I’m packing everything I own. I thought that for someone who reads a lot, I don’t own many books. Turns out I was wrong; I’ve just filled twelve boxes with books. This doesn’t bode well for the stuff I do think I have a lot of.

Packing is hard work, physically and emotionally, but it doesn’t fit the exclusive and extremely narrow definition that my mind has for “real work”. Packing was about to join housework and self-care on the list of things that I expect to happen without using up any actual time, but I spotted impossible expectations at it again. Just in the nick of time.

The solution? Dancing breaks. I plan to make the most of these last weeks of living alone, performing my solo expressionist dance creations for two unimpressed (if not disturbed) cats, and the occasional driver stuck in traffic on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway who glances up at my windows as I go twirling by.

Now that I only have 3 weeks left in this neighborhood I’m feeling equally sentimental about the many ‘must try’ places that are about to be abandoned unexperienced, as I am about my favorites, like Maggie Brown. Especially Sunday brunch on the terrace.

And I’m trying not to order Thai food every single night, knowing that there won’t be Thai in the new hood. How will we survive?

I’ve updated my jewelry web site. Check it out – there are new designs and some additions to the spirals and zig zags.

Soon after my last move a friend gave me a bunch of furniture, including a wicker arm chair which she’d found on a Brooklyn street. It’s very comfortable, and my cat Annabelle has adopted it for her own. This is Annabelle’s chair:

Yesterday my building had a stoop sale. We were setting up and I saw my upstairs neighbor bring out a chair that looked identical to mine. I told him, and he said that he too had found his chair on the street – when he lived in Hong Kong. Two chairs found abandoned on the street, in cities on opposite sides of the planet, living in the same building.

Throughout the day I kept staring at his chair, imagining someone buying it and carrying it away; I couldn’t bear the thought. Mid-afternoon I asked him if his price was firm. “You know what – for you, free. They should be together.”

I’m beginning to suspect that while we may believe we’re masters of our own destiny, in fact our stuff is sucking us in the wake of it’s own purpose.

The cats have always exhibited a great disinterest in television, except for the one time when Annabelle went behind the set to see if she could catch the cheetah on the screen.

Winged Migration was on PBS last night, and this time Annabelle was watching. Pretty soon Wolfie came along. According to some highly unscientific polling favorites were the Dancing Cranes and King Penguins.

There’s a wonderful thing happening over at one in ten.

Eireann Lorsung‘s mom has suffered a hemorrhage in her brain, and the crafting community being what it is, there is an auction to raise funds to help out with her medical bills.

You can bid on pieces by Lisa Congdon, Amanda Soule, Stephanie and Mav of 3191 fame, and many more crafty bloggers.

You can bid on my leaf earrings:

Find out more about the participants at the one in ten site, or just browse the list of eBay auctions. You have until Friday to get a head start on your holiday shopping, in the name of a very good cause.

Circa 1982:

I’m the one sporting the pink beard with green boogers coming out of my blue nose.

My cohorts are my brother, my uncle, and my best friend in mischief. I don’t remember us making the masks but I remember the excitement of the new polaroid camera and waiting for the picture to appear.

Thanks to the flashback friday group on flickr for making me dig this out.

My friend brought me two shells from her mother who collects them while walking on the beach near her home in Hawaii. It’s an honor that she relinquished a few in my direction.

I’ve been playing around, thinking about cones, and how to construct them. How to build them from a spiral:

Or from circles, like the necklace that is nearly finished now:

My circle obsession gone 3-dimensional.

Tis done. There remains paperwork to fax, and a lease to sign, but we’ve paid our deposit and we have a new home.

There were 20 minutes of real despair when I stood outside the building waiting for the broker, thinking that he wasn’t going to show up, wouldn’t call me, that we had missed our chance. But he arrived, and the sky was blue, and a crew was cleaning up the park across the street.

It hasn’t sunk in – I’m still tensed up and furrowy, doing my usual horizon scan for things to worry about. A little yoga might help. Sleeping in felt great. The growing garage sale pile is making me as happy as if it were my own growing treasure.

Change is frightening, and freeing at the same time.

There’s really nothing more to say.