weeks ahead of me I may dabble more…who knows! I have given myself permission though to move on if it continues to create such internal tension. Meanwhile hubby asked today if we could frame this first effort and hang it somewhere? LOL. How about the garage?!!!

 

 

Posted in wisdom | 3 Comments »

beat the clock…

Sunday, October 9th, 2011

So here I am just 9 days out from surgery and playing a rapid-fire game of beat the clock. I finished updating the PowerPoint, and drafted patterns for two shirts which pared down my to-do list considerably. Everything on the list has been what I figured I could not do well for several months. I might just surprise myself and two weeks post-op be climbing lots of stairs, sitting at the computer endlessly and painting cloth but I sort of doubt it.

After I cross off everything on the list I am going to be so physically exhausted I will need a good nap. And what better place to nap than in the hospital…not! Actually being this busy is a god-send as I am not obsessing at all about going under the knife one more time. I don;t have time to fret about it!

The last two days I have made multiple trips to the basement to work on painting cloth. While a layer dries I am catching up on email and mahjong solitaire. It is a good life this one!

My goal has been to paint all the cloth that was previously dyed and patiently waiting for attention. Now all the large pieces are done and tomorrow I will work on the smaller ones. Once the week starts I am on to other things…lots of other to do’s…acupuncture, chiropractor, haircut, surgery consult, blood typing, mentor and clean the bathrooms. Could I possibly have any more fun?

Posted in knee surgery, patterns, surface design, time management | 3 Comments »

time management again…

Sunday, October 2nd, 2011

One of the things on my pre-surgery list has been to flesh out two of my five lectures. With one finished I am hard at work on the other. All five lectures have been given numerous times so it is indeed time to freshen.

Initially I was scheduled to deliver one in mid-November but when my surgery was postponed to October 17th I had to also postpone that lecture. Still I thought it would be of great benefit to have this tedious task done before surgery rather than procrastinating on it afterwards.

I am just now back to work on it after taking a 2 pm lunch break. I meant to eat an hour ago but kept putting it off as I copy-pasted. I know now it was a very prudent option to work on it sooner over later. I cannot imagine being able to sit at the PC for hours on end after having my knee replaced.

Revising a PowerPoint is both fun and arduous. The artistic creative side of it is great fun and I continually get lost in the play. I am forever adding a key point here or there which in turn means it has to be copied to many more pages. Then I keep re-arranging the order of pages. As I shuffle through the presentation suddenly I come across a page that I moved but not updated. It seems the more I do to flesh it out, the more work I am creating for myself!!! If this were me 20 years ago I would have gone all the way through making one particular change, then all the way through making the next change. Instead the right brain is riding high in the saddle on this one plugging in images here, and text there ad nauseum with no concern to continuity. That’s when it hit me that this is going to take twice as long to do as my former left brain self would have allowed. So this becomes a 100 hr prep for a 1 hour presentation.

But that’s okay…if I weren’t doing this I might be fretting about going under the scalpel again. Right now…who has the time?!

Posted in knee surgery, procrastination, teaching, time management | No Comments »