Have you seen the weather reports for Green bay right now? Words like blizzard and white-out conditions are being used.
Not a big deal, right? Well, maybe if we were flying directly into Green Bay. But we're flying into Milwaukee and driving up. At night. (or maybe not...I'm thinking we will drive up on Friday morning instead because night tim + black ice = bad) Oh, and our flight connects through Kansas City, where tornadoes have been touching down.
This could get interesting. Fingers crossed, everyone!
Whenever I think of my grandmother, I immediately picture her sitting in front of the TV watching her soaps. She was a CBS fan, which meant that she watched Guiding Light and Young & The Restless. When I would visit her, she didn't change her watching habits, although (as the story goes) one day she asked my mom if it was okay for me to watch the shows, seeing as how there was kissing and murder and things. My mom simply replied that it was fine, but Grandma had to answer any questions I might have. Seeing as how I was both inquisitive and observant, my grandmother quickly adopted the habit of sending me out of the room on errands any time the show started getting particularly violent or porny. I'd fetch her glasses of water or a pack of gum (Juicy Fruit, always Juicy Fruit) or another ball of yarn.
The yarn was for whatever afghan she was working on at the time. Grandma came from an era and a society where sitting around doing nothing was not acceptable, so if she was sitting and watching TV, then her hands would be busy making something. In her case, it was afghans. Tons and tons of afghans. She made me an afghan in this very 1970's color scheme, dark brown-tan-cream-burnt orang. It was a classic ripple afghan and it stayed on my bed for probably 15 years. I still have it buried in one of my closets; I have yet to find a blanket as warm and comforting as that afghan. Unfortunately for my grandmother, she fell in love with that pattern after she promised it to me. She spent the rest of her life (unfortunately only 3 or 4 more years) trying to replicate it. She never did, but when my grandparents died unexpectedly in '84, we found a cupboard full of afghans that she had crocheted while watching her soaps. They all had the same color scheme as mine, but none of them were exactly right. But hey, at least she had something to keep her hands busy.
Grandma passed the yarnwork gene on to my mom, of course, and Mom crocheted until her job made her carpal tunnel too painful to crochet any more. I have a blanket from her too, a red and black and white one that she made for me to use when sitting in the stands after band tournaments. They were my school colors, and my friends were allg rateful that we had it because it got cold on those metal bleachers during damp October nights. And I'm still trying to figure out how to get the snowflakes out of her collection of Christmas ornaments...tiny things crocheted from gossamer white thread, then starched within an inch of their lives. Her hands got bad before she could teach me how to make those, so stealing hers is my only option.
She taught me to crochet, too. But I've only been okay at it. I still can't master the ripple blanket, mostly because I'm bad at stitch counting. I can't read a crochet pattern any better than I can read Latin. And for some reason, I cannot for the life of me make straight edges. The scarves I've created were all either wavy edged or made from long chains of single and double stitches; they're easy to hide crooked ends on.
But I love working with my hands, I love having something to do while I sit and watch TV at night. If I don't have something to keep me busy, I end up fidgeting or snacking or tormenting the cats. So I decided this year that I was going to learn how to knit, damn it. And earlier this month, on Super Bowl Sunday, I did.
I learned how to knit and I absolutely love it. The patterns are easy to read, the stitches are easy to count and see and work with, and glory of glories, my edges are straight! My friend handed me a pair of size 10 needles and a few balls of yarn, taught me the basic garter stitch, and I took to it like the standard fish to water. I finished my first scarf within a couple of weeks, and decided to teach myself how to bind it off. I even taught myself how to cast on, how to purl, how to do a stockinette stich.
I see a problem here though. I'm obsessed with it already. I found myself caressing some pairs of bamboo needles the other day, and more than once I've spouted off with another idea I've had to Things I Shall Knit. A sweater for Kevin! Hand/wrist warmers for everyone at work to protect them from our rogue air conditioners! Little jackets with matching caps for my mother-in-law's weiner dogs! Knit caps with ear holes for the cats! A new purse for me! I'm plotting trips to yarn stores and cruising through Knitty.com trying to decide just how brave I am.
I'd write more about it (because really, I can't shut up right now because I am so enamored with knitting), but I have a scarf to finish. It's cold in Wisconsin, and my husband needs it fr our trip next week.
(Man, we're going to have to move somewhere colder just so I can keep knitting stuff that I can actually use, aren't I?)
In which the only excitement in my life involves made up drama
I have a friend whose life is a total freakshow of Very Bad Things Happening At Once right now and all I can do is be a shoulder for her to lean on, an ear to listen to her necessary venting, and an occasional source of entertainment.
I have no funny children to do adorable things that I can talk to her about, my boss is really only funny every so often and that's usually on accident, and she is already familiar enough with my husband's wacky side that there's no new material there. Luckily for her, I recently broke up with my nail lady without informing my nail lady of that fact and am now having to come up with new and creative ways to avoid her.
The whole situation is really very absurd, which also makes it really very awesome.
It all started about 6 weeks ago, when I gave up on ever having my natural nails grow in long and gorgeous and nearly unbreakable like my mother's (the one thing I didn't inherit from her, damn it all to hell). I went in to see Amy, my former nail lady, and asked her to put a new set of acrylics on for me. Four days after she put them on, every single last one of them was lifting, and they were just gross looking...thick and bumpy and filed to a weird shape. And it was my breaking point. This was like the third time I'd had this whole lifting phenomenon happen to me and I did not want to deal with it again. I needed a new nail lady.
My friend (and bowling teammate, no less) always has good looking nails, so i of course asked her where she got hers done. long story short, her nail lady (Bebe) popped off the old ones, slapped on some new ones and not a one lifted in the three weeks I waited between fills. So I cancelled my standing appointment with Amy, vaguely citing a busy schedule.
I knew Amy would call me eventually though, because she has my cell phone number. But that was okay because I had an elaborate lie already concocted about how I was going back to school so I couldn't make it over to her shop anymore and had to start going somewhere closer to school. Kevin thought I was being an idiot and should just tell Amy she sucked and that's why I stopped going, but he just doesn't understand. See, I went to Amy for something like 8 years, which means she's been part of my life for 3 years more than Kevin has. Hell's bells, I wear a necklace almost every day that she gave me for my 30th birthday! I couldn't just hurt her feelings like that!
Needless to say, she called this week. And since I was at work, I got caught totally off guard and managed to forget to tell her my cover story and again went on about how I've just been really busy and no, I'm not mad at her, blah blah blah. And when I hung up, I promptly saved her number to my phone and marked it "Amy DON'T ANSWER" so that I will be able to successfully avoid her forever now.
Of course, I can no longer go to the Ben & Jerry's or Starbucks that are in the little strip mall that her nail salon is in, because she would totally recognize my car and I just don't want to have a whole face to face with her because I think I would have to eventually tell her she sucks and that would just ruin my whole day.
Needless to say, this whole story entertained my friend to no end. And how could it not? I mean come ON, the biggest drama in my life right now is the fact that my former nail lady may or may not be stalking me a little. Oy.
On the good side, my nails have been looking better than they have in years, which makes all the drama worth it. Right?
Anyone who knows me in the very least knows that I have a thing for animals. If I had my way (and a few hundred thousand dollars), I'd go back to school full time, get a bio degree and then go to vet school because spending the day surrounded by animals would be the best job ever. I've made Kevin promise me that someday I can have a duck. And maybe a sheep. And a miniature horse. And a dog. Or three. Oh, and more cats.
I really, really, really want a dog these days. I want a dog the way other women want a baby. It's less of a want and more than a need...it's really becoming an obsession. I see a puppy and it's hard to keep from kidnapping it. I talk to Shmouse and I ask how she's doing, then how her dog Lily's doing. If I had the space and money, I'd be at the shelter this weekend adopting at least two dogs.
Knowing this, imagine how fucking sad this commercial makes me every time it comes on:
Seriously, forget Hallmark commercials, just show me adorable dogs in a shelter to make me cry. It's gotten to the point where I just have to hear the first few strains of the music and my heart breaks. It's really just not fair.
On the good side, if that's not a good way to convince people to A) adopt shelter dogs and B) SPAY AND NEUTER, DAMN IT, then I don't know what is.
