Another night of looking up at the clock, swearing, and saying "it's already one a.m.?" I have to stop making a habit of this. I was making great progress on the present for my younger daughter, having focused on it nearly all day. It's very close to complete. I'd love to finish off the last few intricate inches of the artwork, but I risk making mistakes now that it is technically the middle of the night and I've turned off the brighter overhead light. I'm very familiar with my patterns. I'll tell myself just a few more minutes and pick it back up. Then I'll make a couple stupid mistakes, and feel like I have to tear apart the last hour's worth of work. It will make me feel a little sick inside, and my shoulders will start to hurt like I've been electrocuted and the after-effects have made me sore. Then I'll put it down and try to fall asleep but instead stare into the dark, berating myself and dreading taking the backwards steps in the morning. Instead, I think I'll do the smart thing and tuck it away from myself before the error happens, and sleep while the sleeping is good.
She gave me a direction of what sort of gift she wanted this year. Well, let me reverse that. She told me what she expressly did NOT want, so I've tried to go in the complete opposite direction. I think my composition will amuse her. It's unique, cute, well-executed (I chose a medium in which I excel so this is not as immodest as it appears), funny, and totally out of my usual artistic choices. I wish I could show it off, but as every one of us is aware, this is a Christmas present. No pictures. And once it is a crafted piece in her house, pictures will be up to her.
I started on this thing this morning with my first cup of coffee, before I was even out of my robe. I kept coming back to it all day and all night. I barely left the house, other than to go to the one place nearby where I can get a lettuce-wrap burger and be dietarily safe. I moved to a spot in front of the TV, and have been working diligently on the present ever since. Now my ears are ringing especially loudly and I'm wishing I had put it aside sooner. The perfect time to do that probably would have been when the same daughter I'm making this for showed up unannounced at my door, causing me to toss it unceremoniously on the bed, and to tell her she wasn't to go in my room for any reason. She had come by to hang two silly owl ornaments on my tree that she couldn't live without. (She and I have had a running owl gag between us for about a decade. I couldn't live without them either.) They are currently the only decorations other than lights that I have up on it. If I'd been smart, I would have left the present on the bed and enlisted her help in pulling the decorations down from the high garage shelf. Tomorrow I'll have to arrange my priorities in the opposite direction.
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