Ah, the Offseason.

As I write the sun is trying to dispel the fog we've been living in for a couple of weeks, and if the sun succeeds in coming out I will have to get outside myself. No excuses. It's time to start the pruning, which I love, and continue the many small projects in the yard. In the house, it is time for cleaning, writing, slimming down the reading pile, and all of those life maintenance tasks I was happy to put aside for a month or two while I focused on selling.

It takes quite an effort to unhook from the production/marketing/consuming treadmill but I like to make a solid break for at least a few days, before I do the inventory and organizing necessary to move into the next retail year. My piles of shirts are a little smaller, and I will have plenty to start the next season, so I am not pushing myself to resume being productive in the shop. I'd like to clear it out to do some different projects.

I still have a lot of blank silk scarves to paint, and could pick up my interest in that, using the new dyes I bought and steaming the scarves for more luscious results. Maybe someday. I have a few sewing projects I want to finish, but I hesitate to turn my living room into a sewing room again. I put away all the Xmas doodads yesterday and cleaned a few shelves. I am trying to be in the getting-rid-of-things mode and am having some small successes there. I can combine these by taking a pile of books to donate to the library, which gets me outside, walking, and gives me a little goal. Little goals work better for me than big ones.

Mostly I want to re-immerse in my research and writing. I am just on the verge of putting my book into physical form, printing out some essays and starting to make it booklike. I know a lot of what I am interested in writing right now will be backstory in the research files and not be the book, but I still have to write it, and that means investing the time. Now I will have the time.

It is also the beginning of the Jell-O Art quarter, aiming toward the 26th Annual Jell-O Art Show on March 29. Thanks to the powers who set the date not for the first Saturday in April, which is of course Opening Day of Saturday Market (43rd annual? 44th?) It's darn hard to do both on the same day. I won't have to, so I can fully immerse in whatever the show turns out to be, and the process will be as fun as the result. I plan to be much calmer about it this year, now that I know I can sing on stage without any undue attention being paid, can just be a part of it instead of the Queen, with all of her important duties. I will still be the Queen, of course, but after two years I will not have to make it all about me anymore. I have an idea for the piece and am scanning the culture for funny bits to form the show around. Perhaps I should practice twerking, since I have a feeling my hips might need some updated moves for that. It's quite tricky to find cultural issues which are going to last until April. Miley may be old news by then (one can hope.)

I'm putting meetings on my calendar today and seeing how the weeks fill up, but there are still nice long gaps in there to do what I want. I'm considering reading through the 80-some original Lockley notebooks at UO (I suppose one has to read the microfilm nowadays) because I find it unlikely that he did not interview Samantha Huddleston, and maybe even her mother Catharine Davis, and maybe more of the Vaughans. The interview he did with John Quincy Vaughan was delightful and there could be more that didn't make it into the library compilations. Although William Tyler Vaughan was colorful and there are some good stories, he doesn't figure that importantly in my particular interest, but I can speculate how he impacted the lives of his children and grandchildren. I love reading the entries by all of the pioneers, especially the daily-life types of things. People went through hardships we might have been too weak to survive, and of course many of them did not. Big families and multiple marriages were common, and I love going to graveyards, so one of the first items on my list is to go to the Coburg IOOF cemetary, which I believe is actually on Vaughan land in Coburg. I want to see Angeline's grave (F.G. Vaughan's first wife) and see about the children she had with F.G., and the children Miranda had when she married Floyd. Lots of little details I want to get straight.

Writing about the early days of these settlers is practically fiction-writing, so I'm looking forward to it. Guess I had better get to it. The sun seems serious about today, so a bike ride to Coburg could be a fine idea. Certainly cannot stay inside if there is going to be sun. Be right back!