This week has been a little easier on me, and I've been a little easier on it. The past couple of weeks, I've felt like I'm fighting against the current, going against the grain, and this week was a little smoother. I've had a little extra time to mourn the plans I had made, a little more time to practice acceptance and grace, a little more time to grow up and look at the changes in my life with maturity. I'm still sad about putting off our plans, and I'm still not totally comfortable with having everything up in the air, but life goes on. Mark and I both made some decisions about our own changing situations this week, and we're moving forward, which is the best we can do right now. We still have a ways to go before everything settles and we know the shape of the next couple of years, but we've both started the ball rolling. The best thing is that we both totally support one another and are very much in love. That helps us get through a lot.
I did decide to apply for the new position within my company and I had my interview on Wednesday. The interview went really well and I'm hoping to hear back this week. The opening is for an editorial position on a line of craft books that is being relaunched. I think it is a good opportunity for me with a lot of exciting possibilities. If they make me an offer, I will be sad to leave my current position, but the line I'm working on now is very established with many long-term employees ahead of me in the pecking order. With this new position, there will be a lot more opportunity for me to grow and try new things. Both positions have a lot of pros, though, so whichever way things go, I'll be happy.
Mark has been doing a lot of research into his school options, and I can tell that he is really excited because of this:
(Please excuse our produce in the background. The garlic and onion were not part of the cake, I promise)
The reason Mark wants to go back to school is to become a pastry chef. He is a wonderful chef, passionate about food, and much more adventurous and inventive than I am in the kitchen. And instead of just doing it as a hobby, he wants to do it as a career. All the research he's been doing has apparently inspired him: rich dark chocolate cake from scratch with scratch raspberry buttercream filling, scratch chocolate buttercream frosting and fresh raspberries. Yum! I told him that if he's ever said to himself "You know, Jenni's almost perfect, but what she really needs is a bigger butt!" well, then, his dreams are going to come true :-) I know, it's kind of hard to take my whining about our changing plans seriously when I get benefits like this, isn't it?
And Mark isn't the only one that has been playing with his hobbies. In addition to the English Gardens bombyx spinning (interminable) and the Ice Queen knitting (only need to do the picot bind off on the cast-on edge, then wash and block), I've also been working on my book projects. I'm not allowed to show the finished projects on my blog, but here is some yarn that I spun for one of the projects. It's actual proof that I can spin something other than frog hair! I know it's a little "rustic," but the projects in the book are meant for beginner's yarns, so I wasn't going for perfection here. It has been awhile since I've spun anything but gossamer weight, so this was a very interesting change. I'm happy with how it turned out and I think it will work well for the project. The fiber was from my stash and was too coarse to use in my lace work, so I'm happy that I found a use for it here.
In addition to all of that, I've been working on cleaning up the computer/craft room a bit because the stash is reaching epic proportions. The fun of that is that I've found some things I forgot I had :-) Expect to see some destashing sales here in the near future!
# posted by Jenni @ 1/20/2008 09:43:00 PM
