in a mood

It's funny. I can tell when I'm in a bad mood where stuff is likely to irritate or dissatisfy me, but even though I can tell I am in that mood, I can't quite snap myself out of it. (Also, I had one of these types of nights last night - more in the sense of Brain going, "I got stuff to worry about" than Bladder going "Take me potty!" But in my case, it was more like Brain going "I'm just gonna sit here and ruminate on every stupid thing you said in the past couple months, and also bring up your failings from the past. And oh, hey, you know those couple things you needed people to do that aren't getting done? It's because they don't really like you all that much and don't care if they do them or not.)

(I chalk this week's mood to a combination of it being allergy season (yet again), having to deal with a couple difficult students, the fact that the weather's whipsawing back and forth which makes me hurt, and, well, it being this week (the ladies will understand what I mean by that))

Last night I went home, did my piano practice, graded a bunch of papers.

Some people talk about the "zero inbox" as their goal - that is, to immediately act upon or appropriately file in a virtual "folder" any e-mail they receive, and then delete it from their inbox. I tend to take more of the inbox-"hoarder" model, where I leave most everything that isn't something I know I can get rid of, and I can do a search later on. It's convenient, because when my colleague calls me up and goes, "Hey, I know I sent you that student's driver's license number a while back, because you were going to have him drive for you for lab? Well, I lost it. Do you still have it?" I can pull the e-mail up almost immediately.

But what I prefer, in terms of models, is a zero-grading model: that is, get it done as soon as possible, ideally so I don't have grading to do over the weekend.

The downside to this is it often means I do grading when I'm tired and really longing to do something "fun" instead.

Anyway, I did the necessary grading yesterday afternoon and evening. When I got done, it was after 7 pm - too late to do very much, but to early to go to bed. (Thanks so much, Daylight Saving. If it were ordinary time, I might have just gone to bed, I was that tired. But it was still too light out).

So I tried knitting on Mizzle. There's a problem with my Mizzle, or, more specifically, how the yarn was dyed - there is a large blue "stripe" on the piece where the first ball ended out. The rest of it is more of a mixture of blue, grey, brownish, greenish colors. And the new ball is darker. I don't know whether to keep knitting in the hopes another blue stripe will reveal itself (and therefore, make the color change seem intentional rather than accidental), or whether to finish it in the hopes I like it better when done, or whether to finish it with the thought of overdying it (which might be a disaster anyway), or whether to rip it out and restart, or whether to rip it out and just toss the yarn because the colors are messed up in it.

(If I restarted - which I would be unlikely to do - it would require alternating balls of yarn, as you are often counseled to do with variegated yarn. And I HATE that. One of the reasons you never see me doing colorwork projects is that it bugs me enormously to have a bunch of different balls of yarn rolling around as I'm trying to knit, and having to manage each one.)

One of the reasons I take very few knitting "risks" (why I don't design) is that it is painful to me to rip something out. All those hours of work! Gone, gone gone.....I might as well just have been doing more grading with that time, or writing an unsuccessful grant application, or reading up for a research idea where it will turn out the last paper of 20 that I read already tried my idea and found it unprofitable....

A big reason I knit is so that I feel like my life isn't disappearing day by day. So I have something I can look at and go "I did that." Because my actual work - the work I get paid for - really isn't like that.

So anyway. I put it aside in disappointment and decided to go sew a little on the current quilt top. I got a couple blocks pieced and then I thought, "You know, I'm really not crazy about the pink I picked here as the sashing; it looks a little garish next to the other pinks in the fabrics." Not enough to trash the project, and I know it will probably look better to me once it's all together (quilts almost always do), but just then I didn't feel so much like working on it.

(I did wind up going to bed some early last night. I'm still tired and cranky this morning, and I admit when they were talking on the radio news about Gwyneth Paltrow apparently talking about how being a movie star is haaaaard, and "regular working moms" have it easier, I tried to muster some sympathy for her but just couldn't. And then I thought, "If this world worked like the fairy-tale world, she'd wake up next morning in the body of a working single mom, so she could see just how much "easier" their lives were." Also, she complained about 14 hour days. Oh honey. I put those in from time to time. Did three of 'em the week before spring break.  And I don't have someone to cook for me or do my laundry or anything like that. I know I'm supposed to "be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle," but there are some whose attitudes try my ability to be kind)

Also getting swamped with spam, which, in the mood I'm in, makes me feel all sad. (I STILL wish there was an option to 'delete spam, and administer small but non-dangerous electric shock to the spammer')