My Scanner is Baroque as Chamber Music.

We had two options: they would send the new one to Fixit Dude at the local Operations Center, and he could come back out in a week or so to install it. Or they could send it here, and our in-house IT diva and I could put it in and fire it up.

It should be here on Tuesday.

I promise that I wasn’t feeding it paper clips or Twix crumbs. I think it might have been the luxe letterhead [we admire alliteration and assonance, chez Ravelled] that some plaintiff attorneys use in their correspondence. I think it was a case of virtual gout; just too rich a feed. Or something.

We had early dismissal from work. I left at 4:00 and headed straight for the bookstore, after leaving the Good Brother a voicemail telling him that, no offense, I was only coming for the boxes because I was just barely awake. He had been up for about a day and a half, himself, and was unoffended.

Made a nice stack of books and magazines, ordered a four-cheese panini and a fork, and settled down for some serious browsing.

They had a European knitting magazine that was new to me. I do not remember the name. Nice production values, and nothing that screamed “knit me”. Came home with the new Knit.1, in part because of Nicky Epstein’s sweater on the cover, which I would make with a few minor modifications, and in part because I tore a page while turning it.

Also the Summer IK, which has several projects that made me say “Hmm, maybe,” and one that makes me want to turn cartwheels. That Manos de Uruguay crop cardi with the embroidered collar. Deliriously over-the-top, something like unto the love child of Alice Starmore and Kaffe Fassett. In pretty much the same colors as pictured, although I reserve the right to tweak them.

Here’s what I scored at game night, last night. Poor Lorelai! The indignity of a Grapes-of-Wrath drive home...



To the rescue: My handy luggage cart. First fell swoop.



Second fell swoop.



And six more boxes, from another friend in the dinner group.



And here.



These are the boxes I brought home from the dance last weekend. They had spent the week neatly stacked on a table in the living room.



And Thursday night while I was winding down from the choir concert, they all gave a despairing sigh and leaped, lemming-like, onto the couch and down to the floor.

While I was at the bookstore last night, I discovered a small error [mine, not the designer’s] in the Flared Lace Smoke Ring and carefully tinked back two rounds to fix it. So that’s done. And the yarn, delicate though it is, is none the worse for it. I thought this project would be a quick knit, maybe a week’s worth of knitting. While I am getting the hang of the pattern, I think it will end up taking me two or three weeks, so I may finish just in time to pack it up for the move. I’ll try to snap a picture tomorrow or Monday, when I have a little more progress to show.

I have no idea what to take for mindless knitting to the music venue today, or to the BBQ tonight.

I also want to pick up a cute shirt to wear tonight, in a color that I know looks good on me. Just in case there is a window of flirting opportunity.

Friday, Blessed Friday!

Where did this week go? Oh yeah, it was largely spent on the road again. [Resisting the temptation to link to Willie Nelson].

LittleBit’s final concert was excellent, and about an hour too long for these knees in those seats. I will never again have to sit in fetal position for a choir performance. The voices, I will miss. The aches that come from insufficient legroom, not at all. Lark will be attending a newer, richer high school this fall. Their auditorium, I like.

I won the flatware storage chest on eBay. Also some other stuff. I’ve been outbid on yet another pair of clogs, but that’s OK; not sure that I really needed a third pair of red shoes.

Did I just say that? Somebody hand me some chocolate, stat!

I do need to sluice off and find something to wear and hit the road. I’m torn between driving in and riding the train. My knees are quite tender this morning; on the other hand, it is payday, and I'm not sure that I want to ride the train to and from work and then cross town again for game night with the singles. I am mostly going because the Good Brother will have more boxes for me.

My scanner is on the fritz at work. I spent a good chunk of yesterday trying to look busy.

We have early dismissal today; I’ll be off at four. I really, really wish that I could just stay home and snooze...

The knitting behaved itself yesterday. I am nearly done with round 4 on the Flared Lace Smoke Ring. It’s going more quickly, now that I’m using circs again. Starting it out on DP’s was absolutely the way to go, at least for this knitter.

And I cannot praise too highly my KnitPicks Harmony circ.

On the road again? Just can’t wait to be on the road again! Not.

My Joy Rush List

Blessings on Barb for coming up with this idea. It has been a culturally rich and emotionally rocky week; it was good to ponder things that fill my cup and make it “runneth over”. Here’s a lucky 13.

1. Wind chimes
2. Double rainbows
3. Ben and Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk
Knitting. Even while I’m ripping it out. Or getting to the office without my instructions for round #2 of the Flared Lace Smoke Ring; found them just before bedtime last night, with the newspapers I brought home [for packing dishes] the night before.
4. Singing harmony with Michael Bublé to “Save the Last Dance for Me”
5. Spinning. When Micki let me play with her Lendrum at Knit Night a couple of months ago, I drove home weeping with joy.
6. Dancing East Coast Swing to Ray Charles’ “Let Me Take Over” or Chaka Khan’s “I Want”
7. Singing with my daughters
8. Diana Krall singing “Besame Mucho”
9. Falling asleep with the late afternoon sun slanting through the blinds and onto my face
10. Pansies
11. Kissing a man who likes me, likes to kiss, and is in no hurry
12. Just about anybody singing “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” Michael Bublé, Dwight Yoakam, Queen
13. Holding my grandbabies while they sleep

It’s Thursday. Tonight is LittleBit’s spring choir concert. She has ten more days of school. And after three different cast-ons [casts-on?], I am on round #3 of the Flared Lace Smoke Ring, transferring my stitches carefully from the DP’s that established and stabilized the first two rounds, onto my lovely KnitPicks Harmony needle.

Duplex, Before

I took these pictures of my new neighborhood Sunday morning, after realizing that I went to the wrong ward and needed to kill some time before my own ward started.

Morning light through a tree in the front yard.



The back yard.



The back door.



The driveway.



Looking up into another tree. Not sure if you can see that twisted branch.



Where the upside-down tomatoes will go.



Its armless friend?



I have more photos, but I need to edit out the house numbers first. This is near a number-free porch column.



Another shot of the back yard, between that first view and the end of the driveway. Lots of trees. Have I mentioned how much I like the trees?



I cast on the Flared Lace Smoke Ring yesterday. Twice. The first time I used the long tail cast-on, and it was too tight. The second time I used the knitted cast-on, and it was not quite snug enough. I am going to cast on again holding two size 4 DP’s together [and pulling one out before I knit] and the longtail cast-on and see if that works. I also assembled my KnitPicks Harmony circ and will see how that goes; the Addi Lace was just a little too slippery with the 100% cashmere yarn. I think if I knit the first round or two on DP’s and then move to the circ, I will have smooth transitions from one needle to another and can knit the balance using Magic Loop.

I lost out on my bid for a box to hold my silverware yesterday; the auction closed while I was sitting on the train. I’ll try again. Yes, I could go pay retail in a store, but why?

Walk with Me to the Train Station

I see this old building every night as I head home.



These are flowers in WFAA Park, named for the TV and radio stations.



I love The Katy Building. I drove past it every morning on my way to work. This is taken from two blocks south and is as embiggened as I know how to make it. One day when I have oodles of time, I’ll get closer so that you can see the detail at the top of those columns. They delight me!



And this is the view westward, down Young Street toward Union Station, which is the white building that you glimpse in the distance.



There is a really cool fountain opposite the station. I’ll try to get a picture of it when the panhandlers are busy elsewhere or I have a friend to watch my bags.

And now for a word from the Churchboy Dating Service. Nothing yet from Brother PossiblyNotPsycho, but Brother Sushi says my response to his profile was just about perfect. And he asked around discreetly, and nobody seems to know this guy. [I just checked; he’s read my profile, but made no contact. So I’m thinking that’s a no thank you.]

There was another “match” waiting when I got home from the voice recital. His needs are simple: “I would like to meet someone who likes to be outside. Walks in the woods and goes fishing. Looks aren’t that important.” Sounds to me that what he wants is a fishing buddy! Or perhaps a raccoon? And yes, while I might have mentioned right here on this very blog that I want to learn to fish, I am so not Backwoods Barbie.

Next!

The voice recital on Saturday was about equal parts exquisite and excruciating. Granted, it is difficult in the best of circumstances to stand before an audience [no matter how doting] and sing your heart out. And more so to do it for a grade. For the most part, I think the singers were matched with songs in their range. But there were a couple of kids who were having a Very Bad Day. So bad that I suddenly understood why people used to take cabbages to the opera. So bad that when Firstborn passed me two smallish breath mints, one for me and one for Brother Sushi, I thought, “OK, one for each ear, but how am I going to get them out again, and what is he going to do?”

You will be pleased to know that LittleBit did us proud. She fumbled some of the lyrics in her solos [almost everybody did, at least once], but every blessed note was on pitch. And her duet with her BFFE [they go all the way back to first grade] made me weep, but for all the right reasons. They sang the “Flower Song” from Lakmé. It’s one aria that doesn’t make my teeth hurt.

The second Serpentine [small] is done.



Lest you think that I have artfully fiddled the Serpentine [medium] pair to make it seem as if there are two pairs?



Work is likely to be crazy today. Two of my team members are off for a daughter’s / granddaughter’s kindergarten graduation. Ask me later what I think about kindergarten graduations, sixth grade graduations, and eighth grade graduations, none of which ~ thankfully ~ we have yet endured in this tribe. And another proud grandma has one tomorrow.

OK, I’ll just tell you now. I think they devalue the really important ones that come later: high school and college. I think it is all part of the whole PC let’s make sure they feel good about themselves movement.

And now I have 15 minutes to get ready and head for the train. Review of Lark’s choir concert, later this week.

Oye, Caramba! -- Impressions and Stupors of Thought

I went over to Fort Worth yesterday morning and discovered that I had gotten there just in time for the Spanish Ward. I went back at 1:00 for my new ward’s meetings. Sigh...

I love my new ward. Already. It’s minuscule [that word really should be spelled miniscule; miniskirt, minivan, mini muffins; minuscule? what were they thinking?], which means that it should not take long to get names and faces matched up. And it’s friendly. I introduced myself to the woman who was handing out the sacrament meeting programs, and she asked where I would be living, and before the meeting started ten minutes later, she had brought over one of my new neighbors and sent another to find me.

The stake president was the bishop of the ward that we lived in when we stayed with friends, fifteen years ago. So I already love and respect and trust him. Today was ward conference in the new ward, which is why I got to chat briefly with the stake president after sacrament meeting and reintroduce myself.

But before that happened, and after the closing prayer, I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up into the blue, blue eyes of The Nice Brother, who was attending on stake business. And who seemed as pleased to find me there as I was to see him. I spent a good portion of Gospel Doctrine class beaming “ask me out, ask me out, ask me out” across the room while keeping my eyes firmly fixed on the teacher.

I didn’t think anything could be better than the dance last night. I was wrong.

OK, maybe not that giddy. But I could be persuaded. The giddiness distracted me, at least a little, from one of my purposes in attending. I’ve been collecting impressions over the last four or five months. And I’m trying to piece them into one coherent whole, but I think there are still a number of important pieces missing.

I am feeling flashes of inspiration rather more frequently than I’m accustomed to. I recognized The Nice Brother when I first set eyes on him earlier this year, from a very brief description that 2BDH had given me. I just knew him. I knew which male friend it was who had been the Good Sam to another sister in our dinner group. I think I know what my calling will be in the new ward; I think it was confirmed by something apparently random that one of my friends said when we were visiting teaching last month. My best friend was talking about a difficult calling she had had recently, and how hard it was to mentor a certain individual, and I knew who it was, without her giving a description or mentioning a name. I just wish I were better at getting impressions about my kids, but I think that I don’t because I am standing too close to the trees.

I wish I knew what this meant. Because ultimately the connection with Heaven is what supports my connection with any of my fellow mortals. And I don’t want to get distracted by something that might become pleasant and/or exciting and miss out on something that is subtle and more enduring. Nor do I want to miss on something that is appropriately pleasant and exciting because I am overly focused on the subtle.

In the meantime, I am grinning like the Cheshire Cat. And today I will be binding off the second Serpentine [small] and casting on with my purple Jojoland Cashmere for the Flared Lace Smoke Ring.

Laissez les bons temps roulez!

I’m With the Band [???]

The dance last night was great. We had a live band, and they were good. Covered a lot of late 60’s and early 70’s stuff, the songs of my misspent youth. They fired up “Black Magic Woman”, and in those magical opening chords, my hips and feet took on a life of their own. Next thing that I knew, the lead guitarist had jumped down from the stage and was dancing with me. [I thought I had wandered into a Springsteen video by mistake; nyah nyah nyah, Courtney Cox!]

How. Cool. Is. That.

A few bars before the end of the song, he wandered on back to the stage. Absolutely the best dance that I've been to since I started coming to the singles’ activities. They’ll be back next month. [So will I.]

Took me almost two hours to drive home, as there was a horrible accident on I-635. I was so sleepy once I got past the accident site that I stopped at a drive-through to pick up a shake. Took another 20 minutes or more to get through that line, as the folks at the head of the line were apparently having issues with their order. As I type this section, it is now two and a half hours since I left the dance, and while I am tired, I am not sleepy.

I moved all the boxes that I packed on Thursday night to stacks on top of my long folding tables, before leaving for the dance. And I packed another five or six boxes and typed up the last of my labels. I will probably need more. I brought home five more lidded boxes and enough knocked-down smaller boxes to fill 2/3 of my back seat. But since it is 1:01am, I don’t think I will traipse out to the car and bring them in.

So, here is my new-to-me flatware.



And here.



I’m also bidding on a small mahogany chest to store them in. Polishing silver is one of those meditative activities that’s fun to do every once in awhile but would be a pain in the patoot on a weekly basis.

OK, it’s now almost 1:30, and I’m officially sleepy. Heading over to the new ward later this morning to meet all the powers-that-be, particularly those who will be helping to unpack the truck in a few weeks.

Night, all!

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

LittleBit went out and got her own phone plan and a new number and a much fancier phone than I would have sprung for. On her own nickel, no less! This will give her a bit of credit history, and that’s a good thing.

I called our provider to ask them to drop her old number, which they will do at the end of the billing cycle. I have also downsized from the family plan to the empty-nester plan and cut my text messaging limit by 70%. I’m not one of those obnoxious folks who treats everybody else on the train to half of a phone conversation, so I think that 500 voice minutes will be plenty. [And someday I will be sufficiently saintly not to look down my nose at the folks who break up with their boyfriends on the 5:46. Someday isn’t here yet.]

In today’s “I am so impressed” department? The comment left on Wednesday’s post by the designer of that luscious smoke ring scarf. I followed the links to a page where I could purchase a PDF. So I did.

Since the Serpentine [medium] is now a full pair...



...and the second Serpentine [small] is cast on, it’s time to start thinking about the next project. I am not quite ready to tackle making both Anastasia socks the same size. [I suspect that it will involve ripping both socks back to the toes.] And I am resisting the idea of two socks on two circs, but that might just do the trick, particularly if I go with a smaller needle size for the sole.

I’m not sure if this smoke ring pattern will be suitable for knitting on the train. It looks like about a week’s worth of knitting. And like all good lace patterns, it looks deliciously complicated, but I suspect that the actual knitting will be straightforward. After I’ve worked one repeat, I’ll know if it’s a good one to take on the road.

My eBay silverware arrived at the office on Friday. It’s gorgeous! I wanted to go home immediately and bake up a batch of popovers and use my new plates. Photos of said silverware to follow, just not today. But here is a plate.



And here are my newest Dansko clogs.



Followed by the ones that came a couple of weeks ago.



Love that rich red!

I feel like a little girl again, playing house. Only this time there are no tiny boxes of pretend food, or stubby plastic forks or miniature copper-clad Revereware pans [I’m tracking some of those on eBay]. Now there is neat stuff that nobody wanted anymore, which I am saving from a landfill. Beautiful, milky old silver and vintage linens and clever cupboards.

There was an interesting profile waiting for me from the Churchboy Dating Service last night. No obvious red flags, so I responded cautiously and have forwarded his profile to Brother Sushi to see if he knows him.

I packed seven boxes of books last night before bedtime and slept in until just after 6:00 this morning! LittleBit’s senior voice recital is at 10:00 this morning, so I need to start getting ready. Fourthborn will be riding with me. And I’m supposed to call Brother Karitas sometime today, because he thought he might have stories to tell me. Tonight there is BBQ and dancing with a live band [as opposed to a dead one?] and a carful of boxes to pick up from one of the Good Brothers, who has been collecting them for me all week.

I snapped a few good pictures of downtown BigD on the walk to the train station last night, but they will have to wait for another post. I need to update Flickr and Ravelry so I can put Serpentine [medium] into my Finished Objects list.

Taking Up a Collection for a Thesaurus, and Other Mutterings

1. On the train into work yesterday, there was a young man who seemed to have only two words in his vocabulary: “shi’man” and “foo”. And let the record show that he was not of the mocha persuasion. I think we should also buy him some consonants while we are at it. If you are going to curse, at least be intelligible...

2. In which Ms. Ravelled appreciates a new context for the phrase “hell on wheels”. Just in case you’re wondering where I fit in his classification system, let me state for the record that I have a reserved parking space in the Pharisees’ parking lot on Whited Sepulchre Lane. With a brass name plate. And a valet who hands me a bag full of peeled grapes as I hand him my keys.

One more character issue for me to work on.

On to happier things. I am ready to bind off the top of the second Serpentine [medium]. I will probably finish that before work this morning. So, photos coming soon! Can the second Serpentine [small] be far behind?

I went to our ward’s monthly Home, Family, and Personal Enrichment Meeting [formerly known as Homemaking Night] last night and had a great time, as always. Mostly it was a potluck and a chance to sit and visit with friends. We had a brief book review, on a book that had vaguely interested me when it came out a few months ago, and now sounds like something I want to read and keep in my personal library. [I know, I know. One more book. Just trying to keep things interesting for my executrix.]

But the best part is that LittleBit [who turned 18 last December and now qualifies to be part of the largest and oldest women’s organization in the world, a/k/a Relief Society] and I are now assigned to be visiting teachers together. It will only be for this month and as much of next month as we are still in the ward, but this is the first time I have ever been able to go visiting teaching with one of my daughters. And we have been assigned to visit two of the liveliest, loveliest sisters in our ward.

OK, time for me to post this and quickly get ready for work. I tried a different station yesterday and learned an alternate, non-flooding route to the one that I prefer. I love having options!

“The Lady’s Not for [Drowning]”

With apologies to Christopher Fry. I dashed out to my car in the cloudburst yesterday morning, headed up for the park and ride, made it through the first low-water crossing with only a little uneasiness, and came to a lake where there should have been an intersection. With two low-water crossings yet to go. There was a pickup waiting to turn, and somebody else stopped a couple of blocks ahead of me, so I put on my left-turn signal [because my car is mysteriously without one that says “Hang on a minute. I’m making a U-turn.”] and headed back the way I came.

I figure that my life is worth the $15.00 that it costs to park under my building. And two of the monthly-parkers were out of the office yesterday, so another co-worker with the same idea and I, both got to park for free.

Preparing for the future. Some things that have been on my mind for the past several months, and new ideas that have popped up like mushrooms after the rain.

Emergency power supply for CPAP machine
It’s one of those things you don’t think about until you’re sitting in the dark and wondering if you’ll have to sleep propped up in a chair all night. After our brief blackout a couple of weeks ago, I spent some time researching options for a backup power supply.

My friend Brother Karitas’ father has a BiPap; it pushes air into his lungs and pulls it out again. Their backup is a gasoline-powered generator on the back porch, and when the power is out, it is Brother Karitas’ job to sit on the back porch in the exhaust fumes and make sure that the generator continues to function.

These are some of the options that I came up with. When I have a place of my own, I would like to set up the solar panels as the primary backup, with a conventional battery in case of extended darkness. I don’t know if any of you also use a CPAP or if you’ve thought about the need for an alternative power source. If you have one, what did you choose, and why?

http://www.powerenz.com/store/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=24
http://www.cpapdiscountstore.com/catalog/super-cpap-battery-pack-bgc222-p-709.html
http://www.cpap-supply.com/Articles.asp?ID=146
Note in the last that they recommend a deep cycle marine battery. What a charming accessory for the boudoir! I wonder if it comes in red...

I forwarded my research, embryonic as it is, to one of my co-workers who uses a CPAP. It hadn’t occurred to him, either, that “no power” = interrupted sleep.

My second pair of Dansko’s arrived at the office yesterday, and the snack plates, both won on eBay. Which leaves the mystery package from England [well, it's not a mystery to me, but it needs to be one for everybody else, at least for now] and the silver flatware.

And I bid on more of the salad plates last night.

I’ve been reading the home dec and gardening magazines that my co-worker and his wife share with me, and I am getting itchy to try unblackening my thumb. He also brought me a sheaf of Cook’s Illustrated, which I have yet to sit down and peruse.

The second Serpentine [medium] is about halfway done, and my row counter has gone missing. I think I had it at Knit Night. It might have slipped off my lap on the train, night before last; I don’t know. So I am making do with check-marks up one side of the chart.

I brought home five boxes from Knit Night [thanks, Jeri!], which we loaded into the car before the sky opened up, and which I unloaded after I got home last night. We have a potluck at church tonight. My contribution will be whatever I can pick up at the store after I get off the train. So, probably no packing tonight, but I’m bowing out of a dinner group activity for tomorrow night, and maybe I can get half a dozen boxes packed before bedtime.

Gotta dash. We had more rain last night, so I need to find an alternate route to the park and ride.

I have “No Reservations” about “Mostly Martha”.

Somebody, I think it was Kristen, asked if I’d seen either or both. And the answer to that is “yes”. Both, and I like them both. And I like both soundtracks, and I think it’s funny that both scores share that wonderfully ditzy jazzy song.

This appealed to my sense of whimsy.

Link to another article that will make you think.

I love Bloglines. I love getting notified when one of my girls posts to her blog, or one of my friends. I am a relative latecomer to brooklyntweed’s blog. That smoke ring he is knitting just knocks my [hand-knitted] socks off! I clicked on the link he provided, and I like the pattern, and I balk at paying $5.95 to ship a $5.00 pattern. I think the pattern would be perfect for my lone skein of Jojoland Cashmere.

But I also think that I will be sitting down with my four volumes of Barbara Walker and designing my own. Blame it on eBay, where my formula for maximum bid on an item is that X plus shipping should be no more than half of retail. So, when shipping is more than the cost of an item, I think twice. And sometimes three or four times.

I have been really lucky on eBay recently. Two new-to-me pairs of shoes. Dishes in one of the patterns that I collect, at hardly more than yard sale prices. Yesterday I scored 36 pieces of silver flatware, missing only one teaspoon, which I just happen to have, packed away in one of the boxes in my dining room. For $15.50 plus shipping. I was outbid on the kitchen toy that I want, and that’s OK. That particular item shows up much more frequently than buses, trains, or age-appropriate men.

I am nearly ready to begin the pattern on Serpentine [medium]. If I don’t drown in the deluge that’s coming down.

In the Middle of the Night

My mom had an uncommon amount of common sense. When I was a young, hormonal girl in the throes of unrequitedness, she would smile gently and remind me, “Lynn, boys are like streetcars. There’ll be another one in 15 minutes.” And she was right. When I was young.

Now that I am squarely in the middle of my life, I have learned that not only are the pickings decidedly slimmer [even if the men and I are not], but there are downsides to public transportation as well. For example, if you need to go home in the middle of the day and there is no bus waiting at the usual stop to take you to the station, so you walk four blocks to the station and arrive in time to see the train pulling out? You will have to sit on a metal bench for an hour and a half and smile sweetly at panhandlers and tell them that you have no money to give them, because you are a single mom and have no money, just blessings.

[This, I know, is what our British cousins would call a prevarication. I have no money because I just paid my tithing and my bills, and I bought a spinning wheel. I told them the truth. I just didn’t tell them all the truth. I learned this from my children.]

There was another middle-aged woman waiting for the train. We were Safety Kids and sat together. And the transit cops were much in evidence, so we weren’t really bothered by the transients. And I had my knitting. So it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it could have been. Even when the platform was invaded by a horde of middle-schoolers heading back from a field trip, who had enough collective energy to power a small village [who am I kidding; they were a small village].

Even though I was not in the best of moods, and their noise level matched their energy level, I could tell that they were good kids. One of them gave up his seat and squished in with two skinny friends so that another woman my age could sit down. They were not profane or abusive; they were just loud. And as we rolled past Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, I was impressed how great it was that these kids were outside, living their lives, not inside the hospital, fighting for them.

I hit the drive-through at Panda Express and picked up an order of orange chicken *and* spring rolls with mustard. I left the office a little after 1:00; I was sitting here at my computer about 4:00 and went to bed around 5:00, full of fiery food rather than the chagrin which had occupied the last several hours.

I woke up a little before midnight, just as LittleBit was getting home, so we had evening prayers together for the first time in weeks, maybe months. And then she went to bed, and I am apparently up for the duration.

The guys among you are probably scratching your heads and wondering why I had to come home in the middle of the day, when I was not throwing up. [Yay! for not throwing up!] The ladies among you will have figured out that I had a Female Emergency yesterday, something that is prone to happen at the beginning of the reproductive cycle when we are getting used to having hormones, and unfortunately also at the end of it when we thought we were safely past it.

I do not know if there is a male equivalent of the helplessness that you feel as you overflow your protection, or the embarrassment which accompanies the knowledge that anyone standing behind you can tell what time of the month it is. Thankfully, I learned decades ago that it’s almost impossible to die of embarrassment. And mercifully, it was a coolish day yesterday so I had a long jacket with me. Still, I think I was never so glad to be sitting in my own car as I was last night.

I am about ready to hit the fridge and bring out the rice I was unable to finish last night. She tossed in a side of sweet and sour sauce, and I have some leftover pineapple as well, so I think I am in for a treat. Not sure what I will do for the next four hours until my alarm goes off. Maybe finish binding off Serpentine [medium] and cast on the next one and then a little spinning?

I think we could use a little music. And I seem to be on a kick. But you can’t argue with the classics.

Firstborn sent me this yesterday. Her boss sends out inspirational thoughts to their office.

Good morning.
Patience
A man must learn to endure patiently what he cannot avoid conveniently. [Michel de Montaigne]

So, apparently, must a woman. Even when she is her own personal Red Sea, and drowning like Pharaoh.

56-Year-Old Women Should Not...

1. Be having visits from the Red Fairy.
2. Eat refried beans while enduring a visit from the Red Fairy.
3. Need Midol, and be without it on the Sabbath.
4. Have flushed the anti-inflammatory prescription last week, just because they hadn’t taken it in two months.
5. Have food cravings; see #1.
6. Miss church because they had chills and fever; maybe it wasn’t those beans after all?
7. Throw up on Mother’s Day. So hard they get a nosebleed.
6. Kill spiders by throwing up on them; so I didn’t, but that deserves its own paragraph, below.

I called my friend Leslye to let her know that neither of us would be at church. LittleBit had a command performance at her restaurant; all those Sabbath-breakers taking Mom out for her once-a-year lunch. And I? I was otherwise occupied. I asked Leslye to snag some chocolate for me, if that was what they were handing out, because I wasn’t always going to be throwing up.

I really hope they didn’t give me another mouth to feed geranium to keep track of.

I woke up a little past 2:00, about five or ten minutes before Middlest called me from Virginia. I asked her what time it was. [Our block of meetings run from 11:00 - 2:00.] I suspect that the real reason I was sick is because the Adversary did not want me at church, and not simply because Mother’s Day is my least-favorite holiday. Witness: I’ve never gotten sick on Father’s Day, and I’m not all that crazy about it, either.

After I was done chatting with Middlest, I left a message on Leslye’s cell phone. “Please tell me there is not a tall, good-looking man wandering around the chapel with a ring box in his hand, looking for me!” Hey, if he really is Brother Right, then he’ll be there when I’m there, and not when I’m not. Right? It’s all about the timing.

My friend Tinks sent me this Mother’s Day card. [OK, that link takes you to a generic page. Click on Mother’s Day More and then on What Mom Hears. Unlike Mother’s Day per se, I like this card!

And on we go to the story about not-barfing-on-the-spider. I was sitting in the tub, minding my own business, hoping that the hot water would warm my cramping abdomen and get it to stop. And all of a sudden my mouth started watering, so I grabbed the little washtub that I use when LittleBit and I are having Gilmore Girls moments, soaking our feet side by side while we eat popcorn and watch old musicals. And I propped it between my knees and my chest, and I waited. And then I saw a tiny little spider, no bigger than the head of a quilting pin, scrambling frantically to get out of the washtub. And I thought, “Nobody, not even an eensy weensy spider, deserves death by vomit.” So I dipped a corner of the washtub into the water and drowned him in tub water. It seemed the kinder thing to do.

OK, how lucid are you when you know you’re about to hurl?

I cautiously sipped some apple juice around 4:00pm. It stayed down. I followed that an hour later with a bowl of ramen noodles. They stayed down. Bowl of applesauce at 6:00pm? It stayed down, too. Houston, our stomach has landed! I spent the late afternoon updating my queue on Ravelry and the evening watching most of Waking Ned Devine while knitting away happily on the medium Serpentine Mitt. And catching up, gingerly, on a day’s worth of calories.

Got an email from one of the Good Brothers, offering empty boxes and a strong back, for my move. Got another one from Leslye, saying that she had my chocolate for safekeeping. Got about four hours of sleep when I went to bed very late last night, and while I would rather stay home and knit or spin!!! I think I am well enough to be a responsible corporate citizen and get on the train this morning.

It’s Monday. I’m vertical. That’s progress!

Baby Grand

I had no idea that this song even existed. Pretty amazing.

Stay me with enchiladas, comfort me with sour cream, for I am depleted by motherly concern. [With apologies to Solomon and his Song (2:5), which we never, ever discuss in Gospel Doctrine class; I’m guessing it falls neatly under the “as far as it is translated correctly” part of the Eighth Article of Faith.] I had a lovely long talk with one of my girls yesterday; I need to have one with another.

It is not the girls themselves who are wearying, nor the fact that they are each struggling with mighty challenges; it is, I think, what the Savior was talking about when the woman touched the hem of His robe in order to be healed, and He felt virtue flow through Him and out into her. I am an ordinary mortal, trying to live the commandments to the best of my understanding and abilities. Most of my contact with the Spirit comes in quick flashes and promptings, not in extended conversations where I open my mouth and He gives me the words to speak.

The flashes and promptings go onto my honey-do list; they take nothing out of me. But the moments when I know that I am speaking Truth, rather than just hoping that I am, those leave me spent.

Yesterday was a very good day; I got all four of the temporal items checked off my list [fed the elders, voted in the local election, picked up the filing cabinet and the spinning wheel], *and* my nails done. Dinner with Brother Sushi last night was everything I could have wished. Good food, and plenty of it. He unloaded my new filing cabinet out of the back seat of Lorelai.



We traded stories. And as he was letting me back into his pickup, I asked him to scratch a spot on my back that I cannot easily reach.

Back-scratching is a very intimate thing. I am nearly as picky about who gets to scratch my back [notwithstanding the layers and layers of clothing between the scratcher’s hand and my epidermis] as I am about who gets to touch my bare feet [which is basically nobody, thank you very much; I don’t do pedicures though I probably should]. LittleBit is the best back-scratcher in the immediate family. She knows just where the itches or tension are lurking, and she has the strength to push and dig until the itch or pain goes away.

LittleBit, unfortunately, was at work when the Itch Fairy attacked my left shoulder blade last night. Brother Sushi was an excellent substitute. I went into dinner tired, hungry, sleepy, and for lack of a better word, fraught. After I hugged him goodnight, I was replete and listened-to and non-itchy.

Look what I noticed sitting on top of an unused desk when I walked down the hall to kick off my shoes.



It’s been in this box since 1991. Just waiting for me.



A small and vibrant piece of myself that I needed to set aside for awhile. And now it’s time to pick it up again.

Have a blessed and peaceful Sabbath, everyone. I had hoped to attend sacrament meeting in my future ward, just to make contact with the bishop and the high priest group leader and the Relief Society president, and then come back here for my meetings, but I did not get out after dinner last night to tank Lorelai. I have enough gas to get to church and home, and to the gas station in the morning. So that will have to wait until next Sunday.

I Enjoy Being a Girl [Not!]

You would think that at age 56 I would be done with this nonsense. You would be wrong. I keep telling those ageing eggs “Honeys, nobody is lining up to sign your dance card.” They must be deaf, or just exceedingly hopeful. I noticed a little tenderness north of the equator when I was toweling off the other day and I thought, “Oh please, not that, I have too much to do right now.”

But apparently the universe disagrees. So hand over the Midol and the dark chocolate, and nobody gets hurt.

In knitting news, the first Serpentine [small] is finished and in my opinion resembles nothing so much as a pink saguaro cactus with a Fauxhawk.



And I have cast on the first Serpentine [medium], because it looks as though there will be plenty of yarn.



One of my attorneys sent out the following email on Friday afternoon, “I am heading over to the Dallas courthouse - does anyone need anything?”

I responded, “One (1) cop, single, straight, age appropriate, no substance abuse problems.” We will blame that on Flower Drum Song.

And in other news, we now have this.



[Yes, that is the Holy Family still hanging out on my end table.] The wheel is actually prettier in this picture than in real life. And yes, that is a platform bolted onto its T-shaped base. The bobbins are different from the ones I had, back in the day, but I’m sure they will do.

Thanks, Jeri! She emailed me earlier in the week to say that a spinner she knew had just put up an ad for this, for a ridiculously low price. I call it a blessing for paying my tithing. It’s not as pretty as my first S-10, which had a matte clear finish, but it has personality and character, and it treadles smoothly.

I resisted the temptation to buy any fiber, though this new shop in Lancaster has all sorts of yarny and fibery goodness. The owner believes in supporting Texas producers. She carries the lovely Brooks Farm Yarns, and roving from the woman who sold me this wheel, and all sorts of names that you would recognize. I like her, and I will be back. They have a community spin-in, out in front of the shop, on the second Saturday of every month. I won’t make it next month, because I’ll be directing the people with the strong backs, but maybe the month after that. It’s not a bad drive at all.

I was supposed to have dinner with Brother Sushi last night, but he had major overtime at work, so I expect his call ~

And there it is. Later, gators! He says he has all sorts of stories to share. As do I.

In Which Ms. Ravelled Impersonates an Evil Troll…

Click on this link. Look at the picture that accompanies the article, and then at the title of the article. Then look back at those flowers and tell me, does anything strike you funny about them?

I subscribe to that newsletter because I am a passionate [if non-practicing] believer in marriage. And I also have a non-prurient interest in what constitutes “healthy and normal” intimate relations, should the day arrive when I am able to be a practicing believer. My field research has left me, umm, a bit shell-shocked.

That subject wasn’t something that I wanted to discuss with my parents. Therefore, I didn’t know how to discuss it with either husband. [Well, I *did* have a brief discussion with First Hubby when we became friends again six years ago, but it was perfectly chaste and entirely philosophical.] And when I mentioned a concern to my gynecologist, thirty years ago, he gave me some specific advice that might have been useful if I hadn’t gotten embarrassed and started doing multiplication tables in my head to drown him out.

I now have a female gynecologist; I could probably ask her, if there were a need. Which, presently, there is not.

I think most of us want to know that who we are and what we want, in any aspect of our lives, is normal. And I think that that certainty is crucial in our intimate life, if we have one. To know that we are cherished by our beloved, and to able to stand confidently before our Maker because our relations with our beloved are apropos.

[Is it warm in here, or is it just me?] Time for a little comic relief.

1. Firstborn called me from work yesterday, asking if I need more boxes. Which I do. She said that she would bring me about eight, with lids; one of her coworkers had built a fort of empty boxes around the desk of another coworker, who was away from her desk. And that as soon as the second coworker [who apparently has no sense of humor] cooled down, they would take down the fort and carry the boxes out to Firstborn’s car.

2. My chair at my desk at work has developed a moaning squeak when I scoot around on the carpet protector. I think it’s in the key of Q. And it’s not a reek-reek-reek kind of sound, more like a woah-oah-oah. As if a tuba were trying to give birth, with trombone descant. [Hovanhess would be pleased.]

3. I am having wonderful learning experiences while riding the train. Today I was surrounded by young men going home for the weekend from Job Corps, to visit their mothers for my least favorite holiday. The young man who was sitting next to me was talking to the one across from me, and he used the phrase “smoked him like a Philly bl*nt”. I wasn’t sure that I’d heard the whole phrase, though I got his meaning. When the other two young men left the train, I asked if I had heard him correctly, and the very proper businessman sitting across the aisle cracked up, “Pffft!” If he’d been drinking coffee, we would all have been baptized.

I can’t wait to see the expression on LittleBit’s face when I repeat the story to her. [She just about died last week when I told one of our elders that I will be “going to church in the ’hood” after I move. I will be living in a transitional but respectable neighborhood. My new ward is urban and umpteen kinds of diverse, and the meetinghouse borders a somewhat iffy neighborhood, and I am not worried in the slightest, because I know that that is where I am supposed to be.]

Cue Billy Joel.

Tune in tomorrow for a road trip, two acquisitions, and a photo or two.

Pink Rules, Turquoise Drools!

Cast on while waiting for the train to start, yesterday morning. This is how far I’d gotten when I walked into the break room. It’s blurry; just look at the length and not the stitches.



And here is where I was at the end of lunch.



And when I went to bed, after Knit Night.



Yay! for knitting that cooperates. Yay! for Mim and her knits. [This one is Serpentine, and it’s free.] Yay! for one of my favorite yarns. [Leftover from Mal’s Mitts, which I made for LittleBit’s friend at Christmas. Dream in Color Smooshy in “Cool Fire”. We loves this yarn.] Yay! for [relatively] fat needles. [Addi Lace 2.5 = US size 1.5].

Happy fingers! Lickety-split knitting! What’s not to like?

Here is a link to my friend Sooz’s column on divorce and integrity. She comments that while we do a good job in the church of teaching people how to court and be married without compromising eternal principles, we rarely discuss how to apply those principles to the coming-apart of a marriage. I remember carpooling, about ten years ago, to one of the dances with a brother in my ward. We stopped to tank his car, and when he got back in I asked how long he’d been divorced. He replied that it should be final in a couple of weeks.

I was considerably less assertive in those days. Today I would tell him politely but firmly, “Please take me back to my car. I’m not riding to the dance with a married man.” Back then I was still reeling from my own divorce, still too much into pleasing others, and so I just prayed very loudly inside my head “Oh please do not let us get into an accident tonight. I didn’t know!”

I had a moment at work yesterday where I got to flex my assertiveness muscles. It was right in the middle of my busiest time of the morning, and I came back from my break to find two of the legal secretaries chatting with the woman who relieves me. She left, and they stayed, grousing about how overwhelmed they were and how much they didn’t want to go back to their desks and work.

After about two minutes of this, while I sorted the incoming mail preparatory to opening it and pulling all the staples, I interrupted them and said, “Of the three of us here at my desk, one of us wants to do her job. Would you mind taking this elsewhere?” They were a little startled, but they left.

Yes, there are aspects of my job that I don’t like. Yes, I have days when I would rather be anywhere else than my desk. But if you really, truly hate your job and think that you’re picked on [when you’re not], why stay? Why not go to work somewhere else? And if not, then go grouse in another part of the office, where it doesn’t interfere with me doing what they pay me to do.

I read this review and will probably buy the book. I think I have a pretty clear idea of whom and Whose I am and where I stand in relation to where I want to be or where He needs me to be. I do think these questions might help me to refine my discipleship.

This was good, too. Yes, I did a bit of reading while I ran the scanner; I’m getting that down to an art.

Dashing down the hall to get ready to head for the train. Thankfully, there’s still time to make the one that I want.

A Calculating Woman

DART [Dallas Area Rapid Transit] has a nifty little online calculator, to help you figure out how much you would save by riding public transportation. According to their model, I will save about $530 a month on car expenses; this includes not only the cost of fuel, but maintenance, tires, interest and depreciation, insurance, license and registration; it does not include the loan payment. I think my savings will be somewhat less than that, but I would have to grab several files to be sure. And I haven’t had breakfast yet.

From here to the train station that I’m currently using, is 9.5 miles, compared to the 25 miles I drive one-way to Dallas. From my new home to the train station that I will be using is 3.75 miles. And I haven’t figured out how far it is from the duplex to the office, but at least 10 miles farther and possibly as much as 15. So this month I will drive somewhere between 50-60% less and after that something like 75-85% less. After three days of riding the train, I am incredibly more relaxed *and* I don’t want to go anywhere else once I get home. I just want to cook a simple meal and putter about and knit.

Pretty cool. Here’s the link to their calculator so you can put in your own numbers. And now I'll stop torturing you with math.

How about I tease you with knitting instead? Here are the Anastasia sisters, side by side, as of dark-thirty this morning.



And what about this?



I don’t know if it’s a difference in grist between the Addi Turbo and the Addi Lace, but the second sock is noticeably larger, both in width and in length. And my left foot is not all that much bigger than my right. It could also be the difference between K2tog and SSK, because my eyelets are definitely bigger on the second sock. But look at that ugly pooling, which is nonexistent on the first sock. I don’t mind the two faint green stripes, but that pond has got to go.

I wonder if I need to gear down to my 000 for this second sock? And if so, I wonder where that needle might be? No doubt I will find it while packing. I know that it made the move from the old place, because I have the bag that it came in.

Oh dear, I guess this forces me to wind up the purple cashmere and cast on a scarf...

DP’s v. Magic Loop v. Two Circs ?= GLM Ski Lessons

Wendy has a new sock posted on her blog. Seriously cool! And she gives the most cogent argument that I’ve read for the use of two circular needles. Here’s my comment on her post:

I like Magic Loop *and* DP’s; it depends on if it’s a traveling sock or a stay-at-home sock. I tried socks on 2 circs, and for me it was like when I tried GLM ski lessons; I was fine with 3-foot skis and no poles, but when they gave me 4-foot skis *and* poles, my brain fried, and I spent the rest of the day in the lodge drinking cocoa.

I didn’t want to post on her blog that I got so stressed from the second day of GLM* that I gave myself the quick-step, which is a fun experience when you have to get yourself downhill fast and get off your skis and into the loo without running down your fellow snow bunnies.

I would have gone straight home that day, but I’d ridden the bus up the mountain, and my car was 15 miles away. I just sat in the lodge, trying to look glamorous in my pink parka and my socks. Girls, remember when I drove us up to Bogus Basin right before Dad died in 1990, and you all turned green from the hairpin curves? That road.

*[this is an interesting article, even for a non-sports-type like me]

I was a reluctant convert to Magic Loop. I love circs for knitting sweaters; it’s how I was able to crank out a basic adult sweater using EZ’s percentage method [as taught in Jacqueline Fee’s The Sweater Workshop] in seven days, back in the mid-1980’s. I also love the rectilinear pokiness of using DP’s for making socks, while weeping a bit over the occasional broken needle. I’m a knitter on a budget, and I try to take good care of my tools.

I love the feel of Crystal Palace’s resin-infused bamboo DP’s. They are wonderful for slippery yarns, and they are stronger than plain bamboo and more flexible than wooden needles. They are also pretty, in a very quiet way. [Addi Turbos, while perfect for sticky yarns, are not pretty.] I much prefer the Addi Lace not only for knitting shawls, but for knitting socks.

This second Anastasia, which is on my 00 Turbo needle, was going more slowly than the re-do of the first sock, which was on my 00 Lace needle. I swapped needles before going to bed last night. I didn’t get as much knitting done at stake conference as I would have liked, simply because of the fiddliness of all those SSK’s with a blunt needle tip. SSK is by its nature slower than K2tog, because you have to twist the stitches before working them together. [You knitting muggles can just ignore this part.]

I have yet to fire up my new KnitPicks Harmony needle; I’ll let you know what I think, when I do. Which will probably be later this week. The 00 Lace needle is so sharp that it wears a hole in my left forefinger when I’m pushing stitches. It’s nice to have a second project on fat needles, for when I want to give myself an extra day or two of healing time. The Harmony is pointier than my Addi Natura. And I think it will look fabulous, dahling, with that purple cashmere yarn I bought a few weeks ago. Maybe one of Knitspot’s “little nothing” scarves?

I will almost certainly buy Wendy’s book when it comes out. And I may find myself trying two circs again, to get tighter stitches on the sole of my sock and looser ones on my instep. We shall see.

I have two loads in the wash, and it’s almost time to go put them into the dryer. Exciting times, chez nous! But I will not be stinky at work today, in spite of Firstborn’s snarky comment last night :)

The Most Important Things

I didn’t get everything done that was on my list for yesterday. But I think I got the most important things done. I love spending time with my best friend. It doesn’t happen nearly often enough, as far as we are concerned. It was definitely easier when we were in the same ward and saw each other several times a week because we were ferrying kids to and from activities.

And I have to say, I enjoy walking through a museum much better when I am with her, than I do when I’m with the thundering herd, AKA my dinner group buddies. I don’t want to follow a tour guide. I barely tolerate those canned bits of information on the jobbies you can hang around your neck. I want to read the sign that accompanies each work of art, and I want to think for myself, and I want to discuss it with somebody who loves art as passionately as I do. Particularly when they know more about it than I do. And I want to go at my own pace. Fortunately, her pace and mine are compatible, so it was a great outing.

The J.M.W. Turner exhibition, running through the 18th at the Dallas Museum of Art, is huge. Almost too big for me to enjoy. I did skip the room with the time-line and contemporary history. Each room was painted a different color; I don’t remember a single one that was Boring Museum Grey. And I like his earlier stuff better than his later work. While I love the colors that the Impressionists used, I am much more fond of the Old Masters. I want trees that look like trees, and women who look like women, and rich, saturated colors. If I want nondescript color mooshes, I will sit down with my brushes and my tubes and moosh them myself.

[Oh yeah, that’s a bad side effect from having gone to Main Street Arts Festival two weeks ago and the DMA today; I want to pull my watercolor supplies out of storage and make messes. I so do not have time for this!]

The one that moved me most deeply, was The Tenth Plague of Egypt; this is the best image that I was able to find online. In the foreground you see two women grieving over a child, and sitting behind them a woman[?] with her head in her hands, and another dead child. For me it captured what those mothers must have felt when they realized that their stubborn Pharaoh was not a god who could save them.

I also liked Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus, though I had to ask my friend for the story behind it. I did not remember that Polyphemus was the Cyclops, nor that his father was Poseidon. I managed to skate out of reading most of The Iliad and The Odyssey, back in high school. [Poor Penelope, having to weave an additional 20 years because her idiot husband taunted the son of a Greek god.]

One of the last paintings in the exhibition was an impressionistic work that I liked, The Angel Standing in the Sun. It reminded me of some of Minerva Teichert’s work.

Stake conference last night and this morning was interesting, as usual. Our stake president is very loving, very tender-hearted, and steadfast in reminding us that we need to be obedient. More than one ox got gored in his closing remarks today. None of mine, fortunately, were on the menu. [OK, one got bruised a little when he reminded us that mothers are to teach their daughters to cook and sew, etc.; I’ve been too busy over the years, just trying to keep them fed and clothed, to do as much training as I would have liked. And the ones who do cook, are way better at it than I was at their age.] I do appreciate his telling us that the sniping which goes on [occasionally] between the stay-at-home moms and the moms who work outside the home, needs to stop, today.

I will miss him when I am in my new ward and new stake. Thankfully, the stake president in my new stake was the bishop when we lived with our friends for a month and a half, after we left the Hill Country with our tails between our legs. So I already know him, like him, and trust him. And I expect to esteem my new bishop as much as I do my present one.

I have been getting impressions with greater and greater frequency this year. I do not know what this means, other than I am working actively to remove thoughts, ideas, and associations that would interfere with that. I have one long-term friendship that I sense should come to an end; moving will make that easier, while making it harder to maintain those friendships that I do want to keep.

On a happier note, there is a woman in the stake with whom things have been strained for a number of years; she was briefly engaged to a man who was [for a time] my friend, and for whom I was developing feelings. They brought out the worst in each other. She and I exchanged pleasantries at the meetings this weekend, and I think the bitterness between us is past.

It feels as if the Lord is enabling me to tie up all sorts of loose ends in recent weeks. And I have the feeling of moving toward a bright and busy future that holds no opportunity for self-pity or stagnation. LittleBit is making plans for a place of her own; the details are still sketchy, but she has brains, determination, and ambition *plus* her heart is good. I trust that she will make decisions that are safe and well-considered and firmly on the Lord’s side of the line.

This morning, I finished the block for the knit-along afghan we are doing in my Knit Night group. Also made real progress on the second Anastasia. Don’t know if I will have time to block it before Tuesday night, but it was a quick day-and-a-half project, and I liked working with the yarn better than I thought I would. Picture, maybe, tomorrow. Time for me to gather up my laundry and take it over to Firstborn’s. Mostly I would like to stay home and take a nap. So maybe I will get up an hour earlier tomorrow morning and do it at the laundry center here at the apartments.

Being Somebody

I read this article and thought you might like it.

My KnitPicks order came yesterday. And it’s three kinds of gorgeous! This kind:



[Two skeins of Gloss Sock, in Woodland Sage. The color is fairly true.] And this kind:



[Three skeins of Gloss Lace, in Mermaid, which is a much lighter aqua than you see here.] And this:



[Ten skeins of Gloss Lace, in Aegean, which is much darker than in this photo, about as deep as Prussian Blue, but greener.] Teal, not blue. (Repeat as necessary.) I also got my first Harmony needles, which I plan to use for knitting the lace yarns and maybe my contribution to my friend’s niece’s baby blanket.

In other happy knitting news, I am nearly done with the re-re-knitting of the cuff on the first Anastasia. Which means that I may finish it this weekend and pick up the second sock where I left it after discovering the extra K2tog and dropped stitch on the first one. I guess it’s a good idea that I’m not so OCD as to count every blessed stitch knit and tinked and frogged and knitted and tinked, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. Extending my preferred metaphor of “the glass is half full”? This yarn has been half-socked four times now and is nearly done with the fifth incarnation. This is if you count the two earlier sock patterns that the yarn didn’t want to be.

The morning light pouring in over the top of the fence around my patio is so warm and lovely. I tried to capture it with my camera, poking my hand through a gap in the vertical blinds, but the two shots I fired off, didn’t turn out. Doing the subject justice would require more time and attention than I care to give at the moment; I’d rather be knitting. So you’ll just have to take my word for it.

The patio itself could use a good sweeping. Not happening. I want some breakfast, and then I want to curl up and knit. I’m expecting a call from Best Friend about our junket to the museum. And I really, really need to do some laundry today. But oh Danny Boy, the yarn, the yarn is calling...

Could I Please Just Marry Gregory Peck?

Though for me he will always be Atticus Finch, reluctant shooter of mad dogs [but not Englishmen], last night I stretched out on the couch with my knitting and the denouement of “Roman Holiday”. I love that man’s voice. It’s a Harley Davidson kind of voice, deep and rich, and he conveys more emotion by the simple act of swallowing than today’s younger actors manage to pull out of an entire bag of shticks.

Just flat melts my butter.

Yesterday was weird. I woke up around 2:15 and couldn’t get back to sleep. Which made for a long, long day. Left a little after 6:30 and called Firstborn at work to confirm what I remembered about how to get to the nearer train station.

What a lovely, pleasant drive! The train itself was comfortable and not too crowded; that may change in coming weeks, if gas prices continue to rise. And I caught a bus at the front of the station for the last couple of blocks to work. Eventually I will walk it. [Eventually I will also sleep through the night.]

I put about an inch and a half on the second Anastasia; I had to rip back to the first round of pattern when I realized that I’d knitted the spiral into the sole as well as the instep. During “Roman Holiday” I worked on the cuff of the much-frogged first sock.

Some thoughts on riding the rails: I like the people-watching. I need to carry less stuff. I like the extra knitting time [about 40 minutes each way in the current incarnation; more like an hour once I’ve moved]. And it takes longer than just hopping in my car and going.

Amusing moment: surfing the Web while opening the morning mail and pulling umpteen staples, looking for a mandoline to go with my eBay cookbook that arrived in the first batch of mail. Realizing that I can pay $45.00-70.00 for a basic mandoline with steel blades and legs that tilt it at an ergonomic angle, or $25.00 for a Kyocera mandoline with a ceramic blade and no legs plus it comes in red. Beginning an order at surlatable.com and coming to a screeching halt when I see $7.95 shipping for an order that is going to top out around $35.00. [I found a second item that I wanted.] Remembering that one of our former employees shopped at the local store. Finding the local store via the website. Eight minutes away. I’ll just hop in my car at lunch and save myself $7.95...

The car. Is at the park and ride. In Hurst.

This will take a little getting used to.

Tonight is dinner and dancing, and tomorrow morning is a bit of culture at the Dallas Museum of Art with my best friend. Tomorrow night is the grownups-only session of stake conference, which I always enjoy. I’m feeling un peu triste, however; tomorrow night at the Richardson Symphony, Olga Kern is playing the Rach 3. J’adore the Rach 3. I will just have to comfort myself with sockliness.

Must be out the door in twelve minutes, if I want to catch an earlier train than yesterday. This could get interesting.

No Crying over Spilt Milk!

No photographing of it for the blog, either. I took my charger and spare batteries to juice up at work, but I left the camera on my computer desk here at home. Pity. Cleopatra could have bathed in the puddle that I created when I dropped my bottle of milk while re-entering the office at lunch yesterday. Thankfully, it was a plastic bottle and not glass, and maintenance sent somebody up immediately, so no real harm done except that I was thirsty all afternoon.

Nevertheless, I had a good day, in spite of several other petty irritations on that order. I had more bits of bad luck yesterday than I normally do in a month, and each time by the grace of Heaven I was able to regroup and get on with the day.

I left the house at 6:30 to go buy my train ticket. The kiosks at the station were all malfunctioning. [But it was a lovely morning, and I had a nice, non-strenuous walk from the park and ride.] I decided to try Union Station in Dallas. I missed the entrance and had to take a two or three mile detour. [But I had time to go back and try again.] There was no free parking so I could just pop in, get my ticket, and be on my way. [But the DART cop was pleasant when I asked.]

I sent an email to one of the attorneys, who lives in a northern suburb of Dallas. He had offered, when he heard that I was going to start riding the train but had missed the cutoff for the office’s monthly ticket order, to pick one up at the station. Sometimes he works in the office, and sometimes hearings and other lawyerly duties keep him in court or working remotely. He didn’t get my email before he came into the office. [But he walked over on his lunch hour (!!!) with my cash and picked up my ticket for me. I’ll turn in my receipt today and be reimbursed sometime next week.]

On Monday I got an email from the office manager, informing me that I had a “webinar” [virtual seminar] after lunch yesterday, with the other members of the committee I’m now serving on. I was the only one who showed up for it. So I had to take notes for the others. [But I also took my knitting, and I got two rounds in on the second Anastasia, in between scribbles.]

While heading toward the Tollway after work, I was nearly creamed by a guy in a big truck. [But the side mirror settings that I learned while teaching LittleBit to drive, enabled me to see him and stay out of harm’s way.]

In the good-news-only department, my Amazon order arrived yesterday, as did my clogs from eBay. And because it was my last day to drive into work, I was able to get everything home last night, plus a nice big nest of empty boxes and the day’s newspaper for packing up breakables.

You are sitting there wondering if suddenly I am the sister of that guy from Lil Abner who walks around with his own black cloud overhead. No, not really. But I went to the temple last night after work, to serve in the House of the Lord, and somebody whose name we won’t mention, but he is popularly depicted in a red suit with horns and a pitchfork, did not want me to go, or to feel the Spirit if I did.

I went anyway. And because I knew what was going on, all day, I was able to drink a fourth of the milk that I paid for, and allow my co-worker to serve me, and frog back Anastasia to the dropped stitch, and make three trips to the car to get everything properly stowed, and realize that the only thing that really mattered was my attitude.

And this morning, our home is filled with that same peaceful, thoughtful spirit that comes from Heaven. There is a stillness in my bosom that has been missing far too long. [John 14:27 ~ “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”]

After I completed my service in the temple last night, I drove to La Madeleine and had quiche Florentine, a cup of their tomato-basil soup, and a mini-parfait for dinner. I ate slowly and deliberately, grateful for hunger and the means to satisfy it.

In discussing my medications with my doctor on Tuesday, she agrees that I no longer need the anti-inflammatory, which must be taken with food. And I have been able to cut way back on the diuretic as well. Which means that I might once again be able to participate in the monthly fast at church. I have really missed the privilege of fasting to bless the poor.

Once a month, those of us who are physically able, abstain from food and drink for two meals and donate what we would have spent on those meals, for the benefit of the poor in our congregations. That money pays rent, utilities, doctor bills, etc., for Latter-Day Saints in need of assistance. [When that molar broke, twelve or so years ago, other people’s generous fast offerings paid my dentist to have the shards extracted.]

I have my new Barbara Walker books entered on Ravelry. I guess it’s time to take them out of the box and put them on the shelf. And then to open the box from eBay and see if the shoes fit as well as I think they will. And then to locate the train station that my daughter sometimes uses, which is far less busy than the one on the county line.

I think it’s going to be a blessedly amazing day.