(photo is SFW)
]]>He's missed me, the little brat. Tenzing too. I've been a null entity in my life for the past two weeks as I worked on bringing The Print Project™ to completion. I came home Thursday night with a sense of jubilance that was tempered by a well-chilled bottle of Mirror Pond Pale Ale and a desperate need to sleep. I slept nearly ten hours that night and nearly twelve last night. I feel mostly human again.
Frantic creativity, for me, comes with a hefty price tag. I do marvel at how I react to it, as I'm not sure if my reaction is typical. It is not physically tiring work, but it's mentally draining. I measure the length of my days by the lights in the room I work in; if I'm the person who first turns them on at the beginning of the day and also turns them out when I leave, I know it's been a long day.
(Misty, I have meant to ask you for ages if you react similarly to design work.)
I think my co-workers think I'm a little crazy. 'Touched' is the phrase I heard growing up, as in, She's a little touched in the head, isn't she? I'm something of a favored and eccentric pet in the office, someone whose foibles are odd, yet amusing. My creative output can be reasonably estimated by a graph containing hours of headphone time and total cups of tea per day.
It also turns out that I'm slightly superstitious about projects. I react strangely when told an unfinished project is good. Perhaps I'm afraid of jinxing the final piece of the puzzle. However, once the project is done, and I can see all the parts, I'm comfortable with being told it's good work.
But, regardless, it is done. I had a slight whiff of disappointment when I handed a copy of the finished project to Jeff this afternoon, so he could see what had stolen his wife away for two weeks. I stifled the sense of discouragement that said, "But it's only three pieces of paper. How did this eat 116 hours of my life?" But that's easily answered; see the title of this entry.
116 hours goes away quickly when you add it all together: Photography. Initial design and layout. Throwing out most of the initial design and layout when the mailing's layout had to be changed radically due to cost issues. Reshoots. Photo cleanup. Copywriting (in this case turning raw statistics into readable, interesting chunks of information). Layout. More layout. Proofing. Discussing changes with printer and the commissioner of the project. Readying for press, and sending it away.
116 hours, mostly over the course of two weeks, one of which was shortened due to a holiday.
No wonder the cats have missed me. I woke up this morning to soft, querulous purring from Tenzing: snuggle time plz? Since words don't work well with cats, I rubbed his ears, giving the Universal Cat Signal Of Human Available For Petting. The next thing I knew, he was busily twirling himself into the perfect position to collapse in the crook of my arm, chin draped over my elbow, paws flexing as he uttered a dramatic, exhausted wheeze (he is such the drama queen) and settled into a nap. I could feel the soft vibrations against my arm as he purred himself to sleep. I hadn't made time for him, and he'd missed me.
Today is a recharge day. Tea, sunshine, kitties. The best moment of all? Realizing that I'd guessed wrong on some of the details (Huntsville? Married? House instead of apartment?) but that when examined from a distance, I've become exactly the adult I thought I would be.
This won't be the last time I need a recovery day like this one. The nature of my job guarantees there will be others, and sooner rather than later, but it's comforting to realize that this time, I didn't just do a decent job, I did a jaw-dropping kick-ass one. Each time I do so, I grow a little more confident that I can do it again.
But for now? Edmund's belly needs rubbing, and I've got a little paperback that's whispering my name.
]]>The face-patting thing is really disturbing at five in the morning.
(Stolen from Thomas' livejournal - no idea where he found it.)
]]>How do I know?
]]>How do I know?
Jeff and I were packing up this morning for our trip to Atlanta. Well, that's a misnomer; Jeff was packing and I was doing my normal morning routine, since I'd mostly packed the night before. When I walked into the bathroom to take my shower, I noticed that Jeff had left the closet door open, and it was blocking the shower door.
(Fang—remember, we tend to refer to our cats in the collective, as they share a single brain—loves an open closet like nothing else. Except maybe scritchies and cuddles and fresh tomato sauce, but then again, our cats are weird.)
What my thought processes should have been: "I should check with Jeff to make sure he can see both cats, so that I don't shut one of them in the closet."
My actual thought process: "Can Jeff see both instances of the cat?"
Clearly, I need to unplug for the weekend.
]]>Worth noting: I immediately told Jeff, who of course laughed and got it. Not to mention verified that the cats were out of the closet.
Put the car in drive, and bounce over the railroad tracks on the way to the elevated freeway that takes you home, and you have a choice: you can either slip the earpiece over your left ear and choose a name out of your phone's address book and speed-dial the corresponding number, or you can slide in the next in a never-ending parade of CDs and sing yourself home.
In the summers, the sun is my companion home; my time-shifted schedule means I am home and hours into my daily dose of home life before the sun ever thinks of greeting the horizon. In winter, though, they're cozy companions before I emerge from the windowless server room, and I am the latecomer to the party.
Solstice.
The shortening of day brings the lengthening chill of night. It's a chill that brings out the flannel blankets and causes the cats to huddle ever closer. I refer to truly cold nights as "two-cat nights," nights in which I know I'll awaken to Tenzing draped over my knees and Edmund snuggled lengthwise against my legs. My closet is not well-insulated. Stepping from the warmth of a two-cat night to the shivery chill that is part and parcel of picking work clothes is my least favorite part of the morning, and it makes my sleepy brain think longingly of summers past, and summers coming.
We mark our lifetimes by milestones: births, deaths, calendars. Part of me still remembers the ache of unfamiliarity the first time I got onto I-565; I looked around and thought, "For better or worse, this is my home" and wondered if it would ever become familiar. In the years since, it has; I can pass by that same stretch of road now and feel the same sort of rightness and orientation that a magnet must feel as it pulls toward north. In those years I've learned the rhythms of this area: the growth and harvest of cotton, the emergence and shedding of leaves, of days growing shorter and colder then gradually lengthening again.
It's a dance that will outlast me.
Tomorrow: Christmas Eve, and a time to reflect. Don't mind me. I'm starting early.
]]>Is that kibble? Oooh, I should eat that.
That's not Jeff or Amy? Bah. I don't like them.
Is that Jeff? Perhaps I should help him read.
Is that Amy? My back needs to be scratched.
Is that Tenzing? I should beat him up.
That is his life.
Tenzing is far more complex. It has taken me years to begin to understand him. Jeff picked up on his personality traits earlier than I did. For years I assumed aloofness on his part, but after comments from Jeff, I began to pay closer attention and realized that was not the case. While not as abundantly demonstrative as Edmund, Tenzing is not nearly so aloof as I always assumed.
It took a long time for me to realize that just because he did not want to be petted or held, it didn't mean he was disinterested. Instead, he is more interested in contact. He does not like long days of me sitting at the computer, because there is no place for him; I am there, but un-snuggleable. He clearly prefers the days of reading, when I become a barely-moving literary lump on the couch; that cat can hear the rustle of pages from across the house and always seems to appear shortly after I've lost myself in the first chapter.
No petting. Perhaps a gentle rub of the ears, or a light stroke on the top of his head. What he's looking for is the sideways crook of my leg as I stretch out. Given five minutes of reading, he is there, turning ever-tightening circles before flopping down with a great, heaving, singular purr! before tucking chin over paws and falling soundly asleep.
The mommycat is reading, and still, and therefore all is right with the world.
I've made a point to take a break and visit the library in the past few days (provoking an irony that will not be lost among a few of you who know an untold story percolating behind the scenes right now) and ended up bringing home books on random, abstruse subjects. My goal was to find subjects that had absolutely nothing to do with dragon*con, programming, or database work.
Currently, with a sleeping cat tucked neatly into the negative space around me, we are studying the identification and manufacture of classic 18th-century lace.
Well, I'm studying, and Tenzing is sleeping on the books. Should learning by osmosis actually work, my cat is likely to prove to be a Flemish genius. Me, I'm just doing my best to stay calm and relaxed between now and dragon*con.
T minus 6 days and counting.
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