Things I want to do:
Make my own header/template for my blog. I’m so tired of trying different themes and never quite liking them because there’s always one or two things that annoy me. I’d really like to do one using my own pictures. But alas! I am too web-illiterate and it would take me forever to figure it out.
Figure out how to use Photoshop to edit my pictures. I know some of them need help, but there are a thousand-and-one ways to fix your photos in Photoshop and everyone has their opinion on what should be done and what is not enough and too much and so forth. I am sure that I am doing it all wrong, and I am completely confused by it all.
Brush up on my German. My college degree includes a minor in German. I’ve knit from German knitting patterns (which I loved – their patterns are so much easier to follow, in my humble opinion). One of my homeschooling goals is to teach my kids a foreign language – like German. With the internet, I could read German knitting blogs to get basic fluency (I am a member of a Yahoo German knitting group so they wouldn’t be hard to find). Then I could read German news sites and talk German with my boys and really go quite far. I love the German language – it would be so much fun.
But I never seem to have a moment when I am thinking clearly enough to do any of this.
I would like to write up knitting patterns for things I have designed and offer them here on my blog. But again, alas! I am web-illiterate. I would need to set up some kind of shopping cart. I would need to offer a few free to prove to people that I know how to write patterns (every designer seems to have two or three patterns on their site that were their early designs that they offered to help create a following). Writing up the patterns wouldn’t be too hard. But schematics? I can’t draw worth anything, and I don’t have a scanner if I drew them by hand on graph paper. Schematics are kind of nice to have. Ach!
I would like to read this book and then spend a half hour a day reading just for the joy of reading. You know, classics. Literature. Stuff like that. I used to love reading. I used to lead a book group at Borders when I lived in Maryland. We read contemporary literature – you know, prize winning novels and the like, not just trashy or popular stuff. It was so fun. I so want to be better at reading and analyzing literature. It’s fun and it makes me feel like I’m stretching myself, like I’m not just sticking with what is easy and with what I already know.
Our bedroom is in major need of a makeover. As in, I want to make new pillow covers and a quilt that actually fits our bed. Right now, we’re using a good down comforter that is supposedly sized for regular/queen. It fits nicely on the regular sized mattress I had before we got married, but it does not fit on the queen size bed that we use now. Quite frankly, it barely reaches the edges of the mattress – only in your imagination does it hang nicely down each side. But I need to decide which quilt pattern I want to make, what fabric I want to use, and then find the time to do it.
Which leads to the next thing I need to do – figure out how to use my Bernina sewing machine. I have it now – finally – but I have not yet gotten it out of the box. It was hard enough to find time to sew when I had my old Viking (which I knew how to use). Finding time to sew and figure out how to use a new machine seems to be impossible. Steve has jeans he wants me to hem – the 34’s are too long and the 32’s are to short so he bought the 34’s and wants me to hem them so he can wear them. And Joey’s longies need elastic so he can wear them and so I can take pictures of him again so we can remember how cute he is without me being mortified by what clothes he was wearing. But I need time when I can think clearly enough, not just to sew, no, to sew and figure out how to use a new machine (though at least I am fairly certain the machine will work and not break down on me and need to be in the shop for repair for two weeks when I finally do find a moment to sit down and use it – we are making progress here).
But…all of these things require me to think clearly. Yes, to actually think about something. Which seems to be nothing short of impossible.
Yes, I get up early in order to have some peace and quiet so I can think coherently, but usually that is when I am planning my day. If I don’t plan my day, let’s just say, it’s not good. Then the boys get up and my day is general chaos, in spite of any planning I may have done. The more serious thought I need to give something, the more interruptions I seem to get. [Why is this?] Then in the evening when the boys finally go to bed, I am simply too tired to spell my name for someone, much less actually think about something.
Sometimes I just feel like I have rocks in my head – all these things I want to do that I never even start to try to get done. They’re just there, in my way, all the time. In fact, sometimes I think it’s a wonder I get anything done at all. Seriously.
But life just goes on. That’s how it is. Right now I need to make the boys put their beds back where they belong – rolling them around the room seems to be a great sport. The laundry needs attention. And lunch needs to be made.
Woe is me!
