Brainwork

A lot is going on. I've been using my brain in different ways than usual lately, and it's energizing.

1. I worked Busch Stadium. That's our baseball stadium in town, home of the Cardinals, at least the home of their uniforms. It's a fundraising scheme, both in the English connotation of "plan" and the American connotation of "racket". A fundraising group sends all their volunteers to a useless 3 hour training which includes reciting, en masse, policies of the concessions company, off a power point slide. Then they come back in packs to work at the concession stands. Our first attempt was actually pretty wonderful--we had an excellent stand manager who ran the show. We just made nachos and took people's money. But then this time? Huge stand that we split with a protestant church so that we would have enough people. Two stand managers and nobody was helpful. I was cash manager and so at one point I had $7000 in my apron. Insanity. Crowded, Cubs game, beautiful weather, the most beautiful weather all month. My brain was on overdrive. I was handed keys and a swipe card when I walked into the stand, and told I would be handling all voids, cash drops, refunds, spoilage, etc. Except that I WASN'T told that--it was just assumed.

And it was ok. Not nearly worth the take that our organization will get from it (our school, raising money to hire an art teacher, ahem). But I was relatively efficient and "on". I came home and the 4 ibuprofen did not take enough pain away to sleep very well. I couldn't be an employee there. Maybe that's why the employees handed me the keys and swipe card and sat in the back eating popsicles.

2. The very next morning, we moved Daisy's classroom. Our school is moving out of the small church we've been slowly taking over, and into our new building, which is an old factory we've had rehabbed beautifully. The move went well--the teachers had everything packed and we had rented 26 foot trucks, one for each classroom, which I got to drive. And as we started bringing boxes out to the truck, I stood in the back and worked it all in my head. We packed that truck tight. I got to use another part of my brain--the night before was math and customer service and efficiency under pressure and heat--and the move was spatial reasoning and navigation and parallel parking a moving truck. It was good.

3. I designed a sweater. I have this dark green Aran-style cardigan that I wear from October to April. It is my little coat for running out to the car or sitting in the library working on the computer in our old drafty house. But it's wearing out and I need another. So I'm knitting one. I picked some cable patterns and made swatches. Then I washed my swatches and measured them. Took the old sweater and measured them. Developed a pattern and worked out the bits and pieces. And I began it today with a 1x1 cable rib.

4. My garden is suffering in the heat, and yet it is thriving in the heat. I've been hand-picking off cucumber beetles, I've scratched my head about the curled up leaves of my tomato plants. But I'm powering through. Lots of bell peppers. My first eggplant ever. Swiss chard. A few tomatoes--many are still green and growing. Basil. Garlic. Armenian melons (they taste like cucumbers only even crisper). The okra and sweet potatoes look happy. A few beets--I may wind up with more greens than beets, but that's ok too. It's a small crop in my backyard but I'm happy with it.

5. We divided the attic. The map over there, let me explain. The black lines are the attic walls and stairs. It is not to scale but I tried. Before last week, the black lines and a random assortment of orange rectangles (furniture) and green rectangles (beds) were what it was.

Oh, and the purple rectangles, which are built-ins, like shelves and cubbies and window seats. There are windows in those two dormers, one at the top (facing the front of the house/south) and at the bottom (facing the backyard/north).

The light blue lines indicate the closet/storage space behind the walls (Christmas, winter coats, etc).

So we added the red line (and rearranged the orange rectangles). The two horizontal red lines are half walls--I can see over them--and the slanted red line is a door. The half walls are built out of doors--we scavenged 7 solid wood 5-panel doors out of the alley (I am my grandmother's true heir this way), had them stripped, and then I finished them with a no-VOC water based stain and finish. They are so pretty.  What Jake did was stack two doors horizontally on top of each other, with a wooden I-beam between them, and U-beams (imagine stained glass floating in its leading) on the sides and bottom. A 2x6 across the top to create a shelf. They. Are. Awesome. Four doors create the walls, and then a fifth becomes the actual door--we had plenty of hinges and door knobs and so forth.

So the bottom of the map (north/back of house) is Fiona's room for now. The little space in the center with the bed built into the wall is Billy's, and the big south/front/top area is Daisy's. Eventually these walls will move around and change, but for the next 3 years, here it is. They are happy.

6. What else? Planning a trip to Upper Peninsula for later in the summer. Investigating alternatives to Girl and Boy Scouts, for a variety of reasons. Watched a Johnny Carson biography. Drank coffee. Cleaned. Replaced the battery in the little key fob/clicker for my car. Taught some summer art classes to neighborhood kids. Hoped and planned for next year (will they hire me? Can they hire me?). Almost potty trained Billy (almost done, I mean, not failed). Bought a 1930s feed sack sunflower pattern quilt at an antique place.

Good summer. Good thinking.