A good part of my recent malaise is connected to the difficulties I'm having indulging my creative impulses. Because our house is for sale (wait - did I tell you this? I don't think so. More later, 'cause selling the house is a big ol' Dead Deer on the Front Lawn) I don't really feel free to start the kinds of projects that would leave a canning kettle simmering away on the stove or sewing machine mid-stitch on the kitchen table while potential buyers pick their way through the house criticizing my taste in furniture and analyzing what the book selection on my shelves means about my intellectual life.

Aside for a true house selling story: When selling our last place to move here we had great numbers of people through the house in the weeks leading up to Christmas. One of them left a note in my stocking - discovered Christmas day - telling me that he or she felt my collection of Italo Calvino's works indicated a desparate need to be thought of as smart. I'm willing to consider this, and I also wonder what leaving a note in a total stranger's Christmas stocking evaluating her emotional attitude towards intellectual acceptance indicates. Prickishness perhaps? Academic sanctimoniousness?

Anyway, the point here is that not being able to do the things that really make me feel settled is very, uh, unsettling. Once the house is sold I will feel free to willy-nilly go about with three projects underway, all interspersed with story time, play-dough sculpting, conference calls and dinner preparations. The pressure I feel to complete something in a single sitting - an entire batch of jam or a complete pair of pants to a Halloween costume takes away a lot of the joy I feel in meandering my way through. And so I haven't done much of anything. And I'm really, really sad about it. Even needlepoint isn't so satisfying to me if I can't leave it out and stitch here and there throughout the day. Soon, I hope, I will once again be at liberty to move about my day without worrying what someone might think of my very untidy hemming skills if the Halloween costume were to be left on the table.