39 years ago today, my father died.

It was 1970.
On a Thursday.
He was 41.
I was 11.

He had been sick for several months before dying of lung cancer. But when you're just 10 or 11 years old, and measuring time to the end of life as you know it, those days, they fly.

The weather that winter was much like the one we are having this year. I remember lots of snow as I walked home from school that day. And Uncle Snooky's car parked in front of our house.

Where it didn't belong.
At 3:30 in the afternoon.

And it was cold.
A Thursday in February Cold.
The kind of cold that can stick with a girl, say, seven or eight years.
With residuals.

In the years after he died, there were times when I lashed out at him, for leaving me at the mercy of his grief crazed widow. A woman who knew nothing about caring for a grief-crazed child.

But mostly I was afraid
Of falling.
Off.
Any thing.
Any where.

Mostly always,
I was afraid.

It is February 5, 2009.
A Thursday.
He was 41.
I am 50.

And very much not alone.
So very much not afraid.

Labels: Deep Shit, Passages

When I was a girl, the last day of school always fell on a Friday. Come Monday morning, after just two days of abbreviated revelry, momma would march our reluctantly sinful asses off to two weeks of Vacation Bible School.

Hateful.

The church we attended was high on the Bible Thumpery scale, as were most of its constituents. Our family, on the other hand, while regularly church-going, was not that Thumpy.

Not-That-Thumpy as we were, we still held the Lord in high regard. Therefore, year after year our mother had us over the barrel of fear, in her stated expectation that we attend VBS. I mean, to say that you're not that "into" Vacation Bible School was akin to saying "No thank-you, Baby Jesus." Saying "No Thank-you, Baby Jesus" was akin to sending out handwritten invitations to pestulence, disease, immaculate-conceptions- minus-the-celestial-beings-to-vouch-for-your-hymen* or a broken Etch-a-Sketch knob that limits you to right hand turns, for all eternity.

I know.

So off we'd go. If not for the impeccably imperfect timing, Vacation Bible School wasn't all that bad. For one thing, none of the snobby rich kids from regular Sunday School were there. I once asked one of those Sunday School girls why she didn't go to VBS.

"Vacation Bible School is for bringing The Lord to non-believers. It's for the Neighborhood kids.

"But I'm a neighborhood kid."

"I know."

Another good thing about VBS was the treats. At the end of every session, we were offered a tiny dixie cup of room temperature kool-aid and a handful of pink frosted animal crackers.

You're jealous, already.

The very best thing about VBS, however, was the missionaries.

The church I attended was very big on Bearing Witness or Giving Testimony. The most important personal Testimony was the story of how one came to accept Jesus Christ as one's Personal Savior. The more miracles in the story, the better.

The other type of Testimony was the sharing of specific incidents of bringing others to the Lord. ::i.e. keeping score.:: Because missionaries often went on hiatus during the summer months, there was aways a plentiful supply for Bearing Witness to the poor, apparently unsaved children of my neighborhood.

One regularly visiting missionary family was based in Applachia.While their stories were not very exotic, the father could play a saw as a musical instrument ::hand saw, not the powered kind.::. He was also a ventriloquist.

The missionaries from Africa and South America always had the best stories.I'm not sure if that is because of the vastness of the geographical and cultural differences or because there was little chance of anyone in the audience being able to challenge their accounts. They also dressed in the traditional garb of their host nation, grossed us out with stories of eating grubs, drinking tea seeped from dirt and pooping in a hole behind the hut. All in the Name of the Lord.

There was one missionary tale that I never tired of hearing. It was the one about the piranhas. I had never heard of a piranha until I went to Vacation Bible School. According to my very reliable VBS source, a school of piranha can clean the flesh from the bones of a live, full-size cow so quickly that, within minutes of an unfortunate plunge, the cow was nothing but a skeleton. And a heart. Still beating.

I know.

After that heartwarming warmup,the next piece of the story is the one that kept me up nights.It was about the little Peruvian boy. Yup.

Just one day after accepting Jesus Christ as his Personal Savior,this little boy fell off of the family raft, into the Amazon, which just happened to be teeming with ravenous piranhas.

The boy floundered in the water more than long enough to meet the Fate of the Cow. But he didn't. The Newly Born Again Child was pulled from the murky,deadly waters, fully fleshed. That's right. With not even a razor burn. It was a miracle.

The lesson: Through accepting Jesus Christ as Your Personal Savior, you will never die by the teeth of flesh-eating fish, which remains as the number one urban child's nightmare.

Needless to say, every time that story was shared, in that chapel filled with sticky, muggy neighborhood children, many Souls Were Saved.

That Being Said
This post was intended to be about a current frustration with my having wasted the first two weeks of a perfectly good summer, on a worthless endeavor. But apparently I digressed.

And the above segue to the real post had a surprise, happy ending...so where was I?

Oh Yeah.
Mondo. I spent the first two weeks of summer working on Mondo.

On Sunday afternoon, I was this far on the front. Just minutes from casting off.



But there was a problem. Notice the straps? One is thicker than the other.



After recounting both armhole and neckline cast-offs, I realized my problem ran deeper than that. Inherently deeper. And stupider.

Remember how I was all bragging and shit on how I was adjusting the pattern to be shapely instead of tently?

Yeah?
Well.

The adaptation included changes in the number of cast-on stitches. Easy Peasy?

Yeah?
Well.

To the Left. To the Left.
Unfortunately, I forgot to take that change into account while counting out stitches for the cable placement. In row fucking one. I needed to be four stitches to the left. In row fucking one.

A Dingo Ate My Baby
It was more like a swarm of steely-toothed piranhas.

In a flurry of ravenous mania, the ill beknittin piece was reduced, in minutes, to nothing but skeleton.

And heart balls. Still beating throbbing.



I know.

The Sure Skank Redemption
In retrospect, I guess Vacation Bible School wasn't all that bad. I now realize that it takes more than two weeks of mandated exposure to under-strengthened kool-aid, flannel boards or my own stupidity, to ruin a perfectly good summer.



Shirley Goodness.

*The story of the immaculate conception always scared me when I was young. What if it happened again? To me? And no one believed? Not that I thought I was anything special. I mostly thought I was everything unlucky.

Labels: Deep Shit, Knit In Progress, Yore

Andy, Did You Hear About This One?
March, 2001. We were driving home from a family gathering, listening to an R.E.M. CD, while four-month old Cakers slept in the back seat. When Man on the Moon came on, Cakers immediately woke up and started crooning, like only a four-month-old can do, with lips formed in a perfect O, and that delightful scowl of concentration. She sang through the entire song, and when it was over, fell right back to sleep.

And then, from no where, I had a vision of my daughter, several years down the road. And it went something like this:



In my vision, the skirt was culottes, the Crocs were pointy-toed granny boots and The Cakers' hair was painted several shades of Seared Retina. But I swear, those were the tights. Striped, and just barely matching anything else in the ensemble, minus the hair.

After receiving the visual anointing, I had a strong sense of rightness about this child, followed by a brief wave of nausea, then goose bumps. I loved Andy Kaufman, although I can't claim to have ever understood his genius. I have a feeling my own Miss Thang will be leading me down similar paths of enlightenment, whilst performing high wire feats on the last of my aging, decrepit nerves.

And for the record, I didn't buy her the tights. They were a gift from a relative who never heard about my vision of Cakers while goofing with Andy and Elvis.

Why yes, those are moose on the t-shirt. And she did wear the outfit to school. We are pretty much hands-off when it comes to letting the girl pick her outfits, as long as bits and pieces aren't showing anywhere.

A little while later she was running around the neighborhood with this addition:



I'm thinking maybe I'm the one who should be wearing the life jacket. For the next 13 years.

If You Believe, There's Nothing up my Sleeve
Then nothing is cool.



Parts are joined.
Let no woman rip asunder.

This sweater is one p.b. hair from being an unhappy memory.

In relation to the above statement, following are sub topics on the matter, too sore to be discussed at this time:

1) One sweater. Three buttonholes. By three different fathers. Baby Daddy number three had a genetic predisposition for being inoperably useless.

::Have you ever tried unknitting an improperly created button hole? I have. The buttonhole in question will join Twinkies, cockroaches and stories about Anna Nicole Smith, in post-apocalypse infamy.::

2) I think Ariann is going to be too small. I admit to shooting for a closer fitting size, because the last two sweaters I knit for myself ended up being a little big through the chest and therefore kinda frumpy. For Ariann, my stitches were a little bigger than the required gauge, which I hoped would give my posse and me some psychological jiggle room.

3) I'm going to proceed with the sweater as though none of these words were ever written and read or uttered and responded to at the salad bar. ::Did you know that the voice of tapioca sounds just like Kyra Sedgwick?:: Besides, this sweater cannot be ripped. ::See item 1) regarding buttonholes and cockroaches.::

Hearts and Crafts

My current struggles with Ariann have commandeered all creative energies. The Travails of the Tell Tale Heart will be continued at a later date. Okay, I've been spending a little too much time at the Heart Candy site.

I'm knitting a doomed sweater. Have some heart.

Labels: Deep Shit, My Daughter Scares Me, The Heart of Man, When Knitting You is Hurting Me

I have a cousin, several years my elder, who was twice widowed by the time she was 30. Both deaths were accidents and occurred on the job. Husband number one drowned while working on a bridge and number two was electrocuted.

I was still in college when the second tragedy struck. At the risk of sounding cold-hearted, I was largely unaffected by these family tragedies, in that my cousin and I were not close. In fact, I think the longest conversation we ever had was at Uncle P00t’s pre-mortum funeral, a couple years back, ::Uncle P is still kicking, btw:: when I said to her “I hear you’re a soshul werker.” And she said “Yep.” And I said “Me too”. And she said “That’s great!” and then there was an awkward silence and averted eye contact and then I walked away.

Anyway.

Like most of the kin on that side of the family, Cousin Annabelle has blackish-brown hair, and like many girls in the 70's, she wore it long and straight. The day after her second husband died, she went to the beauty salon and had her long, straight blackish-brown hair cut short, permed into tiny curls and dyed platinum. Just in time for the first night's viewing at the funeral home.

When I find myself rolling around in fields of woe and self-pity, I sometimes think of Cousin Annabelle, showing up at the funeral home in her freshly-cropped, frizzy, platinum ‘do; her scalp still burning from the process.

And then I think of her friends and family members, struggling to come up with the exactly right thing to say to this beautiful young bride, with the mind-boggling bad luck. I imagine these people rehearsing aloud, their selected lines of condolence, on the ride to the funeral home. And I can’t help but smile, when I picture them stricken speechless, at the sight of her.

I don’t know exactly why Annabelle did what she did. But I do know that shock and grief are notorious logic benders. I also know that the brain, in its most primitive mode, is a wickedly genius survivalist.

Maybe she was psychotic with grief, when she made the hair appointment.

Or maybe she was crazy like a fox.

Maybe she refused to take this battery of hell, lying down. Or at least lying down as a brunette.

Maybe she thought blondes have less pain.

Maybe she wasn’t ready to share her despair.

Maybe she wanted people to wonder about her hair, instead of the horror.

Or maybe she just wanted people to look at her hair. Period.

Because how could the first thing out of anybody’s mouth be anything but: “Your hair...you've changed your hair.”

Wherein She Tried Her Hand as a Quick Change Artist
An hour before we left for the cardiologist appointment last Monday, I was scared. While a part of me knew we were riding a wave of internet-induced, psychological hysteria, another part of me that knew full well that bad shit happens as easily as the good. And the bad shit is just a phone call away. Or an appointment away. Or a police-officer-ringing-the-doorbell-at-2-a.m. away.

In the event it would be a long wait for any good/bad news at the doctor's office, I packed up a knitting package for butt-ugly Ariann sleeve #1. Then, about 15 minutes before we were supposed to leave, in a flurry of non-knitting-related panic, I determined that the nearly done sleeve was too ugly to live, and ripped it back to within two inches of its life. And instead of worrying about what could lie ahead, I spent the ride to the appointment picking up live, lacy stitches on the freshly ripped sleeve.

I have mentioned this before, that I hadn't been happy with that sleeve for a long time. Therefore, from a logical standpoint, the decision to rip was a sound one, if not a tad impulsive. Subconsciously, I was probably thinking that if later in the day, some cardiologist hands me my heart on a platter, I will not receive this platter with a less than perfect piece of knittery in my lap.

Doctor: I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news….”

Me: I just ripped this sleeve out this morning. Look how far I’ve gotten already. I’m still having problems with that SSK stitch, though. Does this look wonky to you?

As you now know, the news on my husband was good.

Unfortunately, not so much for the second first sleeve.



It looks like it has a knit-in elbow bend. Maybe I'm a genius after all.
But ya know, bad knitting is kind of like a bad hair cut.
You can always grow it back.

Thursday's Sky. Friday's Eye
Candy

Labels: Deep Shit, The Heart of Man, When Knitting You is Hurting Me

It was a week ago Thursday night, late. I'd just popped a tiny Tylenol P.M. and was heading off to bed, when my husband comes into the room and asks me if his aortal aneurism ::I cannot spell that word.:: was ascending or descending?

What are you talking about?

My anyerism. You know. Is it descending or ascending?

How'd you get an anuerysm?

Didn't you hear the doctor? ::He's referring to the rent-a-cardiologist at the hospital, a month ago.:: He said my aorta is enlarged.

I never heard the word anyerism.

Well, that's what an enlarged aorta is.

What are you talking about? We don't know if your aorta is enlarged. You haven't even seen the real cardiologist yet. Your own doctor told you that you're a big boy, with a big heart and sometimes a big heart brings a big aorta. And if that's what you really have, wouldn't the rental cardiologist unit have told you? They didn't even have your baseline measurement at the time. And I just took a Tylenol P.M. ferfucklesakes.

I know my baseline, now. It was 4 cm. It's up to 4.6. That's huge. That's an aynyerism. Just forget I said anything. I thought I could talk to you...my wife. I thought you might be interested to know that when they perform the surgery to fix it, I'll be buried in ice and put on artificial life support, so as to minimize the brain damage, which is almost certain with this particular kind of surgery.

Brain damage? Where the hell is this coming from? And way to ruin a good Tylenol P.M. fuzz, by the way.

I got it from the internet. I've been reading up on this shit every day. I have...as he reads from the back of a tattered grocery list...a Thoracic Aortic Aneryism. And that's really bad.

I'll spare you the details of rest of the dialogue, but I will share that it included screaming and swearing and crying and then laughing. You see, a couple months ago, Cakers was diagnosed, by a real doctor, with bronchitis. The day after the appointment, our very own Doctor Cabana calls me at work to tell me that Cakers has Asthma.

Did the doctor call? I asked, with alarm.

No. I got it from the internet. She has asthma. I just know it. ::I have no idea. Maybe there is a diagnostic website where you breathe into the mouse and right click at the same time?::

Oddly enough, at her follow-up appointment, the doctor gave Cakers'lungs and overall respiratory functioning, a clean bill. And we didn't speak of it again. Until last Thursday.

And even though we agreed to hold off on looking for a nursing home until after getting a second opinion from the Real Cardiologist, the following Monday, I couldn't stop rethinking the possibility of me and The Cakers living a life without this man. This internet diagnostic idiot, who just happens to be my everything. My happiness. A man I would gladly share a life with in a van, down by the river. Okay, make that a used R.V.

I need him. He changes light bulbs and fills my gas tank and fetches me wine. He loves to grocery shop with me. He has a healthy respect for ADHD. He can do a buttload of dishes in about 10 minutes, the same amount of time it takes me to circle the kitchen six times, move 3 plates from one counter to the other, before deciding to do it later. And every night he tells me to quit plucking my eyebrows and come to bed. ::I don't even know how he knows that's what I'm doing, because I'm very quiet with the tweezers. It's like he's psychic. Practically.::

Needless to say, I spent last weekend fighting the intrusive images of limping through the rest of my life, fielding the misguided hatred of the half-orphaned Cakers, while growing fat and wrinkly and bald of brow. All alone.

Long story almost over: Per the Real Cardiologist, The fucking rental from the hospital misquoted the echocardiogram findings to us. His Aorta was not 4.6 cm, but only 4.2. Which, with margin of error, is basically a non issue at this time. His aorta hasn't grown. There are no structural issues with his heart. And while his cholesterol was normal, it was a bad normal, and the Real Cardiologist is also a lipids specialist, so put E. on medication for that, which is unrelated to any of the issues that put him in the hospital.

E. still has to see another Cardiologist who specializes in the electrical stuff, but this guy we saw Monday is pretty certain the episode last month is not a heart issue but a brain issue and described it as the opposite of the "fight or flight" response, which we now affectionately refer to as the "I think I'm going to lay down and take a nap. Right now." response. Okay, I guess you had to be there for that one. But my husband loves him some nap, any time of the day.

We should know more after the next appointment.

In the meantime, it's all systems go, with no restricted activity.
Well, except for access to the internet.

Post Post Note 1: Work is going to be crazy up to the end. I feel like I'm in a batting cage with three pitching machines, and no bat. Or armor. I'm working late every night and when I get home I have nothing left to think or say. It's going to be a more-than-usual sketchy blog schedule 'til June. And I've not been getting around to read blogs and am behind in correspondence and I really wanted to respond to comments on last few posts, but I just...can't. Right now. Much. But I do appreciate the good thoughts and encouragements.

Post Post Note 2: The Rent a Cardiologist Fuck-pas was the second in a series of two significant miscommunications at the hospital, which caused me undue emotional duress, of the life-threatening variety.

Labels: Deep Shit, I Need Therapy Thursday, Manpie, Scary Shit

Sigh Candy.



It might not look like much to you, but believe you me, this picture taken just this morning, is a Sigh for these Sore Eyes.

I'm kind of at a loss as to what or how much to share of my past two days. Because everything seems to be okay now, the emotional havoc I've recently endured, seems a bit melodramatic in the retelling. But I still feel the need retell, so I'm just going to open the lid and see what tumbles out onto the keyboard. So bear with.

We returned home from the cottage Tuesday night, the house still a mess from when we left it, with the addition of extra fur blobs scattered about, likely from Bella renting herself in grief, in response to our absence.

Anyway.

On weekends and vacations, my husband ::aka Cabana Boy, but today he's E.:: and I take turns sleeping in, and Wednesday morning was mine to sleep into. About 9:50, E comes into the room and announces that he had just passed out in the bathroom and needs to go to the hospital. He looked poorly. Greenish. I thought maybe he was getting the flu.

So I got up and dressed and we headed to the ER, where I dropped E off at the door, and went off to park the car.

For the sake of brevity I'm going to try to bullet the high and low points of the adventure. ::And no offense or anything, but I'm mostly writing this for me and not you, but I need to be brief with myself too, because I gots shit to do.::.

After finding E. with the intake nurse in her little intake cubby, I experienced what I call the first in a series of Little Terrors.

Little Terror #1: The intake nurse appearing obviously concerned with my husband's medical presentation as indicated through her muttering "With a pulse of 43, we don't have time for a temp...he needs to be seen....Now."

Little Terror #2: After getting Cakers situated in the waiting room, I walked into Trauma 2, where it felt and looked like a scene from the T.V. show, E.R. Orders were being barked while professional bodies moved about the room and around the equipment and one another, in a frenzied yet oddly synchronized dance.

Little Terror #3: A nurse stopped the frenzy to ask if she could call someone to come in to be with me.

Little Terror #4: The fear in E's eyes.

Little Terror #5: They put pads on his chest in case they needed to use the paddles.

Long Portion of Story Shorter, it took about two hours for his pulse and blood pressure to creep into their respectfully normal ranges, although they were still low.

Once the color started returning to his face, we relaxed a little and started enjoying Little Happies, In Light of the Situation.

Little Happy In Light of the Situation #1: Whenever the monitor showed a considerable dip in blood pressure or pulse or a red alert came on the monitor, my facial expression indicated alarm. ::E couldn't see the monitors. I'm sure that's on purpose.:: He finally asked me to either stop looking at the monitor or develop a better poker face, because I was scaring the shit out of him. But I initially thought he said "porker face," so every time I looked at the monitor, I held my nose up like a pig. It was still hard to hold a porker face in response to scary dips in the numbers, so I would still look scared, porker face notwithstanding, which made E laugh...okay I guess you had to be there.

Little Happy In Light of the Situation #2: The nurses station was right outside his room. One of the nurses walking by the door, dropped a pen and stopped to pick it up. E. then called me over to whisper "I have some ER gossip. That nurse is wearing a red thong." I laughed and with my best porker face, looked at his blood pressure reading and saw that it immediately went up a couple points. We then decided to tell the doctor that his blood pressure Got Up at the Crack of Thong, and maybe he can get a prescription for some of that.

Blood work showed E was low in potassium, so that was added to his IV, which seemed to help, after a while. The doctor ordered him to spend the night so they can monitor his heart and undergo further evaluation. Once he was stablized and a plan was in place, I went home to pack a bag for Cakers to stay at my in-laws, to let the dog out and tidy up a bit for when the in-laws came by. Through the course of tidying up, I somehow picked up a blob of peanut butter on my palm, which I somehow got on the steering wheel and console of the car, and a little on my jeans and purse, and nothing handy with which to wipe it off.

Back at the hospital, I had a very hard time getting a straight park with E's behemoth car ::It's a hatefully huge SUV.:: and was in and out of the car three times to check how crooked each attempt was or wasn't. I never did get it quite right, but barely good enough was good enough for me.

And it was a bitterly cold, snowy and windy day. When I was just outside the entrance of the hospital, I noticed a flurry of money flying past me. The folded bills looked strangely familiar as they tumbled away. As I watched a couple bills go down the storm drain I thought, Damn, that's my money! I chased after what remained, almost hitting my head on a parked car.

Little Happy In Light of the Situation #3: Between accidently transferring peanut butter from the kitchen cleanup to E's steering wheel and my purse, and the parking problems, and money blowing out of my purse and into a storm drain, I light heartedly determined that the first thing I will tell my husband when I see him, is that he cannot die because in the past hour I have seen what I am without him and it is not a pretty picture. Not only would he get a kick out of the image of my utter and complete dependency on him, but would surely prompt him to an even quicker recovery.

So I make it up to his room in one piece, to find that he isn't there. I stopped to inquire at the nurse's station, where several scrub-clad women were circled and jabbering like a nest of magpies. While I waited and waited. Finally a woman looked up from her nearby desk and asked what I needed. I told her I was looking for my husband. Clearly, this woman was new to the job and could not help me without first consulting with the magpies, who did not stop their chatter for yet another minute, as she stood by, waiting to ask the question.

Little Terror #6: The newbie told me that the magpies told her that my husband was still in the ER. Still? It's been hours, I said. She shrugged and told me that it can take a long time to get transferred to a room from the ER.

So, I head back to the E.R., which in this hospital, is kind of like changing terminals at a major airport.

Not so Little Terror #7: I get to the ER and head to Trauma 2, where I last left my E. But the door to Trauma 2, which was previously open the whole time we were there earlier, was now closed. When someone came out of the room, I could see and hear that there was some very serious shit going on in Trauma 2. With my husband. He's dying in there, I thought to myself. He's going to die before I can tell him that he can't. Die. Because if he dies, I will spend the rest of my life leaving a trail of peanut butter, and pulling in and out of angled parking spots,and letting money blow out of my purse and down the storm drains. Eventually we'll be poor and homeless and forced to live in an SUV, down by the river. Except we won't even be able to do that, because I can't park the fuckingly huge and hateful car.

He can't be dying in there, because I can't live without him. I just can't.

I don't know how long I stood staring at the door of Trauma 2, but I'm sure it was just moments. Finally a clerk behind the desk asked me if I needed something. I somehow choked out my husband's name and asked if he was in there, and pointed to the door.

No, he's been taken to his room, the clerk said. A nurse overhearing the conversation, piped in to confirm that she had delivered him herself and a floor nurse signed for receiving him. He was probably getting his echo cardio somethings or his doppler doppling whatchamacallits.

"They told me he was still down here. They told me..." and then I couldn't talk anymore, but only pointed again, to the door behind me. The door to Trauma 2.

And then I started to cry.

After some genuine consoling, I was given directions back to my husband's floor. While I was certainly relieved at the good news that my husband was not behind door #2, I had a hard time shaking the fear and made several wrong turns on the way to his room. I apparently had the look of neediness, because several hospital staff stopped to help me along the way. They were rewarded for their efforts by my bursting into spontaneous bawl and incoherently grateful blubbering. One woman, who appeared to be leaving for the day, recognized me from earlier, and walked me all the way to E's room.

Once I was up in his room, one of the magpies approached me and apologized for the breakdown in communication. It was genuine and she was forgiven. She later apologized to E as well.

There is definitely more blogging to be done, from this saga. I'm still feeling emotionally skittish, even though my man seems fine, for now. All his tests came back normal, and his heart is strong. Because of his congenital heart issues, he is scheduled for further evaluation, with the focus on trying to figure out what caused the problem. He'll also be fitted for a temporary monitor, which will record his heart activity over an extended period of time.

For now, I'm just happy that we're all back together.
College Boy is heading home at this writing, for the holiday weekend and tonight we're celebrating with one of E's favorite dishes, Black Bean Enchiladas.

I apologize for the choppy, messy writing here, but I really needed to get this out of me. Because I lost 2 days of spring break, wherein I had planned on doing some Easter preparation, I am sorely behind in that and all other household endeavors. And with Cabana Boy currently on medical waivers, I gotta get the getting going.

Have A Good Friday, everyone.

Labels: Deep Shit, eye candy Friday, Manpie

Today I'm home from work on a Snow Day. To be weatherly precise, we're calling it a Wind Chill Day. Currently it's 4 degrees below zero, with a windchill of 20 below; temperatures at which the unprotected faces and minds of children can crystallize and shatter into derma dust, in a matter of minutes.

What better time, then, to reminisce about friendlier, warmer climes?

This here is a picture of us returning from our last boat ride of the summer of 2006.



And let me tell you, it was a fabulous ride. The air was the perfect temperature. The water was like glass. The sunset, fabulous.

And maybe the best thing about this last boat ride of summer, was that I didn't know it was the last ride. I did know that the boat was coming out of the water the next day, to be put into storage. I also knew that there would be a chance for the For Reals last boat ride before that happened.

But I declined on that second last ride. It didn't sound like fun. There would be too much expectation for perfection. I would have been under self-imposed pressure to enjoy the ride to the fullest, but what if I couldn't? What if it was too bumpy or windy or a seagull crapped on my shoulder? It would ruin everything.

And then there would be the sorrow. Who wants to be sad on a boat ride?

Not me.

Nope. I'd already had my perfect last ride, with my perfect cuddle nesting on my lap. :Likely the last cuddle ride ever. She was almost too big then and I remember thinking about it at the time, but had to push the thought away.::

I've thought about this subject quite a bit since that picture was taken. I've wondered, do we really want to know when we're doing Something Wonderful for the last time? A Something we will never be able to reclaim or recreate? Am I a coward for wanting to avoid the tarnish of bittersweet, on a good thing?

In the summer of 1969, I had my very last boat ride with my daddy. Of course, I didn't know it at the time. It took place during my very last vacation with him.

As camping-in-a-tent-for-two-weeks-in-Northern-Michigan vacations go, that last time was perfection. Because we knew better, we always brought our winter coats camping, in July, and that year we never had cause to bring them out of the suitcase. In fact, that vacation was the only time in our family's history, that we had a vacation without rain. Ever.

And daddy had his best fishing year. Ever.

Also on that vacation, I wore bell bottom pants for the first time, to the skating rink. They were blue and white polka dot, in a cotton blend. My mom had made them for me, with a matching cropped jacket with a huge white zipper and ring pull. I thought I was the cat's ass.

What we didn't know at the time we were having the best camping-in-a-tent-for-two-weeks-in-Northern-Michgian ever, was that my father was dying of lung cancer.

Through the rest of that summer, it was mostly business as usual, except for my dad's increasing complaints of lower back pain. He was never much of a "hands on" kind of dad, but that summer, for the first and last time ever, he took my sister and me to the city pool a few evenings, for family swim. He said up front he was doing it to relieve back pain, but we didn't care.

I'll never forget his alarm and resulting chastisement, upon seeing that I plugged my nose when I went under water. ::I was 11 years-old and he didn't know this about me.::, so during the evening swims, he taught me first to hold my breath proper and then how to dive. And even though he wasn't doing all this for us, my sister and I lapped it up.

By the time school started in the fall, daddy had been rushed to the hospital by ambulance twice. Both times he had passed out from the pain in his back.

During one hospital stay, a doctor told him that even though the back pain was likely in his head, it might be good idea to lay off the 3-pack a day habit. Just a few weeks later, he was diagnosed with lung cancer, which had now spread to his back, and liver.

And on February 5, 1970, just a handful of months from our last boat ride together, my daddy died.

And just like the last boat ride of last summer, the memories of perfect weather and perfect fishing and the perfect feeling of a cat's-ass-in-bell-bottoms and the most perfect last boat ride of my family's life as we knew it, have all remained untarnished.

And 37 years later, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Labels: Deep Shit, Yore

Uno Zapato
Or One Shoe.



Two summers ago at the neighborhood playground, there was a shoe.

One shoe. Actually, it was a flip flop.::The "flip" of the pair, if I recall...::

That summer we went to the park almost every day that we were home, weather permitting. And every day there was The Flip. Every day in a different location; by the climbing ropey thingy, then the rings, then the swings, then the slide. One day I couldn't find it anywhere and thought someone had finally tossed it, or took it home. But then I saw it down the hill from the playground, near the soccer field. The next day, it was back in the play area.

Every day that I went to the playground, I remembered that I forgot that I was going to bring the camera,to take a picture.

But I never did. Remember.

But I did do a lot of wondering about that one Flip and how it came to be left behind on a playground. It looked like it may have belonged to a 3rd or 4th grader (or a Cakers' size kindergartener, the girl has some dogs on her).

How do you lose just one shoe? You think a person would notice a thing like that. One missing shoe. Did the kid walk all the way home with one Flip? Or did he just flop to the car with a pack of sibs, where his podiatriactical imbalance went unnoticed in an ensuing back-seat, sibling-induced fray?

The Flip did disappear by the end of the summer. Likely a victim of a cleanup in preparation for the start of school. But that summer, a weird thing happened. I saw One Shoes everywhere. Along my walk route up at the lake, in parking lots, along curbs of city streets, on sidewalks...Just One Shoe. Uno Zapato.

And always I wondered the same things whenever I saw one:

How did it get there?

Was it flung out a car window by an angry girlfriend?

Did it fall from an airplane?

Where's its mate?

Why do people never lose their shoes in pairs?

Didn't the person know they were missing a shoe?

How did the person not know they were missing a shoe?

Was it an amputee who suddenly just figured it out?

Was it The Rapture and I missed it?

Was it The Rapture and they were taking amputees first, kind of like going to front of the line at Disney or handicapped parking?

Was it the Rapture and they were taking amputees first AND I missed it?

Is this it?

Am I in Hell?

Is Hell being stuck on Earth for all eternity, wondering about One Shoes and never having a camera so one can at least chronicle being in hell with One Shoes on one's blog?

Is there a Weblog ring for bloggers in hell?

What did they have for lunch?

Last March I was on a walk and saw the above featured shoe sitting in the front yard of a home. The day before there had been several inches of snow on the ground, which had melted just that day, in a sunnied frenzy. When I first saw it, I went right up to the shoe to look at it. I think I was seeking some answers to the questions that I knew would soon cause me great torment.

From what I could determine, it was a fresh drop. No way had that shoe spent any time under snow. Not yesterday, not ever. And it was a toddler's size. What the hell and...

Oh No, here we go again....

How did it get there?

Where is its mate?

Why don't people lose their shoes in matched pairs?

Was there a one shoed toddler running amuck in the muck?

How can he not notice?

Was it the pink laces?

Was he wearing socks?

Had he been abducted?

Was this evidence of a heinous crime?

What kind of mother doesn't notice her child is running around outside in March without a shoe?...

Right then and there I decided I was going to tame this one legged monster and officially decreed the upcoming summer to be the Summer of the One Shoe, wherein I would chronicle my adventures with the anticipated, multiple One Shoe sightings through photographs and related recorded musings.

After my walk, I grabbed my camera, hopped in the car and returned to the scene and took that picture to start what I believed was going to be a footful summer adventure.

Long story a little shorter, that is The Shoe. The Only Shoe. I never once saw another One She, for the remainder of that spring and summer.

That's right, not a one One Shoe.

In fact, not long after I took the picture of the One Shoe, I was walking around the lake near my home and came across ::gasp:: a pair of slippers. All neat and tidy, lined up side by side on the walk path. White terry cloth. Two.

I know. Where did the slippers come from?

How did they get there?

How does someone lose an entire pair of slippers?

Did they fall from an airplane?

Do they belong to an escapee from a nearby retirement community?

And is she now lost in the woods?

Did she actually get away?

Or was she abducted?

By Slipper-Hatin' Aliens?

Was it The Rapture?

They've now plucked up the two-leggers, and I still missed it?

Am I now in Hell on Two Shoes?

Should I get a tankini wax, just in case?

I don't know if seeing the pair of slippers jinxed me in my grand One Shoe plan or what, but that little sneaker up there is The Chronicles of the One Shoe. Yup.

Uno Zapato.

P.S. My other choice for U was Uno Commento, however, based on a recently alarming trend, I think I'll need to save that option for Z.

P.S.S. Since it's been kind of slow here in my stretch of the superhighway, I've been rewriting this post as the Shoe so moves me. Because I can.

Labels: ABC, Deep Shit, Pho-Ho'

And sometimes you close your eyes and see the place where you used to live, when you were young.-The Killers

(Just sayin': The following post is kind of ramble-y and was not well thought through prior to publication. Twas also proofed sparingly.)

One of my walk routes takes me past a place that has a distinct smell. I'm not crazy, or at least I'm not crazy in a way that sounds or smells like what I'm about to type, but I swear that this place with a smell smells like mashed potatoes, with lots of butter and black pepper. Like my mom used to make. On Sundays.

And just for a minute, could you please indulge me by paying no mind to the fact that you are sure that a place outdoors, in a residential neighborhood, cannot smell like mashed potatoes with lots of butter and black pepper?* Because it does. Because I've smelled it. And do smell it. And whether or not I'm experiencing a localized olfactorial hallucination, which I'm not, is not the point. At least not today. So please play along.

The first time I smelled the smell, it made me cry, a little. It wasn't a sudden break down and blubber kind of thing but more of chokey-uppy-where'd-that-come?-from-gaspy kind of thing. During 5 o'clock traffic, no less.

While I haven't cried the mashed potato since that first time I smelled it, the scent does still make me feel kind of sad and nostalgic. I think it's about Sunday dinner with my family, when I was a kid. When my family was whole. Or as whole as it would ever be.

Before my brother went to Viet Nam.

Before my daddy got sick and died.

Before my brother came home from Viet Nam and cried a lot in the basement.

Before my big sister went off to college to save her soul.

Before my mom went crazy from grief and worry.

Before my little sister and I grew boobs and tempers and a keen appreciation for a swinging vacuum cleaner hose as a weapon of choice.

Before all that.

I make a pretty mean bowl of mashed potatoes with lots of butter and pepper. But no matter how many steamy bowls I prepare of the stuff, it never quite tastes the same as that haunting smell.

Lately I've been feeling kind of sad and nostalgic about my current tribe. Mostly my girl, but the boy too. I miss them.

Yeah, the boys at college and that makes some sense.

But The Cakers is here every day.
And yet I miss her.
Every day.

Because every day she comes home from school different than she was the day before.

And every day I am simply amazed at the new person she has become.

And every day I want to get to know this new person. But there's never enough time. And before you know it, it's time for bed.

So she goes to bed and gets up and goes to school and changes all over again.

And before I have a chance to miss the girl from the day before, another one has shown up at the door. So we do it all over again.

And I feel like I'm watching a movie of my life at hyper-speed. In this movie I play myself, watching the movie of my life at hyper-speed. And all I can say is that it's a good thing I don't have any lines because I find it hard to breathe at times.

Just point me the button to slow it down. I promise I'll use it sparingly. Otherwise I'm just going to have to grab hold and not let go until she's big enough to kick my ass. Which may be as early as next week.

The same week I turn 48.
The same age as Madonna, who, according to the host of a nightly entertainment show, is doing some amazing things for someone "pushing 50."

I don't want to be amazing for my age.

I just want to be.

eh.

I soon will post a knit updater.
But it must wait a few days later.

*I'm pretty sure it's a plant I'm smelling. Smell familiar?

Labels: Boobs and Pee and Poo, Deep Shit, Passages, Tree From Where I Fell, Yore

...is for my big, strong, hunka, hunka, burning lens.

The Olympus E-500.



I received this camera as a gift last Christmas and have yet to mention it here. Until now. Of course.

The main reason I haven't mentioned it is that I really don't know much about it, except that it has a lot more pixels than my last one, that it takes around 14 fucktillion pictures before the rechargeable battery runs out and that it makes me very happy. I have yet to find make my acquaintance with the manual, but I'm sure it's very nice.

I was initially kind of uncomfortable with the extravagance, but I know better than to dicker with Santa. Besides, it has been my experience with the old hairy guy, that whenever he is really good to me, he rewards himself threefold, which gets me off the hook from that indulged feeling.

The second reason I haven't mentioned my new camera is that I've been feeling kinda guilty. About my old camera. And how, after it served me faithfully for 7 years, it was rewarded by being used to photograph its replacement, after which, it sat in a drawer for six months.

Oh, the humiliation.

In fact, I'm only posting this now because in January, I put the old dog back to work as the boat camera, because it's more portable. So there.

Even though I haven't found read the manual yet, I quickly came to appreciate the camera's diverse capabilities simply from looking at the easy-to-read dial on the top of the camera.



While I have yet to utilize all these features, the icons are easy to recognize and self-explanatory in their simplicity, as follows:

A-This is the Find Me a Girlfriend setting, as indicated by the icon of a woman's head, with a bouffant-y, upsweep-esque kind of do'. You have to tilt you head a little to see it right.

B-This is the Find Me a Boyfriend setting, as indicated by the icon of a man's, well, it's kind of hard to see in this picture, but it's clearly a profile of a man's, well, you know. You have to tilt your head the other way from the girlfriend angle to see that its clearly a man's, well, you know. If you can't see it still, I'll just say it's a big hangy thing kinda hanging over smaller hangy thing. k?

C-This setting will give you superhero athletic skills.

D-This one will make the person you are taking a picture of smell better. It also works for self-portraits.

E- This icon shows a star and a crescent moon, which is the universal symbol for for psychic powers. On this setting, well, you already know, right? I knew you did.

Although, I still don't know what that Auto PASM thing means. Although it sounds kind of freaky.

There is just one thing about this camera that concerns me. There are some settings that provide a brief description in the control panel screen, of the setting's specific purpose. There's one such description that reads "Shoot Active Children." I'm like, "All of them?" Yikes!

See? I don't need no stinkin' manual.

All I need is a thing of beauty on which to focus, and the rest kinda takes care of itself.







Scratchin'My Itch
Today is our 7 year wedding anniversary. Tomorrow we're sneaking off to the cottage for our annual slumber party for two, where we hope to float some boats.

So I'll be out for a coupla.

Bloggy Dearest
You are not getting up from this table until you have finished that meat.-Joan Crawford as depicted in "Mommy Dearest"

Before I get to that, LeeAnne, Neil, Kim and Chris, you may be excused from the table.

As for the rest of you...I'm going to keep putting Friday's post in front of you until you finish making your comments on it. I want no less than 15 bites.

And when I come back on Tuesday, I expect to find that you finished the job.

CeCe, Now
::You thought I was kidding, didn't you?::
Post Preface: The following post (this is not the actual post, part) is cognitively fueled by my family's genetic predispostion to explain every thought in one's head that is even remotely related to a given topic, at any given opportunity. Historically this familial phenonmenon has primarily been observed in restaurant settings where over the years, thousands of hapless wait staff have fallen victim to hearing loosely related thoughts and/or personal histories regarding menu items of interest, as shared by select (very) female members of my family. And it goes something like this (still not the post part, k? I'll let you know)

Waitress: Are you ready to place your order?

Fictional Female Member of My Family (FF MOM F): Well, the chicken looks good. Are there any nuts in it?

Wait Staff: Nuts in the chicken?

FF MOM F: I have diverticulosis. Just one sesame seed can kill me. ::pats tummy::

Wait Staff: Well, we wouldn't want that. Would you like some more time?

FF MOM F: The halibut looks good, but I just had fish on Wednesday. I had dinner with my son. He's been married four times,but this last one seems pretty nice. I think the rehab helped. When he was little I used to tie him to a tree in the back yard, so I could get some housework done and watch my stories. One time I accidently tied him to the dog. Boy, that was a quite the to-do. We had to put the dog down. Poor thing. Nerves, dontcha know.

Wait Staff: I can come back...

FF MOM F: Mmmm, I was thinking about the halibut. There isn't any shrimp in that, is there?

Wait Staff: Only if the halibut ate some as his last meal.

FF MOM F: Oh, no! I can't eat shellfish. Even if I'm sitting next to someone eating shellfish and I accidently stick my finger in their food or give them an open mouth kiss or something, I will spend the next two days in the bathroom, if you know what I mean. ::pats tummy::

Wait Staff: Really, ma'am, I was just joking. There's nothing on the halibut but a crunchy potato coating.

FF MOM F: There aren't any nuts on those potatoes are there? I can't have nuts...

Start Post Here...(you were warned, remember)
Ce Ce! What shall I see?
A horse's head where his tail should be.-Nursery Rhyme

A pretty face on a horse's ass. That's kind of how I've been feeling about my well honed skills at badly following a good pattern. But, back to that in a minute.

When Bonne Marie first released CeCe, I fell in love with her beauty, brains and personality, on sight. After purchasing the pattern, I decided I should finish that damned Peaches before casting on for yet another lace cardigan. Plus, it was too late to finish in time to wear to work for spring, when I would get the most use from a short-sleeved cardie.

And then: 1) Bonne Marie added 3/4 length sleeves to the pattern mix and 2) Peaches bit the dust.

And here we are, almost ready to make a selection off the menu.

After swatching three, gauge appropriate yarns from my stash, I found myself with no other choice but to go buy some yarn. At my neighborhood yarn store, I fell for a lovely wad of cocoa-hued Cascade Sierra.

Even though it wasn't on the prescribed list of yarns, I thought I could make it work because the gauge recommendations fit the pattern's. Mostly I thought I could make it work because I really, really wanted this color. It reminds me of buckeyes, which reminds me of the time I collected buckeyes as a kid, and thought they were so beautiful that surely people would want to buy them, so I went selling buckeyes door to door. I was, of course, mistaken. Consequently, over the next year or so, I was the neighborhood Kid's Choice for teasing and the random punch in the stomach.

I did get the stockinette gauge, but because I was in a hurry to cast-on for the next road trip north, I skipped swatching for the lace pattern. After casting on in the car and knitting up over four inches of pattern over the next couple days, I decided I didn't like the fabric. It was too beefy.



Now,I'm a girl who likes me some beefy. I likes me some beefy cakes and some beefy mitts and even a nice beefy wine. But beefy lace? Um no. Not on my swatch.

So I ripped it all out and started over with a larger needle, which resulted in the not-so-beefy look I was looking for.



Lovely, ain't she? My CeCe? The only comforting thought I carried with me, as I ripped out the four or so inches of the first try, was that the next try would go much quicker since I already had lots of practice with the pattern.

Ha. Well, let's just say my Comfort went Southern and I ended up ripping back two more inches, twice. You see...

::This would be about the time I'd start telling ya about that wintery day in the 7th grade, when I got off the bus and was laughing so hard that I peed my mini skirt. I mean, this stuff was a day's worth, race horse force, shooting and steaming from my in betweens, initially straight down into the snow, and eventually reduced itself to piddle, right into my stylin' plastic-fake-leather-look fleece-lined shoe boots. ::

...While going with the bigger needle, I had to go with a smaller size in the pattern, but I had memorized the pattern for the larger size, and therefore kept knitting that one, which reminded me of the time in kindergarten when I threw up all over my rabbit muff in gym class and how even though that muff never smelled or felt the same after that, I still loved it so..

Waitress: I'll give you a few more minutes.

Despite two more false starts, I'm happy to say I now have two full lace repeats completed, with nary a boo.

CeCe how I am?

Pre-K Wasteland
Things have been getting a bit gnarly here in the house of Cakers and Swine. We held up pretty well the first couple of days of being housebound on account of the inclement climate. While daddy worked in the basement, me and the girl had ourselves some crafty times, coloring, painting and doing nails via a special spa day afternoon. ::THAT spa thing was so fun that I've pretty much decided that it is an event not to be replicated until the Cakers'senior prom, or beyond, to better enable us to remain living and/or not incarcerated fully treasure the special and wholly unique memory of the day.::

At the end of the second day, however, I was seriously needing a cure for my shredded nerves. I did, however, make mental note of how well The Cakers was holding up through the hole-up. ::I'm now convinced that sound mental health can be talked to a slow, tortuous, and certain death.::

That being said, after my well polished Cakers was well in bed that night, I came upon this scene in the playroom:



Evidently, some of us hadn't been holding up as psychologically sound as I originally thought.

Here's a close-up of Mattel's latest release,Morning After Barbie:



This Barbie comes with her own bigger than life-size, hand free vibrator:



I'm not sure what he's planning to do with the compact car, but the dog adds a cute touch.

Really, things have been crazy ass around here. I am way behind in reading blogs and responding to comments. I especially wanted to get back to some of you on comments on my cottage neighborhood post. I hope to still do that. ::Sigh::

And I suppose I'm not even close to being caught up on the Alpha bit thingy, eh?

Thanks all for the compliments on the ribby shell. It really doesn't look as obviously swirly in real life, as depicted in the picture. I have worn it with total emotional abandonment.

I really need to make this a wrap. I've been working on this post for two days, two sentences at a time. At this moment, I should be taking full advantage of The Cakers being out of the house for a couple of hours, so excuse me while I try to fire up Barbies Robo-brator get some sorely needed housework done.

*Blogger will not let me upload pictures today at all. WTF, again? So the Barbie pictures are hand jobs and cannot be clicked to enlarge and look a little hinky, to boot.

Labels: ABC, Deep Shit, My Daughter Scares Me, Pho-Ho', The Casting On Couch, Tree From Where I Fell

...of my vacation

I guess it's a sign of a good vacation if over a two day period, a vacationer has no more than 30 minutes available for writing a frickin' blog post. So that's good. As in a good thing. Right?

We've had two days of gorgeous weather here, which means there's been no wasting time indoors. I even got me some pink cheeks.

And then it's back to work tomorrow. And while I've a post a-perculatin', it's just gonna have to wait.

In the meantime here's some vacation sky for Sandy, taken at the lake early last week.



::For the record, while my camera does have a special setting for setting suns, the only special handling that shot had was shrinkage.::

Labels: Deep Shit, Pho-Ho', Saturday Sky

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.-Groucho Marx

Last Friday I was walking past the high school at the very time the varsity basketball players were being dropped off to catch a bus for the big game. Regional finals.

As I stood at the curb of the drive-way and watched the mom-driven cars with the win-driven passengers pass me by, I started to cry. Even though the brief surge of emotion caught me off guard, I quickly identified the source. Time.Flying.

See, I'm having trouble wrapping my pea brain around the fact that it was just over a year ago that I wrote this post about my son's last high school basketball game of all our lives. The game that set in motion the Perpetual Snot Fest That Was My Face, well into June.

I can't believe that it's coming up on one year since I started drinking heavily planning my son's graduation open house, plans that included a little Trippin'Down Memory Lane .

In about six weeks my son will conclude his freshman year of college and come home for the summer, to bug the ever lovin' shit right outta me. ::He's a colossal HBO hog.:: But the real emotional kicker for me has been The Cakers getting her draft papers for kindergarten, in the mail.

My baby. Starting kindergarten (providing she passes the physical). And me just pretending it ain't so. See, I know how this story ends, as described above. Only by the time she goes to college, I'll be feeble-minded. And off my rocker to boot. Late-onset Post-Traumatic Scrapbooking Disorder, they'll call it.

I have been preoccupied lately with this time thing. I've been feeling like that last clip in the final episode of Six Feet Under, where they fast forward through time for each of the characters,while Clare drives away at the speed of car. That's how I feel. I'm Clare's car. Same ol same ol, while the rest of my world is flying by, and eventually away.

Ack. I really wasn't going to get so fucking dramatic today. My original thoughts for this post were about my chronic fear of getting old and catching the same Mom Butt Disease that the lady on the Pizza commerical has. You know, the one who sprints down the street while carrying a pizza? They make it look like her life is so busy that her husband can't stop the car to pick up a pizza. The real story is that her husband is trying to leave her and her ol' lady khaki ass.

Getting Into My Pants.
I'm done with the pants, except for some weird ass shit I gotta do with the waistband. I have been putting this off for two days, and I'm sure I'll go five. But here's what I got so far:



The hole for the waist cord is about as gnarly as the crotch hole. I didn't use the cable cast on this time because the yarn ends up on the wrong side of the needle and, well, I didn't really care.

The Question
Is Cheesy Blogging better than No Blogging At All?

All right people. It's official. Work is kicking my ass. Again. I knew it was coming. It happens every year at this time, in the world of speshul ed. Because I blew my I-Can't-Blog-Good-No-More whine wad on The Test, I thought I'd take a more subversive tact, which is to distract readers from the lack (absence?) of interesting, current fodder, by linking to a past post which may be unfamiliar to new readers, and hopefully forgotten by youse faithful.

In fact, it was one year ago today that I pulled my first official cheese post, by rerunning a post from the previous year; an ode to my husband on his birthday. ::Happy Birthday Honey. Zoom.:: I won't link to that, because even I have my cheese link limitations. But it is a good read. Both times (i.e. March 22, 2004 and 2005).

An Asside: Has anyone else noticed that crime shows on TV are starting to borrow story lines from Scooby Doo episodes? Can you spell Saturated Market?

Labels: Deep Shit, Passages

Okay. After 3.25 hours in front of the computer (minus a pee), I hit the "score" button and covered my eyes.

30 seconds later, peeking through my fingers at the bottom of the screen, I see:



Hot Damn! I passed. Just barely, but who gives a Freudian hump? I passed. I passed. I passed...

I put my head on the table and tried to calm my jangly nerved self. After a moment or two, I look up at the screen to read the rest of the notice, and see the rest:



75 is passing. 84 is kicking names and taking ass.

::On the huge monitor, the 84 part was way over to the right of the screen and out of my "between the fingers" view. I was rather an emotional/cognitive wreck. K? And a person can be both goofy and brilliant.::

Almost the entire exam was vignette based. There was not one question on psychotropic medications. No cholinergic or primordial side effects to recognize. Nothing on research design either. And the one question about the differences between structural, strategic and Milan systems (which I knew, dammit) meant as much to me as "What color Froot Loop gets soggy before all the others?"

Not complaining. Nope.

Now I just have to figure out where to begin in my effort to reclaim my life. But not today. I'm plain worn out. I feel like a living, breathin' specimen of backwash.

And I'm 84 fucking percent okay with that.

License to Kill Drive
Now here's a quick (or not) little story about how this (or someone's) testie was almost dropped on its furry ass and how sometimes the fingers of universe gotta get pokin' in some goofy pie to get things going in the proper, predestined manner.

About a month ago, I get an email at work from personnel. In this email I am told that my personnel file is missing the I-9 form and could I please come by the office with the proper documentation (driver's license and soc. security card) and fill out the form?

It was a busy week and I knew for a fact that I provided all this info when hired, because I used to hire people and I just knew the deal, so I ignored it.

A week later, I get another nasty reminder. Again, I'm in no hurry. However, I do remember to put my social security card in my purse while at home, in case I get inspired.

Later that week I happened to be in the administration building for a meeting. As I was getting into my car to head home for a four day weekend, I remembered the form. Thinking once and thinking twice about trekking back across the parking lot in a slushball storm (it was raining slush balls at the time, weird, apocalyptic shit going on.) I decided to get the email monkeys off my back and went back in to fill out the forms.

As the secretary is putting the form in front of me, I tell her that I'm pretty sure that I filled this out back then. She was silent for a moment before sheepishly explaining that they had to go through 800 personnel files, checking for proper documentation and when they came to the last 100, they decided it would be easier to just make these people reproduce instead of going through them. And then she said she was sorry for the inconvenience.

I was not thrilled to hear this rationale, but truthfully, I'm a pretty flexible person when it comes to stuff like this. Besides, I was in the building anyway...

So the form is filled out and the secretary hands me my driver's license and says "That's expired, you know." I had no idea. My husband handles the car stuff and must not have noticed the driver's license renewal reminder with the car registration/tabs renewal. Back in November.

No biggy. I think.

Halfway home through the slushball storm I find myself almost having to pull off the road. Not because of the slushballs. Because I think I'm having a heart attack. Because I just remembered something.

Per the instruction packet I received after registering for the licensing exam, I MUST bring two items with me on the day of the exam: 1) The authorization letter that says I can take the exam and 2) a valid driver's license. Unexpired. It says just that in the instructional packet. Unexpired driver's license.

If not for having to make the wonky, irritating and totally unnecessary stop at the personnel office, in the middle of a slushball storm, to fill out a form that I didn't really need to fill out because I already filled it out, I would have shown up at the exam yesterday, with bells on, and an expired driver's license.

Because I never would have caught it.

I would have forfeited my seat and fee and have to wait 90 days to reapply. And then I would have had a word with my husband. Word.

Now, is that some weird, synchronitious shit, or what?

It was that odd little bend in the matrix that gave me a considerable boost of confidence that the outcome of the test was going to go my way. I don't think all those guardians of the test-icular universe would have gone through all that effort to mess things up, just to get me to sit and fail.

I believe. You?

Labels: Deep Shit, That Damn Test

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Christmas ain't for Mothers. Least not for the most part.

Now that I'm a few days out of the festive frenzy, I have a better attitude about the whole thing. But what really set me to proper perspective was something that happened on Christmas night, while we were en route to my sister's house, for the third and final family celebration of the day.

It was an accident. On the beltway. And it looked bad. Like, clutch your heart and say a prayer bad. As we were stopped at the light at the intersection where it happened, a mini-van and SUV pulled up on the shoulder of the road, directly to the right of me. Out of these vehicles sprang two middle-aged, paunchy guys, in baseball caps.

As I watched the two men sprint past the flares and toward the flashing lights and wreckage, I knew, in my mother's heart, these guys were fathers. Of teenagers. And for the remainder of the 10 minute ride to my sisters, I cried a bit. And prayed. For them. And then for my family. And finally, for me. For a cure for my whiney, soured, holiday heart.

Throughout the pandemonium that is typically my family's Christmas party (book worthy material, really) the image of those running dads was never far from my heart. Later, we learned that the accident happened when a 30 year old woman ran a red-light, and was broad-sided by a van, driven by a 16 year-old boy. The woman was hospitalized and is going to be okay. The teens sustained no injuries. At least not physically.

So, no post-holiday whiny, complainy post for me.

But there's no harm in making a couple observations. Right?

Holiday BM
Yeah, I'm talking about BM as in Movement. Big Movement of gifts. ::Ew! What did you think I was talking about?:: I've decided that Christmas is really all about moving stuff, as follows:

1. You go to mall and buy bags of stuff. And stuff.
2. From the mall, the stuff is moved to your car, then moved home.
3. From the car, the stuff is moved to several hiding spots in the house, where it remains until...
4. Yes, you guessed it, it's moved again. To the wrapping center.
5. Then, to under the tree.
6. Christmas morning, you move the stuff from under the tree, to the respective recipients, who then leave the stuff in wild piles all over the living room.
7. Until someone (who? I wonder?) moves it all back under the tree.

Meanwhile, across town, extended family members are having their own BM, as they move things from under their tree, to their car, and then across town. Toward you.

From their car, their stuff is moved into your house. And the ritual of the Christmas morning BM is repeated.

After the guests leave with their stuff, you prepare to move more stuff to a party at a different location, later in the day. This is like the ultimate BM. Lots of stuff, plus food, moved into the car, where it will be moved across town, and from the car, into a sister's house. Once inside, the stuff is moved toward the respective recipients.

While you move that stuff away from you, more stuff is moving towards you and your immediate family members. At the end of the party, all that new stuff will then be moved to the car, and across town, and from the car to the house, to be placed in wild piles, all about.

The following morning, upon finding more piles of moved stuff, needing to be moved, again, a person might be moved to tears, or drink, or Judaism. Or all of the above. (Judaism allows drinking, right?).

Call Me Natasha, Darlingk
So, Miss Darlingk, where did you get that hat?



...Oh, just a little something I threw together, while trying to keep my religion, after the Big Movement. I think, Norma, this might be the cure for the pea brained blues. At least, as far as the external issues are concerned.

The pattern is Feeling Fuzzy from the yarn girls guide to simple knits. The fuzzy yarn is Gedrifa's Micro Chic (discontinued, I believe.) and the top is Kool Wool, from Lion Brand, picked up for a song and a tooter from a local close-out bin. I added two inches to the foldup brim, to give a fuller look around the pea brain's face.

I came up with this idea after recalling the most flattering hat I ever owned, which was back in the 80's, when those Russion, fake fur/knit capped things were all the rage.

At this time, I have nothing on the needles and am contemplating my life ahead (another stint at the cottage, and mental preparation to return to work.)

Well, this post is much longer than I planned on making it. Already. So I'm cutting you off.

Coming attractions: A closer look at the BM pile. (i.e. Sometimes Christmas is for mothers.)

::A special shout-out to whomever (whoever?) nominated me for a Knit Blog award. I was, am, stunned and honored and stunned some more. Totally. Just that someone even considered this place worthy of being placed on that list of pretty big hitters is, well, really, really cool. Thank you.::

Labels: Deep Shit, Knit Done, Now You're Whining

A couple of weeks ago, our dog Cheddar was treated for a skin infection, with antibiotics. The dose was 2 capsules, 2x daily, with food.

Despite his predisposition for chomping on shit sticks, it seems that Cheddar has not yet acquired a taste for powdered ass, in capsule form. Enter: The peanut butter.

::As most dog owners know, peanut butter is the nose-schmear of champions, when it comes to getting any-size Fluffer to swallow a bitter pill.::

For 10 days in a row, after every meal, Cheddar had two pills shoved down his throat, followed with a dollop of peanut butter on his nose. Two days into the regiment, he had the whole routine figured out. Meaning, after every meal, he came to the kitchen with great expectations. Of the peanut butter variety. In fact, his love for the easy spread was so great, he pretty much forgot, meal to meal, about the other part. The pills.

Unfortunately, all great expectations must come to an end. And after the pills were gone, so was the twice daily nose dip.
But that first time he came to the kitchen, packing peanut butter expectations, I felt badly. Add to that, the confused, mournful stare, from his chocolate puddin' eyes, and paint me done wore down. And I gave him a little lick.

The next evening, against better judgment, I did it again. On the third night, however, I decided that this daily dance of deceit was done. I cut him off. Cold Turkey.

It took another three days for Cheddar to accept the reality that I would no longer be spreading it for him, in the kitchen. Yes, it was harsh and painful for both of us, but it had to be done.

Like Cheddar's brutal withdrawal of nose from nirvana, I’ve had a hard time giving up my peanut butter expectations, of the bygone days of summer.

That being said, it's probably been a good thing, to have had my nose to the grindstone, over the past three weeks.

With no reward.
And none expected.

Because that’s what made this weekend at the cottage, exceed my wildest expectation.

Pure Peanut Butter Surprise.

::That picture was taken early this afternoon. The Tootsies belong to me and my girl. Photography by Yours Truly.::

Labels: Cottage, Deep Shit, Pho-Ho'

Reward for Safe Return.

Okay, so I’m reading my last post, you know, doing that post-post analysis* that some bloggers are wont to do, and suddenly someone is clutching my breastessess, in utter mortification.

Uhh, before you grab that cocktail and sit down in titillating anticipation, forget about it. I clutch myself.

So, what, exactly is the source of the breast-clutching horror?
It seems I’ve lost my whimsy. My irrelevance. For, in that last post, ::I can hardly say this, I’m tellin’ ya:: I actually and quite seriously describe the contents of my new cabinet drawers.

As though this is interesting. Life altering, even.

As though people clicked out of this ol’ swine hole thinking “Wow, I’ll have to try that drawer thing. Now, how did that go again?”

As though, after reading my post, the ol’ knitblogger IM’s were firing up… "have you seen what Marcy did with her drawers?” And the word spread, like a cyber version of the opening scene of Bye, Bye Birdie.

Yeah. Exactly. So, let's just stick the rotisserie pole up my ass, right now, grab some sauce and fire up the grill.

How did this happen, exactly? How did Pig lose her Whimsy? Well, I think I know.

Remember that Bible story about Samsonite? The guy who disobeyed God by cutting his hair, then lost all his luggage while on vacation? He said it was just a mix-up, during a layover at the camel-stop. But we know what really happened: He cut his hair and lost his mojo. Then his world came crashing ‘round him.

You see, I’m afraid that the act of cleaning up my sty took away my mojo. My whimsy. Clean and organized goes against the very nature of my inner beast. And now I’m paying a terrible price, through the loss of interesting thoughts and words.

However, harken thee and be ye not afraid! The force of nature has my backside. For every act of cleanliness, there is a is a direct and opposing act of filth. And, like the growing out of a Wrath-of-God-Inducing haircut (And we've all had one.), we just need to give it some time.

Meanwhile, I’m up at the cottage, for the last hurrah of summer. And it’s raining. Which is a beautiful thing, today.

Knitting a Knomaly
I am currently working on a secret project, using some yarn I found during my cleaning binge. The yarn is some really weird, irritating, vintage shit, purchased during my Ebay period. It’s very strange. As you can see:



Even though it's strange, it's quite simple to describe: Two strands of silky dental floss, with a strand of Brillo pad, and the occasional embalmed fly carcass.

I’m using it with another Ebay purchase yarnomaly, to make a party shawl.

The results, so far, are pretty cool, but not very photogenic. So, I’m on a wait-and-see-how-it-goes-before-posting-picture plan. I’d hate to wind up the poster-child-knit-of-the-week of a snarky WTF knitblog post. Well, hate is a strong word…and any publicity, good or bad, is all good, right….?

Nope. Not ready.

But I’ll be sure to keep you posted.
In the mean time, I’ll just be up here, buggin’. In the rain.

*Ever notice the anal in analysis? Coincidence? Afreud not.

Labels: Deep Shit

Thunky Thursday
I can't shake this song, from first thing in my morning car…

Somebody told me
You had a boyfriend
Who looked like a girlfriend
I had in February of last year… - The Killers.

Be Killin.’
Me.

Autumnal Inequinox
I think I’m suffering from the seasonal malaise that Amy is reporting. I know that for me, it has to do with the shifting of the afternoon sun and the fact that I have no windows in my office (brain can't make gradual daily adjustments to changes). When Daylight Savings time is done in a couple of weeks, I’ll suddenly feel just right.

Tubular (Or: All That, and a Lithium Drip
I love:
The new TV show LAX . But I'm thinking that the writers can't keep up for long, the quick pace and interesting story lines that initially captured my attention.

I fear:
The BK commercial where the guy wakes up to find himself under the covers with a stiff headed Burger King, who lovingly hands him a sausage biscuit. Just add Dairy Queen with a banana split and they’d have the fixins’ for a ménage a porn parfait. (Anyone remember the joke about Burger King, Dairy Queen and an unwrapped Whopper?)

I hate:
All the new CSI copy cats. This includes the CBS copy cats, copy cat-assin’ their own show, about two too many copy cat-assin’ times. (Wordass Queen: I wasn't sure about the hyphens.)

My pick, however, for this year's copy cat lameass combo award goes to Medical Investigation. I wanted to like it, but the acting sucks and the premise can’t be swallowed without intubation.

SideNote: I’m actually relieved to hate this one. My brain is already overloaded with daily CSI reflections. I mean, every time I sneeze, I can’t help but picture, in full special effect slo-mo imagery, my little spittles flying through the air at 20,000,000 miles per hour, to land on some hapless victims shoulder who simultaneously brushes up against a woman who just had sex with a felon just moments after....okay...that’s my brain on CSI.

Oooh Baby, Baby Sweater
Almost done. All I have left is to whip up the collar and go upstairs and holler (where did that come from? I'm thinking of some childhood rhyme and pulling down pants...I think I’ve been Burger Kinged.)

Front



Back


Finis
My son received his acceptance letter from (to?) CMU yesterday. To say he is pleased would be an understatement. Last week we had a heart to heart about his college plans and he said he is really, really excited about going there and that he has no qualms giving up his Green Dreams. He also said he has no interest in visiting or applying to any other colleges.

Soooo.....Every fall my husband and I take a long weekend up north. We weren't gong to do it this year because I was needing to save my personal days for carting the Camster to college visits. Now that those plans have been neatly kiboshed, I'm taking a long weekend at the cottage, with The Husband, The Cakers, The In-laws and The Cheddar. ::My in-laws are great and their presence allows for a date night with my sugar daddy.::

We're leaving tonight after work. So posts might be scarce over the next couple days. Or not.

Labels: Deep Shit, Passages

My Stupid
Ummmm...the Flax Jax pattern I'm currently working on is not from the Falick/Nichols book. It's Eaton's Minnies . And it's moving along nicely, without much flack. .

This is a shot from the back. The seed stitch stripe doesn't come all the way around the front, which looks cute when it's done, but makes for a strange picture at this point in construction.



Rocky Road-ents
Over the past few weeks there have been scores of squirrel carcii showing up on the shores of Lake Michigan. People are also fishing live ones from the lake and channels. (You can read more about it here.)

I'm not typically an alarmist, but this squirrel unrising is kind of creeping me out. Is it a message from God? Boris and Natasha?

Or is it something less mystical, such as an innocent game of Lemmings that went terribly wrong?

Okay, that's a leap.

Maybe there's a simple explanation, such as they just missed the commuter furry ferry to Milwaukee and thought they could catch up.

The real nerve feeder for me is that the biologists don't have any answers either. While most of the scientists continue to stand around and scratch their ears heads, only a few have ventured out on a limb to hazard a guess or two on the etiology.

What I find odd, however, is that no one has mentioned the obvious similarities of this event to a phenomenon that occured a couple thousand years ago. I think you know where I'm scurrying with this.

The Dead Sea Squirrels. Exactly.

In fact, the Dead Sea Squirrel exhibit was in West Michigan just last year. I didn't go because I heard that you could only see little bits of squirrel and even then, could hardly tell what you were looking at. Truthfully, I found the whole concept a bit macabre.

So, is this just a dark coincidence or are we about to unearth a long buried secret? No doubt there will be plenty of chatter on the subject in the upcoming weeks. In the meantime, this mysterious tail, er, tale, is gonna drive me more than a little nuts. I'll be sure to update if I dig anything up.

Labels: Dead Sea Squirrels, Deep Shit