Enchanting Juno

Ginger ale runs in my veins.

Q: When is the stomach flu a good thing?

A: When the alternative is that you might have given food poisoning to yourself, your mother and your godparents.

It is, as with so many things, all about perspective.

Yes, I had my godparents for dinner Wednesday night, and managed to do so without killing my mother. I am unfair, she was very cooperative about only being asked to do things that weren’t interesting. I don’t know how to cook with another person – I have a one cook kitchen, really, but I also know that two years ago when I had her friends over for lunch I couldn’t handle cooking with her.

I am organized. You might not know it to look at me, but I am. I have a PLAN when I cook, even if I can’t articulate it to any one else, and she flies by the seat of her pants. It kills me. And just because I wouldn’t let her clean the Le Cruset with a brillo pad, does not mean I am over controlling.

I may be, but that’s just protecting my cookware.

Bless my godmother, she was appropriately horrified that such an act was contemplated. Mom likes to have everything as low maintenance as possible. She is as bewildered by my high maintenance goods as I am by her buy-cheap-and-replace-it-when-it-gets-trashed philosophy.

Anyway, it was a very nice dinner –

beaded baby lamb chops, smashed potatoes with caramelized onions and goat cheese, whisky-glazed carrots and parsnips, a green salad with parmesan shavings and red onion, pavlova for desert.

I ate too much, but went to bed in good heart, only to awaken at 3 AM certain that Something was Wrong.

I was terrified that I’d given everyone food poisoning until mom woke up well and a discrete phone call to the god parents ascertained that they were also in fine fettle.

I shall spare you the further details, leaving it only that I believe I have a net calorie loss over the holidays. And I’ve lost about 8 pounds in the past 48 hours. Mom was terrific actually – I think that’s the one time you still need your mommy, to bring you ginger ale and tuck the blankets around you while you shiver in bed.

This morning I got dressed to go see the chiropractor (having thrown my back out after spending 30 hours horizontal) and mom says “wow, you can really see those 8 pounds. You should keep those off.”

Ah, status returns to quo.

Undercover.

I’m stealth blogging while mom is in town, since this piece of my life is carefully concealed from her.

I was logging her into my computer to check her email and I felt like my personal life was spread all over the computer in scarlet foot-tall letters (Email from Boston Guy! And Far Away L!  Bloglines! Juno mail! Typepad! eHarmony!), leaving me naked. 

But other than asking me what a blog was, nothing seemed to make an impression. 

I don’t know why I feel this need to hide it from her:  I could probably restrain myself from saying sarcastic things about her if I knew she’d be reading.  But I don’t really want to, because this is where I vent.

And maybe it is that she has a habit of co-opting enthusiasms of mine – if I like A, she’ll immediately buy me 3 examples of it, and then again and again, until the wonder of discovery on my part becomes lost to me.  Knitting and blogging are two things I don’t want to lose to her well-intentioned enthusiasm.

I’m ungrateful, I know, but there it is.

And the triviality of these concerns is thrown into sharp and horrible relief by the news from the Indian Ocean.  I am disgusted with the fact that the 11 o’clock news last night made literally no mention of the tsunamis in their rush to discuss Christmas decorations and post-holiday shopping.  Maybe they got to it in the last few minutes – I gave up in a rage and turned to the internet.  But I keep getting the same suppressed-tears-about-to-rise-to-the-surface feeling I had for weeks after 9-11, when I think about the people, the communities destroyed, the unsuspecting divers dragged across coral and the sunbathers swept away, the villages, the generations of families erased by the waves as easily as a footprint in the sand.

We are tiny in the face of Nature, and sometimes she likes to remind us that we are trivial.  But oh, the women who are weeping for their children.  I wish I could pray.

Link to relief agencies gathering financial support for refugees and survivors.  I hope our government will do a little more than express concern.  In the meantime, I'm going to do my part.

Back to the formless void.

The baby sweater is no more, it has been ripped into oblivion and I’ve hidden the yarn under a pillow, lest my eyes be soiled by it and my spirit oppressed.

There is a kind of escalating scale of mistakes – one can be fixed, two can be fixed, but three, three is a moment of critical mass, the downward point from which success will fall away into the void of the impossible, and the domino effect of successive idiocy will begin its tumbling fall.

Basically, I suck.

I mean, this is a garter stitch baby sweater people. The ways in which it could not be simpler are uncountable.  But it was the worst looking thing I’ve ever done - or it was before I detroyed it like a whimisical primitive god – I’ve made some things that didn’t fit right or were unsuccessful from an aesthetic perspective, but nothing that I would be actively ashamed to show to someone. 

Until now.

First the gauge issue, ripped and redone 1 needle size smaller.

Then the irregular rows, displaying some very weird tension issues – not so much rowing out, although I had some of that, but also strange variations in individual rows, ripples and waves and twisted stitches for which I could not account. 

Then, on Christmas afternoon, I perpetrated another 8 row stripe, and in pulling out the extra rows, picked up and knit from the row below and didn’t catch it.

Then I found another similar mistake from the first time I ripped out half the back.

Then I had an uncharacteristically difficult time dropping down to pick up the stitch. 

My mom kept trying to talk to me and I would snarl –“can’t you see I’m busy.  Effing sweater” or similar.  When I thought about going back for the second dropped stitch and wanted to cry, I realized it was time.

Finally I said, “OK, I’m ripping this out” and there’s this long pause, then Mom goes “I think that’s a good idea”.

So much for the zen of knitting.

The yarn (Cotton Fleece), I must say, has held up beautifully to this abuse.  But I’m thinking that this is a cotton (or mostly cotton) problem for me – the combination of the small needles, the largely inelastic yarn and my wrist are spelling doom for me.    I’m going to make one more try on casein (not bamboo) needles, then I’m going to the store and looking for an all wool yarn of similar weight.

What do you think a stiff whisky would do to the tension?  The yarn’s tension, not mine.

Quantify this.

How happy does it make me that I got a page hit from someone in the Islamic Republic of Iran, searching for "Angelina Jolie Naked"?

I am not sure that this can be measured with existing technology.

I bet he (I'm making an assumption here, I realize.  If I slight an Iranian lesbian, I do apologize) was terribly, terribly disappointed.

Oh dear goddess save me.

All of a sudden we have the most astonishing cold – which seems to distress everyone but me.  The sudden crispness has done the impossible – kicked me into the Christmas spirit.

Of course, we are supposed to see temperatures in the 50s by the end of the week, so I may turn into a grouch again.

But last night was knitting group – which was sparsely attended, but delightful.  Better than Zoloft.  The Knit Goddess has a remarkably graceful tree, an oddly curving blue spruce with the typical sparse branches, and some lovely old glass ornaments, and real candles in clip-on holders.  She is an artist and saw the potential in what most would have dismissed as a Charlie Brown tree.  It is one of the loveliest I’ve seen and a good reminder that perfection is not just about symmetry and convention. 

Usually the group runs until about 9 or 9:30, but last night we were all having such a good time, none of us looked at the clock until 10:30.  I am so grateful to knitting which has unexpectedly given back to me the community of women.  It isn’t that I don’t have women friends - I do, lots of them – but the sitting and working with your hands and talking…well, you know.  It is a thing we don’t have so much of in the modern world.

Nothing to show – the scarf for mom is three-and-a-half hours worth of knitting longer, the sweater for Baby G is precisely the same. 

Oh, and I have turned into my mother - hopefully not in all ways.  I used to stay up late to get things done, and make fun of her for the getting up in the middle of the night (5 am ish) to finish projects, but last night I was tired and went to bed and ….got up at 6 to clean the house for a couple of hours before work.  Me.  Getting up early to work.  Not merely intending to do so, then actually sleeping until 7:30, but really getting up and cleaning at 6 am.  There are no words for the wrongness.

Buying a tree tonight and setting it up.  You know the best thing about this holiday so far?  My mom is coming on Christmas Eve and I am actually looking forward to it, to seeing her.  I’m going to save the decoration until then so we can do it together.  I can’t remember when I felt that way, or anything other than anxious and stressed by her impending arrival. 

This despite the fact that she told me she was ready to clear her calendar for the middle of September next year because she thought the likely reason I was being so “secretive” ("secretive" I guess being the same as "unwilling to discuss the intimate details of my life with my boundary-free mother") about my activities in the beginning of December is that I’d….wait for it… found some man to deliberately impregnate me and would be needing her for the delivery in 9 months.    This in spite of the fact that I told her 6 months ago that I would not be having children unless I met someone I wanted to make a family with and so could we please not talk about her desire for Grandchildren any more.  She's been reminding me for years that I don't need a husband to have children.

Sometimes I wonder if she's actually met me. 

On the other hand, how many times in your life do you get to yell into the phone, “Are you high?  Jesus Mom, I was having sex, OK?  Just leave it alone!”

Merry Christmas, y’all.  Peace on earth.

I sleep the sleep of the just uncomfortable.

I’m throwing my back out sleeping on the wavy bed, so I looked at the calendar today and thought – “Hey, the frame was supposed to come back into stock December 11.  Where is it?”

So I called them.

And the girl on the customer service line says, “We show delivery on that December 1.” And tells me it was signed for by my shipping manager. 

Excuse me, What??!??!!!  Now, this isn’t that big a place – if an extra king bed frame had been here for three weeks, I assure you I would have noticed.  And even if I hadn’t, my shipping manager would also have told me, because he is the most responsible human being ON THE EARTH.

So I think, December 1?  Ah, yes the day the feet finally arrived.  And I tell her that.  You think they’d be able to tell the difference between a 2 pound box of accessories and 75 pound box of wooden frame, but hey, maybe their shipper charges them a flat rate.

Yeah, because UPS does that, uh huh.

So we go around and around a few times before she believes me, at which point she says it is out of stock until February.

I make an unhappy noise.

We go around a few more times and lo! It is expected back in stock December 26^th.  And they will send one out then.

In the meantime, the headboard leans against the only empty wall in the room, preventing me from having the window and exterior door replaced until I get it installed and I keep waking up curled into the hollow created by the bent center support – cozy but crimped.

I feel like I should call them back and make sure they are sending a new center support as well, just to be sure.  It’d be major bummer to get only the new frame pieces.

Is this a FO I see before me?

Knitting! 

I know you've all been holding your breath.

Thanks to Rachael for the pattern - this is what I had in mind originally, but couldn't find a pattern for.  I suppose I could have figured something out, but the hot water bottle cover was one of the first things I made and I didn't know I could, you know, make stuff up.
In Reynolds Bulky 3-ply alpaca/wool blend, a gorgeous black flecked teal.  Much better than the cashmerino aran horror it replaces.

The baby sweater is from an old IK - I absolutely love it.

Almost as cute as the nephew.  But it is cursed for me.  Last night I realized that half way up the back I switched to a 8 row stripe instead of a 6 row stripe.  So if you will note the crinkled pile on the side, that what's left of what needs re-knitting.

The thought of knitting the back for the third time was too, too depressing, plus those freaking 3mm needles make my wrist hurt.  So now I'm making this for my mum.

Single skein of Lobster Pot Catch of the Day teal mohair skeined up with a pale green ribbon which I bought in Cape Cod last January.   I'm doing it in a rib pattern I found...somewhere... Row 1 K3, P3, Row 2 K1, P1.   Looks quite nice - not as glittery as the picture and matches her winter coat.  Reversible rib.

Procrastination is a beautiful thing.

And finally - because friends are lovely and it makes me laugh.

H - the knitting friend who started me on this yarn hording journey - used to work for Henson.  She has one of these, which were only produced in-house, and  I have admired it in the past.  She found an extra while she was clearing up for the holiday and gave it to me - NOT for Christmas, she was careful to say.

Isn't she the sweetest?  And how much do we love the new Kermit the frog knitting bag?

The mood is lifting - I made sure to get enough sleep this weekend,  mostly caught up on the christmas shopping, and, well, thank you for the kind words.  They were much appreciated.

Can I get you a drink?

Because it is a pity party.  Welcome.

I’m suffering from some kind of generalized ennui…or angst…or mild depression. 

I am useless at work – my desk is literally collapsing under the weight of undone stuff.  I confessed to my accountant this morning and he’s going to provide “more hands on” service next year.  Which means I am now going to pay some nice young man from his office to do the crap I’m too disorganized to stay on top of right now.  It should be a relief, but right now it just makes me feel like a lazy ass P.O.S.

I confessed to my brother that the baby’s sweater won’t be done in time.  I mean, I may get it done before the 25^th, but there is no way it is getting to Ontario in time.  He’s just said that it’ll be fun to have presents to open when they get home, but I feel like a failure.

He called me yesterday for our father's birthday, but I felt so guilty about an accounting thing I need to get to him that I dodged the call and left a craven message this morning.  My own conscience assumed it was about the thing I feel guilty about and it never even occurred to me he was just calling to say hello.

Last night I had to rip the half done back of the baby's sweater and start again on 3 mm needles (instead of the indicated 4mm) because the thing didn’t look right – too loose and way too big.  I always get pattern gauge, and I was so behind I didn’t swatch, but it was 18 inches across not 15.  So it might have fit him in college.   OK, high school. It is still a little bigger than gauge – 15.5 inches across, but the texture feels right, so we’re going with it.

I stepped on my cat this morning.  I don’t think I hurt him, but I didn’t do my groin muscle any favors trying to avoid him.

And all day I’ve just felt like crying and I can’t figure out why.

Instead of processing invoices this morning I started a 100 things list.  ‘Cause that’s productive and original…..

1. I went to an all girls’ boarding school.
2. This fact makes most people who learn it for the first time laugh.
3. The most universal thing said to me is “You are really weird” (or odd).  It doesn’t get said all the time, but nearly everyone I know has said it once.
4. It is true.
5. I’m OK with that. Although I prefer ‘odd’ to ‘weird’
6. Total strangers often point out how big I am – I mean they point it out to me.  I don’t mind if they are four, but if they are 40, I want to smack them.
7. So far, I’ve restrained myself.
8. One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen was the look on my sister-in-law’s face when we walked out of the restroom at a family wedding and a total stranger stopped dead in her tracks and said to me “My god, you’re huge.”  Since the stranger was about 5’2” in all dimensions - perfectly spherical in fact - I thought it was a bit rich, but otherwise par for the course.  But I thought S was going to punch her.  Listening to her mutter under her breath for the next half hour made me love her more.
9. I’m not a slim woman, but mostly what I am is very, very tall.
10. Being the Tall Girl has been fundamental to the development of my personality
11. And to the development of most of my neuroses.
12. No, I don’t play basketball.  Except in 7 & 8 th grades, when they made me.  Until they realized I’m not aggressive enough.
13. I probably am aggressive enough now, but I still don’t like the game.
14. I’m extremely curious, and enthusiastic about new information.
15. I am a dilettante.
16. I am fascinated by what other people know.
17. I like men with a slightly foppish side – not one they wear on their sleeves all the time, but one that creeps out unexpectedly.
18. Any kind of work I’ve ever done has bored me to flinders after 4 years.  (what’s a flinder, anyway?)
19. I’m coming up on 4 years at my current position and the rot has set in.
20. I’m not sure I want children.
21. It turns out I am a good judge of character, but sometimes I forget to listen to myself.
22. Every time I’ve ignored my little voice about someone I have lived to regret it.
23. I used to edit myself all the time.
24. After my dad died I lost my filter.
25. Sometimes I can’t believe what comes out of my mouth.
26. It turns out that I can’t believe it because I’ve been conditioned to be Nice, not because I am troubled by frankness.
27. I’m a lot less conventional than I look.
28. The only reason I will turn my back on a friendship is if it is more important to the other person that I be who they think I should be than that I be who I actually am.
29. It took me a long time to learn this.
30. I take a lot of things very seriously.  Some people think that makes me a drama queen, but I don’t agree.
31. I was raised to think I was intellectual, but it turns out I am far more intuitive by nature.  Sometimes I have to remind myself to pay attention to that, though.
32. I’ve decided that I can never have a romantic relationship with anyone who doesn’t understand why the Bone Marrow appetizer at Blue Ribbon in NY is the Best. Thing. Ever. to put in your mouth.
33. Cheese is dirty.  That’s why it is good.
34. I love food. 
35. I’m a pretty good cook, but not an instinctive one.
36. People who are instinctive cooks just awe me.
37. I can be a little too maternal with people I care about. I know that can be really annoying.
38. I’m working on it.  (Thank you for your patience on this one, people in my life)
39. I’m scared of heights a little.
40. But I still patch my own roof.
41. My house is more than 140 years old.
42. Given my preference I’ll never live in new construction again, but I’m practical and wouldn’t fuss too much if circumstances required it for the short term.
43. I don’t have a close family.
44. I wish I were closer to my brother.
45. We were separated for boarding school when he was 9.  Between that and summer camp, we really don’t share much of a common childhood.  And as adults we have very little in common other than affection.
46. If I do have children, they will go to boarding school over my cold, dead, blood stained corpse.
47. Seriously.
48. We never took family vacations when I was a child.
49. I never think to take vacations now.  I’ll take time off, but I never go anywhere.
50. I’m trying to change my assumptions about this.
51. I’m an agnostic.
52. But I still love Christmas. 
53. Even though organized religion gives me the shivers.
54. The pivotal event of my adult life was my father’s death.  It changed everything.
55. My biggest fear about pregnancy is that my feet might get even bigger and I wouldn’t be able to buy shoes. (I wear a size 12 now)
56. I want to go back to school.
57. I’m dragging my feet about it.
58. Most of the people I’m closest to have survived significant grief and loss – a parent, a sibling.
59. I don’t think that’s an accident.
60. I am helpless before a pair of cute shoes.
61. I have a cabinet full of makeup, but on a daily basis I wear lip balm and maybe mascara.
62. I get my eyelashes and brows dyed.  Blue-black for the lashes, dark brown for the brows.  It looks fantastic.
63. I would pay almost any amount of money to a tailor who could make me jeans that really, truly fit me.  So far I haven’t found one.
64. When women dismiss all men entirely because of bad past experiences it distresses me as much as it does when men say stupid sexist shit.  I believe in assessing the individual as an individual.
65. Mostly I succeed with that.
66. My trainer can say anything he wants to me and it won’t offend me.  Once someone has checked your abs while you are doing leg lifts, you have no secrets. 
67. I think learning to trust him has helped me learn to trust men more overall.
68. I believe in the benefits of psychotherapy.
69. I think of myself as squeamish, but evidence indicates I will be the one to remove the fishhook/bandage the wound/mop up the blood/remove the stitches while more obviously stalwart individuals are all icked out.
70. I can’t stand horror movies, but when I see them, they are never as bad I thought they were going to be
71. I hate being teased.
72. But I can tolerate it with an indulgent smile. A false one.
73. My mother taught me the facts of life when I was not-quite-two.  She used a weird little book of photographed color-paper cutouts – featuring chickens, spaniels and 1970’s humans.  Not all together.  I bet some of you remember this one.
74. My best friend told me there was no Santa before I was four.
75. I showed her the chicken book at about the same age. 
76. We are still friends after 33 years.
77. Perhaps because of this early knowledge, my B*rbies had a very, very, very, very active social life.
78. But I started my own social life comparatively late.
79. So that’s a big raspberry to conservatives who think knowledge leads to ruin.
80. None of my female friends are the kind who will play head games with other women.  I’ve virtually never experienced this phenomenon.
81. If I think someone feels sorry for me it makes me irritable.  Particularly if it is for something I don’t feel sorry for myself about.
82. Until a few years ago, I always assumed that other people knew more about life than I did.
83. I made terrible mistakes in judgment about people while operating under this idea. (see 28 & 29)
84. I love music.
85. But don’t have a particularly good ear for tonal differences, so I don’t hear as much in it as other people do.
86. Which may be why I tend to focus on lyrics and songwriting more.
87. I am totally disabled about learning other languages.
88. My head mistress at boarding school once ordered me to apologize to her for asking her not to interrupt my friends and me when we were speaking during a meeting.
89. I wouldn’t do it.  Instead, I told her I thought she had been out of line.
90. The night I said that to her was the first time in high school I felt like a part of my class.
91. But that wasn’t why I said it.  She just made me angry.
92. I have a strong sense of personal justice.  Maybe individual justice is a better term.
93. I’m not as well informed as I’d like to be.
94. I’m a very, very tactile person.  Which makes the yarn thing not much of a surprise.
95. Sometimes I don’t know what I believe until I open my mouth or put hands to keyboard.
96. I used to read all the time, but I don’t any more.  I lost my taste for most fiction about 4 years ago. I miss losing myself in it.
97. I won second prize in a poetry contest in college.
98. The girl who won first had been writing poetry and winning awards for years, and I had been writing for only a semester, so I was really, really proud.
99. I think she became one of the writers of Legally Blonde.  But I’m not sure.
100. I hadn’t written anything for years until I began to blog.

I forgot.

I know this is boring for anyone other than me, but since this is ALL ABOUT ME, PEOPLE I'm just doing it anyway.

Other reasons Far Away L is totally brilliant and I miss him lots and lots:

He tells me stories.

While describing the insects he saw in a recent trip to Brazil (where he was with a team providing medical support for a 200 KM race through the jungle) he did sound effects to convey the motors, guns and machinery that the giant scary bugs sounded like.  He's a really good mimic, has a mind that hangs onto obscure information and an extraordinary eye for detail, so these little narratives are something to cherish. 

He wants to join Médecins Sans Frontières.

He made me see magic in things I ordinarily wouldn't take the time to notice and I am not sure I will ever look at the world in the exact same way again.

He is so getting a DNA scarf.  In alpaca.

Spelling

That would be nomination and nation's in paragraph one - Ive tried to fix it 6 times, but Typepad won't save the changes.

And I'm glad to see the Weather Pixie finally put on some damn clothes.  It is freakin' cold today.

Harumph.