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

Tuesday, Cabana had his appointment with The Doctor Electric, who agreed with The Doctor Aortal's appraisal, and is 95% sure that Cabana’s visit to Camp Cardio last month, was cognitively induced.

But just to be sure, The Doctor Electric has put Cabana on an Event Monitor for 30 days. An Event Monitor is a little black box which, at the push of a button, records a specific period of heart activity, via wires that are hooked up to freshly plunged nipple rings...Oops. Wrong website.

You can read more about the real thing here.

I'll be back in later in the weekend with a spousal perspective on the keeping score of the heart and related rhythms of love and fidelity.

In the meantime, there's an already opene bottle of Chianti in the kitchen, with my name on it and some real Freye Canday for your perusing pleasure.

Labels: eye candy Friday, The Heart of Man

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